White Evangelicals and their "Toolsets"

An excerpt from my other blog about race relations and white evangelicals:

The racially important cultural tools in the white evangelical tool kit are “accountable freewill individualism,” “relationism” (attaching central importance to interpersonal relationships), and antistructuralism (inability to perceive or unwillingness to accept social structural influences).

…

Absent from their accounts is the idea that poor relationships might be shaped by social structures, such as laws, the ways institutions operate, or forms of segregation. Again, understanding evangelicals’ cultural tools illuminates why this element is missing. White evangelicals not only interpret race issues by using accountable freewill individualism and relationalism, but they often find structural explanations irrelevant or even wrongheaded…Evangelicals are thus also antistructural because they believe that invoking social structures shifts guild away from the root source—the accountable individual. However, evangelicals are selectively aware of social institutions—they see those both impact them in their own social location and tend to undermine accountable freewill individualism. For instance, they are aware of affirmative action because such programs can impact them in their social location, and they tend to oppose such programs because they go against evangelical understanding of accountable freewill individualism.

"Japan Probe" Here to Defend the Most Oppressed People on Earth...Whitey!

So while browsing through Twitter I saw a Tweet by the women over at Disgrasian that stated:

We Don't Care About White People, Apparently

They then linked to a blog post that took "offense" to their position on the McDonalds "Mr. James" ads over in Japan. In their blog post they wrote:

Interestingly, there are some foreigners and non-natives in Japan riled up about this humiliating depiction of themselves, going so far as to compare Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit. Because there aren't enough positive depictions of beautiful and sophisticated foreigners selling things to the Japanese, apparently.

Sothese riled up white people are actually comparing this ad campaign to Stepin Fetchit, who played every single bad and humiliating stereotype associated with Black people during the 1930s. Disgrasian blogs:

I find the outrage leveled at this Mr. James character by certain people to be verging on histrionic. Comparing Mr. James to Stepin Fetchit? Really? Stepin Fetchit was an African-American stereotype popularized in the 20's and 30's. He was known as "the laziest man in the world," and "a befuddled, mumbling, shiftless fool." But one of these fools is not like the other. It's important to remember context here, that Stepin Fetchit was a minstrel character created during the time of Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the systematized oppression of African-Americans that followed slavery. I mean, slavery, okay? Over two hundred years of slavery. It's morally bankrupt to put a fool like Mr. James on par with a fool like Stepin Fetchit; stereotypes like Stepin Fetchit were instruments, ultimately, in reinforcing the second-class status of blacks--and not just socially, mind you, but legally. Stepin Fetchit didn't merely offend. Stepin Fetchit made the abuse of our constitution, the miscarriage of justice, the legalization of inequality, and the back of the bus only that much easier to live with.

But, one thing that really undermines Japan Probe's argument is not just the stupidity of their argument but the fucking advertisements on their god damned page!

Such as this one
And if that one doesn't scream fucked up and racist this one sure as hell does!

Hey, Japan Probe, not that I want to give you sound advice or anything, but before you make an argument about...No, wait, never mind, I definetly do NOT want to give you dumb mother fuckers sound advice on anything.

Crazed Euro-Centric Whitey Bullshit I Deal With at Graduate School

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Whitey committing genocide against the Native population...No wait...I need to be "objective." I mean, whitey "negotiating land rights" with the Native population...there we go.

As those of you who have read my About page will know I am pursuing my Masters in Divinity (same as Masters in Theology but one extra year of "pastoral formation" and such) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Here is an example of some of the great fantastic knowledge I have to put up with.

For an online class (in where we meet for discussion once a week) one of the questions was this:

What are some ways the new context of independence and establishment of the United States shaped American religion?

And my very mild answer was this (bold was added for this blog, just me being slightly snarky)...(Click here to read the rest)

Oscar Grant, young father and peacemaker, executed by Bart police

Originally posted on Alas, a blog. Slightly modified.

This is absolutly apauling (if you want you can see the video for yourself, I don't want to though, but you can find it pretty easily). I will be at the protest today at the Fruitvale Bart station at 3 pm if any other Bay Area folks who read my blog want to come along.

By now everyone has seen the horrific videos of an Oakland BART police officer shooting an unarmed Black man, Oscar Grant, while he lay face down on the ground and was fully cooperating. The man who was killed execution style was the father of a 4-year-old girl and was considered a peacemaker. In fact moments before he was shot he was pleading with his friends who were all cuffed up to calm down and be cooperative with police. Grant was seen begging the police officers, who had pulled tasers out and pointed them at the heads of his friends, not to shoot...(Read More)

Gentrification and Community Organizing

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Jack blogs:

This Friday I’m heading to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn for the premiere screening of Some Place Like Home: The Fight Against Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn, a documentary by Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE, a community organization lead by and comprised primarily of low-income women of color, has been rallying the community in a fight against the rampant development that’s going down in Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding area. While developers, big business, and politicians alike claim they are only trying to improve the community, the development is being conducted with little care or concern for the residents and small business owners who are already there. Some Place Like Home documents the struggle of FUREE, the neighborhoods’ residents, and small businesses against the forces that are trying to push and bulldoze them out. Check out the trailer below.

Mumia Abul-Jamal on Thanksgiving

"I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive."

Time Wise, on his Facebook posted this video of James Baldwin. In his post he stated:

This is an amazing clip of Baldwin, discussing Malcolm and Martin, but especially the last two minutes, in which he poses the ultimate challenge to white America.

I don't necessarily agree with his views on the Black Muslim movement but he was speaking from a different time and a different generation.

Getting in Trouble: Regulating the Self

I'm at Carlo's house right now and I was browsing a book he was reading called Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinty. [1]

In it I found this illuminating quote that Carlo had highlighted:

Adult descriptions of infractions on the referrals often invoked their reading of the tone of the exchange as expressed through children's body language...girl received after-school detention for a "sassy mouth, standing with attitude, walking away when I called her in the 6th grade line at lunch." The same girl got two days of in-house detention for "disruption in class. disrespectual [sic] and defiant when spoken to. Mouthy and had an attitude." A white girl was sent to cool off in the Punishing Room after charged with "defiance; flapping & pointing; slamming drawers, called Sharon a bitch."

What is most significant for us here is that reading of "defiant attitude" are often deciphered through a racialized key...

Notes

1. Ann Arnett Ferguson, Bad Boys: Public School in the Making of Black Masculinity (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004),67-68.

The Native Media and American Politics

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

The Angry Indian blogs on Native American news outlets:

We were never meant to be a part of the colonial system and I find it embarrassing that those who are chosen to represent us do not have the courage to speak about this in real, coherent and tangible terms. Instead, we talk of what it like for Indians to be a part of the DNC and RNC conventions and who got to speak before large crowds and which “tribe” will adopt a candidate who in the end will do absolutely nothing for our people but keep us in our respective place at the bottom of the U.S. totem pole. And we ask ourselves why we get so little respect.

"ask a white kid"

I logged onto myspace this morning and one of my friend's had posted a bulletin entitled "ask a white kid."



Did anyone happen to catch this?

Race and Biology

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Ridwan blogs:

Last year around this time Nobel Prize laureate, James Watson, shocked the scientific community with his ludicrous claim that race is a scientific category.

Watson, you may remember, won the Nobel Prize for his research that led (in part) to the 'discovery' of DNA.

So, it is October again. Now comes a report that Akhil Bakshi, a fellow of the prestigious Royal Geographic Society and celebrity photographer, is pushing the preposterous claim "that blacks, whites and Asians have different ape ancestors."

The Exotifying Gaze

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Johanna blogs:

I am really uncomfortable with how a lot of vegan cooking is described as “exotic” (to whom?). It assumes so much about the audience racially & culturally, & as well is loaded with really creepy connotations — the exotic is there to be conquered, mastered; it’s there purely to titillate your (white/Western/etc.) self (which also implies that white people have no culture — a convenient excuse used by people participating in cultural appropriation, but not actually true). It’s a “safe” way to imagine you’re experiencing other cultures without, you know, having to do that pesky thing known as actually engaging with the people whose cultures you’re attempting to eat via their food.

On Responsibility, Accountability and Values: The Process to Change

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Asabagna blogs on white people and no longer expecting them to change a system that benefits them:

In regards to the eurocentric dominant culture, this has meant four things. One, I no longer felt any responsibility to be their teacher (and/or confessor… as a way for them to ease the angst of their white privilege) on the effects of white supremacy - eurocentric superiority thinking and practice on people of colour. Two, I had no desire for the material and/or societal trinkets which signifies “success” in their society. I could no longer be bought. My soul… beliefs, values and principles… are more important to me than to “gain the world”. Three, I don’t expect anything from white people. I don’t expect them to be fair. I don’t expect them to be just. I don’t expect them to be empathetic to my situation or to the struggles of people of African descent. I don’t expect them to take any sort of responsibility for their past, present or future behaviours. Finally, I care about all people… regardless of nationality, ethnicity, colour, religion, gender, age and sexual orientation… who are oppressed and/or taken advantage of. I don’t compare and rate oppressions on a scale. However with that being said, the issues concerning people of African descent are first and foremost in mind… because I am one of them… and what we need to do, not only to overcome to survive, but more importantly, to empower ourselves to live, is the core of my cause.

[Hat Tip: IllVox]

White by the Numbers

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Tammerie, who is pursuing a dissertation on anti-racism and Christian theology, blogs:

By the numbers, white people still hold a preponderance of the positions that count, out of proportion to our presence in the population, from which I would argue we are able to maintain white-privileging control over the systems and institutions that shape our society, including business, legislative and judicial systems, property sales and management, education and health care. (Note that the percentages of non-white, non-male legislators was considered too small to be tabulated.)

Of course, not all white people are employed in positions that afford economic power and privilege. Whites represented 44 percent of the 37 million U.S. citizens living below the poverty line in 2006. The (historically constructed) sad thing about that is that most of the white people living in poverty think they have more in common with wealthy white people than they do people of color also dealing with poverty. And that keeps folks from banding together and working together to insist on change in an unjust reality.

Obama and the White Vote

I'm obviously not an Obama fan, I'm a Cynthia McKinney fan. To me, the only change Obama represents is a change in policy of the bourgois; no more no less. Bourgois change is not real change. But, Tim Wise has a great article on Obama's candicy in where he says:

If, in order to be elected, a man of color has to pander to white folks, in ways that no white politician would ever have to do to people who were black or brown, then white privilege and white power remain operative realities.

[Hat Tip: Racialicious via Barry]

Esther Ku Not Funny

Offensive, sure, but not funny. The only people who think she's funny is white folks who feel good when they hear their racist humor spouted back at them by an Asian person and feel vindicated in not being racist.

Sunny Vergara, a former Asian American Studies professor at SF State and whom I've had the privilege to hang with on a few occasions writes this in the American Pop section of Asian Week:

When Chin writes that Ku’s schtick is “to playfully undermine Korean stereotypes”, it’s not immediately clear how these stereotypes are exactly “undermined” by her performance. The trouble is, she traffics in the most exhausted and obvious stereotypes, in chopsticks and slant eyes. That is, it’s not the kind of humor that comes from acute observation, or a comedy animated by outrage, but a stand-up routine that’s little more than a superficial enumeration of cliches, strung together without rhythm. Which does not comedy make.

Check out his blog and check out the rest of the article.

Furror Over New Yorker Cover

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

ShineThePath blogs on the latest controversy involing the Obama campaing and the New Yorker:

So why has the The New Yorkers’ cover art coming under heavy criticism when it simply is poking fun at all the right-wing racist attacks against the Obamas? Attacks which the Obama campaign had to create their own website to defend themselves from the campaign. They’ve had to tell you his father wasn’t a Muslim, he was an Atheist. That he, himself, didn’t go to a Madrassa. He threw his pastor under the boss for the sake of appearance, had to to denounce Louis Farrakhan, had to tell Black fathers in Bill Cosby-esque “get-your-shit-together” patriarchal uncle tom tone to be personally responsible just to seek the approval of white America. The reason why the Obama camp is trying to squash The New Yorker cover article is to really get rid of race from the agenda of discussion in this campaign altogether. Obama doesn’t want race brought up, and he sees it as only a harmful element in his campaign. So rather than dealing with race and white supremacy, he has only talked about a post-racial society.

[Hat Tip: Mike E.]

Gentrification

I read this Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago and wanted to blog on it:

The Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council is one of 88 neighborhood councils created in Los Angeles in the last nine years. Each is a junior varsity city council of sorts, with the ability to pass judgment on new development and other things, but its power lies largely in advising politicians who have real power.

...

Echo Park was one of the first L.A. suburbs and, later, was the site of some the city's first white flight.Now, the Anglos are coming back -- white return? -- and in recent years, that has begun to redefine life in the ethnic enclave that developed in their absence. Latino businesses and families have been pushed out, largely by rising rents.

Then I read this just now in the New York Times and this just pissed me off:

It is Saturday evening, the second day of summer, and the air around Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem is filled with the scent of blossoming linden trees and the sound of West African drums.

Across the street from the park is 2002 Fifth Avenue, a new seven-story cream and red brick luxury co-op with a doorman, $1 million apartments and a lobby with a fireplace.

The drummers in the park are African-American and from Africa and the Caribbean. They form a circle and have played in the park, in one form or another, since 1969...

...some in the building at 2002 Fifth Avenue, most of them young white professionals, have a different perspective: When the drummers occupy a spot nearby, residents say, they are unable to sleep, hear their television sets, speak on the telephone, or even have conversations...

Oh for FUCK'S SAKE! I'm gonna blog in this soon. Just thought I'd share the articles.

Paper Citizens

Natalie, the YouTube director for Community Channel posted a good response to a racist e-mail she got about her being Asian and obviously not Australian (duh! Aussies are only white!). I'll blog more on this latter...I think.

Hip hop activists attacked and arrested for daring to hold the NYPD accountable

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Jack blogs:

I’ve been wanting to blog about this since I heard about it last week, but Vivir Latino and illvox and Racewire and a bunch of other folks have gotten to it already…

…

Obstruction of justice and resisting arrest should really be renamed the Activist Charges, since they seem to be what all of us are threatened with whenever we’re arrested for either protesting or observing the cops and holding them accountable for their actions. The latter seems to particularly piss the cops off. I know this from personal experience, having been pepper sprayed along with other community members and seeing two friends being violently arrested for doing just that - questioning police actions, asking for badge numbers, taking pictures of their activity. All the charges against the two people arrested were dropped. Three members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s Cop Watch were arrested while videotaping an arrest in Brooklyn in 2005. All charges against them were later dropped. When the cops went on a bike-confiscating frenzy in the East Village last summer, two people who dared to observe and question them were arrested. It happens over and over again.

Click on these links to hear some of Rebel Diaz's music.



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