Transit Mulatta

The People Speak

2010-02-11T11:06:00.000-08:00

Watch Amy Goodman's Farewell to Howard Zinn.

Who will speak up now?

A friend asked me to begin posting again, especially my recent sing-song scribblings, but I feel that the hastening of globally-interconnected suffering belies (my sense of) rhythm.

Surely, the everyday concerns of the People everywhere speak louder than I can.

The People on the reservations in South Dakota have been iced in and without power and water for weeks, and The People in Haiti are bracing themselves for a torrential rainy season with only leaky tents and tarps overhead. Many more, perhaps 1 million People, have merely the open sky.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Haiti's debt history includes paying reparations to slave owners. Soon after Frederick Douglass had served as U.S. minister and consul general to Haiti (from 1889-1891), he spoke at the World’s Fair:

“We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy today is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons of Haiti ninety years ago … striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world.”

Here in California, where our so-called leaders employ the 15 billion dollar budget shortfall to legitimate the sacrifice of our most vulnerable residents without so much as a genteel, phlegmatic cough, who remembers, has been taught, and can speak enough of the People's History to see where California is headed?

As climate change heightens our responsibility to pursue social, political and economic change, who can learn the People's Present quickly enough to write?

But here's yesterday's crack at a poem.
--------------------------------
How does a people become Indigenous?
When do they know it is time
to sink right down
and just let your roots grow?

When will all of the rest of us
Slow down and consider the
Divine,
precisely Here?

Those who have been running
Around for centuries
Making civilizational Progress
and metaphysical pilgrimages
and calculating the consequences
from the Moon–

I mean, if I were made
Here.
Of mud and water!
Of fire and ice!
Of the wind spoken softly under the black sky
Punctuated by night stars!

I would feel like I belonged Somewhere.
I would feel like Somewhere belonged to me.
-------------------------

Field Report from San Diego

2010-02-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

I woke up on the hard edge
of contemplation this morning with a thought.
I want to be a poet. . .
not a great one
like June Jordan or Alice Walker. . .
just an honest-to-goodness, California-born oracle,
scribbling the obvious and chronicling
this long, dark moment, which is like
driving through a tunnel
from the city, past the suburbs,
and emerging onto an old time road
where miles of sad, brown swirls of dusty
commercial farmland are stabbed in the middle
by aging, “For Lease” signs.
And the occasional, green swatch
sticking out
like a watermelon patch
with five thousand, striped green bellies
lying sunny-side up
makes me wonder whether midwifery is on the rise,
now that most hardworking people are hard pressed.

The People of California are broke.

Perhaps we should round up all the single mothers, disabled veterans,
street-people, and recently released inmates
and give them a 95,291 dollar salary
for pursuing the unsatisfying and clearly unsavory job
of telling the oil companies that

"There ain’t no free lunch."

Nor food stamps, nor children’s healthcare, nor homeless shelters.
No mental health services, no public assistance
for survivors of domestic violence, inequality, or predatory mortgage lending,
No Black Infant Mortality Program, and no, absolutely no, poetry for the people.

It’s like a goddamned, post-apocalyptic, third world country out here.

What’s it like where you are?

Posted with Stanchich, Zinn, and the State of the State/Union/World in mind.

At the Root: Get Real about Race & Gender

2008-08-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

[Torchy Brown was a comic strip heroine in the 1930s. Read on for more details about her inspiring author/illustrator.]

Today I'll commence by sharing someone else's pithy blog entry, sent to me by my east coast buddy, who like me, regretfully (yet happily), lacks cable access and therefore didn't get to see "Black in America" the CNN series that many folks were awaiting with curiosity and tempered optimism.

It doesn't seem as if the series was that great.

But I encourage you to check in at "the Root," where you'll find Walker's article and some related strong, critical thinking by authors who write about mixed race kids and their identity questions, taser-killings, why some Black people are getting sick of the onus of constantly "defending" Obama against the right. And a lot of commentary from people who are working stuff out.

Regarding the (somewhat hastily written but powerful) blog entry, "Black in America: Ain't I [a] Woman?" I agree with its writer that race conversations need to include "women who have a critique of corporate media. Or women who might bring up the issue of light-skin privilege. Or women who view economic disparities between black men and women as something more than a reason black women should consider marrying white men."

Below her photo are some excerpts from her comments at the Root:

"It's not pretty, but I'm going to tell you what I think.

A lot of black women are pissed that the first segment of CNN's Black in America was even less complex than the second.
Not able get a man? Unprotected sex? 40 minutes to get a tomato?
Get real."
...(she says more)

"Instead of a woman who can get a gun easier than a vegetable, what about the black women who are using vegetables as guns in their commitment to change the way people of color eat? What about the ones who bring ideas about natural foods, homeopathy, and spiritual balance to their families and communities.
The ones who design innovative strategies for addressing mental illness, encourage healthy same-sex eroticism and partnership, and emphasize the need to define ourselves as global citizens. What about the ones fighting environmental racism?
What about the black women who have such a deep concern about the fallacy of racial constructs, they don't even identify as black." (Read the rest.)

True, and there's more than a mere lack of understanding about race, class and gender, of course, at the busy intersection of blackness and femaleness. Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich wrote a piece, entitled "Black Women Are Touching the Sky," which does a great job of pointing out the real damage done by these kinds of stories. That is, they render invisible the Black women who are there and HAVE BEEN THERE ALL ALONG; she raises the following example:

"I have observed, for example, that every photo of the historic civil rights marches, demonstrations and rallies of the 1960s shows clear images of Dr. Dorothy I. Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; Dr. C. Delores Tucker, president of the National Political Caucus of Black Women; Mrs. Coretta Scott King, president-emerita of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and several other unnamed women.
They were photographed marching and standing right beside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Urban League's Whitney Young, the NAACP's Roy Wilkins and the Congress on Racial Equality's James Farmer. But national media did then, and still do, refer to the 'Big Four' of the civil rights movement, ignoring the ubiquitous Black women leaders."

What can we do? Sometimes we need to change things immediately. As Rebecca Walker said, perhaps CNN should just have a do-over. I think that's a great idea. I think a little instant gratification would help us to rewrite our cognitive narratives suggesting, reinforcing, and incessantly proving that inequality is so deeply inscribed that there is no quick fix, only historical long-suffering.

The work of two inspiring Black women might freshen up that drear perspective--oppression is so tiresome, really.

First, check out the NPR story about Jackie Ormes, a smart and incredibly sassy Black woman who was also a comic strip producer (illustrator and writer) for the Courier in the 1930s to 1950s, and then follow the links to sample some of her comic strips!

AND we should READ Louise Bernikow's books and articles, and seek out her current traveling lecture and slide show about activism called "The Shoulders We Stand On: Women as Agents of Change."

She can be reached at louise@womensenews.org.

Is Tolerance a Sophisticated Substitute for Mutual Respect?

2008-07-17T15:50:00.001-07:00

Everybody's talking about it.

If this use of satire is meant to draw our attention to the ridiculous nature of recent misrepresentations of the Obamas, is this cover going to provoke discourse that changes people's misconceptions or is it likely to reinforce them? Does calling it satire make it okay?

The person who sent a related article to my inbox asked, "uh-oh are we in for another teachable moment?" Yes, if we are to advance the struggle toward social equality, I think we should consider pedagogy--I mean how we teach and learn about difference. I think lots of people suspect that this cover is communicating something sinister, but they don't really know what. Is Michele meant to be depicted as a terrorist or a Black radical activist? Do most people understand the distinction?

Humor that pretends to be sophisticated such as this is a bit like telling a student struggling in calculus class to look up the answers in the back of the book. If you don't get it, when and how are you gonna learn?

Meanwhile, media folks (e.g., Racewire bloggers) have started the conversation, inquiring what's behind this sarcastic wit and how people feel about it. In my view, in the following quotation from an article in the Washington Post, editorialist Philip Kennicott nails the big, righteous point about humor that we hope this controversy will finally raise:

"Successful" satire -- mildly funny, generally anodyne and broadly therapeutic -- needs an "April Fool's" moment, when the joke is revealed and everyone is at least invited to have a laugh. No, Bob, it's not Friday, it's still Thursday; that report isn't due for another 24 hours and you can climb off the ledge now. Like a practical joke, satire can be hysterically funny without a shared catharsis, but that's often a cruel form of humor. To be effective -- if by effective one means a teachable moment, a transformative bump forward in self-awareness -- the humor must be widely appreciated.

Race humor told from a distance is so rarely funny. What we hope is that ironists and other putative humorists are learning something that they will in turn teach us, since that's the job they've chosen. Calling this cover image "satire" implies that the New Yorker has the intention of challenging certain widely held misconstruals regarding Muslims, African-Americans, Black women, Black activism, etc.

I wonder, though, if once the controversy achieves selling a requisite number of magazines, any of the editors and readership of the New Yorker (self-styled liberals with advanced education) will modify their views or think particularly deeply about these issues of representation?

What would a more sophisticated view look like, and is this magazine genuinely prepared to re-tell a history of political change that acknowledges the grievances of such groups as Black Panthers and flag-burners?

I seriously doubt it, but I'll let you know if I see any positive signs.

The Presidential Gender Race

2008-06-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Susan Faludi's op-ed piece, Think the Gender War Is Over? Think Again, in the NYT poses and elucidates answers to the key question: Isn't political power (specifically the current presidential race) always already about race, class and gender, regardless of who's on the ticket?

Unique Time-Space Gender/Race Juxtaposure

2008-06-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Another lens on how interpersonal relationships drive the deepest kind of social change emerged in my readings of media on race this week. Perhaps you heard the NPR story regarding the first interracial prom in Mississippi that just occurred this year and were surprised or reminded of the Lovings, whose relationship inspired change of significant magnitude. In this vein, K.L. Folan of the Post writes a healthy rumination from the perspective of a Black woman married to a white man, entitled What Mildred Loving Knew, and raises several points of statistical and anecdotal evidence showing that very few groups openly support this particular configuration of relations. Who has the courage to change racism/social inequality from within one's own psyche, and one's own relationships? And when and where does that courage originate?

Also: Check out this U-tube media reporting synthesis of clips about the Clinton endorsement of Obama.

What Marriage Equality Meant in Virgina until 1967

2008-05-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Today's NYT reports that Mildred Loving died at the age of 68 on May 2, 2008. In 1958, she and her husband, Richard, married each other and disobeyed the Racial Integrity Act that had been on the books and enforced actively since 1662.

Of their decision to fight for this change in society, Mr. Loving said in an interview in 1966 “we have thought about other people, but we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones. We are doing it for us.”

I hope you'll read this amazing story to its finish, but in case you don't here's the end spoiler. According to Douglas Martin who wrote today's article, "Mrs. Loving stopped giving interviews, but last year issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the announcement of the Supreme Court ruling, urging that gay men and lesbians be allowed to marry."

Did you know ??? that 38 states had miscegenation laws until 1948 when the California Supreme Court overturned California’s law? And did you know that Alabama only changed its constitution to exclude miscegenation laws as recently as the year 2000?

iPolitics: Random Shuffle Religion/Presidential/Race!

2008-05-05T14:49:00.001-07:00

Oh so much about these topics, you don't need TM to sort it out for you. Just allow a random selection of quotations and sound bytes by any pastor or presidential hopeful in the news of late to bathe your semi-conscious but always critical, media-consuming mind.

Then consider the wisdom of our nation's founding members who thought some space between religion and politics might foster a better democracy. I wonder if we as a country (not simply me, but a winning majority of us) would vote for a figure like Dr. Martin Luther King? How do we understand Obama's anger as the media portrays it for us?

As we meditate on how complicated and often suspect the nexus of religion and politics seems to continue to be, here are some pieces to shuffle:

the opinion in the NYT, asking if we ought to judge candidates by their associations with religious leaders and also exploring some of specific statements that reflect the extreme views of a pastor associated with the R-party's front runner (4 May 2008);
the MJ story about Hilary's faith claims (1 Sept 2007);
the succinct letter to the editor written by John McBride, author of the Color of Water, about his experience as a mixed-race person dealing with the Black Church (30 April 2008).
and the more detached analysis by Freepress of how much media coverage was dedicated to the pastor "flap" (6 May 2008).

Now look at this story in the Post about new forms of Black organizing and reconsider whether this uproar about religion and politics is likely to be relevant in the ways that pollsters project.

Race & Democracy

2008-04-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

According to the NYT, Democrats are thinking about the connection between elect-ability and (so-called) race as Obama continues his bid for presidential candidacy.

The prophetic anger of MLK. . .What Should We Change

2008-04-07T09:29:00.001-07:00

'A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

'I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.'

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 4, 1967 address at
Riverside Church in New York

-------------------------------------------

After 1965, the civil rights leader grew angrier over America's
unwillingness to change. "ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, few truthsring louder than this: Barack Obama and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. express in part the fallen leader's split mind on race, a division marked by chronology and color.

See "The prophetic anger of MLK" By Michael Eric Dyson, April 4 2008 at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dyson4apr04,0,1840793.story

See also
PROTESTERS LOUDLY DEMAND GOVERNOR RESCIND IMMIGRATION ORDER http://www.projo.com/news/politics/content/Immigration_Protest_04-04-08_DD9L3K5_v30.3819a0f.html

Critically Thoughtful Perspectives: Obama

2008-04-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

More Obama-nalia from the "Inbox." See the New America Media pub below that features reactions from various Asian American, Latino, Muslim, and Native American communities.

UCLA ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES CENTER FACULTY PERSPECTIVE:

UCLA Law Professor Jerry Kang, who is an active member of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center's Faculty Advisory Committee, has written a very insightful opinion piece in the National Law Journal, in which he draws parallels between Barack Obama's recent speech on
race, and two historically significant US Supreme Court cases --Ozawa v. U.S. and U.S. v. Thind -- dealing with naturalization and race for early Asian immigrants:

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1206528538825

"Beyond Black and White: Ethnic Media Respond to Obama’s Call for
Dialogue on Race"

by New America Media, News Digest, NAM Staff,
Posted: Mar 26, 2008
<http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=531dbc03a996929b43ce9d306144f44d>

Editor's Note: A lively conversation about race in America is taking place in the ethnic media, where Latino, Asian, Arab and Native American commentators agree that the traditional black-white dialogue must be expanded. But Sen. Barack Obama's speech on race has some of them wondering whether he is the right man for the job.

Called a “symbol of unity” and a “sign of divisiveness,” and compared to Fidel Castro and Korean politicians, Sen. Barack Obama’s call for a national dialogue on race produced a litany of responses from the ethnic media. But all of them seemed to agree on one thing: the longstanding black-white national dialogue about race is long overdue for an overhaul.

Obama's speech on race in America was called “courageous and forceful” by members of the Korean-American community, but few seemed to believe that American attitudes toward race would be swayed by it.

The Korea Times called the speech “a fearless challenge” in its March 23 editorial. Instead of choosing to avoid race – which the editorial calls “the toxic substance in American politics” – Obama bravely launched a frontal assault to confront the controversy over the remarks of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama was a member of Wright's church for 20 years.

Although it praised Obama’s speech as eloquent and courageous, the editorial pointed out that its effect is uncertain. “Now it’s the voters’ turn to respond to the race issue,” editors write. “Korean-American voters are among the voters who will have to decide whether Americans’ good sense and rationality can overcome race.”

Chinese American readers weren't easily swayed by Obama’s speech, according to Joseph Leung, executive editor of the Sing Tao Daily, yet interracial relations remain a concern of the Chinese American community. Chinese and African American communities may communicate well on a political level, Leung notes, but day-to-day communications between ordinary people in the two communities are still lacking.

Each community saw Obama’s speech in the context of their homeland politics. For Korean Americans, Obama’s speech recalled the tactics of South Korea’s liberal presidential candidates who ran on a platform of social equality in the mid-1990s, but failed to deliver once they were
in office.

James Kim of Granada Hills says he doesn’t question Obama’s sincerity, but says it takes more than just one person to create a change in the political system.

“I don’t think the past two Korean presidents deliberately deceived the people,” says Kim. “I don’t question Obama’s intention, either. But there’s always a big gap between ideals and reality.”

South Florida's Spanish-language media responds to a heavily Cuban-American audience (roughly 80 percent of Cuban Americans voted for Bush in 2004). Not surprisingly, many of the region’s Latino commentators dismissed Obama's speech as a calculated attempt to evade bad PR caused by Wright’s remarks. Wright has preached the belief that HIV was created deliberately by the U.S. government to decimate the black population.

Writing for Miami's daily newspaper El Nuevo Herald, columnist Adolfo Rivero Caro called Obama's charismatic, oratorically-talented persona "messianic" and "demagogic," even comparing him to former Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. " Seducing the public, talking of the extraordinary future that awaits them, always has seemed to me a cheap trick."

Vicente Echerri writes in El Nuevo Herald that “his racial origin, ideal for representing the American who has transcended prejudices and stereotypes, will serve him very little when he identifies so absolutely with a racial group, with a black church presided by a prophet of racism."

The notion that Obama could bring the concerns of Latino voters to the table was a subject of debate in the Spanish-language media.

Three days after Obama’s speech, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson endorsed the candidate. Interviewed live on CNN en Español, Richardson said Obama's words on race had clinched his decision. Hispanics, he said, are suffering from hate crimes and demonization as a result of an immigration backlash. They need a candidate who understands the folly of pitting race against race.

In his speech, Obama indicated that undocumented immigrants should not be scapegoated for the nation’s economic troubles.

But some brushed aside Obama's rhetoric of racial healing to ask for a more tangible Latino-oriented platform. One of them was Steven J. Ybarra, a longtime Democratic Party activist and undecided superdelegate from California. "I listened to Barack's speech," he writes in passing in a March 25 column on HispanicVista.com, before turning to the more tangible issues that will decide his vote at the Democratic Convention.

"I am going to ask the candidate where is our place at the table," he writes. "Because we are tired of just cooking, cleaning up, and getting blamed when the party goes bad." Ybarra is referring to past Latino voter drives in general elections, which he believes were hobbled by lack of funds and inattention from the "East Coast power brokers" in the Democratic National Committee. He also points to a "brown-black divide," acknowledging that Latinos often feel brushed aside in political and economic deal making that includes blacks.

Despite the fact that a majority of Latinos have said they support Sen. Hillary Clinton, the largest Spanish-language daily in the country, La Opinión in Los Angeles, endorsed Obama in the Democratic primary.

An editorial in La Opinión the day after Obama’s speech praised it as a symbol of unity, saying that "the social and economic challenges faced by whites, blacks, Latinos and immigrants are similar whatever our obvious differences."

Readers of the San Jose, Calif.-based Vietnamese newspaper Calitoday had the opposite response. One reader, identified as Kevin Nguyen, posted a comment on the newspaper’s Web site that said that given Rev. Wright’s influence on Obama, “If Obama is president, he is bound to create divisiveness in America.”

Even as Obama has been chided for his connection to the religious leader, another current of accusations has followed the candidate: the false assertion that, because of the way his name sounds, he is Muslim.

In the Arab media, journalists expressed concerns over the nature of these “attacks” made against Obama that highlight what they believe to be widespread “Islamophobia” in the United States.

“He is ‘accused’ of being a Muslim,” Dr. Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, told the Saudi Kingdom Television. “The beautiful name Hussein has become the ‘kiss of death.’”

Hasan Al Barari wrote in the Jordanian Al-Ghad Newspaper that he personally preferred Obama over all the other candidates, but wished he had responded differently when accused of being a Muslim. "Obama should have said, ‘What if I were a Muslim?’ If he had said that, he would have changed the dynamics of the debate, and exposed the chauvinists that are making these accusations.”

Dr. Gerges agreed, telling the Saudi television station that Obama missed an opportunity to defend Muslim Americans. “Truly,” he said, “it is painful that the most important progressive candidate in America, Barack Obama, has not used this opportunity to educate American society about the Islamic civilization.”

Sa’d Al Deen Ibrahim wrote on Yemeni Al-Motamar’s Web site that when Obama is accused of being Muslim he usually gives an affirmative answer consisting of two words, “I’m Christian,” as if being Muslim is a crime and he is innocent of it.

While his campaign managers view the fact that Obama’s father was a Muslim as a liability, Arab journalists view it as an asset that may enable Obama to better communicate with the Muslim and Arab worlds.

Each ethnic newspaper took Obama's race speech as an opportunity to place its own community into a national dialogue that has long ignored them.

The Native American Times published a commentary titled, "Include the Invisible Americans in Race Debates," by Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji), an Oglala Lakota Indian born on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the former publisher of New York’s Indian Country Today. "When it comes to race relations,” Giago writes, “Native Americans are the invisible people."

However, a letter to the editor by reader Masleca noted that Barack Obama mentioned Native Americans in his speech. The paper quoted Obama as saying, "This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian
children and Hispanic children and Native American children."

Reporting by Elena Shore, Marcelo Ballvé, Jalal Ghazi, Kenneth Kim,
Peter Micek, Andrew Lam and Jun Wang

And It's Still. . .OBAMA!

2008-03-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal carried the following and below the article is the URL for the Obama race speech that everyone's talking about!

"PASTOR FLAP HASN'T HURT OBAMA"

By JACKIE CALMES
March 26, 2008 7:19 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- The racially charged debate over Barack Obama's relationship with his longtime pastor hasn't much changed his close contest against Hillary Clinton, or hurt him against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC polls with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, called the latest poll a "myth-buster" that showed the pastor controversy is "not the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign."

But both Democrats, and especially New York's Sen. Clinton, are showing wounds from their prolonged and increasingly bitter nomination contest, which could weaken the ultimate nominee for the general-election showdown against Sen. McCain of Arizona. Even among women, who are the base of Sen. Clinton's support, she now is viewed negatively by more voters than positively for the first time in a Journal/NBC poll.

The latest survey has the Democratic rivals in a dead heat, each with 45% support from registered Democratic voters. That is a slight improvement for Sen. Obama, though a statistically insignificant one, from the last Journal/NBC poll two weeks ago, which had Sen. Clinton leading among Democratic voters, 47% to 43%.

While Sen. Clinton still leads among white Democrats, her edge shrank to eight points (49% to 41%) from 12 points in early March (51% to 39%). That seems to refute widespread speculation -- and fears among Sen. Obama's backers -- that he would lose white support for his bid to be the nation's first African-American president over the controversy surrounding his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. of Chicago.

Had that erosion happened, party leaders' reassessment of Sen. Obama's electability could have tipped the race to Sen. Clinton's favor. Weathering the episode could strengthen his standing among the party leaders nationwide -- the superdelegates -- whose votes are likely to break the impasse.

Beyond the nomination race, in hypothetical matchups for November's election Sen. Obama still edges Sen. McCain 44% to 42%. That is nearly the same result as in the early March poll, before videos of Mr. Wright's most fiery sermons spread over the Internet. But Sen. Clinton, who likewise had a narrow advantage over Sen. McCain in the earlier survey, trails in this one by two points, 44% to his 46%.

The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday, a week after Sen. Obama delivered a generally well-received address on race. The poll's margin for error is 3.7 percentage points for questions put to a cross-section of 700 registered voters, and slightly higher for those questions put only to subgroups of Democratic, Republican or black voters.

As reassuring as the poll is for Sen. Obama, Mr. Hart and Mr. McInturff agreed that it did indicate that a substantial number of voters question whether the first-term senator would be a safe choice, or whether more needs to be known about him. Mr. McInturff said some voters are wondering, "Do we know enough about this guy?"

While the senator's support among Democrats is little changed, he did slip among conservatives and Republican voters, groups that had shown some attraction to Sen. Obama's message of changing partisan politics in Washington.

"I think the survey does indicate that this has taken a little of the patina off Sen. Obama," Mr. McInturff said.

But the pollster also saw "some evidence here that Sen. Obama's speech did him well." The candidate's support for his handling of the Wright matter was stronger among those voters who said they saw his 37-minute speech.

In the Philadelphia address, which Sen. Obama wrote and titled "A More Perfect Union," he criticized his former pastor for his condemnations of the U.S. for its injustices to blacks, but refused to renounce him.

He also sought to explain to both blacks and whites the grievances that each holds against the other, while urging both to recognize their real enemies are shared ones -- chiefly economic and educational inequality, and the job losses from globalization.

The Clinton campaign had steered clear of the Wright controversy, until Sen. Clinton this week told interviewers she would have found a new minister had hers made the remarks Mr. Wright did. Sen. Obama for two decades has attended the 8,000-member Chicago church where Mr. Wright, who retired recently, was pastor.

The negativity of the Obama-Clinton contest seems to be hurting Sen. Clinton more, the poll shows. A 52% majority of all voters says she doesn't have the background or values they identify with. But 50% say Sen. Obama does share their values, and 57% agree that Sen. McCain does.

Also, fewer voters hold positive views of Sen. Clinton than did so just two weeks ago in the Journal/NBC poll. Among all voters, 48% have negative feelings toward her and 37% positive, a decline from a net positive 45% to 43% rating in early March. While 51% of African-American voters have positive views, that is down 12 points from earlier this month, before the Wright controversy.

More ominous for Sen. Clinton is the net-negative rating she drew for the first time from women, one of the groups where she has drawn most support. In this latest poll, voters with negative views narrowly outstrip those with positive ones, 44% to 42%. That compares with her positive rating from 51% of women in the earlier March poll.

Both she and Sen. Obama showed five-point declines in positive ratings from white voters. But where she is viewed mostly negatively, by 51% to 34% of whites, Sen. Obama's gets a net positive rating, by 42% to 37%. Among all voters, he maintained a significant positive-to-negative score of 49% to 32%-similar to Sen. McCain's 45% to 25%.

The toll on both Democrats from their rhetorical brawling is evident in these poll findings: About a fifth of Clinton voters say they would support Sen. McCain if she isn't the Democratic nominee, and likewise a fifth of Obama voters say they would do the same if he isn't the party standard-bearer.

Write to Jackie Calmes at jackie.calmes@wsj.com4

URL for this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657171729866843.html

AND here is link to the full transcript of Sen. Obama's speech on race as
prepared for delivery <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23690567/>

And listen to the response from Rinku Sen via Colorlines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVi4KpG1G_E

Updating the Race-Philes: Obama, Etc. 2008

2008-02-27T20:18:00.000-08:00

Okay so it's been so very long since I blogged about anything, but here are several items that contribute to our critique of race/gender/sex and power this season:

Here's someone making the point that race is more than merely relevant, it is a reason to vote:

"It's OK to vote for Obama because he's black" in Salon.

And how does US imperialism factor in? Puerto Ricans don't have the right to vote in the election, but the outcome of their primary on June 7 will assign the final 63 delegates! (They may be the deciding factor!) The following video gives you a sense of how that likely may go.

You-Tube Video: SI, se puede!

And what about race is gendered, and vice versa?. .Here's an interesting article about how transgender people experience race.

See "Becoming a Black Man" in Colorlines.

Cheers!

Anti-African Racial Violence in Switzerland

2007-10-09T10:38:00.001-07:00

The report in the Washington Post describing a chainsaw assault on an African man in Switzerland, is horrific, whether you wish to contemplate the geopolitical significance of increasing racial violence or not.

Race Gender & the Ongoing Civil Rights Movement

2007-10-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

September 22, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

NY Times

The Women Behind the Men

By GAIL COLLINS

Daisy Bates had to march with the wives.

When the nation observes the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock school desegregation on Monday, there will undoubtedly be a great deal said about Bates, who was head of the city's N.A.A.C.P. chapter. She helped recruit nine black teenagers and escorted them through irate mobs of white adults and into their first classes. As a result, she and her husband, Lucius, lost their business. She was jailed, threatened and the Ku Klux Klan burned an 8-foot cross on her lawn.

Bates was invited, of course, to the famous March on Washington in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Rosa Parks was invited, too, and Pauli Murray, the lawyer and feminist who had staged the first sit-in at a Washington restaurant during World War II.

When they got there, they were all assigned to walk with the wives of the male civil rights leaders, far away from the cameras. "Not a single woman was invited to make one of the major speeches or be part of the delegation of leaders who went to the White House. The omission was deliberate," Murray said later.

Dorothy Height, the head of the National Council of Negro Women, and others begged that at least one woman be included among the speakers. They nominated Diane Nash, the student leader who had been perhaps the one person most responsible for the success of the Freedom Riders in the South. No dice.

"Nothing that women said or did broke the impasse blocking their participation. I've never seen a more unmovable force," Height wrote. The men kept telling her that women already had participation — both Marian Anderson and Mahalia Jackson were going to sing. In the end, A. Philip Randolph delivered a "Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom" while the female civil rights legends sat on the stage.

We've learned, with some pain, to celebrate all our national heroes through clear eyes, as people whose great hearts and minds still did not take the dream of freedom and equality past their own immediate cause. The Declaration of Independence is our noblest piece of prose even though Thomas Jefferson kept slaves. Susan B. Anthony is my favorite Founding Mother, but I know she broke her old friend Frederick Douglass's heart when she lashed out at a government that would give the vote to "Sambo" and ignore well-educated, middle-class white women. Dr. King and the other male leaders and martyrs of the civil rights movement are always going to be a beacon in the center of our history. But they generally believed women's place was in the home, and most were privately looking forward to the moment when they would all go back there.

The women of the civil rights movement who are most celebrated tend to be the brave victims, like Rosa Parks, who dutifully played the simple seamstress too tired to give up her seat on the bus, even though she had in fact been an activist for longer than almost any of the men. Still, in her autobiography she remembered that March on Washington and noted that these days "women wouldn't stand for being kept so much in the background."

The women who men were less enthusiastic about were the ones who led. Martin Luther King Jr.'s first triumph as the public face of the Montgomery bus boycott was possible because a group of middle-class black women led by a college teacher, Jo Ann Robinson, had organized it. They had been preparing for the opportunity so long that when Rosa Parks went to jail, they had 35,000 fliers ready the next morning, to deliver to black households through their children at school. Yet now they have practically vanished from our history.

You do not have to dismiss the men to believe that Ella Baker was the greatest organizer the civil rights movement ever knew. When she was passed over for the directorate of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which she helped found and ran as acting director, she attributed the rejection to the fact that "I was female; I was old. I didn't have a Ph.D." Then she went right on organizing, guiding the black college students into forming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which she would direct throughout its glory years as adviser and unpaid spiritual leader.

Baker also got it — the moment of recognition that all the previous movements for American social justice had not quite grasped. "Remember," she told the young people, "we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit, a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind."

You watch the reports from Jena this week and you wonder where women like Bates and Baker and Robinson would be if they were alive today. Wherever it was, it would be at the front of theparade.

Take Your Bearings & Read the Latest. . .

2007-09-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

I've been following the Jena Six story, and wondering if I have anything to add to the obvious. If, by chance, anyone is relying on this blog for an update or a quick link to some revealing conversation that explicates the issue, read the following current stuff: "Do you understand where you are?" and RaceWire.

Of course, today (of all days) there is ample opportunity to ruminate on whether the increasing numbers of race-related fiascoes in the news (since say 2001) reflect a shift in media accountability and interest, or indicate, rather, a heightened struggle around how we perceive ourselves as a country of diverse peoples. That is, the ideological work being done to "shore up" our physical boundaries and "protect" the homeland is also absolutely and continuously about consolidating our ever-slippery, national identity based on a social hierarchy inflecting race, class, gender, etc.

As I said, little new to add.

Summer Hiatus

2007-08-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Clearly we've taken a rest from blogging about it all, but we'll be back in early September with a recap on what's the hap and a mad cap on everything new!

News: Black Caucus Bows to Fox & George Washington Had a Secret Slave Passage

2007-06-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

The Black Caucus has decided to run with Fox. . .the conduit of Republican propoganda and, frankly, racism.

Another news bit: Archaeologists unearthed George Washington's presidential home to discover a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves. "The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington's guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house." (Read more about "whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.")

Links:

More About It 7/4/07

The History of Honoring the War Dead

2007-05-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Check out this NYT article that begins, "Memorial Day got its start after the Civil War, when freed slaves and abolitionists gathered in Charleston, S.C., to honor Union soldiers who gave their lives to battle slavery." Cohen offers historical background on the waning significance of "slavery and freedom" to commemorations of this holiday.

Race According to Generation "Why?" & Other "New" Structures of Feeling

2007-05-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

Everyday brings with it renewed evidence of the truthfulness of the sentiment now in various quarters gaining the confidence and sympathy of our oppressed people that our elevation as a race is almost wholly dependent upon our own exertions.
-- Frederick Douglass (circa 1850s)

As time marches on, I am convinced that the long sentence and other rhetorical tools once used to appeal to the sentiments and sympathies of thinking people among us are woefully inadequate in our fight to expose the hoary apparatus of racism in its contemporary forms. I will concede that these forms are not as ethically cut and dried as slavery might have rendered them back in 1847 when Frederick Douglass began writing at the helm of the North Star, the first black-run newspaper, but is our contemporary context so much more complex, nuanced and challenging?

Why is racism America's little darling?

Seems everything I 'blog' about race these days tries to get at the unconscious reproduction of social inequality, and how race, especially in the absence of historical consciousness, operates just below the level of discourse and apparently just beyond our collective control. So as I waded through my race update emails of the last week, I attempted to pose a transcultural (transracial, if you like) query that came from the gut. Rather than simply linking the recent race stories analytically, I tried to feel my way through, checking my reactions alongside those of the people described and represented. Perhaps the following juxtaposition of a host of harrowing race-stories in the news will allow you to consider, as I have attempted to do, how 'racism' as such reflects the feelings and thoughts of people struggling with complex issues related to race, who in every case below are described as our 'youth.' Are there 'new' structures of feeling that validate racism today?

(I warn you, I draw few conclusions.)

Hutchison asks, "Is it ignorance, confusion, racial denial, or closet bigotry?"

First, I read "Many Whites Still Smugly Tie Their Racial Blinders Tight" (Hutchison on Alternet), which begins with an attempt to understand readers' responses to a recent critique of the re-release of "Song of the South " on DVD (i.e., 1946 Disney film replete with all the major food groups of racial stereotype). While the writer provided some statistics and polling data to the effect that white people, especially youth, reject claims suggesting that stereotypes are negative or damaging or wrong and that Black people often disagree, which explains in part why so many white readers were quick to denounce his film critique as advocating censorship, most unsettling to him was the fact that the white people most impervious to stereotypes that Black people find offensive were neither conservatives nor old nor apolitical.

They seem to be thinking, feeling young people.

If it weren't for so many recent incidents of the "new stealth racism" -- coined not by me, but by the writer of "Racism goes on trial again in the deep South" -- occurring today, perhaps we might look at these polls and facts and deduce that young people are phasing out race. It is, after all, irrelevant to the everyday lives of so many cosmopolitan, mixed-race young folks among "Generation Y," which should render it obsolete any day now!

(Maybe if we ignore it, it will just go away.)

The story about what's going on in Jena, Lousiana, however, counters any such naive hope (see Afro-Spear) It reads like an old race classic with no happy ending, seeming to borrow from a pre-Civil Rights era film or novel. High-schoolers in Louisiana are fighting to desegregate the shade trees and the opposition is hanging nooses and hiding out in Baptist churches, which leads judges to pursue putting the black kids who (might have) assaulted the 'noosers' in jail for the rest of their lives.

Just read it. The publication date is Sunday, May 20, 2007, but you won't believe these are our young people.

Now, check out the piece in the Chicago Tribune, entitled "Whites are not immune to black hostility." (See excerpt below or note 1.) I saw the title and thought, "thank goodness, at least someone is feeling something!" Then I read it and felt terrifically bad for the woman and for public school teachers in general who are forced to deal with these kids and their anger. But then I cringed a bit when I reached the author's conclusion, which seemed to wax smug and sanctimonious. As I'm trying to mind the copyright rules, I will focus on the part I excerpted below, especially the writer's complete confidence that the teacher would have seen justice (i.e., a response to her EOP complaint and subsequent lawsuit) and moral outrage more quickly, had the students been white and had she been black.

This might possibly be true in an oversimplified hypothetical case, but how many black teachers teach (and seem, from a young person's point of view, to exert unequal power over) classrooms full of angry white teenagers trapped in the ghettos of the inner city? Perhaps more relevant to my exploration of the structures of feeling that undergird our national emotional landscape, does it mean anything in particular that the offensive, violent persons wielding race as a weapon, in this case against a white woman teacher, are yet again young people?

As I read "War among blacks is too easy to ignore," which attributes the black murder rate to the postmodern conditions of the inner city that "also reinforce the deep feeling among many youth that life is cheap and easy to take, and there will be minimal consequences for their action as long as their victims are other young blacks." This description of these young people's disregard for the value of each other's lives reminded me of what is arguably, the quintessential definition of institutional racism: In 1857, the Dred Scott Decision, a Supreme Court ruling, pronounced that people of color "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect" (note 2).

How do we define or identify racism or bigotry or so-called racial denial, when young people of color have no rights, which anyone is bound to respect? And is it simply the Black kids in the ghetto who have ceased to value human lives? One thing is clear, these young people who are battling the discrimination, stereotypes and institutional policies that they didn't create, are the same kids who are killing each other with old-time "symbolic" nooses, shooting each other with sophisticated weapons mostly unavailable in this country after school, and being asked to die in violent foreign conflicts that they didn't initiate and mostly don't understand. And this violence which has banished feeling, especially human empathy, almost entirely from the USAmerican everyday emotional landscape impacts young and old alike.

-------Notes-------

(1) If you cannot sign into the Tribune to read the article mentioned above, here's an excerpt:

Whites are not immune to black hostility
--Insults from black students spur lawsuit
by Kathleen Parker
May 16, 2007

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- In a new twist in American race relations, a federal court has ruled that a white teacher in a predominantly African-American school was subjected to a racially hostile workplace.

The case concerned Elizabeth Kandrac, who was routinely verbally abused by black pupils at Brentwood Middle School in North Charleston.

Their slurs make shock jock Don Imus look like a church deacon.

. . .despite frequent complaints, school officials did nothing to intervene on Kandrac's behalf, arguing that the racially charged profanity was simply part of the pupils' culture. If Kandrac couldn't handle cursing, school officials told her, she was in the wrong school.

Kandrac finally filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and subsequently brought a lawsuit against the Charleston County School District, the school's principal and an associate superintendent. Last fall, jurors found that the school was a racially hostile environment to teach in and that the school district retaliated against Kandrac for complaining about it.
. . .

Let's be clear: What these children called this teacher is beyond reprehensible and could be only be construed as hostile and threatening.

Here's a sample: . . .white ho. . . .

Kandrac's attorney, Larry Kobrovsky, argued that the repeated use of "white" made these slurs racist in nature. But school officials insisted that because black pupils were equally abusive to other blacks, the language wasn't inherently racist.

Here's what we know without question: If white pupils had used similar language toward black pupils and teachers, the case would have been plastered on the front page of the New York Times until heads rolled.

A black Kandrac would have a million-dollar book deal, a movie contract and hundreds of interviews to juggle. Her oppressors and those who passively facilitated her abuse would have been pilloried by the media -- their faces all over the evening news -- while Revs. Al and Jesse organized protests.

Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist. E-mail: kparker @kparker.com)

(Read the rest on line!)

(2) pg. 7; Andrews, William L. 1990 "Introduction" in Three Classic African-American Novels. New York, NY: Mentor.

Why is Sambolina Jolie Wearing Blackface on Film?

2007-05-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard about the upcoming film where a famous white actress will play a 'biracial' woman (by tanning darkly and wearing a nappy wig), check out these pictures and commentary. For the record I concur with the blogger at Sterohyped and reiterate (in my own lingo) that two major problems with this instance of 'blackface' are the following:

One is our sordid historical past, when white actors wearing blackface always played Black characters and reproduced damaging, hateful misrepresentations of Black people that persist as the stereotypes all USAmericans are forced to confront and fight today (cf., Birth of a Nation). The second is our sordid contemporary reality in which Hollywood is still segregated, economically, socially, racially, etc. That is, Black women actors don't often get major roles, because producers don't fund Black films, "mainstream" Americans don't attend films (that don't exist) with Black characters, and most importantly Black women are so unattractive and untalented that they cannot even play themselves (i.e., Black women), much less aspire to play mainstream (white, nuetral, American) characters.

That's enough!

Links to the ongoing conversation:
Washington Post Discusses Jolie & the History of Black Face (6/23/07)

Homeland Racism and Other Weapons of Mass Distraction

2007-05-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Lately, USAmericans across the political spectrum have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy assessing, refuting and rebuking the recent, profligate racist annoyances that seem to occur constantly in Hollywood, on television, on the radio and along the presidential campaign trail.

And, this, most certainly, could be time wasted.

That is, if we fail to recognize that attending closely to media rhetoric regarding race is vital and relevant to a broader analysis of power. In this vein, just as I was contemplating whether my intermittent blogging here had become too media-crazed and domestically-focused, I received what seemed a brief, informative article about Black soldiers’ perspectives on the current situation in Iraq. Upon reading the first few paragraphs, I had planned to write a short ditty and to provide a link, but as I summarized the argument I found that the writer’s passive approach to reporting “just the facts” constituted a legitimation of war on behalf of the African-American community. So, here again, I think it is worth paying attention to what this author sets out to say, how he says it, and precisely where the fact that he is talking about race directs (and distracts) the course of his argument. (Check out the Common Dreams Reprint.)

“It’s hard to fight halfway around the world for people’s freedom when you’re not sure you have it at home.” -- Gregory Black, Retired Navy Diver

In a recent article for the Boston Globe, Derrick Z. Jackson attempts to put his finger on why African-American soldiers possess an especial "sensitivity" to US military involvement in Iraq. He writes that Black soldiers are increasingly less willing to participate in what they see as an “oilman’s war” that “smacks of neo-imperialism.” Employing various statistics, opinion polls, and the studied perspectives of sociologists and political analysts, he provides an informative snapshot of the role that military institutions have played in equalizing career and education opportunities for African-Americans, especially men, and reciprocally how the US all-volunteer military has relied on the disproportionate participation of African-American soldiers since 1973 (when the draft was “permanently” suspended.) Gregory Black, a retired veteran of the current conflict sums it up: “we’re halfway around the world fighting people of color under the guise of democracy and we can’t see how it’s benefited anyone.”

Jackson’s recurring theme is that Black soldiers are more “sensitive” to the wrongness of the US invasion and ensuing occupation of Iraq. As he moves through the article, however, he abandons what might have been a useful examination of these feelings and simply piles on various quotes that defend African-American perspectives without explicating them in the slightest. Clearly, suggesting that the perspectives of African-Americans are distinct from those of mainstream Americans, especially in the time of war, might render them vulnerable, so he and his expert interlocutors feel compelled to explain that African-American soldiers’ resentment regarding their exploitation for the economic gain of a very small, elite minority, has “nothing to do with [a lack of] patriotism.” He quotes David Segal, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Research on Military Organization, who says “What we’re getting is not an opposition to war, but considerable opposition to this war.” And it’s all downhill from there.

Sadly, Jackson’s preoccupation with avoiding a negative representation of African-American soldiers hijacks his argument and nullifies his initial point that this unique perspective might shed light on the relationship between racism at home and US aggressions abroad. He uses statistics and polling data to demonstrate that that African-Americans, like most other USAmericans, have lost faith in this administration and its projects, and he concludes the article by suggesting that “kids” today (and their “influencers”) have TVs, watch the news, and are therefore more savvy about the horrors of war and the dangers of this conflict in particular.

It bears repeating that statistically speaking, he argues, Black people are just like everyone else in the United States. That is, the majority dislikes the current administration and our involvement in Iraq but supports war in general.

Why Race & US History Are Inexorably Linked

The requisite historical approach necessary to a critical race perspective would have remedied this article's key faults, namely myopic presentism and generalizing, and likely would have rescued Jackson’s argument from this insipid conclusion. Specifically, he might have legitimized the feelings of African-American soldiers by placing them in a deeper historical as well as ideological context. For instance, he might have referred to how the sacrifice and participation of the poor, people of color as well as ethnic and national minorities in US military efforts (call them wars, conflicts, or aggressions) has been historically a way to gain social status, achieve citizenship, etc. Along these lines, consulting the historical record might serve as a reminder that minority soldiers’ (and collaborating civilians’) aspirations often remained unfulfilled, and that many post-war periods were characterized by the systematic retraction of temporary wartime privileges. Specifically, one might observe how restoring peacetime relations has often included a violent reorganizing of the Racial Order, especially desegregated social spaces, occupations, etc. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, pursing the connection raised three separate times in the article between the sensitivity to racism and to imperialism, might have shed light on how and whether the current situation in Iraq is changing the way that members of all communities in the US look at war. In summation, let me re-phrase it like this:

Are Black people just like all the other Americans who support war, or are all Americans just like African-Americans who are beginning to question whether war is consistent with the USAmerican values that we cherish and seek to preserve?

Race, Violence & War Relevant Links:
Chicago vs. Iraq (Southtown 5/24/07)

The Magic Rhetoric of Radio Racism

2007-04-30T16:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, the quick, efficient opprobrium (total condemnation) of last month’s Radio Racist was quite satisfying. The feminists broke it down; corporate sponsors did the math; Black producers wrote his pink slip; and Don Imus was out the door. However, it seems that always someone else is waiting in the wings to work the racist-sexist nexus. So, thanks to Rush Limbaugh last week, USAmericans have a new, fresh controversy and reason, as the Nation put it, to be “disheartened that so soon after the Imus controversy came and went the so-called shock jocks and right wing nuts went right back to business as usual, didn't blink an eye and continued to use racism to insult and humiliate.”

While I challenge any listener to find less than five intentional offenses upon a single hearing of “Barack the Magic Negro,” the racist parody created by Paul Shanklin and aired on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program this past week, here I see an opportunity to use a close reading of this text to resist racist “business as usual,” and consequently to stave off this low point in media -induced cycles of hope and despair. Here I suggest that we examine how high-profile media events such as these throw up a smokescreen of loud, abhorrent racism, while just below the surface they perform a rhetorical sleight of hand--that is, the subtle "magic" of continuity and repetition that keeps the ideas, images and language of racism alive despite real, illusory or desired social change on the part of most mainstream USAmericans. In other words, these media events “educate” by introducing and habituating us to stereotypes, ignorance, false generalizations, and slander disguised as objective facts, useful terminologies and historical information related to race.

Magical Chain of Substitutions: Black Equals Negro, Etc.

What is most audacious about the Shanklin piece, “Barack the Magic Negro,” is more than merely the unacceptable invocation of the word "Negro." Rather, we should take note of and probably offense to the blatant announcement of an unapologetic and intentional, slippery slide among the terms Negro, Black, African-American, etc. What it is less transparent, however, is the fact that the actual parody, like the title itself, plays across several historical and current conversations about race without making reference to them. As a means of detecting the magical mechanism of rhetorical racism, I suggest we look at the obvious. I propose that we examine how this author creates a "chain of signifiers" — a series of substitutions among words, names and individuals that mean or invoke something only slightly different each time they are used yet lose their referents along the way. (I am arguing that this process reinvigorates an old-time racist logic that the majority of USAmericans would reject if they could see it.)

Reading Radio Racism

As listeners we are invited in several ways to read this piece as everyday political satire, which uses tools conventional to the genre and surfaces issues that are already out there. First, listen to it. The tune “Puff the Magic Dragon” (a popular children’s song known to have multiple layers of potential meaning) immediately cues listeners that the skit is a “parody” and is meant to be “funny.” In which case, attacking either Senator Obama, a presidential candidate, or Rev. Al Sharpton, also a prominent public figure, are par for the political course. Furthermore, because mainstream media attributed at least some of the rapidity of action in the Imus case to the words and volume of Rev. Sharpton’s critique, casting a disparaging impression of him could be seen as a straightforward and prophylactic attack by people protecting their occupational niche (albeit undeniably racist). Specifically, recent gains regarding the use of stereotypes in the media, which vaguely might be attributed to Sharpton and that radio racists might find especially threatening, include coupling public decency with social equality concerns and raising a general sense of hope that the USA is approaching a sociological "tipping point" where racism will be considered obsolete and unsavory.

Clearly, in the Shanklin skit, Rev. Al Sharpton and Senator Barack Obama are represented unfavorably, but is it reasonable to suggest that they are cast as mutually affirming stereotypes that have shed their social and historical referents? (Which stereotypes? Well, how many are you familiar with?)

Solving the Mystery: What Are We Learning without Even Noticing?

As easy and appropriate as it may be to criticize public officials and to mock someone as fearless, distinct, and problematic as Rev. Sharpton has proved himself to be, I propose that our rhetorical sleuthing begins (and ends) with the moment that he is cast as 1) a buffoon with 2) the word "Negro" in his mouth and 3) the argument about "racial authenticity" on his lips.

While some may argue that deep rhetorical sophistication is beyond the scope and capacity of the particular authors in this case, it is important to note the significant argumentation that the skit accomplishes. As Obama’s bumbling critic, the embarrassing character of Sharpton distributes a vague sense of shame which is potentially felt by all, including ineffectual politicians, Black people, anti-racists, “conservative” humans, etc. However, what we are supposed to miss is that Sharpton is cast, not as an unflattering version of himself, but as an ugly stereotype that requires symbolic work to unpack and that distracts us from noticing whether his perspective, or any information for that matter, is represented with accuracy in this skit. Furthermore, while the Shanklin parody doesn't site its references, the recent LA Times article "Obama the Magic Negro" does. The latter directs us to consult Wikipedia for an explanation of the "Magical Negro," where this term refers to a fictional literary character or archetype, specifically a Black male protagonist who serves the racist interests of a White-dominated society at his own expense. This is indeed a heady matter. By drawing an archetypal and polarizing tension between two stereotypical characters, the skit manages to impart that conversations about race are ridiculous and/or divisive; that "insider" race terms and conversations have lost their protected status; and that the foibles of any Black person can be used to discredit the merits of any other (c.f., classic racism).

Unlike creating fictional characters in movies or books, I argue that casting actual public figures as racial stereotypes is an intentional and complex, rhetorical violence that makes “sense” just below our conscious vigil. The real offense of this particular skit, then, is that by mis/representing the views of real political figures and associating them with obscure references to forgotten racializing language, images, and terms, this so-called "parody" reaches deep into the social, psychological substrate and has the potential to (mysteriously or magically) mis/educate us about important debates at the intersection of race and politics right now when it matters most.

While I decline to read further into this parody which I assure you draws on other explicitly racist stereotypes, I encourage you to check out the suggested readings and related links posted below that introduce any interested reader to conversations and study regarding stereotypes of people of African descent in USAmerican history. I highly recommend the book by Bogle and the film, Bamboozled, by Spike Lee. (I also invite your comments.)

Related Links & References
Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1992).
"Barack: The Magic Negro" Alternet Article w/ Audio Link
Spike Lee on Stereotypes (in the news 2001)
13 Movies with Magical Black Men. . .

The Hairy Discourse of Race: Radio Misrepresents Black Women Again

2007-04-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

So far, the women basketball players of Rutgers have done well to represent themselves both before and after the "Ugly Imus Incident," so here I raise a small, side point that I find potentially relevant to the discussion regarding whether the old man should retire from radio. I wonder if anyone else has noticed that none of these women--among the visually heterogeneous mix I saw on three television channels over the last few days--had visibly curly, much less "nappy" hair. While it's possible that had their hairstyles been curlier, they might have taken the broader racist sexism even more personally; however, what these women have articulated so well in their statements where they refuse to separate racism from sexism, is that the days are long-gone when old white men could subjugate, silence and belittle the accomplishments of women (Black or otherwise) by, simply, invoking and insulting their appearance. Truly, the old man has sealed his own obsolescence, dating himself and his radio product, by demonstrating that he lacks more than merely the deftness and savvy needed to wield popular cultural representations, insider jokes, and critical "hipster" language for radio entertainment. What he needs, rather, is a college intro to the intersections of race and gender in the new millennium. As undeserving as he is, the Scarlet Knights are giving him a crash-course, very powerfully and on their own terms.

Various Links on the Outcome and What Can Be Done:

Installment 1:
The Post on the Firing
NPR on the Broader Context
What about Black Trash Talkers?
Feminist Majority Campaign against Hate Speech (Letter to CBS Template)
Free Press Media Diversity Campaign (Write the FCC)

Installment 2:
After/Outrage
Everybody Hates Don I.

A Lens on Race in the Media (or Race: A Lens on the Media)

2007-03-15T09:45:00.001-07:00

Here's a must see videoclip montage that does its own explaining about how issues related to race and Blackness are treated and "spun" by one popular television media outlet. It sheds a little light on the recent decisions by '08 presidential candidates, who refused to participate in a debate to be broadcast on a particular network.

Link to the site, and check out the short.

Reflecting Black: Young People's Self-Portrayals

2007-02-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

A new five-minute film, "A Girl Like Me," made by teenagers (Reelworks) and posted to YouTube is amazing. Thoughtful young women examine the constraints of color, culture and self-presentation by talking about their understandings of and feelings about the images, stereotypes, and expectations for Black women that circulate in broader USAmerican society, daily life and in their own families. They also reproduce a classic developmental psychology doll experiment with children. The disturbing, if unsurprising, results include the preference among Black children for the white doll and its associations with goodness and beauty. Brilliantly, however, these young filmmakers conclude by claiming how their intervention is to consciously love themselves against these odds. (Powerful stuff, you must watch it to the end!)

Another short film should (and does) accompany "Black Girl" on the site: Similarly, "A Boy Like Me," with a young Bill Cosby, examines children's artwork, invokes classic child psychology studies, and demonstrates, quite cogently, that children's artwork of the period reflected more than merely self-esteem and a sense of security (or lack thereof), rather it revealed, in the case of Black children's artwork, a (woefully nuanced) understanding of social inequality and anti-Black racist violence.

My impulse is to poem.
(ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create)
-----------------------------
The night is long, and the struggle intense,
but we will prevail against the darkness
of ignorace and hopelessness
cast as nature's way,
because we continue to love
the daylight of our own humanity
to which we will awake
someday.

Sombra Morena

February is (Black) USAmerican History Month

2007-02-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Putting aside the irony that February is the shortest month on the (Roman) calendar, let's attend to the significance of a month in which USAmericans, globally renown for our ignorance/neglect of history, focus at least some of our media and scholarly energies on reclaiming a past that includes Black people, celebrating their achievements and contributions.

In this vein, PBS has produced the powerful documentary, "Forgotten Genius," about a chemist, Percy L. Julian. Born in 1899, he was the first Black person to be admitted to the National Academy of Sciences, and rightly so. As the film demonstrates, he was an accomplished researcher leading with his scholarship and singular inventions in the industry, as well as championing civil rights, and cultivating the careers of a host of other Black scientists. (See the full NYT review.)

The Ongoing Barack-O Conversation

Here's another solid article (from In These Times) about how race matters continue to frame Barack Obama's political career.

And while you're at it, check his exploratory committee website.

The Right or the Capacity to Speak? (Is He Black or Not?)

2007-02-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

"The Racial Politics of Speaking Well" (The NYT Week in Review) breaks it down, some more. And we should connect this to the conversation about whether Barack Obama's experience is Black enough. This is complex racialization: when he is marked by White America as African-American, the distinction between him and other Black people is also palpable. Check out the article in Time. Is he the exception that proves the rule? (Which rule?) Is he able to represent the Black community, if he is "exceptional" in so many ways, and "embodies" a notion of difference that restablishes the racial hierarchy? This is to say that he is racialized, most assuredly, as not white, but in its historical fasion the political machine deploys race, simultaneously, to claim him as not-Black, like the rest of us. Sinister, how "accidental" mis-speech reinforces the invisible hand of institutional racism and unleashes the spectre of race just in time to distract members of the voting public from examining whether this candidate can speak for the disenfranchised and amplify the concerns of traditionally marginal groups, including Black people. Does he speak too well?

*Meanwhile, Colts or Bears? Two Black Coaches in the Superbowl!*

I know that anyone reading this right now is probably not making guacamole and preparing for the big game, but I received the message posted below (with minor edits for clarity only) from the organization Color of Change, which expresses that Black leadership in football signals something historically significant, and reflective of a concerted, political struggle of which we should take note.

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Dear Sombra Morena,

When I was growing up, football was dominated by Black players, but we weren't allowed to be quarterbacks. And we certainly couldn't be the coach.

I don't even care much about football, but I can't wait to watch the game this afternoon. Today, America celebrates a first: two Black coaches in the Super Bowl. It may seem like an accident, or the inevitable result of time's passage, but it's not. Like most civil rights gains, it's the result of active struggle.

In 2002, attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran Jr. decided that Blacks had been shut out of coaching long enough. They released a report entitled "Black Coaches in the National Football League: Superior Performances, Inferior Opportunities" that called out the NFL's "dismal record of minority hiring." Two facts stood out in the report: 1) while Blacks comprised 70% of NFL players, only 6% of coaches and 28% percent of assistant coaches were Black; and 2) while only six of 400 NFL head coaches hired since 1929 were Black, they significantly outperformed their white counterparts in wins and playoff appearances. Mehri and Cochran threatened a lawsuit, and the NFL agreed to change.

Later that year the NFL adopted the "Rooney Rule," requiring teams to interview at least one non-white candidate for any open coaching position. In 2004, two of the seven vacancies were filled by Black coaches. The Rooney rule did what happy accidents and the passage of time could notmake a dent in race-based discrimination in the NFL.

Today, we've got two black coaches in the Superbowl (and a Black Presidential candidate in the wings), but these are small steps towards a much greater goal of equality and racial justice. Most Black people still have second-class access to quality health care, jobs and education; an increasing number of Black men go to prison instead of college; and Katrina made clear that protecting the lives of Black folks, especially if they are poor, is of little importance to those in power.

Van and I started ColorOfChange because we know that change doesn't happen without a fight, and because we have faithand great hopethat all of us, together, can keep pushing forward to make major change for Blacks in America.

Today, let's celebrate these two amazing brothers, Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears and Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts, and pay tribute to those who helped them get to the top of the game. And then tomorrow, let's continue the work of raising our collective voices, applying pressure, and fighting for greater justice for us all.

Thank you for being a part of this work,

-- James Rucker
Executive Director, ColorOfChange.org
February 4th, 2007

And if you can get with that, perhaps you would also be interested to see that Spike Lee is working to increase the numbers of Black sports journalists by initiating a new program at Morehouse College (HBCU).

And if you're wondering where I stand on the intersection of violent sports and race, perhaps you would be interested in this NYT analysis of violence in the Super Bowl adverts, assessed as a reflecting the toll of war. And maybe I don't need to point out that when we look at the most celebrated "opportunities" for young people of color, (violent, competitive) sports and (always wrong) war figure pretty prominently.

Can the Master's Speech Dis-Articulate the Status Quo?

2007-02-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

For the moment, Biden's recent statements about Barack Obama, which I'm sure he deeply regrets, are raising a conversation about what people (of every color and creed) think about a Black person in a powerful position whose affect is, well, mainstream. The first article I am posting below is an effective interrogation of just what exactly "articulate," means when applied to someone like Obama, and the second is a memorium to Molly Ivans written by Maya Angelou.

It seems a proper conjunction between the befuddlement of certain, white people who don't get out much (and their suprise, as if it is always, already the first time that they have encountered an "articulate" person of color), and the overlap of these two women, one Black and one white, who have used their facility with language and eloquence to advance the "good fight" until the very end.

See An Inarticulate Kickoff, by Eugene Robinson
Molly Ivans Shook the Walls with Her Clarion Call, by Maya Angelou,
Remebering Molly Ivans, by Lou Dubose (former editor, The Texas Observer),
and Missing Molly Ivans, by Paul Krugman (posted below, from NYT Select).
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Missing Molly Ivins
New York Times Select (NY)
February 2, 2007
Author: PAUL KRUGMAN

Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, "a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader's record."

I can't claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.

She explained her philosophy in a stinging 1995 article in Mother Jones magazine about Rush Limbaugh. "Satire has historically been the weapon of powerless people aimed at the powerful," she wrote. "When you use satire against powerless people it is like kicking a cripple."

Molly never lost sight of two eternal truths: rulers lie, and the times when people are most afraid to challenge authority are also the times when it's most important to do just that. And the fact that she remembered these truths explains something I haven't seen pointed out in any of the tributes: her extraordinary prescience on the central political issue of our time.

I've been going through Molly's columns from 2002 and 2003, the period when most of the wise men of the press cheered as Our Leader took us to war on false pretenses, then dismissed as "Bush haters" anyone who complained about the absence of W.M.D. or warned that the victory celebrations were premature. Here are a few selections:

Nov. 19, 2002: "The greatest risk for us in invading Iraq is probably not war itself, so much as: What happens after we win? There is a batty degree of triumphalism loose in this country right now."

Jan. 16, 2003: "I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, 'Horrible three-way civil war?' "

July 14, 2003: "I opposed the war in Iraq because I thought it would lead to the peace from hell, but I'd rather not see my prediction come true and I don't think we have much time left to avert it. That the occupation is not going well is apparent to everyone but Donald Rumsfeld. We don't need people with credentials as right-wing ideologues and corporate privatizers -- we need people who know how to fix water and power plants."

Oct. 7, 2003: "Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire.

"I've got an even-money bet out that says more Americans will be killed in the peace than in the war, and more Iraqis will be killed by Americans in the peace than in the war. Not the first time I've had a bet out that I hoped I'd lose."

So Molly Ivins -- who didn't mingle with the great and famous, didn't have sources high in the administration, and never claimed special expertise on national security or the Middle East -- got almost everything right. Meanwhile, how did those who did have all those credentials do?

With very few exceptions, they got everything wrong. They bought the obviously cooked case for war -- or found their own reasons to endorse the invasion. They didn't see the folly of the venture, which was almost as obvious in prospect as it is with the benefit of hindsight. And they took years to realize that everything we were being told about progress in Iraq was a lie.

Was Molly smarter than all the experts? No, she was just braver. The administration's exploitation of 9/11 created an environment in which it took a lot of courage to see and say the obvious.

Molly had that courage; not enough others can say the same.

And it's not over. Many of those who failed the big test in 2002 and 2003 are now making excuses for the "surge." Meanwhile, the same techniques of allegation and innuendo that were used to promote war with Iraq are being used to ratchet up tensions with Iran.

Now, more than ever, we need people who will stand up against the follies and lies of the powerful. And Molly Ivins, who devoted her life to questioning authority, will be sorely missed.

P.O.C. Governors & In the White House

2007-01-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

As we study the upcoming competition for personning the federal executive branch, we have been reminded that governorship, traditionally, is seen as a neat precursor to presidency. (And we have been relieved to see that the electorate has denied these ambitions to several people particularly ill-suited to heading our multicultural democracy; cf., Allen.) So. . .naturally as race is raised as increasingly significant by virtue of the presence of people of color in high positions, especially governorships, the following three items caught my attention:

Did You Know that, Historically Speaking, Deval Patrick (Massachusetts) is Black Governor Number Three? "Some sources are referring to Deval Patrick as the second African-American governor in U.S. history, which is incorrect," wrote blogger eeka. While he is "the second elected African-American governor in the United States," he is also, in all accuracy, "the third to serve."

"P.B.S. Pinchback," she noted, "served as governor of Louisiana after an impeachment."

Considering his brief governorship occurred during the year of 1872 in the South, this struck me as both fascinating and noteworthy.

And There Are Many P.O.C. in the White House: Who Are They (Representing)?
On the subject of people of color who may (or may not, or were, and now are not, but might in the future) build their presidential curricula by serving the current White House administration, Colorlines has a very critical take. What they assess to be "tokenism" doesn't, they argue, lead to amplifying the concerns of traditionally marginal groups. (See the article for a useful survey of various folks "coming up in the ranks.")

The Dangers of "Running While Brown." Clearly the hideline below reveals its own critique, highly relevant to our perusal of governorship as presidential precursor. (Link to the site that "cites" this article.)

Heady Hilarity for the Historically-Aware

2007-01-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

This photo-quote has arrived twice now in my e-mailbox, causing some hilarity, but as my friend D. reminded me, the broader context and deeper historical connections are worth more than a cursory giggle. The following excerpt from page two of the article, entitled "President Bush is 'Our Bull Conner,' Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel Claims" (New York Sun, September 23, 2005), provides some background for the comment:

The storm, he [Charles Rangel] said, showed that "if you're black in this country, and you're poor in this country, it's not an inconvenience - it's a death sentence." Denouncing Mr. Bush for waging "a war that we cannot win under any stretch of our imagination" instead of providing for those devastated by the hurricane, Mr. Rangel left his audience with a parting thought.

"If there's one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget, it's that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all," the congressman said.

Rangel raises the fallacy of white supremacy in an unsubtle fashion that is seen as humorous by some, and "inflammatory" by others (see the article), but I would wager that many USAmericans won't even recognize or understand the profoundity of this reference to Bull Conners. Clearly the transparency (as acknowledged by many observers all over the world) of what happened to poor and black communities in the aftermath following Katrina has brought the historical irony of reinscribing racial inequality at home, while purporting to "defend democracy" and "freedom" abroad to the level of public discourse. The point he makes, if it needs explaining, is that blatant manifestations of institutionalized racism are among the many horrific and inevitable consequences of our current myopic priorities which focus on global power with very little attention to the local effects, here or elsewhere, and that we would do ourselves better to carefully examine the very recent historical contributions of racial supremacy theories to the strategic premises which undergird the USA's will to global influence/dominance.

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Related, of course, is the discussion about reparations and who is responsible to whom for the brutalities of our historical past. See also, this article, "(Slavery) Get Over It."

Racing the Whitehouse--Renewed Hope for a Capitol "B"

2007-01-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

There is a perrenial two-part "race" question that seems to be emerging again as folks engage the idea of a Black President and what that would mean for the USA historically. The first part of the question is why Black, with a capital "B," is more politically and culturally expedient than just "black," and the second is why the capital "W" is left to more seamy, semiological duties in public discourse these days. (Perhaps, you've heard the question posed, why "white," not "White"?)

A friend sent an article today (see the link below) that takes its departure from a conversation about whether Barack-O is "Black," or even "black." Given the absence of USAmerican slave experience in his ancestry, some have argued, he might be among the few folks for whom "African-American" is truly more descriptive; however, as this author relates, "Black" (and many other group identities that refer to a recent or multi-generational experience of racialized oppression) is more than merely the exact, complementary Other to whiteness.

Why is this? If we accept that slave history is every USAmerican citizen's legacy, we begin to understand why and how "whiteness," as such, disavows history, and why Blackness, perforce, claims it. We also begin to understand how a man, who is of African-descent and a highly, political figure must in many respects be "Black." That is, Black, with a capital "B," is a claimed identity that recognizes the broader history of race and how bodies are marked and how our society must deal with the ongoing, persistent effects of social inequities in a society where race is precisely a cover for reinscribing these inequalities.

The related point, which the attached article raises best through a gentle interrogation of the author's own "mixed-race" experience, is the invisibility factor of whiteness. White, he aruges, is a non-identity, which carries neither the burden of representation (i.e., speaking for the collective with total historical and political awareness at all times) nor the social stigma of being "marked" and "read" through the daily lens of race, racializing institutions, and racism. So, the author, concluding that he does not bear an unequal share of the social, political and economic burden that "race" bestows on racialized subjects, chooses "white" on the required university form, and acknowledges the choice as a privilege. In sum, he argues that white (uncapitalized) is not an acknowledged political identity that explicitly seeks to redress a long history of inequality. (Of course, there are "White" movements.)

In supplement to his argument, I observe that when media celebrate "race" as a significant issue in these upcoming elections, they often divert people's attention from the fact that race issues are unequivocally USAmerican issues, and that "Black" is triangulated into each USAmerican's lived identity, conscious or otherwise. By invoking race, society's most unwieldy, pseudo-scientific tool, media catalyze certain "race effects," including ascribing distinct responsibilities and reinscribing differential power. In the world of politics, neither white nor black mean anything when left outside the context of a struggle for social equality, which is why self-description that clarifies a political position is such significant terrain for non-white people, and why many people who enjoy the benefits of the status quo choose not to acknowledge the difference that a capital "B" proclaims, and, accordingly, why they might like to keep the capital "B" (as in both "Barack" and "Black") out of the capitol, and out of the "White" House!

See "Black" vs. black

Was 2006 The Retreat to Race? Give the Gift of Thoughtful Attention This Holiday Season

2006-12-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

Race, racializing, and racism are big news this year.

(I could cry at how cavalier everyone seems about the resonance of the Rosie O'Donuthead incident with every other recent “cele-bratty” racial tirade.)

The larger context, for a moment, is that currently we USAmericans are embattled on every front. During times of war, historically speaking, white America closes ranks. Internment, torture, mistrust and fear. None of these things are new, but shouldn’t we take this opportunity to do something different? To look at our society and how growing US isolationism is not only fomenting hatred of our country by the rest of the world, but also revealing our unreconstructed deployments of difference here in the “land of the free”?

As cynical as many of us are about our transnational role as a model for an actually, existing multi-cultural democracy these incidents speak volumes to the rest of the world: That is, peace and productive inter-ethnic exchange are impossible, just look at the U.S.

Just look at “US” for a moment, and think about whether this is a laughing matter, or a really significant indicator of how much work we still have to do to educate ourselves. The one good thing about this incident is that it raises anti-Asian sentiment to the level of conscious discourse at this important moment. Red alert! We should really look at how the war on terror has "somehow" been translated into a war on difference, and a license to hate.

As I read way too many commentaries on blogs to get a sense of how people feel about this level of direct dialogue on race, I have to put a strategically optimistic spin on it, perhaps racist people will get so sick of hearing about racism that they’ll stop it!

Probably not. But we can hope that all this talk about race will generate a more nuanced critique and more unified mobilization. (Also, since when aren't anti-racists the same people who oppose sexism, homophobia, agism, abilism, etc.?)

Drink a loving cup to issue in all the positive social change we will enact in 2007!

P.S. I agree with anyone who is experiencing media meltdown from too many conversations among people that seem to begging for a critical thinking intervention, so I just signed up to be an e-activist on media policy.
Dunno what will come of it, but the site is very informative!

President Obama: Should he Run?

2006-12-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Folks are asking the question, "should he run?"

Here's a link to a great NPR story raising some of the other questions. (Thanks, Odille.)

Put on Your Race Goggles, Mama . . .

2006-12-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

We all wish our society were truly color-blind, whatever that might mean, but recent events reveal the truth that most USAmericans choose to remain color-unconscious. I'd begun this entry on race, humor, and the collective psyche, when the shooting of a young Black man in New York occurred. News commentators overtly claimed it was "contagious" rather than racial, because two black and two Latino officers participated. In our current state of panic inducing color-coded alerts, perhaps we should look at how racism itself is contagious and where it infects us most.

More than merely inconvenient to people of color and our allies, race-based ideas, ignorance, and racism pervade the collective psyche from which we all enact our decisions, interact with others, and consequently, it frames the things we find fearsome, horrific or funny. For a few moments following Katrina, it seemed the whole of USAmerican society had admitted finally that our country needs 24-hour, high-definition, global color vision—that is, real, actionable insight on how racism continues to impact our society. Then it seemed like we got tired of wearing our goggles all the time and translating everything into race-talk.

(After all, Louisiana is in the South, where they haven’t fully implemented the post-civil rights society that we enjoy elsewhere.)

But, if this were true, where in the US would our actually existing racial utopia locate itself, in Hollywood? New York? As horrified as many people were by one comedian’s recent racist meltdown at a Jewish comedy club in Los Angeles, you don’t need me to remind you that throughout this year, we’ve seen a whole host of “celebs” and politicians laying bare the ugliest trash of our collective psyche (and then apologizing). These recent incidents, I argue, point up a busy psychic intersection where neglected areas of national history, persistent unspoken relations of abusive power, and suppressed family secrets collide. Strangely, humor peddlers, politicians, disgruntled drunks, and pollsters, all vie for exclusive rights to work this lucrative corner: America’s collective unconscious. If we are to reclaim this precious real estate, clearly, we must secure our color-vision goggles and ready ourselves for the long-haul, a protracted engagement with the constant, visible manifestations of the "dark matter" of our collective psyche, or Race.

I'm posting the following article, which, acutely, sheds considerable light on race matters in these recent days.
-------------------------(Click on the title for the link).

The Crime of Breathing While Black

By Christopher Rabb, TheNation.com. Posted December 7, 2006.

A young black man and an elderly black woman each die in a hail of police bullets; a comedian invokes the era of lynching, and suddenly it feels like a crime to be caught breathing while black.

There is nothing like being made to feel like a nigger. Just having to verbalize it or commit such a thought to text is gut-wrenching. Janitor or journalist, if you're black in America, that feeling is both unmistakable and more familiar than it ever should be so long after the the visible successes of the civil rights movement. But despite the greater prospects, opportunities and privileges earned for and by many of us over the decades, the default has remained the same: The power dynamics that exist in this country at any given time may render us niggers.

I have often joked that if you ever want to see a modern-day Uncle Tom, look no further than me in the vicinity of a white police officer. The reality is, that is how I have been conditioned to behave around the police for pure self-preservation reasons, having grown up black in Chicago with parents who wanted their boys to live to adulthood. But the other reality is that whatever newfound liberties I have experienced, and all too often have taken for granted, I don't ever want to be made to feel like a nigger -- something far, far worse than its utterance. It is a status whose roots form the tree from which we are lynched. Without the corollary lack of humanity and powerlessness, lynching could not occur, in all of its modern iterations, "contagious shootings" included.

Two recent police shootings involving black victims have a deeper meaning and impact for those of us who are unwarranted, but nevertheless prospective, suspects. In New York, Sean Bell, a 23-year-old unarmed man, died and two of his friends were critically wounded -- caught in a hail of fifty bullets fired by undercover officers -- as the group emerged from a nightclub, where they had been celebrating Bell's bachelor party. In Atlanta, 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot as she sought to defend herself from police who had stormed into her home in search of drugs.

This past Thanksgiving I was stopped by an Alabama state trooper for a minor, unintentional moving violation. It was late, my family and I were tired and we were driving through rural Alabama in a rental car. Almost instinctively I knew what I had to become and how I had to act when pulled over. But as soon as I knew that the trooper had no desire to use his discretion to let me off with a warning, I committed an inviolable act that I will not soon forgive myself for as a husband and father of two small children: I challenged the trooper, albeit politely. It was a stupid and potentially dangerous thing for me to do, as the stealthy punches to my thigh from my wife reminded me.

Nothing is more important to me than the safety of my family, and yet there was this dissonant part of me -- that privileged post-civil-rights-era, Generation X sensibility that was evoked -- asserting that "we've been niggers long enough," as I recounted the generations and diversity of indignities my family has had to withstand with no recourse.

Such indignities still abound in popular culture. Consider comedian Michael Richards, who recently unleashed a racist tirade after being heckled by a few black men in the audience. Worse, he made graphic reference to lynching when he explained what would have befallen them had they "mouthed off" to a white person fifty years ago.

But whether or not we use the word "nigger" or discourage its use by others -- or among black folk -- the discrete events that trigger that visceral feeling in us will remain as long as black lives continue to have less value than white lives. Because they do. To invoke a newer, insidious rhetorical tool of conservatives, it is white "innocent life" that is sacrosanct, not society's moral outrage against violence and brutality, physical or psychological.

More than a decade after the O.J. Simpson verdict, Simpson is still the poster boy for brutality and injustice, whereas former detective Mark Fuhrman is all but legitimated as a bestselling author despite a long history of his admitted brutality as a member of the LAPD.

For many African-Americans, whether or not they believe a guilty man was nearly framed, to cast Simpson as a symbol of brutality gone unpunished is not only bizarrely misplaced and insulting; it is also symptomatic of a society intentionally blind to the daily realities of what it feels like to be seen more as a problem than as a person.

Every day we are made conscious of our own race and status in society by a host of peers and judges in a range of venues. And even if we never have to endure an altercation with the police, we still are acutely aware of how easily we can be made to feel like niggers: our gait, tone, behavior, our proximity to valuables (or more valuable people) is scrutinized. And our choice to accept this reality and conform to earn that eye contact, that begrudging customer service or that success in hailing a cab is related to this issue of brutality, because it is an assault on our citizenship and very humanity.

"Contagious shooting" may very well be a legitimate assessment of the events that culminated in Sean Bell's death hours before his wedding. But it is symptomatic of something larger that undoubtedly correlates to when such contagions most often occur and to what degree. If there is a presumption of guilt or reason to fear or distrust someone irrespective of context, that itself is a crime; it represents the psychological brutality and ubiquity of institutional racism.

But perhaps institutional racism sounds a bit too harsh for the thin-skinned mainstream media, the proxy of our willfully ignorant body politic. Society prefers what is in essence "situational racism" that dissolves with a well-placed, well-timed apology to the right brokers of contrition. "Some of my best friends are black." "I was drunk." "He had a wallet." All socially acceptable mitigators of brutal speech are deftly untethered from their more vile origins, too shameful and heavy for those most complicit to bare. But the weight of its impact never lessens on those of us who do not have a choice as long as we're breathing while black.

Christopher Rabb is a blogger, freelance writer, web entrepreneur and activist. He is the founder of Afro-Netizen, one of the largest Black-oriented weblogs on the Internet, and has also founded the Progressive Civic Fund.

Detour: If You Can't Transgress, Digress!

2006-09-12T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've gone underground with my novel, and as my other blogs attest, I've been otherwise and productively distracted, but there's so much fodder for this particular discussion. . .that I simply must pipe up!

Pretend you are a visitor from a far away galaxy for fifteen minutes, and observe what you learn about the contemporary problematic of "race" in the U.S.A. as you explore the following links (ushered by my explanatory titles).

Race Expertise Companies--New Spin on the Business of Diversity

Tracking Media Representations of Mixed People

Think Tank Promoting Justice in Media

Tune in to "Addicted to Race" (Podcast)

A Petition to Let Self-Appointed Experts Know that MTV is Not a Champion of Diversity!

On the Transcommunal Bridging of Black and Women's History (Months)

2006-03-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

Plentiful and eloquent discussions have raised our awareness of the simultaneous value and irony of devoting a single month to the histories of Afrodescendent peoples in the U.S. followed by another month dedicated to women’s histories. For me, February being a short month, the celebration and inspiration to train our historical eyes to peer more closely at the contributions of Black people to our broader national legal, social and democratic legacies always recedes a little too quickly. So as I find myself noting the flow of the ‘ides’ and consequently the ebb of Black history month, I try to ease the progression by lifting up the people who contribute to these histories by bridging movements.

Aptly, the National Black Justice Coalition just posted a web-piece that praised ‘same-gender loving heroes,’ who have been at the forefront of the kind of community work to which I refer. Below is the link, which offers our global-eyes a lens on the kind of transcommunal work done by Black folks of all genders that advances the project that we pursue in our increasingly international women’s movement as well:

http://www.nbjcoalition.org/news/black-history-profile-5.html

International Women's Day

2006-03-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

It is literally the eleventh hour, since G-world was down earlier, but we post now to remind everyone that March 8 is indeed women's day all over the world, and to remember and to recognize all of the women who have contributed to the movement(s).

(Tomorrow we'll add some details.)

Coretta Scott King Dies at 78: "Leaves Feminist Legacy"

2006-01-31T14:07:00.000-08:00

We honor Coretta Scott King, the amazing woman, whose life was a light on positive social change as a personal path. Like a beacon illuminating intersections rather than impassable social chasms, she showed us how we might overcome one of the stickiest of activist dilemmas. That is, seeing beyond one's own situated experience (or epistemological tunnel vision). We must remember rather, as she always did, that when we promote racial or gender equality, the broader social change we seek is neither culturally-specific nor single-issue. Each success advances our capacity to recognize and promote human equality on all fronts!

The reprint posted below taken from the Feminist Daily News Wire offers a very brief sketch of Corretta King's life and reminds us of her exemplary contributions to various movements simultaneously. While today's BBC article, entitled "Widow of Martin Luther King Dies," is longer and has beautiful pictures, the more "feminist" approach, evident when comparing titles, is better, and here's why.

The FDNW synopsis recognizes her singular life as a contribution in its own right. Surely it is unintentional when the BBC treats Coretta Scott King as wholly derivative of her husband. Nevertheless, the effect is stunning: Clearly for fear of readerly non-recognition, the title fails to mention her name, and, instead of remedying this, the first sentence explains that "Mrs King had carried on her husband's work for racial equality after he was assassinated in 1968." Perhaps there is an ironic comparative lesson to be drawn with the subject of yesterday's post regarding the first woman president of South America. This is a big deal! That is, as we noted, an entire handful of women has served previously in a presidential capacity during an interim period usually related to the death of a presidential husband. These previous cases of women effectively and capably exercising executive power, however, fail to constitute a "legacy" of women presidents, political, historical or otherwise.

What is distinct about Coretta Scott King's legacy is that she served vigorously as a leader in the pursuit of peace and civil rights before and after her husband's death. Her life leaves us a feminist legacy, because she took her husband's work where he might not have been able to do. By refusing to compromise race for gender or vice versa, she charted an historical course for future feminists of all genders to carry on.

We wonder, who will replace her in the interim?

"Coretta Scott King Dies at 78, Leaves Feminist Legacy"
Feminist Daily News Wire - 1/31/2006
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Renowned civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, wife of the late Martin Luther King, Jr, passed away last night in her sleep at the age of 78. Coretta Scott King was well-known for her dedication to peace and civil rights, but she was also dedicated to women’s rights throughout her lifetime.

King played a significant role in the founding years of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She hosted NOW’s second convention in Atlanta, Georgia. King was appointed by President Carter to serve as a commissioner on the National Commission on the Observation of International Women’s Year, which was led by Bella Abzug.

On what would have been Martin Luther King’s 50th birthday, King dedicated the public observation to the drive to make his birthday a national holiday, as well as the drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. King faithfully attended the annual brunch of the National Congress of Black Women, led by Dr. C. DeLores Tucker, a civil rights and women’s rights champion who passed away last year.

“Over and over again, Coretta Scott King lent her words, her encouragement, her acts, and her deeds for the drive for human rights, civil rights, and women’s rights worldwide,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “She wisely used her historical position to further the rights of all people.”

(Tagline: "FeministMajority.org - Your source for the feminist perspective on political Media Resources - Feminist Majority Foundation")

SEE PHOTOESSAY: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/coretta_king/

Chile Gets First Woman President: Are We Next?

2006-01-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to centre-left candidate Michelle Bachelet, who has become Chile's first woman president, taking at least 53.5% of the poll.

According to the BBC, it has been noted that she is somewhat of an unusual choice for the conservative country, because "not only is she a woman, but she calls herself a socialist and she is a single parent with a 12-year-old daughter and two other grown children." (She's also a doctor!)

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A FEW NOTES REGARDING SOUTH AMERICAN WOMEN PRESIDENTS
Michelle Bachelet - elected Chile's first woman leader, 2006
Janet Jagan - elected Guyana's leader in 1997 after the death of her husband, the previous president
Lidia Gueiler Tejada - served as interim president of Bolivia following a coup, 1979-80
Isabel Martinez de Peron - sworn in as interim president of Argentina in 1974 when husband Juan Peron fell ill and died; kept power until 1976
Rosalia Arteaga - briefly acted as president of Ecuador in 1997

My Secret Gardena: A Grandmother Tale

2006-01-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

I am calling from my car to announce that I am circling East Los Angeles like a helicopter looking for a clearing.

In my mind’s eye, I can see my granny standing near the table next to the window as the phone rings. It doesn’t beep or trill or screech. Somewhere inside the old-fashioned apparatus that my grandmother expertly splits in two and places against her ear, there is a little tiny hammer that strikes a little tiny telephone bell that, literally, rings.

As she lifts the receiver, Granny smoothes the cloth on the table and surveys the length of her block on 139th street through her screen door, both up and down. Then she says unhurriedly, as if her voice is made of maple syrup, “hello-ooo. This is Mary. Oh, hi sugar, my beautiful granddaughter. Where are you?”

“I am right here on San Pedro, so I’ll be there very soon,” I answer.

This is only true in a relative sense, because every time I begin my descent down Granny’s street I rediscover the winding back-roads of Gardena. That is, I get lost.

If I were a normal, sensible person I would follow the internet map, stay on the freeway for ten more miles, and circumnavigate this crazy third-world labyrinth of industrial warehouses and burned out projects. But I am not a normal sensible person. Rather, I follow the sentimental landmarks punctuating my childhood memories, which, obviously, are no good for driving.

But I simply cannot resist. I have to see it. I have to know that it is still there.

Driving intuitively, I scan the wide boulevards, which are sparsely strewn with boarded up businesses and bullet-proof liquor stores, for other signs of life, or better, signs of families. Way over to the left, I spot low buildings, like bungalows, and something green, perhaps a hedge, so I turn at the corner. I drive a couple more blocks and then turn again.

Eureka! Halfway down the block, I spy a handful of handsome, young men milling about in the driveway before dinner. I call out to them, explaining my query. The boy who approaches my car is tall for thirteen and very polite. He flashes a big white smile, admits his ignorance quickly and apologetically, and summons his little sister from the house by turning toward it and yelling. “Sissy” emerges onto the porch, which prompts the immediate appearance of “Dad,’ who waves to me and calls out to his wife, “Mama, come out here and tell this girl how to get over to one-three-nine street!”

A woman with a smooth brown face and the same gorgeous smile as her boy emerges from the backyard. The whole family accompanies her to my car. “Mama” does not look old enough to be my mother, but she clearly knows her stuff. Rather officially, she wipes her hands on a dish towel, confirms that I am less than a mile from Granny’s house, and kindly points the way.

Somewhere at the heart of Gardena, sandwiched between the notorious Compton and the infamous Watts, lies this magical community, where approximately one hundred black families continue to live quietly in very modest houses with small, immaculate lawns. And, I assure you, the handful of bright young men, who are waxing the car in the driveway or standing by while someone cuts the grass, are always eager and ready to engineer a special small town welcome for anyone who is lost on her way to Granny’s house. Which is why, I highly recommend the surface route.
αααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααααα
(Inspired by a Conversation with the San Diego Women’s History Museum)

Advancing Gender Equality In Remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King

2006-01-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

"I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education, and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits"

— Dr. Martin Luther King
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“But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.”

In his day and age, Dr. Martin Luther King believed that racial equality would produce a more just society, and that a society thus improved would benefit everyone. The famous “I Have a Dream” speech desegregated our national unconscious, by universalizing the so-called “American Dream.” Here I celebrate the Dr. MLK legacy by reflecting on how his inspired vision for peaceful, progressive social change would necessarily embrace gender as the significant window on creating universal equality and global prosperity in our 2006 world.

How was Dr. King able to wrap his arms around the issues of the day so effectively as to speak to everyone without straying from his larger vision of racial equality?

We admire Dr. Martin Luther King for modeling clarity of purpose and how to communicate it. The powerful resonance of Dr. King’s words across the ages—LET FREEDOM RING—reflects more than merely discursive acumen. Rather, Dr. King’s genius lay in his ability to include, apprehend and compel everyone within earshot to revise their sense of our human destiny.

Universalizing the “American Dream,” therefore, required a logical feat simultaneously philosophical and economic. First we must imagine ourselves human (not simply color-coded or US); then we must imagine ourselves free. In the actual language of the “Dream” speech, Dr. King uses financial metaphors, such as bad checks and bank notes, to enjoin leaders and common folks alike to see the jealously guarded coffers of American opportunity as boundless, rather than bankrupt. Released from the miserly, Calvinistic hoarding of the “riches of freedom,” we might truly enjoy the “inalienable rights of men.” When the dream is realized, then, we are no longer struggling in a competitive marketplace for a limited supply of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” because these are the universal “rights” of citizens (which here we presume to mean all humans).

But years later, we must face the tragic fact that Woman is still not equal.

To his credit, Dr. King’s universalist dream mentioned the little girls who would join hands with little boys, so that we might be sisters and brothers all around. Unfortunately for us, however, he did not mention the women we would become, nor did he flush out for us how in this millennium every kind of structural inequality cramping our global prosperity would hide behind gender, once race was "gone."

Dr. King once said, “Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.” In the same fashion that he was able to galvanize the everyday concerns of “men,” to convince us that universal equality was our "human" project to enact together, I will follow his leading example by hoping for our continued moral evolution; by exposing the fraudulent logic of economic scarcity; and by exploiting our great strength, which is numbers.

As mentioned earlier, the language of the Millennium Goals stretches toward total inclusion, or ‘universality,’ and, interestingly to us, the practical economic logic wielded by powerful leaders recognizes that gender inequality is expensive on a massive, global scale. In closing, given the increasing numbers of women, and poor women, and poor women who are mothers with HIV and no access to education and no transportation and no work, I suggest that equality in these areas, in all areas, may be our best bet for unlocking the mystery of universal human rights and equality in this millennium.

Organizing to that effect (i.e., promoting GENDER EQUALITY; c.f. millenium goal, number three) is my way of drawing on and celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King's powerful legacy!

Winter Gifts: Irremediably Hopeful Social Change Objectives for 2006

2006-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Among the many loving ways that our friends and family demonstrated affection and caring for us during this recent and seemingly endless series of winter holidays, one gift shines light on all the others. My grad school mentor sent a new year's card, announcing a share of a goat had been given in our name to an extremely poor family. Little did I know how much we needed that gift, and how it would allow me to appreciate all of our gift(s) more consciously, and strangely enough, guiltlessly.

I posted the card and photograph at the busiest crossroads in our apartment. Each time I walk by and notice the Indian woman accepting a goat, I am inspired. Rather than feeling distanced by a photograph that only refers to an exemplary family receiving a picture-perfect goat, I appreciate its generality. The woman's face beautifully communicates her dignity and purpose, concretizing the abstract, if economically specific, value of a "share." That is, this photo reminds me that throughout the world people are working with our collective resources to create and increase our global prosperity.

The health and prosperity of the family that received a goat, then, literally enriches me.

A Quick Evaluation: Are Your New Year's Resolutions Sufficiently Optimistic?

Unequivocally, we endeavor to increase our common global treasury of economic, cultural, environmental and spiritual prosperity, but sometimes we allow cynicism to weigh down our perspective.

In honor of all the underdogs who have made New Year's resolutions that they hope will stick, and of all the people who are represented by the 189 heads of state who--no matter how politically or disingenuously--have implicated us discursively, historically and irretrievably in pursuing (or failing to pursue) a host of "Millennium Goals" (at the 2000 UN Millennium Summit), I have created a 15-minute exercise for generating and replenishing healthy optimism as we embark on the journey of 2006.

(I suggest you use a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, divided into four equal qundrants.) I promise this is heartening!

1. Firstly, read the millennium goals below, and/or the facts about poverty in California. (In quandrant one, note which single goal or fact most touches sparks for you.)

"Millennium Goals " (from Millennium Declaration, 2000 UN Millennium Summit)

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Notice these statistics are about us. . .10 Facts about Poverty in California
(Simply copied wholesale from a reputable website).

Four of the twenty poorest cities in this country are in California, which includes Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego.
There are 36 million people living in poverty in the U.S. - five million of those in California.
One in five children in our state live in poverty.
In 2003, Tulare County had the highest percentage of poverty in California.
In 2000, Fresno was the poorest major city in the nation.
The U.S. poverty threshold in 2000 for a family of four was $17,603.
African American and Latinos are overrepresented among California's poor.
In Los Angeles County, 1 in 3 single families in 2000 were poor.
Individual poverty in California in 2000 was 14.2 percent of the state's population.
The average poor family spends more than half their income on rent.

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2. Secondly, think about how you personally speak or act to change ANYTHING mentioned or implied in these documents.

Yes, the sweeping language implies alot. For instance, in California, working for better education, women's rights, minority access to transportation, healthcare or work would significantly change the rates of poverty.

(Put your notes in quadrant two.)

3. Write down one thing you plan to do in 2006 that will make a difference, even if you simply rewrite the item from quadrant two, in quadrant three.

4. Now, affirm your work by noting something specific about your commitment.

For instance, schedule the days or dates that you will work on and/or complete these goals, or note how your your work addresses a local issue or a global objective. Write this in quadrant four.

5. Congratulations, and thank you for working in specific ways to create global prosperity!

In the Street: Why Mulatta Ain’t Got No Class?

2005-12-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

The mainstream media crescendo of direct references to a notion of race appears to be mounting. Recent events demonstrate how the “R” word (and any common understanding of what race means today) operates like a discursive iceberg, where race seems to allude to or insinuate something below the surface, but never quite reveals what or how vast that thing is until it is too late.

We know that references to race raise emotions and that many people in our society continue to characterize social tensions that cannot be otherwise explained as race-related. Unfortunately, however, the ubiquitousness of race in public discourse does little to determine its usefulness as a modern American English vocabulary word or to pin down its precise meaning for the majority of people who have need to use it.

If I were less historically inclined, I might suspect that the alliterative appeal of “race riots,” rather than a precise application of sociological terminology, best explains their recent popularity in media reportage. The manner in which we have discussed recent events such as those in New Orleans, Paris, as well as Australia, however, just might reinstate 'race' as an operable concept in our political lexicon.

To what exactly does our contemporary application of ‘race’ refer, and why does it continue to be more linguistically evocative than other terms we use to characterize extreme social discord or injustice?

Race or Class?
After the Katrina FEMA-sco, everyone saw and heard the words ‘Black,’ ‘poor,’ ‘race’ and to a lesser degree ‘class' arranged for maximum emotional impact.

The media, meanwhile, stoked the public opinion machine:

“A nationwide NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 7 in 10 African American respondents -- compared with 3 in 10 white respondents -- said the Bush administration would have responded with more urgency in New Orleans if the victims had been in white suburbs, rather than a predominately black inner city. "

“Gallup . . . found only 21 percent of blacks surveyed believe Bush cares about black people.”

“About 1 in 4 African Americans lives in poverty, and the poverty rate for Black families headed by a single mother is almost 40 percent.”
c.f., http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/23/RACE.TMP

Despite the stark difference of perception between two distinct constituencies, President Bush offered an explanation that invoked race. "This poverty has roots in generations of segregation and discrimination that closed many doors of opportunity.''

While the President was careful to avoid the slippery slope of defining race, he saw the critical need to discursively connect the suffering of poor Louisianans to the persistence of racism in our society in terms that ‘insiders’ would understand.

Why? Here, the critical thinker must ignore the distractions of cynicism. Clearly, it was both politically expedient as well as humane for the President to communicate “compassion”—that is, to use polling and other data to accurately “feel with” the afflicted. The afflicted were (most visibly) Black.

Let’s revisit the poll results. Most significantly, these data reveal that most Black people and most white people FEEL differently where race is mentioned or involved.

Additionally, we might extrapolate that most Black people polled felt that race, racism and/or racial inequality were strongly inter-causal with the extensive poverty, suffering and death among Black hurricane victims. Conversely, White people in this poll mostly understood all of the above to be an extreme effect of class in/difference.

So who’s right?

Does Race Matter?
During the last ten years or so, the US government and public institutions, such as those related to education, social services, or healthcare, have done their best to eradicate the use of race terminology in public policy. As such, the proactive or “affirmative” strategies designed to systematically remedy socioeconomic inequality across racial/ethnic boundaries were deemed antiquated, ineffective and unnecessary.

The left blames the right for this.

Among progressives, however, many old-timers have tired of rehearsing arguments about the primacy of ethnicity, race, class, gender/sex or sexuality in successful social change work. Thus, many younger folks eschew old-school Civil Rights based activism to pursue more pragmatic organizing, which addresses social concerns, such as poverty, illness, illiteracy and violence.

Taking It to the Streets: Deducing Race from Forms of Protest
As suggested earlier, I suspect that we may deduce something about the importance of consciously--i.e., being aware/awake & preferably not drunk when--applying terms related to race by examining how as a concept it works “below the level of discourse.”

Let’s look at the ease with which we couple the word race with the word riot when describing a particular form of social unrest involving tension between two or more communities. (I will only mention that boycotts, strikes and demonstrations are not automatically perceived as racial.)

Take these examples of Post-Civil Rights era social unrest characterized as race riots: the debatably “multicultural” (neither unified nor idyllic) unrest in the streets of Los Angeles that included looting and burning stores after the police beatings of Rodney King; the disorganized roving of, as well as looting and burning of cars by suburban North African youth in Paris and France after the accidental electrocution of two boys involving the police; and finally in Sydney Australia, the organized mob reaction of 5000 mostly drunk white men who terrorized Lebanese or Arab-looking people at Cronulla beach based on rumors about attacks on two lifeguards, as well as a host of events escalating the involvement of all the implicated communities.

If it were not for the most recent application, we might define a “race riot” as a street demonstration by a racialized minority group that most likely includes looting and violence but absolutely forms a collective response to an understood (or perceived) social injustice. Applying “race riot” to the Australian situation, however, reveals that in this case the form of protest, the riot, is less important than the source of tension, race.

Quite simply, rather than withering because of its limited descriptive value, race is a lively, if unwieldy, social concept where we continue to dump the inexplicable, the emotional or the unmentionable social tensions that continue to plague an unegalitarian society.

Race doesn’t need a definition. In my opinion, it needs more careful pronunciation.

My Atavistic Political Blackness, Exclusionary or Solidary?

2005-12-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

There is no hierarchy of oppressions. – Audre Lorde

Years ago in Santa Cruz, I recognized the words of Audre Lorde tattooed ‘large-and-loud’ on the arm of a young, non-Black sales clerk at Trader Joe’s grocery store. Instantly, I felt myself cleaved in two.

On the one hand, I understood and appreciated the powerful commitment to universality that this girl had inscribed on her body: That is, “when I suffer, I feel your suffering. We are human together.”

Simultaneously, however, I heard the bitter-sweet rejoinder that often, even years later, surfaces when I see Lorde’s words quoted and, usually, attributed to (a non-Black) someone else doing good work. Somehow it is both the inclusive, rallying, humanistic cry as well as a practical, personal reminder that race continues to segregate and isolate members of our society.

That is, these among many of Audre Lorde's words always imply to me, “if you are oppressed, you know it. You don’t waste time fighting about who hurts more. You recognize oppression, and then you fight it wherever it is.”

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I raise this issue of whose suffering or whose equality is more important, because I found myself wrestling with finalizing an upcoming post about the imploding landscape of racial relations just as many of my/our social justice allies made their final efforts to support Stanley Williams in his struggle to claim his right to life.

I noticed that some of our strongest potential allies stood by confused, for lack of what I call a 'moral majority.' That is, as long as ethical clarity expressed by a politically significant majority of the People is absent, we cannot expect our public servants to exercise their duty--that is to wield the hoary authority that we confer upon them, in a manner consistent with our values.

Social justice leaders, such as Audre Lorde, who interpret human rights with compassion and clarity have reminded us that equal access to the basic rights of life, liberty, and freedom are what we seek, for everyone. (Not redemption, which we leave to the Divine.)

Tristes Traffique (2.1 ALT)

2005-12-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

Waking up is always a bit rough. Today, I watch myself as I emerge onto the expressway, like a smoldering Mad Maxine. Testing my morning mettle, I pump the accelerator for a unit of petrol-plasma and pursue the cloying, sweet ‘bouquet’ that hangs around the ‘jams.’ These are the jugular juggernauts that plague any system of human transplacement. These are also the data most relevant, and most elusive, to my research.

I speak the first of my daily observations aloud for the recorder:

“The public concourse stretches taut in all directions, pulled by one-way conveyances as far as my perception dares to go. The din is maddening, and the color of exchange at the moment is flashing red. Electronic, valvular overload seems imminent.”

“Present: Very tense,” I say in conclusion.

Until recently I saw little need for traveling the open highway. Frankly I had no stomach for it. Now, I am hardwired to surveil even the metaphors of transit. I spend my working days racing like a synesthetic wildfire along the circuitry of the collective somatic switchboard.

Sensing the data as it registers across the vast network of post-industrial capillaries and 24-hour sinews, I simultaneously taste and smell and feel transit.

A Busy Intersection: Global AIDS Awareness & Transportation Justice Day

2005-12-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

What Do AIDS Awareness & Transportation Justice Have in Common?

If it is merely coincidence that they share the first of December as their commemorative anniversary, the fact that these two significant issues for people of African descent share the need for a tireless critique of race/gender/class & sexuality is more than trivial to us. That is, today we must tie all consciousness-raising back to educating people worldwide about universal human rights, especially if we are among those who would declare themselves the global enforcers and purveryors of democracy.

What Color is AIDS? Is Access to Physical Well-Being, Health Care & Medicine a Universal Human Right?

In 2005, more than 3 million people contracted HIV, thus there are now greater than 40 million persons living with HIV and AIDS.

Three quarters of the people living with AIDS are in Africa, less than one percent of whom have access to medicine or "life-prolonging" treatment.

In the USA, more than half of all HIV infections are among African-Americans. Some of the obstacles to adequate treatment include lesser access to healthcare in general, and limited funding. Ironically, languaging in the Minority AIDS Initiative makes it difficult to apply federal monies appropriated for ethnic minorities to the most afflicted "racial" communities, i.e., African-Americans.

Well, thank goodness for World AIDS day; raising awareness about this dreadful disease and changing all of the crazy foundational logic that prevents us from finding and applying a global cure will eventually invigorate a universal, global understanding of structural inequality and eradicate that too.

What does public transit have to do with democracy?

Exactly fifty years ago, Rosa Parks defied the law and remained seated on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to bring the issue of racial inequality to the attention of the broader USAmerican public. Today, then, we should be cognizant of how access to public transportation or the lack thereof can continue to exaccerbate and reproduce the effects of social inequality in our society, especially for women of color.

According to the American Public Transit Association, women remain the most frequent users of public transportation. In fact, low income African-American women take five times more trips by public transit than the general female population. (Six times more trips than men.)

According to the Women's Foundation of California, access to safe, affordable and reliable transportation is one of the top three factors determining whether low-income women will obtain and keep work. Similarly, studies prove that access to public transit increases the participation of low-income girls in after-school programs and their likelihood to graduate.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the World Bank Development Fund has concluded that women's access to public transportation is one of the strongest indicators of whether societies transitioning toward democracy will make it.

This is because transportation means access to trade, work, school, public life, healthcare and the outdoors. Effectively access to transportation defines one's "quality of life."

Is a "quality" life a human right?

(Needless to say, we think so.)

GIPS--Race Bytes from the Mulatta-Mobile (4.0)

2005-11-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

Adjusting the specialized calipers on my head, I also fluff my 'afro' to maximum roundness in the rearview mirror. I must do my best to sit still, for interpolating an accurate up-to-the minute mapping of one's social position requires careful input.

As the system digests my coordinates, I make myself comfortable and wait for the audio ouput version of my perspectivally subjective, space-time specific physiography.

"Did you Say Bayou or Banlieue?" [The GIPS device is attached to the dashboard. The audio output voice is vaguely feminine, digitally composed with a cyber-Parisienne lilt. 'Gigi' reads aloud as the 'phreno-fingers' scan my cranial registry.]

"Physiography of Race in Public Discourse, Summary for Autumn 2005, Prepared by Your Personalized Transportation Unit, Gigi"

"Coordinate one. In France, just a few months ago, several people, mostly the children of African immigrants, had been trapped in their apartment building in Paris. The US news media made nothing of the French government's tepid reaction to this tragedy.

"Entry from Gigi's log: You sat in the cockpit and cried.

"Coordinate two.
When covering the effects of Hurricane Katrina, the US press repeatedly broadcast the tactless, if genuine, observations made by the president's mother: From the position of extreme wealth and privilege, the impoverished black people of Louisiana had lost very little.

"The world was outraged by her insensitivity.

"Since the cat was out of the bag, however, the president did something shocking. Diverting attention from his family as well as from FEMA, he acknowledged the persistence of race as a factor of social inequality in US society. Thus, those who survived the natural disaster and the genocidal aftershocks are now 'affirmatively' authorized by the current administration to blame history for the ongoing power effects of race, lived as Blackness.

"The world was somewhat appeased by his conservation of compassion.

"Entry from Gigi's general log: We noted that these poor people had no access to personal or public transportation.

"Coordinate three.
When USAmerican media began to cover the social unrest following the death of two young, Afro-Parisians who were chased by police into a power plant, reports emphasized that angry mobs had begun to burn cars in the streets all over France. Locally, radio audiences became so enervated by and fixated on this aspect of reportage that KPBS radio announcers were forced to quell the hysteria. They connected callers to on-site commentators in France who offered this perspective: nearly 100 cars burned nightly in France prior to the riots, so perhaps this was neither the most significant aspect of recent events nor very likely to spread to Southern California.

US-based reporters, themselves escaping the paralyzing grip of Southern California SUV-solipsism just in the nick of time, began to ask why the French government had reacted so slowly to recent events. Ellen Beardsley of NPR--stationed in Paris and therefore outside the obfuscating haze--suggested that French politics always happens in the streets. Thus French leaders awaited their cue. "They follow the impulse of the people."

"Notes from Gigi's Log: We noted the opportune nature of this historical moment for emphasizing the relative insignificance of the automobile in most of Europe, especially Paris. Since most Parisians utilize the Metro, RER, and other forms of public transportation, this attack on personal property might be read as an indictment of excessive, unequal privilege in a democratic society, rather than an effective assault on 'freedom' as it is defined in the USA.

"Should we finish the physiography or re-enter the highway?"

Race en feu / Race on fire (3.0)

2005-11-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today there is no avoiding the tangle, so I roll down my window and exploit this opportunity to collect an especially piquant emissions sample.

An huge, unmistakable flashing arrow is blocking the middle lane up ahead and implies some kind of detour. But as I place my foot on the brake and flick my blinker to indicate my assent, I notice that not everyone gives in so easily. In fact, there seems to be a contravening trend whereby individual vehicles throw themselves into the void beyond the sign.

Quickly inventing a phylogeny of perils, I sort the various distractions and squint my eyes to read. As the large block print on the sign acheives visibility, Gigi reads it in a muted, if theatrical scream, 'NOW ENTERING RACE.'

Rather stupidly, I ask, 'aren't we all going the same somewhere?'

When I realize that I am caught in the noisy swill of identity traffic, each commuter jockeying for position like so many spawning salmon in a kind of INDY 500 competition for political relevance, a priori, I decide to consult my personalized GIPS (global-identity-positioning-system) for the local coordinates of this so-called Race, before I enter the fray.

Culturally and historically speaking, where am I and what lies ahead?

Encouraging The Bus Riders Union & Move San Diego

2005-11-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

According to the website dedicated to advancing the cause of universally accessible transportation in San Diego,

"San Diegans pay 66% higher cash bus fares than transit riders in similarly sized cities. We also pay 25% more for monthly transit passes than transit riders in similarly sized cities. Yet, San Diego's transit is struggling -- we pay the highest fares but don't have the best transit system."

Recently I noticed that TRU (the Bus Riders' Union) had created Move San Diego and I initiated correspondence:

(Excerpt from Letter)
Dear Members of Move San Diego,

At the outset, I want to congratulate all of the transit riders in the union, for sustaining the energy and gathering the resources necessary to achieve this stage of organizational development. Additionally, I wish to express my genuine excitement about your next step, addressing public transportation in San Diego as one of the city's most significant, "cross-cutting" community issues. (I elaborate below.)

What’s good about now for *Move San Diego*?
As recent elections indicate, San Diegans want and appreciate fresh, creative energy right now. This is a great context for initiating a multi-dimensional, single issue campaign that offers Move San Diego as part of the solution. While monies may not be flowing so easily, this atmosphere of public receptiveness to novel solutions should be celebrated productively to create awareness and raise consciousness, both inside and outside political circles. It’s a great time to do two things, utilize our greatest asset, all of the bus riders, and to offer help to our public officials. For example, as they try to stretch the budget, our public officials are especially amenable to organizing approaches that make use of people power, untapped federal or state resources, assistance from other officials and allies, and novel ways to attract all of these through community involvement, etc.

How do we become the “go to” organization in public transportation reform?
The recent extension of TransNet by voters teaches us that transportation is recognized already as a significant community concern by the broader public. (San Diegans don’t pay taxes for non-issues.) So what’s the problem? San Diego’s long term infrastructure challenges continue to preempt any genuinely visionary regional transit solutions, because other needs, such as rural roads, are always perceived as more crucial. Why? Because transit riders are not at the table.

In the moments that matter, such as the forming of regional task forces and drafting community benefits agreements, transportation reform activists (bus riders, walkers, cyclists & allies) need to be recognized for the crucial contributions we make to community efforts to improve life for all San Diegans! In addition to being a political constituency that should be served, not underserved, by our officials, we need to make ourselves known, even indispensable to our “could-be” allies—i.e., other community and advocacy groups, environmentalists, and pro-worker groups such as unions, etc.

How do we get San Diegans to prioritize public transportation?
If we scrutinize recent history for campaigns that successfully address long-term, regional issues, affordable housing provides a nice example. Everyone knew there was a problem, but when policy research, specifically a household poll, demonstrated that the lack of affordable housing adversely impacted every family in the region, renters and homeowners alike, the Mayor declared a crisis! Furthermore, when all of the “players,” public and private, understood that this was more than merely an annoyance, rather, this was a deep social problem, cross-cutting all San Diegan communities regardless of class and ethnicity, the need to work regionally, strategically and through coalitions was transparent. Educating the public, then, both changes our understanding of the problem as well as the perceptions held by public officials, who are necessarily informed by public opinion!

It seems to me that to increase the ability of *Move San Diego* to address transportation reform, we will need to simplify it as a single issue. Simultaneously, we will need a comprehensive strategy to become the most recognized “go-to” name in transportation reform in San Diego. This is the perfect moment. Access to public transportation is fundamental to a democratic, metropolitan society like ours.

Again, I say, “let's make *Move San Diego*, the "go to" organization for public transportation reform!

Ride On!
Sincerely, Transit Mulatta (Of Course!)

“Hybrid Temporal Logic”—A Note Regarding the Online Order of Things

2005-11-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

For those who may begin at some point to forget how (and why) you read Transit Mulatta, I’ve devised an organizational schema involving dates but completely impervious to their intent.

Perhaps the ethics committee of web-logging society will discover me long before I apprehend the relevant tenets of temporal logic and reject me as well as my artful system.

Henceforth, nevertheless, any numbers appearing to be dates will serve as imaginary placeholders, tastefully arranged. Thus, rather than supporting any teleological, calendric fantasies, dates will indicate transitive, if useful, reading trajectories that hold only for the moment.

(How else should I draw my patient readers’ attention to the text that has suffered most recently under my creative erasure or other so-called 'writerly rigors'?)

Subjective Time: Writing Backwards in the Fast Lane (2.0)

2005-11-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

Speeding along as if I had never known rest, I am in motion.

Present: Very Tense.

Until recently, I had enjoyed an especially lonely stretch along the epistemological highway. From the serenity I created behind Gigi's tiny windscreen, I had no need for the carpool lane, and frankly no stomach for it.

Parked somewhere near the literal border of here and distinctly, ‘way-over-there,’ I simply sat, observing, lulled by the steady stream of muted colors and the mild, moderate tones of rational public radio updating my always-already-expanding knowledge base of political collisions and pedestrian double-crossings.

In fact, if it weren't for this congestion of broadcast and broadband in cellulite phone technology and PDA blue dentistry continuously lipo-suturing the vehicle of my fuel efficient autonomy to a broader somatic switchboard, the surface route to yoga might have maintained its blessed inertia indefinitely.

Nonetheless, something has ruptured my silence. CRASH!

Public discourse rages, loud, red, electronic, valvular overload.

Testing the jugular juggernaut, I pump the pedal for more petro-plasma, and somehow I see myself emerge like a smoldering Mad Maxine, 'mise un-seen.’ Racing like a synesthetic wildfire along the circuitry of post-industrial capillary and 24-hour sinews, I am no one’s native daughter, un-writing myself.

Thus, I complete my first parabolic adventure; hail myself as I go by and pull over.

Subtitle: Physiographies of Race/Gender/Sexuality & Public Transportation

2005-11-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

Because someone has mentioned that November is national novel writing month, I begin this blog 10 days into the game.

With no particular illusions, I simply allude to a never-ending, ne'er-quite-begun fiction project with my title. Anyone who reads this is welcome to draw her own conclusions about whether it is the book finally congealing or a chronicle of racializing discourse in the novo-millennial, global public sphere.