For those of you who are interested in learning more about Brazil beyond what I cover here, which is mainly from the pop culture/race perspective, check out this awesome site: Eyes on Brazil . The author and blog moderator Adam covers many facets of Brazilian life and culture, and gives the perspective of an estrangeiro (“foreigner”) without patronizing, belittling, or exoticizing Brazil and its people. It’s also a great site if you have general questions about Brazil and/or want to work on your Portuguese as Adam is highly responsive to comments and posts short video clips on Brazilian Portuguese colloquial expressions and slang. Here’s a bit more about the site from the author:

Eyes On Brazil exists in order to give a deeper understanding of the Brazilian arts (as well as all things Brazilian) to an English-speaking audience. Personally, I’ve spent almost 10 years studying (and dreaming of) the sleeping South American giant known as Brazil. Seven of those 10 years were focused teaching myself Brazilian Portuguese, and as such, I consider myself fluent.

Adam also has sibling sites on Belem (Brazil), Salvador (Brazil), and even Colombia.Veja já!

As mentioned by countless writers who dare to venture into the dangerous territory of race and ethnicity, racism is a tricky animal. There are moments when racism stares one right in the face, begging to be confronted via the most obvious of responses, then there are moments when racism hides in the shadows, only to be perceived by the most observant, sometimes the victim alone. Yet what is to be done when considering racism when it has literally crossed borders, cultures, and history? Does it become a new species?

I was faced with this difficult question just last week. On Wednesday, I walked into our teachers’ lounge/meeting room to ask if anyone knew of any Asian restaurants in the city. This inquiry, by the way, is not completely out of left field. Brazil has a large and thriving Asian population, composed primarily of Japanese immigrants and their descendants, in addition to smaller Chinese, Indian, and Thai communities, and many cities in the region in which I live happen to have restaurants that serve Asian food or some Brazilian-Asian fusion dishes. The dialogue that followed, however, was far more out of left field than my request:

Brazilian Teacher (male, white, 25): “Yeah, there is a Chinese restaurant downtown. They have yakissoba and sushi.

Me: Oh ok. I thought yakissoba was Japanese, no?

BT: Meh, Japanese, Chinese, same thing, right?

Proceeds to do the “Miley Cyrus” (also known as “a derogatory gesture that involves using one’s index, and sometimes middle, fingers to stretch the skin around his or her eyes horizontally, in order to make one’s eyes appear like those of people who are of Asian descent”…just in case anyone was lost). Laughs hysterically.


Me: Takes a deep breath in order to remain composed. Um, no. They have some things in common, sure, but to say they are the same is not exactly correct. I mean the culture is different, the language is different… sometimes the foods have similar origin, but are still different . . .

BT: Yeah, but Korean, Japanese, Chinese…they all look alike right?!?!? “Miley Cyrus,” proceeds to laugh again.

Me: Disgusted. No, they don’t actually. Some people may have similar features because there was a lot of mixing going on in Asia for generations…(so flustered at this point, because I am thinking of thousands of years of civilization, and how exactly to explain that to someone in 30 seconds), but there ARE differences. It’s like if I said everyone from Spain, Portugal, and Italy look JUST alike and are all the same just because the majority of people are white. I mean people are different!

BT: All the same! “Miley Cyrus,”AGAIN

Towards the end, I decided to return to the original subject to preemptively extinguish a potential fight.

Me: Ok, whatever. Where is the restaurant?

So by this point, clearly I was fuming. But after the fact, I began to reflect on the exchange. Was I being overly sensitive? Did I miss something in my Brazilian history lesson about it being socially acceptable to derisively mimic people with Asian ancestry in public places? Was I being a “typical American” (read: over-reacting to the tiniest of issues)?

At first, I thought maybe so. I had carried around my own country’s baggage of sullied race relations and unpacked it in another place. I was analyzing the situation through the gray lenses of the United States and our racial past. But then I considered something that had a simple answer, but not exactly the easiest of solutions:

Is racism culturally relative?

The immediate answer is, “yes,” but in terms of addressing this version of cultural relativity or, in other words, the variation across different societies and cultures of what is considered of value, good/bad, and/or acceptable, there is no easy answer. Different countries may have similar histories, but the nuances of each nation’s respective past often yield a strikingly different present.

With Brazil carrying the heavy weight of being considered not only one of the most ethnically and racially diverse nations in the world, but also the most “utopian” in terms of race relations, to analyze the issue of racism becomes doubly difficult because to consider race at all is a bit complicated*. There are fewer fixed ideas of race in Brazil than in the United States. For example, there was never a “one-drop” rule here, nor was there legislated segregation following the abolition of slavery (though they abolished slavery in 1888, much later than the United States, many Brazilians cite the Jim Crow Laws when condemning the U.S. as a racist country). These factors, when coupled with pre-existing ideas allowing for slightly more social acceptance of miscegenation (“race mixing”), mean that race is a far more muddled category. Though complex, the Brazilian racial spectrum tends to be far more “open” in terms of racial categories and even provide for what one could consider racial transcendence, meaning that after a day involving a lot of sun exposure or a property inheritance, I can go from being considered one race to another.

The complexities of Brazilian racial history and general race relations I will leave for another article, as it is too extensive to discuss at this moment, but it is important to consider the aforementioned when thinking about whether or not the statements I heard and gestures I witnessed were racist or not. If I were raised in Brazil, there is a possibility that I may not have found my co-worker’s impromptu comedy routine racist, but I wanted to test this theory by running by a few of my Brazilian friends of various races.

The majority of my friends said it came down to a matter of city vs. country. In larger cities, much like in the United States, there is less tolerance for racial stereotypes and discrimination thanks to the increased diversity within the population who keep everyone, including the government, on their toes. Though there are residents of Asian descent in the town in which I live, there are thousands more in cities like São Paulo, which is where most of my friends live. They noted that the heightened political awareness and education level of larger cities may also be a determining factor in the response to my co-worker’s behavior.

But to add to this consideration, I also thought of how I deal with the majority of cultural norms I find outside of my comfort zone (i.e. female circumcision, socially sanctioned domestic abuse, or the exclusion of certain ethnic and/or religious groups from voting rights). I usually resort to using the Harm Principle, a concept coined by one of my favorite thinkers, British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

The Harm Principle rests on the basic premise that one should be allowed to do as he or she pleases, so long as his or her actions do not harm other human beings. In my own personal version of the harm principle, however, I extend the definition to go beyond the physical. I include the prospect of psychological “violence.” If you engage in an act of racism, by my definition, you are conveying a pre-existing stereotype you hold of one group of people in the presence of others. And even if those present are not of the group you seek to insult, the general affect on the listener is harmful because it results in the spread of stereotypes, which in turn can result in the spread of hatred and/or lead to discrimination (“Active” racism, i.e. legal restrictions for certain racial groups or hate crimes).

In other words, my co-worker passed my racism test. By considering all Asians to be the same, primarily based on a sole physical characteristic that most, though not all, East Asians share, and then, in addition, by relegating the cultural and culinary traditions of all East Asians to the same category, one that he then proceeded to ridicule, he scored pretty high on the b.o.b. (big ole bigot) scale. So while I fully recognize that race and the way we think about race-related issues varies across cultures, it does not mean, in my opinion, that we should give license to those who choose to engage in the perpetuation of stereotypes or complete misconceptions about one group or another. From one country to another, feeling as if your respective group is not considered equal or that your culture is somehow funny, strange, or insignificant in comparison is all the same: unacceptable.

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

I can’t remember where I was or whom I was with when I heard and realized that we are all temporarily able-bodied. I’m sure it was this decade, perhaps 2003, because I really had not thought about my privilege as an able-bodied person until I began my graduate work and met Angel, a woman in my cohort who was focusing on women of Color with disabilities. I also didn’t think about it until I lost one of my abilities.

Being trained as a scholar specializing in intersectional theory and thought, disability was a “difference” rarely mentioned and discussed unless Angel brought it up. We can see the continued absence and exclusion of people with disabilities in popular culture. Yet, if they are present, we mostly see how people with disabilities are considered anything but “normal,” and usually there is a level of wanting to find a “cure” to become “normal.”

What would images that view disability as a social construction look like? How can those of us who are educators incorporate discussions of disability into our teaching? Where are resources for us? How can we use popular culture when we teach about disability?

In response to these questions, my small cohort of friends and scholars working within an intersectional framework started to share resources. I’ve spoken with Angel about the song “Blind Mary” by Gnarls Barkley and how there are positive aspects of the song and some problematic areas, yet it is one of the better teaching tools involving music we have to show how disability is a social construction.

Last week Angel shared two YouTube videos with us that focused on disability in Zimbabwe and Lebanon. Her friend who runs the website Krip Hop Nation where you can find information about hip-hop artists with disabilities around the world, shared with her these videos. The videos center respect and acceptance of all bodies and the messages in the videos are powerful.

The first clip is part of a documentary in progress about an Afro-fusion band from Zimbabwe named Liyana. The documentary’s working title is “iThemba: My Hope,” directed by Roger Ross Williams. Liyana are touring in the United States and their full touring schedule can be viewed here. Unfortunately, this film does not have full translation. Here is a clip from the film called Liyana: The Band.

The second film is a music video directed by Rania Rafei and is part of the Sprout Touring Film Festival which focuses on films about developmental disabilities.

This video is called Difference Is Normal, which uses hip hop to share the collective testimonies of youth in the Arab world. There is a discussion of the youth led filming and writing of lyrics for the film at the Sprout Touring Film Festival site. Today, their work has expanded as war has lead to more people living with disabilities. The video includes English translation.

How do you see these films being utilized to expand our understanding of difference? In what ways can we implement an intersectional framework to discuss able-bodied privilege through popular culture?

One thing I did not get for my birthday yesterday was sleep. Despite having a pasta-tasting menu for dinner (five buttery pasta courses = sleep, right?), I found myself awake at 5 a.m.–again–drinking scotch out of my new birthday tumbler (I got two, one for me, one for Diana), catching up on my interwebz, commiserating with our friend Edana on Facebook, who was also awake and asking all of the pertinent questions one has at that twisted hour (namely, what’s wrong with us and why has alcohol failed us), and cursing this dull, repetitive, unceasing misfortune of mine.

So the last thing I wanted to see this morning was a website devoted to sleeping Chinese people. Because it’s like, How dare you. But the truth is, watching people sleep is fascinating, particularly when they’re not actually beside you in bed, taunting you with their sleepfulness. And the pictures are all taken of people asleep in public places, which suggests that these sad sacks probably have more in common with someone like me than I would think.

You’d think that the website’s premise would be kind of offensive, like sleeping Chinese people are no different than animals at the zoo, especially since the photos are taken by some German dude living in China, but the idea endeared itself to me after I read the photographer’s welcoming statement:

“They talk about ‘The Sleeping Giant’. About ‘The Birth of the New Super Power’ or ‘The Awakening of the Red Dragon’. Often with a strange kind of undertone, which is supposed to frighten us. The reality definitely looks more peaceful.”

Fighting Chinysteria one picture at a time? That’s one thing, at least, that’ll help me sleep better at night.

To go to sleepingchinese.com, click here.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of microcredit. Poor women from the Global South use loans as small as $20 to start businesses and lift themselves from poverty. The creditors make a profit when the loans are repaid. Win-win.

What do they say about things that look too good to be true?

A whopping 90 to 99 percent of these loans are paid back with interest, another shining indicator of microcredit’s success. But there is an ugly side to ensuring repayment, where poor women are made to police one another and punish defaulters with collective acts of aggression.

In her study of Grameen Bank microcredit programs in rural Bangladesh,* Leila Karim finds that the focus on the 98 percent loan recovery rate hides how beneficiaries are co-opted into “a political economy of shame.”

Microcredit works by appropriating the only social capital poor women possess — their virtue and family honor. Among the Ifugao women in the northern Philippines,** microcredit beneficiaries are grouped into cohorts of five to fifteen members. They are given clear instructions: “You are all responsible for the loan and have to make sure that no one defaults.”

This lays the foundation of a very effective surveillance system, wherein poor women monitor other poor women. And the poorest women, the ones who need loans the most, are evicted from the group to minimize the risk of default.

Given the surprising lack of entrepreneurial or job skills training in microcredit schemes, it’s not unusual for a member to default on her loan. This is when things get even uglier, as the other women in the cohort are forced to extract payment.

In Bangladesh, for example, women march off together to publicly scold a member who falls behind on her loan payments. The cohort would also scold her husband in public. If she could not produce the money, the other women in her cohort would take anything that could be sold for loan payments — her cows and chicks, grain from her family’s pantry, uprooted trees and plants from her yard. Even her gold nose-ring, an important symbol of marital status for rural women.

When even these repossessions were not enough to repay the loan, the cohort could instigate the ultimate dishonor of ghar bhanga (literally, “house-breaking”), where the defaulting member’s house is sold off to pay for the microloan.

The institution of microcredit has thus forged social relations based on shared debt, undermining previous ones based on shared labor and trust. Women informed on potential defaulters or members who used the capital for unauthorized purposes, such as buying food. Women who defaulted on loans have been taken to police stations and locked with criminals until their families made payments. The resulting shame from all these actions cause wives to lose their honor and virtue, and have led husbands to file for divorce.

Small wonder then that women go to great lengths to make their loan payments. Ifugao women reported an increase in their workhours, taking on additional income activities selling homemade foodstuffs. Other women have reported cutting back on family expenses like food and children’s school items.

In emergencies, women who have diverted loans to subsistence purposes have turned to moneylenders. Women who took on microloans to achieve self-sufficiency instead found themselves even more baon sa utang.

These difficulties illustrate a failure that microcredit programs share with other top-down antipoverty strategies. Aid workers from Manila dictate the development programs’ strong emphasis on microcredit and entrepreneurship, instead of the healthcare and education programs that Ifugao representatives have requested. Instead of addressing the roots of poverty among rural and indigenous women, microcredit schemes have generated credit-related strife.

Also among the Ifugaos, microcredit programs are undermining existing local arrangements. Governed by the principle of innabuyog (“sharing the good”), Ifugao women have long organized themselves into reciprocal labor collectives to cultivate rice and raise livestock. These collective also provide members with short-term loans when needed. These organic and vibrant arrangements are being supplanted with the homogenous, competing entrepreneurial projects championed by microcreditors.

I do not doubt that individual microcredit workers mean well, and that people like Prof. Mohammed Yunus have good intentions. But microcredit has been turned into a panacea, the star of antipoverty programs around the world, to the exclusion of more responsive strategies. That’s very problematic.

The supposed success of “compassionate capitalism” strategies obscures the enormous social costs behind statistics such as amazing loan repayment rates. Social costs that are ultimately borne by women who are already marginalized by their socioeconomic and indigenous status.

————

* Data from Bangladesh is from Lamia Karim, “Demystifying Credit: The Grameen Bank, NGOs, and Neoliberalism in Bangladesh,” Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 20, No. 1, 5-29 (2008)

** Data for the Philippines are from Lynn B. Milgram, “Operationalizing microfinance: Women and craftwork in Ifugao, Upland Philippines,” Human Organization, Vol. 60, No. 3 (2001)

You could say Slumdog Millionaire is too cute by half. But you can’t say it doesn’t do cute very well.

Adapted from the novel Q and A, Slumdog follows “uneducated” street kid Jamal (Dev Patel) through a Dickensian collision of money, love, poverty and hope against all odds. It’s the kind of fairy tale Hollywood can’t do without tripping over its’ own commercialism anymore. But the relentless pace set by Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and the direction of Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan sacrifices schmaltz (and practically everything else) in the name of the quest of this most improbable (implausible?) hero.

We meet Jamal, a perpetually wide-eyed call-center drone, as he’s being “questioned” by Mumbai police. The kid has been doing well as a contestant on Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? — too well for comfort, in fact. How could this urchin, this upstart, people are asking, be on the verge of winning the grand prize of 20 million Rupees when doctors and lawyers have fallen short?

“Because I’m a Slumdog, I’m a liar, right?” Jamal asks the cops. But the truth is, Jamal’s an anomaly. The answer — or rather, the answers — are within him. Boyle and Tandan line up the parallel paths of Jamal’s rise: each right answer ties in to the different flashpoints in the hard-knock lives of Jamal and his conflicted older brother Salim (Madhur Mittal). The boys have, at various points, been orphans, hustlers, “Musketeers,” travelers, until they finally take different paths. The only other constant in Jamal’s life, besides making enough to get by, is the love of his life, Latika (Freida Pinto). Indeed, the only times mild-mannered Jamal gets riled up is when somebody crosses his girl.

The film’s single-mindedness brings to mind Forrest Gump — and that’s potentially as bad as it is good. We get glimpses of the abject poverty the kids face (the scenes in the “orphanage” are particularly harrowing) but Jamal’s focus on saving Latika (who herself seems to avoid the worst possible fates before running into Jamal again) dulls some of the impact of seeing what Jamal has overcome along the way. It’s easy to see why other reviews have panned the film for being “picaresque” and “cinematic overkill.”

But, in a time where Mumbai is in the news for all the wrong reasons, and on the verge of the annual winter barrage of cinematic and economic gluttony, Slumdog is, like its’ hero, an anomaly: a “feel-good” movie that actually delivers on the sentiment.

And you can say about that what you will.

So, this morning, I was co-hosting Crappy Hour on Jezebel with Megan. (I’ll be there the rest of the week.) We actually happened to get into a bit of a debate over the way that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai were covered.

Over the weekend, reader Frida alerted me to some oversights in the coverage:

I’ve been keeping a close eye on news reports coming out of Mumbai regarding the horrific terrorist attacks of the past three days. One thing that I was sure of was that among the foreign casaulties, at least one Asian, a Japanese businessman named Hisashi Tsuda, had been killed.

However this article on CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/28/india.attacks/index.html at 11:14 AM EST, lists “one Chinese” among the dead, with no mention of a Japanese casualty. This is the sentence, “including three Germans, two Americans, an Italian, a Briton, an Australian and one Chinese were among the at least 15 foreigners killed –”

Now if there are fifteen foreigners, and the nationalities of nine are listed, that means the nationalities of six of the victims were not disclosed. I guess that COULD mean that one Chinese person did die, and a Japanese was among the nationalities not mentioned in the CNN article.

But, alas, there is the possibility that some CNN Online staffer/writer got a bit confused by the whole theory that “Chinese” and “Japanese” are not the same and are not interchangeable, and put down “Chinese” casaulty when he or she really meant “Japanese” casualty. Because I have not seen any other news outlets at this time mention anything about a Chinese casualty.

If this is the case, that’s sort of disrespectful, no? In case they edit before you see it, here is a screencap I took some minutes ago: http://i34.tinypic.com/e98ajc.jpg with “Chinese” underlined.

I started watching the coverage, to look for more information for Frida, but quickly became horrified at the way the same few shots were shown over and over – blood on the floor of the hotel, wounded and bleeding people being carried to safety. It was a bit jarring to me, as it just felt like the images were placed for maximum shock and horror. It was also odd, as I remember watching coverage of the terrorist attacks in London back in 2005, and not seeing much besides external shots of buildings, tunnel data, and surveillance cams before and after the event. Why the difference in this situation?

I brought that up this morning, and Megan and I had a bit of a disagreement:

MEGAN: Welcome to another grey, rainy D.C. morning. This did not help me drag my ass out of bed.

LATOYA: Yeah, the bed was strangely warm this morning. Ah well — I’ll throw on some T.I. and that will get me started. In the meantime, have you been watching what’s going on in Mumbai?

MEGAN: Yeah, what a terrible long weekend.

LATOYA: Understatement. The coverage was horrifying. Not just from a fucking asshole terrorist standpoint. But also from a “how do we cover things that go down in other nations” standpoint? I got emails all weekend from readers (of Racialicious) about the way this attack has been treated.

MEGAN: Well, “how do we cover things that do down in another nation on a holiday weekend” standpoint, I think.

LATOYA: No, this is a bit different. Did you watch any of the TV coverage? Lots of shots of the blood on the floor. Bleeding people being dragged to safety. While normally, if we are covering something that happens in the west, we only shoot the building, and shots of people and their families.

MEGAN: I hardly ever watch TV coverage of anything, honestly, and particularly not network coverage.

LATOYA: Maybe a destroyed item, like a bombed car.

MEGAN: Actually, I have a huge problem with not showing injured people.

LATOYA: We show more respect to the human casualties. Why do you have a problem with it?

MEGAN: Because I think that when we minimize the effects of violence, we minimize it’s impact. I criticized the media a lot in the wake of the Bhutto assassination for sanitizing the violence. I don’t agree that we shouldn’t show white people, but I think we should show all of it. What turned people against Vietnam? Seeing the truth of violence.

LATOYA: Perhaps. And yet… we wrote about this before. Tami contributed a piece called “The Brown and the Dead” which focused on the discrepancy of coverage given.

MEGAN: Violence shouldn’t be some pretty, sanitized ballet of bullets in the movie, or some cold, bluish corpse with a well-designed fake wound on CSI. That’s just porn, practically. Show it. Make people recoil in horror.

LATOYA: She writes:

According to the Huffington Post, a CNN spokesperson, defending the news outlet’s work in Burma, said “the enormity of the story” merited showing corpses. What are the chances that CNN will show the broken bodies of the 22 people killed in twisters that plowed across the central United States this weekend, y’know so we get “the enormity of the story?” We did not need to see graphic footage of victims to understand the enormity of Oklahoma City or 9/11. I do remember seeing some footage of the dead in Katrina–not as graphic as the Myanmar coverage–but we all know those folks weren’t American anyway, they were “refugees.” (Tongue firmly in cheek, here.)

Now, I am normally for releasing the less sanitized version of historical events. It’s one of those reasons people don’t know what the fuck a lynching actually was. It’s been sanitized. But the glaring discrepancy is odd, to say the least.

MEGAN: I think we did need to see the broken bodies on 9/11. Did you watch the French documentary they aired on CBS a year later? It was the first news coverage to deal honestly with the people throwing themselves out of the windows. No, I agree, I think people should be forced to confront the reality of what violence does to people. I just don’t think the way to reduce the discrepancy between showing it abroad and here is best served by reducing the honesty of our coverage abroad.

LATOYA: Maybe. But as it stands currently, news outlets alter their footage as a sign of respect to the deceased — a courtesy that they do not extend to all the victims.

MEGAN: But, for the record, the media sanitized the shit out of the bombing in Pakistan.

LATOYA: For Bhutto, right?

MEGAN: I would put quotes around “respect.” I don’t think the only way to be respectful of someones death is to pump their body full of chemicals and plaster it with makeup and set it in a coffin.

LATOYA: Not surprising. She was a friend of the West — did you miss the retrospectives?

MEGAN: Gosh, I must have stopped paying attention in between looking at photos of the other people her assassins killed and writing about how the media was sanitizing it for our collective right to not have to look at dead people. Though, to point out, blood on the floor and bleeding, but still live, victims are generally considered fair game, as news coverage of 9/11 and Oklahoma City and, if I recall correctly, the Olympic bombing showed.

LATOYA: There’s looking and there’s gawking, Megan.

MEGAN: I’m not disagreeing with the thesis, but I want it all. I want people to see what we really do to one another. I want to de-mystify, and de-romanticize violence. Let people gawk! Make them look! This is what I think was so effective about war coverage in Vietnam — it was the violence wrought upon us and by us that made people think, wow, maybe war isn’t a good thing. Maybe Communism isn’t the worst thing in the world, maybe this is.

LATOYA: Perhaps. There’s some “not encouraging serial killers” logic for that that I remember from Forensics class, but I’d rather head back into the land of the living.

Megan makes good points – that people have to be able to see the horrors of war in order to want to do something about it, and the use of terms like “surgical strikes” makes it seem like warfare only affects targeted insurgents. There is little focus on the civilian casualties. Even our headlines chastely announce the numbers of the dead, and no more detail.

However, I’m still not at ease with the idea of showing all the violence and showing all the gore – particularly when some nations get the benefit of respect shown for their deceased, and others do not. Jezebel commenter Kazzah drives home the point I wanted to make:

Down here in Mexico, graphic photos are par for the course. This morning is an excellent example: in the wake of news of a massive cache of decapitated narco victims being discovered in Tijuana, the front page of the famously graphic newspaper La Prensa showed, yes, a row of lined up heads with the headless bodies beside them.

When I first arrived in Mexico several years ago, there had been another decapitation incident, this time five heads in Acapulco. I was sitting across from a guy reading the paper when I saw the photo of the heads, and I recoiled in horror, looked away, felt nauseous and violated. Now, this morning, I actually scanned the paper calmly as I walked by the stand.

I don’t know if I’m a better, more realistic, eyes-open person for seeing this kind of graphic violence every single morning without fail (Mexicans do love their corpses – there are several papers that publish “nota roja” photos every day), but I do know that Mexicans have a MUCH more sensible and aware understanding of the death and implication of violence than any of us up in the Land of the Frozen North with our euphemisms (“she passed on”) and quiet, mostly unvisted graveyards. Mexicans understand the fragility of life and the reality of violence, and the way they live their lives is evidence of this.

Yes, it’s gawking, even for the Mexicans who giggle at charred corpses, but feeling cathartic relief that it was our neighbour who got robbed and not us is pretty much part of the human condition. Pretending that death – and especially violent death – is something clean and pretty and calm is pretending that we will all meet our end peacefully in our beds, surrounded by loved ones. Death is usually ugly. We need to stop being afraid of its realities.

All that being said, I still believe human decency must be followed. Recently, there was a photo of a teenage girl who had been raped, tortured and strangled, then left on the street with her shirt pulled up over her head. I couldn’t look. All I could think about was how that poor girl had gone through this evening of incalculable suffering, only to have her poor nude body printed on the front page of a newspaper, in full colour, to be gawked at. Admitting violence is one thing; humiliating the dead is another.

Your thoughts, readers?

… No, really, people watch this show every week? No wonder the Bush presidency lasted two terms.

24: Redemption is both set-up and appetizer for the show’s incomprehensible fanbase, setting the table three years after the surely cataclysmic sixth season, which left Super Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) on the lam and out of a job, what with his beloved Counter Terrorism Unit being disbanded.

As we begin this two-hour slice of Jack’s traumatic life, the former Republican role model is moonlighting in the fictional African country of Singala, helping out an old special ops buddy (Robert Carlyle) building a school/living shelter somewhere near the country’s border. Where these kids’ parents are, why this school is not co-ed, or staffed by anybody who’s not white, is never explained. The only other person at the camp is a slimy, United Nations worker. Of course the UN guy is French, and verbally fahrts in Jack’s general direction.

But never mind the kids or their harsh socio-political realities, Jack is emotional, man!

He’s depressed about how Season 6 went down, and beset upon by an Annoying Liberal U.S. Bureaucrat (Gil Bellows) serving a subpoena for Jack to testify to Congress regarding “human rights violations.” If we’re talking about the rest of this series, can we move to upgrade the charges to Crimes Against Humanity?

(By the way, we know Bellows is playing a Liberal because he wears dorky glasses and complains about the heat. An Annoying Republican Bureaucrat would have hiked his way across the jungle, carrying the subpoena like Christopher Walken did the watch in Pulp Fiction.)

Jack’s mellow gets harshed even further by a seemingly out-of-nowhere coup organized by the People’s Freedom Army, led by the evil Gen. Benjamin Juma (an under-used Tony Todd) and his #1, Col. Ike Dubaku (Hakeem Kae-Kazim). You know they’re important characters because they’re not featured in a single publicity still Fox released for the movie. Though Juma and Dubaku decry the Singalan government as working for their “white masters” in the U.S., we learn the PFA is in fact being funded by evil American Jonas Hodge (Jon Voight).

In shepherding the schoolchildren to the rapidly-closing U.S. Embassy, Jack has what you could call an off day: 10 kills in just under two hours, as they make their way to asylum before the embassy is evacuated under orders of lame-duck President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe). The fall of Singala, and Jack’s and the kids’ final march to safety, plays out alongside the inauguration of Daniels’ successor, the “idealistic” Allison Taylor. In order to get the kids on the last helicopter to safety, Jack is forced to forego his “What, me, accountable?” philosophy and turn himself in for testimony.

On the “real world” side of things, the program featured a commercial for Malaria No More and referred viewers to a documentary on child soldiers on its official website. And it’s encouraging, I suppose, that writer Howard Gordon didn’t attempt to give Redemption a “feel-good” ending: you know, Jack killing Juma and Dubaku with both arms tied behind his back (don’t laugh; he killed Dubaku’s brother in that condition) and making Africa safe for Hot Topic and horrible NBA expansion teams. And Juma and Dubaku might get to become true Big Bads along with Hodge when the show resumes in January. But if that’s the best thing to come out of this two-hour informercial for Real Americanism, then … like I said earlier, people watch this every week?

Take me back, Tim Kring, all is forgiven!

I know, I know. If you’re looking for socially conscious rap or hip hop, you don’t go to Busta Rhymes. But this still surprises me:

Maytha from KABOBfest has highlighted Rhyme’s song “Arab Money,” which has some disgustingly racist lyrics. Maytha brings up some great points about this video, namely, that it is a blatant example of the acceptability of anti-Arab racism.

Let me highlight some of Busta’s rhymes:

Women walkin around while security on camelback

Club on fire now — dunno how to act

Sittin in casino’s while im gamblin with Arafat

Money so long watch me purchase pieces of the Almanac

Ya already know i got the streets bust

While i make ya bow down makes salaat like a muslim

Camelback?! Gambling with a dead PLO leader?! Elsewhere, there are references to growing beards and Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family known for his success in business (his…uh…bread).

Busta Rhymes’ song (and its fakey Arabic chorus–shudder) is just one more instance of hip hop’s cultural appropriation of Middle Eastern music (producer Timbaland has been “sampling” Arabic songs for years: remember Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin”? That is Egyptian artist Hossam Ramzy’s “Khusara Khusara” that you hear).

Rhyme’s references to Yasser Arafat and Saudi princes create the illusion of ownership: not only are we expected to think that he and Browz understand/speak Arabic and understand Middle Eastern politics and geography, but we’re also supposed to think that he rolls with said Arabs.

When I first heard the song, I didn’t know whether to be angrier about the sexism (Rhymes makes reference to “Middle East women and Middle East bread”—things), the racism, or the casual name dropping in what Maytha calls “baseless stereotypes masquerading as knowledge.”

Not to mention the insensitivity of the lyric “See now I take trips to Baghdad,” as if it’s a vacation destination and not a war zone full of people whose lives have been ripped apart. It’s almost as if Rhymes thinks all Arab countries are as rich as Saudi Arabia and as glitzy as the Emirates.

And if you want to know how much Ron Browz knows about Arabs, listen to this interview:

One point I have to disagree with Maytha on is her assertion that “Elite Khaleeji Arabs need to get off their consumptive high horses and stop making us look bad because of their wanton bougie-ness and hideously hedonistic materialism.”

I disagree with this mostly because blame for the stereotype of the unimaginably wealthy Arab who spends his money unwisely can’t completely be leveled at rich Arabs. Rich white guys spend money on stupid crap all the time, but it doesn’t reflect badly on their race. I think it also does a bit of a disservice to wealthy Arabs who have poured their money into their communities through infrastructural development and investments. But I digress.

The major problem with Rhyme’s song is that it uses cultural appropriation to perpetuate stereotypes, which are not only absorbed by non-Arab audiences, but can be internalized by Arabs. Case in point: Maytha shows us Arab American hip hop artist/producer Noose’s reworking of “Arab money” into an equally stereotype-ridden video. Perhaps it was missing the icing, however: there wasn’t a belly dancer.

So now it’s an Arab man producing this stuff, adding the hookah and the keffiyeh and the (presumably) Arab woman as a video vixen. Noose is obviously aware of the stereotypes that Arabs and other Middle Eastern people face, evidenced from his own lyrics:

Along with the Feds thinkin’ I’m bin Laden

C’mon people, I’m not gonna blow up Manhattan

And yet, he’s just as quick to roll them right out:

Arab money serious

I might buy a pyramid

Maytha’s analysis of the song and its producer is a great one: she says that she “cannot see this as more than a cheap appropriation of hip hop gangsta posturing with a superficial ‘Arab’ twist.” I’d have to agree yet again.

Another thought that crosses my mind is that “Arab” is used not as an ethnicity but as an adjective for money. Which begs the question, what kind of money is “Arab” money? From Busta Rhymes’ and Noose’s songs, I gather it has something to do with an obscene amount of wealth, which is in itself a stereotype. But this is especially dangerous in that colloquialisms are easily twisted (please reference the history of the terms “gay” and “queer” for further examples), and “Arab” could (and in some cases has) become a pejorative term, used in negative ways just like “African”, “native” and “Jew” have been.

This is the problem with cultural appropriation: initially, things are appropriated for a reason (wearing a keffiyah to show solidarity with Palestinians, for example). But quickly, this same appropriation turns into empty name-dropping, outright stealing (here’s looking at you, Timbaland), and/or derogatory usage against the original “owner” of whatever was appropriated.

I can’t help but wonder whether Busta Rhymes will get any Arab money for this album.

If Maytha has anything to say about it, I’m guessing not.

Last week The New York Times reported on the Chilean youth parties known as Poncea Parties (a.k.a. lets make out and dry hump on the dance floor parties). The New York Times is surprisingly late uncovering the Poncea Parties. Even the less cool Newsweek covered the Poncea phenomenon in March! Come on NY Times, step up your journalistic game!

There has been a lot of recent American media coverage about the about this Chilean youth subculture and their (often public) sexual exploration (despite the NY Times’ late discovery). Drawing inspiration from anime, the young Chileans refer to themselves as “Pokemones” and don piercings and flat ironed asymmetrical haircuts. Mostly the American coverage is scandalized to the point of careless reporting.

While the sexual repression of the Pinnochet dictatorship is mentioned in passing as a cause for this sexual awakening and experimentation, the focus seems to be on the perceived sexual deviance of the youth. They are not monogamous, same-sex hook-ups are commonplace, and they are actively breaking down the boundaries between public and private that dictate sexual normativity. I think the American media coverage through coded language is pointing the finger at stereotypical beliefs about Latin American licentiousness and queerness (and please believe they threw in the fact that the kids were grinding to reggaeton) as reasons for the youth’s “bad behavior.” Cast into a national phenomenon, the media has ignored important issues of race and class in participation in the poncea parties. For instance, who has the ability, economically and otherwise, to actually partake in these activities? Whose bodies aren’t policed and survailed? Even if its deemed naughty by the mainstream, it is still dictated by issues of access so not acknowledging that is careless journalism.

Also, by isolating this particular issue of “deviant” youth sex to a Chilean context the American media doesn’t have to face the fact that similar sexual activity happens regularly in schools and suburbs across the U.S. (remember the whole oral sex bracelets a few years ago?). By focusing on youth sexuality and the need for effective sexual education “over there,” we excuse ourselves from doing the work around youth sexuality and education that needs to happen here.

I’m not condoning 14 year-olds giving each other blowjobs on bus benches in Santiago (because that just seems unsanitary), but I am advocating for a more complex analysis of the issues behind these parties. I’m looking for more than “Chile’s disaffected ‘Pokemones’ don’t care much about politics. They’re too busy having sex.”

It’s just not that simple – so stop the simplistic journalism.

*tip of the fitted cap to Guanabee

I heard from Sepia Mutiny’s post about M.I.A. getting “dissed” by DeLon, a new rapper of Sri Lankan descent. DeLon took M.I.A.’s most popular song, “Paper Planes,” called out her politics and support of the Tamil Tigers, and shows the “terrorist” side of that group. (You can see the disturbing video here.) [Ed. Note - Not safe for work. Or lunch. - LDP]

I don’t know enough about the situation in Sri Lanka to really make judgments. But DeLon’s video bothered me because he is employing exactly the same strategy that the Bush administration does: creating a dichotomy of good and evil, and using the word “terrorist” like it’s not subjective.

That said, I have always been a bit skeptical of M.I.A’s politics. Is she just projecting an irresistible (lucrative) image, or is she actually doing anything? When I went to her show at McCarren Pool in June, it made me a bit uncomfortable to be dancing around with a bunch of hipsters in Brooklyn while she has images of children from developing countries flashing across the back of the stage as her visual aids.

That’s part of the brilliance of M.I.A.’s whole persona. Her music, and the visual effects in her shows, and even her voice, are so flashy and noisy and chaotic. But I mean that in the best way possible. She seems to represent our generation of media-saturated, globalized, de-sensitized minds. And she is somehow able to shout over all the noise.

After the show, I was filled with energy for at least 24 hours. But it wasn’t noisy and aimless energy, like the energy the concert seemed to evoke. It was productive and creative and even peaceful energy; I remember I felt like writing all day after waking up the next morning. And that could be one small example of how art can make a difference. Of course she’s not going to change the plight of poor people by singing about it to a bunch of hipsters. But I do think there was something remarkable about that energy.

Going back to the “diss” I was initially talking about: It seems obvious that DeLon is doing this as a publicity stunt too. I guess that’s kind of the point of both politics and the music industry, though.

Maybe they can make peace and do a song together?

—

Latoya’s Note –

Make sure to head over to Sepia Mutiny to check the conversation. Some samples:

35 · Sonali in New Orleans, HOLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA! on August 6, 2008 07:39 PM · Direct link · “Quote”(?)

I have typed and retyped a response, with so many thoughts. Ultimately my point is this:

At the end of the day MIA is an artist. I really bloody good one. She is a refugee who suffered during her youth and ended up in England with a whole buncha other war-torn immigrants trying to make sense of their lives. I don’t think she necessarily has a responsibility to clarify her ideas as she expresses them. Isn’t it obvious? She was screwed out of a secure and safe childhood. She is a product of war and her art is a catharsis. I encourage anyone who reads this blog and has suffered DIRECTLY from the war chime in on this. Unfortunately, her catharsis took the world stage. She didn’t intend to be famous I am sure, it just happened and thats why there was a lot of backtracking. Nonetheless from a purely creative standpoint, she had nothing, manipulated her way into a prestigious art school as a visual artist, took on a medium she had no concept of, music, and commercially conquered it as well did something that NO OTHER ARTIST OUT THERE WAS DOING. Her sound was so fresh when it came out. And thats why she gets mad props FROM ARTISTS.

I am Sinhalese, and of course when she first came out I was all WTF?! But at least we are talking about it. And yes, terrorism is WRONG. But terrorists don’t become terrorists overnight. Perhaps if peaceful protest wasn’t so quickly squashed and ignored after independence, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in. That is not to justify the formation of the LTTE, but it is to say there is a deep rooted multi-faceted issue here that doesn’t just involve a simple “they’re wrong and they’re right” attitude. In addition, the SLA as well as the government are guilty of gross human rights violations, so much so that we were not re-elected to the Human Rights Council (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7413570.stm) We also intimidate journalists (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7487911.stm) Its one thing for a terrorist group to carry out such actions, but it is another for a government to do such things. That is government-sanctioned terrorism.

In any case, somebody is getting rich. Off both ends, and thats why we continue. Maybe weapons come from whities, but some brownie is the middle man. Both the LTTE and the governement have equally f*cked the people they “fight for”.

I can’t get mad at someone who is firstly an artist and secondly a emblem or spokesperson or whatever she is supposed to be for Tamils. I am sure she didn’t want to be. Perhaps she should accept responsibility or perhaps WE should take cues from this artistic expression and let it -simply- be an impetus to LEARN FOR OURSELVES. If you listen to a neon art school ghetto immigrant and think “Wow, fountain of political and historical knowledge” you are just stupid. And if hipster, fratster, and whatever other -ster kids believe the hype without research or questions then they were dumb to begin with and clearly have nothing of their own to fight for or believe in. If you don’t tune in and look into ideas for yourself, that can’t be helped, you know? Either way without a conscious questioning mind you are damned to be a sheep. Baaaahhh. Not my problem.

Nonetheless, Delon sucks. I mean he SUCKS. I wish someone of equal creative and charismatic force as MIA had made the Diss, cos then there could have been some REAL BEEF!!! But because Delon sucks, everyone will laugh at him. It’s terrible. Also, he is the embodiment of the S Asian American cliche—if I am not white I am black. At least MIA was her own weirdo.

AND this would be all the more believable if he wasn’t promoting himself at the end of the gruesome imagery. Thanks again Delon! Youre a douche!

RahulD on August 6, 2008 08:23 PM · Direct link · “Quote”(?)

35 · Sonali in New Orleans, HOLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

That is seriously one of the best comments I have seen on this site.

Onto the evaluation of Delon; I’m not really a fan or conniseur of rap other than owning “Follow the leader” and “Blackstar”, but without this video composed of other people’s images or another person’s musical riff…the song is not very smart or catchy…The salsa-rap is not-very (how do I put this…)good, but if he evolves and actually embraces the identity he is promoting…more power to him. But right now, as annoying as M.I.A’s music and half of her fans are, this guy is her Benzino…

40 · yeti on August 6, 2008 09:18 PM · Direct link · “Quote”(?)

He is making his voice heard throughout the global community that terrorism is NOT RIGHT!

Yes, because that message is really getting lost in the static. I, for one, was under the impression that terrorism is definitely the only way to solve problems, even small ones like when your neighbor doesn’t mow his lawn or when your kids won’t shut up.

I love that site.

Most travel books don’t prepare Black Americans for the experiences they will have abroad. Ever since I first traveled abroad, I have been bemoaning the lack of resources for Black women who want to see the world. I receive frequent emails from Black women who are either planning to go abroad or are already abroad and looking for resources. Last year, I suggested that someone should compile our stories so that I could support other sisters who want to travel abroad. That’s why I was happy to find this web resource,
U Go Gurl and the book, Go Girl.

FINALLY A TRAVEL BOOK FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN.

A rich collection of fifty-two stories covering the globe. Sister-to-sister advice on everything from destination selection, to traveling solo, to saving money on airfare. Exploration and discussion of issues of particular concern to black women; dealing with racism, overcoming fears, claiming entitlement, etc. The book also includes a planning guide and a resourceful guide.

Maya Angelou tells the story of arriving in Africa a stranger but leaving claimed as a member of the Bambara tribe. Evelyn C. White writes about finding new pride in being black after visiting Egypt. Opal Palmer Adisa evokes the sights, sound, and aromas of urban Ghana where she traveled to meet her lifelong pen pal. Lucinda Roy brings alive the year she spent teaching girls in Sierra Leone and talks how the villagers’ friendship overcame her loneliness for home.

Alice Walker offers a quite meditation on how the beauty of the country stirred her imagination. Audre Lorde captures her experience of being refused entry to the British Virgin Islands because of her dreadlocks. Gwendolyn Brooks recounts the camaraderie and tensions of a trip to Russia with a group of American writers. Gloria Wade-Gayles explores the complexities of being both an American and a woman of color as a paying guest in a Mexican home.

“Whether traveling for escape and relaxation (”Sailing My Fantasy”), on a spiritual quest (”Red Dirt on My Feet”), in search of a mind-expanding, life-changing experience (”The Kindness of Strangers”), as a “going home,” finding one’s roots (”Before I Was a Bajan”), to find relief from racism (”Why Paris?”), to celebrate black culture (”In Search of Black Peru: Christmas in El Carmen”), to honor black history (”Visiting Nannytown”), to reach for understanding across cultural barriers, (”Japan of My Dreams”), to help others (”Seeing Things in the Dark”), or to open up new possibilities in one’s own life (”Genesis of the Traveling Spirit”), the travel experiences chronicled in Go Girl! will delight, enlighten, and inspire.”

I’m very excited to read the articles, as well as make a contribution to the site.

This is especially true in light of my many awkward social encounters while abroad that have somehow involved race. I’ll try to outline some of them, as well as stories my friends have recounted.

When I went to Durham England to do research for a week, I really felt like things were going pretty well and I was not confronted by awkward racially charged moments. I was satisfied with my research experience, the staff at the library and archive were very nice. I had many quiet walks through the half empty town and along the river. Nobody really talked to me, except during breakfast at the dining hall. On my last day in Durham, I had a conversation with a British man who either worked at the library or in the dining hall at the castle/hostel where I was staying in. I commented on the city’s quaintness, the beauty of the campus, my pleasant stay in a castle, and of course the library and archive. I was also interested in the Sudan studies program and getting a PhD in the UK is much faster then the unbearably long, endurance test that passes itself off as a PhD in the US.

Light heartedly I said I might return to Durham as a student in in a PhD program. The man said, “well that might be hard for you being that you’re black and people aren’t used to seeing Blacks in these parts.” I felt like saying, “Thanks for reminding me that I’m Black, for maybe drawing attention to all those awkward exchanges in stores or in restaurants, the extra looks I receive, all the things I ignored just to make the trip more comfortable. Thanks for highlighting that I can never fit in or fully comfortable in your country.” But I didn’t. Instead I tried to be pleasant and we ended the conversation shortly after. I liked Durham a lot less.

Traveling while Black in many parts of the world can expose you to some amazing experiences that help you put America’s racial dichotomy in better perspective.

In the Aswan region and Nubia, the Nubian vendors would call out, “Nubian! My cousin!!” In Marrakesh, some vendors pumped their fists, shouting out, “My sista!” Little kids would come up to me and ask if I was Moroccan. If traveling with Egyptians, I can get Egyptian or Moroccan rates as long as I don’t open my mouth and say something. Traveling incognegro can be beneficial. Sometimes people are even nicer. Egyptians, for example, love Barack Obama. They will talk endlessly about him. Sometimes there is solidarity, and that can be nice. Most of my travels have been in the Middle East, so there is often a Muslim solidarity that helps bridge the racial and cultural divide. When I was flying from Alexandria, Egypt to Kuwait, my carry on was way over the weight and size limit. The clerk at first was going to charge me, then he said, “Okay, you go! I like American Black Muslim!”

At the same time, you will find that racism is a global phenomena and that you may get a different reception than your white, Asian or Latino/Hispanic/Chicano counterparts. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes not so subtle. My friend who traveled to Spain said she would get approached by men who assumed she was a prostitute. One young man who went to France said that the French treated him like he was stupid until they found out he was American and then they just treated him like #$@*. When I traveled to Sharm al Shaikh, I was constantly stopped asked what room I was staying in. My roommate who was a stunning brunette with bright blue eyes, on the other hand, was never stopped and asked. She was the one to notice pattern.

At airports and security checkpoints, guards take extra time examining my passport, in disbelief that I was really American. In fact, most people find it hard to believe that I am just plain ole Black. I often say in broken Arabic, no may family has been in American min zaman (for ages). Also traveling in the Middle East, you may get anti-African sentiment due to illegal immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa. n Europe, people can think you’re illegal. This is why I hold on really tight to my passport. Try to get on a flight to Heathrow with all those stickers from the Gulf, Morocco, and look phenotypically North African or from some “Moozlem country. You may just get detained as they run some background check, miss a flight for r no particular reason except you look like a possible terrorist. Don’t travel to all the “hot spots,” as the British intelligence officer who interrogated me as I was running late for a flight, called them.

People can say racist things also, especially the brats that run the streets. I was in Kuwait in a Bedouin neighborhood with my friend and her daughter on my way to a Mawlid. And these Bedouin boys were staring at my friend’s daughter and she at them. They made faces at her, she made faces at them. And I heard them say withing like “….Abeed!” My friend seemed to ignore it, and my friend’s daughter said, “They’re rude!” I was pretty hot, but at that time, they were really tired of my anti-racism tirades. So, I just made a mental note that bedouin kids who live what basically amounts to Kuwaiti projects (even thought the projects are much fatter than you’d ever have in the states), are racist little #$*$!! In Egypt, depending on how you look, kids and ignorant people will say rude and racist things. A European student studying at AUC said her friend came to visit and people would make monkey sounds. My friend’s husband has a Black British friend who was always asked the time. The thing was they would get a kick out of him lifting his shirt and still being really dark. And they’d go and laugh and laugh. Also, in social circumstances, you could have some awkward conversations where people say things that wouldn’t fly in America. People may not pay any attention to you, while they fawn over your paler friends.

Further, Europeans and Americans can assume you are just part of the landscape. You’re that native that needs to move out their way as. One time I was traveling with my friend from Bahia. We look very similar and people often assumed we were Moroccan, maybe from somewhere in the South. On our way from Casa Blanca to Fes, we found some British people were sitting in our seats. So, we were looking at our tickets and them. Mariah said, “Umm, these are our seats.” I was trying to speak to them in my clear American diction. The young couple just looked at us blankly and the crusty old man blurted out, “Doo Youu Sbeakk Frrrench?!”

I said, “No, I speak English!”

What really pissed me off was that he didn’t hear us because we were brown. He assumed that our non-British accent meant that we weren’t fluent speakers. Our brown skin rendered our language incomprehensible, as well as our rights to the first class seats that we purchased with our hard earned money.

Like the Sharm experience and the train, people may assume you are a migrant worker, refugee, or just have less money than your paler counterparts. Or they may doubt that you belong. I find it troubling that sometimes I have to talk in extra loud English to get some attention. This works wel in Kuwait because they love Americans. While your friends may be able to get their American privilege, you have to assert yours. “You better respect me, my country rules the World!” sometimes to get some your needs met. One of my friend advised dressing to the nines all the time. She said she dresses almost like a princess and spends lots of money. Then people treat her well. I’m not saying that you want to flash your passport or a fat stack of local currency. But really, you have to keep in mind that how people see you in the lands that you are visiting can shape your experiences in that country.

I definitely have to follow this up with a traveling as a Muslim woman, that’s a whole different trip.

Megan over at Jezebel provided a provocative conversation topic in her post “Aussie Feminist Germaine Greer Argues That Domestic Violence Against Aboriginal Women Is Understandable.”

She writes:

Despite Kevin Rudd’s official apology to the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders for their treatment at the hands of the Australian government, his government continues to support and fund the previous government’s Northern Territory Intervention, which puts troops on the streets of Aboriginal towns (among other seemingly repressive measures) to combat the well-documented widespread epidemic of domestic and child abuse. That said, feminist Germaine Greer’s response to it is nearly as shocking. She suggests that domestic violence is an understandable outlet of rage against oppression and thus argues that we shouldn’t ask them to stop. What?!

When I first saw this story, I thought she was joking, but she’s not. In trying to argue that rage, substance abuse and violence is a result of the oppression of the Aboriginal people, most people would be hard pressed to say that she’s wrong. Addiction begets addicts, violence begets violence, and crushing and hopeless poverty and societal isolation does nothing to help. But that does not mean that no one should try.

Megan then goes on to outline the current situation with aboriginal women in Australia, and explains that the military intervention is a clumsy solution which does not attack the root causes of the problem, like poverty or systemic racism.

Then, she notes:

If one accepts the premise that Aboriginal men are — consciously or subconsciously — expressing their rage over their position in Australian society on the bodies of Aboriginal women and children, one must also recognize that it is the wrong outlet. But domestic violence (as we learned yesterday) also stems from sexism, from an attempt to assert power over another person and from the failure to understand that it’s completely wrong. That, even as Ted Bunch noted, more “brown and black men” are punished for it than white men is not a reason to refrain from punishing the former, but a reason to increase the equity in the system for the victims of the latter. And the last thing a feminist ought to be doing is advancing the idea that domestic violence is an understandable reaction to racial oppression and can thus be dealt with, if it still exists, when racial oppression is gone.

Megan’s post sparked a fascinating discussion in the comments section where many Jezebels argued different parts of the issue. Some Jezebels read Greer’s response as condoning or excusing the violence against aboriginal women. They noted that this kind of reasoning has also been used to excuse violence against women in communities of color – that the men have been so oppressed by racism, that they are not responsible for their behavior toward the women in their own communities.

Other Jezebels argued that that wasn’t what Greer was saying at all; Greer’s comments were taken out of context and she was arguing to diagnose the root cause of the behavior, not excuse what was happening.

Commenter Queen of Doorbells posts this link with a video of Germaine Greer fleshing out more of her thoughts.

Main premise from Greer:

“If what you are trying to do is explain an extraordinary galaxy of self-destructive behavior… if you’re saying well, here is someone who lost…absolutely everything that makes life make sense to him, we can’t be surprised that he is involved in self-destructive behaviors which extend to the people who love him best. That’s got nothing to do with excusing it. It’s got to do with understanding it. The only way we are going to make any headway…is if we address the actual cause of the self-destructive emotion, and try to understand it, and draw it into the public domain.

Somebody has to tell us where it hurts. Someone who is about to put a noose around his neck and hang himself from the branch of a tree has got to say to us “I’m doing this because! Because the world you’ve given me to live in is, for me, unbearable.”

And I am transfixed with black rage. Because I don’t think people commit suicide out of grief. I think they commit suicide [as] an act of profound hostility. [...]

Even in this case, I am not trying to talk away or excuse destructive behavior, whether it’s within an Aboriginal context or without. What I’m trying to say is if we don’t understand it, we won’t deal with it. And everything we do – taking away alcohol (we’ve done that a thousand times before), intervening, knocking down land rights, riding roughshod over people – will fail. And it doesn’t matter how much money we throw at the problem, and how much rhetoric, we will fail because we haven’t dealt with the poison at the foot of the tree.”

I highly encourage you all to watch the video from 37:30 on as it highlights the discussion surrounding the project and the issues with implementation.

Julie Bishop, another panelist (and representative of the government), points out what she perceives to be a flaw in Greer’s argument – since all of these issues have roots in historical wrongs, and we can’t re-write history, what does she reasonably expect to have happen? She posits that Greer’s theory also fails because it does not provide an action to be taken now.

This is where I would like to begin the discussion, readers.

Bishop reports that the problem is that action needs to be taken to protect these women and children who are suffering under current conditions. And she is correct – something needs to happen. However, as Jessica Yee beautifully pointed out in her post a few weeks back, government intervention does not always work to alievate the problem, and can actually make things worse.

So, how do we work toward a viable solution?

(Image pulled from the Jezebel website.)

If your city newspapers are anything like mine, you’ve been witnessing the regular old deluge of Olympics coverage. But the ’08 reporting is special – mixed in with the diving stats is story after story about how China is corrupt, repressive and deceitful.

Take yesterday’s amazing headline from Canadian national newspaper, the National Post: Chinese Introduce New Sport: Deception. Or Tuesday’s story in the Globe and Mail, another Canadian national newspaper: Beijing static: Disagreements over whether to watch the Olympic Games or tune them out are dividing families. A Toronto Star story from a few weeks back details how the Chinese are not only secretive loonies but also warmongers: China Wages War on Olympic Weather.

I can totally agree that China has an awful human rights records; that what is happening in Tibet is horrible; that Beijing (and many other parts of China) are staggeringly polluted.

But here’s the thing: what Olympic host country hasn’t done terrible things that they should be held to account for? Hell, it’s often the chance to host the Olympics that motivates state violence. So why is China the only one getting called out?

Seriously, I’m not just crying wolf. In December ’07, European organisation the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions released the report “Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights.” The report states that

The Olympic Games have displaced more than two million people in the last 20 years, disproportionately affecting the homeless, the poor, and minorities.

An ’07 article in the Guardian discusses the report in more detail, stating that

In every city it examined, the Olympic games – accidentally or deliberately – have become a catalyst for mass evictions and impoverishment…The games have become a licence for land grabs…

Barcelona’s Olympics, in 1992…[were] used to cleanse the city. Roma communities were evicted and dispersed. The council produced a plan to “clean the streets of beggars, prostitutes, street sellers and swindlers” and “annoying passers-by”. Some 400 poor and homeless people were subjected to “control and supervision”.

We hear the same story in the US.

Even before the 1996 Olympics, Atlanta was one of the most segregated cities in the US. But the games gave the clique of white developers who ran them the excuse to engineer a new ethnic cleansing programme. Without any democratic process they demolished large housing projects (whose inhabitants were mostly African-American) and replaced them with shiny middle-class homes; about 30,000 families were evicted. They issued “quality of life ordinances”, which criminalised people who begged or slept rough. The police were given pre-printed arrest citations bearing the words “African-American, Male, Homeless”…In the year before the games they arrested 9,000 homeless people.

Usually any criticism of the cost of the Olympic games – to poor folks and people of colour – is silenced or ignored. You’re ruining the fun of the games! Why do you hate the spirit of international co-operation? But this year even the torch run was opportunity to loudly and publicly protest the behaviour of the Chinese government – rightly so. So why don’t we use the occasion of the Olympics to criticise more governments?

Could it be that we’re just a lot more comfortable calling out The Other, the backward and the funny-looking; rather than slamming an elegant urbane metropolis like Barcelona, or criticising a great bastion of Western democracy like the US?

And we’re also more comfortable imagining people of colour in poorer countries as victims. The idea of Western citizens as impoverished victims is unsettling to us – so the MSM will give more air time to advocates for an important but distant cause like Sudan than it will to the problems of our own communities.

It’s not just the simple hypocrisy that gets my goat. It’s the way that the Beijing Olympics are being seized as prime chance to express our horror at nasty governments: so that we can distance ourselves from them. We can mark ourselves out as democratic, caring and 1st World in stark contrast to authoritarian, ruthless, 3rd World China.

In the Globe and Mail article one of the interviewees (smugly) states, “Awarding the Olympics to China was certainly motivated and inspired by a noble idea, but the experiment has failed.”

Hello paternalism! Who awarded the Olympics to China, and why were they in a place to tell China to clean up their act?

The idea that Canada should give other countries tips on human rights doesn’t sit well with me. Last year Canada (along with the US) was one of just 4 countries who flat out refused to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And in the same way that giving the Olympics to China didn’t spur China on to the height of humanitarian goodness, the advent of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is inspiring a lot of Canadian dirty dealing.

Here’s a tragic example: Harriet Nahanee was a 71 year-old Squamish elder (that’s right, she was 71) who was jailed for two weeks for her part in a protest against the construction of a highway upgrade in prep for the 2010 Olympics. Protesters stated the upgrade would damage ecologically sensitive land. When she was arrested fellow activists asked that Nahanee not be jailed as she was in poor health. Instead she was incarcerated; shortly after her release she died of pneumonia.

At an intercontinental Indigenous gathering in Mexico in 2007, delegates called for a boycott of the 2010 Olympic Games:

Indigenous representatives attending an intercontinental Indigenous gathering in Vicam , Sonora Mexico have called for a boycott of the 2010 Olympics Games…Delegates agreed that the 2010 Games, to be held on the occupied Indigenous territories of Vancouver “BC”, will have an immense negative impact on Indigenous people’s lands and lives. Reading from the proposed resolutions delivered at the gathering, Gord Hill, a Kwakwaka’wakw delegate, stated that “Olympic related mega development on Indigenous lands have already disrupted hunting and fishing grounds and destroyed sacred sites”.

I’ll bet you one Team Canada ’08 visor that the Indigenous-led boycott won’t get much press.

I recently came across the above campaign, produced by Mortierbrigade Brussel, an ad agency in Belgium.

MediaBistro notes:

To attract attention for the cause, a young boy dressed in shorts and a tank top could be seen running into prime time TV shows (live programs, with hosts) only to drink the water that sat in front of the hosts, or their guests. The boy chugged the water and ran off.

In three days, the boy had been on enough programs that a stir was created. In just six days, people donated the equivalent of $5.24 million dollars. Considering the relatively small size of Belgium, that’s no small feat.

The viral piece was meant to highlight the disparaging situation for the 1.1 billion people that don’t have clean water, and the fact a child dies every 15 seconds from a lack of clean water. The agency’s client ‘Music for Life’ and their partner, The Red Cross, did more for clean water in a week than anyone could have imagined.

(It is also interesting to note that Media Bistro took the word “Black” out of the title when reporting the piece.)

Here is the video:

What do you think readers? (Particularly interested in the international perspective.)

Diamond purveyor DeBeers wants you to get your Africa-inspired bling on. The September issue of Elle magazine (originally spotted on Jezebel) features the company’s diamond pendants shaped like tribal masks. Hmm, let’s see…what part of this is most vomitously offensive?

The fact that Cecil Rhodes, DeBeers’ founder was a colonialist and white supremacist, who disdained non-Anglo culture and eagerly participated in the rape of the African continent throughout his lifetime? Wikipedia says:

Rhodes wanted to expand the British Empire because he believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was destined to greatness. In his last will and testament, Rhodes said of the British, “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.” He wanted to make the British Empire a superpower in which all of the white countries in the empire, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony, would be represented in the British Parliament. Rhodes included Americans in the Rhodes scholarships and said that he wanted to breed an American elite of philosopher-kings who would have the USA rejoin the British Empire. Rhodes also respected the Germans and admired the Kaiser, and allowed Germans to be included in the Rhodes scholarships. He believed that eventually Great Britain, the USA and Germany together would dominate the world and ensure peace together. Read more…

Is it the hideous pan-Africanness of the trinkets? They are not true representations of any African culture or specific tribe. I would bet that the pendants’ designer knows nothing of the animal spirit masks of Burkina Faso, or the religious, ceremonial masks of the Yoruba or Igbo. DeBeers is offering diamond-encrusted, co-opted culture–exoticized and commodified. The company is selling generic baubles to be worn (let’s be honest) by people with no African heritage and no interest in the plight of the continent.

No…no…I think the worst part of this is the hypocrisy of DeBeers, a company that has played a major role in the bloody history of diamond mining and its devasting affect on African nations and peoples, trafficking in Africanized diamond trinkets. Says Dodai at Jezebel:

But De Beers (which controls about 40% of the world diamond market) built its company on the backs of “poorly-paid, abominably treated native African workers,” and is often accused of human rights violations and illegal mining operations.

Watch this segment of a nine-part video developed by the International Rescue Committee on a trip to West Africa:

(Hat Tip to Jezebel)

Ever wonder how an internet meme gets started? Or, for that matter, how it then spreads and metastasizes until it becomes accepted fact?

Over the last week, we’ve seen one particular meme develop about China: “China Hates Black People” (courtesy of Perez Hilton).

This idea didn’t, however, originate with Perez Hilton. It started last Friday with a story in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, “Authorities order bars not to serve black people,” which alleged that Chinese government authorities were secretly planning to ban blacks from bars during the Olympic games. Reporter Tom Miller based the story on the claim of one anonymous source:

“Uniformed Public Security Bureau officers came into the bar recently and told me not to serve black people or Mongolians,” said the co-owner of a western-style bar, who asked not to be named.

Then Miller quoted another unnamed source, a “black British national who lives in Beijing,” to further shore up the story:

“Chinese people are prejudiced, but I would have hoped that the government would set a better example as it debuts on the world stage.”

The story was then picked up by legitimate news sources like Reuters, The Globe and Mail, and The Age, and that was before it hit the blog-o-sphere. Four days later, around the same time that the Chinese government officially denied that such a ban existed, Perez Hilton posted the story, et voila…a meme is born. In the two days since and at the time of this writing, 649 comments have been made about Perez’s post, and many of them are loaded with xenophobia, racism, and hate, and not just for the Chinese:

Look. There are plenty of reasons to distrust the Chinese government and not believe a word it says. Free speech does not exist there, dissidents are routinely jailed and silenced, and the government doesn’t pretend to be a democracy. We’re all pretty familiar with its suppressive tactics. Just ask Tibet. As a first-generation Chinese-American, I was raised with a healthy dose of suspicion when it comes to China’s government, because it was the Communists, after all, who chased both sides of my family out of the country, tried to kill my great-grandfather, tossed my great-grandmother into a labor camp for the rest of her life, almost killed my father (the bomb that dropped next to him was, fortunately, a dud), took away my mother’s ancestral home, made one of my uncles a permanent invalid, and generally devastated the lives of everyone I’m related to. My experience teaching in China after I got out of college only confirmed my feelings that this was a country where you couldn’t talk freely and you had to toe the party line and the government had ultimate power.

But I find this story about China banning blacks from bars during the Olympics–and how little it’s been substantiated–very difficult to swallow. China has strong ties to Africa, some of them a bit too strong for my taste (just ask Sudan). Beijing is an international city filled with foreigners. Of course, you will find Chinese people who are prejudiced, racist, and xenophobic. Some of them are my relatives! (During my year-stint there, I met a lovely older teacher who told me he was “afraid of blacks” even though he had never actually met a black person. And where did he get this idea? American movies.)

Kudos to the Shanghaiist for following up the South China Morning Post‘s story with a considerable debunking and especially to Beijing Boyce (“A Somewhat Young China Hand on the Local Drinking Scene”), who did some actual reporting on this and hit many bars in Beijing after the story broke, painting a drastically different picture from the one in the Hong Kong paper.

Still, the Chinese are great at keeping secrets (just ask Calgon). So if this turns out to be true, you know that Diana and I will be first in line to shame the shit out of my mother ship. But, in the meantime, the idea that “China Hates Black People” is out there and, sadly, although it was intended as a commentary on racism, it’s only served to stir up more.

(To contact Perez Hilton, email perez@perezhilton.com)

Source

Mexico’s favorite monkey-boy, Memin Pinguin, may now find an audience in the U.S. That’s because Wal-Mart has decided to carry the reissued comic books series, first released in the 1960s. There’s just one problem. Memin Pinguin isn’t simply a monkey-boy but referred to in the series as a “Negro.”

With that description comes all of the negatives associated with blackness. Other characters, who apparently beat him at various points, regard him as “stupid” and a “troublemaker.” Also of note is that one of the newly released comics includes a storyline about Memin Pinguin running for office, which some believe is an allusion to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.*

Though it seems clear that a comic book featuring a “Negro” monkey-boy is offensive, Mexican dignitaries think otherwise. Not only have they defended the country’s love for the comic book figure, they also issued a stamp in commemoration of Memin Pinguin in 2005. To the critics from the North, they say, because Americans don’t understand the culture, they have no right to object to the character.

I beg to differ. In the 1950s and ’60s, when the U.S. made headlines for its Jim Crow policies, dignitaries from a range of countries spoke out about segregation, refusing to kowtow to the notion that Jim Crow was simply the Southern (American) way of life, a way of life they couldn’t grasp. The same went for our “peculiar institution” of slavery. And the same goes for Memim Pinguin.

He may only be a comic book character, but, by portraying this little black child as something less than human, the book sets the stage for children to further dehumanize blacks. Not only is this of concern to blacks in Mexico, the bulk of whom can be found in the Vera Cruz region, this is of concern to the blacks throughout Latin America, where the books also have a large following. Thanks to Wal-Mart’s decision to carry the Memin Pinguin series, now the comic book is of concern to American blacks as well.

Wal-Mart is an establishment I already strive to avoid, but the company’s decision to carry the reissued Memin Pinguin books only strengthens my resolve never to shop there again. What will they pedal next—lawn jockeys? But is it surprising that a corporation known for failing to provide employees with fair wages, medical benefits and the right to unionize would have no qualms about promoting a book for children that, at its core, serves to dehumanize?

As for the Mexican people’s supposed love for Memin Pinguin, I admit to knowing little about popular culture there. But what I do know is that there is a dearth of actors with indigenous and African heritage featured in television programming in Mexico, and, when such actors are featured, it’s usually to fill a stereotypical role, such as a maid. I do know that indigenous people in the country all too often fall at the very bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole there, with no way to work themselves up. So little is their worth that hundreds of indigenous women who work in Chihuahua’s factories have been systematically raped, tortured and killed for more than a decade, and no one has been held responsible. Despite international outcry, it is apparently acceptable for the country’s elite to hunt these women for sport.

Even if Mexico were a model of egalitarianism, Memim Pinguin would remain a character worthy of our censure, but the fact that the country has much progress to make in this arena makes it imperative that we speak (and act) out against any figure, real or otherwise, which serves to dehumanize a portion of its population.

*Editor’s Note: Check out this video for more insight into what the books actually contain. The book in question appears to have been published before Obama announced his candidacy.

(Thanks to Cheryl Lynn for sending this in!)