(Boy, I know all fandoms are like that, but this was kinda record for me.)
( And spoilers for latest Reborn chapter, the one that still hasn't come out. I don't know which number it is. )
In other news: I was googling for a correct way to phrase something for this entry and the first result for that search was actually this: Fancy a Fight? In Paraguay, Dueling is Still Legal.
Uhm, what? Excuse me? Like, really. I have no idea what you are talking about, son. Why am I seeing pictures of Jedi, fencing, and white men boxing anyway?
If I didn't feel so uncomfortable about this, I would talk about white privilege, and First World privilege and how they interact in a global level. Because some things coming from both sides just make me so tired.
But white Europeans? Who colonized my country and the reason racism in incredible and tremendously prevalent here is definitely not USA (but I'm not saying their culture doesn't influence ours a lot, that's not what I'm saying).
ETA: I forgot to say it, but what really, really bothered was the dismissal of
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wistfuljane's experience. As if being German-American, Italian-American was the same as Vietnamese-American or Asian-American. Which clearly is not the case. (But the OP may not feel it that way, as a dismissal I mean, and I respect that.)This is a village where some multinationals, far from levelling the global playing field with jobs and technology for all, are in the process of mining the planet's poorest back country for unimaginable profits. This is the village where Bill Gates lives, amassing a fortune of $55 billion while a third of his workforce is classified as temporary workers, and where competitors are either incorporated into the Microsoft monolith or made obsolete by the latest feat in software bundling. This is the village where we are indeed connected to one another through a web of brands, but the underside of that web reveals designer slums like the one I visited outside Jakarta. IBM claims that its technology spans the globe, and so it does, but often its international presence takes the form of cheap Third World labour producing the computer chips and power sources that drive our machines. On the outskirts of Manila, for instance, I met a seventeen-year-old girl who assembles CD-ROM drives for IBM. I told her I was impressed that someone so young could do such high-tech work. "We make computers," she told me, "but we don't know how to operate computers." Ours, it would seem, is not such a small planet after all.
It would be naive to believe that Western consumers haven't profited from these global divisions since the earliest days of colonialism. The Third World, as they say, has always existed for the comfort of the First. What is a relatively new development, however, is the amount of investigative interest there seems to be in the unbranded points of origin of brand-name goods. The travels of Nike sneakers have been traced back to the abusive sweatshops of Vietnam, Barbie's little outfits back to the child labourers of Sumatra, Starbucks' lattes to the sun-scorched coffee fields of Guatemala, and Shell's oil back to the polluted and impoverished villages of the Niger Delta.
Very good, isn't it? Until the exact next paragraph:
The title No Logo is not meant to be read as a literal slogan (as in No More Logos!), or a post-logo logo (there is already a No Logo clothing line, or so I'm told). Rather, it is an attempt to capture an Anticorporate attitude I see emerging among many young activists. This book is hinged on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition.
Uhm. So let me get this straight, Klein. You write this for First World Liberal Westerners. Who just have to wake up from their comfortable lives and fight corporations. Never mind that the same Third World Activism have been doing this for decades by now. I hope I'm reading you wrong, but I'm having a feeling you see them (us?) as Those Poor People who have to be saved by White First World Westerners. We have agency, you know.
I just hope the rest of your book doesn't treat Developing Countries citizens as The Other (Object) That Has to be Saved and Protected because I would be pissed.
(To be fair, I just started reading, so I have no idea. It says hell of important things, but it just reminded me to a post I read casually today on one of the linkspams about HOW WE NEED THE POWERFUL WHITE PEOPLE BECAUSE WE HAVE TO BE PRACTICAL EVEN IF IT COSTS US OUR DIGNITY, and sorry, I don't subscribe to your magazine. Sorry again. Powerful White People? Treat other human beings as human beings. A snake isn't more important than me, I don't care how your white self may see it. That's all.)
ETA: Also, its introduction is treating Western Activism as a Salvation and totally dismissing the effect a lot of it really has in Third World communities of color (I'm just seeing the praising of White Environmentalist). But I don't know if these things will be mentioned again through the book.
ETA 2: Ah. Okay.
Most memorably, it led me to factories and union squats in Southeast Asia, and to the outskirts of Manila where Filipino workers are making labour history by bringing the first unions to the export processing zones that produce the most recognizable brand-name consumer items on the planet.
Okay. I'm still wary. "Most memorably" because it differs from the rest of the activism she mentioned by being from South-Asian people and not Westerners? You know that's weird. But still, I may have a better relationship with this than I thought. Maybe I'm just being uber-picky because I have had a bad day at on-line discussions.
But I'm not sure why it should be unusual, strength being firmly on the side of those who are Japanese and fight the Japanese way. Reborn is written by a Japanese person for a Japanese audience, so of course people from the in-group are going to be portrayed more favourably. In Hollywood, white men win. In Shounen Jump, they don't. :D
ETA: Just to clarify, the favourable portrayal of an in-group in Hollywood is problematic precisely because the US is multi-racial and multi-ethnic, but Japan is neither.
That's the problem with racism, you know. Also, the classic "Japanese people = white people." (Because I'm pissed and don't want to deal with people being clueless, let me say this: racism is based on erasure, genocide and domination of other cultures. Does Japan has a recent -or with still some impact on people's lives- history of doing that? Yes. Towards White Nations*? Big resonant no. Nor does any non-white culture. Conversely... yeah, you should know this.)
And see, people there are very much worried about white and half-white characters and their representation in manga (you know Japan has this problem about colonizing white people, oh wait). Leave alone that the whole fandom makes a good show in ignoring the existence or just plain making disgusting racist comments on the one black character. (And God knows the series in question doesn't do much better.)
Shonen series are not for me. Give it up.
*I use white here to refer to European or European descendants dominated countries. You know who they are.
** My explanation of racism here is very simplified. It doesn't cover a lot of things, but it sure as hell does cover white-supremacism and its repercussion worldwide.
This is all good for Spencer and the other members of the Wolf Pack. But consider this: Judging by the Google hits for each of their names, Taylor Lautner is more popular than the four "wolf boys" combined [...]
Lautner's fame should've gone to a Native actor.
Look at the response Lautner got on The Tonight Show. He was perhaps the most popular guest since Conan O'Brien took over the show. He's a star of New Moon, the most popular movie in the country. At the moment he may be the second most popular actor in Hollywood (after Robert Pattinson). No non-Twilight actor--not Will Smith, Tom Cruise, or Tom Hanks--has more eager and enthusiastic fans.
[...] Now imagine if the Jacob Black role had gone to a Native actor instead. This actor would've become the most famous Native actor in the world--more famous than Wes Studi, Graham Greene, or Adam Beach. He singlehandedly would've put Native actors on the map.
People would be clamoring not only to hire him, but to hire actors like him. "The prime teen demographic is swooning over these bronzed Native hunks," producers would say. "Find me more actors like [name of real Native actor, not Taylor Lautner]."
Do you know what the Quileute Nation has received from Twilight? Entitled stalkers.
So hot, hot Stephanie Jacobsen.
( Stephanie Jacobsen pics )
Australian, born in Hong Kong, moved to Australia at twelve. Her career here.
----
Interesting things:
anti racism…what went wrong?
anti racism is a white supremacist movement. because the big names/experts/the ones who make the money and prestige of it. are majority white.[...]
what i mean is. that the ones who are the most ’successful’ in anti racism are white. they are the authors, bloggers, consultants, workshop trainers, speakers etc. yes there are lots of poc who do anti racism work. or better said there are a decent number of poc who work in the anti racism industry.
and i have to differentiate between anti racism the theory (almost completely developed by poc under the designation of critical race theory) and anti racism the industry.
so when i speak of the current anti racist movement, i am speaking of the public face of that movement which is presented by those who work in the anti racism industry.
And something I totally forgot to link, but one hell of a post:
Rape Culture 101:
Rape culture is 1 in 6 women being sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Rape culture is not even talking about the reality that many women are sexually assaulted multiple times in their lives. Rape culture is the way in which the constant threat of sexual assault affects women's daily movements. Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you're alone, if you're with a stranger, if you're in a group, if you're in a group of strangers, if it's dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you're carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you're wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who's around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who's at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn't follow all the rules it's your fault.
Rape culture is victim-blaming. Rape culture is a judge blaming a child for her own rape. Rape culture is a minister blaming his child victims. Rape culture is accusing a child of enjoying being held hostage, raped, and tortured. Rape culture is spending enormous amounts of time finding any reason at all that a victim can be blamed for hir own rape.
Rape culture is judges banning the use of the word rape in the courtroom. Rape culture is the media using euphemisms for sexual assault.
helens78's post brought a lot of things for me, many of them make me tired. I want to make an entry about English, about the arrogance from native speakers to expect everybody to talk perfect English, even from non-native speakers. Also, Makoto was telling me about this very insidious believe around here that "knowing English gives you freedom" which is... ahahahahahaha, you know. I'm going to make a post about all this soon, but not today.---
I'm going to talk about something else. Again, about Asian peoples erasure in anime and manga fandom. I had a conversation with classmates today that made me rage so much.
I'm not going to say something new, this was very much discussed already.
When I had that discussion in my fandom about putting white actors to play Asian characters, some person was very insistent that "it wasn't their fault if they couldn't think in any Asian actor to play Asian characters."
It's kinda funny, I already talked how is a commodity to consume something and erase the same people that create it, but there is something more that speaks volumes about racial power relationships around these places.
Right now anime and manga are extremely trendy in the Western World. We see lots of white and non-white people consuming and making themselves fans of "Asian culture," specially "Japanese culture" (between quotation marks because we know it's not the real culture they are "fans" of, it's the culture as seen by western lens). But of course, as things are being sold around here, the "cool culture" is Asian, the cool people aren't Asian people. The "cool people" have to be white people. Even in non-white countries like mine. So of course we have white people playing the part of Asian characters. White people are more desirable after all. And white people have to appropriate another culture, they have to make it theirs by being there instead of Asian people.
Japan is cool but only if you have Asian women fetishized and Asian men erased and replaced with white men, you know everybody loves white men.
Some years ago I was talking about Death Note's live action movie with a classmate, when I asked her what she thought about it she told me "ew, do you want one of those Jap to play Light?" (and it's not that I particularly care about the character, but she obviously did). Because, you know, Light Yagami is not Japanese, in her mind he probably is a white kid in an "Asian culture", thus very cool.
And today again my classmates were talking about how anime characters were "western" because Japanese people wanted to have "big eyes".
That's why I have a big problem with people who see no problem in fantasizing about Hugh Jackman as Kurogane, for example. These people are not only very naive and ignorant about racial issues, these people are playing a big part in not only erasing people from a particular culture, but erasing them and replacing the culture with what they picture said culture. And the way they picture it is for western consumption.
Via
bossymarmalade. helens78's Twelve generations from now, people like me will still be writing posts like this.I have asked people not to use the term "Jap slap" and been told that I was the racist one for assuming it had racist undertones, which it could not, because the original poster is not a racist. I have cringed away from things like Translation Party, which directly and specifically mock Japanese as a foreign, alien language that cannot ever be translated into real, meaningful English.
But this is a part of Western culture that people aren't interested in giving up. We like mocking what's different from us. We like drawing lines between "us" and "them". And language is one of the easiest ways to tell the difference, one of the easiest places to draw a divide. People whose first language isn't English often get reamed for incorrect word usage in debates, because it's an easy way to dismiss their intelligence and argument -- "you can't possibly have anything useful to say; you're not smart enough to communicate on my level."
Even people who are native English speakers have language used as a weapon -- how many people do you know who've had the dictionary thrown at them in a debate, or had their spelling and grammar attacked in lieu of a real argument? Particularly online, using language as a defining factor between "intelligent" and "stupid", or "one of us" and "one of them", is common, because written language is all we've got. I judge strangers in WoW by their typing; if I run into someone who uses "u" for "you" and "r" for "are", I think of them as Not The Same Kind Of Gameplayer As Me.
deepad has an amazing post about transnational adoption: One boy/ Boy for sale/He's going cheap.There is a curious intersection with the feminist discourses around birth control and abortion - white western women are entitled to their right to abort and adopt. Meanwhile women in India and China and I presume elsewhere, are told about responsibilities. It is our responsibility to get married and give our husband a son. It is our responsibility to continue the family name. It is also our responsibility to not breed ourselves into overcrowded squalor. It is our responsibility to control our reproductive fecundity. Apparently, now, it is also our responsibility to give up our children to people who have more financial and material assets.
It is hypocritical to espouse the cause of capitalism and not follow that ideology's core principle to its logical conclusion - human beings are capital. They can be assets or expenditure depending on the value ascribed to them. And paying a human being money in order to get legal access to another human being is a commercial transaction.
What disgusted me the most about the article was the conclusion, which focusses on how, though the children are currently with their grandmother, who wishes to keep them, the woman who wants to adopt them hopes for a "a happy ending in which she gets the girls". Clearly if Charles Dickens were to write about Mr. Bumble putting young Oliver Twist up for sale today, we would be expected to find Oliver's escape from the undertaker who paid good money for him, into the eventual arms of his biological aunt to be a tale most tragic and woeful. [...]
This is neo-colonialism - where military and economic wars are fought and sponsored on other people's land, and the resultant orphaned bodies displaced to grow up bound by gratitude and love to a country that would deny their native counterparts the ability to choose immigration on more equitable terms. Where the individualistic and therefore unassailable morality of "right to choose" breeds a sense of entitlement that is fed by preaching a rhetoric of responsibility to the rest of the world.
- Mean POC are mean.
-White people are innocent and never have to be called out on their clueless behaviors. I'm a bitch for doing so.
- Don't harsh other people's fun.
- People are exhibiting the same behaviors, the same old arguments with the same straw-men again, again, and again.
ETA: Totally forgot. THERE AREN'T ASIAN ACTORS IN HOLLYWOOD. I know that isn't a classic.
Daughter of ETA: I forgot one of my favorites: Calling out a offense (oppression, obviously) is always worse than being offensive.
Dude, I could continue with this all day.
So many NEW things!
And I bet someone will come some day again with the "this has never been discussed before!" thing.
ciderpress, A Soliloquy on Language and Race in Seven Parts[...]My cousin was, and still is, a primary school teacher. She spent her days teaching seven year olds how to read, read, add and subtract and behave themselves in public. In the evenings, she taught an adult literacy class. The class was small -- adult literacy rates in Korea were about 98% -- but mostly made up of women in the 60s and 70s. And there, I saw a woman, with eyes that had seen a thousand years, cry with joy because she could finally write her own name.
The reason many of these women couldn't read wasn't just because of sexism and classism. The reason the literacy rate in Korea is so high isn't because Koreans are obsessed with education and doing well in tests. Instead, they stem partly from Korea's experience in the intense wave of New Imperialism wherein Western countries and Japan fought as well as colluded to share ownership of countries in East Asia.
The reason that these women couldn't read was that they were born in the early '30s and they were, in their formative years, directly affected the Japanese colonial policies and the attempt at cultural genocide and eradication of national identity during the latter part of the occupation period. These policies, which included the prohibition of teaching and usage of Korean in schools, rewriting history books to justify the occupation and forcibly changing Korean names to Japanese ones. Many young women, and children, during the Japanese occupation became the workforce as Korean men were forcibly conscripted to the Japanese imperial army to fight against allied forces in China. Many young women, after independence in '45, then went on to bear the brunt of the Korean war; they were of the hundreds of thousands displaced and living in refugee camps as the war raged on with Soviet sponsored North Korea and China driving the South Korean and American/allied forces up and down the peninsula, signalling the beginning of the 30 year Cold War between the Soviet block and the USA. And then after the destruction that left the Koreas economically ruined, their resources destroyed and a people and country still at war, these men and women were the ones who had to rebuild the country.
Then again, the narrative of Imperialism in the Korean penisula is not why I began to tell this story. I'm telling this story because telling those who are reading this the story of one little old lady, who had survived her own language and identity torn from her heart and survived being separated from her family and her home as she fled to the south as a teenager, is my way of continuing her oral history. She knew the importance and preciousness of language because it was stolen from her. It was only really then that I began to realise with an adult perspective why it was so important for me to participate, why it was so important for me to be able to participate in this kind of national, cultural, global narrative. This woman, whose story does not appear in the narrative of Western modern history, which concentrates on US lives lost in the Korean war, the liberation they brought to Korea, lives in her, all those who know her and in me.
[...]
Colonialism was state sponsored, religion endorsed, culturally approved corporate theft of native resources, labour and even people. Many white people thought that white men were doing the savages a favour, bringing culture, Jesus and the age of enlightenment. To control a country, you must control the people, paralyse collective responses and destroy national identities or empty them of socio-economic content. Colonialists actively sought to rupture the solidarity of communities. Taking away their language, an integral part of their identity, and enforcing your own and taking control words and how to use them colonises consciousness. These languages and these cultures are then treated as savage while European languages and culture are civilised. Sometimes, as a result, languages died.
This touched me deep as a Paraguayan.
I can't re-post the whole post here. But it's worth it. So go read!
marny_h96's IBARW 4: Genocide? What Genocide?:105 years ago, in what is now Namibia, something happened. Something terrible. Something not a lot of people have heard of. At least not in Germany. And I wonder why.
[...]
It seems that three decades before WW II and the Holocaust, people were killed in German South-West Africa (now Namibia)
. Enough people to call it a genocide.
The Herero and Namaqua Genocide
Sadly, I can't remember where and when I first heard about it. What I know, though, is that it was never mentioned in school. Not once. The German colonial endeavours were generally overlooked in History class but you'd think that something as terrible as a genocide would have been mentioned. Especially when you consider Germany's past. But there was nothing.
So, what could be the reasons for "forgetting" the Herero/Namaqua Genocide?
[...]
Denial? More likely. There's at least one book and one article out there claiming the Genocide is a lie. That's not surprising considering how many people still deny the Holocaust happened. What is surprising – and disconcerting – is that the German government treats the Genocide as something they have nothing to do with. Saying that the government of the Bundesrepublik (Federal Republic of Germany) is not responsible for the actions of the government of the Deutsches Reich (German Empire) is like saying they're not responsible for the action of the Third Reich government. And they took responsibility for that, at least partially, by acknowledging the Holocaust, apologizing for it and paying reparations to the survivors.
yamasan's And This Is Why I'm Just Going to Watch Little Mosque on the Prairie Now:I was watching that diverting Zac Efron movie 17 Again the other day, and you know what ruined it for me? One throwaway joke, in an otherwise brain candy, fluffy piece of mostly unobjectionable film, ruined the whole damn thing. Our newly 17 again, soon-to-be divorced protagonist, upon overhearing his wife and her friend discussing the possibility of the wife going out with another man, says something like this to his wife and her friend, "If this were Afghanistan she'd be dragged through the streets by goats with her hands cut off." That being technically engaging in adultery before the divorce is complete.
[...]My family left Afghanistan by the skin of their teeth, and there are not so many what-ifs and may-have-beens separating me from being a woman facing the possibility of being stoned to death. So a joke about what happens to Afghan women in the war-torn, still Taliban-influenced country of my people is so far from fucking funny, I can't even. That one little joke threw me out of the movie like I'd been catapulted out with extreme prejudice because my experiences and my knowledge and my ethnicity made it personal. I couldn't keep watching the movie because I'd just been reminded, glaringly, THIS MOVIE IS NOT FOR YOU. YOU MIGHT AS WELL NOT EXIST AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER, BECAUSE WE TOTES DID NOT EVEN CONSIDER HOW THIS JOKE MIGHT FLY FOR AFGHANS OR MUSLIMS IN THE AUDIENCE, AND WE DO NOT CARE.
And listen, it's not like I shouldn't be used to this. There are countless times I've seen the plight of the Afghan people used as a throwaway plot point or teaching moment in a show or movie or book. I've seen Afghan terrorists, poor oppressed Afghan women, Afghan orphans, the Afghan girl from the cover of National Geographic...I've seen and heard Afghanistan used as the butt of countless thoughtless and tasteless jokes, and only rarely can I at least appreciate the dark humor in them. I've seen the whole trope of only white men can save brown women from brown men. The last time I saw Afghans on TV or in movies in a non-news setting, and as actual people who get to be narratively equivalent to your average WASP was in The Kite Runner, and even that had its problems.
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evilprodigy's Yellow Fever: It's Not Just A Man Thing:If you, white chick, have ever exclaimed wonderingly at how beautiful and androgynous! Asian men are, so different from white men: you were being racist. If you have ever marveled that Asian stars are so much more adorable, so much more queer-chic and pretty than American movie stars: you were being racist. If you have ever turned East Asia in your head into your own personal emasculated yaoi wonderland, you were being racist.
Asian men are not your gay boyfriends that go with your handbag (and neither are gay men), they are not your pretty fetish objects -- they aren't any prettier than your own fucking men, nor any more androgynous. They don't exist for you to emasculate. They don't exist for you to idealize. They are not your fantasy boyfriends, they are not a badly-translated boys' love comic, they will not love you long time either and they will not love each other long time and they are not bishonen. Every time you have gone to Japan/Korea/China/Magical Asian Fantasyland and marveled at how delicate the men were and how awesome it was that you couldn't tell the schoolgirls and schoolboys apart, you were being racist. (And you were probably fucking lying, at that, or need some seriously new glasses.) The systematic undermining of Asian masculinity is an old pastime, and by doing this you are partaking in it. Stop it. Stop it all. Shut down everything. East Asia does not exist to mass-produce your China dolls. East Asia does not exist to mass-produce your bishonen.
East Asia is comprised of human beings with cultures that are not oddities, souvenirs, or bizarro fantasy worlds, and of people who do not appreciate being fetishized, sexualized, emasculated, exoticized, othered and generally dicked over -- and it has produced a diaspora of people who don't appreciate this either, myself included. So if you do this: stop it now. Put it down. Put a halt to it, and I hope that if you have a sense of common decency, you have a sense of common shame that you ever perpetrated this to begin with.
the_future_modernes:Self-Delusion and the Lie of Lifestyle Activism (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)
But, of course, the ecological impact of recycling one battery (or ten, or a hundred) is so miniscule as to make no discernable difference at all. It literally DOES NOT MATTER whether I recycle a battery or not.
This is true for so many things that we are urged to do as our civic contribution to the world. It is, in fact, NOT easy to make a difference.
The lie of lifestyle activism is important in part because it bleeds off much of the energy that does exist in the world for social action. It also reveals some of the ways we deceive ourselves about effective civic engagement.
[...]
We want to be able to stay within our comfort zones and still feel like we are "making a difference."
Part II: The Distortions of Lifestyle Politics (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)
Unintended Consequences and Middle-Class Organizing
Of course members of the middle class are perfectly capable of participating in collective struggles over power. Try to locate a group home in a middle-class suburb, or de-track a suburban high school, or cut down a beloved suburban oak tree, and you will quickly see the wrath of the relatively privileged.
Unless it sees its own privileges under attack, however, as Fred Rose notes, the middle class prefers to educate others about the truth and to model correct action.
As middle-class settlers moved into North Kenwood-Oakland, the key problem that affected them directly was what they perceived as unacceptable levels of crime and disorder. While their active efforts to alter this state of affairs did "improve" the community in some concrete ways, these changes did not address the core structural causes of the poverty that most affected their working-class neighbors. In fact the easiest solution to problems of disorder was simply "to drive out what is seen as the offending class" (268).
While the settlers came to "reclaim" the neighborhood for everyone," then, when they got to North Kenwood-Oakland, they ended up expending much of their energy to make it more comfortable for themselves. They sought to make it reflective of their own understanding of the "correct" urban lifestyle.
To improve their new neighborhood, the settlers actively supported three key strategies. They sought to limit public housing, they supported strict screening for new low-income renters in "mixed" public housing, and they brought in police from the University of Chicago to supplement the local district police.
Dude. Story of my life. Or better, story of the middle classes in Latin America.
Disclaimer: I'm not exactly the most versed person in USA's pop culture, so you have to forgive my ignorance.
I was having lunch while my little cousin was watching some MTV special called "Michael Jackson Greatest TV moments" or something. They were discussing some of the man's videos; this one, for a song I can't remember, was located in an Ancient Egyptian setting, Jackson was some kind of entertainer for Queen Nefertiti. (People here will probably know better about this video than me.) In this pop version of Nefertiti's time, she was played by supermodel Iman, the Pharaoh was played by Eddie Murphy, and everyone else in the set was black.
I was barely watching TV because my mind is full of three exams, but when I saw that video I remember thinking something like, "well, I think Jackson was trying to look for at least a minimal accuracy by no casting white people."
When the commentary about the video was finishing some white woman (I don't know who she was, I tell you I suck at this) was saying how, "also, the fact that Jackson casted African-Americans for this video was clearly a shown of black pride. He wanted to get close to his roots, his people."
I almost spit my food. Granted, I don't know why Jackson casted all black people. Maybe being a black man made him more aware of the white washing going on. But I will tell you something, that comment there? Just showed how ignorant and invested in white supremacy some white people are.
Egypt? Who did you expect him to cast? WHITE PEOPLE? Even if this was a pop music video, that statement was fucking ridiculous. Casting brown people to play the part of brown people is now "black pride".
Granted, there is a lot of debate about the "race" of ancient Egyptians. But dude. DUDE. Phenotypically, Iman is a lot more accurate Nefertiti than Liz Taylor is a Cleopatra. And having all black people is damn accurate for a music video.
What piss me off is that an all-white cast by a white person would obviously not represent "white pride" or something. Even if completely wrong.
ETA: What I meant to say is NOT that him doing it for being proud of his race was wrong or something. It's that when black people are cast to play Egyptians is a political statement, political correctness, etc., because what you would expect is white people playing Egyptians (emphasis, you know), no matter how wrong it is. And yeah, the latter is "white pride" and a political statement too, but for another post.
This brings me to the reconstructed face of the mummy attributed to Nefertiti. And how, googling for this, in some blog I saw people saying that "the [face] reconstruction was political correctness gone wrong. Nefertiti was white." (I know there is a bust of her with uber-light skin, I'm kinda sure the painting was a retouching.)
So, here you have a not so tangential rant: there is a reason I hate the term "political correctness".
"Political Correctness" = As icon says, meeting minimal standards of decent human.
And apparently, "Political Correctness" = Meeting minimal standards of historical accuracy.
I'm so tired of this shit, I'm so tired of hearing things like "political correctness," or "tokenism". And privileged idiots complaining that people are just SO sensitive for wanting to pretend that whites aren't the only people inhabitating this world. Or white people going about the "post-racialness" of the first world. *rolls eyes*
"Political correctness" means that the norm is white washing, oppression, objectification. Power differences that affect real people's lives and make things shittier for them? Don't exist because the privileged don't want to bother about them.
... Uhm, this was supposed to be shorter and sound angrier. It's been a while since someone screamed "reverse racism!" at my face.
Totally unrelated, damn hot fic that I have never read before (not work safe obviously). And I made myself proud knowing all that is worth out there for KuroFay. Damn.
I was making icons with the help of
outou's great tutorial and these bases. Well, one icon! But I don't have much time.the_future_modernes when I grow up), via the wonderful colorblue: Intersectionality and Rape. It has wonderful links. Must read.
Off to study. Now.
shewhohashope talked. And she said everything that has been bothering about the latesr discussion about rape.I know that you're all dying to hear my take on this, so here it is: I don't think the discussion is moving from the particular to the systematic aspects of rape. It specifically looks at the implications of rape culture on particular women rather than engaging meaningfully with the ways in which rape is used systematically as a tool of oppression.
[...]
It was a mistake to refer to rape in the Congo, and rape in the poorest parts of the rural south (I read this as 'Global South' initially, but she may mean the U.S. South?), next to 'a frat house party' with no further analysis at all. Right away there is a complete erasure of the wider context. You can talk about the patriarchy and it's effect on women, purporting to discuss the wider systematic aspects of of rape, rather than the particular and the personal. Then to go on to ignore how the patriarchy is used as a tool of colonialism and how the patriarchy is used as a tool of class conflict is (say it with me social science students) problematic.
[...]
Using the word 'civilisation' as though it were antithetical to rape is ridiculous. When rape culture is being discussed, rape is a product of civilisation itself, not an example of its disruption but a natural result of the principles it is built on. Rape is about power, and power struggles and domination are inherent to society building
The difficulty with words like 'civilisation' is that one can mean many things in choosing to use it, it could refer to culture in general - another term which seems to defy any simple definition - or it could refer solely to urbanised societies, typified by their dependence of agriculture. But - and this is the fraught part - people are unable to to prevent themselves from assigning morality to what should be simple, descriptive terms, and 'civilisation' carries a particularly difficult, politicised history.
MUST read.
Hilaria Supa: orgullo indígena de Perú / Machu Picchu / hoja de Coca / Native pride / Coca leaf:
Hilaria Supa: racismo diario Correo y lecciones de su lucha por justicia en Perú / racism in Peru
Hilaria Supa: UN Permanent Forum Indigenous Issues / Foro Permanente de Cuestiones Indígenas ONU
Ese post de Carlos in DIC tiene su biografía, no se olviden de leerla:
Hilaria Supa Huamán (born in the community of Wayllaqocha, Anta, Cusco region, in 1957), is a human rights activist, an active member of several Indigenous women organizations in Peru and the world and a Peruvian politician. She is currently a Congresswoman representing the Cusco for the period 2006-2011, as a member of Ollanta Humala's Partido Nacionalista Peruano party.
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foc_uAs RaceFail 09 continues, it has become clear that there are those who are hellbent on marginalizing and silencing people of color. In the past few months, minorities have been denigrated by bigoted authors and publishers who have also asserted that Fen of Color are rare and pratically non-existent. Despite numerous discussions and attempts to enlighten on the fact that POCs are fans, writers, artists and just as integral to this genre as our white counterparts, we are continuously dismissed.
On Monday May 18, 2009, we are asking anyone who identifies as a POC/non-white to post this banner, their speculative short stories, artwork, poetry or simply write a post on their favorite fandom on their blogs as an act of protest to show we will not be silent or invisible. The day of protest is entitled Fen Of Color United or more aptly, FOC_U.
ETA: There has been some interesting talk about the person who runs this, I'm not sure where he stands now, but people deserve to be warned. I'll wait for his answer before withdrawing my support.
See those headlines?
The Washington Post:
Afghan Civilian Deaths Present U.S. With Strategist Problems
New York Times:
Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War
Wall Street Journal:
Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S Talks
Red Cross Says "Dozens" Died in U.S Airstrikes, Eclipsing Start of Obama's Sesion with President Karzai and Zardari
Yes. This is The First World Power. Those Afghan civilians they are killing are getting in between their Public Relationships to support that war. What a bother.
Can I get angry now? Can I be completely outraged by those bastards?
The 40 Year Old Virgin: Sex Ed. (Boy, I almost can't remember that movie, but I knew I hated it for some reason.)
Cis is not an academic term
From Shakespeare to StumbleUpon The Male Gaze Is Everywhere
2 Red Deaths = 1 White Death = Different Media Coverage and different degrees of sympathy
Time To Call Out Another Privilege
Just To Clarify: that is not what a “real man” is supposed to look like. (I had some problems with this, specially their definition of sexism -Wikipedia's- that ignores power relationships, but I included it because it said important thing about stereotypes and discrimination.)
You are not your breasts
