Posted with the kind permission of Keith Knight; visit Keith’s website for many more cartoons.

Adviser for Americans arrested in Haiti suspected of Child Trafficking in El Salvador. So am I supposed to believe they just happened to find someone connected to human trafficking and hired him? Don’t answer that. In other “I hate the world” news this shit right here? Prime example of what happens when groups get so focused on their pet interest that they throw all logic and common sense out the window. The reality is that abortions are not happening because Planned Parenthood exists. Long before Margaret Sanger was a notion in her mother’s eye women had ways to end a pregnancy. And they did so (and still do so) for a lot of reasons having nothing to do with race, though as with everything else racism does play a part in the underpinnings of some of those reasons.

First up, there’s the purely financial aspect of things. We live in a country that begrudges people a living wage and health insurance. For some reason these are viewed as things you have to earn, and if you don’t manage to secure them then it’s all your fault for not using those magical boostraps. Never mind pesky details like limited educational opportunities, a sagging job market, and the overall lack of boots or straps that plague much of our population. Attitudes toward public assistance are ugly and filled with all sort of ridiculous myths about recipients. Especially recipients of color. That Welfare Queen schtick is alive and well along with an idea that more money = better parents. Not true.

Then there’s the reality that not every relationship that produces a child is a safe healthy long term one. That’s not exclusive to any race, but the reality is that a WOC in an abusive situation is going to have an even harder time getting help. And more kids can make it harder to leave. And of course there’s the simply reality that not every pregnancy is a wanted pregnancy for a whole other host of reasons. But hey, why let facts get in the way when you can fin all new ways to pretend that WOC don’t love their children. After all, if they breed them but can’t feed them then the answer is to steal save them right? Right. Oh wait, I was supposed to be outraged at the idea of abortion wasn’t I? Sorry, I reserve that emotion for stupid manipulative ad campaigns that ignore reality.

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Annie Lowrey in the Washington Post:

But what if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Imagine trying to convince someone — Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? — to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!

Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators — 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority — making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.

So in total, there would be 51 female Senators in this made-up world, compared to 38 who have ever been in the Senate in reality, or the 17 current female senators.

One thing that Lowrey didn’t bring up: religious representation. There would be fewer Jews in the Senate, alas — 2 (rounding up) rather than the current 13. About 50 senators would be Protestant, and 25 would be Catholic. 1 would be Muslim. About 15 Senators wouldn’t identify with any organized religion at all; I’m not sure how many of those would be openly atheist, or openly agnostic. (Source).

One of the frustrating things about living in Iowa City – a cozy, liberal-for-the-Midwest sort of town – is that I’ll make friends with intelligent people, considerate people, well-spoken, literate people, who nevertheless will pull out phrases like “I don’t believe in white privilege” when I have discussions with them.

To them, I dedicate this. (Originally posted on my own blog, http://magistrate.dreamwidth.org/.)

Hey, college- and grad-school-age friends of mine, which, to be honest, could cover everyone I know who’s reading this blog. (Except, perhaps, for those of you who have already obtained your graduate degrees, but one never knows. You might be looking for more.) I want to pose a simple exercise to you:

Let’s say that you were scoping out colleges to apply to. Could be for an undergraduate degree, could be for a writing workshop, a Masters program, a PhD program, a few one-off classes in a summer session, whatever. You’re shopping around, you’re thinking of campus visits, you’re calling up admissions offices and asking for pamphlets. It’s a good time. Here’s the exercise.

I want you to take out a piece of paper, or boot up a copy of TextEdit or NotePad, of just toss some thoughts around in the back of your mind, and answer this: what are the things you look at in deciding where to go?

How about things like cost? Availability of scholarships and student aid is a big thing, availability of student jobs. In-state vs. out-of-state tuition is a deciding factor for a lot of people, I know.

Location? Will it be close enough to visit family? Will it be close enough that they’ll expect you home every weekend?

The programs, obviously, should be a major factor. What’s the learning environment like? Do they have an engaged faculty in the stuff you want to learn? A complete department, or a few professors teaching classes on it here and there? How does one school’s program stack up against the others’?

Hmm. The campus itself should be a concern. Is it walkable? Bikeable? Does it feel like you’re going to be living in a bustling downtown, or a manicured garden?

And the city. Are the local politics conservative or liberal? Is it a metropolis or a hamlet? Is there an arts scene? Shopping? Public transportation?

All of the above sounds fairly reasonable, right?

What else do you think about?

Take some time.

…

…

…

How’s this: when you’re looking through schools and programs, do you stop to think, If I go down here, am I going to be in danger because of the color of my skin? Do you wonder if you’ll have to worry about getting profiled or pulled over if you drive somewhere? Do you think, if I get into something and the cops are called, are they going to be biased against me?

Do you wonder if you’re going to have to fight a constant battle against people’s preconceptions of you – your intelligence, your citizenship, your economic status, your language skills?

Do you wonder if you’ll be othered or tokenized, if your race will become a big issue because diversity on campus is low, or if you’ll face an expectation to associate with people of your own race or be considered a race traitor? Do you worry that you’ll become someone’s “black friend” or “Latino friend” or “Asian friend” or any other “attribute friend”?

Do you wonder what percentage of your time is going to be spent educating others about your race, your racial history, or the nation of your perceived origin? Do you wonder which of your actions will be taken as reflecting your race as a whole? Do you wonder if people will expect certain things from you, culturally, interest-wise, background-wise, because of your race?

Do you worry that you’ll be forced to mis-represent your race – say, as “black” when you are in fact biracial – when filling out official forms, because no accurate category exists for you?

Do you wonder if exchange programs have provisions for your safety, if you were to go out of the country? If, say, you wanted to study in Moscow, where race crimes sextupled in early 2008, would the program have people who would know how best to protect you? Or would you be allowed to go?

Are these concerns for you?

If these thoughts haven’t crossed your mind when looking at those programs, if you’ve never had (at the bare minimum) a list of options in your life cut apart by these concerns, then you experience a kind of privilege I have never had. And if you think I’m blowing this out of proportion, that I’m being overcautious in worrying about these things, let me tell you a few stories.

My father got into a minor car accident once, and when the police arrived on the scene, they determined that he was at fault. This was either a rear-ending or a sideswiping of his car, mind you. He decided to contest the matter and took it to court; on walking in, his first day, he discovered that the court had assigned him a Spanish translator, despite the fact that he didn’t speak Spanish (our surname is recognizable as a Yoruba – that is, Nigerian – name, and resembles a Spanish/Latino surname not at all), and despite the fact that he was a professor of English at the University of Nebraska.

Once, when I was riding in a friend’s car, she was pulled over for something like a broken taillight. At one point she got out of the car to talk to the officer who had pulled her over, and when she got back in, she told me that the officer had asked her if I spoke English. This happened in Iowa City, which is for the most part a very friendly, liberal town. Bear in mind that when this happened, I was studying at the University – an institution of about 30,000 students in a town of about 67,000 altogether. Bear also in mind that I was born and raised in Nebraska, and English is in fact the only language I fluently speak.

I had a good friend in high school, a fellow member of the Speech & Debate team, who mentioned one day after 9/11 that he’d been accosted in a store by a man who had told him, “We don’t want your kind here.” He was an Indian Hindu, which didn’t seem to matter; he’d been othered because he was nonwhite, lumped into a group he had no relation to, and harassed. In his case it was only verbal, but that’s not always true.

Racism is not over, folks. It’s become a bit quieter, but it’s still virulent. The three stories above all happened to me and people I personally knew, in Lincoln and Iowa City, which are known for being friendly places. That’s not even scratching the surface of places where it does get loud, where it does get violent, where it’s systematized, where it’s routine.

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as white privilege. And male privilege, and cisgender privilege, and able-bodied privilege, and heterosexual privilege, and educational privilege, and economic privilege, and national privilege, and thin privilege, and a hell of a lot of other kinds. And if you never have to think about them, that probably means you have them. And you can say that you never have to think about them. But don’t you dare try to tell me they don’t exist.

So this whole thing with Chris Matthews “forgetting that Obama is black” falls into that same range of racism as “Pretty for a black girl” and the “You’re not like those other black people” claptrap often espoused by the “I’m not racist, but…” crowd. They’re coded as compliments, but the subtext is still an ugly one that frames racism as being the fault of the oppressed. After all, if we’d all just be a credit to our race then our problems would go away right? Right. Oh wait, no that’s completely wrong.

Let me give you a quick history lesson on American race relations and what can happen when black people in this country are just going about their business. We can start with Rosewood, Florida. Now let’s move on to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and of course the riots that broke out right here in Chicago. What’s that? Oh, you think the early 20th century is ancient history? Okay. Let’s talk about a Baptist church in Selma, Alabama. Still too far in the past? Okay. Let’s come forward to cases like Lenard Clark’s or Abner Louima’s. Or this one on New Year’s Day 2010.

This incidents are as much a part of America’s racial history as the “I have a Dream” speech, traffic lights (invented by Garret A. Morgan, peanut butter, open heart surgery (successfully pioneered by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams), and all the other positive moments like the election of President Obama. I’ve heard people that claim to be colorblind (or post-racial) insist that the future hinges on seeing people without including race. Of course their future seems very…pale with some of the same people complaining about the continuing existence of institutions like the NAACP, HBCU’s, and other organizations that predate the Civil Right’s Movement.

I’ll buy that part of the problem is the failure of our educational system to teach history comprehensively, but that’s not the only reason for these attitudes. America’s efforts to “transcend” race are still about America’s efforts to forget the past entirely and of course to ignore anything happening right now that might require confronting reality. Racism isn’t going to go away as long as we try to pretend that ignoring race is a solution. The idea that race is something for POC to overcome is the equivalent of buying racism a new costume to replace the old hood.

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A likable essay in the Minnesota Star-Tribune by poet Bao Phi:

But then how do nerds of color like me fit in, and how do we deal with fellow nerds who don’t want to talk about things like race and class in comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies? I’ll be the first to admit, I got into all of that stuff for the escapism it allowed. It was invaluable to me, as a refugee from a war growing up in an economically poor urban area, to fantasize that I was someone else, somewhere else. I’d rather be a paladin with a war horse riding to battle a chimera than be the Vietnamese ghetto refugee nerd running from the dudes on my block who tried to jump me on my way to and from CUHCC clinic to get my teeth cleaned.

However, there was a discomfort about some of my own internalized issues. I always chose to ignore the weird feeling I got when I realized that, in my dreams, I was always, literally, a white knight. When I dreamt I was a superhero, I was a white dude with superpowers and the Mary Jane to my Peter Parker was always white. [...]

As I got older, I wondered more and more about certain things: like, why Wolverine seemed to have an Asian fetish, why the only Asian men in the nerd worlds seemed to be the bad guys or some servant like Doctor Strange’s assistant Wong. I wondered why the only Asians in comic books, movies, and video games seemed to be ‘exotic’ Asian women. [...]

I became a fan of the new Battlestar Gallactica and yet wondered how Grace Park’s character seemed like a sci-fi stand-in for Miss Saigon, and despite my skepticism stuck with the series through its entire run and watched in horror as the show literally and figuratively dumped almost all of their characters of color out of an airlock by the time the show ended. I dug Firefly a lot, but was annoyed that Whedon predictably relegated Asian culture to a neo-Yellow peril future where the extent of China emerging as a superpower means that people throw in a couple of badly pronounced Mandarin words into their everyday conversations, and despite the idea of this looming Asian culture, there are no actual Asian characters to be seen.

None of this was easy for me personally, because I had to confront my own internalized racism. There was a part of me that said, no, don’t ask these questions. It’d be easier to just go with the flow. Don’t rock the boat. No one cares about this stuff. Do you really want to challenge yourself about how you want to be white? You’re a man of color from Phillips – are you really ready to out yourself as a self-hating nerd?

And you’d think that fellow nerds, regardless of race and gender, would understand given that our status as freaks and geeks and outcasts would give us some humility and common ground to stand on. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Try bringing up issues of race, class, gender, and homophobia on a video game message board and see the vitriolic response you get, no matter how diplomatic you try to be. Bring up issues of representation and race to fans of Battlestar and Firefly and get told that you’re a killjoy or one of the “PC police” who doesn’t understand what their favorite show is trying to do.

The comments at the Star-Tribune include headings like “I really feel bad that people have to view everything view ‘colored’ glasses” and “It’s all economics, not racism,” of course. *rolleyes*

As you all most certainly know, an embarrassing quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surfaced over the weekend. Reid apparently stated during the 2008 election that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be an electable African-American candidate because he was lighter-skinned, and because he had the ability not to speak in a “Negro dialect.”

The quote was cringeworthy, and full of what Josh Marshall once described as “racial grandpaism,” the sort of archaic, muddled statement made by a guy who is generally well-meaning, but also generally possessed by some racist baggage left over from their upbringing.

Was the quote racist? Well, yes. But racism is not a capital offense; I have said racist things and so have you. One can’t grow up in America and not be suffused with some of the racist legacy our culture carries. The best any of us can do is recognize this and strive to overcome it, and apologize and learn when we fail to live up to our responsibility to overcome it.

More to the point, Reid’s statement, while clumsy and racist, was not malicious. He wasn’t saying that Obama shouldn’t be president because he was a charlatan, or that it was reasonable and proper that darker-skinned African-Americans should be less electable. A more artful phrasing of what he was trying to say might have gone something like this: Because of the legacy of racism in this country, a candidate like Barack Obama, who is biracial and who is able to speak to audiences in a manner that is less connected with stereotypically African-American speech patterns, will be more electable than a candidate like, say, Al Sharpton, who is darker-skinned and whose speaking style is more stereotypically African-American.

That doesn’t mean that this is right; it’s a value-neutral statement of fact. And what’s more, it’s true. Just as it’s true to say that being white makes one more “electable,” historically, than not being white, or that men are more likely to be elected president than women. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s something we should work to change. But it’s true, and saying so doesn’t make one a racist or sexist. Saying so makes one observant.

Which brings us to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

As you may recall, Trent Lott used to be Senate Majority Leader until, in 2002, he was forced out in a scandal involving a statement he made that included racist language. The then-Majority Leader’s statement that got him in trouble came in a tribute to retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, KKK-S.C. Lott said of Thurmond:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, at a time when he was a Democrat of the traditional Southern variety — i.e., a flaming racist douchebag who nevertheless had an illegitimate biracial daughter conceived, quite probably, in rape.

Southern Democrats were furious at efforts by President Truman to ameliorate the damage caused by the apartheid system of segregation. The breaking point came at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, at which a young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert Humphrey urged the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The speech prompted a walkout of Southern Democrats, who left to form their own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats nominated Thurmond, at the time the Governor of South Carolina, as their standard-bearer.

The party’s platform was simple: States’ Rights. Anti-Miscegenation. Pro-Segregation. Pro-Lynching. They were a party whose raison d’être was the full-throated defense of Jim Crow. Perhaps their platform was summed up best by Thurmond, who during the campaign said, “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra [sic] race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

Again, when he said those words, he had a 23-year-old African-American daughter.

Flash-forward back to today. Many on the right, apparently wowed by their ability to connect that both Trent Lott and Harry Reid were or are Senate Majority Leaders, and that both were accused of racism, are now calling on Reid to step down as Majority Leader, because the situation is totally the same. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said flatly, “If he [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should.”

This is, in a word, bonkers.

Again, what Reid said was inartful and cringe-inducing and yes, racist. But it was not malicious. A different phrasing could save it from racism, and the core idea — that America in 2010 will treat candidates of varying racial backgrounds in different ways — is absolutely true.

Compare to what Lott said. Lott said that if America had followed Mississippi’s lead in 1948 and voted for the Dixiecrats, that America today would have avoided a lot of problems.

And yet the Dixiecrats stood for the worst sorts of barbarism committed in this country. They were the spiritual heirs to the slaveholders, the men and women who were absolutely and completely committed to keeping a boot of the throats of all non-white Americans. They expressly supported lynching, for God’s sake.

There is no way to save that quote, no way to phrase it that does not make it offensive and malicious. Lott was saying, flatly, that if only we’d maintained a system of segregation and racial apartheid in the South, that America today would be better off.

To compare the two situations is ludicrous.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

Claiming that Harry Reid’s comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as “Hebrews” is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling “Segregation Forever!” would have cured us of “all these problems.”

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid’s comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren’t simply having a hard time re-branding, they don’t actually understand how and why they got the tag.

Exactly right. Harry Reid said something stupid while arguing that a specific African-American man could get himself elected to the presidency. Trent Lott endorsed the worst part of America’s racial legacy, and held it up as our nation’s salvation. That Republicans can take these two situations and not see a difference between them says far more about the Republican Party than about Harry Reid.

A new gossip book about the 2008 election has been getting lots of press for this report about Harry Reid:

He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately.

Reid has apologized for his choice of words.

I think Matt gets to the heart of the matter:

It’s good that Reid apologized, but at the same time you can’t really apologize for being the sort of person who’d be inclined to use the phrase “negro dialect” and it’s more the idea of Reid being that kind of person that’s creepy here than anything else.

Amanda thinks this shows a need for forced retirements of our more senior Senators. In contrast, Mark can’t see why people are objecting to Reid’s quote:

Other than using an old-fashioned word to refer to African-Americans (a word which was the standard word for about the first half of Reid’s life), what did Reid do wrong?

But “Negro” isn’t just “old-fashioned”; it’s a racist epithet. It’s true that a half-century ago, “negro” was commonly used by both Blacks and whites. But things have changed since then. From Wikipedia:

During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African American leaders in the United States objected to the word, preferring Black, because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. During the 1960s Negro came to be considered an ethnic slur.

The term is now considered archaic and is not commonly used, and is widely considered a racist slur. The term is still used in some contexts for historical reasons such as in the name of the United Negro College Fund. or the Negro league in sports.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this; this isn’t a judgement on Reid as a person, or an indictment of his entire character. A sincere anti-racist can slip up and have a racist moment.

Nonetheless, it is racist for white folks¹ to casually use racial slurs as part of everyday speech, and Mark’s mistaken to think otherwise. It’s not even slightly unreasonable to expect that someone who is sharp enough to be the head of the Democrats in the Senate, who is one of the most powerful people in the world, would have learned sometime in the last four or five decades to stop using the word “negro.”

1. I’m ignoring for this post the question of Black people using the word “negro” ironically, or of elderly black people using the word non-ironically, because Reid clearly isn’t in either category. (back)

From the blog Alienated Conclusions, and via Shadow and Act, which in turn was via Womanist Musings:

What if suddenly, instantly, the power of white femininity were transferred to black women?

The answer is clear: Black women would represent value, purity; and based on their natural traits would be worthy of protection and instantly become the objects of universal desire. White women would represent the opposite.

“Beauty tar potion” would become globally popular to get the “black look.” “Dove” would be replaced with a black soap called “Raven” to help exfoliate the skin and bring out subtle hints of melanin.

White female features would be declared violent. Their “jagged” thin lips, “knife sharp” noses, and “harsh” jaw lines would be nature’s way of expressing why men have a natural preference for the soft features of black women. Soft lips, soft cheekbones, and soft, round noses would be proof of natural femininity. Full, pink lips and large, dark eyes would become associated with virginal black girls whose purity must not be compromised. Black female features would thus be said to represent youth.

Straight, blond hair would be considered “wild and unruly” because when the wind blew, it did not stay in place. Women with naturally straight hair would hide their “unruly” and “wild” stick-straight hair in public. The desire for “lightweight hair” that defied gravity would permanently end the use of blow dryers. Keeping one’s natural blond hair wild and straight would become indicative of a political statement.

The anti-aging properties of black female skin combined with soft, curvy bodies would be proof of the overall reproductive health of black women. Scientists would argue that black women were naturally preferred as long term mates and mothers because they were “healthier.”

There’s more at the original post.

Clicktrigger in the comments at Shadow And Act added some more (click over to read all her suggestions):

…there’d be a whole new kind of nose job.

…the default colors for underwear would be black, brown and tan. Dead-white bras would barely even exist. You’d have to order those off the internet or something. And black cotton panties would be a symbol of feminine innocence.

…the irreversible skin-darkening (and iris-browning) caused by the prescription drug Latisse would go from being a heavily downplayed, barely-mentioned negative side effect to being the primary selling point. It would be sold OTC, with little to no regulation or FDA input. Everyone would just shrug and say “why would anyone put that dangerous stuff on their skin/in their eyes?!” even as dark skin and brown eyes are aggressively promoted as the ideal. [...]

…the meanings of certain words would change. “Fair” would simply mean “light-colored.” The “beautiful” meaning would fall out of use, and the archaic word “ebon” would come back to replace it. Poets would pine for their muses with “ah, she was so ebon, so ebon!” (We’d also go back to using the word “just” instead of “fair.” Kids would whine, “He got more than me! That’s unjust!”)

Via Racialicious, I was directed to this jeremiad, which wins the internet:

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

The entire post — which began as a comment on Annalee Newitz’s brilliant Avatar commentary — is worth reading in full, and I will be invoking Moff’s Law going forward any time someone argues that I should stop analyzing a movie because “it’s just a movie.”

I haven’t seen Avatar yet, in no small part because I don’t really know if I have the patience to put up with three hours of white-guy-saves-too-perfect-to-live-indigenous-people-from-other-white-guys. I may eventually go, because I’ve heard universal praise for the visual and technical effects in the film, but I’m not sure that wizardry is being used in service of good.

More to the point, though, is that James Cameron quite obviously wanted this to be a talked about movie. He could have pretty easily created a dumb-but-visually-stunning movie about plucky soldiers fighting mean aliens. (Heck, he already has.) Instead, he made a movie that by all indications is Trying To Say Something Important about nature and indigenous people. So it’s not exactly a stretch for people to want to question what the movie is saying, and to argue that Cameron’s characterization of the native peoples in Avatar literally dehumanizes them, and ends up reinforcing racism rather than working to destroy it.

Art is supposed to say something to us, even the art that wants us to shut our brains off to enjoy it, like, say, the Transformers franchise. Sometimes what it says is subtle, sometimes it’s subtle as a freight train. But it’s meant to affect, even if just to divert people from their humdrum lives. Because of this, it’s only natural for people to react to how they were affected by art by telling people how they were affected by art. If they’re artists themselves, they may even go further, and create art that is a response to previous works, as Avatar can be seen as a rejoinder, not just to the old, overtly racist treatment of aboriginal peoples as savages, but to Cameron’s own treatment of non-humans in Aliens.

That’s what art is supposed to do — spur discussion, spark creation, and yes, engender criticism. Of course, all too often — and especially when that criticism strays into questions of gender or race — people don’t want to hear that there are problems with films they liked. They want to ignore the flaws in a work of art. That’s their privilege. But it doesn’t mean the rest of us should follow their lead. Art is about communication. And that communication should not be one-way only.

To start, I’m sure many of you have seen or heard about the YouTube video of the black dude who shows that the webcam on the HP MediaCenter does not track his face but does track the face of his white co-worker. The vid is here, in case you haven’t seen. It’s pretty funny, too, because the dude (Desi) seems like a fun guy. When he says “I’m going to go on record and say HP computers are racist” you know he’s mostly joking, though it is really messed up that the camera doesn’t recognize his face as a face.

Now, this vid was uploaded to YouTube (ironically using the HP MediaCenter) on December 10th but it took a few days to really blow up around the ‘net. HP caught wind of it a couple of days ago and put up something on their blog mentioning lighting conditions and they were working to solve the problem and whatever. But that hasn’t stopped tons of commenters on blogs and Twitter and Facebook from declaring that HP is racist or, at least, its webcams are.

I find myself in a strange position here, because I’m about to say something I don’t normally say: people, there’s not racism here.

That’s not to say there isn’t a problem and a serious one. But it’s more along the lines of the stuff I pointed out yesterday with the digital frames. One of not thinking or considering, one of privilege and blindness, but I am failing to see how racism is involved.

Let’s back up a bit. In case you’re not sure what’s going on here technologically, there is a feature in some webcam software that is designed to zoom in on the face of a person looking into the camera. I don’t know why this feature is necessary, but obviously someone likes it. Anyway, Face Tracking is supposed to keep your face in close up no matter where you move within the webcam’s field of vision. It identifies what is a “face” by an algorithm I won’t even try to explain because I don’t know how it works. HP said something about measuring the distance between the eyes and cheekbones but, again, I have no clue. That is what Desi was trying to get to work in the video but could not.

The software behind all this is part of HP’s MediaCenter suite which looks like one big program all created by HP. However, that’s not exactly true. When I was playing around with the program I noticed that it was really similar to CyberLink’s YouCam software, from the way the buttons and settings menus were designed to the kinds of effects and avatars available.

It’s no secret that vendors often bring in third-party software then put their own branding on it. Why develop webcam software in house when perfectly good software already exists? You can find YouCam software on a ton of computers, not just HP, and you can also download it yourself. I put it on a computer of mine and tried the Face Tracking thing and it works the same. So, if anything, the software is “racist”, not the webcam and not the computer manufacturer.

Though HP probably did some testing to ensure that the software interacted well with their system, I doubt anyone at the company tested all of the features. That’s not their job, actually, that’s the job of the software developers. So if we’re going to look for culprits here, we need to turn our attention to CyberLink. I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to guess that the folks at CyberLink tested the Face Tracking with a few people, but either not with any dark-skinned employees (assuming they have some) or not in enough varying lighting conditions with said employees.

The webcams included with most notebooks and all-in-one PCs are not of the highest quality. They’re for Skype chatting and mking silly YouTube reaction videos or lip dubs. The brightness, contrast, and backlighting correction are rarely the best (I know, as I’ve tested dozens). And that’s where the software runs into problems.

Go look at this video, then this one. It shows that a simple change in the software’s settings makes the difference between the webcam being able to track the face of a dark-skinned person and not being able to. (Also note that different shades of dark skin make a difference, too.) So what’s the real problem here? It’s two fold: one, that the software developers didn’t properly take dark-skinned owners into consideration when creating the product. Two, that crappy webcams make everything worse in life.

Given all this, I don’t see racism here. I think this is a fine wake-up call for CyberLink or whoever actually made that software to expand their testing parameters. I am willing to bet that they probably didn’t take dark-skinned people into consideration, but I’m willing to be told I’m wrong. If they didn’t, it’s probably because all of the developers on the team were fairer-skinned (which doesn’t mean white. The webcam works fine for East Asian and light-skinned Black faces, for example). It’s looking more like a case of blindness due to privilege. Like I said, problematic, but not malicious or even unfixable.

For my part, I’m going to continue to enjoy the video that started it all. Because it’s damn funny. And though I hope people will stop just parroting the HP Is Racist line and start asking “Who made the software?” and “How can we get them to fix this problem?” I can’t force people to. Instead, I will just pop popcorn and watch the drama unfold.

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You know, if I was someone who was instrumental in ensuring the election of George W. Bush to the White House, I’d hide my head in shame. But not Ralph Nader. No, he’s back, happily using racist epithets to refer to the current president, who is, at last check, an African-American:

Nader, who has been viciously critical of Obama since before his inauguration, said he was encouraged to see many of the president’s campaign allies beginning to turn on his agenda.

“Is the title of your article ‘I told you so?’” he asked. “This is what I meant a year ago when I said the next year will determine whether Barack Obama will be an Uncle Tom groveling before the demands of the corporations that are running our country or he’ll be an Uncle Sam standing up for the American people.”

You know, words really fail me. I don’t really know what possesses an old white guy to use the words “Uncle Tom,” you know, ever, but I really don’t get why a soi disant progressive would use those words to describe the first African American to serve as president. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting, and it stands as exhibit 3,492 in my ongoing argument that Ralph Nader is one of the worst humans alive today.

I will note that Nader is a big Kill the Bill guy. Now, I know that in and of itself doesn’t prove that killing the bill would be a disaster of Brobdingnagian proportions for the Democrats, one that would cause the party to spiral out of control for years. I mean, hey, Nader was right about the Ford Pinto, so, you know, it’s possible he could be right again. But I do know that given his record since 2000, if Ralph Nader says the sky is blue, I’m going to assume it’s pink until further examination. After all, he once declared there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush, and…well, let’s just say that didn’t exactly work out for the United States, humanity as a whole, or the universe in general.

Someday someone will explain to me this fascination America has with the idea that Michelle Obama has white relatives like it’s remotely unusual for a descendant of slaves in America. I notice with all the talk of “So and so was impregnated by X slaveowner” and the rush to interview the white relatives so they can say the obligatory “I’d love to reunite with that side of the family and talk about our history” no one discusses exactly how so many mulattoes came to be born during and after slavery. I know the story of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings has been played as very romantic, but I sincerely doubt that even if it was that way for them, the same is true of Michelle Obama’s great great great grandmother’s relationship with the man that bought her when she was 6 and impregnated her at 15.

I know romance has nothing to do with why my maiden name is Irish. The slaveowner on that side kept very detailed records of everything. Including Or why my grandmother’s mother had straight hair. My great great grandfather raised her (and presumably loved her) anyway, but there’s some pretty clear evidence in the records that their reasons for moving north to Chicago weren’t based on a desire to leave the farm land that he worked so hard to acquire and hold onto through Reconstruction. My great grandmother was born in 1894 and she’s listed as mulatto, but her parents are listed as black. It’s on that list of things that was never explicitly discussed, but no one in our family is laboring under the delusion that the way she got here was about romance you know?

The power dynamic between slave and slaveowner is almost never recognized in these romanticized revisionist histories, much less what it meant to be a WOC assaulted and impregnated by a white man in a society where you had no hope of him ever facing anything approximating justice. There’s a lot of talk about how long ago slavery ended, but there’s not a lot of talk about the impact it, (and all the events that followed) have had on family dynamics in the black community. Or the psychological effects of institutional racism in any community. Even here there’s no discussion of how the white relatives feel when the new found cousin isn’t the First Lady. Because let me tell you what, our Irish relatives weren’t so excited when we found them. A whole lot of those “Cherokee” relatives people like to claim weren’t NDN, but it was a convenient lie for white families looking to avoid the stigma of having been touched by the tarbrush.

I blog a lot about sociology, critical race theory, and history. I’m not alone, after all there’s tons of research being done in those areas. Not so much when it comes to the psychological effects of racism on an individual level. It’s difficult enough to talk about being a POC and what we deal with as a result of modern institutional racism without trying to articulate the generational emotional and physical trauma of living in a society that’s innately hostile to your very existence. There’s been some work done but it’s not an area that’s easy to navigate academically or socially. Because really when you’re talking about these kinds of family stories it’s easier to smile politely and just not discuss it than to dig up all those bones and really face the pain.

There’s such a stigma attached to seeking mental health assistance (including some very specific intra-community impediments) that I can completely understand why this is the proverbial elephant in the room when it comes to discussing race and racism. But (like all the other aspects) it’s one that cannot be ignored. Because even when it’s not acknowledged the fact remains that racism has an impact on every aspect of life. Everything from parenting choices, to jobs, to housing, to how our communities function is impacted by this huge awful weight and that doesn’t happen in some emotionless vacuum. Even the “positive” stereotypes are hurtful because they’re rooted in deeply ugly historical and social context. Is it really so difficult to at least consider the psychological impact of that kind of ongoing trauma might be beyond the grasp of the casual observer?

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Hotel owner tells Hispanic workers to change names. You know, you’d think that at some point in this series of increasingly bad decisions it would have occurred to him that he was creating a public relations nightmare, if nothing else. But I guess this is one of those times where bigotry trumped any semblance of critical thinking skills. And it’s easy to say that being a bigot is a state of mind devoid of logic in the first place, but it’s more complex than that. I’m certain that this man (and all the people like him) are convinced that their behavior isn’t based in racism or is even problematic. They really believe that they are in the right and it’s other people who lack logic. And it’s not until there are real consequences that they begin to consider the possibility that maybe, possibly, perhaps their thought process is flawed. But that’s an uncomfortable thought pattern and not necessarily one they follow for long so real change is rare. Why? Because sooner or later other people who know them (or who just agree with them) start saying things like “So and so is a good man. He’s not a racist.” or “They are just a product of their times. You have to understand.” or even (and this one is my favorite) “That’s not real racism. Real racism is…” because some folks think that it takes a burning cross, rope, and a tree before it’s real racism.

Racism doesn’t work that way of course, but it might as well when you consider that other than the initial public censure someone like this hotel owner faces, there’s not much in the way of consequences for most racist behavior. And no, I’m not advocating time in the stocks or whatever horrible physical punishment someone wants to liken to being held accountable. All I’m saying is stop giving out those excuses and justifications and free passes because it’s not racist enough for whatever standard would make it difficult to look a POC in the eye while retaining a relationship with the person whose bad behavior you’re excusing. I won’t even get into whether or not someone should boycott businesses/books/other goods and services based on individual bigoted actions. That’s a personal decision. I just want the minimum cost for engaging in racist actions to be acknowledgment that the action is racist. Yes, there is no way to peek inside someone’s heart and know for sure that their motivation was conscious racism, but it’s not about the intent, it’s about the impact. So, regardless of what you know about your friend, relative, significant other, favorite comedian, other unnamed person connected to your life in some way…stop making excuses for their bad behavior. Personal accountability isn’t toxic even when it’s being taken for toxic behavior.

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There’s absolutely no racial component to the criticism of Barack Obama, and I think all you liberals are the real racists for suggesting there is:

When you walk into the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar in Paulding County, you feel like you’ve walked into a different era.

Behind the pool tables stands a mannequin in a Klu Klux Klan costume, but it’s what’s outside of the Patrick Lanzo’s restaurant that has some people angry.

Lanzo put up a sign that reads “Obama’s plan for health-care: N*&%*r rig it.”

Only he didn’t say “N*&%*r” (to paraphrase Ralphie). He used the racial epithet, the big one, the queen-mother of racial epithets, the “N-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash” word. Spelled out for all to see.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. The guy is willing to use that word on a sign advertising his restaurant. He also has hosted a neo-Nazi rally, and his restaurant’s interior features “a number of racist images in his Georgia Peach Museum bar such as cartoons of Klan members lounging on lynched black men and items disparaging Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” It also features a mannequin of a Klan member in full regalia. So you’re probably thinking this guy’s a racist. Right?

Wrong! We know he isn’t a racist, because he says so:

Despite the sign, Lanzo said he’s not a racist.

He said he’s just against what he calls a “sub standard healthcare plan,” which he said President Obama is trying to push through.

Well, of course! I mean, obviously, he’s just making a reasoned point on health care reform that just happens to use the ugliest word in the English language to refer to the President of the United States who just happens to be of the ethnic background said word defames. How could you think he was a racist?

Now, vile as Lanzo is, I actually would defend his right to display his racist utterances. It makes him easy to identify as a racist, for one thing. But that’s beside the point. The point is that even this guy claims he isn’t a racist, just like every other teabagger out there. Because opposition to Obama has no racial element. The right keeps saying so, and maybe, if they keep saying it, eventually they’ll even start to believe it.

As for me, I’ll trust my lying eyes.

Like most Americans, I don’t have much time for Bill Ayers. Yes, I know he’s central to the vast left-wing conspiracy to elect Muslim Black Socialist Black Communist Black Muslim Blackity Black Black Black President Barack Hussein Super-Allah Obama, but he’s also a former terrorist — and no mincing words, that’s what he was. If you use violence against civilian targets to further political aims, you’re a terrorist, and while Ayers was ultimately not convicted of any crime, that doesn’t make him innocent. I have little time for the man.

That said, because Ayers and Obama — both professors at the University of Chicago — crossed paths a few times, Bill Ayers has become a Svengali figure in the right-wing mythology of Barack Obama, secret Kenyan. For bizarre, half-assed reasons, conservatives have convinced themselves that Ayers secretly wrote Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father, because everyone knows African-Americans can’t write — I mean, Barack Obama just isn’t that good a writer. No, really.

This is, of course, incandescently offensive, but pretty much par for the course from the right, so one tends to ignore it, because the alternative is caring whether Bill Ayers lives or dies, and I don’t.

That said, my disdain for Ayers does not inculcate me from the ability to be amused by massive conservative fail, and that’s when one has to note that something wonderful has happened:

Anne Leary creates traffic and attention to her previously obscure blog with a picture of Bill Ayers and a “conversation” that sounds like suspiciously like a letter to WorldNetDaily’s forum:

Dear WND - I am a blogger from the midwest and  I never thought this would happen to me…

Leary (and you should be) claims that she said “Hey you’re Bill Ayers…” and a guilt-ridden Ayers immediately broke down and admitted that he wrote Barack Obama’s book.

Yep. A conservative blogger sits down next to Bill Ayers, and tell him that she’s a conservative blogger, and Ayers immediately tells her that he wrote Dreams from My Father, and she reported that as fact. Was Ayers serious? Of course not. Criminy, even Jonah Frickin’ Goldberg can see through this. But that didn’t stop much of the wingnutosphere from jumping on this as proof — proof! — that Bill Ayers is actually president.

You don’t have to like Bill Ayers to find that highly amusing.

1. Don’t derail a discussion. Even if it makes you personally uncomfortable to discuss X issue…it’s really not about you or your comfort. It’s about X issue, and you are absolutely free to not engage rather than try to keep other people from continuing their conversation.

2. Do read links/books referenced in discussions. Again, even if the things being said make you uncomfortable, part of being a good ally is not looking for someone to provide a 101 class midstream. Do your own heavy lifting.

3. Don’t expect your feelings to be a priority in a discussion about X issue. Oftentimes people get off onto the tone argument because their feelings are hurt by the way a message was delivered. If you stand on someone’s foot and they tell you to get off? The correct response is not “Ask nicely” when you were in the wrong in the first place.

4. Do shut up and listen. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of listening to the people actually living X experience. There is nothing more obnoxious than someone (however well intentioned) coming into the spaces of a marginalized group and insisting that they absolutely have the solution even though they’ve never had X experience. You can certainly make suggestions, but don’t be surprised if those ideas aren’t well received because you’ve got the wrong end of the stick somewhere.

5. Don’t play Oppresion Olympics. Really, if you’re in the middle of a conversation about racism? Now is not the time to talk about how hard it is to be a white woman and deal with sexism. Being oppressed in one area does not mean you have no privilege in another area. Terms like intersectionality and kyriarchy exist for a reason. Also…that’s derailing. Stop it.

6. Do check your privilege. It’s hard and often unpleasant, but it’s really necessary. And you’re going to get things wrong. Because no one is perfect. But part of being an ally is being willing to hear that you’re doing it wrong.

7. Don’t expect a pass into safe spaces because you call yourself an ally. You’re not entitled to access as a result of not being an asshole. Sometimes it just isn’t going to be about you or what you think you should happen. Your privilege didn’t fall away when you became an ally, and there are intra-community conversations that need to take place away from the gaze of the privileged.

8. Do be willing to stand up to bigots. Even if all you do is tell a friend that the thing they just said about X marginalized group is unacceptable, you’re doing some of the actual work of being an ally.

9. Don’t treat people like accessories or game tokens. Really, you get no cool points for having a diverse group of friends. Especially when you try to use that as license to act like an asshole.

10. Do keep trying. Fighting bigotry is a war, not a battle and it’s generational. So, keep your goals realistic, your spirits up (taking a break to recoup emotional, financial, physical reserves is a-okay), and your heart in the right place. Eventually we’ll get it right.

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So there’s this letter in today’s Dear Abby about the way President Obama is referred to by black Americans/self-identifies as a black man. And it contains an argument I’ve heard before about the white “half” and so I feel compelled to point out a few bits of historical and social context in the interests of not listening to people make this argument any more. First up, we live in a society that coined the One Drop rule to ensure that racism had a solid generational footing. The impact of that rule, Jim Crow etiquette and laws, and a host of other bits of institutional racism are still being felt today. Terms like mulatto and colored carry a whole lot of cultural baggage in America that most (if not all) people with good sense want to avoid heaping on anyone else. So, that brings us to words like biracial or multiracial. And yes, President Obama (much like my eldest son) is technically biracial. However, he is not light enough to pass and so he has spent his life (regardless of the color of his mother and grandmother) being treated as a black man in his everyday interactions.

My son isn’t light enough to pass (not that I’d want him too) either and he sees himself as a black man. Some of that is definitely influenced by upbringing (after I divorced his father, I eventually remarried and his stepfather is black), but it is also a product of what he sees in the mirror everyday. This idea that a society that engineered distinctions like the One Drop Rule, mulatto, colored, quadroon, octoroon, and quintroon is going to be filled with people that look at someone with a skin tone that reflects black ancestry and see the white/Asian/Latino/Indian/NDN ancestry as paramount is frankly ludicrous. I’ll let you in on a secret, your average black American with a family line present in America for longer than 2 or 3 generation is part something else. Maybe white, maybe NDN, whatever the racial background, when they go outside and walk down the street unless they are light enough to pass for white (and have the requisite features of thinner lips and a nose that is high and narrow enough) someone is questioning their background. More importantly they are encountering racism (subtle and overt) that constantly informs their experience.

And yes, there is some backlash (from all sides) attached to the notion of self-identification for multiracial people especially if someone feels that the racial identity established is too narrow/disrespectful of the other ancestry/too general. We’re a country that likes boxes and labels (see every single discussion of Tiger Woods) because we’re a country that has built an entire caste system on racial classifications. My son’s biological father is white, but his experience in society? It’s not that of a white man. It will never be that of a white man. When President Obama refers to himself as a black man it’s not a denial of his mother, it’s an acknowledgment of his experience. Is that a good statement about the state of American race relations? Probably not. But this the reality of living in a country that periodically trots out the idea that being tolerant or color blind is the only way not to be racist.

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Glenn Beck doesn’t really seem to know, despite saying Barack Obama has a “deep-seated hatred” of it:

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

I’ve had a little project in mind for a few weeks but I’ll need some help bringing it to fruition. As many of you know, when engaging in discussions about contentious topics such as race, gender, politics, oppression, etc., there are always clueless and/or privileged people who whip out arguments so often used and so stock that they end up on a BINGO card somewhere. Veterans of such discussions often comment on this and sometimes even link to specific cards. And the more patient amongst us will explain to the clueless/privileged person why their argument is a cliche.

While rolling my eyes at some of the drive-bys over on Alaya’s Supernatural thread I thought that it would be useful to not only be able to point to BINGO cards and say: “Look, what you just said is on here, this is how clueless you are,” but also have that square link to a post or comment thread wherein the statement is taken apart and shredded to pieces. It’s similar to the way I tell people to read the Required Reading or simply point to coffeeandink’s excellent How To Suppress Discussions of Race. We’ve all had these debates so many times that at this point all we really should have to do is say: “Go here and click on I/3.”

First step is to find the existing BINGO cards. Liz Henry has an awesome Flickr pool with the ones she’s found here. Are there any more we should add to the list? Let me know in comments.

Next, I suggest we go one card at a time and find a link or multiple links for each square. As I said, it can be a comment or thread or a whole post wherein the statement/question is debunked or someone has taken the time to explain why it’s wrong/stupid/prejudiced/not worthy of addressing.

I think this was the first BINGO card I ever saw:

So I would like to start with that one. You can suggest links (your own or someone else’s) in the comments, just be sure to indicate which square the link is for. If you want to take part in the project by posting a card to your blog and compiling links, go right ahead. Just tag your post bingo-project in Delicious and ping me here or on another BINGO Project post so others won’t replicate your efforts.

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