Ouch.

Long time friend of the blog, Jeff Yang, has just lost his far reaching and influential column, Asian Pop. He writes in today’s farewell post:

So this is it, I guess: The final installment of “Asian Pop.” After nearly eight years beneath the masthead, the Gatekeepers have decided that “the economics of our business have changed in a way that doesn’t support online-only columns.” (And maybe not offline ones either: These are parlous times for the news biz.) [...]

As you might guess from its title, Asian Pop began with a focus on Asian media and entertainment, treating “Asianness” as something alien to the American experience, and “pop” as a reflection of passing fancies and ephemeral trends.

Over time, however, with the encouragement of three successive terrific editors, the column moved beyond those original boundaries, transforming Asianness from a spectacle into a perspective, and making “pop” shorthand not for popular but for populi.

Last week, I accompanied Doris Truong to drop Jeff off at the airport, one his way to a retreat to go walk up a mountain and think about things. Knowing Jeff, he will come back bursting with excitement and ready to embark on a bunch of new projects. But this decision by the powers that be to kill his column (and all other online-only long form columns) is heralding more bad business to come. I’ve been engaged in journalism work for the last two years, ever since Poynter made the decision to make me a Sense Making Fellow. In many ways, I’ve had a front seat to watching the freefall of legacy media. Diversity was one of the first values on the chopping block as expendable.

As the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported earlier this year:

[W]hile the study showed a slight increase in newsroom employees overall (from 41,500 in 2009 to 41,600 in 2010), the number of employees of color was actually down half-a-percent, making 2010 the third consecutive year that the percentage of minority journalists declined, explained MediaBistro. The total number of journalists of color declined from 5,500 in 2009 to 5,300 in 2010.

“At a time when the U.S. Census shows that minorities are 36 percent of the U.S. population, newsrooms are going in the opposite direction. This is an accuracy and credibility issue for our newsrooms,” said Milton Coleman, ASNE president, in a statement.

What’s more, 441 newspapers that were part of the ASNE survey reported no full-time minorities whatsoever — a number that has been increasing since 2006.

Broadcast isn’t much better:

Out of 815 executive producers, assignment managers, managing editors, assistant news directors, news directors and general managers at the ABC, CBS, Cox, FOX, Gannett, Hearst Argyle, Media General, Meredith, NBC and Tribune stations 713 (87.9%) are White, 64 (7.8%) are African American, 24 (3%) are Hispanic/Latino, 13 (1.6%) are Asian and only 1 is Native American. The management teams at 82 of the stations are all White.

“It is disheartening in 2010 that four of the media companies in the report have no African American news directors and so many of the companies have no black news director in some of the most diverse cities in America,” said NABJ President Kathy Y. Times. “It’s time for African American viewers to reconsider their support of media companies that do not appreciate or make diversity a priority.”

NABJ first began conducting its annual census as a way of encouraging broadcasters to commit to hiring more people of color for editorial positions. Still, the association believes true progress cannot be made unless the companies fully commit to developing talent who can then be promoted from within.

And digital media is following in the same path. I’ll write a bit more on this later, but it is amazing that at a time when ethnic media is rebounding, we still aren’t receiving anywhere close to to the resources and support that a moderately funded unit in a larger media organization enjoys. And Jeff’s column ending makes me uneasy in another way – specifically, the AOL Way. If you aren’t familiar, Media Beat breaks it down:

Business Insider has published a leaked copy of what it said is AOL’s new “master plan,” a presentation outlining the company’s goals and processes for the next few months. What comes across is an intense focus on numbers. And hey, that makes sense for a business document, but there is something both beautiful and scary about the way AOL is trying to streamline its entire “content generation” process (or, as I like to call it, “writing and editing”) for maximum profitability.

So what are AOL’s goals? Basically, to turn every blog post into a serious moneymaker. Specifically, by the end of March, AOL aims to increase the total number of articles published each month from 31,500 to 40,000, and to grow the median number of pageviews per article from 1,500 to 7,000. Meanwhile, the average cost of creating an article should fall from $99 to $84, and the profit margin on each article should increase from 35 percent to 50 percent.

When deciding what topic to cover, the AOL Way apparently involves weighing issues like traffic potential, revenue/profit, turnaround time, and editorial quality. Again, these are considerations that any for-profit publication is probably weighing, but what’s impressive is how specific AOL’s guidelines are — for example, there’s a “Demand Tool” that might, for example, predict that an article will earn $500, so under AOL’s guidelines a website can spend up to $250 for that piece of content.

The document also mentions a new “SEO Checker” that is supposed to be used on virtually all of AOL’s content, giving writers and editors guidelines on how to customize their articles to show up prominently in search engines.

Choire Sicha, of the Awl, termed it “spam labor camps,” but I fear that’s kind of optimistic. And it’s having ripple effects. While most mainstream media outlets expressed disdain at AOL’s policies, my editor friends have told me they are facing the same considerations. Budgets are slashed, so a few celeb/marquee writers are making tons of money while most pieces are paying between $100 – 300. In addition, original content that is reported, far reaching, or establishes a framework has been devalued – if consumers are voting with their pageviews, most people just want entertainment and op-eds. So the focus on quality is shifting – it’s no longer a necessity, it’s more like a luxury. So not only are there less opportunities for newsmakers of color to get in the game, there are far less opportunities to distinguish one’s self and one’s work. And take it from someone on the entrepreneurial/indie media track – it ain’t sweet over here. Back then I wrote:

All the VCs stressed that they were there to invest in profit making ventures. They want to get in and get out, and many of them were looking for a sale price of at least three times the amount of the initial investment. So remember, they are going for high growth in industries like telecoms, health care, and entertainment media.

What I didn’t share at the time was that one of the VCs looked me in the eye, and asked me if I was going to keep wasting this platform on social justice or get serious about making money.

There is a lot of talent out there – and when Jeff gets back, in a week or so, I’m sure you’ll hear more from him on Asian American media. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is a harbinger of a new media age – and it isn’t gonna be pretty.

I suppose I should say, by way of introduction, that this is something of an example of the squeaky wheel getting the grease. While Hemant was on a well-deserved vacation (this daily blogging stuff ain’t easy), he had a number of members of the SSA contribute guest blogs. I took offense to one of them, and got up on my horse to shout about it. In a fit of self- aggrandizement I tweeted a link to that post to him, and then promptly went on with my life, my rage spent. Upon returning, Hemant has invited me to write this response and expand somewhat on my argument.

To summarize as succinctly as possible, Derek Miller wrote a guest post in which the basic thesis was that in order to attract more members of minority communities (particularly, in that case, African Americans – it will be to this group I refer for the remainder of this post, but there are similar barriers faced by members of other ethnic groups as well) to the secular/freethought movement, the only thing that could be done was to make the movement more friendly and welcoming in general. A sort of Field of Dreams approach to attracting members of communities of colour – if you build it, they’ll start showing up. I was a bit apoplectic because Mr. Miller has clearly not consulted with, or bothered to listen to, anyone who has been talking about this issue from the minority perspective. This kind of laissez faire approach to recruitment is doomed to fail for reasons I will explain. I’ll also offer some of my own suggestions as to what steps can be taken to more actively include people of colour (PoCs) into the freethinking discussion.

Why don’t black people come to atheist meetings?

The freethinker community has been struggling with this question of late, as more and more speakers have become sufficiently emboldened to decry the lack of ethnic diversity at things like conferences, meetup groups, and other atheist-friendly activities. Increasingly, demands have been going up for a simple answer to this question, and have not been forthcoming. This was, I think, the general thrust of Mr. Miller’s post – there are no simple solutions to this problem. It does not follow, however, that there are no solutions to the problem at all, and we must simply wait for black and brown folks to get over their shyness and start showing up. There are a number of overlapping potential explanations, and until we can begin to see them as a larger context (instead of trying to tackle them one at a time), we’ll simply be spinning our wheels.

There are a few commonly-cited explanations for why black folks just don’t seem to show up:

Atheism as a ‘white people thing’

The face of atheism is, or at least has been, a white one. It’s intimidating for a member of any visible minority community to walk into a room and be the only dark face in the crowd. Whether or not people actually are staring at you (and yes, people do stare), it’s tough to get over the feeling that you don’t fit. Many black people, particularly those in the sciences, are used to being outnumbered, and have figured out a way to deal with it. At the same time, if you’re iffy about showing up to the campus freethinker club or the skeptics in the pub event or the atheist book club, knowing that you’re going to be an outlier is certainly not a point in favour of attendance.

Atheists being racist

If I can echo a statement made by Jen McCreight, it’s not necessarily the case that atheists are more racist than the general population (my suspicion is that we do a pretty good job, by and large), but that it’s more shocking to hear racist talking points from people who pride themselves on rationality and evidence-based decision making. When race comes up as a topic, I’m often mildly amused/horrified to hear the kind of 19th-century ‘scientific racist’ slogans that come out of the mouths of my confreres. I personally have a thick skin about it, knowing that people are well-meaning but just not well-educated. My experience is perhaps a bit atypical, and it only takes a couple of bad experiences to sour the whole idea for you permanently.

The black church

Much has been made of the disproportionate influence that organized religious organizations have over black folks, which may explain, in part, their (our) reluctance to show up to atheist events. The black church goes beyond simple regular religious instruction – in many communities the church takes the place that the government does as a focal point of organization and a social safety net. It’s the lynch pin in many black communities, and distancing one’s self from the church is essentially volunteering to go into exile. To the extent that this prevents many black people from coming out as atheist, this may explain some of the differential participation. However, there are lots of black atheists out there who have already left the church and yet still don’t show, so we can’t simply point at this as the biggest explanatory factor.

Poverty, education, and access

It is no secret that, as a population, black people (particularly in the USA) experience higher levels of poverty than the general population, and definitely a higher level than the white average. This is due to a whole host of factors that are probably outside the scope of the freethinking movement to solve in a timely manner. That being said, socioeconomic factors may have some explanatory power over why black people are less likely to participate. Not every black individual is going to experience more financial hardship than every white individual – to suggest this would be absurd. However, when we talk about this from the level of the population, there is more disincentive for PoCs than for non-PoCs.

Each of these on their own might dissuade individuals from making the decision to attend, but it’s not hard to see how the pressure against participation can accumulate for those who are doing their personal utilitarian calculus.

So how can we be more attractive?

Identifying the problems facing atheists of colour with respect to joining the community is not the same as solving them. One might be tempted to say that these are intractable problems, and all we can do is wait until they resolve themselves over time. That’s certainly how I interpreted Mr. Miller’s response, and many of the comments that followed it. It’s somewhat ironic to watch a group of people who are actively agitating for great separation of church and state, and for greater mainstream acceptance of atheists, to turn around and say “just give it time and it’ll sort itself out.” That line of reasoning coming from an accommodationist theist would be met with derision, and deservedly so. Problems can be solved by committed people willing to take action; we wouldn’t be doing any of this otherwise.

Just to briefly address the above 4 issues I raised as examples:

• We can be more assertive about putting freethinkers of colour in highly-visible positions. I am not talking about bumping Jamal from the mail room to be king of atheism – the assumption that this movement lacks PoCs who are qualified in a variety of fields is wrong, primarily, and racist secondarily.
• We can get serious about talking about race and racism. I’ve long been advocating incorporating anti-racism as a skeptical approach – applying methodological skepticism to racial topics as well as those that are strictly scientific. Just as it took us a while to adopt feminist thought into our lexicon, so too does the effort need to be made to add new tools to our utility belt when it comes to talking about race. While it may not be very interesting from a biological standpoint, understanding race is like understanding theology: just because it’s not real doesn’t mean it doesn’t exert a great deal of influence.
• We can, as Mr. Miller may have been suggesting, make the freethinker community a true community that performs the same function that churches do (minus the chants). Above and beyond simply knowing that each other exist, we can begin mobilizing our collective strength to look out for each other, much the same way we did for Damon Fowler. This will be particularly challenging because of how remote we are from each other – churches are physical entities that are at the centre of both your social and physical community.
• We can take steps to actively reach out to close some of the poverty gap. Major events like TAM or other large-scale events can offer a number of bursaries or scholarships for those that can’t afford to pay. Whether or not you make those tied to ethnic membership is really a decision to be made on a case-by-case basis – there are arguments to be made on both sides. My take on this is that you need to decide how important it is for your organization to have PoCs present, and whether or not you can tolerate doing something that might seem unfair.

Above and beyond these specific remedies, though, there is a larger issue that I think gets less press that was also part of my initial rant. Freethinkers and skeptics have our pet topics: alternative medicine, UFOs, creationism, church/state separation… you know the highlights. I am in no way trying to minimize these topics – they’re all deeply interesting and important. However, these are somewhat esoteric and fringe interests that don’t really speak to the passions of the general public. I know that I personally am more interested in applying skepticism to things like politics, poverty, race, and law. There are many people for whom those interests are part of their daily reality – failing to address those interests means that even those who are technically in your target audience are simply uninterested in debating whether or not chemtrails are more ridiculous than homeopathy.

Concerted effort can change minds.

How do we know that will work?

This is an excellent skeptical question, and I’m glad you asked it. The freethinker movement has, lately, faced two other major fights for increasing diversity. The first was/has been/continues to be the fight to include women. A few forthright women stood up and, despite the pressures against them doing so, spoke out about the lack of female voices in the skeptic community. They challenged many of the assumptions and traditions of the society from which freethought had sprung about the role and abilities of women. We continue to grapple with this issue today, and the fight is far from over, but it’s a lot better than it was say, 20 years ago.

The second major fight was for recognition of issues facing LGBT persons. Freethought is a natural ally in the fight for gay/lesbian/transperson rights, and while initially there was not a lot of enthusiasm for topics that didn’t really fall under the classic ‘skeptical’ umbrella, we eventually (thanks to the hard work of vocal, dare I say ‘strident’, people) made LGBT issues one of the central poles holding up our tent, if you’ll forgive the entendre. To be a freethinker is, now, to be assumed to be queer-friendly. This didn’t happen by accident or by passively making the freethought movement simply a friendlier place – it took effort and active recruitment.

In the same way that we fought and won those battles, we have an opportunity to put in work and solve the problem of a lack of ethnic diversity. We can learn to speak the language of anti- racism, and we can adopt causes that are friendly to those who might not otherwise feel at home in our midst. But above those, we can put actual programs into place designed to actively draw out those fence-sitters of colour who need that little extra ‘nudge’ to get them in the room at the next event. Depending on how well those programs work, we can ask people who come from underrepresented communities what they would do to effect change. Of course, this will also require us to start listening (or get better at listening, excuse me) when people tell us how we can make things better.

Again, all of these proposed solutions are contingent on the assumption that we, both as a community and as individuals, actually care about the lack of diversity within the movement and wish to see the situation improve. If our approach is going to be one of passive diffusion – wait for sufficient numbers of dark-skinned people to find their way into the room such that we can stop harping on this whole ‘diversity’ issue (what is that, anyway?) – then we can just continue to do little. If we don’t care, then we should just say so and be done with it.

(Image Credit: The Guardian)

1. Diversity is content knowledge and text: as stated earlier, there is a wealth of information, lessons, techniques, and vocabulary that diversity has unearthed and exposed for all people to draw from. Much of my own Latinidad was informed by W.E.B. DuBois’s introduction of double-consciousness to American culture. Gloria Anzaldua’s notion of borders can help higher education look at how they frame “global” “intercultural” and “internationals” as it has informed me with understanding the intra-group dynamics between Latinos who come to school as International Students, and those who are U.S. domestic.
2. Diversity provides a set of tools: When I first designed a Latino Leadership course for the University of Maryland, I introduced leadership halfway through the semester, not until we laid out a vocabulary of what Latinidad is in relation to social consciousness, followed by a survey of social issues affecting Latinos. Reappropriaton, code-switching, critical thinking, inclusion, dealing with difference, combating oppression, dialogue, and the third-eye feeds directly into Leadership as a tool for social change, a hybrid, not an addendum to be added afterward. Resulting models would inherently have these components within their DNA. Early Hip Hop is another example of a set of tools designed by a certain few, carrying on the ability to be held and utilized by many outside.
3. Diversity a continuous process with an outcome to be seen and felt: building blocks and  masonry must result in the creation of a building. But what does it look like? Take into account which voices were present, what conflicts arose and how were they addressed, what processes and structures were reframed for inclusion, what knowledge was unearthed, what issues of power and privilege eradicated in the process. In addition, the process of diversity means constant revaluations of the questions, which are answered and used again as a new equation to be recalculated again.

I may be off here. But, I hope future events can take into account the entire scope and range of the “D” word. It hurts when people walk with you, but still don’t get you. Again, I’m not a fan of the word. I use it alongside “equity,” “inclusion” “multiculturalism” interchangeably. I’m not championing the word, but advocating for a more comprehensive terminology that does not leave me as a checkbox, but a complete change agent and contributor to the new.

(Image Credit: “Unfinished Painting” by Keith Haring)

Editor’s Note: Christina Xu is one of the organizers of ROFLCon, a convention dedicated to exploring internet culture and memes. Before SXSW, she took the time to write about diversity and conference planning from an organizer’s perspective. – LDP

In a week, I will join my dear friends Tim Hwang and Diana Kimball in front of a panel at SXSW, where we’ll be speaking on the experience of organizing this crazy business we call ROFLCon. Like the conference itself, it’ll be part silly, heartwarming celebration and part serious introspection and discussion. And I (gladly! wholeheartedly!) signed up to talk about the only harsh criticism in a sea of loving responses to our creation:

First, a warning: this post is going to be long, and it is going to be more full of Real Talk than R. Kelly.

There are three important things to know about the beginning of ROFLCon.

1. I was 19 (Tim and Diana were 20) and not yet very hip to race or gender issues (see previous blogpost and below).
2. ROFLCon was intensely personal; to make our first guestlist, Tim and I literally just wrote down everything we’ve ever LOLed at on the internet that we grew up on: Something Awful, GameFAQs, 4chan, YTMND. Places that are predominantly (and aggressively) white, male geeks. There are thousands of other sides of the internet; we picked this one out of personal nostalgia.
3. ROFLCon became intentional SLOWLY and not of our own accord. In the bootstrappy beginning, we took anyone that we could get. We dreamed and worked ROFLCon into reality without any idea that it would become an institution of sorts. In other words, we had no idea that our choices would be scrutinized as political missteps, that we would somehow become arbiters of who should or shouldn’t be included in internet culture.

None of these are meant as excuses. They’re just to explain how a staff that was 43% female and 29% people of color could put together a conference with a tiny on-stage presence of either. I suspect this is the story with other conferences and endeavors of love, as well. We should have realized that being the first big, even vaguely serious conference about internet culture was not just a breakthrough, it was a responsibility. But at the same time, how could we have?

We didn’t, not until the day of the conference when people kept raising questions about the lack of diversity, or until we got a handful of critical blogposts thrown at us. The peak of this was, undeniably, Art Fag City’s criticism via/re: Steve Lambert. Here’s what I wrote to the ROFLCon mailing list (as part of a very active, intense email thread that almost everyone contributed to) when that happened:

I wasn’t there when this happened and I did terribly little in terms of organizing this so it’s probably not my place to do this, but I’d like to write an apology to address this on the blog. Or at least on my blog. I think it’s a really fair (if slightly snippy, which to be honest is totally okay by me) critique.

The staff debated the wisdom of this, and eventually ambitious plans were laid for a series of blogposts from various staffers. But then we all remembered that we had theses due in a month and went back to panicking: college, more liek LOLege, amirite?

But looking back: Art Fag City, you were mostly right, but I hope you know that your vitriol was counter-productive. People are not born understanding these things; they have to learn, even if they’re women. Being really mean to a bunch of sleep-deprived and well-intentioned 20 year olds will create much more resentment than progress, especially if you’re an outsider to our world. There are few enough women in this industry; attacking those that are just starting out is about the best way to ensure it’ll stay that way.

If you’re a commentator trying to shake up the system, being angry at people who create things out of love will get you nowhere. Teach them to be angry alongside you instead.

So anyway, how bad was our lack of diversity? Out of the 160 people we’ve ever featured or asked to speak at ROFLCon, 26 have been women (16%), 19 have been people of color (12%), and 6 have been women of color (totally embarrassing %). The stats went up from ROFLCon I to II (+1% for women and +5% for people of color). Obviously this completely simplistic sociological inquiry via Google Docs leaves out a lot of other important factors, but overall it suggests a homogeneity that isn’t pretty.

SO JUST PUT MORE WOMEN IN IT RITE?

There’s been a smorgasbord of suggestions for improving diversity at tech conferences, but we aren’t a tech conference. Most of the speakers in general on this Women for your Conference list are totally unsuitable for us: those women are srs bsns, and we just aren’t.

This is a controversial statement, but I want to make it clear: it’s hard to find women that fit the bill for the original ROFLCon agenda because there simply aren’t that many. Women, for the most part, do NOT make the memes that circulate on that particular corner of the internet; when they do, they usually don’t take ownership because it becomes uncomfortable very quickly.

For ROFLCon II, we tried hard to invite Boxxy, the most famous female user on 4chan: we even called her high school! But she and her family are understandably wary about Boxxy’s fame being tied to her real world identity, not just because of the violent threats. For all of us, it’s a taken-for-granted privilege that what we did in our youth didn’t determine how we would be judged in college and in life; that grace may not be afforded to Boxxy and others like her. As ROFLCon staff Allie Pape put it beautifully over email 2 years ago:

Like it or not, women aren’t doing silly things on the Internet, or deeply personal things on the Internet, without consequences (look at [former Harvard sex blogger] Lena Chen). So I think a lot of them aren’t doing these things at all.

Basically, the nature of white, male privilege on the internet and in the world is that you can do transgressive stuff and become famous for being funny, while most women or people of color who do the same will be attacked and stigmatized for as long as the internet cares to remember simply because they stand out. Their voices get marginalized, drowned out by the furor. That’s why even when they are creators, so many of them stay anonymous, or hidden from the public eye.

Is this indicative of a negative, hostile environment for women and people of color on the internet (and in real life)? YES. Do I want to fix this? YES. Are there people who defy this and do it anyway? YES. Is ROFLCon happy to support them? HELL YES. But, is ROFLCon capable of fixing the misogyny and racism of the internet from which it sprung? …

Are you serious?

ROFLCon has become an important window into the world of internet culture, and it’s certainly in a great position to frame the discourse around the internet to academics & business people, but changing the discourse on the inside? Anyone who spends any significant time on the internet knows that the hivemind gives a crap about what some dorks with badges are doing. Proof? We’ve never been seriously trolled by a trigger-happy Anonymous that reviles those who break Rules 1 & 2. Look at the Paypal website. Now look at us. We’re on a horse, in the middle of 1/1000th-of-Anon-thought-we-were-important-enough-to-DDOS land. Thanks, Anon, not just for leaving us alone but for recognizing what many commentators have failed to understand: that in your world, we have no power. The only way to change this culture is through repeated, deliberate participation by increasingly more individuals. Not through conferences.

SO WHAT CAN WE DO?

As the ROFLstaff discussed Art Fag City’s criticism, the ever-wise Kevin Driscoll wrote:

worth repeating: rofl(.+) represents a deceptively specific, small configuration of internet cultures. the complete absence of women presenters this time around is rather brutal but what might it indicate about THIS internet?

The first time Kevin had brought our attention to how deceptively specific and small our focus had been was through the session he pushed through in the first ROFLCon on Soulja Boy.

Soulja Boy performing in front of a screen of fan Youtube videos, from Wikimedia Commons.

To almost everyone at first, the reaction to this panel was WTF??? But Kevin dropped some serious knowledge (in the form of research for his master’s thesis) quickly made it clear why Soulja Boy mattered. Even though he doesn’t fit into our preconception of what a meme was, Soulja Boy’s meteoric rise to fame was all because he had created a huge internet phenomenon. Hundreds of thousands of people of all different races, genders, classes, etc. cranked Soulja Boy to a record deal, and his savvy with regards to engaging his fans through the internet surpasses most traditionally geeky internet celebrities. This is a community that only doesn’t look like ours in that it’s too mainstream.

(Fun fact: moot, the founder of 4chan and probably the world’s leading expert on trolls, considers Soulja Boy to be the greatest troll of all time.)

It quickly became clear that this was the tip of a big, bassy iceberg. The internet’s dance crazes and communities continues to fascinate and delight me, and it serves as a constant reminder that there are tons of communities on the internet that are just as creative and much larger than the geeky archipelago I hailed from. The internet, once the proud domain of geeks, is for everyone now. The globally-connected Ethan Zuckerman introduced us to the idea of “multiple internets” fractured by language and governmental barriers, but it was clear that cultural and social norms were also creating silos of awareness if not of access.

We invited Ethan to share the opening keynote speech at ROFLCon II, and he hit it out of the park with a whirlwind tour of global memes. He implored all of us to play anthropologist rather than bouncer when it came to internet memes: to err on the side of inclusiveness when it came to things we don’t understand, to take advantage of the access afforded us by the internet to explore other cultures (at home and abroad), and to find ways to laugh with rather than at others.

As ROFLCon grows, it expands past the internet of my youth to include many, many other communities. ROFLCon II took small, uncertain steps in many directions out of our comfort zone: towards going globally (booking a flight from Istanbul for Mahir Cagri), towards reaching back into history, towards inviting critical theory to the party (see below). Based on the success of these experiments, we have a plan. To increase diversity at future ROFLCons, we’re not just going to try to invite more women and people of color from the internet: WE’RE GOING TO INVITE MORE INTERNETS, including those helmed by women (and Mexican ravers and queer posthumanists and Chinese vigilantes and skinny-jean-wearing Africans). Why not?

WILL THERE STILL BE LULZ??

Of course, all of this must be done in a way that upholds our proud tradition of excellence. There’s no place for boring on the internet, which is maybe why some of our finer tomes on gender and race theory are, like Milhouse, not memes. And we won’t tolerate any panicking, scandalized outsiders levying blind criticism: even when we’re being critical about something, we want the problems being pointed out by those who understand and love the communities they’re talking about.

Of all the ups and downs of watching ROFLCon II come to life, I was by far the most proud of a panel I put together on race and the internet, entitled (last minute, at 3 AM, in a hotel room in Miami), I can haz dream? The secret is that while I knew I absolutely wanted to do a panel on race, I didn’t know exactly how to structure it. So I just got all the funniest, smartest people I could find who had interesting stuff to say about race and the internet (Lisa Nakamura, Baratunde Thurston, Christian Lander, and Teresa and Serena Wu) and crossed my fingers. Insightful observers will note that this is actually how all of ROFLCon is put together, and it worked beautifully here.

The panel was the most insightful one that I’d witnessed at any ROFLevent. It was also among the funniest. Best of all, it was PACKED with people who walked away from it with a deeper understanding of a sensitive issue they probably wouldn’t have opted to learn about without the lubricant of humor. When I first approached Lisa about moderating such a panel, her response was “Wow, I’ve heard great things about ROFLCon, but people don’t usually invite me to fun conferences because I’m kind of a downer.” This panel proved that there needn’t be anything downer about a serious topic. It’ll be a model to follow for the future.

More like this plz! Photo by Eugene Hsu.

wtf tl;dr

ROFLCon started as and continues to be an uncertain experiment. We have found success in the blend of humor and critical investigation, but we aren’t without our deficiencies: how could anyone be when trying to pay homage to something as vast and complex as the internet? We are incredibly lucky to have the gentle guidance of wise friends (and less lucky, but still thankful for the angry stings of haters), and we are iterating one baby step at a time towards becoming a conference that the whole internets can be proud of. It grows as we grow. Along the way, we’ll try to be as honest and transparent about our motivations and failures as possible. Want to help us? If you’re passionate about the internet like we are, get in touch (more than 3 weeks before the conference) and introduce us to your favorite memes and communities. My email (/blog comments/Twitter/Google Alert) is open for feedback.

The FCC is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a huge merger between Comcast and NBC Universal, which would create a new media mega-corporation.  This has brought quite a bit of controversy over the future of the web, with many digital justice activists protesting the increase of corporate control over the web.

Angry Asian Man reports on an unexpected silver lining: the FCC has proposed that Comcast and NBC must improve diversity if they are going to complete the deal, to ensure minority broadcasters are not left out.  According to ABC News:

Public interest groups have urged the Obama administration to reject the deal. They fear Comcast might charge other cable distributors higher fees to transmit NBC Universal-owned content, leading to higher cable bills, fewer independent programing choices and less competition.

Comcast said in agreements filed with the FCC that it would add four new cable networks either owned or partly owned by African-Americans within eight years if the deal goes through.

It would also expand an existing channel carrying Asian-American programing to more markets, or create a new English-language channel that caters to Asian-American interests.

More diversity on major networks is definitely something to celebrate, but I’m not so sure this is the major step forward as some are quick to claim.

Most of what I’ve heard about the merger has been from the net neutrality aspect.  Back in August, Colorlines broke down why it was so important to keep an eye on Comcast:

The fight started because those scary scenarios about blocking and slowing traffic aren’t merely speculative. In 2005, Comcast blocked its users from sharing BitTorrents, which are popular ways to send and receive large files. The company claimed that it was preventing its users from committing copyright infringement, since the file-sharing platforms are often associated with quick and easy ways to get free music and movies.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stepped in and ruled that no Internet service provider could block or interfere with user traffic—unless it was for “reasonable network management purposes.” Comcast challenged the ruling and this year a federal court overturned it, finding that the FCC didn’t have the authority to regulate broadband in the first place.

The court ruling has added yet another layer to the debate. The FCC is scrambling to regain its regulatory authority. That authority actually began eroding years ago, when a conservative majority of commissioners ruled that broadband be treated differently from landline phone and TV services, which are seen as essential to every household and therefore subject to federal oversight.

Meanwhile, service providers have argued vehemently against net neutrality regulations, saying that any formal rules would stifle competition and innovation—which would in turn keep prices up and limit broadband expansion into poor and rural communities.

So the issue on the table Tuesday is really a continuation of an earlier move – what right do large service providers have to restrict access for certain users?

The Comcast site even dips into the debate, explaining in a roundabout way that space online is limited, and most companies are making moves to ensure that there will be enough bandwidth for all our phones and devices.  However, they seek to control content providers, with far reaching impacts:

Level 3 Communications, a company that helps Netflix Inc stream videos online, has accused Comcast of charging it unfair fees to deliver content to Comcast subscribers.

(As a Comcast customer – they have a chokehold on my area – I find it interesting this is happening.  On Demand now promotes their movies by saying “Get it 28 days sooner than on Netflix!” so if I was Level 3/Netflix, I’d be pissed too.)

In addition to higher fees for certain types of content, there is the looming threat of “paid prioritization” – essentially the idea that certain content providers can pay more for more access and faster speed, which means smaller sites may be left to fight for the remaining scraps of slower, free bandwidth.

Senator Al Franken is not having it:

Just days before the FCC’s scheduled Tuesday morning vote on net neutrality, Franken blasted Genachowski for offering too many breaks to communications giants. “Let’s be clear. This is not real net neutrality,” the lawmaker said during the rare Saturday session. “This is the first time the FCC has allowed discrimination on the Internet,” he warned, referring to provisions that would let corporations pay for faster transmissions, creating Internet toll lanes.

The proposed rules, he further complained, would allow dominant wireless providers to block access to various applications, such as Google Maps. “I sincerely hope that the FCC will make significant improvements” before the Tuesday vote, he demanded.

While I am thrilled we will get some new programming out of the deal, I don’t feel like that’s a good trade or compromise.  Comcast-NBCU agreed to create the networks within four years.  They have yet to say what type of support the networks will be given, or if they feel any obligation to stick with these networks until they are financially viable.  They also agreed fairly quickly to creating more networks and the formation of “a diversity advisory board” – but the creation of these things has historically been a smokescreen for large corporations to hide behind, not avenues to lasting, institutional change.

The vote on Tuesday is impossible to call – there are too many factors in play.  However, this is one of those decisions that is ripe with unintended consequences, and we should all keep our eyes and ears open.

In Jim Webb’s latest op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (titled “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege“), he turns the traditional narrative for ending affirmative action on its head. Instead of using the same old racist platitudes, the Democrat from Virgina uses history and acknowledgment of structural inequality to propose a radical rethinking of government programs. But check the bait Webb uses:

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America’s economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship. Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived.

My, my, my. Webb’s op-ed makes some very astute points but also trades on the idea that race is a zero-sum game. For this reason, the piece both succeeds and fails.

Webb provides great historical context in making his argument and often notes that the historical baggage of state-sanctioned discrimination is still with us. However, Webb distills our history down to black and white, noting:

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup.

Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.

Webb doesn’t mention Native Americans, who are also currently suffering due to our nation’s founding and history.

Webb’s idea that remediation is needed for African Americans is true, and many of the current programs do not have as much benefit as hoped. However, America’s racial history doesn’t only spin on a black and white axis. Webb is correct that there is no parallel for what African Americans have experienced. But, while immigration laws may have changed the make up of the United States, many immigrants did face state sponsored backlash on their way to citizenship. And even if immigrants and their children find success on American shores, the story doesn’t end there – for example, much of the new data about Latinos denotes a difference between first, second, and third generation Latinos, because the data sets become quite different. Quite a lot of research is starting to reveal that third generation Latinos tend to slide backwards, reversing many of the gains their parents achieved. For example, a 2009 research brief exploring connections between work and school and black and latino youth, and how the rates of “connectedness” start to fall after the second generation. While the reasons for this vary, some studies point to assimilation as part of the issue – along with adopting societal norms, third generation Latinos keenly feel the impact of racism and discrimination in hiring and in other aspects of life.

Webb downplays exactly how much racism is woven into the fabric of society, and underplays how much other ethnic groups suffer under a racist system.

However, Webb does bring up an important point – there is a diversity of white experience in America that is not currently acknowledged or measured:

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years, and well below that of most other white groups. A recent NORC Social Survey of white adults born after World War II showed that in the years 1980-2000, only 18.4% of white Baptists and 21.8% of Irish Protestants—the principal ethnic group that settled the South—had obtained college degrees, compared to a national average of 30.1%, a Jewish average of 73.3%, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9%.

Policy makers ignored such disparities within America’s white cultures when, in advancing minority diversity programs, they treated whites as a fungible monolith. Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

I can agree with Webb on a variety of fronts. However, Webb frames his entire piece as if racism is only a problem that faces African Americans, recent immigrants have no issues in society at all, and whites, once again, are getting the short end of the stick. This line in particular…

Also lost on these policy makers were the differences in economic and educational attainment among nonwhite cultures. Thus nonwhite groups received special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.

…is eerily reminiscent of all the other critiques of “set-asides” disadvantaging whites and unjustly privileging people of color. And Webb never mentions that most business start ups are still helmed by white men (firms run by whites are 81% of small businesses, despite major pre-recession gains by nonwhites), that most people admitted to college are still white and upper-middle to upper class (the research on this is grim), that the managerial class in America is still predominantly white and male (check the EEOC numbers on private industry), and government contracts are still mostly funneled to companies helmed by white men (here’s a Native perspective on contract parity), even with all the other programs in place.

While I appreciated many Webb’s points, his overall analysis leaves me cold. It would be beneficial if policy makers revised many of these programs, since they are not benefiting African Americans in a substantial way. And it would be wonderful if the scope of research and policy reflected a more thoughtful discussion of sub-groups in general, especially since our racial categories (white, black, Asian, other, with Latinos as an ethnic group) as so broad and indistinct.

But Webb’s framing of the issue still ignores how many people do not believe African Americans are owed any sort of redress from the government, and his critiques minimize the impacts of racism on other nonwhite populations. We can agree on the need for government reform, particularly around the effectiveness of diversity programs and how they are proctored, but there needs to be a level of honesty as to how much racism and classim permeate society before we can make an accurate assessment.

I’m assisting a lecture tomorrow on the adult entertainment industry for a course at Penn, so I thought I’d write a quick blog. Note: most links NSFW.

Sean Cody, the king (or among the kings) of amateur gay, and gay-for-pay, video online, has recently included a couple of black men on his site. Sean Cody is infamous for his almost religious devotion to featuring only white performers, though he’s not the only one. Bloggers from Unzipped, Fleshbot, to Men of Color Blog were understandably flabbergasted — and delighted — at the recent shift.

I wonder: Does the change have anything to do with Sean Cody’s possibly declining numbers?

First, disclaimers: 1) I’m speculating. I have no access to Sean Cody’s traffic or subscription numbers; 2) Sean Cody makes it money from subscriptions, not advertising, so while traffic might suggest lower subscriptions, it doesn’t necessarily; 3) the sites I’m using are as unreliable, though perhaps more so, than the other ratings agencies.

Looking at the general trend, it seems possible Sean Cody’s popularity has declined in recent months. See the tables above. The site has been facing increased competition from a steady stream of new entrants to the market, sites like Dominic Ford, It’s Gonna Hurt, Tim Tales, Cocky Boys and a host of others, most of which I don’t know. This is not to forget all the free amateur/professional aggregators, like XTube, YouPorn, and the like.

All this competition promises one thing: anything a user wants, a user can get. If Sean Cody doesn’t offer black guys, you can get it elsewhere for free. And if you want higher quality, most of the other upscale amateur sites offer more diversity. Randy Blue, which uses more professionals and a few more people of color, is either up in traffic or slightly more than flat. Equally diverse Dominic Ford, a newbie, is on the rise, though not yet a threat (a lot of its buzz has to do with its much-promoted 3-D offerings). Meanwhile, lily white Corbin Fisher is probably flat. A number of other new subscription amateur outlets, like the controversial Machofucker, put diversity at a premium. Sites like Manhunt and Adam4Adam offer pay-per-view options with huge and diverse libraries, and they too are growing or already popular. The free sites, for their part, have basically beat everybody out, and Quantcast’s numbers suggest black, Latino and Asian visitors disproportionately frequent free sites like XTube, GayForIt and JerkYourTube. Perhaps they are getting something there they can’t elsewhere: diversity!

It’s not just about race, of course. Other higher quality amateur and subscription professional sites offer lots of deviations from the white, smooth, clean frat type (SC’s bread and butter): hairy, older, beefy, tattooed, etc. are all available elsewhere. Sexual tastes are varied. It goes without saying more variation is better, though holding your niche is important as well.

Sean Cody may have needed a way to differentiate himself from the likes of Corbin Fisher and Bel Ami, knowing he would get press for his championing of diversity and maybe a few new subscribers. Months ago, starting with Geoff and Middle Eastern Sydney, Sean Cody has been slowly diversifying his slate of pseudo-straight models. It must be working, as in, paying off. Since then, he’s published: a pair of ambiguously ethnic models (John, Joseph), the black Derek, hairier guys (Ian), the older (looking) Dennis, all culminating in the recent interracial scene, the first in, well, a long time. (UPDATE: He has posted a second interracial scene with Landon and another Latino guy has shown up in his subsequent audition video).

Sean Cody was really one of the first sites to capitalize on the use of amateur performers in adult online video, turning it into a solid business and proving you didn’t need to produce a six-figure scripted film to get people to pay for pleasure. It is true that his site, along with Randy Blue, really did start out quite diverse, when both sites needed to fill the content vacuum and get models who would work for cheap, as MOC Blog pointed out (not without controversy). Now the market might be running away from, or past, Sean Cody, and he’s needed to adapt, however slowly, to the changing and increasingly cutthroat environment.

It’s still possible — likely, really — that Sean Cody’s subscriber base does not want black models. But it’s equally possible the site wants to grow that base and needs black models to do it. It’s also true that for mainstream subscription-based companies like HBO and Showtime, the freedom from relying on advertising has allowed for greater experimentation and diversity. Despite HBO’s primary focus on affluent men, shows like Oz and The Wire, while nowhere near as highly rated as The Sopranos, allowed the network to retain its more urban subscriber base. Showtime made its mark by being the only network to show explicit gay content, and, while it’s largely abandoned that strategy, it still offers a strong slate of shows geared toward women, offering actresses like Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) and Toni Collette (United States of Tara) the complicated lead roles rarely offered to women.

I’m not sure of many things, but I can be sure that the market for online video is dynamic and always changing. Who knows where it will go next?

]]> http://www.racialicious.com/2010/04/21/in-adult-video-online-does-diversity-sell/feed/ 5 http://www.racialicious.com/2010/04/15/pimp-my-stereotype-the-racialicious-roundtable-for-flashforward-1-15/ http://www.racialicious.com/2010/04/15/pimp-my-stereotype-the-racialicious-roundtable-for-flashforward-1-15/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:00:21 +0000 Arturo http://www.racialicious.com/?p=7438 Hosted by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

When did Tim Kring start working on this show?

Yes, Byron Balasco and Timothy J. Lea are listed as the writers for “Queen Sacrifice,” but the mind-numbing absurdity of Keiko’s subplot in the episode stank of Heroes-level caricature. Here’s the recap:

So, newly-arrived Keiko is looking for a job around L.A.…

This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.
- The Doors, “The End”

Keep the cameras on me.
- Lady Claire Hilton Be-Be-Benetrelli

The ratings make it increasingly likely that “Brave New World” was Heroes’ last stand. Though there’s still “hope” for a Dollhouse-like reprieve, pulling 13 million less viewers than Two And A Half Men doesn’t bode well for the show. But first, let’s catch up a bit. As they say on tv, Previously On Heroes:

* After getting mind-schtupped and finding, then losing, Charlie, Hiro survives brain tumor surgery thanks to his mom.
* After permanently winning control of his body, then going to Claire for answers, Sylar asks Parkman to purge him of his powers, but gets trapped inside his own mind.
* After burying his brother, Peter learns that his new girlfriend might be responsible for a massacre. Gaining further insight through his mother’s ability, he journeys to Parkman’s home to rescue Sylar – the only person who can save her – and ends up reconciling with him.
* After briefly joining the Carnival and reconciling with Gretchen, Claire discovers Samuel arranged for Lydia’s murder as part of a bigger agenda. She and Noah are then trapped underground in a trailer by Samuel.

What follows is an example of the series’ depressing consistency – “World” is long on blondes but desperately short on action. Backed up by Doyle and buoyed by an unwilling Emma, Samuel finally stops lollygagging and sets out to “announce” the metahuman presence by killing a gaggle of people in (sigh) New York City, including a suspiciously-curious local press corps. Perhaps the newsies saw Samuel’s “family” and thought the Knicks were having an open practice.

Unfortunately for him, he proves to be more Dr. Evil than Magneto, as his plan breaks down with ridiculous ease: Claire & Noah break out of his “50 foot” dirt-trap – seriously, how would anybody but Claire know what falling that far feels like? – thanks to Tracy & HRG’s new (and, of course, blonde) GF Lauren; nouveau Superfriends Sylar and Peter free Emma and subdue Doyle and Samuel; and said family ditches him, fleeing to safety thanks to Hiro and Ando.

Hiro is at the center of the episode’s other storyline, as he finally – and do we mean finally – learns to get over losing Charlie and stop mucking about the timestream trying to “fix things.” Not because his powers nearly led to his death, mind you, but because he learns that she did the human thing and moved on with her life. Even then, his initial reaction is to mewl, “My hero’s journey has come to an end” – because, you know, Hiro was always in it to get a date. It’s the lowest point in Hiro’s nearly series-long descent, a sad moment for anybody who wanted to see him grow into his heroic future self. Instead, he only appears in NYC because Bennet had the good sense to call for back-up. (Not to brag, but we figured it would get this bad almost a year ago.)

All of this, of course, serves as little more than a prelude to Claire outing herself as a meta-human to the press corps against her father’s wishes. You’d think that Claire-Bear would remember Nathan was once shot in the process of doing this, and that she was rounded up as part of Nathan’s federally-funded campaign against superhumans. You would also think Claire would remember she’s waffled between wanting to be in the public eye and wanting to be a “normal person” for most of the past four years. But apparently, you would be wrong.

Or perhaps, the creative team hopes you’ve also forgotten these things. Because as long as the NBC brass keeps publicly praising the series, there’s a chance it might return. Because, you know, there’s always room for more blondes.

My friends at Fantastic Fangirls turned me on to the Chromatic Comics meme that went around LiveJournal, Dreamwidth and similar blog sites. Simply put: a number of bloggers re-cast various fandoms with all-POC casts. Below are a few notable examples with links attached.

From Bossymarmalade’s Chromatic Marvel, you saw Vanessa Williams as Emma Frost up top. Add to that:

Diego Luna as Gambit

John Cho as Multiple Man

From Entwasian’s Chromatic Buffy:

Percy Daggs III as Xander Harris

Takeshi Kaneshiro as Angel

Trascendenza tackled both the new Star Trek and DC Comics:

Wanda Sykes as Leonard McCoy

and I’ve been calling for this for awhile now: Gina Torres as Wonder Woman

And a hearty shout-out to FF’s Sigrid for this:

So, just to review, a handful of geeks with access to IMDb have come up with non-white casts for at least three different Marvel Universe movie franchises, plus some DC, Buffy, and Star Trek. The next time someone says that people of color aren’t cast in geek franchises because there aren’t enough qualified actors for the roles, feel free to link them to any of these.

Couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Also see:

* Handyhunter’s Chromatic DC/Marvel (NOTE: male swimsuit pic inside)
* Nextian’s Chromatic Lucifer
* Livia’s Chromatic Marvel
* St Aurafina’s take on Michelle Rodriguez as Wolverine

What’s the bigger piece of sci-fi: that everybody on the planet can be knocked the you-know-what out at once, or that an imprecise recitation of Schroedinger’s Cat can work as a pick-up line?…

… No, really, let me know. If the latter is even close to plausible, I’ve still got the monologue on my DVR so I can transcribe it. Meantime, let’s see what the Table thought of “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.”

SUPER CHO + JETT JACKSON TEAM-UP HOUR! Demetri is like Midas on this show. But it already looks like he’s starting to burn out, no?

Mahsino: Like I said in our first roundtable for this: Demetri’s back must be tired from all this show carrying he’s doing. Yeah Stan and Al are lightening the load, but still… I’m just hoping his “murder file” was just a cover up for witness protection and he’s in a short coma during April 29. Yeah, it would be really convenient, but I’ll take it.
Diana: I like the Demetri/Jett Jackson pairing much better than Demetri/Shakespeare. Mahsino, I’m with you. I’m hoping his lack of a flashforward and his murder can be explained by something else.
jen*: Great to see them together, and any pairing with Fiennes is gonna suck in comparison to one with Jett Jackson – from jump. I liked the ~Blue Hand~ exposition without our British buddy, but I’d love for Cho to get a revelation of his own – maybe some way to change his “destiny”?

Ok, so this week we confirmed that Charlie the Hobbit is 1) evil; 2) involved with Lloyd and a group responsible for the Blackout; 3) proficient in some bizarre hyper-nerd variant of game. What I’m wondering is, could he possibly be *the* Big Bad?
Mahsino: He can’t be the big bad, we’re not even midseason yet.
Diana: And he’s literally not that big. Is it just me, or did he look less like a hobbit when he was on Lost? His close haircut and lack of facial hair forced me to focus on his nose as I was watching. I digress.
jen*: Naw. He doesn’t have the fill-in-the-blanks to be the Big Bad. He just seems like he’s stuck on himself enough to not have been worried about the whole knocking people out for 137 seconds thing. He’s a worker bee.

The scene with Dylan on the bus was clunky (for example, how the hell would the bus driver know *that exact address?*) but the inclusion of the Mexican/”Cholo”/Chicano passenger was interesting. You don’t often see a character of that fashion portrayed as sympathetic – even if he did threaten the bus driver’s life.
Mahsino: Yeah, that could’ve gone horribly, horribly wrong. Instead it was just- not bad? The whole suspension of disbelief also hit me when he agree to stop off at the exact address, did the busdriver not have a radio to call dispatch to get CPS?
Diana: It was a bit unrealistic. I was mad at the bus driver for hounding Dylan about $1.55, so I didn’t mind when the passenger stared down the bus driver like he was crazy.
jen*: Riiiight. Drop him right *at* the house? Whatev. School-bus drivers don’t do that. And, it was nice to see that the passenger was friendly, but tres noticeable that it was supposed to be surprising. Brown people can actually be nice, y’all – surprise, surprise. But we always gotta keep that skreet edge. “I will put you down like a sick dog…” – Not the best threat I’ve heard, but still apparently effective. So, overall – this interaction didn’t totally suck, but, coulda used a lil less extremism.

I don’t exactly care for the Bedfords, but the scene in the living room was sublime in its’ awkwardness. And I was actually in Mark’s corner during his dismissal of Simon … but he lost me again in the kitchen argument. How’d you feel about it?
Mahsino: Every time Mark get’s mad at his wife’s flash forward, I half expect him to lift his leg up and pee on her to mark her as his territory. I get that he’s projecting his future failures onto her, but this is ridiculous. I feel like it’s never occurred to him that the reason she leaves him might not just be because he drinks again, but because he’s a sanctimonious asshat. Either way, I do find his leaps of logic to be either good writing/acting in regards to being believable in real arguments.
Diana: Frankly, I was glad to see his wife call him on his BS because he was being a class-a asshat. At the same time, I thought she gave up a little too quickly on working out their issues. But something about their characterization just doesn’t make you want to invest in them as a couple.
Arturo: They’re just unbelievable stiffs, both of them. That’s what happens when you stick melodramatic characters in what could/should be a sci-fi thriller.
jen*: Completely blah. I did feel like she gave up a little early, but then I figured – if he’s been this annoying *sober*, he must’ve been a real prick on the sauce. Somebody, somewhere made a mistake in making him the lead, because I spend each episode wishing HE was the one with no vision/murder in his future. These guys really do remind me of the Bennetrellis: stars by pure chance that I completely do not care about.

… And then there’s Janis. “Why am I crying?”, I thought, was a well-placed line for her situation. But it was nice to hear that Maya still cared, no?
Mahsino: I’m neutral on Janis. I put her in the same category as the nanny in that I don’t know what her purpose is or why I should care about her. And I don’t like Maya, I’d imaging that looking up a potential suitor on Mosaic would be as creepy as Google/Facebook stalking them. Not a good look. Either that, or it’s my general negative disposition of tv characters named Maya (mainly from that other show that shall not be named).
Diana: I was really relating to Janis. The fact that she almost lost her uterus and her confiding that she had never thought about having children until the flashforward and now faced with the prospect of losing her fertility made her character very realistic. I won’t lie, I was broke down.
jen*: I felt for Janis and her sitch, but I’m no fan of what they’re doing with her character. I loved her reason and common sense on the Nazi issue, and wish she could’ve had more power. I loved her no-quit attitude that led her to take down her attacker while she was bleeding out on the pavement. But discovering that her chances of pregnancy are now tenuous, at best, wasn’t as sympathetic for me and it should’ve been. Maybe cuz I thought her flashforward was kinda boring in the beginning. It’s like the rest of her personality getting fleshed out was superfluous exposition on the way for us to get to her Quest-For-The-Baby.
Mahsino: Thinking back, although her logic skills are pretty sound and she’s kinda badass, what grinds my gears is the fact that she managed to get an ultrasound at 10pm at a doctor’s office.

Open Mic!
Mahsino: Joseph Fiennes must really be in shape from all the running he does on this show.
Diana: I was mad that they dressed Dylan up as Flavor Flav for Halloween and then, when he went missing, his father told the security guard he was dressed like a pimp. WTF?
Arturo: That got my antenna twitching, too. My theory: Lloyd just went to some generic shop and got what was billed as a “Flava” outfit. Add to that some lack of cross-cultural awareness and there you go. At least Dylan wasn’t “acting the part.”
jen*: I also caught that pimp business. Not cool. But also, could someone please tell me about this kangaroo? If it got loose from the zoo during the chaos, wouldn’t there have been a few more wild animals that got out as well? Where are the lions and tigers and bears?
Diana: Ooh, Jen, that kangaroo thing is odd. This is the second time it’s hopped by for no apparent reason. On another note, I was also freaked out about all those bodies with blue hands.
Mahsino: Maybe since Mark seems to be the one who keeps seeing the kangaroo, it symbolizes his constant jumping to conclusions.

Character bios and images courtesy of Flash Forward Wiki and ABC

When I went to college at the University of Utah, there was no box for me to check. There was no “Middle Eastern” and there was definitely no “bi- or multi-racial.” I’d like to think that the U of U has since updated their ethnicity data, but I can’t be sure.

When I applied to graduate school, I practically wet my pants when I saw “Middle Eastern” on the online application. I was overjoyed to think that my regional ethnicity was included. I happily checked “Middle Eastern”, ignoring the line for “Other,” where I could have specified “bi-racial.”

Currently, if you fill out an application on the Oregon State University’s website, there is a drop-down box of ethnicities, with an almost exhaustive list. They divided “Middle Eastern” and “North African” to make sure all ethnicities within these groups were covered, and the lists were fairly inclusive. Hazaras, Maronites, Baluchis, and other under-represented Middle Easterners were under “Middle Eastern.”

However, there is still no option for multi- or bi-racial.

Last March, several Middle Eastern UCLA student groups began a lobby to expand the University of California application ethnicity check boxes to include ethnicities such as Arab, Persian, Afghan, etc. It’s mind-boggling that the UC system would still not have up-to-date ethnicity representation on its applications, especially since California has high concentrations of West Asian diasporas in California (they don’t call it “Tehrangeles” for nothing).

The University of California system updated its ethnicity check boxes in 2007, when the Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) started the “Count Me In!” campaign, intended to break down the different groups pushed together under the category “Asian/Pacific Islander.” The campaign successfully put 23 new ethnicities on the application, including Samoan, Pakistani, and Hmong, and aims to improve census and research data on these specific groups’ college attendance patterns, financial aid packages, and student representation.

The first thing I thought when I read about the previous campaign was, “Lots of West Asian ethnicities are technically Asian because regionally they are on Asian continent. Why weren’t any of them included in this campaign?” Erin Pangilinan, a member of the APC  campaign, stated that the campaign’s ethnicity representations were based off California Assembly Bill 295 (which included a call for “state entities that currently collect demographic data regarding the ancestry or ethnic origin of Californians to also make a separate category and tabulation for specified Asian and Chamorro, Indonesian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Taiwanese, Thai, and Tongan”) and the 2000 U.S. Census, which stated that the aforementioned specific ethnicities have the largest populations in the United States. She stated that the campaign “was not intended to be exclusive, instead it is starting point to have a more inclusive and comprehensive admissions policy.”

The second issue that arose was that many of the “ethnicities” on the list were not actually ethnicities, but nationalities (Pakistani, Taiwanese, etc). Pangilinan explained that the campaign focused on ethnicities provided by the Census, which brings up more questions about ethnic representation in governmental processes. Constructing nationalities as synonymous with ethnicities creates troubling deficiencies in ethnic representation within nations, erringly homogenizing the ethnic populace.

This led me to question the inclusivity and strategy of the current campaign. I spoke with Faisal Attrache from UCLA’s United Arab Society. He said that the campaign is not aiming for a “Middle Eastern” designation: “We are attempting to gain representation of Middle Eastern minorities, but we do not want it to be under the heading of ‘Middle Eastern’ for many reasons.  It is a term with an unclear meaning and sometimes excludes several groups that we would like to include in the campaign. Ideally, we would like all the categories to standalone and not be grouped under ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘Near Eastern’, because after all, the region we represent stretches from Central Asia to Western Africa.”

The campaign’s aim at a designation other than “Middle Eastern” is a relief: “Middle Eastern” is a term that’s left over from the colonial period, and is fairly misleading ethnically. “West Asian” includes much of the Middle East, including Arabs, but leaves out North Africa, a region which is heavily ethnically Arab. But I do have a fair skepticism at the stand-alone designations: if every other group has overarching categories, these ethnicities will most likely have one, too.

While I’m overjoyed that we (meaning underrepresented West Asian groups) might finally be included on the applications, I still worry about all those who aren’t being represented, and won’t be unless they lobby (or someone lobbies for them). Attrache mentioned that student groups at UCLA representing these ethnicities coordinate the campaign, and so Arab, Persian, Afghan, Armenian, and Assyrian students will be included. But no conclusive list has been agreed upon at this time, and so it’s difficult to say whether ethnicities that don’t have a large student presence on campus will be represented accurately or at all, especially if they are a significant minority in their home region. Because of the numerous and varied ethnicities in these regions, it’s almost certain that someone will get left out, which feels wrong in the current “We’re here, we’re [insert ethnicity], get used to us!” climate.

There’s also the fact that the box system itself is flawed, not just because of any possible lacks in representation, but because it historically leaves out bi- and multi-racial individuals. While the bi- or multi-racial designation could appear with a line for clarification, universities that use a drop-down box format have no way of collecting data about bi- or multi-racial students because the students cannot specify their racial makeup.

A blank line would illustrate better how people define themselves through their ethnicities and would be less likely to pigeonhole respondents into a group they don’t feel they identify with. It would also be welcoming for bi- or multi-racial students (much better than check all that apply).

The difficult logistics aside, this is an important campaign, just like it was two years ago. Not only will it give university statisticians and financial aid operators a better idea of the population indicators, but it can help the community at large gauge where it is on the local university scale in terms of representation, participation, and inclusion. It may also lead to an overall overhaul of the ethnicity system, recognizing differences among ethnicities under other categories previously bunched together (“Hispanic”, anyone?) and inaccurately represented.