Enough Said …

unattributed

The Real L World but Not the Real L A

post still in progress – images added tonight

Let me start by saying I watched the entire run of the L World on Showtime, wrote essays about both its import and its failings, and teach it in my popular media course. Despite the many things I enjoyed about the show, from both an academic and viewer standpoint, the promises Chaiken made to be a multicultural show written from the perspective of biracial lesbians and lesbians of color, as well as white lesbians seldom panned out in the ways she promised. So I admit it, I was cynical about the racial politics of the “reality” show version of the L Word from the minute I heard it was in the proposal stage.

Like many of you, I watched 6 seasons of the L Word where overall the characters and storylines were compelling but black women, butch women and trans men (the latter of which were often collapsed into a single category) were largely absent and/or almost always depicted in profoundly offensive ways: Kit starts out as a drunk and bad mother whose parents and children hate her. Though she improves over the series she is also the outspoken gender and transphobe whose only white counterpart is the always inappropriate Jenny. As the only consistent black female presence on the show, she also acts as a subtle reinforcement of the idea that black people are more homophobic than white people (the visibly white, tho multiculti cast is all lesbian, the visibly black woman is straight with offensive gender politics) even as she subverts this idea by being openly supportive of not only her sister but the entire community. Yolanda, the only black woman in Bette’s lamaze class, is perpetually angry and constantly attacking Bette for passing. The audience is invited to judge her anger and be repulsed by her politics and beliefs even in the one scene where she is not yelling or on the verge of yelling. More than that, this first season encounter establishes the narrative of whiteness that often undermined attempts at diversity on the show, ie that if you can pass for white, live a life in which you are largely or completely treated as white, then you should and so should the show. As Better put it in response to Yolanda’s accusation that she had failed to embrace her entire cultural heritage and become white, “why shouldn’t I?” And her list of all the privileges and advantages that passing affords her are stated without irony nor complexity as if to further affirm the politics of privilege. The only offset to this mantra is that Bette makes an effort to have a biracial baby with her white partner and that her search is intentionally juxtaposed with her decries about the rightness and goodness of whiteness or lightness.

Latinas faired slightly better in the L Word partially because Papi, who was the quintessential “hot tamale” stereotype, was brought in for a plot twist and then quickly edited back out. Yet like Chaiken’s promises of multiculturalism in the promos for the first season of the show, quite a bit of media buzz surrounded Papi’s entrance into the L Word as a Latina lesbian character. Promotion promised us a character that had largely been missing from the show, what they delivered was a character who helped white lesbian Alice get her groove back and then was largely missing from the show.

At the same time the L Word did give us more interesting secondary characters of color. Candace Jewell, Bette”s fling, though tight-lipped was decidedly not a Saphire character, instead she offered us one of the only positive depictions of working class, [soft] butch identity on the show. She was intelligent, passionate, and hard working. Though some of have criticized the character for the jail house love scene which for them tapped into certain stereotypes of blackness. Tasha also went a long way in fixing some of the earlier missteps of the show with regards to gender politics and class identity. While her character was also more fleshed out than others, it still tapped into certain, more subtle stereotypes, about black women as angry, aloof, and conservative (vis-a-vis white liberal feminists). Carmen, as femme, also complicated an alarming equation of butchness and working classness or hickness that seemed to permeate the show, especially when Moira arrived before transition but also with Kelly. She was perhaps the most well-rounded and integrated character of color in the series. She was tied to a main character so that she was hard to marginalize and the scenes involving her family dealt with both Latinos who are opposed to homosexuality and those who embrace it in ways that avoided stereotypes about people of color and homophobia. At the same time neither of the Latina characters were played by Latina actresses bring the sum total of prominent Latinas employed by the L Word to ZERO. The absence of Asian women, which can only be countered by the casting of South Asian women to play Latinas, was also glaring in a show set in LA.

Given the racial and gender politics of the fictional version, I doubted the unreality of the proposed reality show would veer much further from Chaiken’s seeming preference for feminine, white or light characters; the previews for the Real L Word seemed to confirm my suspicions. There are no black women on the Real L Word and the emphasis on upper class identity in the show seems to imply that black women are poor and therefore not running in the same circles as these “top 10% ” lesbians (to borrow one cast member’s self-description). While I doubt the class-race connections were intentional, the failure to provide wide shots during Rose’s class discussion which would have shown an array of visibly brown and black women leaves the viewer with a particular message even as Rose’s own presence complicates it. More than that, the tight shots in these first scenes may have been an issue of consent and production but also serve to further erase darker women of color from even the background of the show.

Both Latinas in the Real L Word are white by Latina standards and at least one can likely pass by U.S. ones. In fact, I did not know she was Latina until she makes a Spanish language phone call to her mother in an anglicized accent. Interestingly, Rose, the more outspoken of the two could not pass.

At the same time, Chaiken has made an effort to include both butch women and her oh-so-light woc lesbians as equals in the show. Two of the main characters are women who self-identify as not feeling comfortable in a dress. One makes sure to tell us she is “a top” (though her make up artist girlfriend promptly says otherwise) and the other one says “There are heels and boots” and she is definitely “boots”.  A lot of time is spent on Miss Boots storyline in the first episode, so perhaps the producers are discovering something we already knew, ie women of all gender presentations are interesting not just us girlie girls.

The show also spends a considerable amount of time with both Latinas. Unlike the Papi character, Rose’s loud-mouthed womanizing is offset by her time with her family, discussions of growing older and getting out of bad relationships, and her negotiations with her live-in partner who I think is also Latina. Thus, she is transformed from a stereotypical version of Latina womanhood into a well-rounded character who likes to party. Since this is reality tv and bad girls sell, Chaiken’s decision to depict Rose’s complexity is particularly important and a key sign of the growth in racial representations begun in the later seasons of the L Word. Rose’s time with her family is also a critical counterpoint to Tracy’s conversation with and about her mother. While Rose has a supportive family who actively discusses her love life, Tracy’s mother has simply refused to address it and Tracy has had to make the difficult and familiar choice of cutting her emotional-sexual life out of her relationship with her parents. Again the two women’s experiences give us a much wider view of Latina women than we might otherwise get from someone invested in uncomplicated racial stereotypes and sensationalist tv.

Ultimately, I found the first episode of the Real L Word compelling. Not only does it expand the discourse of gender and race beyond that of the fictional show but it offers us a wide range of interesting characters with recognizable issues and lives. It humanizes the experience of lesbians across the lifecycle and thus offers another opportunity for people to see the gay community as normal or to see a snippet of themselves reflected on tv. However, that snippet continues to erase black and Asian women and to privilege a preference for lipstick whiteness and/or lightness that makes me wish Chaiken would deal with her own biracial issues and come into her racial own (instead of emulating Bette’s “why shouldn’t I [pass for white]“). As one biracial girl to another, I can tell her that life is much better on the other side of racial confusion and fear of blackness (all though I cannot say I ever shared those two issues with her). So I will keep watching the Real L Word while rooting for Chaiken to live up to some of the promises she has made over the years and let go of some of the baggage she has defended. And truthfully, the show is interesting, often compelling, and literally hard to turn away from even in the midst of the worst dyke drama.

What did you all think?

On Fathers and Days

This post has been edited to fix all of the disability related grammar issues. Sorry it took so long.

unattributed/employeesthrive.org

A lot of women bloggers took the weekend to write reflections about their fathers. Many were filled with ambivalence, pain, and resolution. Some showed the courage of the phoenix rising out of natal ashes. Many natal families are the first place we learn fear, violation, betrayal, and violence; these stories, and being able to tell them without judgment, are woven into a feminist commitment to ensure equality for young girls and women around the world. But when it comes time to talk about families, I feel like the thin girl complaining she is not plump enough or that she cries in front of her mirror too. I’m sure she does, but given the amount of body policing and psychologically damaging labels of ugly, lazy, and unlovable larger girls labor under it is hard to give skinny an ounce of sympathy. And so, like skinny, I keep my mouth shut. You see, my stories about my father are about systems of oppression not the scary man who we fear coming home from work, having too many beers on Sunday, or stumbling into the “wrong room” at night. My father taught me to be strong and wise and politically committed. His failing was in sending me out into a world of middle class people with working class revolutionary commitments and ethics. And our shared lack of compromise with polite people has led to our shared careers as the hard core wing of academe and social service,  too smart to toss and to different to be included.

unattributed/voices.com

I could tell you stories about how my father missed my birth because he wasn’t the same color as my mother so the staff told her he’d gone out for a smoke and they couldn’t find him. I could tell you about the time that a group of men beat him bloody on his way home because they didn’t think he deserved to be in our family. And I could tell you the look on my first boyfriend’s face when he came to my house and met my father or the way the gf and my dad bonded to my mother’s chagrin. I could tell you these stories and watch you guess at whether he was lighter or darker than me and my mother. Watch you wonder if my stories of outside oppression color my ability to see it inside my home. But the thing is, my tears, though real. are not your tears and my father is still my hero.

getty image/unattributed

So if I were to tell you a story about my dad, it would be about how such a strong man and brilliant mind inspired me to be better than I am. It would be about his escapades putting his life and his career on the line to stand up for Chicano rights, Black Pride, and the American Indian Movement. It would be about the bad-ss days of old when he and Angel Davis were in the trenches together instead of contrasted by hallowed halls. And it would be about how at the end of his life, this man is disrespected almost daily by young, white, gay and lesbians, and upper middle class white heterosexual couples and college kids who call him the “Man” while they mock him, antagonize him, refuse to serve him at restaurants and grocery stores, all the while waiting for him to die so they can tell their friends to buy up his house and own the whole block. It would be about how the onset of dimentia is making their disrespectful crazy-making around him seem legitimate to police and is transforming my dad from the kind soul who carried a big stick to the raging “old fool” on his porch in shorts in the middle of winter.

The Fields/Hustlerofculture.com

Then instead of lamenting how little he cared for me as a child, like so many others have done this weekend, I would have to tell you how sometimes I cry at the utter lack of control I have over how he is treated by those “neighbors” who think they are so progressive and so much more oppressed than he. I would have to trust you to understand that my PhD does not buy me the privilege to stare down the cops who ignore his calls or the neighbors who mock him. I’d have to trust you to know that the money I make may stop them from stealing his home out from under him as they did to black elders on the block, but it will never buy him security or the respect that he has earned but they still refuse to give. I might even have to tell you how I rage like an angry black woman at some of those people as they stand there shrouded in their white innocence, pointing and using my anger to justify their fear and hatred.

The First Family W/ Barack Obama’s Sister & Husband & Michelle Obama’s mother/unattributed

So no my dad is not the boogie man. I don’t have to swallow childhood shame to take him out to breakfast on Father’s Day or pretend my girlfriend is my roommate.

And so I keep my mouth shut. Because I know what a privilege it is to have a father, a real one, and not just some terror in the shadows who once donated his seed.

Perhaps this little glimpse into my life tells you why it is that every Father’s Day I post pictures of loving dad’s doting on their children and encourage us all to remember the fathers we did have, whether natal or chosen, who helped us find our way.

Give Us Free

This Juneteenth, I find myself wondering just how free we really are. There is a black man in the White House and a black woman still dominates afternoon tv, even if her ratings are slipping and have been since she supported said black man. Black people can apply for jobs, business and home loans, buy, sell, eat, drink, in public and alongside white patrons. Unlike our brown brothers, we can even live in Arizona, as long as we are a deeper shade of berry that is, tho I don’t know why we would. In the eyes of many, the legacy of slavery and the existence of racism are things of the past.

unattributed

But let’s break down the difference between then and what many scholars and activists have come to refer to as The New Jim Crow:

• We have a black president but for the first time since the troubled days of reconstruction, or those of 1963, 1965, and 1968, both nationally syndicated radio and talk show hosts are calling for a “million gun march” on Washington and supporting a movement that contains openly racist elements
• Despite the loss of basic civil and human rights under the Bush Administration we only see the rise in law enforcement willing to “defend the rights of states and citizens” after Obama’s inauguration and specifically implying that he will at some point try to “enslave” people, “create concentration camps”, and/or rise up against the “people of the U.S.” based on neither history nor voting record nor any other indication except his blackness (see Oath Keepers manifesto – and no I am not linking there)
• The intentional, and illegal, targeting of black people and other poc for predatory lending , particularly women of color, helped cause the economic crisis and left entire black communities without homes or good credit and the only response has been two administrations handing over stimulus checks to the perpetrators
• Despite exposure of predatory racialized and engendered lending, the bid to profit off of poor black women and other woc (as well as poor white people to a lesser extent) continues in the form of tax loopholes and property law manipulation (You should note that even though the documentary Flag Wars shows a white lesbian real estate agent intentionally targeting and intimidating black home owners, including at least one homophobe, and then reveling in one hold outs death as she picks over her things for resale, that same agent was later featured on an episode of House Hunters, for which she was hired and paid by both the show and the home buyers, living in a mansion in FL)
• Unemployment for African Americans is at a 25 year high while no programs are specifically earmarked to help them
• White supremacist and other hate groups are on the rise with a 54% increase in membership since 2000
• Liberal blogs, established “zines”,  journals, news shows, publishers, departments, etc. continue to exclude or tokenize (defined here as having 1-2 people but no more despite multiple opportunities) intellectuals of color giving the sense that we are still only important when discussing race and that only a handful of us have the intellectual chops to do so
• Despite evidence to the contrary, liberal circles are just as likely to blame African Americans and other poc and resort to racism for losses in rights we share but are perceived of as their own as conservatives
• Gentrification that displaces African American and other poc communities is still largely spoken about by liberals as “bettering the community” “saving neighborhoods” “creating community” or “fostering multicultural communities” and applauded without a single thought to the economic, social, and psychic damage done to displaced black folks
• More black trans women are being killed now than in the past and less is being done about it even as gains in protections for trans communities are being won largely on the basis of murders of trans women of color
• police brutality against black women and girls continues to be documented on video and yet excused away by review boards
• and if listservs. livejournal, and blogs are any indication, the number of white people who believe that “racism” is a “slur” levied by black people to make “innocent” white people feel bad about themselves and not an actual indication that discrimination has occurred is any indication, the number of white people who feel immune to being called out for discrimination and absolved of ever being discriminatory is also on the rise
• That liberals, conservatives, and hipsters think racism is something they can joke about as if it is both a thing of the past and theirs to laugh at

So this juneteenth, I find myself not in the mood to celebrate the last black folks to be told they were in fact free and subsequently let out of bondage but rather musing on how long the white people in that Texas town kept black people enslaved despite 2.5 years of laws to the contrary because they could and neither their neighbors nor the nation was interested in making sure equality was upheld.

While I am grateful that black people in the U.S. are no longer enslaved (not counting black and ther poc “servants” trafficked here from other countries to clean elite people’s homes or serve as sex slaves), I am saddened by the fact that we are still not equal in this nation and that the spectre of segregation looms at every turn.

Sabotage

It was just brought to my attention that a jealous colleague sabotaged a huge grant my colleagues and I have been working on for almost a year. I am particularly upset about it because this person is someone I have gone out of my way to include and encourage for over 10 years while others have walked away. There have been many times in public spaces when particularly egregious accusations have been made by woc and I myself have experienced some of their complaints first hand but luckily only once outside of the blogosphere. In my mind, while there have been many reasons to isolate this person when writing or doing innovative research, I have always worked to make room for scholars of color and to encourage them to decolonize their minds and their praxis & I was not going to stop in her case just b/c the writing seemed to be on the wall more often than not.

Many people start from places that in one way or another are destructive because of poor coping skills learned in marginalization or the general horrid competitiveness that structures much of academe. It can take a long time to unlearn that, especially if you work in a destructive department, institution, or community. There are very few consequences for Senior scholars who behave badly (including engaging in identity based oppression) toward junior scholars and many of them survive by passing it on.

The irony of this particular event is that in some ways the grant we were working on was about trying to shift milieus and extend supportive spaces …

So I am thinking about what it means when someone destroys so much good work out of fear, anger, and jealousy. I am trying to keep my mind from cycling over rumors that have popped periodically around this person time and time again throughout the years and wondering how many things were in fact true. Most of all, I am trying to find the productive lesson in the ruins and the grace to find the 70 x 7.

Until then, I’m practicing the following:

Breath

Let Love in

Create

Oh and steering clear of the blog lest I start naming names and spelling out tenure revoking behavior and yes, dear reader this pattern includes things that bad.

IPad Overheats!

(I realize this is full on fluffy when I could be writing something else; sadly I’m busy, give me a break)

Yesterday, having been given a reprieve from two pending meetings and a deadline, I went out to sit in the sunshine with the dogs. While they were running happily at the dog park making friends, I thought I’d catch up on my “summer fluff reading”. I have been meaning to discover why the Steig Larsson books are so popular with feminists and whether or not the new zombie book for the summer stands up to World War Z for a while now and this seemed like the ideal time.

In the park, most people prop themselves up under the shade of a tree to read but I like the sun. So unlike others, I sat just beyond the trees  where the full face of the summer sun could shine on me. My iPad rested against the make shift stand I’d made out of my bent knees; the letters of my ebook were only slightly visible but still readable. I’d already read the reviews of the iPad glare problem, so I had already adjusted the color theme on the nook reader app for summer reading and had an anti-glare screen ready in my purse just in case. The color adjustment, combined with an increase in the font size, worked well enough that I could read the words in full sunlight with limited strain.

However, I had barely gotten to page three of my book, when the iPad went dark. The screen blinked once and then was gone. A moment later a familiar yellow triangle with the lightening bolt throughout, I thought was relegated to desktops, popped up at the top of my screen with a warning: iPad needs to cool down before use. It was 75 degrees outside. Hardly hot.

image unattributed

I moved to the shade of a tree and tried pushing the restart button … The same scary warning came up again.

My partner, who had brought a hard copy book to the dog park, simply laughed at me as she turned the worn pages of her favorite paperback. Like me, she wondered exactly how my new iPad was going to fair either in Spain this summer or in la isla where we often find ourselves this time of year. Like other working summer travelers I had these visions of slimmed down carry on luggage this year; just me, my love, and all my reading, emailing, writing, etc. crammed into a sleek little iPad. However, 75 degrees is positively cool compared to the 90-100+ weather that dominates the Latin landscape in the summer time.

After 1o minutes in the shade, my gf decided perhaps we should go home in case the IPad blew up. It had not turned back on. And while I was trying not to look anymore foolish in front of her than I already did, I was starting to panic. After having the IPad for several months, it has all of my notes from last term, one of my newer presentations, two in progress papers, 6 books, and my portable copies of two teen series I am reviewing for use in a media class for Fall. All of that would be lost if the IPad blinked out because of a little sunshine. (You are supposed to back up the IPad on a desktop or laptop computer regularly so as not to lose data, but with my busy life I seldom have time. In fact, one of the reasons I was reading on the nook app instead of the kindle app, which is far superior in book like reader experience, is because Barnes and Noble actually saves your books to the website and makes it possible to access them again if you lose them on your portable.)

The Nassau Library Blog

By the time we reached home, the iPad was working again. No permanent damage occurred with any of my files nor the applications as far as I can tell. However, I am left with the sinking suspicion that the iPad is utterly useless outside of air conditioned settings in the summer time. Not only does the screen wash out in sunshine, unless you are willing to spend between $10 and $30 extra for an anti-glare protector, but apparently the iPad overheats in moderate sunshine. I’m not willing to experiment to see if it overheats while turned off in sunshine, ie if you walk around with it in your bag in the sun, so I can’t say how it will fare moving from AC to AC. Just imagine how much hotter the inside of a purse or gym bag is than your hands. Or worse, what happens when you show up to present that brilliant new theory of yours and the warning sign goes up on the big projection screen because the conference room AC is lower than N. American standards.

If you can’t sit in the sun, it might not work without AC, and you are likely not able to carry it around for extended periods in the sun, then it is a $700 piece of equipment that is only available for seasonal use. Images of my gf tucking her paperback back in her bag chuckling and memories of historiann’s post on ebook readers in general abound.

There are many fixes supposedly promised from Apple on the way for the iPad. Among these are issues with multi-tasking, screen adjustment, and app standards. Yet both the proprietary nature of Apple’s app system and the hardware issues seem like they are going to continue to make this little machine as problematic as it is revolutionary. For me it has become an integral part of my daily life, from the alarm system that sings to me when I have to go to a meeting, to the notepad where I keep all of my notes & quickly integrate links to videos and websites that are related, to the option of folding the carrying case up and setting it on the dashboard to watch videos for my classes while my gf runs inside the store hardware store, it’s endless uses have made my life much more simple on the go. And yet, as I pack for our seminar in Spain this summer or re-imagine my research/vacation trips to la isla, I can’t help but think that the iPad will be staying at home.

Displaced Women and Children

REUTERS/Alexei Osokin

I have been doing a lot of thinking on the rise of “Ethnic Cleaning” in our world lately. While there have always been examples of people turning on their neighbors and friends because of racial or religious differences from the burning out of entire African American communities in towns in the U.S. to the genocide against Jewish people and anyone who dared to support them under Hitler, sadly, we have examples great and small to choose from. Yet it seems to me that the modern period has seen much more frequent examples of ethnic cleansing across the globe. Worse, in most of these cases so-called super powers have done very little to stop them while they are in progress. We can mobilize an endless amount of troops to go fight for oil in the Middle East, regardless of how many innocent people on all sides die or are permanently warped by the experience, but we seldom rush into the face of great evil against minority people whose only crime is the color of their skin, hair, eyes, or the place where they worship. Human Rights and Corporate Interests are clearly unequal in the eyes of the modern states and we humans are losing.

This week, another vulnerable group fell prey to its neighbors while the world watched. Southern Kyrgyztan errupted in ethnic violence late Thursday when armed Kyrgyz men turned on their unarmed Uzbek neighbors. By Saturday morning, the second largest city in the region is in flames with 1000s wounded and the counted dead nearing the 100s. Uzbek areas of the nation are all but deserted and people fear that even if they survive the violence there will be no food, medical supplies, or water for them to survive the aftermath.

While men were targeted to be beaten and killed, fleeing women and children found themselves trampled in the rush to a secured border and the attempts to cross the intentionally ditched designed to stop them. Like in other ethnic conflicts, these women and children are likely being targeted for specific gendered violence and trafficking and without aid will continue to be into the future.

While you might be hoping to turn a blind eye to this conflict and wait for the moving Hollywood film that comes out in a year or two, the fact is both Russia and the U.S. are implicated in the conflict in Kyrgyztan. Both countries have military bases there and yet neither has responded with requested military aid to the people being systematically killed and burned out of the nation.

The failure to act on the part of either the U.S. or Russia is further complicated by the relationship of Kyrgyztan’s Prime Minister with both nations. Interim PM Roza Otunbayeva, is a college educated moderate with longstanding ties to Moscow, including teaching at Moscow University. She was also the UN envoy to Georgia when violence broke out there. And while Otunbayeva served in a government she herself said continued the corruption and nepotism of the nation’s past, she broke away from them in order to form a party and a platform that would see more egalitarian representation and inclusivity in the Kyrgyztan’s government and society. Her calls for help should have been met with at least some kind of response from Russians who know and have supported her and North Americans who want to continue to have a moderate in charge of a country where the hold a military base. And so one has to wonder why those calls have fallen on deaf ears except for minor humanitarian efforts on the part of Russia. With two major super power’s bases in the nation, violence should never have escalated unchecked to ethnic cleansing and burning cities. In fact a previous conflict between these same ethnic groups in 2007 was quickly put down by Russian troops, sparing huge casualties and/or genocide.

Otunbayeva is also the first female president CIS/SCO member state yet neither she nor the huddled and terrified female refugees of today’s violence have garnered much attention from mainstream feminist press. As of now, I have seen no calls to support a beleaguered female leader or women who are very likely being raped or rounded up for trafficking and certainly are homeless, displaced, and largely trapped at the border with burning cities on one side and ditches blocking their exit on the other. Unlike imperialist feminist calls to “save women” in the Middle East that aligned with western expansionism and hunger for oil and failed largely to ask what women living in the region wanted or needed, hold accountable military and counter-military strategies that targeted women and girls and made it less safe for them to go to school or be in public, or ensure that women’s rights were not discarded by this or any previous administration as they pushed forward, calls to support the women and children in Kygyrztan would align with the requests the PM herself has already made. She has asked specifically for military aid in stopping violence and detaining the engineers of ethnic cleansing in the state. She has also asked specifically for help with the people who have already been displaced and with containing and putting out the fires and other damage raging through the cities.

At this point NGOs in the region are trying to get outside aid to people and hoping that violence can be quelled long enough to restore the constitutional democracy Otunbayeva has promised.

It seems that we feminists need to take a wider and deeper look at the meaning of solidarity and global feminism. And that we people engaged in social justice also need to make more lasting connections between current processes (economic, political, and social) and old “coping skills” (marginalizing, enslavement, rape, and genocide). As I watched the news today I couldn’t help thinking about lost African American cities, the children who refused to save themselves at the cost of their targeted classmates in Rwanda while adult “peacekeepers” divested in Rwanda, the gains one, or possibly two, corrupt military bases could gain from widescale instability in Kyrgyztan, and the deadly shooting of a Mexicano in Arizona weeks before the new pass laws come into effect there. It may seem like these things are not comparable and certainly the scale of some far outweighs the scale of others. Yet, what I am arguing here is that there are cyclical patterns of power and control that ultimately erupt in violence whenever, as the saying goes, “good men do nothing.” Sitting at the intersections of feminism, critical race theory, and history, I think we have plenty of information to do things differently and I find myself wondering why people, especially women and children, have to suffer while we do not use it.

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image two: displaced women and children look on with nowhere to go on Saturday in Kygyrztan. AP Photo/D. Dalton Bennett

Stats Only Measure What You Ask

The one where I interrogate un/employment statistics

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Every other year when I teach the required methods course for one of my departments, I start the quantitative section by explaining “Stats only measure what you ask.” This is why we spend so much time on qualitative methods first, not just because I prefer them or because, as my students fear, quantitative methods are “so hard” I’m trying to “spare them as long as I can”. The fact is: if you don’t know how to ask questions then you will never know how to measure the answers with raw data nor how to interpret someone else’s data sets.

cafe press product for ywearclothing.com

While it may seem that this information is the exclusive domain of advanced undergraduates or graduate students in certain disciplines and everyone else can simply be thankful they never had to take stats, the fact is we are surrounded by statistical information all the time. (I know I sound like you high school math teacher justifying Geometry, bare with me.) Almost every time you watch national news, several times throughout the year on your local news broadcast, and almost daily on both pop culture shows like The View and news commentary shows like those that run on both Fox and MSNBC, stats play a key part in discussion of our lives. When you don’t know how to ask questions to interpret the data given, you find yourself quoting opinion poll numbers as if they are indisputable or angry later because you find out the information does not measure what you were told it did.

Case in point: The National Un/Employment Statistics

The [U.S.] president has come under fire this week for Bureau of Labor employment data that claimed to have decreased overall unemployment in the U.S. but was actually counting mostly temporary census jobs. THe BLS reported the creation of 431,000 in the last quarter. Both the government and pundits used this number to argue that the economy was getting better and that jobs were on the rise.

No one asked how the BLS measures those jobs, ie what questions it asks to generate its numbers.

CUNY Job Fair/Alvarez/NY Daily News

A huge portion of the jobs created were temporary positions with the Census. The BLS does not exclude part time, temporary, seasonal, etc jobs from its count. Nor do they exclude people who for any reason left (of their own volition, were laid off, or fired) their job and then returned to it. What they count is the number of people reported to be hired in any given quarter.

If you don’t know the questions asked, you cannot understand the data. So because everyone took the numbers released and ran with them, when the 585,729 census workers began to be permanently laid off and the unemployment numbers began to rise again, people who had used the BLS to claim the economy was getting better cried foul. Suddenly there was talk of intentional manipulation of numbers and economic realities to make the President look better.

Enter the next set of misleading numbers released today: Jobless claims at lowest rate since 2008.

According to several agencies charged with measuring unemployment in the U.S., jobless claims have dropped by 3000 people this month. This number measures the number of people either still claiming unemployment or opening new cases for unemployment benefits.

What questions are not being asked?

The decreased number does not include the impact of the 99ers, people for whom all types of extensions have been exhausted and who are therefore kicked off of unemployment. According to HuffPo, the 99ers will likely represent 1 million people this year with no benefits, no incomes, and no statistical representation in the numbers both the government and the media are using to make claims about the health of the economy.

Nor does it count people who have not claimed unemployment because they are steadily burning through their finances or because they have obtained part time, temporary, work that makes them ineligible for benefits but does not constitute actual stable employment. And as always, these numbers only count people in the system not those who for one reason or another have never claimed benefits despite being unemployed.

unemployment office TN/ AP Photo/Josh Anderson

If we ignore these factors, as many of the people reporting on the new numbers have done this am, then we are likely to come to the same erroneous conclusions the BLS numbers caused earlier, ie: the economy is doing better and more people are employed than ever.

The reality is far more bleak. May 2010 saw the start of the 99 week shut off for unemployment benefits across the country (for those states who did not get extensions, these cut offs may have come earlier) and June is predicted to be the largest cut off month in the history of unemployment because of the number of people claiming benefits who have exhausted their allotment.

Add to this the fact that the Labor Department says only 41000 jobs were created in May (AP) and that most Census workers have been or will be permanently laid off and you begin to see a picture that any one of these numbers renders hidden by not asking the right questions.

Presidential Blame?

2004 Unemployment Line Protest outside the RNC held by PFAW/ Dave of BlueJake.com

Many are chomping at the bit to blame the discrepancies in the optimistic way the numbers are being reported and discussed and the realities they hide on the President. On the one hand, they are right to note that these numbers are being used to shape policy as well as perception. On the other, 1.2 million jobs were lost in the waning years of the Bush administration and these losses as well as the economic crisis in general all started on Republican watch. Partisans and the past aside, many of the current policies, like the ongoing decision not to extend unemployment benefits any more, are not made by the President but by Congress. Unlike the N. American people, Congress has much more information about how un/employment stats are kept and a greater access to and impetus to review all of the key stats. When they choose not to do that because of erroneous conclusions like “huge spikes in jobs in April and May mean that the economy is bouncing back” or “unemployment claims are lowest they’ve been since 2008 so people have found jobs”, they are guilty of intentional ignorance that ultimately leads to policy decisions that worse the economic lives of many N. Americans living on the edge.

Media

While Congress chooses to look the other way, the mainstream media is leading N. Americans astray.

In reporting un/employment statistics without breaking them down for the average reader and then proclaiming proof that the depression is finally over, something various outlets have done periodically over the last 2 years, the media creates the false sense that the nation is in recovery.  While in other times this might have created a needed moral boost, those times have long gone. Instead, what these declarations do is lead to a continued or increasing sense that unemployed workers are to blame for their circumstances. From employers who dare to question why people have been unemployed for 3 months to 2 years because the media has told them there are 411,000 new jobs out there or families and friends who have managed to hold on to their jobs or because of a lack of specialized skills have managed to find new jobs (albeit at lower rank or pay) vilify or question people with more specialized skills or larger income to debt needs who not only cannot but likely will not be employed by the local grocery store. The media’s misleading conclusions create a vacuum in which the humanity of the unemployed is staunchly sucked out in favor of the false promise that unemployment is a thing of the past and only losers don’t have jobs.

unattributed

When additional information about the widely reported numbers comes to light, politically motivated pundits jump on it and start a whole new media spin. In this version, the numbers are intentionally manipulated by a corrupt government trying to destroy the [white] working class. Given the kind of mythos the media creates around these numbers, it is not only card carrying supremacists who are inclined to hear this misguided warrior cry. Many people who have sat across the table from a smug employer asking “Well what have you been doing for the last 2 years?” are likely to feel the kind of resentment, dehumanization, and anger that makes blaming the government easy. Filtering those emotions through the lens of race turns that blame into a force similar to those during and immediately after reconstruction or the employment organizing in the 30s that in places like CA, Chicago, and other big cities was predicated on racial supremacy and xenophobia (particularly the vilification of and occasional violence against API immigrants and black people). These sentiments in turn fuel the continued unemployment of people of color which is much higher than that of struggling white communities, while still targeting them as potential threats to the economy.

Getty Image of Unemployment Line date unknown

Resentment amongst communities of color are also on the rise. While partially spurred on by the media myth-making and its consequences, it is also tinged with the failure of the President to implement any programs specifically targeted to racial communities most hit by layoffs and lack of rehire. Despite statistics that show people of color were among the first fired and the last hired and that certain groups’ unemployment rates outpace the national average by almost 5 times as much, neither Congress nor the President have made any move to deal with the intersections of race and class, race-class-gender, or even class and gender during this undeclared recession/depression. And those with long memories, still recall how the President avoided the direct question about how he was helping the 50% unemployed African-American males in NYC during his one televised press conference on unemployment. These issues of course also get us back to other missing factors in BLS data which can and does break things down by both race and gender but whose most cited stats do neither.

Conclusions

What is reported about the economy in the dailies is only part of the picture. Neither the people collecting individual statistics nor the people making huge erroneous leaps from them can be trusted without first remembering: stats only measure what you ask. While the blame lies largely on other shoulders than the President’s it is also imperative that he takes leadership in disseminating clearer information and demanding Congress act on it. We too must take responsibility for being informed and cross-checking any information we receive. In order to be informed advocates for economic renewal and equitable job development, we have to start asking what questions were asked to generate the stats we see and whether those questions justify the conclusions people are making. When we do that, we will not only develop a more accurate analysis of the economy but hopefully defuse some of the anger, resentment, and judgment that is currently permeating our nation and fostering conflict.

You can start by signing the Change.org 99er petititon here

Politics Quick Fix

You may have noticed that after all the intense writing I did about politics during the election season here at the blog, the focus of the blog has moved decidedly in different directions from DC and its outliers. Nevertheless, sometimes you cannot look away and this Super Primary Tuesday is one of those moments.

On the Left

AP Photo/unattributed

The big news today is that Blanche Lincoln managed to hold on to her seat despite not supporting the public option or the union bill that would allow workers to join and support unions in private instead of under the watchful eye of the bosses they were trying to keep in line. According to MSNBC pundit Ed Schulz and a report yesterday am on CNN, there may have been voter tampering involved in her win; both channels reported that districts that had been heavily in favor of her more progressive primary opponent received less voting areas than it has in the past and that promises to rectify this with a special Saturday am polling station for early voters were against the law in Arkansas and led to all kinds of voter confusion. Video of Arkansas’ voting in those districts included packed parking lots, long lines, and even a car accident.

Why is this important?

Blanche Lincoln is a Democrat. Democrats have long chaffed over supposed and proven voter tampering by Republicans over the last 8 years. Efforts by both Democrats and Progressives to ensure an end to voter tampering were so feared by their opponents in fact, that they launched smear campaigns to stop people from getting out the vote or challenging election results. We have documentaries and news specials full of cynical or shocked faces on the Left proclaiming the immorality of the Right with regards to voting dating back to the Florida scandal in the first Bush election. In other words, it is part of our voting knowledge and our democratic vocabulary that one thing that sets Democrats apart from Republicans is that the latter cheat, often, and using multiple tactics that including moving polling centers (OH and MI I am talking to you).

So if the polling stations were down to only 2 from roughly 50 in previous primaries in districts that were likely to come out against Blanche Lincoln then her win is actually a loss for Democrats everywhere. In one, highly publicized primary, we have lost the moral high ground on voting “irregularities” in favor of supporting a candidate who has failed to support many of the policies that the majority of the country was behind when she, and other Democrats, were overwhelmingly elected.

Her joy and incredulity last night in accepting the nomination mask a potentially much darker turn in the party in which not only voting is in question but so is the power of support from the administration. Both President Obama and former President Clinton lobbied hard for Lincoln in the past few weeks. Clinton even stumped for her and was part of her ad campaign. As progressives continue to be disappointed in the middle road policies of this administration, we cannot help but note how they have rallied for a woman who was willing to fillibuster with Republicans to stop us from having decent health care. Their continued support of her in the face of these policy “contradictions” is only slightly less disconcerting than the fact that by doing so they too are implicated, however tangentially, in the voting poll controversy.

On the Right

The other big stories this morning are the wins of  former ebay CEO Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina in California. Like Lincoln, Whitman’s win casts a bright light on potentially questionable election practices by her Party while Fiorina’s win may simply show that when comes to politics the old boy network has room for a few [corporate] women.

While voting polls appear to have been at their standard number for each community in CA, Whitman’s raised huge flags with the amount of money she was willing to spend to get elected. According to Time, she spent $80 million on her primary campaign.  Many are claiming this morning that it is the clearest sign that she “bought the election” of any candidate in the nation’s history. Her actions, though questionable, were not illegal and ultimately people have to ask themselves why they are so swayed by the amount of time they see a candidate but not by the knowledge that candidate spent the GDP of some small nations to win a primary.

More intriguing to me is the way Whitman became a player in the Republican Party in the first place. If you think back to the Presidential primaries and start counting the number of times John McCain told anecdotal stories about “the CEO of Ebay” you’ll know what I mean. I, for one, had no idea who Whitman was before John McCain decided to wax poetic about her every chance he got during the last legs of his election bid. Many watching and commenting on his speeches, assumed that he was going off on random tangents or grasping at straws to include references to a woman in a campaign where he may have “chosen” a female running mate but ultimately continued to operate as if it was an old boys network. Did John McCain know something we didn’t? Was he asked/told to stump for her in advance or even paid to do so? We will probably never know, but again, her bid for CA Governor has to make you wonder why she was the woman McCain fixated on 9 times out of 10 during an election she had nothing to do with.

campaign photo/unattributed

Fiorina was also mentioned by McCain several times during the Presidential Primaries until she openly mocked Palin’s qualifications. However, Fiorina worked for the McCain campaign as the economic advisor and therefore her mentions at least makes some sense.

What is more important in her case is her incredibly negative business image vs. her crushing win yesterday. As CEO of HP, Fiorina was considered a disaster by many because of declining stock and shares of the computer market. Market Shares Blog reported that HP stock went up 7% after she was fired the day the news broke. Fiorina on the other hand has always maintained that she was forced out and that gender was a critical factor in the decision. If we believe the former assessment her win is just as suspect as all of the women in NY who were disqualified by the public as backdoor candidates whose runs were considered part of an unearned legacy rather than legitimacy on their own. Some of those candidates may not have had direct political experience but they did have tons of transferable philanthropic experience. Can Fiorina, as a potentially disastrous business woman, count her time as CEO to explain away similar unearned keys to the kingdom?

Two-Parties One System

On the one hand, this primary season has seen many women coming to the political foreground. The Republicans in particular have ushered in a large number of women as their candidates, proving for those who did not learn this lesson from the suffragettes that biological sex and political beliefs are not fused together once and for all. But except for those hold out biological determinists and wrongfully educated WS folk who think “any woman” winning is a win for “women”, these wins, regardless of the Party, do not bode well for the progressive movement in this country. While some of these women will support middle class feminist goals, stances against unions and health care mean that their feminism will not extend to the majority of women struggling in this country even if they call themselves feminists. So for me the presence of so many women in the primaries is noteworthy but not a real measure of any larger feminist advance.

For the majority of voters, the primaries should be a wake up call no matter what. While neither progressives nor Tea Party challengers fared well in this election, the reason for their defeats may have more to do with shady practices than with voters. When neither Democrats nor Republicans can successfully shake off their own dirt to point at the filth of the other party, this country is in trouble. When it happens at a point in our political sentiment as a nation that incumbents are failing us, traditional government is lying to us, and what We the People need most is ignored or denied, the very public failures of both parties to uphold democratic ideals in an election only serve to further entrench dissatisfaction. While some on the Left may believe that this dissatisfaction can only be interpreted as racism, and much of the expressed disdain right now is (see my anti-Obama poster page in the tabs @ the top of the blog for evidence if you need it), progressives and others are beginning to become seriously concerned about environmental issues, employment, health care, etc. that still have not been solved. And while those of us on the Left can see across history to note how many of these issues and problems stem from past administrations and economic and global policies from past ideologies, we are also smart enough to look at the choices made by this administration. When potential or perceived voter tampering on both sides gets added to that plate of complaints it seems like the table might break.

So readers, what do you think about yesterday’s primaries and about our two party system?

WordPress Fail

The one where I question WordPress’ decision to highlight a Black Face apologist post over the reported 297,850 posts made this am from which they had to choose “Entertaining, Enlightening, and inspir[ing]” content

UPDATE: Since writing this post, I have seen more diversity of topics and identities represented on the Freshly Pressed page than I have ever seen on it in the entire time it has been in existence. No one at wordpress.com has commented on this post but they were aware of it (I sent in a link).

UPDATE II: it took 2 weeks before they returned to highlighting racialized posts about black people and 1 month before they started in on questionable posts about Asians; today’s Fresh Press included a post by a white woman entitled “I Think I am Becoming Asian PART ONE” (emphasis mine). The insistence on highlighting the colonial gaze as representative of the top .003% brilliance on wordpress is appalling. If you blog here, please ask why authors who are not writing from this vantage point, you know the other 99.997% of us, are not as intelligent, amusing, or brilliant in the eyes of wordpress Freshly Pressed editors because I think just asking that question will make you wonder about what the focus has been here lately.

For those who don’t know, a colonial gaze is a viewpoint in which whiteness is naturalized, central to the argument about other cultures, assumed of the audience, and used to otherize non-white cultures in ways that are either meant to be amusing or belittling but ultimately reaffirm whiteness as normal and right and everything/one else as “odd”, “weird”, and essentially lesser whether it is the intention of the author or not. It can be held by members of the dominant culture and internalized by those outside of it. It operates in a hegemonic way, ie so widespread that it seems natural and normal rather than a biased and culturally specific way of perpetuating inequality.

———————————

I came here this morning with a list of smallish posts on current affairs and pop culture to write, ie a typical day @ the blog. I remember having something about

1. oil protests at the White House by women that didn’t get much coverage
2. the arrest of Joran Van der Sloot
3. the return of True Blood and the rewriting of Eggs murder as a key plot point

I was going to close with an amusing video first scene on Rachel Maddow’s blog where a fake border check point was set up by a white podcaster to stop people of European decent on the basis of their appearance to prove a point about racial profiling and AZ. It was a tidy little list that I hoped would generate conversation on twitter (where most of my commenters talk back these days) and maybe even here (like the old days).

However, much of my plans fell out of my head when for the second time in just-slightly more than 1 month wordpress highlighted a racialized, if not [internalized] racist, post on its main page.

BBC Asian Network/ Unattributed

For non-wordpress users, when you log in to wordpress you are diverted to the “Freshly Pressed” page which highlights 11 “outstanding posts” for readers. Unlike other blog formats that allow you to do some level of intelligent searching on your own or rotate through a medium list of newly posted material throughout the day to peek your interest, wordpress offers a static “Freshly Pressed” page and then a series of links inside your blog that are somewhat tailored to you like “tag surfer” and “blog surfer.” The difference between the former and the latter two options is that the former is visible to everyone who comes to wordpress looking to open a new blog or logging in to an existing one. The same 11 posts show throughout the day.

Roughly 1 months ago, 4/28/10 to be exact, I complained on Twitter about the trend I noticed in the “Freshly Pressed” section of highlighting content I felt was radically different than what was highlighted in the past. Before “Freshly Pressed”, wordpress highlighted both the most recent posts posted to the site from any blog and also highlighted specific blog posts they found interesting. These posts ranged in content from fluffy tv episode reviews to environmental disasters, race politics to restaurants to try, etc. In other words, it was wide and varied and often encouraged readers to find people like them and people who were posting completely different but interesting content. It also focused somewhat on new blogs so that you always got a sense of who was signing up.

Vanity Fair

In my tweet, I asserted a marked decrease in the variety of posts highlighted at wordpress as well as an over all trend toward a particular hipster perspective. I felt this trend, though certainly reflective of a section of blogs published on wordpress and often interesting, was leaving out a large cross section of wordpress blogs and bloggers. I pointed out that on that day’s “Freshly Pressed” page I had been directed to a blog that linguistically replaced “African Queens” with a white woman who was dating an African; the post in question also staunchly denied white privilege, basic, documented, immigration patterns, and offered up nothing about her relationship while chastising people for critiquing it from a decidedly privilege-ladden and defensive stance. I was appalled. And so were most of my tweeps. In fact it generated a heated discussion which I myself stopped by saying it wasn’t worth all of the energy we were spending on it.

A few hours later, wordpress’ official blog sent out a list of criteria for how they choose their “Freshly Pressed” posts,which included the general guide that chosen posts “represent how WordPress can be used to entertain, enlighten, or inspire.” (emphasis mine) and the specific criteria summarized below:

1. “Unique content free of bad stuff” – bad stuff defined as “plagiarism, hate speech, fear-mongering, adult/mature content, improperly used images that belong to someone else, spam or content that is primarily advertorial“
2. includes images – especially your own or those properly cited “We like original images (meaning, your own), but if you don’t have any of your own and decide to use someone else’s, be sure you properly credit the original source” (emphasis mine)
3. tags
4. typo free
5. compelling headline

Since this set of guidelines has appeared, I have seen any number of posts on the Freshly Pressed page that do not meet one or more of the expanded criteria for guidelines 1 and 2. They are especially lax with regards to highlighting posts without proper citation of images or adult content (at least twice in the past few weeks I have seen posts highlighted with closeups of women’s breasts or suggestive shots implying upskirt images). They have also on occasion included arch-conservative political posts that are clearly “primarily advertorial” in content.  I’ve actually applauded the inclusion of the latter, not because I agree with them in anyway, but because I thought it showed an effort on wordpress’ part to represent the viewpoints of more of its blogging community. The seeming lack of the commitment to showing a wider range of blogs and bloggers, especially with regards to “identity based” social justice posts in favor of content that directly negates it, is at the heart of my original complaint. In fact, I would argue that the majority of the posts highlighted during the days I logged in for the last month did not meet 1 or more guidelines. But I don’t work at wordpress and honestly, after noting an overall lack of diversity in the authors and the content they highlight (they do seem to gravitate toward posts about Asian food and Asian pop stars but other than that …) I just kept blogging. After all, it is not like their decisions are any different than any other liberal organization around (which means they are guilty not that they are all excused).

It was probably easier for me to shrug off the trend because I have no personal investment in being highlighted. I have my group of loyal readers and I believe in my content enough that I don’t need outside validation. I have also had my previous blog highlighted more than once by wordpress before the onset of “Freshly Pressed.” Not only did that bring in readers I still have, it also gave me faith that the trend I noticed could be reversed at any time and people who write about racism, feminism (non-mainstream feminism), classism, etc. would once again have their numbers reflected in what wordpress highlights. Put another way, I know that people writing about politics from and identity from a social justice standpoint make up a large enough percentage of wordpress blogs that their marked absence from “Freshly Pressed” is both disconcerting and hopefully unsustainable based on the circulated guidelines.

Stern Fotografie/ Karl Lagerfeld

However, this morning, I logged in and saw a post JUSTIFYING BLACK FACE highlighted in the “Freshly Pressed” section. According to wordpress’ own statistics, there were 297,849 posts besides this one to choose from this morning. That means that wordpress believes a post JUSTIFYING BLACK FACE is in the top .0003% of its total posts for the day in terms of its ability to “entertain, enlighten, and inspire.”

Let that sink in for a minute.

Done?

If we judge this post on the basis of the circulated criteria it is a whole ball of fail:

1. it contains an uncited photo that belongs to someone else
2. while it does not include hate speech, and I do not believe the author meant to be hateful or offensive, it is a post whose primary thesis is that modern day black face in the media, and its current popularity in the fashion industry in particular, is acceptable
3. the post itself starts by calling up the controversy it is about to examine and then takes a decidedly offensive tack, ie justifying black face (yes I am going to keep saying it), which by definition would make it advertorial by nature

In other words, like so many other highlighted posts in the past year, THE BLACK FACE IS OK POST HIGHLIGHTED BY WORDPRESS THIS AM OVER 297,849 OTHER POSTS DOES NOT MEET WORDPRESS’ OWN GUIDELINES FOR HIGHLIGHTING

What then can we surmise about how this post beat out the 99.9997% of posts to grace every wordpress user’s login page and global dashboard?

• Was it “Entertaining“? – Minstrel shows brought in a wide audience in their day and were based around the amusement of white people at their own myth – making about the lives, intelligence, sexual appetites, and ability to be a part of society of black folks …

Mammond 1899

The post in question, actually has no stated knowledge of minstrelsy or its history, which is no doubt why it JUSTIFIES BLACK FACE. It does not draw on racist humor that would at least clearly explain the racism behind choosing it as 1 of the top 11 posts available this morning. There is actually no humor, racist or otherwise in this post, unless you find the quoted thesis of the post, listed below, amusing for its pure lack of understanding about how subtlety and hegemony work with regards to U.S. racism:

“Her makeup and hair was well done and she was not dressed, I feel, in a way to construe any negative connotations to the black culture.”

I guess there is something entertaining about seeing Claudia Schiffer’s over the top blond hair (which I believe includes extensions) being completely ignored when the author praises the Halloween-esque Afro she dons in the side image as part of her BLACK FACE because:

“If she had a bad weave … then there might be a problem”

The wig is tacky and she does have a bad weave, but we are trained in this culture to believe white women’s hair is always long and straight and super model white women’s hair is always extra long and thick and straight, while black women’s hair is kinky and short unless they paid for a weave. News flash: from reality tv “stars”, to actresses, to supermodels, weaves are a common part of the job for white women. I can not say for sure Schiffer has some form of extensions in her hair for the image the highlighted author chose, but given the volume of it, I’m inclined to believe she does and that it looks bad.

• Was it “Enlightening“? Often racism, internalized or otherwise, can enlighten us about how deep racism is in our culture and how willing white people are to search for and then highlight any black person who says what they are secretly thinking themselves, ie:

“The most Schiffer and Lagerfeld are guilty of is not being sensitive enough to the feelings of the black culture.”

I don’t however think illuminating the depths of hegemonic racism is the reason Imani’s post was highlighted today.

Black Friend Gag/Comedy Central

Instead, I think her post was chosen precisely because it does highlight what one or more people making the decisions at wordpress’ “Freshly Pressed” page think about race and racism, ie that black people are too sensitive and that intention matters more than action. Of course, it is a little hard to miss the intentions in the images in question here, but you’ll need to think like a racism apologist for a moment. More importantly it excuses racism and calls out “over-sensitivity” in the mouth of a black woman blogger. It is the classic “see even black people said it” moment that is making my intellectual and personal blood boil.

If wordpress believes there is truth value here, then we have to be serious about the question of “enlightening” content.

Imani argues two things:

1. Schiffer’s BLACK FACE photo does not have any stereotypically negative content and therefore is not racist – this is presumably based on a classist argument in which dressing Schiffer up as a black escapee from the old tv show Dallas (ie an 80s millionaire complete with shoulder pads and gaudy jewelry) means they are not being offensive. First, class is not race. Depicting her as wealthy does not negate depicting her in a racist manner in the same way that a multi-cultural photo could still be guilty of classism or sexism, or even racism. Second, race and class are intertwined. And while Imani is right to point out that the most stereotypical images of black folks assume poverty, there is also the more subtle class critique of wealthy black people that include “uppity” and “declasse”.  In fact, if we wanted to stretch this analysis to its furtherest point, we could look at the decision to put Schiffer in an Afro rather than braids or puffs in light of the dressing down of First Lady Obama. More likely, though, the image seems to be taking the declasse tactic. In blackface Schiffer’s appearance is at once gaudy, with big flashy jewelry and glittery clothes, and out of time, calling up soap opera divas of the 80s rather than modern business women and economic powerhouses.  Schiffer’s white photo on the other hand, shows her in a classic black suit emulating a madonna-esque power ensemble of sex and money. (You should note the original image is sexist; it replaces Schiffer’s shirt with a black leather bra. Nonetheless she is the picture of modern vis a vis the outdated and gaudy attire of her “black” counterpart.) These images operate on multiple levels, calling into question the class attainment of black people on the basis of race while also sexualizing white women and therefore subsequently desexualizing black ones.
2. Karl Lagerfeld, the photographer, didn’t have enough black models to use so he made do. “maybe it was the lack diversity in the people involved with the photo shoot” – Imani has no way of knowing who was at that shoot therefore her argument has no basis. More importantly, there are a bevy of black models available and like any other photographer, if Lagerfeld had wanted a multicultural shoot all he would have had to do is call the agencies and request models from the various races he wanted to represent. The same people who represent Schiffer also represent Brazilian, African, and Asian models for sure and probably also Latin American, Latina, Caribbean, and Black British or Black French models, so he would not have even had to make two phone calls to have a multicultural shoot. The bottom line is Lagerfeld chose not to use models of color because his goal was to produce BLACK FACE and that decision is part of a growing trend in the modeling industry right now that at its heart is incredibly racist. Racist because it erases the presence of women of color. Racist because it takes jobs and money from women of color in order to keep it in the hands of white photographers, designers, and models who will not complain about the racism in the images. Racist because often the images themselves rely on racist stereotypes both subtle and covert. RACIST because it calls up a history of oppression whose antecedents are still readily felt especially in the fashion industry.

Not only is the information Imani includes incorrect but she also edited out pertinent information I found only after writing this post while looking for images to illustrate it.

1. Schiffer actually appears in both BLACK and ASIAN FACE – something Imani does not mention until the very last sentence and does not depict
2. the photoshoot was done for a conservative German magazine which regularly peddles in racialized fantasies

This information would have been not only enlightening but also added much needed depth to our understanding of what is actually going on in the controversial images. It would also have undermined Imani’s entire thesis without having to do the kind of work I have done here to show its holes.

Stern Fotografie/ Karl Lagerfeld

The full spread speaks to the convergence of sexist, racist, eroticism that is entirely missing from Imani’s analysis. Where I writing this post as a response to her and not to wordpress, I would take time out to deconstruct each of these images for that content and focus on how overt racism and sexism are making a come back as the interlocking tools of choice to express racial fears across the West.

In other words, if we define “enlightening” as something that gives us new, in depth, or profound information this post fails on all accounts because it’s naivete about race, racism, and racial history make its argument wholly unfounded and unsupportable except in the minds of racism apologists. To be fair, Imani never set out to analyze the photos but rather to excuse away people’s reactions to them as racist. But to do one, you ultimate have to successfully do the other.

• Does it “Inspire“? – it inspired me to rant for 30 minutes in this post and on twitter and encourage people to retweet wordpressFAIL citing racialized thinking as often as possible, but again I don’t think that is what wordpress meant.

Harem Fantasies/Professor Jan Nederveen Pieterse Collection/ BBC

Forgive me while I do something I tell my students not to do when writing a paper. According to Webster’s Dictionary, inspire means:

1 a : to influence, move, or guide by divine or supernatural inspiration b : to exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence on

Divinity aside, this definition argues that there must be something deeply meaningful and moving in the posts highlighted by wordpress. And yet the only thing this post gives us is a racism apology from a black woman who actually believes that a famous photography did a black face photoshoot because he couldn’t find models of color to use …

I am not inspired, I am heartbroken.

For all the work we have done to teach people about oppression and how to analyze, organize, and decolonize around it, we still have young black women justifying their own oppression due to a lack of knowledge and white people justifying their own unexamined uber-subtle beliefs about race through them. Worse, in the last 4-8 years of teaching I have seen a profound failure to understand subtlety, history, or basic critical thinking (ie the ability to look beyond the surface image or first reaction to the deeper meanings and connect them to other information from the past and present) on the rise amongst N. American students. This lack of critical skills relates to any sort of analysis not just oppressions work which is always hard the first time out. I believe the problem stems from the “No Child Left Behind” testing culture of middle and high schools. As so many have already proven statisically and ethnographically, testing culture has thrown out critical thinking for “the right answer” and learning how to deduce it without having to think or engage beyond the flattened out multiple choice options presented students.

I am concerned about how a seemingly arbitrary decision about education has translated into such a wide gap in the ability of younger people to deconstruct huge systems of oppression and what it means for the perpetuation of racism, sexism, etc. Couple this with the TX textbook controversy, attempts to shut down multicultural ed in AZ and underfund/combine/dismantle ethnic studies, women’s studies, and queer studies at the university level across the country and a pattern of planned ignorance seems to emerge that raises any number of red flags. This planned ignorance is then reflected in the increasingly polarized conversations that neither look at facts nor evidence on and off the internet.

Part of mural in London c 1966/ The Latest.com

In the midst of these large battles, blogging was once a way to write back to abusive power. It was used by many to highlight the perspectives, experiences, and analytical skills of people largely left out or ignored by mainstream media, publishing, and academe. As blogging mainstreamed however, the ability for counter-revolutionary voices receded. Now Ashton Kutcher’s fart tweets, Huffington Posts paid posts, and Shock Jock’s witch hunts receive the bulk of attention while people blogging for the sake of writing what is not available or not available in any large and tranformal way anywhere else get relegated to niche.

WordPress has a unique opportunity as one of the largest sites hosting blogs or providing software to independent hosts. As of this morning, there are 293,224 people blogging on wordpress. People who have been repeatedly highlighted on “Freshly Pressed” have received book deals, speaking engagements, invitations to cover important national events, exclusive interviews, and even regular tv commentary spots. In other words, WordPress has the opportunity to highlight a wide section of the population and influence their ability to speak to much larger audiences as well as gain mainstream legitimacy. When wordpress decides to ignore the bulk of its social justice bloggers who blog about racism, classism, sexism and the like in favor of identity neutral, hipster funny, and occassionally sexist or racist posts it makes a critical decision to work against not only a portion of its writers but the social justice I still believe the people behind wordpress would say they support. When it highlights a post JUSTIFYING BLACK FACE, especially on the heals of promoting a post erasing black women and denying white privilege a month earlier, one has to question exactly what the real criteria is for “Freshly Pressed” and exactly what kind of influence wordpress is aligning itself with. WordPresss itself has failed to live up to its own guidelines for highlighting posts and this instance it has done so in the service of racialized thinking if not straight up [internalized] racism and as a 5 year veteran of the wordpress blog I call Bullshit.