While we are on the subject of minstrel shows and blackface, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss how widely accepted “redface” is in American culture.  From the moment I saw this Honda Pilot commercial, I was struck by how similar the troll is to American Indian caricatures.  In fact, I was watching the commercial when my partner came in and asked, “Is that supposed to be an Indian?”  I said, no, but that’s what really bothers me about the commercial. 

Below is a picture of the Honda pilot troll commercial.  Now I’m not passing judgement on this commercial by saying it is racist.  Instead, I think it is useful to compare the troll to several American Indian mascots.

Here’s the Honda Pilot Troll…

Here’s an “Indian Chief” mascot costume that you can order from anytimecostumes.com

Here’s another costume, which is advertised in the “Animals and Mascots” section

Here are several random caricatures I found on the internet including the infamous Cleveland Indians “Chief Wahoo” mascot. 

Yes folks seems like we can’t even go a day without college students hosting “racially themed” parties. Today, the Smokinggun.com featured some pictures from a Martin Luther King Day party at Clemson University. The theme of the party was “Living the Dream.” Yes folk this is what some ignorant people think about the dream of the Civil Rights Movement. They could care less about providing equal opportunities, stopping hate crimes, ending segregation, and several of the other noble themes of the Civil Rights movement. No they would rather celebrate d-rags, malt liquor, big booties, and blackface. To them this is what Martin Luther King Day is about. Their dream is making fun of African Americans, claiming that they are parodying “ghetto culture” and if they are part of the academy awards, voting for groups like 36 Mafia, since they allegedly represent “real” black life and hip hop.

A few months back I put up a post called “Halloween for White People,” which included a few pictures I found on the internet of whites in blackface; this post is an extension of that post. Here I’ll be posting pictures from facebook and these parties. As I have highlighted before, facebook is rampant with racism, but on the positive side a group of over 2,000 students is fighting back by having a group called “Students against Racially Themed Parties” (you can only access this if you have a facebook account). First let me post a few pictures from the Clemson party:

Students Against racially themed parties has collected several pages of photos documenting racist parties and racism on facebook. Here’s picture that one guy decided to put up as his profile.

I was particularly struck by the friend comment on this profile. The friend says, “i’m lovin the nig costume.”

Here are a few more

Unfortunately some of these are a little grainy, but this is some of what’s going on on college campuses. I waiting for the apologists to come out of the woodwork on the last photo with the “look her black friend thinks it’s OK.”

Today I was at a community house for local activists/radicals/anarchists and found this sticker posted underneath by the water dispenser:

Surgeon General’s Warning:
Consumption of soft drink bevarages may result in
Rotten teeth, diabetes, obesity, malnutrition, osteoporosis, & Cancer

Well it wasn’t exactly like that, because it was all in caps.

I took it down, and tomorrow I’m going to leave this in its place:

To the person who put up that sticker, and everyone else who couldn’t be bothered to take it down.

I have gotten tired of taking down messages that reinforce mainstream ideas about food and bodies. Rather than just removing that sticker, I am going to explain why I find it problematic - in the hope that one day people will stop putting such messages up - or at least other people will take them down before I see them.

1. I have no idea why you thought this message is necessary. Presumably you believe that there are people out there who have been deprived of the information that soft-drinks can lead to rotten teeth, and there only way of accessing this information is through alternative channels. We obviously live in very different worlds.

2. Telling people that they shouldn’t eat a particular food because they might get fat, is about as un-radical message as you can find. I’m not even going to go there, you should know better.

3. As activists we should be focusing on health collectively rather than individually. We challenge the system of unemployment rather than blaming people for not getting a job. Surely we should challenge the system of food production rather than blaming people for getting sick

4. Think for a second about people who have the diseases listed - would you really be ok with someone with rotten teeth reading that? Are you even aware about the link between rotten teeth and poverty? Is this just another way of making sure that only middle-class alternative types feel comfortable in this space?

So lets stop with the moralistic bullshit around food. Let’s treat food politically or ignore it. Repeating mainstream messages is not an option.

PS: Surgeon General? Can we please stick to the bureaucrats we are actually inflicted with, without borrowing other people’s?

Update: If you want to see the video and hear a Tarleton State administrator talk about the party at Tarleton you can click on this MSNBC link.  P. Moore also has a good local newscast up.  I have to say I am impressed with the young man who hosted the party at Tarleton.  He actually gave a real apology, not those half baked ones we have been seeing lately.  I’m also impressed with the administrative responses at the two schools.  It also struck me that the young man who hosted the party at Tarleton had a Black roommate for two years, so much for the contact hypothesis although it could account for his seemingly genuine apology. 

Editor’s Note: P. Moore over at The Think has some of the pictures from two recent “ghetto” parties–you know the parties where whites dress up in costumes and try to imitate African Americans.  The pictures include one that was supposed to be a Martin Luther King party at Tarleton State in Texas and another one thrown by University of Connecticut law school students called “Bullets and Bubbly.”

I figured I would focus my attention on UConn case (You can check out the photos here on the Smokinggun.).  For those of you who don’t know, I graduated from UConn.  I was a graduate student there, not at the law school but at the main campus in Storrs.    Since I am a UConn grad and I know that several UConn grad students read my blog, I thought this would also be a good time to note that the graduate student representative to the Board of Trustees was at the party.  Here’s a quote of from him in the Hartford Courant:

Michael Nichols, a graduate student member of the UConn board of trustees, attended the party along with several other student leaders. He wore a tuxedo, he said.

“At the time we felt that nothing was wrong or mean-spirited. Since then we have learned that many of our friends and fellow students were hurt. For this I am truly sorry,” he said, adding that he hoped the discussion would raise sensitivity to other students’ feelings.

I’m not going to call for Nichols to step down from his position because I’m not a student anymore and because he didn’t dress up like this.  However, he was at the party, and I do find it troubling that he would participate in this kind of behavior.  At the very least, people should write him a letter letting him know that his behavior does not reflect the concerns of graduate students at UConn.  If you are a UConn student, you can send Nichols a letter letting him know that this behavior is unacceptable.  Here is his trustee office address:

Mr. Michael J. Nichols (Student Trustee)
c/o 352 Mansfield Road
Storrs, CT 06269-2048

Mr Nichols is an elected representative; thus, he needs his constituents to hold him accountable for his behavior. 

It may also be time to revisit the fact that the law school has had a virtual lock down on the graduate student trustee position over the years.  I remember this being a big controversy when I was at UConn.  In either 2002 or 2003, the main campus fielded a candidate for student trustee who was trying to challenge the law school grad students, who are usually preparing for their political careers and don’t have the interest of the vast majority of graduate students in mind.  It may be time to revisit this, and see if the Graduate Student Senate can find a good candidate from the Storrs campus.  There were somewhere around 70 law students at this party, so this is not an isolated handful of people, and it may be a symptom of a need for change in that position.

It is not easy to get into law school these days, and UConn is fairly good law school, so we are talking about some well educated people, which leads me to ask–do these people really not know that this is offensive?  Haven’t they learned about this?  One side of me says, I’ll take their claims at face value.  Maybe they genuinely don’t know.  On the other hand, another part of me says, they have to be lying because anybody who has come of age in this country should be aware of the offensive nature of blackface and general mockery of African Americans. 

I remember being taught that it wasn’t right to say “bad things about black people” when I was a kid.  In fact, I distinctly remember one incident, when my brother was in his early elementary school years, and we were sitting at the dinner table.  My brother hauled out with the n-word.  He must have picked it up at school.  My Dad said, “What did you say?” My brother was acting like a little smart alec and came out with the n-word again, like it was funny. (He knew what he was saying was wrong, but he seemed to think this was a funny thing to say.) At this point, my Dad whooped his butt.  Yeah, my parents taught me this was wrong.  And it was wrong enough to result in an “ass whoopin’” to use my Dad’s terminology.  Now, I couldn’t figure out why nobody said anything when my parents went to visit our relatives, and a few of them liberally used the n-word and made disparaging remarks about black people.  I tried to ask my parents about this a few times, but never really got an answer that made sense to me.  I supposed that is fairly typical of the hypocrisy of growing up white in the US.  We often get mixed messages about race.  However, when I was younger it seemed fairly clear to me that blackface and the n-word are wrong. I pretty much knew that was bad.

Which leads me back to those UConn students, I don’t really know what kind of messages they grew up with, but I am glad to see that the University is using this as an opportunity to let them know that this behavior is offensive, inappropriate, unbecoming, and unprofessional.  The new dean, who started just this week (what a welcome!), expressed dismay over the incident, as did the interim dean. As educators it is part of our role to explain why this behavior is offensive, and I’m formulating a post on this for a later time.  However, you’ll have to pardon me being suspicious about these claims of ignorance.

It is truly sad to see that these folks are our future lawyers.  The criminal justice system is arguably the most racially biased institution in the US, and these students represent the future.

Sage, of Persephone’s Box, tagged me with a meme - the idea was to steal a letter to MPs she’d written about stopping violence against women and encourage people to send it in. She had specific proposals, some of which I disagree with (really against longer prison sentances), but most of which were important steps.

I can’t take up Sage’s tag, because I don’t have any faith that anything Sage suggests will make a difference, and I don’t have suggestions of my own.

My great grandmother was a temperance activist. From what I know of her life, I’m fairly sure that as well as being a morality statement, she took this position because of the violence she had seen.

I think she was wrong; history strongly implies restricting legal access to liquor. But sometimes, when I’m yet again overwhelmed out how little I can do about violence against women, even among the people I know, and the enormity of the problem - I’m not so sure.

At least she suggested a solution. Everything I can think of that would make a difference, is so vague, so insurmountably large, that I never know where to start.

I don’t like this; it’s not my style. I tend to believe I know how to make change and I like fighting for a better society. But I just don’t know how women can change a world that doesn’t believe we are people.

PS I’d like to say a special fuck you to the World Socialist Webiste whose review of Volver said this:

Even Volver, which is one of his lighter works, touches on a range of painful personal themes—the loss of a loved one, marital infidelity, financial difficulty, etc., but from a far too comfortable angle and with a tidy resolution that tends to trivialize the events.

I don’t know much about that movie, but I do know that child abuse, and an abusive husband play a central role in the plot. While it’s rare to see such blatent disregard of the politics of violence against women, the attitude behind it is far commoner than I can cope with among left-wing circles.

*That state in tag where you cross your fingers and can’t be tagged - may have a different name where you come from.

Note for Commenters The comments of this post are limited to feminists and feminist-friendly posters. I’d love to hear other people’s ideas about what we could do.

I went to see Short Bus tonight. There are a lot of good things you could say about this movie. It’s got lots of lovely and real moments, humour and wit, and, most importantly, it shows people having sex. Not just soft lighting and fading to black, but people having sex in a way that an actual person might actually have sex.

I’m not going to say any of these things, instead I’m going to explore why, despite these features, the movie left me cold.

The most obvious reason was that there was just too much non-consensual sexual activity for me. A professional dominatrix has sexual contact with a man who repeatedly steps over her boundaries, and she can’t afford to enforce those boundaries. A stalker stalks a couple for two years, and culminates this in touching one member of the couple sexually when he is passed out. The climax of both the major plots involve scenes with sexual contact that is clearly non-consensual.

I don’t have a problem with movies depicting non-consesual sex. What I need is for a movie that depicts non-consensual sex to take that seriously. To give the viewer space to be creeped out. I need to know that the director also believes that non-consensual sex is a problem, or else I can’t play in his world. I can’t switch from creepy non-consensual sex scene to happy orgy party scene, where one woman’s orgasm restores power to a city.

Shortbus sold itself, both during the movie itself and through publicity, as a broad view of life and sex. I think if I hadn’t thought of the movie like that I would have enjoyed it a lot more, becuase my other problem was what a limited world this movie showed.

Partly it was limited in the way films set in Manhattan are so often limited. Ridiculously rich people are meant to stand for us all. I realised while watching that I’m prejudiced against Manhattan movies, or at least that subset of Manhattan movies that believe that by showing us Manhattan they are showing us the world. If what I’ve been told is true, then if you can afford an apartment that looks spacious in Manhattan, then you have a reasonably to very high income.

But it was more than that, the extras in the scenes set in the club were remarkably similar for a movie that was supposed to show us a broad section of human experience. They were almost all young, conventionally attractive and white. The exceptions were tokenised to an extent that felt insulting. The old man wasn’t just an old man who might enjoy sex like everyone else, he was also the only old person in the building (and as a side-note I don’t think he deserved any forgiveness or absolution). The non-white characters were given pointed roles (one of the main characters or one of the few lesbians who was shown twice), which presumably was meant to make us forget how few of them there were. There were two fat people in there, but both were meant to show how weird and freakish this club was, and didn’t actually do anything (because that would be too much).

I discussed all this, as we were walking home afterwards. We agreed on the points I mentioned above, But my friends felt they had gained something from this movie, and many people gave it rave reviews. I understand why. We’re so deprived of anything resembling real images of sex and sexuality, that for so many of us a step in the right direction is really important.

I’m not sure that any movie can take the weight that the director and marketers tried to give this one. If films acknowledge sex as a part of our life then this could be a movie about a sex therapist, a depressed man, and the people they meet. But they don’t, and it’s not. I’m not saying you shouldn’t see it, because movies like it are rare - but we deserve better.

This is regular feature over at my site, but since Amp is away, and I just started my new semester.  I figured I would post it on Alas, so people over here can enjoy it too.

1. An essay on the culture of racism in American politics.

2. I’m Not Just Your Token Black Guy (great article by a college student challenging the “my black friend” argument)

3. Cornell student goes to prison for racist hate crime.  The most pathetic part of the story is the non-apology, apology at the end.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Let me assure you, your injury is not due to who you are, but who I had become due to my emotional state,” Joch recited from the letter. “I’m anything but a racist, but I acted like one that night.”

In the letter, Poffenbarger said he wasn’t aware he stabbed Holiday, and ran away because he saw blood on his knife.

“You were not a target of racism that night,” the letter said. Poffenbarger confesses to personal turmoil, writing that his world was spinning out of control. “My actions came from a blind urge to lash out at my own demons. I wish you a full recovery and a restored faith in the goodness of all people.”

There were at least 50 people in attendance the hearing, including Poffenbarger’s mother, uncle and Cornell students. Most of the courtroom spectators were people of color, and their solemnity and silence was palpable during the proceedings.
Joch appealed to the court for Poffenbarger’s safety in prison, saying that he would have to keep his conviction a secret and would need protective custody.

“That means my client would have to be locked in a cage for 23 out of 24 hours per day for the duration of his sentence,” Joch said.

4. A parent wants to ban Huckleberry Finn from a high school’s reading list.  This is an old argument; in fact, this book has been on the most banned list for years because it has the n-word.  Personally, I’m against banning the book because the book itself has an anti-racist message, and it reflects an realistic portrait of that era.  I think when evaluating this book people need to get beyond the n-word and analyze the message.  The same arguments could be made for other racially themed anti-racist movies, books, etc.

5. Earl Ofari Hutchinson says there is not sufficient evidence to convict the Black teens accuse in the Long Beach racially motivated beating case.

6. Ann sent me this story. A mayor in Texas wants to ban the n-word by imposing fines for offensive uses of the n-word.

Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley wants offensive use of the “n-word” to be punishable by a fine of up to $500 in his town.

“It’s not a particular problem in Brazoria,” Corley said, “but it’s a national problem.”

Corley said he got the idea while watching two black ministers talking on television about how offensive that word is. “I just think it would be great if this little town of Brazoria, with 2,800 people, leads the way in fighting against this offensive language,” said Corley.

7. A group of college student athletes attacked several Palestinian students at Guilford College.  I received an email from a reader about this one–Thanks James!

Editor’s Note: Apparently, this is an urban legend.  I thought it was funny, but on a serious note I don’t think you could measure IQ purely based on writings and speaking.  Moreover, as much as I think GWB is not the best president, I don’t think IQ is necessarily related to job performance.  I wanted to have a debate about that in the comments section, but it’s pointless to debate a hoax.

From the Lovenstein Institute:

According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 60 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking. The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:

147	Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132	Harry Truman (D)
122	Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174	John F. Kennedy (D)
126	Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155	Richard M. Nixon (R)
121	Gerald R. Ford (R)
176	James E. Carter (D)
105	Ronald W. Reagan (R)
98	George H. W. Bush (R)
182	William J. Clinton (D)
91	George W. Bush (R)

The six Republican presidents of the past 60 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.

The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126.

No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176. Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis.

The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis. “All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers.

Not so with President Bush,” Dr. Lovenstein said. “He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking.”

The more I read about ‘health’ research, the more sceptical I am of any edict about diet or lifestyle. It starts by doubting the headlines (housework prevents cancer), then you read the articles and get sceptical of science journalism. So far you’re only blaming the messengers. But then you go on the internet and find the articles the press-releases are based on, and they don’t prove anything. It’s when you read the articles in their entirety, and see badly designed study after badly designed study, which don’t prove anything, despite what their authors claim. Theoretically journal articles are supposed to be refereed to ensure that they actually prove what they say they prove. As articles that clearly don’t prove what their authors claim are allowed through this process, why do we believe any of it?

And yet, I was still surprised to read an article arguing that a diet high in saturated fat did not make people more prone to heard disease.

Malcolm Kendrick appears to be making two claims: that there’s no evidence that a diet high in saturated fat causes elevated cholesterol, and that there’s no proof that elevated cholesterol levels leads to an increase risk of heart disease, or death. Read the article yourself - I’m sure you’ll hear more about it - he’s got a book coming out (the parts about cholesterol lowering drugs are particularly interesting).

I’m not saying I believe Malcolm Kendrick - necessarily. In fact I make it a matter of principle to disbelieve everything in the Daily Mail. There’s some really bad logic in the article (almost all foods on saturated fats were rationed in the UK during and post-war, but the level of heart-disease doubled - this is supposed to be evidence that there is no link between heart disease and saturated fats. Unless there was more than one risk factor for heart disease). I wouldn’t be surprised of Dr Kendrick, or others doing this research had some connection with the meat and dairy industry (if you were part of the meat industry wouldn’t you pay him?)

But at this point everyone is being paid by someone. Food is manufactured for a profit, as is food advice. Malcolm Kendrick gives the examples of the 9 memeber panel that decided to lower the recommended cholesterol level - 8 had ties to the pharmaceutical compnaies that produce cholesterol lowering drugs.

The ridiculous nature of nutritional advice can be seen when the anti-carb people fight the anti-fat people. Each side is very good at demonstrating why it’s a bad idea to demosing an entire food-group, but the argument behind this isn’t that demonising a food group is probably a bad idea, but that we need to eliminate the right food group (and I’m sure the anti-carb people are funded by industries that are high fat, and vice versa).

We have a puritanical attitude towards food. The idea that virtue will be rewarded, and that virtue is the elimination of pleasure, and the quest towards perfection, describe most mainstream conversation about food (and as a political activist I must point out far too much non-mainstream discussion as well). This fits in well with the needs of our food producers (which is for us to buy their products, in case you were wondering). Meat producers can make you feel virtuous when people are worrying about carbohyrate, bread produceers when people are worrying about fat. The people who make chocolate, donuts, and deep fried potatoes know that these ideas of sin and virtue serve their intersts as much as anyone else’s - because it’s only within that context that people can transgress by eating.

At this stage willing to believe that it’s dangerous to smoke, and eat arsenic - but it appears that we’ve got to take everything else of faith. Personally I’ve got other things I’d rather spend energy believing in.

Check it out here.

Hey folks,

I got this email on a list serve, and I figured I would disseminate this query to as many people as possible.  This sounds like a fascinating area of research that needs further development.  I’m not sure if he needs participants for a study, references to organizations and activists, or general literature on the topic.  Personally, I’m excited about this area of study because I have yet to see any thorough analysis of the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and disability.  If you can help him you can send an email directly, if you have general points of suggestions for the general audience, please feel free to put them in the comments section. 

From: A. Rahman Ford

arford@sas.upenn.edu

I am searching for literature regarding race and disability.  I seek to use such information to explore the intersection of disability and Black masculinity. Any information will be greatly appreciated. 

Blog for Choice day has come and gone, and there’s a lot of great posts. I’m very excited that a lot of feminists have taken this opportunity to interogate and question the usefulnes of ‘choice’ as a slogan, goal, or analysis. I have lots of ideas about this, and hopefully I’ll get round to writing about some of them soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to write about one tiny corner of those issues.

When abortion battles were fought and won (or lost, in New Zealand’s case - but we won the wore), they weren’t fought using the term ‘pro-choice’.

The feminist slogan was: “A woman’s right to choose.”

The most obvious thing we’ve lost in the compacting of the slogan to a label is the woman. The feminist slogan put women at the centre of our argument.

The term pro-choice, also steps back from demanding our rights, and phrasing those rights as anything which interferes with making the choices we wish to make. I believe that charging women fees for abortion interferes with her right to choose, just as surely as making her get her abortion signed off by two doctors.

The phrase pro-choice is too wishy-washy, too vague, and too open to the idea that it’s the ability to choose that matters, rather than the quality of the options. The choice between continuing and unwanted pregnancy or working as a prostitute to pay for an abortion is a choice some women have to make, in places where abortion isn’t funded by the state. That doesn’t mean I’m for that choice. Other women have to have abortions because they can’t afford the time off work that would come with pregnancy. Again I’m not pro-that choice. As a feminist part of what I want is to ensure that women don’t have to spend their lives choosing between two shitty options.* In the meantime I will fight to ensure that women themselves are able to decide which shitty option they think is better, but that’s not my end-goal.

So maybe I’m not pro-choice after-all - I think I’ll ditch the short-hand - waste the extra syllables and make sure I always say that I believe in a woman’s right to choose.

* I’m not saying (and don’t believe) that abortion is always a shitty option, but that it can be, for some women under some circumstances.

I don’t know how many of you have already heard this story.  It came out a while back, and I had prepared a post, but never got around to pubishing it.  There have been a few developments since the original incident.  Here is the story:

The campus police at UCLA apparently, asked a student named Mostafa Tabatabainejad to leave the campus library because he didn’t have an ID card. When Tabatabainejad, did not leave at the pace the officers wanted, they approached him and grabbed his arm. When the student objected to being grabbed, they apparently tased him. Here’s a quote from the UCLA Daily Bruin:

Neither the video footage nor eyewitness accounts of the events confirmed that Tabatabainejad encouraged resistance, and he repeatedly told the officers he was not fighting and would leave.

Tabatabainejad was walking with his backpack toward the door when he was approached by two UCPD officers, one of whom grabbed the student’s arm. In response, Tabatabainejad yelled at the officers to “get off me.” Following this demand, Tabatabainejad was stunned with a Taser.

UCPD and the UCLA administration would not comment on the specifics of the incident as it is still under investigation.

In a statement released Wednesday, Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams said investigators were reviewing the situation and the officers’ actions.

“I can assure you that these reviews will be thorough, vigorous and fair,” Abrams said.

The incident, which Zaragoza described as an example of “police brutality,” left many students disturbed.

“I realize when looking at these kind of arrest tapes that they don’t always show the full picture. … But that six minutes that we can watch just seems like it’s a ridiculous amount of force for someone being escorted because they forgot their BruinCard,” said Ali Ghandour, a fourth-year anthropology student.

“It certainly makes you wonder if something as small as forgetting your BruinCard can eventually lead to getting Tased several times in front of the library,” he added.

Edouard Tchertchian, a third-year mathematics student, said he was concerned that the student was not offered any other means of showing that he was a UCLA student.

I first saw the video on Keth Olbermann about 6 weeks ago. You can watch it in its entirety here. It’s pretty scary, but I do have to say that I am somewhat impressed with the students reaction to the police. They questioned the police, and the video itself was recorded on a camera phone.

Since the original incident the student has sued the University and the officers. According to the LA Times:

The UCLA student who was stunned with a Taser gun by campus police when he refused to show his identification filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that his civil rights were violated and that police acted in a brutal fashion.

In the 16-page suit, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, 23, sued the university, campus police and half a dozen officers, claiming they used excessive force and violated the Americans With Disabilities Act in the Nov. 14 incident in Powell Library. The suit states that Tabatabainejad has bipolar disorder.

In earlier reports, the student said that he felt he was singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance, and since that time I haven’t heard anything else about the racial/ethnic aspects of the case. 

While I think the police reation was excessive and the ethno-racial aspects of the case are troubling, my initial reaction was surprise at the University policy.

As an academic, I find the police behaviour unacceptable, and I am not only disappointed by the police behavior, but I am also concerned about the “random” checks for student IDs in the UCLA library. I have spent time in the libraries of  Universities: Northwestern University (albeit about 16 year ago), University of Detroit Mercy, Shawnee State University, Bowling Green State University, the University of Connecticut, and Long Island University, and I have never been subjected to a random check.  The only times I remember any libraries being vigilant about checking people is the bag check that many of them conduct when you leave. I guess they are worried about people running off with books.  Moreover, any public university should have an open access policy to their libraries.  I understand if they do not want everyone to be able to check out books, but given that much of their funding is from tax payer dollars they should allow community members into the library to look at books, maps, magazines, journals, and other materials.  Most of the university libraries I have been to allow the general public to enter the library, and I don’t see why this school should be different.  Of course, with the particular student in question this is a moot point since he was a student anyways, but I worry about many of the new restrictions imposed on libraries in the past few years.  I don’t think the state needs to know what books I check out of the library, and I don’t think they need to act a gatekeepers at the library door.  (Gee, I feel like I’m stuck in a Ray Bradbury novel– Farenheit 451, anyone?)  

What do you think?  What policies are appropriate for University libraries?

Here is the original story from Inside Higher Edu.

The Student Retains a Lawyer

Original Story from LA Times

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The following comes from Amnesty International’s urgent action campaign. Marcus Robinson is about to be executed by the state of North Carolina for a crime that was committed shortly after he turned 18 years old. Doubt remains as to whether it was him or the other guy present who actually shot the victim, Erik Tornblom. The other defendant is currently serving life in prison with a chance for parole. Please read for more details regarding Robinson’s case and what you can do to help save his life.

Marcus Robinson, black, is scheduled to be executed in North Carolina on 26 January. He was sentenced to death in 1994 for a murder committed when he had just turned 18 years old.

A 17-year-old white youth, Erik Tornblom, was robbed and shot dead on 21 June 1991. Marcus Robinson and another African-American teenager, Roderick Williams (17), were arrested and charged with capital murder. It remains unclear who shot the victim. Marcus Robinson told police that it was Williams (who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole). At Robinson’s trial, the prosecutor argued that Marcus Robinson had been the gunman.

In arguing for a death sentence before a jury made up of 11 whites and one non-white, the prosecutor pointed to statements attributed to Robinson before the murder that he was going to rob or kill a white person. His appeal lawyers have pointed to cases of white defendants who have been sentenced to prison terms in North Carolina for the racially motivated murder of black victims. They have raised the case of a 27-year-old white man who was convicted of the 1992 stabbing to death and castrating of a black man, whom he referred to as a ”nigger”. He received a life sentence. In another case, two white racists, aged 20 and 21, were sentenced in 1997 to life imprisonment for shooting two randomly chosen African-American victims.

The use of the death penalty in North Carolina, as in the USA as a whole, is marked by discrimination. In 2001, a
comprehensive study found that ”racial factors – specifically the race of the homicide victim – played areal, substantial, and statistically significant role in determining who received death sentences in North Carolina during the 1993-1997 period. The odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendants (of whatever race) who murdered white persons.” Forty percent of murder victims in North Carolina are white, but 77 per cent of those executed since the state resumed judicial killing in 1984 have been of people convicted of killing whites. Research with capital jurors in the USA indicates that white jurors are more likely to vote for death than black jurors, and that majority white juries make a death sentence more likely. Research has also revealed a lower receptivity to mitigating evidence among white jurors when the defendant is black.

At the time of the crime, Marcus Robinson was emerging from a childhood of severe abuse at the hands of his father. At the age of three and a half, for example, he was admitted to hospital, unconscious, having seizures and with blood streaming from his mouth and nose. An examination revealed burns, scratches, bruising and swelling. During his childhood, he also witnessed his mother being assaulted by his father. In the early 1990s, he was diagnosed with brain dysfunction, attributed to the abuse he had suffered, that impaired his ability to plan and control his impulses. Since then, medical science has established that, even without abuse, the adolescent brain is not fully developed at the age of 18 and continues its development into a person’s 20s. In 2005, when the US Supreme Court prohibited the execution of people who were under 18 at the time of the crime, it noted that ”as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies… tend to confirm, a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” Also unknown to the jury was the fact that, not long before the murder, Marcus Robinson had been prescribed Prozac after he reported mental and emotional problems. The side-effects of this drug can include mood changes, hyperactivity and aggressiveness.

The jury concluded that there were mitigating factors in Marcus Robinson’s case, including his youth, his background of childhood abuse, and behavioral or mental problems. However, they also found that the mitigating factors were not enough to outweigh the seriousness of the crime, and sentenced him to death.

Interviews with jurors after the trial revealed that during the sentencing deliberations, a juror had asked a court bailiff to bring in a Bible. Without either notifying or obtaining the approval of the judge, the bailiff did so. The juror then proceeded to read to other jurors a passage concerning the retributive notion of ”an eye for an eye” in an effort to persuade them to vote for a death sentence. The claim on appeal that this introduced an external influence jeopardizing the impartiality of the jury has been rejected and a hearing in federal court on the issue has been denied. In a 2-1 decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2006, the dissenting judge protested that ”the majority ignores the fact that the Bible is an authoritative code of morality – and even law – to a sizable segment of our population.” He argued that it would be ”blinking (ignoring) reality not to recognize the profound influence that quotations from the Bible could carry in the jury room. Moreover, the specific passage read aloud… bears directly on the severity of punishment to be imposed for a criminal act and expressly requires the death penalty as a punishment for murder.”

Marcus Robinson’s mother has appealed for clemency. Nine months ago, her son Curtis was murdered. ”There are few words to describe the pain I feel from losing my son, Curtis, to murder,” she said recently. ”There are no words to describe the additional pain I will feel if my son, Marcus, is executed next week. I have been on both sides now. I felt the horror, the anger and the desire for vengeance after Curtis’s murder. But an eye for an eye would not bring back my beloved son.” She learned on 15 January that her third son, who is in the Navy, will be deployed to Iraq at the end of the month.

There have been 1,060 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, 43 of them in North Carolina. There are signs that the USA is slowly turning against capital punishment (see USA: The experiment that failed: A reflection on 30 years of judicial killing, 16 January 2007). There is strong public support for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina. Approximately 1,000 faith group congregations, businesses and community groups have passed resolutions calling for a moratorium, including almost 40 local governments in the state. In addition, more than 40,000 people in North Carolina have signed the moratorium petition.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Erik Tornblom, and explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the manner of his death or to downplay the suffering caused;
- opposing the execution of Marcus Robinson, noting that doubts persist as to whether he was the person who actually shot Erik Tornblom;
- noting that while the prosecutor’s arguments for a death sentence in front of an almost all-white jury included evidence that Robinson had acted with racist motivation,research indicates that North Carolina’s capital justice system is itself tainted by racial discrimination;
- noting that Marcus Robinson’s involvement in this crime came when he had just turned 18 years old and when he was emerging from a childhood of severe abuse, abuse which led to severe injuries and brain damage that impaired his planning ability and impulse control;
- noting that the death penalty extends the suffering of the murder victim’s family to that of the condemned inmate, and expressing sympathy for Marcus Robinson’s mother, who has lost one son to murder and is facing the prospect of losing another to execution, as well as facing another son being deployed to Iraq;
- calling on the governor to grant clemency to Marcus Robinson in the name of compassion and justice;
- calling on the governor to support a moratorium on executions in North Carolina, noting the large public support for such a measure based on concerns about the reliability and fairness of the capital justice system.

APPEALS TO:
Governor Michael F. Easley,
Governor’s Office, 20301 Mail Services Center,
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301
Email: governor.office@ncmail.net
(via website) http://www.governor.state.nc.us/email.asp?to=1.
Fax: 011 1 919 733-2120 / 011 1 919 715-3175
Salutation: Dear Governor

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the Urgent
Action Office if sending appeals after 26 January 2007.

Today is the 34th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and also blog for choice day.* The topic is supposed to be ‘why am I pro-choice’. It seems a little trite, I’m pro-choice because I believe women are people, I’m pro-choice because I want to decide when I have a child, I’m pro-choice because I have two younger sisters, I’m pro-choice because I trust other women to make choices about their own lives, I’m pro-choice because sex should be awesome, I’m pro-choice because of all the women who have died and are dying from illegal abortions, I’m pro-choice because of all the women who have died and are dying because they couldn’t get an illegal abortion, I’m pro-choice because parenting is a hard important job and must be voluntary, I’m pro-choice because I know how hard women fought in New Zealand to ensure women would have access to abortion.

It probably says a lot about my life that, for me, those things go without saying. I have met with people who oppose abortion and regarded them as slightly quaint (or hated them passionately depending on the circumstances).** I got over a guy I’d had a crush on for way too long when I discovered he wasn’t pro-choice enough for me.

What I want to say about abortion isn’t anything to do with what I think the laws should be.*** There have been two things I’ve written about frequently on this blog the first that access is as important as rights and that the right to choose has to also include the right to continue the pregnancy.

Brownfemipower has some great posts about the US National Advocates for Pregnant Women conference (which she’s at at the moment). What they really made me think about is how much abortion is normally treated as a stand-alone issue, and how counter-productive that is.

It’s all pretty irrelevant in New Zealand; I’d guess we have more women fighting other reproductive issues (social welfare, medical care, women in prisons, violence against women) than abortion. But if I wanted to change that, if I had the energy to start fighting back then I would try and work with people who didn’t just want to focus on abortion laws (although our abortion laws are a piece of shit and I will not rest till I have danced on the grave of every man who voted for them), but saw that almost all issues that effect women’s lives, effect reproduction. We won’t be able to make meaningful choices until we create a very different world.

*I must confess to finding this a tad annoying - abortion rights don’t begin and end in the US, but you get used to it.

**I once had a half hour argument about abortion on a peace vigil with an ex-nun.

*** Although for the record I’m really hard case about abortion law and don’t accept any legal restrictions for any reason, don’t ever think it’s anyone’s business but the woman whose making the decision, and think that if you don’t like decisions people are making to terminate their pregnancies you should change the conditions under which they make the decision, rather than tut-tut about the decision itself.

I feel a bit guilty; I’ve been neglecting “Alas” lately. Partly it’s that I have the flu that is (so it seems) never, ever going away; partly it’s a minor crisis at home (basement flooded, water damage everywhere, contractors contractors contractors). Whatever it is, lately I just feel no drive to blog.

So I’m taking a break until I do feel like blogging. Which will probably be shortly after this flu goes away. In the meantime, I might do some extremely light posting - baby blogging, sketch blogging, that sort of thing. We’ll see how it goes.

Keep yourselves well, folks. :-)

The first episode of Ugly Betty aired in New Zealand a couple of days ago. My short review is that it looks awesome (although the ending was way too pat, and if the point is supposed to be that if you’re smart you can succeed I will stop watching).¹

One aspect bothered me, and that was the part of Betty’s presumed to be gay cousin - Justin. He wanted to watch fashion TV, and was slightly effiminate, and I suspect that from this the audience was supposed to deduce the sexuality of a 10 year old.²

It probably didn’t help that immediately after watching Ugly Betty I watched a few episodes of Arrested Development.³ In this show there is also a character that the audience is supposed to believe is gay, based on a general sexual awkwardness and a feeling of oddness. I’ve been bothered by this particular trope ever since Andrew in Buffy.

I find the idea that we can deduce someone’s sexuality from their gender conformity, or anything else besides their sexual desires, is completely regressive.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these characters are always men. A woman who acted and dressed butch, and whose sexuality was uncertain wouldn’t be amusing, she’d be pathetic. The joke (such as it is) is dependent on a society that views feminine traits as inferior in general and inexplicable in men.

For all the fancy dressing (and all these shows are in some ways progressive or alternative) these characters are basically more gender policing.

I would actually like to see a male character who gave off all sorts of effeminate vibes was sexually attracted to women, or reveal that a character who behaved in typically masculine ways was in fact in the closet.⁴

1. I also saw America Ferrar’s golden globe acceptance speech, where she said “It’s such an honor to play a role that I hear from young girls on a daily basis how it makes them feel worthy and lovable and they have more to offer the world than they thought.” I believe her, but do want to pont out what a sad inditement on the world that is. (back)
2. I’ve only seen the first episode so I could be wrong and I’m sure people will let me know in the comments if I am. (back)
3. Also awesome, don’t get me wrong. I keep on having a new favourite joke, for a long time it was the fact that none of the family could tell any Latino people apart, then there was the Atkins diet episode, but my new favourite is “they won’t do anything to me, it’s shoplifting and I’m white.” (back)
4. Of course on Buffy this happened with the Larry character, and it was great. Except the actor was a Christian homophobe and they killed him off. (back)

The next Carnival is at Try to Follow. If you want to know more about the Carnival, you can check out Allywork. 

Submissions should be made at this blog carnival page.  Please send your posts.

[This is Charles] In the long running previous thread on that started out with Amp’s rebuttal of anti-trans arguments, I suggested opening a new thread to refocus and to make the loading time shorter (425 posts and rising, phew!). A huge issue in that thread was the problems of how to talk about trans issues (transitioning, transgender, transexuality, cisgender, …), so I think it might be good to look at how the language works around all this, and what is wrong with the language we use.

I’m going to be lazy, and not do the work I should pulling quotes from the previous thread. Instead, I am going to just post the last comment from the previous thread, as it seems like a good starting point (I hope this is okay with everyone):

BritGirlSF writes:

nexyjo and littlelight - I’d love to hear more from both of you about how you feel about how the language we all use at the moment frames the issues, how it works for you and how it doesn’t. For example, nexyjo said something about not feeling like a woman post-transition even though many other MTF trans people do. How would you define your current gender identity? Or are you not defining it because we don’t seem to have any words that really fit?
I’m not sure if that made sense, I’ll try to clarify if it didn’t. That’s the point I was trying to make earlier, really - our ability to have this conversation is hampered by not having the linguistic tools we need.

Still sick (although mostly better). Also, basement flooded. Thousands of dollars of damages. Contractors, contractors, contractors. Insurance. Not a good week, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyhow, in that context, I hope folks will understand how baby blogging might end up being a day late. :-)

This isn’t a great photo of Sydney, but what I love about it is all the iconography that might be meaningful on its own — the space rifle¹, the ghost doll, the Flintstones-style dress, the red fingernails — but which, placed together, defies any attempt to find a coherent meaning.

Gotta love a big pen. Remember when she was bald?

1. Sydney likes to fire the zap gun at adults; if the adult pretends to die in agony, Sydney finds that especially hysterical. (back)