White Privilege At Its Finest

I was enraged to hear so much news coverage about the murder of Chris Wootton, a white fraternity student at UC Berkeley. Why? Because last fall, a dark-skinned Latino student, Rod Rodriguez, was confused for a gang member and murdered. He too was a UC Berkeley student. He and Chris were high achievers in school. Chris, however, was killed in a Saturday night drunken brawl, whereas Rod was visiting home and had been closing up at the barbershop where he worked. He often provided free haircuts to locals because they could not afford hair-cuts. He also was heavily involved in the Berkeley community, advancing racial justice through volunteer work.

Not only did the Chancellor of the university write a detailed email to all of the students about Chris Wootton's tragic murder, my mother called me all the way from San Diego saying she heard about it in the news. It was also significantly covered on the internet. Rod, however, was virtually unnoticed except by members of the ethnic communities on campus and in his hometown.

As enraged as I was, I only made a few comments to fellow students in my classes. Adrienne Johnson, however, wrote a piece to the main campus newspaper--The Daily Californian--who heavily covered the Chris Wootton murder in several detailed articles, and who had only given Rod a passing glance.

Adrienne succinctly puts it all into perspective:

Like many students, I was shocked and saddened by Chris Wootton's tragic death.

However, may I comment on the articles devoted solely to Wootton's death? I have counted no fewer than five full-length, prominently placed articles detailing this tragedy. I attended the forum on Sproul Plaza and found myself sandwiched between NBC reporters, TV crews and photographers.

May I also comment on your coverage of another, very tragic death of a graduating senior killed in very similar circumstances-Rodrigo Rodriguez Jr.? This past September, he was killed by a gunman who mistook him for another person. This story received little coverage; there was no community outpouring. I remember only one of very few articles, from Sept. 19, "Student Gunned Down in Hometown." Why, do you suppose, this is? Why would the Daily Cal cover Wootton's death-involved in a fight on frat row -and ignore Rodriguez's tragic victimhood? Could it have something to do with favoring a white frat boy over a child of immigrants? Favoring a science student over an American Studies major?

"Student Gunned Down in Hometown" is an inappropriate, insulting title in comparison with Wootton's article "Community Mourns Shocking Loss of Senior."

It is the Daily Cal's responsibility to inform the community when something of this measure occurs with fairness and equality. Just because Chris may have been more popular should not be reflected in his death's coverage. I feel that this is a grave error on part of the Daily Cal and this letter or a formal apology should be published apologizing to Rodriguez's friends and family.

Image of Irony

I admit it, I like to browse "lol" pictures. Here's a great one.

You'd think that a lack of historical knowledge would be the only thing wrong with these people. You'd think that the irony of this ideology would end at race, ethnicity, culture, xenophobia.

...but no, I am proven wrong, it's much more than that. As much as I despise her hatred and ignorance, I have got to thank that lady for pushing the envelope of senselessness.


see more politics and fun!

Tongue-in-cheek, I can't help but say that it sounds like "...fecal." Might seem a bit forced to you, but it honestly jumps out at me.

Let's Talk About White People

The other day I visited a beautiful city called Sausalito, north of the San Francisco bay. "Beautiful" is very loaded--the city was so clean, plump with flowers and shrubberies, and very white. I mean, there were shops with incredibly expensive yachting apparel, and more. But in pointing out its whiteness, I am not being hostile. I have every right to point it out, for I do the same thing when I observe black, Latino, Asian, and other racialized geographical areas.

Pointing out whiteness should not make white people uncomfortable. It should be blatant and funny, Kind of like it is in this article about San Francisco being a top white destination.

As odd as this may sound, it's refreshing to find out about a blog that highlights "Stuff White People Like." The blog brings white culture into shape and form. It latches onto whiteness and drags it down from its normative perch, so that we can pinpoint its traits and study it. It even provides information about how to deal with/talk to the stereotypical white people described in each of its entries.

This Time article by Jeninne Lee-St. John describes the blog a little further:

If you don't keep up with all the snarky, zeitgeisty corners of the Internet, Stuff White People Like is a pseudo-anthropological list mocking the habits, tastes and whims of people of non-color. (Entry #1: Coffee. "White people all need Starbucks, Second Cup or Coffee Bean. They are also fond of saying "you do NOT want to see me before I get my morning coffee.")

...I called Damali Ayo, a black social critic and artist who wrote the book How to Rent a Negro — a satire inspired by the same sentiments as another thing that white people like (#14), Having Black Friends. She thinks the blog, oddly, represents a form of social progress. "I'm really glad that white people are stepping up to critique white culture, because in general white people like to deny that there is such a thing as white culture," Ayo says. And she sort of made me feel better about being enmeshed in that culture. "Stuff white people like is what we all live and breathe everyday. Turn on the TV: it's all stuff white people like. I've been studying stuff white people like since I was four just so I could have a conversation."

Driving While Black

I had a great conversation late last week with a new co-worker of mine who is being trained to load packages into the Washington State trailers at my work (UPS, or Under Paid Slaves). He is the third person to be trained on our belt since I've starting working here in late February (but, I digress). His name is Casanova and he's a young Black man of 21 years and dresses in the style of Bay Area hyphy.

As we were loading into Washington him and his trainer, a young Latino man named Mike, we all started talking about Dave Chappell and on his commentary on race, especially the difference of how cops treat whites and Blacks when they pull them over. Casanova started talking about how whenever he sees a cop he gets a little nervous, and if a cop is on the other side of the ride driving in the opposite direction as him and sees the cop pull a U-turn Casanova automatically knows that the cop is going to pull him over and question him. No if ands or buts about it. If he sees a cop pull a "Uey" in his rearview mirror he knows he's in for a whole lot of shit. Even when he did nothing wrong.

I can just picture the cop taping on his window and asking. "Excuse me sir. Did you know you were DWB? [driving while Black]"

"Uh, yeah, kinda did know that officer."

Anyways. This got Mike talking about his old neighborhood in the Mission district in San Francisco and how the cops harass him too due to his dark complexion and his "affiliation" with gang members (there is a knew "anti-gang" injunction being imposed on people in the Mission). Talking about having cops pull up in his driveway and asking to search his car even though he's only working on the engine or how he gets harrassed by cops who want to use an anti-gang injunction order on him because he has family members in gangs (so he's not supposed to speak to his family huh? Guess that's the new "family values" that Bush wants) and how his mother works with an anti-violence and anti-gang org in the Mission and how he knows many gang members because of this, so he's essentially being harrassed for trying to get kids out of gangs.

But what got me really thinking was this. Do whites really know what it's like to live life as a person of color? I mean, sure we all see the movies and read about it, but do we actually experience it? No, we don't. Yet whites are the first to come out and accuse people of color as being "reactionary," "over sensitive," and (my favorite!) playing the "race card." Also, with America so segregated by class and race how could whites know about what goes on on the other side of th fence? Unless a white person actively seeks these things out and questions the statues quo a white person won't know this (this brings us to the point of the recent Supreme Court ruling on desegregating the schools, but I'll blog on that latter). I have the "advantage(??)" of working in a blue collar working class union job with many people of color (mostly men though) around me and I'm able to actually hear their experiences every single day I go to work.

Yet most whites (I'm assuming) don't here these things every single day they go to work. Most whites will question the experiences of racism that people of color face today and claim that racism was left behind many decades ago. Yet how to whites know this? And why do they assume this? Again, have they experienced racism? Of course not, their white! By definition whiteness is privilege, privilege to not experience racism and many other isms out there.

This is something whites should think (all though they won't) about the next time they accuse someone of being sensitive and playing the race card. And it's something they should think about long and hard.

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Over the Rhine

[X]press Newspaper: An Example of White Privilege and Ignorance

Damn, I have never felt so awkward, disheartened, angry, and yet so very proud before in my life. A few days ago while I was sitting in the journalism lab at SF State, talking to the new [X]press newspaper editors for next semester, Ian Thomas, the current head editor, stormed into the room consumed with frustration. He was pissed off at the soon-to-be editor Sean Maher for his column that we published in this week's current issue called "A Note on Diversity from Next Semester's Newspaper Editor." (For content analysis of this article click here) Basically, Maher was inadvertently saying that race doesn't matter and that we need to be colorblind.

Several weeks ago [X]press had made the decision to put together a race package and with that a content analysis on the demographics of our photos for the last 16 weeks. However, in his column, Maher expressed that "what makes a community meaningfully diverse is a wealth of individual beliefs, perspectives and behavior, not just a bunch of different-looking faces. When we define diversity primarily in terms of what people look like, we give credence to the idea that a person is defined by those appearances." By saying this, it was if he was undermining the purpose of why we had even decided to do a content analysis on the paper in the first place. [X]press wanted to determine how accurately we were representing our diverse campus community in our news coverage. Like many other mainstream news periodicals, we found that we had not been and now we were asking our readers to please keep us in check.



Thomas flung the paper behind his head in outrage, exclaiming that he was pissed off. He was also upset that the team of editors did not consult him about this editorial because if he would have known, he wouldn't have allowed it to run. Thomas also didn't want our readers to get the impression that this represented [X]press' true beliefs. He told Maher that what he had said was very typical of a white, straight male to say. Ironically, both editors are white, straight male college students. But obviously, one is more conscious of class, racial privilege, while the other remains color-blind, ignorant, and oblivious to his privilege.

I understand what Maher was trying to get at, that we shouldn't judge people on the basis of the color of their skin but by their ideas and perspectives. However, we can't deny the fact that we do. He went on to talk about how he strives to see people as individuals and not necessarily as the group they're part of or associate themselves with. Well, if he wants to be representative of our SF State community, the majority of students agree that race/ethnicity is really important to their identity that helps define who they are on this campus, according to SF State's Campus Climate survey, explained Jamie Newton, an SF State social psychology who I interviewed for my piece on subtle racism (Apparently, Maher didn't read my piece on subtle racism that I had written a week before). You can't disassociate an individual from his or her group(s), especially if a person defines him or herself by that group. The survey also found that a substantial number of minorities –– not more than 50 percent –– said they sometimes or often felt mistreated on campus because of their affiliation with racial, religious, or sexual orientation, etc. groups.



So now tell me that race doesn't matter.

Not to boast, but I was the one who came onto the [X]press staff as a Filipino American, a person of color, this semester talking about why diversity is important and started the hoopla on it. I pitched my stories that included people of diverse races and backgrounds and then I argued that we didn't have enough stories on the Black student population on campus and in turn, wrote one. I also found that students do experience subtle racism at SF State on a daily basis (Just because we're diverse and liberal, doesn't mean we can't be racist). Now, if I wasn't a person of color, would I have wanted to cover these stories? Probably not, because these are stories that aren't always easy for people who aren't of color to tackle and comprehend. I'm not saying that every person of color is conscious and that all those who are white aren't. Don't get me wrong, I know there are white, conscious people, who aren't afraid to acknowledge social inequalities ( i.e. my boyfriend, Jack Stephens, the founder of this blog; my editor, Ian Thomas). However, it seems to me, not being affected by the struggle is an excuse used by many white people to not address it.

To some, being color-blind may be a good thing. That race doesn't matter. But how can we ever be color-blind when race is so ingrained into our minds, daily conversations, thoughts, institutional structures, systems, ideals, how we perceive things, etcetera, etcetera? Honestly, we've been colorblind for far too long to the extent that it's blinded us to the subconscious racism and racial privilege that exists. Instead of confronting these issues, we hasten to overlook and fail to address them along with other societal inequalities that have been detrimental, yet prevalent factors within American society. We've been socialized by our institutions, media, society, to not respond to race and yet, it's one of the first things our subconscious processes when identifying, categorizing, and relating to someone.



I was very disappointed by our race package. By the end, I was the only one working on it. Why? Maybe I was just too late in turning my couple stories, maybe people just got busy focusing on other things-- but for whatever reason, it was just another example of how race and its entourage of stereotypes, assumptions, and judgments, are once again shoved onto the back burner and neglected.

I was so proud that Thomas spoke up and that the situation literally brought him to tears-- a conscious, privileged male who's attempted walk in the shoes of "the other" apart from his own. With all do respect, I can't say the same for Maher (Sidenote: Maher was willing to continue this dialogue and carry it into the next issue to better address diversity).

Man! That Shit is Racist!...Against...uh...Whites

My girlfriend is doing a story for our school newspaper about institutional racism and how it plays out in our everyday reactions on campus. She opens up with an example of a teacher describing to a class about the controversy between Native American burial grounds and construction projects. Then, one of the students in class (a white female) raises her hand and says, in disbelief. "Really? They bury their own kin? I thought they ate themselves!"

Pretty messed up huh? Especially when the teacher didn't address the issue she brought up and instead just told her she was wrong and left it at that. But why I'm blogging about this is that one of the editors (who's a Chinese and Latino male) who is editing her story said she should get rid of that quote because it's racist...against whites. Huh? Excuse me?

When I first heard this in the news lab and I was pretty flabbergasted and upset. "Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked my girlfriend out loud. "Jesus Christ. That guy's an idiot! Don't listen to that shit."

This brings up a whole lot of issues that I don't really want to talk about now, especially since I'm working on a multimedia piece right now and I have to go through all of the audio and pictures that I collected over the past seven weeks. But I will say this (and I will latter expound this point in an upcoming blog):

It's interesting to note that the editor seemed to focus on the fact that my girlfriend mentioned that it was a white woman who said that comment instead of the actual racist comment it self. He saw racism where it wasn't instead of where it truly was.

It's All About the Money

Last month I was assigned to take pictures (my pics were in the paper, don't know why they're not online yet) at Thurgood Marshall High School over in the lower class (and predominantly Black) San Francisco neighborhood known as Bayview. A group of students at San Francisco State University take part in Industrial Design Outreach and try to outreach to lower class youth to show them that they could have viable and healthy careers as an industrial designer. One of the students who is apart of the team has a father who helped donate computers to the high school and has been a community activist for Bayview (and Hunters Point) for many years.

As I was going around taking pictures I saw a young Black kid mulling over a design he was doing for a t-shirt. I got closer to see what he was designing and to see if he needed any help with Adobe Image Ready since I use Adobe Photoshop a lot. When I saw what he was drawing my heart dropped, all though I wasn't wholly surprised and I wasn't blaming him for thinking the way he was thinking, especially coming from a lower class neighborhood and being Black (that's already two strikes against him in mainstream society's eyes).

What I saw was this. He had basically drawn a classic American muscle car with some nice silver rims and tinted windows. The car was rolling down the street, but the street wasn't paved with asphalt, it was paved with $100 bills.

It was sad to see a young Black man worshiping commodities like he was and worshiping money like he was, yet I do understand why he drew what he drew. The media is saturated with images of wealth and commodities. The music videos kids see these days all filled with commodities (women are even commodities in these videos), such as diamonds and other assortments of "bling," alcohol, yachts, mansions, pools, designer urban wear, and of course the ultimate commodity (the unifier of commodities) money. Growing up in a high crime low income neighborhood also doesn't help. With the media so saturated in money (music videos, TV shows, etc.) one begins to feel like an outcast and one begins to feel ashamed of her or his class and/or race. Even sitcoms involving Black people mostly involve Black people who are in the upper class (The Cosby Show, The Bernie Mac Show, Girlfriends, etc.) and never show lower class Black folk in a positive light (they always show lower class Blacks in situational comedies, almost never in dramas, except police dramas of course).

This worshiping of money and being left out of the mainstream has a huge effect on residents in Bayview-Hunters Point and Visatacion Valley (residents in upper Vis Valley have the distinction of living in run down army barracks as public housing). The homicide rate is huge, in 2005 there were 96 homicides with a majority of those homicides being concentrated in that one area in southeastern San Francisco. Oakland had similar numbers as well with a smaller population. The homicide rate hasn't changed all that much since 2005.

Most of this violence is Black on Black gang violence and has heavily to do with money and turf. This young kids are killing each other to accumulate more and more capital in order to buy the things they see on TV because many of them know (consciously or unconsciously) that it's nearly impossible to actually achieve the amount of wealth they want to, especially with it being harder to actually clime up the economic ladder than it was in the 1970s(1) and especially being Black.

All of this and more is what was swirling through my mind when I saw what these young man was designing. And it was all the more heartbreaking because I knew there was little I could do to help break years and years of psychological and class false consciousness that has been ingrained within him.

Notes

1. I remember reading that specefic statement in a New York Times series on class. I'll try and find the article for a future post.

Image From:
Bling.com

Crazy Ol' Sensitivity Training

So just a few minutes ago I heard something pretty stupid uttered from the mouth of a white male (not that surprising).

I'm in the journalism lab right now uploading pictures for the newspaper on a speaker who came to campus who is the South Asian reporter for the Washington Post.

While uploading the photos my photo editor Gina came into the lab to talk to one of the designers who is designing a page for this Thursday's issue. There was an article on a pow-wow held by SKINS, a local San Francisco State Native American group. The pictured being used was of Native American students in their traditional tribal regalia and dancing in a circle.

Gina told one of the designers that they were putting up a new photo for him to put into the paper because "We never cover SKINS in this paper and the fact that the only picture we have of them is them in stereotypical traditional native dress and having them dancing in a circle is not OK. So we have a better picture of this one girl getting ready for the event."

He seemed to have got the point but as she was walking out he said in a sarcastic voice. "I bet this has something to do with the sensitivity training."

She shot back. "No it doesn't. And don't be a jackass."

Ooooohhh, that gave me quite the wide grin.

"NO! I'M NOT BLACK! I'M WHITE!!"

Last night (well, technically this morning) at my work I was loading an Arizona trailer with my friend and co-worker Wendy. It was a slow night so we were able to talk about a lot of things: from music, to relationships, to school, language, and so on. During the conversation it somehow got steered toward race (probably my doing). Wendy, 34 and Nicaraguan (she moved her permanently as a teenager), told me how it was very hard for her to explain to her youngest daughter (who's Latino and Black, but looks very much Black) that she wasn't white. She said that one day her daughter told her that she was white and Wendy, probably very carefully, had to tell her daughter that she wasn't white, but instead very Black, and Latino as well.

"No! I'm not Black!" She yelled. "I'm white! I'm white!" She was about four years old when this happened. She now realizes (she around eight or nine I think) that she is Latino and Black but this gives us a window, and the opportunity, to see how pervasive racism is in our society.

Growing up (and still today) all she saw in the media was white faces. White faces on billboards, white faces in movies (Disney no doubt), white faces on the sides of buses, taxi cab signs, buildings, commercials, and TV shows. All she probably saw was white faces. If she saw any type of people of color at all in the media it was probably on debates about whether or not Latinos should be U.S. citizens or a rise in the rate of homicides and crime in Oakland's Black community. So all she probably ever saw relating to Black people were (and still are) negative stereotypes. All she probably ever saw of white people were positive stereotypes: the leading role, the princess, the beauty queen, etc.

So it would make perfect sense for someone who is aware and conscious of today's ills (and someone who is of color) to see why she reacted the way she did and why she yelled out. "No! I'm not Black!"

Another friend of mine told me he cried when he found out he wasn't white because not being white meant not being "normal" since all he saw in the media (and in his school) were white faces. Another one of my friends didn't know he wasn't white until he was five or six, and that fact, he told me, confused the Hell out of him.

So if you ask me how deep racism and white cultural supremacy runs throughout Western society and in America. It's that deep.

Image From:
Gone Movie

World White News Coverage

[Editor's note: I made a change. I originally wrote that the study we did in my class was on KRON 4 it's actually on KPIX another local Bay Area TV news station.]

I just got out of my Media and Politics class (Political Science 464 and also listed under Journalism 464) at San Francisco State University and let me just say I'm fuming right now. I'm doing this post right now so I can remember everything that happened.

Basically our professor brought in his daughter who works for KRON 4 News, a local news station out of the San Francisco Bay Area. In an Ethnic Diversity and U.S. Journalism class I did last year we did a study on KPIX and studied how they used "experts" in the news. We basically found out that the "experts" used were overwhelmingly white and even more overwhelmingly male (I think by 70% or so, but I'll post the study I did with my class group latter), so I was pretty familiar with the news coverage of local Bay Area news stations.

During our discussion she talked about how, in the newsroom, the most coverage will go to someone who speaks the loudest about a news issue. So I mentioned how I know a lot of people who are outspoken in Bayview Hunters Point (a predominately Black neighborhood in San Francisco and a ghetto [some people still live in run down army barracks over there]), especially about issues of gentrification and how their voices don't get heard and how it should be the reporter's job to not just listen to those who "speak loudest" but actually find very pressing issues.

She than said when she said "loud voices" she meant reporters in the news room and not just people in the community. If she would have kept it at that all would have been well and I wouldn't be writing this blog...but...she went on. She than said how maybe issues in Hunters Point wouldn't be that important to the "overall" Bay Area Community and how they need to not just cover stories in Hunters Point but in (rich and white) Berkeley as well as the South Bay and the (rich and white) North Bay. I thought What the fuck is this damn white woman talking about!!?? The community?? The community in the Bay Area is people of color! Whites are a minority or close to a minority when compared with the population of Chinese, Filipino, and Latino Americans! What community are you talking about!!??

I then told here how that was a problem. I said that people of color make up almost half, if not more, of the population in the Bay Area and that they don't get covered that much in the news by local mainstream news stations. I then said alluded to her that why wouldn't an issue in Hunters Point be an important Bay Area issue.

A fellow female student of mine chimed in and voiced my concern pretty well when she said that issues effecting Bay View Hunters Point are more important to her than some University of California Berkeley elites getting upset about environmentalists camping out in their university trees (a semi-big story here in the Bay Area).

I than said how the way the news is going about presenting the news is basically wrong. She's talking about how they need to appeal to a mass audience and yet she seems to be saying she's appealing to a white audience, which is not the majority demographic in the Bay Area. I said how issues effecting people of color are almost never covered, and if they are, they are only covered because of issues of gang violence or shootings, and that's the only thing people see on TV associated with these certain communities.

Than another fellow classmate of mine chimed in to our poor poor reporters defense. He started off with. "I'm Latino." Oh boy! And how in Sol Cal (Southern California) people in the Latino community would complain about how Latinos were only being portrayed in the news as illegal immigrants and as gang members. Than he said "But when I went to Boston" the news media focused on Irish American gangs and how the Irish American community would complain that they were being stereotyped as gang members and as violent. OK! Fine! Than if that's the case than that's completely fucked up and the media should change their focus!! What does this have to do with the discussion at hand! He than said how it had nothing to do with race and everything to do with statistics. Excuse me?? He said that Latinos in Southern California predominately are involved in crimes down there and therefor get covered more and how poor Irish in Boston are predominately involved in crime there and therefor get covered more. Oh my God! Could this White rich Landino (Landino means a white and rich Latino, or non-Latino) be any more juvenile in his thinking! Jesus Christ!

I chimed in by saying how its utterly ridiculous to say that news coverage in one area is justified because of statistics (and first of all, where does he get his statistics from? Is he just making it up? Does he only think this because the mass media only portrays Latinos as such? Hmmmmm). One should focus on issues effecting the Latino community, I said, that don't involve gang violence, there are plenty of issues out there. And also, if one is covering gang violence than one should delved deeper into the deep rooted problems in gang violence and not just have it be a normal news report. As for the Irish American community in Boston. That doesn't justify Sol Cal news focus on Latino violence. That's messed up if that's all the news media covers in Boston because there's more to the Boston Irish community than violence (and explain to me how stereotyping the Boston Irish community justifies the stereotyping of the Latino community, is it because their white! Shit). I basically started saying how the news media keeps a narrow focus on certain issues within the Bay Area and only caters to a certain audience (a white audience) and not to the needs of a vast majority of others (people of color) and how when one does cover the Chinese community its only during the Lunar New Year and when one covers the Black community its only during spouts of gang violence. There is no depth, there is no substance, and if you do get a good in depth piece on the Black community because of gang violence the fact that that piece only came about because of gang violence is not right! One should be focusing on that community whether there is gang violence or not! That should not be the excuse to cover the Black community! Why, that's weird. Why are they covering the Black community? Oh! Right, right! Gang violence. Those craz-ay Negroes.

The speaker than said, oh shit, here it comes, that there was a Black woman in the news room saying. "No, we should cover this, we shouldn't cover that." Dude! You're using the Black friend excuse!! God damn it! Whatever, I'll let that one slide for new since people in the class are getting pissed at me.

I brought up a few more points about how KRON 4 really needs to branch out and bust out of its white shell. Than she mentioned to me that I should become an intern to know what working in a news room is like. Excuse me?? What the Hell did you just say! If that isn't the biggest cop out ever! I've been a student journalist for four years (but that's beyond the point)! So I should get an internship to see how you dumb mother fuckers act!!? I told here that that doesn't matter because what I see on the news doesn't reflect what she was saying.

She than told me she didn't agree. I than snapped back and said. "Well, I don't care if you disagree I'm just telling you what I see on the TV and what I've studied." I don't remember her responding to that comment. Hah!

Another student decided to chim in (another white male) and he said that that's the type of issues that ethnic media is covering. I was like, What the Hell??!! That's messed up!! It's wrong if ethnic media is the only media covering these issues! First of all ethnic media isn't seen by the majority of people outside of that ethnic community! Secondly, the stuff that ethnic media is covering (i.e. gentrification, race issues, police brutality, institutionalized racism, etc.) is the stuff that mass media should be covering. And if that's the case than that just proves my point! Aren't you just saying that small time media outlets are for people of color and the big mass media outlets aren't really for the "masses" but just for the white population!?

The speaker also said (apparently in her defense) that KRON 4 doesn't look at race when doing their coverage and they've never thought about it. They only do coverage based on region (North Bay, East Bay, San Francisco, etc.). She actually admitted they've never considered race! What the fuck!

I interrupted her by saying. "You've never considered that? Wow! Why? Never?"

I said a few other things until the speaker chimed in again and set me off (I behaved, I wasn't yelling or anything) when she said that a main bureau editor for the Oakland Tribune was Black and that he's been around for the past 20 or 25 years. That's it! I've had enough of this shit!

"So what!" I said rather sternly.

She looked at me a little confused. "So what!" I said again. "Who cares if he's Black! That has nothing to do with what we're talking about!" She seemed a little speechless and the class ended shortly there after.

So, yeah, these are our future journalists (and one present day journalist) and our future political science people.

Damn I'm pissed off!

Making Whites Feel Guilty

Last Autumn I took a class called "Humanism and Mysticism" to finish all of my requirements for my Religious Studies minor. The class started out promising but the professor really had an ax to grind, especially concerning issues of race, although he did it cryptically (except for one occasion, but I'll do another blog on that latter), so many people in the class couldn't pick up his conservative white man biases (in fact, many thought he was a liberal since he was a band member in Sha Na Na and played in Woodstock).

At one point in December 2006 he began talking about Friedrich Nietzshce and his theory on the transvaluation of values and how Nietzshce used the transvaluation of values to attack Christianity (but we don't need to get into that right now). This is how his lecture went:

Basically he started talking about the Beautitudes and he was saying. "You know the Beautitudes. 'Blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungary, etc. Woe to you who are rich.'"

He than went on to say how this is bad thinking and how its not bad to be rich, it's bad to be poor and that nobody likes to be poor. Of course, one can take the context of Jesus' message as not blessing poverty but instead blessing the people in poverty because they endure hardships imposed on them from the outside, but we don't need to get into that now. With this he introduced a theory that Nietzsche had on religion.

Essentially (this is how the professor described it). Originally there was a "Master Class" and the "Hoi Polloi" (slaves, or, the masses). The Hoi Polloi are what make up around 70-90% of the society and the Master Class are the minority who control society and get educated. After awhile though a sect within the Master Class breaks away, they are too physically weak to rule by force and they don't have enough clout to rule politically, this sect is called the "Priestly Class." Essentially the Priestly Class guides the Hoi Polloi to revolt against the Master Class and to overthrow them. With this the Priestly Class takes its place over the Master Class. The professor than told us that the Priestly Class makes the Master Class "feel guilty" and "uses the strengths of the Master Class to make them fell guilty."

Our professor told us. "Now, unlike some," referring here (most likely) to Ethnic Studies professors and radical professors in general, "I'm not here to make you feel guilty. Oh, woe to you because your rich. NO! I'm not about that at all. How dare I."

For the professor, the Master Class is the normal ruling class in this society, i.e. white people (he talked much on how there is no racism anymore in my class), and the Priestly Class are the professors, specifically Ethnic Studies professors who make white people "feel guilty." For the professor, these Ethnic Studies professors use the "strengths" of whites to make them feel guilty. White people are on top due to hard work, they are in colleges because they study hard, they have riches because they worked hard, they live in nice neighborhoods because they were "smart enough" to move out when crime was rising and when suburbs opened up. The professor in my class saw these Ethnic Studies professors as unjustly making whites feel guilty for their position in society and he saw their position in society as justly earned.

He would constantly say in class. "I'm not here to make you feel guilty. Sex is good. Power is good. Money is good."

During class he would also compare and contrast Confucian values (by Confucian values I mean his version of Confucian values, so if it looks like I'm insulting Confucianism, I'm not, I'm just insulting the professor's version of Confucianism) with Taoist and Christian values. He would show us how Jesus made the rich "feel guilty" because Jesus came from the poor countryside, which looked at urban wealth as earned off the backs of the poor country folk and how wealth was opulent and sinful. He would also show us how in the Tao Te Ching where it would say that wealth was the "fall of man" and how it "diluted" man and distracted man from the Tao (or, the Way). He would always paint Taoism and Christianity in a negative light because of this. He said that the Priestly Class asked humanity to do things that were impossible (such as renounce wealth and turn the other check, etc.) so humanity would "feel guilty" and turn to the priests for help. He even quoted a passage from the Tao Te Ching (a passage on the evils of wealth and opulence) and said that. "This isn't right! This is what Osama preaches." Essentially, he was equated Taoism to radical Jihadist Whabism (the Christian Right, if you will, of the Muslim world).

With Confucianism, he would say, you have a good balance. Making money is good and one should make money (as long as it didn't conflict with the Tao) and one should gain power, since power was good (as long as it didn't conflict with the Tao).

Essentially, the professor was using the Confucian values (his Confucian values) of wealth and power to counter the Christian (as in the historical Jesus, not present day conservative Christianity) and Taoist values on wealth and power. He pervertedly took these Confucian values to support the system of white male supremacy in the United States. For him power is good; the white males in America have power; money is good; the white males in America have money; and to preach against these things was to make whites "feel guilty;" and making whites "feel guilty," according to the professor, is wrong; wrong because whites got to where they were based on hard work. He also would use the Asian Model Minority myth to prove that racism didn't exist and that all races could have wealth and power in America (see "Welfare Mothers" and "The Asians Have Landed!").

One time in class he said. "Asian American Studies professors always try to disprove the model minority. 'We have gang bangers! We do drugs! We're dumb too!' Bullshit, don't believe any of it." (I've taken three Asian American Studies classes and have yet to hear any professor say this).

Like most whites, my professor can't see that the wealth and power white society has built up is solely off of governmental policies that benefited whites and is off the labor and toil of people of color; whether it be slavery, Pilipino farm laborers in the 1920s and 1930s, Latino immigrants today (just to name a few). What my professor had done was to justify the existence of white male supremacy in America today by stating that there is no alternative and that we should continue to on our way and not change the system. And any attack on the system makes whites feel unduly "guilty" for being "strong."

Media Portrayal of First Peoples: "Civilized Whites" Meet "Untamed Savages"

On the TV the other day I was watching a Capital One ad, you know, those ads that always end with, "What's in your wallet?" Basically it was a "typical" white American family and the father says something like, "We're going to visit our relatives everyone."

Then his son says, "We're going to Ireland?" With a gleeful looking face.

The father, a little nervous, explains. "No, I'm meaning much more distant."

The next scene is in a genertic jungle scene (I thought Paupa New Guine when I saw it) and he greets his "relatives" with open arms. The natives greet him back by a croached native (in the usual native garb and paint) who shoots a posion tipped dart into his neck.

What's important to note is the contrasting of the civilized white family against the "primitive" natives. Also, the commercial plays up on nearly every racial stereotype of native "Amazon like junlge" peoples in just a few seconds.

This commercial got me thinking of other commercials, more specefically Budweiser commercials (the ultimate in white male stupidty). One of the ads I remember seeing was another stereotypical portraral of a native "jungle person." The ad series was called "Zagar and Steve." And, according to Rob Schmidt, the author of the blog Newspaper Rock the ad:

starr[ed] an "odd couple" of roommates, Zagar and Steve. Zagar is an Amazonian Indian who relies on deadly violence and is completely ignorant about modern life. He's essentially a Neanderthal--as savage and uncivilized as any Indian portrayed in the last 500 years.

In another post done on Conscious Media Maker the blog author states that the:

Steve and Zagar” ads for Bud Light featured a single, young white man named Steve with his roommate Zagar, a half-naked jungle savage of undetermined ethnic origin. Each spot found humor in juxtaposing the “civilized” Steve with the savage Zagar, and included just about every offensive indigenous stereotype you can imagine: cannibalism, eating domestic animals, spear-chucking, etc

Also, the author than goes on to point out how this isn't just a new phenomenon. Racism has played a role in Budweisers commercials from the very begining.

This is an old Budweiser ad from 1934, click on it for a larger view (hat tip to copyranter). The tagline reads “Good times coming, boss!”

The white man smirks at the camera, bending over slightly to supervise as his black manservant serves up some Bud and cold cuts for the guests.

And the "Zagar and Steve" commercial isn't only recent commercial that's smacked of racism by Budweiser. In a blog done on Counter Punch by David Zirin, Zirin goes on to describe a Budweiser ad about a whiney sports star:

"Leon" is Bud's big joke parody of the modern professional athlete. "Leon" won't do interviews unless his special dimple is on display. "Leon" is far more concerned about looking "pretty" than playing well. "Leon" is egomaniacal, lazy, and all about the bling-bling. "Leon" only speaks in the third person. Oh by the way, "Leon" is Black.

Zirin goes on to write:

"Leon" is supposed to be a harmless caricature, but of whom?...So who is "Leon"? "Leon" is corporate America's gob of spit in the face of modern Black athletes and anti-heroes. They are striking not only the players themselves, but also us--the fans-for embracing them. We shouldn't accept that. Let's load "Leon" on a bus with Stepin Fetchit, Mammy, Charlie Chan, and that damn Taco Bell Chihuahua--and push it off the pop culture cliff. Until "Leon" goes, Guinness will suit me just fine.

Images From:
Newspaper Rock
Conscious Media Maker

The White Working Class and Its Latino Scapegoats

This will probably be my most personal “observation” blog for a while. About four days ago I got into a gigantic argument with my younger brother (he’s 19) and my father. This obviously isn’t a journal blog but the argument definitely illustrates white privilege, white supremacy, and contemporary racism being played out everyday in many peoples homes all over the United States.

I forget how it exactly started but the topic on hand was immigrants, to be more specific, undocumented workers (they used the term “illegals”). My family is Irish and Guatemalan but my immediate family mostly identifies with their Irish side and hence Irish issues are regularly brought up. Since the topic some how got onto immigrants I pointed out that back in the early 1910s Irish Protestants in Ulster (Northern Ireland) were very much split along class lines with Orange Order (an anti-Irish-Catholic society) being dominated by the landed class, as was Ulster Unionist Council (the governing body of the anti-Irish-Catholic Ulster Unionist Party). Because of this many lower class and proletariat Protestant-Irish broke away and formed orgs of their own (such as the Independent Orange Order, etc.). The upper classes were fearing their hold on a British Ireland was slipping so they created black propaganda to scare the lower class unionists. Basically they said that Catholics would take their jobs and create a Catholic Ireland with values totally different from their own and that the Catholics would persecute them. Rumors flew and many lower class unionists believed the hype (despite the fact that the Catholics in Ulster had no political power whatsoever). Because of this the unionists were able to unify in order to destroy the Home Rule bills going through British parliament during the 1910s. I also pointed out how the undocumented worker debate reminded me of the Irish first coming to America in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s and how they were blamed for much of the ills that Latino immigrants are being blamed for today. Well, apparently this was not the right thing to say and the shit hit the fan.

My brother yelled out. “That’s not at all the same! That’s completely different! They’re illegall immigrants! The Protestants were illegally brought over from England to take over the native Catholics! Irish immigrants weren’t illegal!”

I then explained, in a not so nice tone, that I was merely illustrating to make a point and that the fact that Protestants were sent in to Northern Ireland by the English has nothing to do with me drawing a line from anti-Catholic sentiment in Ulster and present day anti-Latino sentiment today in the U.S. I than stated that Irish immigrants were able to come to America because the immigration quotas weren’t yet put up. The first immigrants to every be restricted weren’t white Europeans but people of color, which was done in the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 19th century. I also stated that while at first the Irish weren’t considered white and where in fact legally labeled Black, eventually the Irish became white (for more read How the Irish Became White) and the reason why the Irish were able to continue to immigrant to America is because they were white. This then, obviously, created a larger firestorm. But by this time I didn’t really care if the argument escalated.

What happened next was foggy but, from what I remember my brother said that I don’t know what I’m talking about and that the only reason why I support “illegals” is because I’m not a “blue-collar working man.” This despite the fact that I’ve done manual labor many of times, brick work, janitorial work, construction, etc. But that wasn’t the point. He than said I was a white-collar college educated “intellectual” and that if I was in a union or a union man I would know the reality and that I would be against “illegal immigrants.” This despite the fact that my brother goes to junior college, but that’s also besides the point. What was going on was that my brother was using classical right-wing arguments to basically drown me out. For some reason getting an education is bad. Yet these were just straw man arguments and I told him this (I also called him a complete moron and an idiot). Than my dad piped in and instead of trying to be the mediator he began to take my brothers side. He asked what it was that I found offensive in my brother’s argument.

I told him. “Ummm…Like every single racist thing he’s said!”

He than told me. “Hey, your brother is Guatemalan.”

“Yeah,” I yelled, “a quarter! And he doesn’t even identify with it! So who gives a shit. Even if he was full Guatemalan his argument still wouldn’t make any fucking sense and it would still be just as stupid! It’s a jackass argument!”

This set off something in my father and he than said. “The only jackass is you Jack! I guess your name is now ‘Jack the Jackass!’”

My dad than said that he was union and he was against illegal immigrants. This started a whole flurry of yelling and finger pointing. I said that if you were a true union man you would be allying yourselves with undocumented workers against the capitalist class and that just because some unions are against undocumented workers, it has no bearing on whether they are right or not.

My father skirted the argument and said. “Why do you think your brother has stupid arguments?”

“Because of what he said!” I told him. “He’s been brainwashed by all sorts of media influence, brainwashed by his football teammates and by his white construction foremen! Also, anyone who argues what he argues, such as gays are bad and undocumented workers are bad for America, is an idiot!”

I normally never resolve to using such language to paint an opponent in a negative light during an argument but I was pretty heated to say the least. Than my father said he didn’t necessarily like gays either, but that can be left for another post.

I than started arguing that this is exactly what the ruling elites want working class folks to think. They want the working classes to have a scapegoat so the unions and the working class keep their heat away from the capitalist class and the elites. Corporations would like nothing better than for unions to focus their attention on undocumented workers instead of on issues pertaining to pay, work hours, work safety, control of production, etc. And than said this is exactly what has been going on since the founding of this country. First the Irish were blamed for taking away jobs, than freed Blacks, than the Chinese, than the Italians, than the Pilipinos, and so on. There was always a scapegoat and the scapegoat always was a group of people from a different ethnic group. (See The Rise and Fall of the White Republic)

My father and brother were pissed and my father told me to spot “ranting and raving.” I than said that I was in no means ranting and raving and I told my father and brother to point out any inaccurate statement I made. I told them they wouldn’t be able to.

My father said. “You think you’re so much better than everyone else huh!”

I told him no and that what he said has nothing to do with my argument. Apparently while I was yelling further (to match their yelling) my finger somehow ended up near my brothers face and he slapped it away. I than slapped his hand saying. “What the hell was that for?!”

“Don’t fucking point that thing in my face you little faggot!” My brother yelled. It gets a little hazy here but what ended up happening was my brother grabbed my collar (I in no way threatened him physically) and proceeding to try and push me against the wall. Than he started through punches and landed about a half-a-dozen to my midsection as well as a few to my face. In the process he broke my rosary (which my girlfriend gave to me for my birthday).

That’s were it ended. There was nothing else to say, nothing more. Their white supremacist arguments didn’t work and as a result of that my brother proceeding to try and kick my ass since he somehow thought that that was what he needed to do.

Image From:
Center for the Study of Political Graphics

White Suspicion

I'm in Bellingham, WA which is 90 miles north of Seattle and about 20 miles south of the U.S. Canadian boarder. Bellingham is an interesting town, it's liberal like Marin County and the San Francisco Bay Area but it has some interesting dynamics. According to the Census Bureau its population is around 70,000 and is 87% white. There's a Native American reservation right next to Bellingham called the Lummi Indian Reservation. Belliingham is a nice town with cheap housing but its also filled with a lot of meth and crack houses and drug addictions, according to people living here. My friend Joe (whom I'm visiting, we traveled to Bellingham from San Francisco by car) was attacked by a bunch of meth addicts last year. While that might be bad, the reservation is horrible. It's like a third world country, alcohol rates are extremely high, my friend Joe works at the local YMCA and many Native Americans will come in stumbling drunk at twelve in the afternoon. The whole situation is very depressing, no jobs, racist policies, etc. cause for high rates in alcoholism. I was there myself and there was a lot of run down homes, trash, burnt out cars on peoples lawns, etc.

But the main gist, or observation, of this blog is this. I was at a party a few days ago and the party was mostly filled with white college students from local campuses (mainly Western Washington Unviversity). During the party a group of Black kids showed up, some of them with shirts that said "I Can't Feel My Face," which is a line Bobcat Goldthwait says in the movie Blow in reference to his cocaine use. I was latter told by someone I meet up there that he was suspicious of the Black kids because he saw one looking into a room. He (a white male) stated, "He was probably trying to stake out the place to steal something. I mean, that's what they were probably all trying to do." Of course, he ignored the fact that people where looking in rooms all night since there was about 50-75 or so people at this party.

Also, during the party this one white girl was yelling at one of her friends claiming that some "bitch" stole something from her and she was pointing to a Black girl in a crowd of three or four Black kids at the party.

Latter that night a few other white kids were talking and saying, "Man, those were some nigs up in there, shit."

Another person said, "Naw, they weren't nigs...Well, I duno."

"No," said the other, "they were nigs."

Essentially, the whole time people were being suspicious because these people were Black. Some of them may have been wearing weird shirts but then that night there was a lot of weird stuff going on. On white kid was wearing nothing but a beach towel and nobody said anything about it. Basically, because they were Black and because they dressed in a different style (i.e. "ghetto" as some would say) they had suspicion thrown on them from many of the white party goers at the party. Yet they hadn't done anything and they were all just as friendly as the other party goers.

The fact was that many of these white kids were putting suspicion on these Black kids but they wouldn't consider themselves racist (in the classic sense of the term, KKK, etc.) and might even have friends of color, yet when it comes down to it, they hold suspicions of many people of color who don't meet the "friendly" stereotype. While they may not be racist in the classic sense, there is racism (in the contemporary sense) being put into play which has effected these peoples view due to negative stereotypes in the media, at home, etc. A few days latter I asked if anything had been taken from the house, and just as I thought, nothing had.

Image From:
Ursus Books and Prints

Orientals and Dog Eaters

I was at my work yesterday and during closing I was talking with an acquaintance I knew from high school, "Mitch," who was about two or three grades below me (I think two). He told me that a mutual acquaintance whom he works with, "Jim" (who was in my same class and football team), got into an argument with him during work. He said Jim was basically flaunting his girlfriend, trying to show off. They got into some argument were Jim called him fat (and possibly a "faggot") and where the other guy called him a midget. Mitch said that Jim's girlfriend was hot but that he "wasn't going to bust a nut" over her. He also stated that she was some kind of "Oriental" chick and he wasn't going to get all crazy over an "Oriental." I basically left it at that since I had to close up at my work and Mitch went to his car but his comment was obviously interesting. Also it should be noted that about a year ago or so Jim asked me about my girlfriend because I had been talking to her on the phone. I said she went to school, yada, yada, and that she was Pilipina. Jim than looked at me with an inquisitive look and said, "Pilipinos? Don't they eat dogs?!" Just another day in white Marin County.