Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

it sounds like he went to Tech Day and maybe believed everything that the representative from Steadicam Corp told him

Well, there's this:
http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/10/is-catcalling-racist-harrassment/

(misleading URL btw)

Hey, as long as it's a slow day in this thread :/ ... seems this play (and the two segments to follow) might constitute an important epic in our epoch. I'm seeing it in a couple weeks:

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/theater-review-father-comes-home-from-the-wars.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/theater/father-comes-home-from-the-wars-by-suzan-lori-parks-at-the-public-theater.html

This sounds fascinating and so wholly dependent upon cast/director synergy in order to work that I can't imagine it being performed after this initial run.

Well, I saw the play she won the Pulitzer for about 12 (gasp) years ago, and I don't know if it's had much of a touring / collegiate life? Mos Def was in it.

I'd semi-expect it could transfer to Broadway once this sold-out run is over, but even August Wilson's plays were pretty spotty in that regard, and things are significantly worse for original plays w/out movie stars there now.

karl, i feel for you in this thread

Gradient Lair and Racalicious and Crunk Feminist Collective

All of the above plus bad dominicana,she is the bossssss

sorry to reopen a can of worms, but i wanted to put this set of tweets in here but i couldn't find them again until now:

https://twitter.com/tgirlinterruptd/status/527489366935875584

seen together with this nonsense:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/10/31/do-we-need-a-law-against-catcalling/street-harassment-law-would-restrict-intimidating-behavior

yet another instance where Official Feminism/Liberalism need to think a little harder about law enforcement

that would be a very, very difficult law to draft reasonably

Criminalization is a terrible failure of an idea, not least because when has criminalizing something ever changed the conditions that lead to it happening?? Plus the obvious racialized costs via the overpolicing of Black & brown people and communities that I've already talked about above.

I'm really hoping that the Hb video has been SO BADLY received in some sectors that it will force a confrontation with SSH and Hb's horrible race politics and slow down/stop the move to legislate against street harassment.

Yeah the last thing police need is another law in their toolbox

I'm just amazed at Hb and Holly Kearl at SSH for their absolute deafness and refusal to engage with Black women/WoC activists about...well anything really. It's just like, why don't you just make a public statement about who your work really is and is not for?? They're not even sorry.

Brittney Cooper from Crunk Feminist Collective playing nice on Chris Hayes the oth night btw, acknowledging the flawed race critique of the video but prioritizing the experiences of all women with SH. HOWEVER I think a Black woman has the required license to make that call--calling on Black men to see the natural relationship between police harassment and gendered street harassment, that both are a revocation of one's rights to a public life, to be a body in public space.

When white women activists try to do that, the effect is to erase Black men's experiences with overpolicing & police brutality and replace them with a store in which ww are the victims (often of Black & brown men, again, in this continuing narrative). But hell, Brittney Cooper can do whatever the hell she wants.

*replace them with a storY

it's a sephora store tho

Well that changes everything.

That entire stream of tweets was a great read.

Oh yeah that was righteous. Then I read the opinion pieces and got distracted by how disgusted I was.

Anything worth bookmarking? I should actually be doing some work today

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh (dear jesus please let me have spelled that correctly) wrote one that was good but could have used even stronger language. The others, not so as you'd notice.

tyty

Okay the ACLU dude was good on the points, now that I went back and read his. The two white women who contributed were abysmal and really embarrassing, unfortunately.

the ACLU guy's points about the negative effects laws like the ones being advocated could have were well worth reading

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/03/jeff-chang-who-we-be_n_6081320.html

Good read, Jeff Chang's the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop which I remember more than a few ilxors love

aaaah I hadn't clicked on the NYT link and didn't realize all four of the pieces under discussion were in one place; I was sitting here half-seriously thinking "why does everyone besides me magically know where to find these things oh wait I might be doing something dumb here"

just for posterity's sake

https://twitter.com/annamilton/status/529067160778575872

Hahaha yessss

awesome

I really loved when you talked about "the opposite of a micro-aggression," that kind of moment of recognition between two people -- the "I see you" moment. I thought that could be a hopeful note to end on.

(Laughs) I think that that's what we're trying to achieve -- we talk a lot about empathy, and of course empathy should lead to recognition. I'm recognizing your struggle, I'm recognizing who you are. I'm not being blind to who you are. And I think that that's ultimately where we all want to get. That should be the product of whatever kind of conversation we're trying to have.

There was an article on Medium this week about "the nod" -- I remember in college I would hang out with a lot of black activists and I would notice that every time they passed another black student on campus they'd nod, and I'd go, "Oh, do you know them? Who's that? I see them around all the time." And they'd go, "I actually don't know." I'd ask "So why do you do that?" and they'd say "Well, you do. You just do it." Or when someone is on stage and they're performing and someone in the audience goes "I see you!" I'd always think about those kinds of cultural practices as being critical to solidarity-building.

^^
"The nod" is still alive, and even in this supposedly enlightened era it's something that can make me feel good when, at times, I feel like some people are afraid of me. I think I did a splicetoday piece on it a while back, I'll have to find it.

i haven't read it yet but will of course bc jeff's dope, but i'm really, really curious how his book squares w/ ideas of afro pessimism (i feel like it wont?)

It is all still about race: Obama hatred, the South and the truth about GOP wins - http://www.salon.com/2014/11/04/it_is_all_still_about_race_obama_hatred_the_south_and_the_truth_about_gop_wins/

Read about how southern whites respond to polls about race. This after I just got done reading a book about George Wallace's campaigns, and all of the intentionally brutal, abusive and unfair things done to black people not much more than fifty years ago. Southern whites bombed and burned black people's homes when they asserted their rights. And THEY'RE "to blame".

http://splicetoday.com/pop-culture/the-nod

true or false, 'the nod' is a nod with the chin and not the forehead?

Good piece xp

i always visualize the nod as the external occipital protuberance dipping back between the shoulders; people who do it from the chin often look like they're sneering to me

Larry: I have a tendency to nod to black people.
Jeff Greene: Wait... what reason would you have to...
Larry: I don't know, I don't know! I just find that I nod to them. More so than white... I never nod to white people.
Jeff Greene: I've never heard of, uh, "white liberal nodding guilt."
Larry: Yeah. It's a way of kind of making contact. You know, like "I'm okay. I'm not one of the bad ones."

I've caught myself doing this too, with similarly vague but positive intentions.

While living in Japan there was a lot of nodding in passing to/from other (visibly) gaijin non-tourists.

Wow

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2014/11/they-assumed-their-adopted-son-was_5.html

http://np.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2km4et/tifu_by_making_a_stupid_assumption_about_my/

well, that is certainly an interesting situation

On one hand I am very appreciative of their efforts to try to expose their son to what they thought was his culture

On the other hand I wish they would have confirmed that he was of that ethnicity to begin with

I have kinda mixed feelings about their efforts too, I mean, if you're going to raise someone as your son, it seems kind of forced to go out of your way to have them learn all this stuff that is only their "roots" genetically, I mean that's not really how culture works.

The counterpoint to that is that they're gonna be treated as if they're of that culture in America anyway so they might as well have been given the opportunity to know more about it?

If this story is real, it's not only awful but totally weird - like, what kind of person tries so hard to give their adopted kid a great sense of his culture without double checking where his family is actually from?

It's also awful/weird to me that no one ever pointed out this kid's family were Korean during the whole adoption process.

TBF the kid's family were Korean Americans (making the distinction between that and children who were adopted from South Korea directly)

I can't imagine it would be all that damaging from the kids perspective which is probably what matters most, i.e.
"Yeah so my well-meaning foster parents erroneously thought I was of Chinese ancestry and raised me as such. I love them but they're idiots. On the plus side I'm fluent in Mandarin, well versed in Chinese culture and get stacks in red envelopes at new year from my fake uncle and aunt!"

it'd give you a good story to tell

GREAT college essay

do people in norway who adopt children from latvia send them to summer camps with the latvian embassy, teach them latvian folk dances and so forth? almost all of the reasons for intensive acculturation in 'native' culture this well meaning liberal person would cite depend upon their child being a 'visible minority' to use the canadian term

if the kid is clever it's a useful lesson in the arbitrariness of 'roots' 'cultural background' etc, if he is sufficiently inclined he can acculturate as a korean if he wishes

assuming this isnt just made up by a reddit poster