I’ve been to a great many plays on race. Some, like August Wilson’s Jitney, manage to survive through the ages and provide a stunningly timeless view on the problems of the colorline.

Others, like David Mamet’s Race or Neil Labute’s This Is How It Goes, make me realize how much of an abstract concept racism’s pervasiveness can be for white people. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream art world is controlled by white people, and therefore what is considered worthy of production is shaped by white perceptions.

Trouble in Mind has been resurrected, but there are always complications. Over at the Arena Stage website, Irene Lewis speaks to the cause of the persistent racial gap in evaluation of material:

For years, the play Trouble in Mind, by African-American playwright Alice Childress, was recommended to me as a show that, as artistic director of CENTERSTAGE, I should produce. I had read the play several times over the years and found it to be “old-fashioned/old hat,” especially concerning the depiction of the character of the white director. Finally, I decided to ask the opinion of an African-American actress whose judgment I have always valued. She read the play and told me that she liked it. When I asked if she found the role of the white director dated and unbelievable, she said, “No.” So I came around to the opinion that this was another case of – what should I call it – whites (me) being “out of touch” with the experiences of African-Americans. I decided to produce and direct the play at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore. It subsequently transferred to Yale Repertory Theater. I am delighted that Molly is bringing this groundbreaking piece to Arena Stage.

“Out of touch” is the last term I would use to describe Childress’ noted work, considering it was originally performed in 1955. Considering the play was created more than five decades ago, it should not be so fresh and contemporary. And yet, we live in an era in which a white woman’s tale about a white woman and the black maids she liberated swept the bestseller’s list and the box office – clearly, things haven’t changed that much. So why the disconnect between black and white theater aficionados? As Childress herself has stated:

“There aren’t any black critics who can close a white play. But in black theater, black experience has been fought against by white critics. The white critic feels no obligation to prepare himself to judge a black play.”

And so, here we are.

Trouble in Mind is a play within a play, designed to explore racism in the theater industry by allowing the audience to peek at the inner workings of a troubled production. Wiletta Mayer (E. Faye Butler) is an aging starlet, who has spent her life toiling in mammy and sidekick roles, desperate for a big break. She is cast in Chaos in Belleville, along with five other actors – three black and two white. John (Brandon J. Dirden) is a young, black upstart, determined to make it in the business despite the cost. Sheldon Forrester (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) is an older black actor who refuses to rock the boat, for any reason. Mille Davis (Starla Benford) is a friendly rival who boasts about her husband’s desire that she give up acting in favor of homemaking. Of the white cast, young Judy (Gretchen Hall) is the classic ingenue type and Bill (Daren Kelly) is a set in his ways older white man. They are all drawn together by director Al Manners (Marty Lodge), who is mounting a large production against the odds and hopes to make a play “that says something.”

Unfortunately, the play was written for to appease white audiences, causing a key conundrum for the black actors in the performance. Wiletta struggles with the play most of all, coming to the conclusion throughout the play that there is something terribly amiss with the script – and having trouble finding an ear for her concerns.

Reviews of the play frustrated me, almost as if I was playing bingo. I heard about the “sassy” back and forth between Millie and Wiletta, and the “stirring gospel renditions,” which made me wonder if the reviewers had read Black Culture for Dummies before scribbling together their responses. These things are in the play, but they are also the examples that appear in review after review – ignored are the more subtle discussions of black cultural frameworks, or the broader idea of the ongoing plight of black actors choosing between regular work and acting on principles of racial justice. And there wasn’t a single reference to Robert Townsend’s “Black Acting School” sketch from Hollywood Shuffle, a more modern update to Childress’ core concepts.

There are other moments gone unnoticed by critics. Of particular interest to me was the relationship between Henry (played by Laurence O’Dwyer) and Wiletta. Initially, Wiletta is unable to voice her dissatisfaction with the director’s commands, and Henry attempts to provide some comfort and support. Henry, a former crew member turned doorman, speaks with a heavy Irish brogue. But Henry is also one of the only whites in the play that does not bother with pity, condescension, and naivety – he just commiserates, person to person. One would be tempted to think that this is a reference to the complicated history that Irish Americans have with whiteness – however, a major part of the acceptance of the Irish into the white majority was abuse and separation from black Americans. Unfortunately, answers are not forthcoming – I couldn’t find any critical analysis of Henry in this context. Taking the play at face value, though, Henry embodies human connection and friendship transcending traditional racial boundaries – even if the two leads had to wait until the stage was dark and their coworkers had gone before they could speak freely.

But the most electrifying part of the play comes from the exchanges between Wiletta and Al Manners, each pushing the other farther and farther outside of the bounds of polite racial conversation, where the ugly truth often lies buried under the veneer of polite society.

Most telling is this monologue, delivered from the beleaguered white director of the production after being accused of prejudice:

Get wise, there’s damned few of us interested in putting on a colored show at all, much less one that’s going to say anything. It’s rough out here, it’s a hard world! Do you think I can stick my neck out by telling the truth about you? ‘

There are billions of things that can’t be said… do you follow me, billions! Where the hell do you think I can raise a hundred thousand dollars to tell the unvarnished truth?

(Picks up the script and waves it) So, maybe it’s a lie…but it’s one of the finest lies you’ll come across for a damned long time! Here’s bitter news, since you’re livin’ off truth… The American public is not ready to see you the way you want to be seen because, one.. .they don’t believe it, two.. .they don’t want to believe it…and three… they’re convinced they’re superior.. .and that, my friend, is why Carrie and Renard have to carry the ball! Get it? Now you wise up and aim for the soft spot in that American heart, let ‘em pity you, make ‘em weep buckets, be helpless, make ‘em feel so damned sorry for you that they’ll lend a hand in easing up the pressure.

In Plays by American Women, Judith E. Barlow notes:

Manners is surely right that few directors in the period would be willing to work on a show about racial themes with a predominantly Black cast, and that White audiences “don’t want to believe” or see people of color as they really are and “want to be seen.” (The failure of Broadway producers to risk showing Trouble in Mind is ironic proof of his claim.) Yet he cannot understand that a White liberal “version” of African American life is no substitute for Black people defining who they are and what they have experienced.

The fraudulence of “Chaos in Belleville” is most obvious when the elderly actor Sheldon offers a moving account of the lynching that he witnessed as a child, a description at sharp odds with the sanitized melodrama of “Belleville.” The ring of authenticity in Sheldon’s account points up the shabby cliches of the interior drama. “Chaos in Belleville” is not only a bad reflection of reality, it is an example of how drama by White authors differs from, and usurps the place of, drama by playwrights of color. “Chaos in Belleville” purports to contain “an anti-lynch theme,” yet it bears little resemblance to the anti-lynch dramas written by African Americans, particularly women. In Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel (1916), Rachel’s mother is helpless against the mob that brutally murders her husband and son. The mother in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Blue-Eyed Black Boy (ca. 1930) appeals to the governor of the state (who raped her long ago) to save their child, while the grandmother in Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in the South (ca. 1925) desperately tries to rescue her unjustly accused grandson. In none of these plays does a mother blame her son for White bigotry and turn him over to an angry mob, and none offers as hero a White man like Renard, who preaches tolerance and pity after Job has been killed. “Chaos in Belleville” is a distorted mirror not only of actual events but of the way those events have been interpreted for the stage by African Americans themselves.

The metatheatrical structure of Trouble thus allows Childress to write a critique of the history of the American stage, where plays by (usually male) White writers purporting to show the Black experience have been embraced while dramas by African American writers are ignored.

Trouble in Mind is currently playing at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC through October 23, 2011. Tickets are $70-85 per show; however, there are student and senior matinee priced tickets, as well as Pay Your Age tickets, military discounts, and Hottix, which are half-priced and first come, first serve thirty minutes before showtime.

Enter the collectors, the hipsters, and the DJs. Their rediscovery of musical heritage is a cyclical phenomenon made possible by the deletion of massive amounts of culture. A process we seen repeatedly occurring in Black music, for instance, from the blues to free jazz to funk to disco to hip-hop.

Revivals are what happen at the point where the margin of the marketplace meets the bleeding-edge of hipsterism. It’s lots of fun, but it can also lead to decontextualization and erasure. Where do sagging jeans come from, right? In the cultural economy, in other words, history itself can be deleted.

So on the one hand, you have the market failure that occurs when companies choose to delete records or stop circulating records that have historical or creative importance, music that embodies our human story or music that helps seed new creativity.

Because of market failure, you can’t get De La Soul’s first four albums on iTunes. Nor can you get most of Biz Markie’s albums. You can’t get the complete Def Jam-era Public Enemy boxset Chuck D and the crew put together almost a decade ago. [...]

When I go into a library, I don’t have to worry about who is holding whose copyrights, why this book didn’t sell enough to continue to be available in any marketplace, how many other stories there are out there that I am missing because the storytellers don’t have the money or the property rights to tell them.

In the library, I am in a space beyond the marketplace, beyond consumption, beyond the money censors, beyond the noise. I am in a place where librarians have accumulated the knowledge and the stories important to me and my community.

The library is the embodiment and the refuge of our collective imagination. In the library, we learn just how big and full of possibility the world is and we build the kindling to fuel our creative fires and to change our culture.

—Jeff Chang, “In Defense of Libraries,” a talk given at a rally to save Oakland’s Public Libraries

The thought of writing about my faith terrifies me.

This terror is (mostly) irrational.

Convinced that most secular progressives would launch into a tirade about the evils of the church, (or worse respond with a measured, “Really?” maintain conversation but narrow their eyes and draw their wine glasses closer to their bodies, warding against my offensive Jesus vibes) I tend to keep my religion under wraps.

It’s kind of absurd, really, given the fact that my encounters with these militant secular progressives are entirely imaginary.

Yet, for reasons I shall soon elucidate (reasons both founded and unfounded), I’ve always felt the need to store up an arsenal of defenses, to have in place a series of ‘BUTS’ to interject in case the words  “Yes I’m a Christian” accidentally (always accidentally) slip out of my mouth. It’s really a great exercise in compound sentence formation:

“Yes, I’m a Christian…BUT I support gay marriage,” or

“Yes, I’m a Christian… BUT I’m pro-choice.”

I’ve never had to use these arguments, but when I’m putting off writing a paper or doing an especially mundane activity, I imagine confronting these incendiary secular progressives, and showing them calmly, rationally how I can be both an evangelical Christian and progressive.

But I’ve gotten tired of (hypothetically) defending myself.

I guess these insecurities/weird, imaginary conversations with WASP-y secular progressives began when I moved to America for good in middle school. (Brief background history: my parents are Nigerian, my twin sister and I were born in England, we moved to Gambia when I was four, had a brief stint in Ohio, went back to Gambia, hit up England again, and then moved to Rhode Island to settle in the US for good).

Those were challenging times, man.

Here we were, tall, skinny, dark-skinned black girls with buck teeth and English accents. Armed only with a superficial Babysitters’ Club based knowledge of American preteenager-dom, I was at a loss for quite some time, trying to navigate the confusing world of adolescence.

But soon, both my sister and I came up with a solution. We stuck out like a sour thumb already so why not run with our difference?

So we became that strange, ludicrous, paradoxical human being also known as the black conservative.

I’m not quite sure how it started. I was certainly influenced by my parents who, like a lot of African immigrants, are socially conservative. But somehow I took it to a whole other level. To make matters worse, I married my religious beliefs with my political ones and the results were (as you would imagine) bizarre and comical. I’d slip in references to ‘the Creator’ in my Science papers.  I’d quote Psalms 139 as I’d write about the evils of abortion for my Social Studies class. I watched The O’Reilly Factor every night. Did I mention I lived in Rhode Island—one of the most liberal states in the union?

Gradually, however, my political orientation began to shift. There are a host of reasons why this happened, many of which are too personal and cumbersome to delve into right now, but suffice it to say, by the time I was a senior in high school, my reputation had changed. Granted, moving to another state helped facilitate that transformation, but my sister and I were no longer known as ‘the Bible thumpers.’ We were now the race provocateurs– the ones that couldn’t go a day without bringing up some race-related issue or railing against our sexist, patriarchal society. But even though my political alignments changed drastically, my religious beliefs remained, largely, in tact.

Now a junior in college, I’m at a weird place. I’ve gone from Focus on the Family to Feministing.  And both (albeit one a lot more than the other) have made some valid points over the years; yet the one-dimensionality with which each views the ‘other side’ is appalling. And, frankly, expected on one website, but not so much on the other.

Bloggers on Feministing regularly refer to fundamental Christians as ‘fundies.’ They once posted a (clearly) satirical rap song and cited a (clearly tongue-in-cheek) blog post on Stuff Christians Like about the “Christian side hug,’ presenting it in a very ‘look-at-what-those-crazy-prudish-homophobic-Christians-are-listening-to-these-days’ kind of way.

For Focus on the Family to have a movie review website dedicated to reducing films to their positive or negative ‘moral’ elements is to be expected. For a progressive, feminist site like Feministing to stereotype so crudely is not.

So often I feel like a minority within a minority within a minority. I so desperately want to participate in these conversations about race and sexuality and pop culture. Slut-shaming on the college campus! Let’s talk about it! Modern Family’s increasingly problematic racial jokes? Check! But so often, I stop myself from joining in, because at some point I fear my religion will come up and I’ll have to apologize or answer for any and all of the Church’s flaws.

I know that a lot of Racialicious readers have been burned by the Church. I’ve read your comments. I’ve seen the grateful, positively giddy exclamations of “Thank goodness I’m not the only one who (fill in the blank) by the church” or of “Thank goodness I’m not the only black agnostic!” or whatever it is.

I understand. I really do. My sister is currently working through her own religious issues and Nigerian parents can make that ish especially hard.

But.

Here’s my ‘but.’

I have a story to share too. As a Christian. An evangelical Christian. One who has really felt the transformative power of Jesus Christ in my life (I know; you’re cringing.) And I suspect that there might be more of us in the progressive blogosphere than we let on. And by us I mean, those progressive Christians who read Racialicous or WhatTamiSaid or TransGriot or AngryAsianMan and agree with a lot of the posts and might want delve in, have their toes touch the proverbial water, so to speak, but are too afraid to do it because they feel like they’ll just have to keep apologizing and qualifying over and over again. And, man, I’m tired of all the guilt. I became a Christian to escape all that guilt.

Sometimes the progressive blogosphere can be strangely homogenous—so diverse in so many ways, and yet when it comes to its views on Christianity—so disappointingly unvarying.

But I’m not writing this to whine. Just to give myself some courage. To free myself from (mostly) imagined fears of rejection. Let everybody know where my privilege comes in, what my background is, before I dive headfirst into the crevasse (remember that 30 Rock episode?) and become more engaged in this progressive blogosphere that I call my home.

In the wake of the Steampunk Kurfluffle that started with Charles Stross’ complaint against steampunk, Tobias Buckell wrote an interesting response about fantasy’s tendency to romanticize the past and mentioned his own work:

But ultimately, I share Stross’s discomfort, which is why my steampunk plays have often been about adopting the style and nodding to the history. Crystal Rain, what I called a Caribbean steampunk novel, is about Caribbean peoples and the reconstituted Mexica (Azteca in the book) of old with a Victorian level of technology, using the clothing/symbols of steampunk, but making their artificiers black.

Sadly, Crystal Rain, written in 2006, seems to have come out just before all the hotness, as it rarely gets mentioned as a steampunk novel whenever these celebrations happen.

So, now that my curiosity was piqued, I had to go out and get the book to see for myself how he handles steampunk before “the hotness.”

What’s so refreshing about Crystal Rain, besides the setting, is its clear positioning as a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. The book takes place in the multicultural, multiracial country of Nanagada, a land outside of our known history. Little touches hint that Nanagada is a society rebuilding itself from a cataclysmic disaster that occurred centuries ago. A mysterious object called the Spindle drifts in the sky. Barren areas exist that sicken the men who attempt to cross them. The Preservationists work to restore some of the lost technologies from “the old fathers” from long ago under the authority of the new governess Dihana and engineers have just started taking advantage of steam technology. Over the mountain range beyond Nanagada, however, lives the society of Azteca, a fearsome rival. Equipped with air ships and goaded to war by their gods called the Teotl, the Azteca are preparing for invasion with Nanagada in its sights.

Our protagonist, John DeBrun, gets caught in the middle of this looming struggle when the Azteca finally breach the mountain pass safeguarding Nanagada and start their brutal march toward Capital City. John just is an ordinary village fisherman, except for two notable things: he can’t remember anything from his past before he washed upon this country’s shores, and his accent is noticeably different from everyone else’s, who all speak in a Caribbean-esque dialect.

But there is more to John than anyone, even the Azteca, realize. The Teotl are looking for him and have sent the warrior-spy Oaxyctl on a mission to capture him. A mysterious, preternaturally strong fighter named Pepper is also seeks John out. As John evades the Azteca forces and crosses paths with both men, he soon discovers that only one thing can save Nanagada from destruction: a weapon known only as Ma Wi Jung, located in the icy north.

Okay, I’m going to get a bit spoilery here, but what makes Crystal Rain fantastic is that the plot shies away from the mystical and leans heavy on the sci-fi. The Teotl and the rival gods the Loa advise opposing sides of this war, and these aren’t figurative beings, but flesh-and-blood creatures. And one of the reveals is that both groups aren’t gods at all, but enemy alien races that are using human beings as pawns in their own intergalactic battle. In the plethora of steampunk books that populated with werewolves, vampires, and magic (usually based on golems and alchemy), a steampunk book with space aliens—that aren’t Lovecraftian—makes it stand out. Other sci-fi aspects include the incredible powers wielded by John, Pepper, and others which are explained using nanotechnology, the unveiling of the forgotten history of Nanagada, and discovery of what Ma Wi Jung really is.

Buckell is a Caribbean-born author, and you can tell that he writes about the tropical world of Nanagada and its diverse peoples from personal experience. I enjoyed the fact that all of the main characters are non-white, and that the cultural setting is firmly Caribbean and indigenous and not a European-inspired setting populated by people of color. Race relations play out in a fascinating way, especially since the central conflict is between two non-white peoples whose cultural histories are drawn from completely different time periods. In Nanagada, multicultural and multiracial groups live together – the “Afrikan, Carib, Chinee, Indian, Frenchi, and Bridish”—but the Frenchi and Bridish tend to live in their own enclaves, while the non-white majority settled most of Nanagada. The different communities commingle, but the separation is treated more like ethnic neighborhoods rather than one stemming from a past history of slavery and oppression. The main differences were drawn between the Azteca and Nanagadan cultures: one is in a state of perpetual warfare and the other is peaceful and diverse, but stubbornly conservative. While the Azteca base their society around the human sacrifices they perform, the Nanagadans are not spotless either. The Capitol City citizens as just as capable to unleash violence against their Tolteca neighbors, the political refugees who fled Azteca society.

Besides its remarkable setting and worldbuilding, Crystal Rain’s characterization is also deftly handled by Buckell. Governess Dihana is a strong but vulnerable woman who must deal with distrust from council elders and traditional Loa priestesses. Oaxyctl the double agent forms an ambiguous friendship with John but remains fearfully loyal to his god and his society to the bitter end. I thought he was the most complex character of all, and Buckell was able to make Oaxyctl extremely sympathetic without giving him any desire to be converted to the Nanagadans’ side. John himself struggles with self-doubt and disability—he lost one hand during an past voyage to the north—but he doesn’t descend into perpetual angst. The kick-ass and brutal Pepper, however, outshines them all in his single-minded determination to find John and get to Ma Wi Jung, ripping apart (at times, literally), anyone who gets in his way. From his first standout appearance–dashing in his top hat, dreads, and trench coat–Pepper steals every scene he’s in. And it doesn’t hurt that I imagine him looking like Paterson Joseph’s Marquis de Caraban from Neverwhere.

Crystal Rain is full of bloody action and strife, a fast-paced adventure tale that doesn’t sugar-coat violence and its consequences. Like the society that had to be rebuilt from post-apocalyptic destruction, none of the characters in the book have it easy. Major sacrifices are made by John, Dihana, Oaxyctl, Pepper and many others, and there is no sunshine ending. But what the ending does show, however, is the capacity for human beings to survive and fight for their way of life. Overall, Crystal Rain is a thrilling read and truly a unique forerunner to the current steampunk explosion.

***
Interested in reading Crystal Rain for yourself? You can read the first third of the book for free online (and the same goes with its sequel Ragamuffin).

Note: I had mistakenly referred to Buckell as a Caribbean-born white author initially, but Jaymee pointed out that he identifies as PoC. Thanks for the clarification!

These men and women call themselves “Indians.” They are members of “tribes,” with names like “Yellow Pocahontas,” “Geronimo Hunters,” and “Flaming Arrows” (a complete list of the tribes is here). They wear over-the-top, elaborate costumes based (very) loosely on American Indian powwow regalia–with headdresses, feathers, and beading (there is a slideshow on nytimes.com that can be found here):

They have an anthem called “Indian Red” whose lyrics include:

Objectively, out of context, this is by-definition cultural appropriation. Imagine if these were white men and women. I should be offended…right?

But it’s complicated. The history of Mardi Gras Indians comes out of a history of shared oppression and marginality between the Black and Native residents, or some stories point to a desire to honor Native communities who took in escaped slaves. Wikipedia (again, the academic cringes, ha.) notes, of the history:

Mardi Gras Indians have been parading in New Orleans at least since the mid-19th century, possibly before. The tradition was said to have originated from an affinity between Africans and Indians as minorities within the dominant culture, and blacks’ circumventing some of the worst racial segregation; laws by representing themselves as Indians. There is also the story that the tradition began as an African American tribute to American Indians who helped runaway slaves.

I still see some problems with that, the “honoring” argument is what many proponents of Indian mascots use, but what it boils down to, for me, is the question:

Can one marginalized group appropriate another?

Inherent in the concept of cultural appropriation is the notion of power. The group in power takes cultural aspects of a subordinate community out of context and uses them how they see fit. These Mardi Gras Indians are African American, and arguably at the lowest economic strata of society (the nytimes article talks about copyrighting as a means to recoup money for these performers). They are by no means in a position of power over Native communities in Louisiana or elsewhere. The Mardi Gras Indian culture does not appear to come out of a desire to “play Indian”, and in many ways, it has moved outside of the realm of cultural appropriation into a distinct culture and community of it’s own. But above all, it seems the history comes not out of a relationship of power, but out of a shared position of marginality and discrimination.

So, in this sense, I find it hard to write my usual rant on an insensitive appropriation of Native culture, but, on the other hand, it still makes me uncomfortable.

Thoughts?

Want To Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something [NY Times]

Slideshow: In New Orleans, Getting Serious Over Suits [NY Times]

Mardi Gras Indians [Wikipedia]

(Image Credits: Duke University, New York Times)

When I first came to the U.S., Americans asked me about that “dot on the forehead.” Now, Madonna wears a bindi. Bollywood borrows Hollywood plotlines (well, two or three for one three-hour film). Now, the Kronos Quartet reinterprets Bollywood composer R.D. Burman. Birthday cards are reproducing old kitschy Indian matchbox covers. Body-hugging T-shirts worn by gay guys in the Castro say “San Francisco” in Devnagari script. There are even Bollywood appreciation classes at universities. My kitsch has become their cool.

Of course, not everything has been alchemized into cool. My big, fat Indian wedding might be hot (“I want one,” a gay man with a Southern accent told me at my neighborhood lesbian bar while sipping a sweet cocktail), but it doesn’t mean the Indian cabdriver, the 7/11 clerk or the Gujarati storeowner are any more acceptable.

Our Krishnas and curries are now public property to be sampled, remixed, chewed up and spat out as millions of cookie-cutter lunch boxes. (Probably Made in China).

It almost makes me nostalgic for the old days when people came up to me and said, “You are from Calcutta? My doctor is Indian. Dr. Harry Patel. I think he’s from that other big city—Bombay?” And they would pause expectantly, as if waiting for me to recognize Dr. Patel. Now, they want to know what restaurant I would recommend in the Bay Area for “authentic Indian food, you know, a hole-in-the-wall place where Indians go, not your white-people-Maharaja-Thali stuff.”

And I am wondering, do I want to tell you?

—Sandip Roy, “My Kitsch is Their Cool,” Colorlines

(Image Credit: Colorlines)

Today, I got three text messages in rapid succession from my friend Hae.

“Check out the new MV from 2ne1 called Fire!”

“Song is addicting!”

“Street version is better than space version!”

I knew YouTube wouldn’t let me down, so I headed over there to see if someone posted an English translation:

2NE1 is just one group in a long line of Korean hip-hop (or hip-pop, according to some, but more on that later*) artists that I have enjoyed thanks to JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment. While YG is credited with popularizing the hip-hop sound in Korea, both companies have received major success with their artists.

There’s the Wonder Girls:

And Big Bang:

Back when I first discovered Korean hip-hop, I was quite fond of showing my friends this video by 1TYM, called “Do You Know Me?”:

After watching the video, my friends had a range of reactions everything from “Who knew Koreans rolled hard?” to amazement to laughter. But some people weren’t quite as accepting, posing the question “Why do they have to take our stuff?”

Is there a such thing as “our stuff?” I grappled with this question in the specific context of a global hip-hop culture. Six years ago, I was looking up scholarly articles on hip-hop for a research paper when I stumbled across an obscure article in a random journal about the spread of hip-hop in Japan. The article posited hip-hop’s growth was fueled by young Zainichi who keenly felt their second-class status and could relate to the lyrics and culture of American hip-hop.

Ever since then, I’ve looked to see where hip-hop flourishes around the globe in hopes of understanding its appeal. Before hip-hop was recognized as a major influence on youth culture , I found articles, documentaries, and mixtapes from places like Palestine, Thailand, Cuba, South Africa, and Haiti. Seeing what I felt to be “my culture” reflected back at me in so many ways was a jarring experience – everything, good and bad had been replicated and remixed and each hip-hop scene emerges with a style all its own.

While preparing this series on Cultural Appropriation, I realized that the dialogue around cultural appropriation and global hip-hop culture follow similar lines of argument. What constitutes appropriation and what is an homage? When are we borrowing versus flat out stealing? What are the power dynamics involved in this conversation?

The idea of cultural appropriation is one fraught with misunderstandings, minefields of misinterpretation, and other issues. I’ve been struggling with how to launch this series for a while now – exactly, what can one say? The Angry Black Woman opened up a conversation back in January, asking her readers to define cultural appropriation. After 103 comments, there were still more questions than answers.

So, in launching this series, I hope to provide points for discussion, but not necessarily firm solutions. The idea is not to provide a go to guide on appropriation, but to illuminate some of the issues in these types of conversations.

—-
*I’m not talking about the different views on what’s “real” hip-hop in this post. Later, when I started taking a serious look at the trends and representations of hip-hop abroad, I found out that the same battles that happen here occur elsewhere. While reading some back information on Jinusean, I saw the message boards filled with those who claimed that Jinusean was hip-pop and the real hip hop in Korea was represented by groups like Drunken Tiger and the whole Movement crew.

Here’s one of Drunken Tiger’s videos, called “Do You Know Hip Hop”:

It’s also worth noting that Drunken Tiger had a mega-hit in Korea from their song “Sweet Talk,” which uses the same melody as Camp Lo’s “Black Connection.”

—-

“Fire” actually isn’t 2ne1′s debut song – their first one was with the boys of Big Bang, called “Lollipop.” I have no idea why this video makes me so happy. Maybe it’s all the colors. Maybe it’s because one of the girls is obviously getting her Snork on. Or maybe it’s because the whole video is 80s-a-licious. Either way, I love it so here it is:

This weekend, I received the following breathless entreaty through a listserv that I subscribe to:

Ebony/Jet Magazine on The Verge of Financial Collaspse (J P)
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:45:31 -0400

One of the most notable permanent fixtures in every black household (back in the days), was the Ebony and Jet magazine. If you wanted to learn about your history, the plight of Black America, current issues facing Black Americans, how the political process of America affects you, how politics works, who the hottest actors were, what time a particular black television show aired, who got married recently, who were the most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in your town, what cities had black mayors, police chiefs, school superintendents, how to register to Vote, what cars offer the best value for the buck, who employed black Americans, how to apply for college scholarships, etc., more than likely, Ebony or Jet magazine could help you find answers to those questions.

We have recently been informed that the Johnson Publishing Company is currently going through a financial crisis. The company is attempting a reorganization in order to survive. Many people have already lost their jobs with a company that has employed thousands of black Americans during the course of its existence.

In order to support this effort to save our magazine, my friends and myself have pledged to get a subscription to both Ebony and Jet magazine, starting with one year. We are urging every other club member who comes across this plea to do the same. Please post, repost, and post again, to any blog that you may own or support.

Please email this to every person that you know, regardless of their background. Let them know that Ebony and Jet magazines have been part of the black American culture for three quarters of a century, and that there is a lot that they can learn about black American culture from reading them.

We are currently discussing the idea of throwing an Ebony/Jet Party, where people can eat, drink, and sign up for their subscription on the spot. Please spread this idea around to all that you know. Your Sororities, Fraternities, Lodges, VFW Posts, Churches, Civic Groups, Block Clubs, Caps Meetings, Book Clubs, etc.

It would be a crying shame, to lose our historic magazine, during the same year of such an historic event as the election of our first black President of the United States.

Now, like a lot of other black people, I grew up with Ebony and Jet magazines on the family coffee table. I remember fondly sitting in the brown recliner in my grandparents’ back room reading a then-oversized Ebony with Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones and Richard Pryor on it. (Don’t know why I specifically recall that issue of the magazine, but for some reason it is one that remains etched in my mind.) I say this to illustrate that these magazines are part of my cultural history. Nevertheless, when I read the missive above, my first thought (after wondering if the message-writer understands that subscriptions generally account for far less of a publication’s revenue than advertising does) was…”Meh.” I’m not so sure that Ebony and Jet, as they stand today, are institutions worth going to the mat for.

To be sure, John H. Johnson, founder of the Johnson publishing empire that produces Ebony and Jet, represents an inspiring success story. When the 27-year-old entrepreneur launched Ebony in November 1945 (Jet was founded in 1951.), he did so in a climate of mainstreamed racial injustice. Black GIs, like my grandfather, were returning from fighting for “freedom” in World War II to find they were less than free at home in America. Real black voices and black life were obscured by stereotype in American media. Local black newspapers, such as another iconic Chicago publication, The Defender, and Johnson’s magazines were among the few places where black people could see their lives and culture reflected and read news important to them. We mattered to these news and lifestyle outlets. Forget the New York Times, these were our publications of record.

Today, Ebony enjoys a circulation of more than 1.4 million, while Jet reaches nearly 1 million people each week. But I suspect neither magazine is as ubiquitous in the homes of my generation of black folks (GenX) as they were for my parents and grandparents. The truth is, like many Civil Rights-era institutions, both publications began feeling irrelevant a long time ago. Yes, black people still need someplace to see their lives and culture reflected and to read news important to them. (Today’s media is much better in covering people of color, but far from perfect.) But are Ebony and Jet the go-to places for that anymore? No, because while black America has changed over the last 60-some years, these publications have seemed largely the same–like museum pieces. I think of them fondly (like my grandparents’ old recliner in the back room), but emphatically not as publications-of-record.

An example of Johnson Publishing’s out-of-touchness? Sunday at the neighborhood Wal-Mart, I picked up a Jet for the first time in forever, in preparation for this post. I wanted to know if it was still there. In an age when black women are fighting stereotyped images of ourselves as Jezebels, playthings and acoutrement for the latest hip hop star whose cuts are banging in the whips of white, teenage suburbanites–it couldn’t still be there. But, yeah, centerspread, there it was–that paean to black woman thickitude–the Jet Beauty of the Week, a young, black woman in a teeny swimsuit giving sexy face. Is this what I’m supposed to rush to the battlements to save?

The forefront of the black communications revolution is now on the Web, where brothers and sisters are breaking news (Jena 6), championing causes and serving up provocative opinions. Ebony and Jet, I think, have failed to keep pace with a world where there is Ta-Nehisi Coates and What About Our Daughters and Racialicious and Aunt Jemima’s Revenge and Womanist Musings and TransGriot and Something Within and Color of Change and Pam’s House Blend and The Root and Black and Married with Kids, and, hell, Bossip. Today, black readers can get superior writing about politics, black life, marriage, parenting, sexuality, pop culture, identity, racism, sexism, spirituality, finance and a host of other issues, for free, everyday, all day, online. The topics covered (or not covered) by Ebony and Jet, the lack of depth in writing, the formats, the frickin beauty of the week, make these publications seem frozen in time, while the world speeds up around them.

Beyond all that, how is Johnson Publishing going to adjust to the new digital age? It’s not the only print purveyor facing this question. Local newspapers across the country need to answer it too. America has changed the way it consumes information, and so far, print media hasn’t found a profitable way to adapt. That’s a shame, because we desperately need the Fourth Estate. We need in-depth reporting. Marginalized folks need these things more than most. God knows that black folks could use the shot to our collective self-esteem that Johnson Publishing’s products offer. But taking extraordinary life-saving measures to rescue publications like Ebony and Jet is merely stalling the inevitable unless ailing publications put strategic plans in place to innovate and evolve.

Look, the older I get the more pieces of my past mean to me. (That’s probably why I spent the weekend watching old episodes of “Columbo,” “Quincy” and “MacMillan and Wife” on Netflix.) But nostalgia isn’t enough reason for me to join the charge to save Ebony and Jet. All the Ebony/Jet parties in the world won’t make a difference if these black cultural icons aren’t making the changes necessary to save themselves.

Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities—blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians—will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

“I think white people feel like they’re under siege right now—like it’s not okay to be white right now, especially if you’re a white male,” laughs Bill Imada, of the IW Group…“There’s a lot of fear and a lot of resentment,” Newman-Carrasco observes, describing the flak she caught after writing an article for a trade publication on the need for more-diverse hiring practices. “I got a response from a friend—he’s, like, a 60-something white male, and he’s been involved with multicultural recruiting,” she recalls. “And he said, ‘I really feel like the hunted. It’s a hard time to be a white man in America right now, because I feel like I’m being lumped in with all white males in America, and I’ve tried to do stuff, but it’s a tough time.’”

“I always tell the white men in the room, ‘We need you,’” Imada says. “We cannot talk about diversity and inclusion and engagement without you at the table. It’s okay to be white!”

“But people are stressed out about it. ‘We used to be in control! We’re losing control!’”

So this roundtable has been a long time coming. In mid-January the team started to take a look at Hua Hsu’s Atlantic Monthly article “The End of White America?” And we had a lot of pissed off things to say. And yes it did take us more than a few weeks to corral all our righteous indignation together. But we hope you’ll think it was worth the wait.

On the Cover

Andrea: This is the impression I got from the cover and the article: screamingly alarmist. The half-face of Obama juxtaposed with heavy-block sans serif capital letters that can be seen half a long Barnes & Noble check-out line away. As if to say this single man–a bi-racial man who self-identifies as Black–is single-handedly ruining white people, whiteness, and, most importantly, white privilege. It seems to play off the fear-mongering miscegenation fantasies of yore: the “receding” of the “white” phenotype, that “beiging” of America that Hsu refers to in the piece. Then, before anyone gets any ideas about the writer’s race, in smaller red letters, is the scribe’s name. Sorta like, “Ha! You can’t accuse The Atlantic of being racist ’cause the name can’t be ‘read’ as white.” Doesn’t matter, IMO. The zero-sum game that is US racism is visually in full effect.

Actually, The Atlantic cover reminds me of another cover from a magazine about twenty years ago, when “coloredness”–coded as “identity politics” and “political correctness” back then–was also “threatening to tear the country apart.” From Time magazine, April 9, 1990:

Just some visual perspective on these kinds of articles.

On Alarmism

What happens once this is no longer the case—when the fears of Lothrop Stoddard and Tom Buchanan are realized, and white people actually become an American minority?…Today, the arrival of what Buchanan derided as “Third World America” is all but inevitable. What will the new mainstream of America look like, and what ideas or values might it rally around? What will it mean to be white after “whiteness” no longer defines the mainstream? Will anyone mourn the end of white America? Will anyone try to preserve it?

Thea: Hsu argues that mainstream culture has turned against white people and the way he talks, it’s as if the colored hordes of P Diddy fans and ethnically ambiguous Latin@s who’re snapping up all the commercial parts have somehow sneakily gotten hold of “culture” and orchestrated this shift. First, we’ll make fun of you for not being able to dance! Then, WE’LL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!!!”

Andrea: This alarmist angle covers what really bugs me about the piece–it’s offers no analysis of structures and execution of racism itself in the US. What Hsu seems to ostensibly and sloppily attempts to get at is once whiteness–and those white people and PoCs who adhere to it–fall back, racism itself will disappear. Hsu says:

There will be dislocations and resentments along the way, but the demographic shifts of the next 40 years are likely to reduce the power of racial hierarchies over everyone’s lives, producing a culture that’s more likely than any before to treat its inhabitants as individuals, rather than members of a caste or identity group.

And there is Hsu’s “we gonna be post-racial, y’all–if we’re not already” statement–which can also be a another read on this article.

But.

This article makes me go back to Tim Wise and Vijay Prashad, who I think would have made better touchstones/springboards for Hsu’s piece because they both have more nuanced understandings of the mechanics of racism in the US. Tim Wise said about whiteness, from his book, White Like Me:

…from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s a series of laws were promulgated in Virginia and elsewhere, which elevated all persons of European descent, no matter how lowly in economic terms, above all persons of African descent. The purpose of such measures was to provide poor Europeans (increasing called whites) with a stake in the system, even though they were hardly benefiting in material terms from it. In other words, whiteness was a trick, and it worked marvelously, dampening down the push for rebellion by poor whites on the basis of class interest, and encouraging them to cast their lot with the elite, if only in aspirational terms. White skin became, for them, an alternative form of property to which they could cleave, in the absence of more tangible possessions.

And from Vijay Prashad, from his book, Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Racial Purity (which gets to Thea’s point about whites as immigrants and the internecine racial conflicts among some PoCs):

Since blackness is reviled in the United States, why would an immigrant, of whatever skin color, want to associate with those who are racially oppressed, particularly when the transit to the United States promises the dream of gold and glory? The immigrant seeks a form of veritcal assimilation, to climb from the lowest darkest echelon on the stepladder of tyranny into the bright whiteness. In U.S. history the Irish, Italians, Jews, and –in small steps with some hesitation ont he part of white America–Aisans and Latinos have all tried to barter their varied cultural worlds for the privileges of whiteness….

Yet all people who enter the United States do not strive to be accepted by the terms set by white supremacy. Some actively disregard them, finding them impossible to meet. Instead, they seek recognition, solidarity, and safety by embracing others also oppressed by white supremacy in something of a horizontal assimilation…

When people actively or tacitly refuse the terms of vertical integration they are derisively dismissed as either unassimilable or exclusionary. We hear, ‘Why do the black kids sit together in the cafeteria’ instead of ‘Why do our institutions routinely uphold the privilieges of whiteness?’ There is little space in popular discourse for an examination of what goes on outside the realm of white America among people of color.

Hsu certainly didn’t expand this space. He’s just screaming, “Fire!” in a crowded theater of racial anxiety.

Fatemeh: Hsu’s “The End of White America?” (cue scary music) essentially aims to hash out the following: “Hey, white people are freaked out that people of color are becoming the majority in the U.S. Why’s that? Don’t worry, guys. It’s cool.” But instead of just sticking to this outline, it feels like Hsu tries to condense several books on hip-hop culture, racial history of the U.S., market trends, and race theory into one article. Because all of these subjects need extensive background, he fails in his attempt to mash them together.

Hsu hints at a “white panic” caused by the racial demographic shift, but doesn’t explore it, question it, or even attempt to assuage it (except for a few paragraphs in the last section). He quotes Bill Imada, who states that whites are worried about “losing control,” which is the reason for all this “white panic” over shifting ethnic demography. But instead of analyzing this point (“What do they mean by ‘losing control’? What do they think this means for them?”), it serves as a transition at the end of a section, and is quickly glossed over in a comparison of different “types” of whites (the seemingly conservative and liberal camps) that still doesn’t tell us what white people are afraid of.

Fear can’t be assuaged or overcome without an assessment of what it is you’re afraid of, which Hsu hints at in the next section but never actually plainly states: “The coming white minority does not mean that the racial hierarchy of American culture will suddenly become inverted…” As if people of color will suddenly disenfranchise whites, confiscate their assets, and force them into slavery.

Arturo: It’s hard to read this article without laughing at first, and then getting angry. Hsu’s piece, much like Diddy’s White parties he talks about, is high in concept but crass in execution.

Ask me about “the end” of whiteness when I don’t have to read “reassurances”in the New York Post that minorities are advancing on television because there are more black supporting characters. Ask me about it when Bruce Springsteen isn’t playing the Super Bowl halftime show because white people are scared of Prince’s guitar and Janet Jackson’s cleavage.

On Hsu’s Use of Language

Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America. And it’s possible that “beige Americans” will self-identify as “white” in sufficient numbers to push the tipping point further into the future than the Census Bureau projects. But even if they do, whiteness will be a label adopted out of convenience and even indifference, rather than aspiration and necessity.

Fatemeh: Hsu presents terms that he doesn’t define, like “whiteness,” “racial transcendence,” and “beiging.” He also makes several terms synonymous that aren’t so:

…the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America…

and

…we can call this the triumph of multiculturalism, or post-racialism.

These conflations are even more problematic because of Hsu’s undefined terms; it’s up to the reader to guess what he means by terms such as “post-white” or “post-racial”. Undefined terms like this are unclear and often alarmist; I can just imagine a reader trying to figure out what “post-white” means: “Does that mean there won’t be any more white people?!”

Hsu not only presents the “white panic” without a full explanation of what it is, but often feeds it with alarmist rhetorical questions like, “Will anyone mourn the end of white America?” and sympathetic constructions of white people who can’t get jobs in advertisements because all the advertisers want “beige” people.

Andrea: Yeah, the word “beiging” is wrong on at least 30 different levels. Here are 4: Inaccurate, creepy, twee-rude (nasty with pinkie in the air), and asinine.

Thea: Let me just say that as a mixed race person of colour I OBJECT to the word “beiging.” Pullease. I am not beige! More of an off-yellow, really.

This is a long-ass article, but Hsu never finds space to define some key, and rather obvious terms. Like “white.” Or “post-white.” Or “multicultural.”

Hsu talks about how white people feel “culturally bereft” and want to distance themselves from “whiteness.” And that seems an accurate representation to me – the word “white” has become a bad word. In some circles if you point out that Gary is white, everyone will act like you called Gary’s mom a ho.

But what drives me mad about that is that it was the white colonisers who came up with the term “white” in the first place, to distinguish themselves from everyone else as more pure and biologically superior. Says Dr Gregory Jay of the University of Wisconsin in his article “Who Invented White People?”:

It was white people who invented the idea of race in the first place, and it is white people who have become obsessed and consumed by it…[Whiteness] emerged as what we now call a “pan-ethnic” cateogry; as a way of merging a variety of European ethnic populations into a single “race,” especially so as to distinguish them from people with whom they had very particular legal and political relations–Africans, Asians, American Indians–that were not equal to their relations with one another as whites.”

So it’s hard to have sympathy for “white folks on the run” or white folks who get their backs up when you point out that they are white, when it was the forebears of said white folks who set up racial categories in the first place.

Perhaps one of the most infuriating things about this article is Hsu’s expectation that we will have pity for these white folks who no longer know how to define themselves in a demographically shifting America. Because in order to have pity we’d
1) have to agree that this demographic shift was equivalent to a power shift, which as far as I can tell it is not, first African American president notwithstanding,
2) have to feel bad that white folks are feeling the pinch of a segregation that they have benefitted from for 100s of years – the segregation they started, and the segregation that many white folks only begin to notice and fuss about when it is perceived to threaten their power and identity.

Not to be all puerile and get into who started it, but uh, they started it. And to loop back to 1), I don’t really care if you’re being segregated. When you do a) become a minority race b) become politically marginalised as a minority race, then I’ll come and talk to you.

And anyways. What really has changed? Sure, I know lots of angry young people of colour who do see the word “white” as a bad word and use it that way. But I don’t think they’re the ones who are greenlighting films, owning the companies that can make or break a recording artist (like Sony or Virgin), or making the final decision on H&M’s Spring Collection.

On Hip Hop

Andrea: I think Hsu uses hip-hop as a played-out shorthand for (and two of its proprietors, Russell Simmons and P. Diddy, examples of) “authentic Negritude,” which is the image of Black folks struggling in the hard-scrabble, poverty-stricken, school-system-and-city-government-failed, inner-city streets. I’m not saying that this isn’t *a* reality for some Black folks (and other PoCs as well as some white people here and abroad) but it also became the mythic standard of what being an African American in the late 20th century and into the 21st century – and a commodified mythic standard at that. Hsu, then, uses hip-hop to insinuate, “See, *those* uncouth, can’t-quite-assimilate-to-”our”-middle-class-mores Negroes are taking over! Hide your (white) women and innocent (white) children!” ::horror-film scream::

But What Is This Article Really About?

Thea: The fact of the matter is that this is an article that is not simply afraid that white people will be a demographic minority, but that they’ll lose control. To me, that’s kind of a repugnant fear. Would a little more balanced distribution of power across race lines really be that bad?

Fatemeh: Hsu doesn’t ever address why there is such “white panic” by Buchanan et al. It feels like this panic is really a fear that white people will have to be treated the way they treated people of color for years. Is this what Hsu means by racial transcendence? Why doesn’t anyone just say this? I feel like that’s what is meant a lot of times, but wrapped up in the secret language and given the code “power.”

Are some white folks afraid they’ll be forced into the white slave trade? Maybe. But I think most people are afraid of “losing control”, which really means losing advantages over others because of skin color, losing skin privilege when it comes to housing or loans or job openings. People will have to actively work and participate in a community rather than assuming one exists based on race.

Andrea: Even if white folks became a numerical minority, I don’t think that’ll cause racism, especially white-centered racism, itself to cease. Unless my memory is getting rusty, a group doesn’t necessarily need sheer numbers to have a system that works favorably for them–just the silver tongue and the ammo. (Apartheid in South Africa, anyone?) So, “white America” supposedly fading away in numbers and in “culture/cultural relevance” (both demeaningly ridiculous assumptions) will not make us “post-racial” any more than PoCs shutting up about Teh Racizim that “we” seem to be “foisting” on the “innocent” white people, esp. in the Obama Age, as Thea rightly states.

Jessica: I mean, what’s with the “What does it mean to be American?” question every time White people feel like they are losing power in these perceived “race wars”. It was even in the title paragraph of this damn piece! Isn’t it really, “What does it mean to be colonized, over and over and over again?” I think that’s how one might fit in a little more with the truth of it all.

Like many people, I hate the quintessential pictorial of what a perfect, hegemonized America would look like if we all just forgot our histories and pretended like we’re getting along in perfect racial symbiosis. Diversity/equity work 101 myth dispelled for ya: Hiring people from racialized communities DOES NOT always lead to the appropriate programs and policies for people of colour. So take a chill pill about Barack, okay? (but keep on hoping for that change!)

Back to what people were actually saying for this article:

Bill Imada:

White people feel like they’re under siege now.

Christian Lander:

As a white person, you’re just desperate to find something else to grab onto.

Matt Wray:

You’re forced as a white person into a sense of ironic detachment…..We’re going through a period where whites are really trying to figure out: Who are we?

I suppose I appreciate the frankness of the opinions shared, although I’d be remiss if I didn’t in my unpolite non-Western norm discourse state that besides having had it with the same old, same old defensiveness that happens when racialized communities start reclaiming and re-asserting themselves, I’m at a loss for seeing how these various forms of wanted cultural appropriation, guilt-tripping, and blame-shifting the issues are in any way beneficial for improving race relations here.

Hsu also seems to suggest that with our increasing numbers, “armies” are going to form and White people had better watch out. Umm, yeah it’s kind of exciting that we’re populating the country as people of colour, even in Canada Aboriginal people are the fastest growing population with 50% of us under the age of 25. But are we planning to mass organize and take over the country the same way you fucked us over?

No. Because culturally speaking, we wouldn’t be Aboriginal anymore. Thanks.

And is it Still the End of White America if a (yet to be seen) White Minority Still Hold the Institutional Power?

Thea: The article is peppered with quotes and anecdotes that echo this vision of white men on the run, of white men (well, really white people, but Hsu focuses on the men) being ostracised for being “culturally bereft” and lacking in colour. But strangely enough, in a 9-page article on power and race in America, Hsu never once talks about the real marker of power in America: money. Who are the poorest people in America? According to Wikipedia:

The US Census declared that in 2007 – 12.5% of all people, [34]including
- 10.5% white people [35]
- 24.5% black people [36]
- 21.5% all Hispanic people of any race, [37] lived in poverty.

Stats on Asians and Native Americans are missing, but at a glance it is clear that while the US now has a person of colour as a president, socio-economic conditions didn’t miraculous change overnight for communities of colour the moment Obama won the election. Obviously!

Hsu says:

[Christian] Lander’s “white people” are products of a very specific historical moment, raised by well-meaning Baby Boomers to reject the old ideal of white American gentility and to embrace diversity and fluidity instead…But his lighthearted anthropology suggests that the multicultural harmony they were raised to worship has bred a kind of self-denial.

It is almost ridiculous to me that Hsu buys into the idea that Americans (and North Americans as far as I can tell) embrace multiculturalism and diversity in a real way when so much of the basic stats that measure well-being and race – the real measures of power – show that he is wrong. Here’s some more stats: rates of incarceration by race in the U.S.; and a Canadian article that states that

Although [Aboriginal people] comprised only 2% of the general adult population, they accounted for 17% of the prison population. They were younger on average than non-Aboriginal inmates, had less education and were more likely to have been unemployed.

Hsu never defines “multicultural harmony.” And because some of his examples that pronounce the dominance of non-white cultures include white kids growing dreadlocks and suburban white kids wanting to be black (i.e. wiggers), by the end of the article I started to think that maybe Hsu believes that things like the use of models of colour in American Apparel ads and last year’s popularity of the fashion keffiyeh are examples of diversity’s strength in American mainstream culture. For crying out loud. That’s not power sharing. That’s cultural appropriation. To go back to the first thing I said, I don’t think it’s people of colour who’ve directed the cultural shift that that’s got us suddenly slobbering over everything “non-white.” I think it’s white folks who are into cultural appropriation (i.e. not anti-racism or equity) have made this so.

The fact is that the popularity of Eastern Religions, sushi, Sufism, faux-Chinese tattoos, Kanye West, backpacking across Vietnam and Bob Marley has not coincided with the fair distribution of socio-economic power across the globe, or across ethnic groups in America. So call me a cynic but to me the popularity of those things – which more often than not rise to prominence as sanitised and white-washed versions of their original selves – is more of an insult than a sign of multicultural harmony.

And also, That Whole White People Are Cultural Bereft Thing is a Racist Fallacy

Arturo: Life at the Atlantic has to be tough – how does one write this stuff with their pinky so high in the air?

Hsu’s sources and examples are undermined just as easily as his argument. Really, we’re supposed to be surprised that the guy behind Stuff White People Like would attest to a sense of white self-loathing? Did Professor Wray not refer his culturally envious students to Temple’s genealogy department? Did he not teach them the meaning of the word genealogy? I’ve got news for these guys – some of the White People I know cared enough to learn about how their families emigrated to this country from Scotland, or from Ireland, or from Germany, or from Russia.

Let me repeat: they cared enough to learn. Only a narcissist (or worse, an avaricious hipster preying on the insecurities of people in skinny jeans) would dismiss culture as nothing more than a pigment; a shared history, the traditions, the customs and courtesies and the stories we learn from our loved ones help forge our respective cultures, not because they’re “cool and oppositional,” but because they come from inside us.

Hsu’s “Flight To Whiteness” section, which could have examined the paths and reasons behind the remaining vestiges of generational racism, instead seems to buy into the self-stylings of the Cable Guys and Sarah Palins of the world as a would-be Rebellion against the Evil Multicultural Empire. Instead of focusing on Smokey and the Bandit and Falling Down, he might have been better served asking how and why Michael Steele and Bobby Jindal could rise up the ranks of the Republican party to which so many of these “besieged” white people pledge fealty.

And Finally

Arturo: Instead of asking the questions he should’ve, Hsu blithely dismisses race as “a fiction that often does more harm than good” and hides behind advertising reps eager to re-code and re-demo the young people they’re probably eager to pitch cigarettes and nose jobs to before closing his note with hopeful visions of the upcoming social shifts — the same ones he and his editors had been so alarmed about. The “end of white America”? I’ll just be glad to see the end of articles like these.

Fatemeh: This article was too tangential and incredibly disappointing. Hsu didn’t need to dance around the definition of whiteness. He didn’t need to use “whiteness studies” to dissect whites into different cultural groups (this should have been an entirely different and separately interesting article). He didn’t need to compare P. Diddy to The Great Gatsby. All he needed to do was examine the white panic, deconstruct it, and let the anxiety around it float away after a clear, rational repudiation. Instead, he tried to come at it from too many angles, which just ups white America’s anxiety level and feeds the fires of fear.

Thea: This article is a bizarre and sprawling mess that suggests that just because Russell Simmons is massively successful, America has not only achieved racial harmony, but is now threatening to submerge white folks into a sea of “beigeness.” But it never answers a very basic question: what do any of the things that Hsu mentions – like Smirnoff ads, 50 Cent, Dora the Explorer or Stuff White People Like – have to do with actual rates of racial equity?

Not much.

The un-anointed are always surprised at how good Filipino food is, offering well-meaning but condescending compliments I’ve long learned to accept with a smile and a lighthearted “I told you so.” Probably has a lot to do with that old stereotype that we Filipinos love dogs. For dinner. I once had a friend (a white guy, if you wondering) over for dinner in 6th grade. As my pops handed him a plate, he paused and stared at the rice and chicken adobo and asked “what is this, dog?” before he excused himself from the table. We stopped being friends shortly after.

Somehow, suddenly, we’ve become the flavor of the month. Filipino chefs have been making noise on the last couple Top Chef seasons (Dale was fucking robbed!). Still can’t forget George W.’s backhanded compliment about his personal Filipino chefs during dictator Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s last US visit. And now, with the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain finally taking his No Reservations food/travelogue show to the Philippines, our sweet, salty and sour secret is out.

Though I only catch it when it happens to be on, I’m a fan of Bourdain’s show. Yes — there’s a tourist, exoticizing element to it, but you can’t front on Bourdain’s presence and palate. And when he says that our lechon is the “best-cooked pig in the world,” it almost makes me want to eat pork again.

Of course, an hour isn’t enough but the representation is respectable: Tapsilog in the opening breakfast scene, followed by street vendor foods (Chicken balls, Tofu w/ Tapioca Syrup), Pancit Palabok (”Not the greatest thing ever, but good” – and I agree), before moving onto provincial dishes such as Sinigang. Kalamansi rightfully gets its own quick feature. And when sisig makes a cameo (and is pronounced correctly) it becomes official that this episode is a pretty big deal. A redemption of that borderline-racist episode of Bizarre Foods that featured Filipinos eating bugs like it’s our national dish.

Funny though, how our history of forced colonization and foreign domination gets reduced to “influences” as if we’re just willingly eclectic like that. American cultural influence and military presence is highlighted for a brief segment, but somehow leaves out the biggest part of the story: The Philippine-American War. It’s true that our national cuisine has incorporated many others, but I’d much rather this story be presented truthfully than liberally. That we, resilient and crafty people that we are, make masterpieces from scraps (on that Jeepney shit) – you can force your shit on us but trust that we’ll flip it (uh, no pun) and make it our own.

In defense of my squarish, bowl-cutted compatriot Augusto (who hosted Bourdain’s provincial excursion), although he wasn’t our most cultured representation, he’s also a reality for many of us. Hearing him fumble a response to Bourdain’s question “Who are the Filipinos?” was excruciating to watch. “I’m not fully Filipino, but not fully American” he says, lamenting his assimilation as a New Yorker trying to “find his roots.” Which is cool, but dude, you’ve never had lechon in your life? Really? Having your culture explained back to you by an outsider is not the business, but I guess if it’s gonna be anyone, it might as well be Anthony Bourdain.

Not that we need the validation, but it’s refreshing to know that we’re at least getting the respect we deserve. Perhaps folks will patronize our restaurants enough to keep em open for more than a year. Shit, perhaps some of you Americanized-palate ass Filipinos will recognize the real and learn to eat that ampalaya without that bitterface.

And maybe, just maybe, my kids wont be mockingly called dogeaters.

Before I utter any statements of depth in this piece, I have to present a bias. Though not meant to offend those who believe in proselytizing, I find myself firmly standing on the side of those against it. If you feel that religion and/or a faith tradition of some sort is your source of hope, guidance for life, and possibly even your ticket to eternal salvation, so be it. I respect that, and I fully honor the right we each have to practice some form of the aforementioned. However, the second you start telling me or someone else which form is best (read: which version will prevent me from burning in hell for the rest of eternity), we’ve got beef.

With that said, I want to go ahead and put it out there that I take issue with the bulk of missionary work (past and present), especially that which takes place in developing nations. It is a reminder of the power of nations who sit firmly and comfortably in their G8 seats, spectators in a game of international tennis. Only in the case of missionary work, the victory comes at a higher price, one that can mean not only renouncing one’s culture, but also one’s religion (or at least denouncing it in public) as a means of attaining vital resources. This is not to say that missionaries have not done good work. There are countless records of missionaries who have helped others in excellent ways, minus all the religious rhetoric. However, even if the message of faith lies in no more than an utterance or the simple presence of the mission’s name, missionary work nevertheless boils down to a political campaign in the name of God.

In light of my objection to this line of work, I find myself dealing with a mental conflict almost every day of my present job. My campaign has nothing to do with God, but in terms of international influence, the English language and American culture come pretty darn close. Though I have been teaching English in Brazil since July of 2008, there are still a few things about my current profession that rub me the wrong way. The source of my discomfort in teaching my mother tongue lies in implications more so than tangible, empirical evidence, thus making my inner turmoil all-the-more “inner.” Much like a mosquito bite on the sole of your foot, my conflict has been an itch I can’t quite scratch.

Before enrolling in the program in which I am involved, I already knew I wanted to live in Brazil for a few months to a year to have more exposure to Brazilian culture, particularly an aspect of it that involved more of the quotidian variety. I was looking to go beyond the favela-riddled, bikini-clad, beach bathing, rainforested Brazil with which we are presented on our television screens and in our Netflix queues. I wanted to be forced to speak Portuguese on a regular basis and pushed a bit beyond my comfort zone. I was not looking for a spoiled, privileged, escapist ex-pat experience of the Eat Pray Love genre.

The easiest way to achieve my goal was to teach English here, but I knew in the back of my mind, I would be presented with interesting challenges that I may not have faced if I had chosen another route to secure a job in Brazil. For one, I would have to be a de facto representative of American Culture ^TM. My language and my country would be placed center stage during class, but what Americans do, eat, buy, and think would be the main topic of conversation at all other times as well. I would be reduced to a living, breathing souvenir. Yet in actuality, I find myself to be a bit of a disappointment to my students and the Brazilian English teachers, not for lack of teaching skills, but for lack of conforming to their ideas of Americans and American life.

Before moving to Brazil, I lived in New York City for six years, so even my view of most Americans was one I took with foreign eyes. I often considered myself somewhat isolated from what most would consider “American culture” mainly because I had lived in NYC, which is clearly more of an international city than say Memphis, Tennessee, the city of my birth. I listen to Metronomy, Surkin, and J*Davey instead of Rihanna, Fall Out Boy, and Snoop Dogg (all of whom have achieved considerable success in Brazil thanks to MTV). I have a considerable amount of tattoos. I am a vegetarian who likes international food. I am agnostic. I am not a fan of Nike, Tommy, or any popular clothing brands. I am not a classic American beauty. And on top of all that, I am black, which still throws some people for a loop here in Brazil because most people assume I am Brazilian until I open my mouth.

Though Brazil’s access to American media has expanded rapidly thanks to globalization, the films, music, and popular culture to which Brazilians are exposed is clearly the dominate culture, of which I do not really consider myself a part. The idea of Americans that many Brazilians have as a result of this type of media is not exactly the most accurate. We are considered arrogant, ignorant, and overweight on the one hand, but filthy rich, glamorous, and perfect on the other. There is very little room for anything from the margins, and even what is thought to be “alternative” is still the same old simulacra. Nevertheless, I have to put on a happy face and endure countless questions related to the subjects above, only to be followed by my response, which is usually something like “I have no idea who that is. I download my music from European blogs. Sorry!” or “Well, no, I don’t eat bacon in the morning, because I don’t eat meat, not even the white kind, which I know is not considered meat here.”

And though the questions can be tiring, I can understand why they are asked. What is more exhausting is processing the reality that as a result of the onslaught and heavy influence of American mainstream media by way of music, films, and other forms of entertainment (including sports), many elements of Brazilian culture are becoming a non-entity in the eyes of many young Brazilians. Brazilian televised news devotes about a fourth of their broadcasts to American politics. Brazilian culture, as the world becomes flat and so easily navigable because of the internet, is being quickly altered to closely resemble ours. Unfortunately, I am caught in the middle. I represent another side of American culture, which can be a good thing for my students, but I am American nonetheless, and some will never see me as anything more than that.

I have somewhat come to terms with my curio status, and at times celebrate it, mainly when Americans show a sign of intelligence in their choices (ahem Obama), but other times, I feel that my presence symbolizes a modern neo-imperialism, though through culture and language as opposed to direct territorial or financial dominance (albeit, those still play a major part in the case of Brazilian/American relations). There are zillions of English schools throughout the country, some of which have a direct link to the United States Embassy, and many Brazilians see learning English as a means of improving their lives, especially in terms of career success. Many of my adult and teenage students alike say that they are taking English in hopes of securing a good job in the future.

Yet in this time of greedy linguistic and cultural consumption, I worry of the looming backlash. I have some students who explicitly reject any and all aspects of American culture and are generally disgusted by Americans, save me (as an exception because I am their teacher), but who are begrudgingly taking English as language skills are seen as one of the few ways to separate oneself from the competition. Even some of my youngest students admit that they are only taking English because their parents are making them, unaware that their budding skill may help them put food on the table in a decade or two.

Seeing this saddens me and further fortifies my personal belief that though clearly beneficial in the long term, teaching English is its own form of missionary work. The parallels to missionary work that are demonstrated in terms of some students’ reluctance to learn when coupled with a frightening pressure to do exactly that in order to simply stay occupationally and culturally afloat worry me. In addition, access to recreational English classes are afforded only to middle and upper class Brazilians, which has previously caused a rift between some English teachers applying to work in Brazil and a few of the Brazilian consulate offices who believe that access to learning English and the skills thus acquired are deepening the divide between the rich and the poor. From what I have seen, I find it hard to disagree. And that’s speaking toward language studies in both Brazil and the United States.

In New York City, maniacal parents have infants who can barely articulate basic monosyllabic words in English taking baby French and baby German so their children will have a better chance of entering elite, private academic and hyper-selective public schools, and even then, nothing is guaranteed. Yet in general, beyond the basic needs met by pre-vacation language book purchases, i.e. how do you say “where is the bathroom?” few Americans are breaking their necks to learn any other language, despite our growing immigrant population. We barely have a handle on English, so God forbid we make an effort to devote attention to some foreign “babble” that we don’t need to speak anyway, right? “This is America. Speak English,” so goes the motto. Yet in our stubbornness to learn another language and general indifference to the prospect of our society and culture changing dramatically as a result of immigration and the expansion of 2nd-generation families in the next few decades, we are doing ourselves a grave disservice.

As a teacher of English in Brazil who already speaks Portuguese, I am a rare breed. Even my students were shocked that I had taken a time to learn a language that, in their words, everyone always just confuses with Spanish. In addition to the language surprise, my students were also interested in the fact that I had been to Brazil several times before, and knew that Brazil was about more than Carnaval. But despite these differences, the things that set me apart from other teachers they had previously had, I still wondered if intent mattered at this point.

In being an “unusual” American to them, there is an obvious benefit, but the shame that sometimes comes with my nationality, due mainly to the international reception of our behavior and the aggressive promotion of our culture abroad, can outweigh any good I intend to do as a teacher. In recognizing the big picture, I may be overanalyzing, but in being a part of this neo-imperialist process, whether or not I have direct control in it, I still have days when I am uncomfortable with my work. I know that I am empowering my students with a valuable skill that will earn them considerable respect in the future, but I wish that more of my fellow countrymen were making an attempt to be more connected to the world as well, instead of continuing to spread American culture with their blinders on.

Last summer saw the launch of ALO Hayati, “America’s Top Middle Eastern Lifestyle Magazine.” Thanks to a gracious donor, I finally got my hands on a copy of the July 2008 issue.

All lifestyle magazines have an aspirational feel to them, and this one was no different. Chock full of advertisements for Dubai hotels and Swiss watches, ALO wasn’t particularly different than any other lifestyle magazine. Considering the economic situation of magazines, it doesn’t seem like an incredibly auspicious time to launch one aimed at a materialistic lifestyle. I wasn’t able to find any updates about the magazine’s publication on the website, and as far as I’m aware, this is the only edition, though in the magazine they refer to an earlier issue in some places.

As someone who enjoys a good glossy every now and then, I delighted over advertisements with Kim Kardashian, and interview with exclusive designer Bijan, and a fluffy piece on intercultural relationships (though I did not care for the cover teaser: “Shocking Intercultural Stories”).

The magazine featured an interview with Leila Ahmed, which was a great one, likening the current western media representation of Muslim women to the same patronizing Orientalism that played out in the first wave of colonialism in Middle East. Her interview shed lots of light on the history and future of the headscarf. Despite the educational qualities of her interview, I kept thinking, “Who is this educating?”

While not every Middle Eastern person is going to be familiar with the history behind the headscarf, it seems sort of odd to have an educational feature about hijab in a magazine aimed at a demographic that has a fairly lengthy history with headscarves, even if many of them aren’t Muslim. Something about this piece tugged at me. It almost felt as if it was aimed at people who were not Middle Eastern.

Other pieces confirmed my suspicions. A photography section, entitled “Faraway Faces” (cue Aladdin soundtrack!), featured lots of “natives.” Lots of women wrapped up with only their eyes showing, lots of traditional attire, wizened old men, and even a camel. And the website isn’t any better. There are tons of shots of women wrapped up to look mysterious in glammy scarves (one such example is pictured at left).

This wasn’t even the worst part. This issue featured a special section on weddings, complete with all the typical wedding stuff (dresses, rings, honeymoon destinations). But it also contained coverage of an actual wedding. Neither the bride nor groom had Middle Eastern heritage. I assume that if they had, the magazine would have mentioned it, because otherwise, why would they be in a magazine about Middle Eastern lifestyles?

Because their wedding was entirely Ancient Egyptian themed.

(sigh)

Now, I don’t want to go dogging anyone’s special day. I know people who’ve had themed weddings of other time periods. And I can even dig that they have a lot of interest in Ancient Egypt (when I was in sixth grade, I would devour anything and everything related to the time period. It was interesting.)

But this? In a Middle Eastern lifestyle magazine? I mean, they did their homework and everything (the article mentions that the bride wore custom-made accoutrements modeled on those of ancient Egyptian queens), but the cake was in the shape of a step pyramid. Come on. It’s like attempting to have a traditional Mexican wedding with a cake in the shape of a sombrero. It just plays up the stereotypes that they’re (hopefully) trying to avoid.

The article conjured up not only some major Orientalist vibes, but reminded me of a similar craze in the Gulf: Arab brides dressing up in saris for their wedding celebrations. The dynamic is further complicated by the fact that many of them have South Asian maids, lots of whom aren’t treated well. It’s called cultural appropriation, people.

Fuckery aside, I did like a lot of the articles in the magazine. They profile not only legendary designer Bijan, but also civil rights activist and author Jack Shaheen. They interview not only Jordanian princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, but also Lebanese chef Viviane Chamieh.

I like the aim of the magazine: peace, regional association (despite the region being an ambiguous Western-defined term), and intercultural and interfaith collaboration. I liked the emphasis on “Middle Eastern” rather than religion or lineage (profiling those who are both born/raised in the Middle East as well as those born in the U.S. with Middle Eastern heritage on either side of their family). I liked a piece on double standards when it comes to sex that I found on the website (yes, admittedly fluffy, but we already covered that). I liked the fact that the wedding section had designs by Middle Eastern designers (more of that, please! There are plenty of them!). I liked that ALO uses Middle Eastern Americans as their cover models. So I really wanted to like this magazine as a whole.

If ALO can cut down on the exoticizing and play up the actual Middle Eastern angle of things (wouldn’t hurt to incorporate more Middle Eastern writers on staff, would it? Or cover things actually happening in Middle Eastern countries rather than covering countries themselves as tour destinations? And profiling more Middle Eastern Americans, like you did in your interview with director Mark David?), it can fully live up to its name.

The tomato comes from Peru and spaghetti was probably a gift from China.

It is, though, the “foreign” kebab that is being kicked out of Italian cities as it becomes the target of a campaign against ethnic food, backed by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi.

The drive to make Italians eat Italian, which was described by the Left and leading chefs as gastronomic racism, began in the town of Lucca this week, where the council banned any new ethnic food outlets from opening within the ancient city walls.

Yesterday it spread to Lombardy and its regional capital, Milan, which is also run by the centre Right. The antiimmigrant Northern League party brought in the restrictions “to protect local specialities from the growing popularity of ethnic cuisines”.

Luca Zaia, the Minister of Agriculture and a member of the Northern League from the Veneto region, applauded the authorities in Lucca and Milan for cracking down on nonItalian food. “We stand for tradition and the safeguarding of our culture,” he said.

Mr Zaia said that those ethnic restaurants allowed to operate “whether they serve kebabs, sushi or Chinese food” should “stop importing container loads of meat and fish from who knows where” and use only Italian ingredients.

Asked if he had ever eaten a kebab, Mr Zaia said: “No – and I defy anyone to prove the contrary. I prefer the dishes of my native Veneto. I even refuse to eat pineapple.”

—Richard Owen in his article “Italy Bans Kebabs and Foreign Foods from Cities” writing for The Times Online

Tyler Perry is set to release a film version of his play, Madea Goes to Jail, which I happened to watch with my family back home in Nashville over the Christmas holiday. TP flicks are best enjoyed as a community, because as you’re responding to your mother’s giggles about Madea’s swinging bosom, you can forget about what appears to be his real message, lurking beneath all that homespun wisdom.

Almost.

(Spoilers ahead.)

In Madea Goes to Jail, Sonny, Madea’s nephew, his wife Vanessa, and their infant son, live with the outspoken matriarch. Vanessa is in graduate school, and Sonny works hard at the local jail, pulling extra hours to finance her education. The two have a deal that once she earns her degree, it will be his turn to go back to school. But it soon becomes clear that Vanessa is an ill-mannered, disrespectful, spoiled, ungrateful bitch who doesn’t want to do the right thing by catering to her husband out of gratitude for his hard work and support. She loudly complains about taking care of the baby or performing any other domestic chore, stressing the need to complete her graduate study so she can make something out of herself. She’s so out of pocket that the busybody next door neighbor, Ella, admittedly manless, irons Sonny’s work shirt for Vanessa, as she sings about how to take care of a man and keep him happy.

Of course, Sonny loves Vanessa’s dirty underwear, despite rumors of her sexual past. He’s willing to overlook her thankless behavior, in part, because she’s beautiful and that’s what good husbands do. We see more of Sonny’s good heart once he goes to work to help Madea get out of jail. He doesn’t like confrontation; he just wants to do his job and be properly compensated for it. At the jail, we meet Wanda, an old high school friend who is now a successful prosecutor for Child and Family Services. Wanda is quietly attractive, saved, and holding a serious torch for Sonny, who either doesn’t recognize it or doesn’t acknowledge it, setting his role as Good Married Guy firmly in place.

Still, things continue smoothly until we learn that his boss and good friend, Nate, is having an affair with Vanessa. As a result of this infidelity, the child’s life is put in danger, and Vanessa lands in jail, seemingly without remorse for her part in the situation. The child needs a blood transfusion to live, which is when we discover that Sonny is not the father. And neither is Nate. Poor, poor Sonny. Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and now given the ultimate insult to a good Black man– he’s been taking care of a child not his own! How much more sympathy can we the audience have for him? And what is more natural than for him to turn to Wanda, the less obviously beautiful, already accomplished, spiritually grounded, and — did I mention? — celibate friend, who’s been secretly pining away, waiting for him to notice her.

To be fair, it appears that the film for Madea Goes to Jail will be almost completely different from the play. However, I probably won’t see it, unless my aunt is playing the bootleg version in her nail shop the next time I go home. Finding love through salvation doesn’t sit well with me, and the possible colorism in effect (perfect, fair-skinned fiancee vs. pitiful, dark brown prostitute) also sets my teeth on edge. An internet chum, in a discussion board debate surrounding TP and T.D. Jakes, recently claimed that all Tyler Perry wants you to do is go to church. I’m not so sure.

There is little to dispute that TP’s target audience is Black women, so let’s look at the message we’ve received so far from the play. A beautiful, ambitious driven woman is a promiscuous, shrill bitch and a danger to the home. A good woman doesn’t turn heads with her beauty, is soft-spoken, religious, and will wait- sexually and emotionally- for the right man to come along. We see this play out as well in the movie version of Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?

Angela, the successful entrepreneur, drinks, is unruly, and loudly and frequently emasculates her somewhat inept husband Marcus, thereby leaving little sympathy for her during his constant forays outside of the marriage. It is only when he finally snaps, calling her out on her behavior (i.e. starts acting like a man) that she becomes soft-spoken and even takes on the womanly responsibility of cooking him a meal. Patricia has a patient, good husband in Gavin, a great career that reaches high levels of professional praise, but her busy, perfect schedule has a tragic affect on her ability to be a parent. Diane, a powerhouse attorney glued to her Blackberry and laptop, neglects her patient, good husband Terry (played by TP), is ambivalent about her relationship as a mother and, without telling her husband, has made a major decision about her body that directly affects his dreams about family. These professionally successful women just don’t know how to make a home! And finally, we have Sheila, whose beauty must be qualified with the phrase “Plus-Sized,” soft-spoken, devout, unemployed, willing to take on the emotional and mental abuse of her brazenly unfaithful husband Mike, until her friends force her to accept the truth. Sheila, once dependent on Mike, then must rely on Sherriff Troy, who gets her a job, helps rescue her from being overweight, and gives her the confidence she needs to realize he’s the man she’s been praying for.

I suppose all that would have churches swelling to capacity because in the end, the gentle, pious, overlooked woman gets her man and the career-oriented, no-nonsense, attractive woman must make sacrifices, lest she end up in jail — or worse — childless.

So getting “us” into church is not his only objective. TP wants to teach women how to have successful relationships by making sure their male partners are satisfied. His morality plays, on stage and film, scold women: Be quiet, in appearance and voice. Don’t try to be more than what you are. Serious ambition is a danger to the family. Be grateful for “good enough.” Wait for the right man to notice you. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Be appropriately thankful when a man takes care of you.

For some, it’s easier to swallow these tidbits of wisdom with humor and the comforting memories of an outspoken matriarch. TP disguises his lessons as carefully as he disguises himself in floral prints and exaggerated twang, but sometimes, the man peeks out from the caricature, and I wonder how long it will be before he has removed the mask completely.

Finally, somebody summarized the myths that non-Chinese Americans have about Chinese food. Most of what White Americans consider “Chinese food” is mostly eaten by white people, and would be more accurately described as “American food” (and perhaps even “white people food”).

Jennifer 8. Lee has a great video on TED Talks titled, Who was General Tso? and other mysteries of American Chinese food.

Here are some important points from the video:

• General Tso’s chicken is unrecognizable to people in China. It is the quintessential American dish, because it is sweet, it is fried, and it is chicken.
• Beef with broccoli is of American origin. Broccoli is not a Chinese vegetable; it is of Italian origin.
• Chop suey was introduced at the turn of the 20th century (1900). It took thirty years for non-Chinese Americans to figure out that chop suey is not known in China. “Back then”, non-Chinese Americans showed that they were sophisticated and cosmopolitan by eating chop suey.
• “Chinese” take-out containers are American.
• There is Chinese French food (salt-and-pepper frog legs), Chinese Italian food (fried gelato), Chinese British food (crispy shredded beef), Chinese West Indian food, Chinese Jamaican food, Chinese Middle Eastern food, Chinese Indian food, Chinese Korean food, Chinese Japanese food, Chinese Peruvian food, Chinese Mexican food (which look like fajitas), Chinese Brazilian food, etc.
• If McDonald’s is Microsoft, then Chinese food is Linux.

These myths that most White Americans have about “Chinese food” are not trivial. Generally, false assumptions beget false conclusions and distorted worldviews. When most White Americans believe that American foods like chop suey, General Tso’s chicken, and fortune cookies are “foreign” and “Chinese”, some effects include:

• Most White Americans think that there is no such thing as “American food”, and that Americans are cosmopolitan and worldly, because they are exposed to foreign foods. For many White Americans, an example of “foreign food” is chop suey. This is ironic, because it actually reveals American insularity.
• When White Americans think of “Chinese culture” (and assume that all Chinese Americans have retained their ancestral culture), most White Americans think of “Chinese” American food like chop suey, General Tso’s chicken, and fortune cookies. However, chop suey, General Tso’s chicken, and fortune cookies are actually examples of how Chinese culture has been lost and replaced by commercialism.
• Many White Americans think that they are knowledgeable about Chinese culture (and not racist) because they eat at “Chinese” restaurants and order dishes like General Tso’s chicken. What many White Americans think as racial knowledge is actually racial ignorance.
• In American movies and TV, Chinese identity is often represented by chop suey. For example, in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (1961), which is arguably the only major Hollywood film with a predominantly Asian American cast as protagonists, the Asian American actors sang a celebratory song called “Chop Suey”. According to Arthur Dong, “Songs like ‘Chop Suey’ became an embarrassment for politicized Asian Americans. It didn’t matter that Flower Drum Song was based on a book written by a Chinese American; it was, in the end, a white man’s concoction.”
• In American movies and TV, Chinese culture is often represented by fortune cookies. Sometimes non-Chinese Americans infer from the nonsensical messages in fortune cookies that Chinese thinking is nonsensical, mystical, and inscrutable. (That’s racist!) However, fortune cookie messages are manufactured in the United States for commercial purposes, to entertain mostly non-Chinese recipients. The messages are not ancient Chinese proverbs.
• It is not uncommon for a White American to meet a Chinese American for the first time, and attempt to “relate” with her by informing her that he loves chop suey. This is offensive for multiple reasons. White Americans think of Chinese people as a stereotype (”Chinese” food), the stereotype is based on White American experiences rather than Chinese American experiences, the stereotype is not even accurate, the White American thinks that the Chinese person identifies with the racial stereotype, the White American thinks that Chinese ethnicity is represented by an American racial stereotype, etc.
• LFO had a song called “Summer Girls” with a chorus that includes the lines, “New Kids On The Block had a bunch of hits. Chinese food makes me sick.” Many White Americans conclude that they “don’t like Chinese food” after eating one type of dish, and that dish probably did not originate in China. Whatever negative associations that White Americans have about Chinese food should actually be blamed on American culture (and American preferences for deep-fried food), not foreign Chinese culture.
• Some White Americans use “Chinese food” as an example of Chinese people being unassimilable and not adapting to American culture. (Some White Americans even believe that the popularity of “Chinese food” in the United States shows how Americans accommodate and embrace minority cultures.) The reality is that “Chinese” American food is an example of how Chinese immigrants bend over backwards to create dishes customized for White American tastes.

Jennifer 8. Lee’s Italian friend was surprised to learn that fried gelato did not originate in China, and remarked, “It’s not? But they serve it at all the Chinese restaurants in Italy!” This incident illustrates the limitations of anecdotal experience as a source of knowledge. Even if the sample size is very large, anecdotal experience does not take into account selection bias. In this case, a biased sample lead to false conclusions about an ethnic minority group’s “culture”.

This incident also reveals that when the national culture is so pervasive, the cultural aspect of a practice that comes from the national culture is invisible to the ethnic majority. For example, White Italians do not see the Italian influence of fried gelato, only the perceived Chinese aspect of it. To Americans, however, the Italian influence of fried gelato is apparent, while fried gelato’s Chinese influence is not.

Similarly, Americans generally do not see the American influence of General Tso’s Chicken, only the perceived Chinese aspect of it. To non-Americans and observant Americans, however, the American influence of General Tso’s chicken is apparent, since it is sweet, (deep-) fried, and chicken. The dish known in the United States as “General Tso’s Chicken” is 100% American.

Perhaps the dish is also 1% Chinese, since the dish’s name was transliterated into English from the name of a Chinese person, and the people who serve it tend to be Chinese Americans.

However, fond memories of eating General Tso’s Chicken is a culture that is shared among more White Americans than Chinese Americans.

Last week, I picked up the new issue of Script Magazine looking for some information on script reviewers . However, what I found was Baz Luhrmann talking about the planning and writing of Australia.

The lengthy article describes the thought process involved in creating a script of epic scope, and reveals that Luhrmann wanted to write a film encompassing the history of Australia. Script explains:

There were a number of issues that Luhrmann knew he wanted to explore, including those related to the continent’s Aboriginal peoples as well as those related to Australia’s to achieve self-determination and self-governance.

After spending six months immersed in research and historical documents, Luhrmann decided to set the film near the beginning of World War II, due to “the transitional period” that it represented in Australia’s history. Also of note:

Another reason Luhrmann chose this time period because it allowed him to shine a light on what he describes as “probably the most heinous and difficult part of our history” – a period that marked a low point in the relationship between Australia’s white majority and the indigenous peoples with whom they share their land. In the time between the two World Wars, so many white Australian cattle stockmen were having relationships with Aboriginal women that the population of mixed-race children was causing a dilemma for those concerned about the country’s racial purity. A government policy was instituted in which mixed race children were taken from their parents, placed in Christian monasteries, and, in Luhrmann’s words, “basically trained to be white. This decimated large sections of the indigenous population – you can imagine the spiritual decimation and the pain. So, it was an extremely dramatic problem that has haunted this nation for a very, very long time and it really began in that period.”

Luhrmann wanted to deal with this issues in his film, not as its primary focus, but woven into the fabric of the piece in much the same way that slavery – while certainly not the main subject of the movie – was an indelible part of the texture of Gone With the Wind.

I find the journalist’s recounting of historical events extremely interesting.

A period that marked a low point in the relationship between Australia’s white majority and the indigenous peoples with whom they share their land[...]

Oh, is that how that went? No discussions of forced removal from ancestral homelands? Or smallpox? So, this was simply like getting a roommate? Informative.

In the time between the two World Wars, so many white Australian cattle stockmen were having relationships with Aboriginal women that the population of mixed-race children was causing a dilemma for those concerned about the country’s racial purity.

This line really jumped out at me when I read it. Relationships? In some cases, there probably were loving relationships between rancher/settlers and some indigenous women. But I think the word they were looking for was relations, as in sexual contact that may or may not have been consensual. I don’t wish to be grim – perhaps I am inserting some of the issues in African American history over on to a different continent. It’s one of those things about colonialism – seeing people as subhuman leads you to treat them as subhuman and rape (of said subhumans) was common. I did a quick search to check my gut feeling, but I pulled up nothing about the relationships between indigenous women and settlers. However, I found two things of interest:

1. There is little if any analysis of aboriginal men in these relationships. Most of the accounts involve aboriginal women and their mixed race children. So logically…

2. If this is the case, then where were the white men who fathered these children? Where are their accounts? If they were in “relationships” wouldn’t they have been around to protest?

It is these little omissions that make me think history is being sanitized again.

Hopefully, someone who knows a bit more about Australian history can drop some insight in the comments.

Luhrmann wanted to deal with this issues in his film, not as its primary focus, but woven into the fabric of the piece in much the same way that slavery – while certainly not the main subject of the movie – was an indelible part of the texture of Gone With the Wind.

Where do I even start with this one? Let’s begin by saying Gone with the Wind isn’t really the best comparison this writer could have made. (Though, to be fair, SLB’s review does show that the comparison might be spot-on.) Between lot of interesting criticism of the novel by black women and the unauthorized parody, The Wind Done Gone there has been a massive attempt to describe how many of us do not see the same story when we read Gone with the Wind.

The line quoted above also cuts to the heart of the criticism I hold for a lot of writers (novelists and screenwriters alike) and their treatment of characters of color. Even when we are the main characters, we are treated like an afterthought. We always occupy that space of something-that-exists-as-a-plot-device or a tool of redemption to the other white characters. To illustrate, here is a note on the development of Nicole Kidman’s character:

By the end of [the initial screenplay writing] period, they created a suitably epic tale that Luhrmann describes as follows: “A woman from a far away place by happenstance finds herself in a foreign environment. All she cares about is her physical possessions – she’s tired of spirit and tired of love. She goes on an African Queen-like journey and finds herself with the most unlikely man who she, by status, could never be involved with, or love in any way whatsoever…and with a child who loses his mother. Together they go on an incredible quest and journey and, out of that quest and journey, she is transformed by the landscape and the experience. She finds love for all three of them. The rest of the film is when the world is spinning and changing: War comes and society says you can’t be together.

[...]

[W]ith a desire to enhance Sarah’s “Englishness,” Luhrmann approached Academy Award winning screenwriter, novelist, and playwright Ronald Harwood (The Pianist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) in February 2006. Initially, Luhrmann asked Harwood to work on the sequence in which Sarah makes her journey to Faraway Downs, but this quickly expanded into the two of them doing a thorough pass thorough pass of the whole script. Luhrmann was thrilled to be able to work with Harwood. “He is one of the grand masters of writing. He has a great sense of the classical and just of storytelling..and had a couple of really cracker ideas [to solve problems]that I had been struggling with for a long, long, time.

There was little discussion of Jackman’s character, who apparently represents Australia. And, for a movie that is “really told from a little child’s perspective,” Nuala’s characterization is also glossed over, save for this note:

The mythological aspect of the script also benefitted from input from a full-time aboriginal script consultant, Sam Lovell, and a number of Aboriginal storytelling and song partners, including Richard Birrinbirrin and Frances Djulibing.

Related:

White Authors, Ethnic Characters
Ballad of the Magical Half-Negro (by Baz Luhrmann)

I think if we’re all quite honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the methods to approaching big-screen biopics are finite—especially biopics about musicians. In order for people’s lives to warrant the silver screen treatment in the first place, those lives have to possess extremes—a series of extenuating events that can be exploited for the highest dramatic impact the actors can generate. And face it: biopics are only as good as their actors. Sure, the writing has to be passable. If you’re lucky, the writing makes the actors’ jobs easy, but to our main point: the lives themselves provide the pathos. The writers need only heighten it. Yes, there are glaring historical omissions. Yes, there are all kinds of melodramatic liberties taken—especially in the film’s second to last scene of this film. But that, too, comes with the predictable territory of biopics, and good actors mine that melodrama for all its worth. That’s what makes a decent biopic so watchable.

Everyone involved in Darnell Martin’s Cadillac Records understands the pecking order of the biopic genre—which is precisely why this one works so well. Fortunately, the casting directors brought their A-game, tapping Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess, the Jewish-Polish immigrant who founded the most successful Blues and R&B label in Chicago history, Chess Records, and the incomparable Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, Chess’s flagship artist.

With Brody and Wright anchoring the film, the substantial supporting cast had no choice but to tow the Oscar-caliber line and, with very few exceptions, they did. Granted, Cedric the Entertainer was probably miscast as songwriter Willie Dixon. He always sounds like he’s faking an accent, rather than playing a role. It’s as though his acting ability doesn’t extend beyond varying the tenor of his voice. But since he was only in a few scenes, total (even his role as the narrator didn’t yield him that many lines), he wasn’t distracting at all.

Other actors with pretty small roles included Eamonn Walker as Howlin’ Wolf, Mos Def as Chuck Berry, and Beyonce as Etta James. Walker’s Howlin’ Wolf was a formidable presence with an icy glare, a grim smile, and serious control issues. Mos Def was suave, comical, and chagrined in equal measure. Beyonce was surprising as a pottymouth and walking wound, with a penchant for syringes and pints of gin. She has miles to go before she’ll be able to carry a role with no singing involved (and speaking of singing, I think I would’ve preferred it if she’d lip-synched… especially on “At Last,” but that’s a nitpick), but she’s grown leaps and bounds beyond her last high-profile role as Deena Jones in 2006’s Dreamgirls.

The real standout among the supporting cast was Columbus Short as Little Walter. From his first frame, a conk in his hair and a harmonica on his lips, Short electrifies in his role as the dark, wounded, and slightly psychotic blues singer. Short is strongest in scenes with Wright and Gabrielle Union (who plays Geneva, Muddy Waters’ wife and Little Walter’s surrogate mother), and was equal parts braggadocio and bitter tears. His turn as an infinitely talented boy whose self-loathing rendered him incapable of accepting the unconditional, parental love Muddy and Geneva offered is so nuanced that you completely forgot you were watching a very familiar archetype of tragedy.

If Short’s Little Walter wasn’t enough of a pleasant surprise, Adrien Brody’s chemistry with Beyonce was another of the film’s high points. Every time he looked at her, his eyes crinkled like a man rendered helpless (and with ol’ girl’s hip-hugging cadre of costumes, is it any wonder?). Even though this likely wasn’t a stretch for the dude who arrogantly slobbed Halle down at the Oscars, Brody played his feelings for Etta with a hat-in-hand humility that almost made his infidelity sympathetic.

And Wright–as the emotional center of the film—infused his Muddy with a resolve that was able to barrel through all kinds of indignity in order never to return to sharecropping. Though his face often flickered with resentment and jealousy (especially in the presence of Howlin’ Wolf and Chuck Berry), his wry demeanor and uncanny intuition often acquitted him quickly.

As you can see, the strengths of Cadillac Records rest solely in its performers’ profound connections with one another. This film deserves multiple viewings, if for no other reason than the meticulousness with which Muddy mourns Walter or the tenderness with which Leonard gazes at Etta.

Don’t get us wrong. Plot-wise, there’s little you haven’t seen before: a once-pretty, now worn wife who puts up with no end of philandering, up to and including, raising another woman’s baby simply because she’s a Good Woman; the deeply troubled apprentice whose entree into a life of booze and blow lead to an early demise; music’s ability to temporarily transcend segregation; a patriarchal White producer getting high off his black clients’ supply (of talent); countless Caucasian musicians capitalizing on underpaid Black artists’ musicianship; and a swaggering chanteuse who futilely hopes her addictions will anesthetize her pain.

Still, go see it. It may be familiar territory, but there’s no reason it should’ve opened ninth—unless times really haven’t changed much since the heyday of payola and paternalism at all….

My brother likes to push my buttons. When I bring up women’s issues, he tells me to get back to the kitchen. When I bring up Iranian culture, he cracks jokes in a fakey Middle Eastern accent.

I love him anyway.

We’re pretty close. We look alike, family members often confuse our voices on the phone, and we crack jokes to keep each other entertained when things get tense or boring. I feel very blessed to have him, and to have the relationship that we do.

Since high school, I have been striving to reconnect with my Iranian and Muslim identities; he hasn’t shown the same inclination. This isn’t to say that he’s remained the same person since high school: he and his interests have developed and evolved, but they have not done so in a direction that seeks to connect with this half of his ethnic identity. He is just as Iranian as I am in his biological makeup, but his identification doesn’t mirror mine.

When we talk about where our lives are going and what we aspire to, he shows astonishment at my life. “You’re not where I thought you’d be,” he says with an incredulous tone that belies some sort of disappointment. “I always envisioned you somewhere else.”

Which always confuses me. Where else am I supposed to be? Yes, I slowly extinguished my lifelong dream of becoming a fashion designer (stop giggling!), but I don’t feel like I drastically changed who I was when I set new professional goals for myself.  “I always pictured you in pantsuits, very professional,” he confessed.

“What the hell?” I thought to myself. “I have a closet full of pantsuit separates! That is who I am!”

I realized that it wasn’t I who had changed; it was his perception of me. Since openly constructing and defining myself under the labels of “Iranian” and “Muslim,” those were the only things my brother seemed to see, which is why I felt so puzzling, so foreign to him. And, indeed, those were the things he always expressed so much confusion about and argued with me about the most.

 “You’re the one that got all the ‘culture,’” he says to me. So that’s it, then: I’m the Iranian one and he’s the “white” one. He feels it, too. Since I was the one who shows the most effort in “being” Iranian, I am the Iranian one. His lack of interest seems to automatically make him unmarked as Iranian, or “white.” (For the purpose of this essay, I’m setting aside the idea that many Middle Eastern people define themselves as white).

The idea that one child is more inclined to a certain ethnic identity and the other is less so interests me. Do any bi- or multi-racial readers find this to be true in their familial relationships? How would this idea play out among several children instead of just two?

As for my brother and I: though we’ve both felt that we occupied different (but somehow complementary) ethnic identities for quite some time, the realization that my ethnic and religious identities have served as an obstacle for my brother is new.

Since it’s the ethnic and religious identities that he gets stuck on, I worry that his perception of these identities (and thus me) is clouded by stereotypes and inaccuracies. I’m not really sure where to go from here. How do you normalize yourself to your own blood?

As we celebrated the eve of November 4th, I was struck by a comment from New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He pointed out with pride the role of the Latino vote in Obama’s election. I wish I could say that about my fellow Filipinos.

And yes, I know, the Filipino vote is not monolithic. I am specifically talking about Filipinos like me, who have immigrated here in our adult lives. We’re working to make ends meet. Many of you are raising families, go to church every Sunday, support extended families back in the Philippines. The Philippines that would theoretically be a very red state if it could vote.

So yeah, there are lots of factors behind this particular Pinoy demographic’s support of McCain and Proposition 8, but I will dive into the one that presents the most challenges.

Filipinos can be quite forthcoming when talking about race. In news interviews in the Philippines and in Pinoy gatherings, many immigrant Pinoys have made it abundantly clear that their “discomfort” over Barack Obama is not due to the rumors that he’s an inexperienced, socialist, Muslim politician. Their discomfort is from Obama’s blackness.

Filipino Americans have long been proud of our ability to assimilate into American society. Decades of colonization helped ensure that Filipinos buy into the American Dream completely — minimal input from a government that back home is often corrupt, working hard to pull oneself up, and evidencing said hard work through conspicuous consumption.

But as writer Benjamin Pimentel points out, buying into the American Dream also includes embracing “the views of the dominant white society – including the prejudiced, distorted image of blacks.”

Pimentel quotes Toni Morrison:

“In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens,” she wrote in Time magazine in 1993. “Whatever the ethnicity or nationality of the immigrant, his nemesis is understood to be African American… It doesn’t matter anymore what shade the newcomer’s skin is. A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open.”

This aspiration to whiteness is not new, of course. It has been evident in our history, as Filipino elites supported revolution not because of nationalism, but on the grounds that elites were honorary whites themselves, or at least figuratively white enough to take on the “white man’s burden.” Decades later, this valorization of whiteness is truly entrenched in Filipino society. Just consider the popularity of those skin bleaching lotions that let the brown masses show their “natural whiteness.”

This home-grown tendency gets magnified once Pinoys set foot in the United States. In the strong desire to identify with the white colonizer, many Pinoys readily adopt the hostility to whoever is considered the Other. And for Pinoys already steeped in colonial mentality back home, it does not take much to stoke the disdain against those who are considered the Other — Blacks, Muslims, and gays.

At the heart of this disdain is fear, partly of the population deemed the Other, but also a fear of losing privileges. Deeply entrenched in the collective Pinoy psyche is the belief that we have a “special relationship” with America, one wherein Americans really really likes us. Or at least, America likes us better than the other minorities out there. So we aspire to be favored by the dominant group and act grateful for the small crumbs that thrown our way.

This mindset is a formidable barrier to coalitional work, and the Filipino immigrants’ misguided support for Proposition 8 illustrates the failure of activists to connect to this community. But this is also a challenge to the Pinoy immigrant community to see beyond the divisive rhetoric, build upon its strong traditions of bayanihan, and to take its place in the greater struggles for social justice.

My mother is a black American, raised Baptist in Tennessee. My father is a Muslim from Nigeria. More specifically, for those in the know, he’s Yoruba.

When I was a baby my American relatives, all natives of small-town Tennessee and wholly unfamiliar with Africans, took to holding me up in the air and anointing me Kunta Kinte, like the character in “Roots.” Although the gesture annoyed my mother to no end, her family members found it hilarious.

Africans, you see, are hilarious. If there is one stereotype about Africans that has lingered throughout my life it is this. Perhaps because of this stereotype, before my birth my maternal grandmother envisioned that I would look less like a baby and more like an offensive cartoon character. She warned my mother to expect me to have coal black skin and bright red lips like Little Sambo. In expressing her fears, my grandmother ignored the reality of my father, who is dark-skinned but not especially so. In fact, he is a shade or two lighter than my mother is. Because Africans are an “exotic other,” however, my grandmother adopted a white supremacist gaze in connection to my father.

She’s far from the only black American to adopt that stance in relation to Africans. In Chicago, where my parents met and lived, my mother recalled being approached by a black woman curious to know if I cried in “African.” Now, I was born in the late1970s, before Akon dominated music charts or Hakeem Olajuwon (a fellow Yoruba) dominated basketball courts. Still, it’s somewhat shocking to note that some of the African Americans in my midst then viewed me as an entirely different entity from themselves.

Fortunately, such experiences never gave me a complex about being African growing up. Perhaps this is because my classmates included other blacks from foreign locales—Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti and Panama, among them. Another reason is that my parents divorced when I was just an infant, resulting in me growing up with my maternal relatives and culturally as a black American. There were no markers, such as dress, food or an accent to distinguish me from my classmates. Even my name, which is not Nigerian but Arabic, didn’t seem particularly odd growing up because of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s popularity then. Classmates often linked me to him, nicknaming me Nadra Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, rather than to Africa.

Being a first-generation African seemed like no big deal because I knew that my black American friends were originally from there, too. In middle school, when I encountered a Haitian classmate who angrily denied that her ancestors originated in Africa, I was shocked. I never believed that being from Africa was something to be ashamed of. I had been given reason to believe so, I suppose. I grew up watching the “Gods Must Be Crazy” films, in which Africans are portrayed as lovable buffoons. And during the “We Are the World” craze, I watched bloated Ethiopian children the same age as me, too weak to swat away the flies that swarmed around them. Still, I couldn’t get why anyone would be embarrassed to be African. The first time I saw the scene in “Boyz n the Hood,” in which a lead character disowns Africa and uses the insult African “booty scratcher,” I simply rolled my eyes.

By the time I was 17 or so, I was exposed to another viewpoint about my heritage. Being African was cool, being African American, not so much. People—white people and a few bohemian blacks—wanted me to dress like an African, speak like an African, etc. I was to be a portal to an exotic world. The fact that I have just one African parent and was not raised by him was completely overlooked. In my early 20s, when I read Malcolm X discuss how whites responded to black Africans with an awe they would never extend to black Americans, I could totally relate.

Some argue that whites treat African blacks differently from American blacks because slavery (and therefore guilt) is removed from the equation when dealing with the former group. I’m not convinced this is it, though. When the eyes of whites light up upon learning of my Nigerian heritage, it seems that they are just excited by the fact that I come from a continent with lions and tigers and bears (okay, so no bears). To boot, because many whites mistakenly believe that they have no culture, they take particular pleasure in learning about other cultures—the farther removed, the better. Ironically, I have met young Africans who feel that they have no culture because of the dominance of American popular culture. They feel they must emulate American culture rather than draw on their native cultures for inspiration.

In black American culture, Africans are at times celebrated and at other times denigrated. Take the film “Barbershop,” in which the West African employee in the shop is more or less an updated version of a character from “The Gods Must Be Crazy” films. Only in this case, he is a lovesick buffoon rather than an ordinary one. Throughout the film, I tensed each time this character found himself the butt of another joke or it was made clear that he could never win Eve’s heart.

These days, my American relatives no longer take their cues about Africans from movies. They wouldn’t dare address me as Kunta Kinte now. However, when my father does something to piss me off, they are quick to come to his defense by blaming his African-ness for his lack of sensitivity about an issue. Their behavior in these instances is more of a hindrance than a help, for it implies that we can’t hold an African to the same standard of conduct as we would ourselves. Their behavior reminds me of a short story called “The Man from Mars” by Margaret Atwood in which the outrageous behavior of a Vietnamese character is ignored because he is “a person from another culture.” In my situation, my American relatives suggest that Africans are simply too assbackwards to understand common courtesy. Never mind the fact that my father has lived in the U.S. for nearly four decades and is a true citizen of the world in that he has visited more countries than I can count on both hands.

During my travels to different parts of the world, the Africans I have encountered don’t fit the buffoon stereotype. In the UK, ask someone to name a stereotype of a Nigerian, and you’re likely to be offered up the image of a cab driver or a drug lord. There are also the privileged Africans I have met from all over, children of ambassadors and prominent businessmen. For a cinematic example of this, check out the French film “Café Au Lait.”

In fact in the U.S., both Africans and West Indians tend to be better educated and more financially comfortable than their black American counterparts. I have sometimes seen this lead to tension between the groups, with certain Africans capitalizing on the positive perceptions white Americans have of them and distancing themselves from black Americans. On the other hand, I have seen black Americans argue that African blacks believe that they are superior, all the while making fun of Africans for their accents, customs and physical features.

Another source of resentment comes from American blacks who visit Africa and are disappointed by the reception they receive. I’m not sure what these blacks are seeking when they visit Africa. I have visited Nigeria only once and was warmly received. Many people I encountered there greeted me with a “Welcome Home” when they encountered me, which I did not expect or ask of them .

I know that some American blacks have it wrong. I think of those, for example, who visit South Africa looking for ancestral connections when more than likely they are descendants from West Africa. I think of those who, as Sarah Palin was recently accused, seem to think that Africa is a country rather than a continent. They—whites and blacks, alike—are the ones who have asked me if I speak African, unaware that in my father’s country of origin more than 400 dialects are spoken alone. And there are those such as an American aunt I have, who despite knowing my father well, told me that she knew that he was from somewhere in Africa but didn’t know the exact country. “Nigerian?” she asked. “I didn’t know he was Nigerian.” This, after 30-plus years of knowing him.

Changing times may signal improved relations between American and African blacks in years to come. Not only has the U.S. elected a half-African to lead the country, at this time in history, more Africans have entered the U.S. than did during slavery. This could result in more awareness among black Americans about the cultures of Africa, not to mention more unions between the groups that produce children who aren’t the subjects of curious stares, jokes and inane questions because of their heritage.