What’s cookin’

Last week, NBC got its share of heat for a fight, that like many before it, started in the cafeteria.  For years, cafeteria chef Leslie Calhoun had advocated for a special menu to highlight Black History month.  When NBC finally granted her request, the result was this menu:

...and I totally get black love for Aquafina (beats Dasani, any day).

The photographer? Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer for Jimmy Fallon’s “Late Night” show band, The Roots (arguably one of the best parts about Fallon’s show, but I digress).  Questlove took the photo with his phone and posted it on Twitter with the caption: “Hmm…HR?”

NBC/Universal responded via tweet, of all things:

@questlove http://twitpic.com/11d07s – The sign in the NBCU cafeteria has been removed. We apologize for anyone who was offended by it.

When The New York Post first featured the story, it did so under the punny banner, “NBC’s Lost Soul.”  The comments on Questlove’s Twitpic range from

I really don’t see anything wrong with this. I am African American and the only thing on here that I don’t eat is Jalapeno. People need to relax, we have bigger “fish to fry”. -Amadii

I don’t usually call my grandma racist for cooking me soda bread on Saint Patrick’s Day. -martinamelia

It’s pretty thoughtless. It’s like saying, “See, here’s something good that came out of slavery! We’re all good now, right?” -utterlycharming

New York Magazine called the situation “a Saturday Night Live–worthy farce about liberal racial oversensitivity.”  The commentary at NY Magazine’s Daily Intel reported that, according to Calhoun, after the first shot was taken of the menu:

“The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn’t.”

That’s awesome. Especially since the black population at NBC is only around 11 percent countrywide, and so we imagine everyone bombarding like the one guy who happened to be in the cafeteria with questions, like, “Hey, black person. Don’t you think that’s racist? Aren’t you upset? Don’t you think you should be? I mean, you understand why this is offensive, right?”

Comedian Wanda Sykes took NBC to task in her appearance on The Jay Leno Show (it’s still called that, right?):

Questlove has since posted this statement about the controversy (emphasis mine):

when i saw the sign i have to admit….i was DYING. like literally LMAO!!! maybe it was juxtaposition of the words: collard & history, jalapeno & honor, fried, black and nbc?? maybe it was the acculturative stress of having 28 days for this food that represents you but come march…pot roast for life kid!

whatever the case, I found this funny and when I find something funny I like to let the world in on the joke (twitpic anyone??). in NO way did i ever think that this was some cruel insensitive joke on behalf of jeff zucker and his comrades at nbc (the cafeteria isn’t even owned or operated by nbc).

I kinda get where leslie calhoun (our culinary rosa parks) was coming from; fried chicken as a fragrant, tasty, honorable metaphor for the struggles and accomplishments of america’s black masses.

The problem is..in the blogosphere, things can take on a life of their own. “online journalists”, site commenters, even comedians (see wanda sykes on leno) have now taken my snapshot of leslie’s missionary zeal and retooled it for their own racialized – “let’s bash nbc for their conan sins” – flogging mission. my twitpic was just me poking fun, a Questlove still life that was clearly intended as a joke. what’s even funnier: race issues in post racial america. potluck anyone?????

I, of course, have my own take on these events and have exhaustively argued with my husband and myself about the implications of such a “celebration” of black history.  I think there are many layers to this and to ignore any one of them is an injustice and a reduction of the complexity that is our nation’s history with race.

So lay your own layer on me: what do our readers and my fellow bloggers think about all this?  “Liberal oversensitivity”?  “Another example of institutional racism”?  “Black on black crime?”  Let’s dish.

Reported racial and gender bias among adoptive parents

From the New York Times Economix blog, Black Babies, Boys Less Likely to be Adopted:

Both straight and gay adoptive parents are likely to exhibit racial and sex-based biases when applying to adopt a child, a new study finds…

The authors found that girls are consistently preferred to boys. For non-African-American babies, for example, the probability that a prospective adoptive parent expresses interest in such a baby is 11.5 percent if the baby is a girl and 7.9 percent if the baby is a boy.

Interestingly, in many cultures the preference for biological children runs in the opposite direction, with parents strongly preferring boys instead of girls. The authors suggest that this preference for girls in cases of adoptive children may be because adoptive parents “fear dysfunctional social behavior in adopted children and perceive girls as ‘less risky’ than boys in that respect.”

Additionally, Caucasians and Hispanics are consistently preferred to African-Americans. The probability that a non-African-American baby will attract the interest of an adoptive parent is at least seven times as high as the corresponding probability for an African-American baby.

The desire for white babies can be partly, but not fully, explained by the fact that most of the adoptive parents in this data set were white; previous research has found that adoptive parents often want children who look similar to themselves.

The study also looked at adoptions by same-sex couples. …

In some ways…gay adoptive parents were more “selective.” Somewhat ironically (at least considering the continued social prejudice against their own family structures), same-sex couples and single women appeared to exhibit even stronger prejudice in favor of girls and against African-American babies than their opposite-sex couple counterparts.

As an adopted person and adoption advocate, I follow adoption news as closely as I can.  I might as well state up front that I’m frequently irked by adoption coverage in the media, by reporters who can’t bother to do the research necessary in order to get their terms straight, and by the backlash that results from those individuals, agencies, and celebrities (I’m looking at you, Madonna) who see fit to bypass those pesky “laws” and “regulations” when adopting.

I think of adopted children and adoptive parents as my family, in some sense.  We don’t agree on everything, but we are all part of the adoption community, and our lives are often misrepresented or misunderstood by friends and strangers alike who have never been on the inside of an adoption themselves.  So I may take issue with or make fun of adoptive parents as a whole, but you know, it just pisses me right off when someone else does it.  Inconsistent?  Yeah, probably I am.  Oh, well.

Which brings me to this article.  I think the tendency would be for your average liberal reader to read this and say, “gosh, those adoptive parents are jerks.” And, okay, some of them definitely are, but I think that reaction would be a bit of an oversimplification.

Anyway, to unpack the piece a little…I knew there was a preference for girls among adoptive parents, though these numbers were new to me.   In terms of intercountry adoption, a lot of sending countries send far more girls than boys, due to cultural biases in favor of boys, so I think a lot of prospective parents (both here and abroad) just tend to assume it’s easier to adopt a girl.  I know if you say you want a Chinese boy, you could be waiting a damn long time.  So a lot of parents put down “girl” because they think they could get one faster.  I myself was placed for adoption largely because I was not the boy my birthparents were hoping for.

I can see some people preferring girls because there is a feeling among many parents (whether it is true or not) that little girls are “easier” than little boys.  Also, plenty of biological parents hope for a boy if they already have a girl, or a girl if they already have a boy, in order to “complete the set.” When I was pregnant, I had a slight (okay, major. It was a major bias) in favor of having a girl; I was all RAHHH GIRL POWER, I’m-not-ready-to-take-a-side-in-the-circumcision-debate, “screw you”-Korean-cultural-bias-in-favor-of-males! I’m not ashamed; I would have loved a son just as much and I hope to have a boy someday; that first time, I just had a preference, that’s all.  All this to say, the fact that some adoptive parents might have the nerve to express a preference for girls over boys doesn’t deeply offend me.  What, they’re not allowed to have a slight gender bias, when you have wealthy biological parents “selecting” for not just gender, but brains, Aryan features, the whole nine yards?

As for the racial bias, I can’t say I found it surprising, and to the extent that it is motivated by racism, it is reprehensible.  The article above failed to highlight the fact that there are very long waiting lists of prospective adoptive parents (mostly white) who want to adopt children of color and children with special needs.  In some places, white parents aren’t allowed to adopt babies who aren’t white, because some people believe they wouldn’t be able to understand or empathize with the racial prejudice and identity issues that child would encounter.  But there are plenty of white parents who, for good or ill, would and do leap at the chance to adopt a child of color.

I’m certainly not defending all adoptive parents here, as many of them do have less than ideal motives for and attitudes towards both same-race and transracial adoption. I know plenty of people who have told me they just couldn’t see adopting a child of another race. But you know what? I know plenty MORE people who have told me they could never adopt AT ALL, because they just weren’t sure they would “feel the same” about a child who “wasn’t theirs.” So you tell me which kind of parent is worse. My point is, a couple often has to take a long, winding, difficult journey to get to the point where they can consider adoption of any kind fairly and squarely.  Given that, and the fact that for most people it truly is (regrettably) a last resort after they have exhausted all fertility treatment options, it should hardly be surprising that, once they do settle on adoption, they aren’t the shining paragons of openness and evolved sensibility you might like to see.

One more thing this post failed to emphasize — though perhaps the study itself sheds more light on this — is the fact that for many adoptive parents, the racial and cultural barriers that arise are not always due solely to prejudice, but rather to their own feelings of inadequacy when it comes to raising a child outside his or her culture of origin.  Really, I don’t think you can get more fair than that.  I think this doubt and honest assessment of one’s shortcomings is a healthy exercise for any adoptive parent to go through, frankly.  Adopting a child of another race and/or culture should not be undertaken lightly, with the assumption one will have no trouble with it along the way, and the expectation of perfect success.  Many adoptees like me who were adopted outside our culture are quite vocal about the things we felt were missing because we were raised by white parents.  Much as I might want to adopt a black child, therefore, I might also hesitate because I would wonder if I’d be the best parent to that child.

The fact is, and I think we all agree on this — not just anyone can be a good adoptive parent, particularly to a child of another race. Not just anyone should be one. If you recognize that, as a prospective adoptive parent, maybe that’s all to the good.  (You know, assuming you are truly being conscientious, and not just a racist asshat.) But it seems there is no way for adoptive parents to win, is there?  If they show a preference for a child of color, they are self-righteous imperialists with a white savior complex. If they show a preference for white children, they must be racist.

Ideally, there would be enough people willing and able to adopt, in both the U.S. and abroad, to keep children within families of their own ethnic and cultural background.  Believe it or not, many, many international adoption advocates, agencies, and organizations acknowledge this, too — and believe that the best option for orphaned children globally would be domestic adoption within their own countries.  But sadly, this is far from possible at this time.  To quote from another post I wrote a few months ago:

The “ideal” would be for more countries to establish ethical, transparent, and thriving domestic adoption programs, allowing more children to be adopted by parents within their own country and culture.  Currently, however, domestic adoption is far from a realistic option for the vast majority of children in many, many sending countries, due to a variety of economic, cultural, and political factors.  The U.S. is one of only a few nations whose citizens enjoy both the financial ability to adopt, and a general cultural openness and friendliness to adoption.  And for many thousands of orphaned and abandoned children worldwide, their only chance to have a family of their own and escape institutional/foster care is through intercountry adoption.

The same goes for children of all ethnic backgrounds here in the U.S. who have been abandoned, orphaned, or placed for adoption with no recourse to biological parents or other family.  We don’t have orphanages or workhouses anymore, but we do have an overburdened and underfunded foster care and juvenile courts system, and there is a wealth of research and foster care alumni stories detailing the increased likelihood of poor outcomes for children who are forced to languish in foster care (most of whom are never made eligible for adoption).  Children don’t just need, they have the right to safe, loving, permanent families.  Right now, the only way for many of them to achieve this is through adoption, including transracial adoption.  We need to educate and encourage those who want to adopt and make it more possible for white parents to raise nonwhite children without making a huge mess of it.  And in the meantime, we should promote ethical, responsible adoption any way we can, particularly among people of color, so that one day we might be able to serve the best interests of all children in need of families of their own.

Apparently Amnesia is the Takeaway from the State of the Union

So in more of the buffoonery that is the American media, Chris Matthews steps up to the plate with this one:

And in a classic case of colorblindness/missed opportunity, colleague Rachel Maddow not only allows Matthews to take pride in his “commentary” but refuses to in any way correct him:

From the insightful interpretation of these events from Ta-Nehisi Coates (emphasis mine):

The “I forgot Obama was black” sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance–you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don’t know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn’t forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

Fortunately, not all of us white people forget so easily.

Rush says put your wallets away, America

Rush Limbaugh just never disappoints, does he?

“In the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, we have another crisis simply too good to waste,” Limbaugh said. “This’ll play right into Obama’s hands — humanitarian, compassionate. They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community — the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.”

Limbaugh also seemed to suggest that Americans had no need to donate to relief efforts: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Zing!  Oh, my side.  Thank heaven we have conservative talk radio personalities to make uplifting jokes at a time like this.

Not Exactly Superman…

Here’s RNC Chairman Michael Steele talking about the Reid scandal on Meet the Press:

more about “Steele: Reid Should Resign as Senate …“, posted with vodpod

Here’s Steele last January talking to Sean Hannity about maintaining the dogma of the Republican Party:

I guess consistency is this man’s Kryptonite.

Senate Majority Leader apologizes for “Negro dialect” comment

Harry Reid apologizes for past insensitive remarks about Barack Obama:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apologized Saturday following reports he had privately described then-candidate Barack Obama during the presidential campaign as a black candidate who could be successful thanks in part to his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann reported the remarks in their new book “Game Change,” according to an excerpt published by The Atlantic late Friday.

“He (Reid) 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 was convinced, in fact, that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination,” they write. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” Reid said in a statement to CNN.

“I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments. I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda.” Reid also pointed to his efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry, among other legislation favored by African-American voters: “I have worked hard to advance issues important to the African American community.”

Good of him to apologize (when ratted out after the fact), but honestly, I could do without the “aren’t I grand?” point he tags on the end about his work to “advance issues important to the African American community.” It’s an apology, Senator, it’s not about your resume.  But he is a politician, after all.

KFC Australia on the defensive

The following ad for KFC in Australia has sparked controversy here in the US because it appears to promote a racist trope about black people’s reputed love of fried chicken:

Naturally, KFC Australia is denying any racist meaning behind the ad, and their official response is that

“The ad was reproduced online in the U.S. without KFC’s permission, where we are told a culturally-based stereotype exists, leading to the incorrect assertion of racism.”

On the one hand, I think the statement has a point in that stereotypes are culturally-based, and it could very well be that Australians are unfamiliar with the fried chicken stereotype.  It’s certainly the case that (what seem to be mostly white) Australian commenters on a number of sites are largely claiming that the response to the ad is a case of American projection of our own racial hangups on another culture, and an example of our insularity and self-centeredness as a nation.  I’ve been searching for responses to this ad from Australian POC, but haven’t had any luck so far.

It’s important for us to remember that race – which includes racial stereotypes – is socially constructed and means different things in different contexts.  I could buy that the general Australian public may be ignorant of this particular stereotype.  I have a harder time, however, believing that KFC Australia’s ad people didn’t know any better.  Even apart from the problematic images of black people being assuaged by the offer of fried chicken, there’s disturbing racial subtext of having a blond white dude surrounded by black West Indians and describing the situation as “awkward.”  From comments online it appears that the ad is one of a series where the same actor appeases a variety of people, including white folks, with KFC, which if true might cast the ad in a better light.  Nevertheless the image of a lone white person in a crowd of black people is one that has a long and troubling history; it should be used with care if at all, and this doesn’t seem to be a case in which that happened.  The company’s comments that the ad was not authorized for reproduction in the US when used as a defense also do not fill me with confidence that they were genuinely unaware that these images were potentially offensive.

It doesn’t help their case any that they apparently have no problem with invoking the very same racist trope (and a few others for good measure) in other ads produced outside the US:

Yea.  Um, ok then.

Harvard guard endures racial slurs

You will all have to indulge me in a little college basketball post, since it is the only sport we bother to follow year in, year out in this house. My husband and I are both respectably obsessed (Big East and Pac-10 roots, now residing in ACC country) from November to March, but we’d never heard of Harvard guard Jeremy Lin until this season. He’s been getting a lot more (as in, any?) national press — averaging 18 a game and dropping 30 against UConn will do that for you, I suppose.

Of course, not all the attention Lin is getting has been positive. From Time: Jeremy Lin mocked for being Asian. The journalist, bless his heart, sounds rather surprised about this “foolishness,” as he calls it. Gasp! Racial slurs hurled at a college athlete? EVEN IN THE IVY LEAGUE? Say it ain’t so.

It’s been 64 years since the Crimson appeared in the NCAA tournament. But thanks to senior guard Jeremy Lin, that streak could end this year. Lin, who tops Harvard in points (18.1 per game), rebounds (5.3), assists (4.5) and steals (2.7), has led the team to a 9-3 record, its best start in a quarter-century. Lin, a 6 ft. 3 in. slasher whose speed, leaping ability and passing skills would allow him to suit up for any team in the country, has saved his best performances for the toughest opponents: over his past four games against teams from the Big East and the Atlantic Coast Conference, two of the country’s most powerful college-basketball leagues, Lin is averaging 24.3 points and shooting nearly 65% from the field. “He’s as good an all-around guard as I’ve seen,” says Tony Shaver, the head coach of William and Mary, which in November lost a triple-overtime game to Harvard, 87-85, after Lin hit a running three-pointer at the buzzer. “He’s a special player who seems to have a special passion for the game. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the NBA one day.” …

Lin caught the hoops bug from his father Gie-Ming. Before he emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, Gie-Ming would scour Taiwanese television for highlights of NBA games. Once in the States, he studied Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the classic Los Angeles Lakers–Boston Celtics games from the 1980s. “I cannot explain the reasons why I love basketball,” says Gie-Ming, a computer engineer. “I just do.”

Throughout Jeremy’s childhood, Gie-Ming would take him to the YMCA after he finished his homework. They would practice and play in pickup games. “Many Asian families focus so much on academics,” says Gie-Ming. “But it felt so good to play with my kids. I enjoyed it so much.” Jeremy won a state championship as a senior in high school, but he received no Division 1 scholarship offers (Ivy League schools cannot give athletic scholarships). Yes, he was scrawny, but don’t doubt that a little racial profiling, intentional or otherwise, contributed to his underrecruitment.

Some people still can’t look past his ethnicity. Everywhere he plays, Lin is the target of cruel taunts. “It’s everything you can imagine,” he says. “Racial slurs, racial jokes, all having to do with being Asian.” Even at the Ivy League gyms? “I’ve heard it at most of the Ivies if not all of them,” he says. Lin is reluctant to mention the specific nature of such insults, but according to Harvard teammate Oliver McNally, another Ivy League player called him a C word that rhymes with ink during a game last season. On Dec. 23, during Harvard’s 86-70 loss to Georgetown in Washington, McNally says, one spectator yelled “Sweet-and-sour pork!” from the stands.

In the face of such foolishness, Lin doesn’t seem to lose it on the court. “Honestly, now, I don’t react to it,” he says. “I expect it, I’m used to it, it is what it is.” Postgame, Lin will release some frustration. “He gets pissed about it afterwards,” says McNally. “I have to tip my hat to him. I don’t know how I’d react. The type of dude I am, I might not be as mature as Jeremy.”

I hope Jeremy (and Harvard, I suppose) keep it up so we can see him in action in the tournament. And I’d love to see him get his shot at the next level, though he’ll have to fight for it. Scouts may not necessarily think he’s a sure thing, but if he’s legit, he can prove he belongs.

Interestingly, the Time article notes another possible career path for Jeremy Lin: ministry. According to the article, he’s considering becoming a pastor; because, as he says, “I’m really passionate about…helping others. There’s a beauty in seeing people change their lifestyles for the better.”

Hat tip: Angry Asian Man

Blind Spots in “The Blind Side”

So I’m late coming to the party on writing about this film, but since I finally got a chance to see it on my Christmas vacation (thanks to some free grandparent babysitting), I’m hoping my tardiness will be excused. Watching the previews for the movie made me almost cringe. It seemed to contain both cliches and sappiness, and I try to avoid both when I invest precious box office dollars and two hours of my life to movie-going. Add that hesitation to the numerous devoted praises for the film I heard coming from middle-aged white women, and it took me a few weeks to actually work up the will to go.

In case you’re on a media fast or have just been tuned out to anything non-holiday related, The Blind Side is based on a true story of the transracial adoption of a football-star-in-the-making by a wealthy, white Christian family.  As with any film that tries to capture the history of a family, there are inevitable short cuts that reduce the members of that family to simpler characters.  But when artfully done, characters, even those based on real people, can be numerous and still retain a dynamism that makes them believable. The Blind Side did not accomplish that, despite a decent representation of seasoned players (Sandra Bullock, and even Kathy Bates) in the cast.

The unfortunate part of the film’s failure on that count is that the most truncated character is, wait for it, the black kid. My husband summed up Michael Oher as “that big guy who walked around sad for most of the movie. Every time you see him, he’s sad-walking. Walking sad in the ghetto. Walking sad at the new school. Walking sad into the laundromat.” We’re told by Sandra Bullock’s character, Leigh Anne Tuohy, that Michael has changed her life, that having him around has made her happy. But we have no idea why.  When they go shopping, he picks out horizontally-striped rugby shirts to the bemusement of the family.  This little footnote is, sadly, given to us as one of the dimensions of his character.

We are told who Michael is entirely by other [white] characters.  There is only one scene in the film where he demonstrates anything other than utter gratitude and love for his new family, and the scene is short-lived as the conflict is all-too-quickly resolved in such a slick manner that I wonder why they even included it in the movie. Michael, in many ways, is portrayed as a phlegmatic, gentle giant, a defender of the Tuohy family without much else to think about or do through the course of the film.  Some commentators have expressed the concern that the use of such a trope might invite the stereotype of the magical negro or even the eunuch, whose only purpose is to aide the white characters in their development.

Michael’s challenges are often oversimplified and understated.  He has a hard time in school, but thanks to an observant science teacher and an at-home tutor, he finds his way past his reading impediments.  Deeper problems are treated likewise.  While the film doesn’t shy away from having a drug dealer use sexually graphic language to threaten Michael’s white sister, in describing the sexual activity and possible abuse Michael was subjected to as a child, the script has Michael describe his experience at home as “mom did drugs or other bad stuff.”  While Leigh Anne is portrayed as imperiled when she drives through the ghetto (even though she’s armed, or so she tells the drug dealer who threatens her: she’s a member of the NRA, she pats her purse), Michael is depicted as invulnerable.  In one scene he is surrounded by gun-wielding criminals and as they pull their weapons on him, he sweeps them away with almost supernatural (say, magical?) physicality, warding off an attack with his bare hands.

The story takes place in the South, a setting that creates its own implied social and racial dynamics, and I expected the challenges of transracial adoption to be amplified by that fact.  The  film does try, showing Leigh Anne behaving as a white ally at different points identifying as Michael’s even when it costs her relationships with her rich, white “friends.” She also takes the initiative to seek out Michael’s absentee mother for her blessing before arranging for his official adoption, even though the state wouldn’t extend her the same courtesy or dignity.  Time and again, she travels into Michael’s old neighborhood, braving whatever discomfort or insecurity she might feel in that setting.

But the film deals exclusively in those extremes: glorious white wealth versus desperate black poverty.  One moment in particular for me served as a metaphor for what was missing in the movie.  Michael and the family are out for a fancy dinner.  As the family leaves the restaurant, he returns because he recognizes one of the waiters.  He says nothing, but goes back inside.  “Where’s Michael?”  The family turn and sees through a window that Michael is embracing a waiter.  They stand outside watching Michael hug the man and when he comes outside, we learn the man is his brother that he hasn’t seen since they were separated by social services as children.

As they drive away, Leigh Anne says she’d like to meet him sometime.  While Leigh Anne can go out of her way to sit next to Michael’s mother on her couch in the projects, for some reason, she cannot bring herself to go inside the restaurant to talk to a man who is clearly important to Michael and say, “Hey Michael, who’s your friend?”  Here she’s introduced to a character who doesn’t appear to need rescuing, and so she stands looking in from the outside, uncharacteristically reluctant to intrude on the scene.

While I am troubled by elements of the film, I am not prepared to classify it as a “white savior” story.  There are kids that need loving homes.  For some kids, adoption, even transracial adoption, is a form of rescue.  And that is not a bad thing.  It sounds like that was the situation for the real-life Michael.  But even if those are the circumstances that create a family in the beginning, building a family is a lifelong process and the challenges and conflicts that are part of that process shouldn’t be glossed over for the sake of making movie-goers feel good at the holidays. I have no doubt that what goes on in the real-life Tuohy family is much deeper than what I saw onscreen.  It’s just too bad the filmmakers couldn’t even get a microcosm of that up there.

The Blind Side fails because it tries to prove the humanity and dignity of a kid from the ghetto by focusing entirely on the family that took him in and reducing him to a flat, uninteresting character that Sandra Bullock brought home from school one day.  With a few football drills and a couple suburban road humps along the way, we’re all fine and post-racial at the end.  Race. Family. Faith.  Community. It’s just not that easy.

How to be an anti-racist ally

Irene’s Daughters have been away for a Christmas vacation, but here’s a link to tide you over!

How to be an anti-racist ally
written by Love Isn’t Enough contributor Julia

Points included:

Broaden your definition of racism

Acknowledge how racism has shaped you.

Acknowledge your white privilege.

Accept your limitations.

Get comfortable with humility.

Share power.

Educate yourself.

Recognize that it’s not about you.

Listen to people of color and accept their truth.

Accept that effect counts more than intention.

Speak up and do your part.

Don’t forget the many resources for beginners right here at Irene’s Daughters, including “A Beginner’s Guide to Anti-Racism for White People”!

Gift guide for people of color?

Of Color / Stylish Gifts (NYT)

I saw this a week or two ago and heard some grumbling about it from white people (“You could never get away with creating a holiday guide for white people; that is so racist!”) as well as people of color (who were basically like, …seriously?), but I didn’t have a chance to take a closer look at the time, as I was drowning in work.

Today my friend Rachel shared the link with me on Facebook and requested I post it here, and I thought it might make a good topic for an open thread. Thoughts? Opinions? Last-minute gift requests? ;) Please share below!

Derailment Monday: “I’m not big on ‘political correctness’”

Sometimes this statement is used as the final exclamation point following a derogatory or insensitive remark — “and that’s why I’m not sorry.” Other times, it is employed to protest or mock the “oversensitivity” of others, or complain about those who do not identify as simply “American” (gosh, and why wouldn’t they? What’s wrong with those people anyway?).

For some, disavowing political correctness is also a way of heading off discussions about racism — and other hot-button topics as well — without having to explicitly say, “Let’s not talk about that.” Many people confuse any anti-racist dialogue with political correctness, and use their contempt for the latter to dismiss the former without listening.

derailment [n]: a defensive argument, statement, or question that dismisses or seeks to undermine anti-racist arguments in an effort to preserve privilege or the status quo

“I’m not big on ‘political correctness,’” a white person recently said to me. “I don’t make people call me ‘Irish American’ or ‘German American.’ I’m American, period. Our society is hyphenated enough as it is.”

I know plenty of people who like to pooh-pooh being “PC,” which, to them, includes the use of “hyphenated terms” such as “African-American” and “Asian-American.” They think you’ve sold out somehow if you make a simple effort not to offend people by the words you choose. I myself grew up in a family where the term “political correctness” was something of a joke.

To a certain point, I understand the mocking. The very term “political correctness” is troubling, because it seems to imply that it’s a matter of politics, or opinion, or formality. And political correctness by itself is fairly toothless. Of course nobody should use offensive or derogatory language, and everyone should be encouraged to think about what they say, but substituting “Asian American” for “Oriental” does not an anti-racist ally make.

I am still not sure why so many people are threatened by basic political correctness, so much so that they feel the need to openly declare their opposition to it. But we can’t dismiss political correctness as something you choose to “opt in” to if you buy into the liberal brainwashing. Those hyphenated and non-hyphenated terms exist because the alternative terms and stereotypes for people of color were almost all offensive. Speaking to, of, and about other people with respect and sensitivity should not be a matter of personal politics, but rather the very beginning and foundation of basic courtesy. In other words, it’s not just semantics.

Dirty Deeds

It’s always embarrassing when your hometown makes the news for back-asswardness, but it’s all the more shameful when the bad news is localized to a 5 mile radius surrounding your high school alma mater.  As I return home this Christmas, I’ll be saying a little prayer for the city of Charlotte—a famously “New South” town that just this fall heralded the grand opening of the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts and Culture, and is now embroiled in a battle over whether or not “whites only” language of yore should remain in the property deeds of homes in one of its most celebrated neighborhoods:

I guess if they couldn’t have legalized “segregation today,” they’ll settle for titular “segregation forever.”

File under “unsurprising but still upsetting”

From The Guardian, Citizens of twelve countries automatically subjected to extra screening at U.S. airports:

Citizens of 12 countries around the world, including Cuba, Iran and Syria, are automatically subjected to extra screening at US airports unless they have been specifically cleared, according to a leaked document from the Homeland Security department.

The disclosure is part of an embarrassing array of information to have reached the public after guidelines issued to security officers at airports were posted online. The breach has led to five transport officials from the Transportation Security Administration which posted the document being suspended from duties while an investigation is carried out…

Joe Lieberman, who chairs the committee, said the breach was “an embarrassing mistake”.

The information disclosed in the document includes those countries whose citizens are singled out for automatic additional screening. In addition to Cuba, Iran and Syria, they are: Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

By contrast, the guidelines reveal that certain politicians including state governors and their deputies and immediate families are exempt from certain extra screening procedures, as are foreign dignitaries travelling with their own US security personnel and their diplomatic pouches.

Yes, Sen. Lieberman, the security breach is definitely what’s embarrassing here.

Derailment Monday: I’m 1/48th Cherokee

derailment [n]: a defensive argument, statement, or question that dismisses or seeks to undermine anti-racist arguments in an effort to preserve privilege or the status quo

As a Southern woman, I am familiar with the painful heritage of my homeland. One of the most grievous seasons in our terrible history was when the Cherokee nation was forced by the U.S. government to surrender its lands and march westward.  This horrific expulsion is remembered as The Trail of Tears.

Because the Cherokee nation was one of the last Indian nations compelled to leave their homes, for many years the Cherokee flourished, amassing property and wealth, in some ways assimilating (ex: slave ownership) and in some ways resisting assimilation into the white culture of the day (leveraging their political connections to retain possession of property and sovereignty rights).

Because  interracial marriage was not wholly uncommon between whites and Cherokees, many Southerners can trace their ancestry back to the Cherokee nation.  Still many others cannot, but hypothesize and even believe that there are Indians in their family.  And that’s where we come to today’s derailment:  “But, I’m 1/48th Cherokee.”

I’ve had many conversations on race where a person’s self-examination was averted by the defense that somehow, they, too, were part of a marginalized group.  This derailment can be used for a number of reasons, but I usually hear it used with the following meanings:

1. I’m not really white, I just look it. By being one of the “club,” a white person can deny responsibility to change their own attitude or challenge the attitudes of others.  As Paul Kivel points out:
   

   When the subject is racism nobody wants to be white, because being white has been
   labeled “bad” and brings up feelings of guilt, shame, complicity and hopelessness.

2. I’m unique and interesting because of the mysterious and cool Indians in my family. White Americans often have an exoticised view of Native Americans (read: Daniel Day-Lewis), and claiming your great-grandma was a Cherokee princess (as if there were such a thing) might make you seem more interesting than telling people you’re just from Georgia.
3. I’m allowed to use certain pejorative terms because I, too, am a person of color. Again, because one is in the “club,” one is free to insult any other person of color, particularly one’s “own” race (a misapprehension Kate explained in her derailment a couple weeks ago).

Now, you may be one of those Americans with honest-to-goodness Native American relatives.  God bless you.  And God bless those of us who can’t find any Indians in our immediate ancestry.  Empathizing with the struggles of others and combating injustice doesn’t mean we have to feign our genealogy, in fact, doing so is an insult to those we’re claiming as our relatives.  While healthy pride in one’s [confirmed] heritage is appropriate, there is nothing romantic about being a part of an oppressed group.

Intersections of Travel and Race

A number of articles have us thinking lately about travel and race. Here on the blog, my “Racist Mascots” post began with a travel story. Nikki’s post about American Airlines’ “Black Atlas” highlights the black experience in various destinations in the United States and around the world.

Cayce recently shared with me an article about Yosemite National Park Ranger Shelton Johnson, who noted that less than 1 percent of visitors to Yosemite are black and is trying to improve the numbers. This, in turn, reminded me of a post by Max Reddick at the Love Isn’t Enough blog, “Oh, the Places We Could Go.”

A couple of months or so ago at the end of the summer, my wife and I planned a trip with a few other African American couples we know just to have one last bit of fun before summer ended….

[M]y wife suggested that we go somewhere and do something none of us had ever done, something unlikely. And we finally decided on a destination and an activity. But on the eve of our trip, one by one the couples and families called us to say that they had to cancel, that they would not be going. And each couple and family proffered the same excuse: “We all talked and decided that that’s just something black folk don’t do.”

And when we arrived at our destination, we found that they seemed to be very right in their assessment. My family was the only African American family present. The other African Americans there were there either with their white spouses or partners or friends.

But nonetheless, we had the time of our lives, and my children talked about the experience for days afterward. This was an experience that they, that we, will never forget and our lives are richer because of it.

Reddick later explained, in the comment section of his own blog, that the destination was a national park in northeast Florida featuring a clear stream where people can go tubing or rafting. Ranger Johnson would, no doubt, be pleased that Reddick’s family enjoyed a national park. He makes an effort to teach Yosemite visitors that “African Americans are right at the beginning of the whole idea of national parks” and travels to inner-city schools with Ken Burns “to spread the documentary’s message of diversity.”

I can’t help but ponder how the different ways that travel destinations and tours address racial issues might come across as welcoming or hostile to people of color.

A few years ago, my parents and I decided to visit Mount Vernon together. As we entered the grounds, we visited some slave cabins first. The signs there seemed to be at pains to explain to me how George Washington changed his mind about slavery during the American Revolution. He came to believe slavery was wrong and against the principles of the new nation, the signs told me. Yet other signs informed me that George Washington began farming Mount Vernon with 36 slaves and owned 316 slaves when he died in 1799. Sure, he willed their emancipation after Martha’s death, but it struck me that George Washington owned a helluva lot of slaves for someone who believed slavery to be wrong. The signs simply interpreted Washington’s actions as “leading [opposition to slavery] by example.” Why not, I wondered, just admit that the first President of the United States, if he was so opposed to slavery, was also somewhat inconsistent?

Worse awaited us in the main house. Before touring the house, a docent introduced us to life at Mount Vernon. It was a 8,000-acre plantation, she told us, and General Washington had to be away for long periods of time during the war. “Yet somehow they managed to keep the plantation running in his absence!” My mother and I shot each other a look. “Somehow?” I muttered. “Like 316 slaves, perhaps? Or are we supposed to believe Mr. Washington normally did all the planting and harvesting hisownself?”

If anyone wonders why people of color might feel uncomfortable visiting a destination like Mount Vernon, I submit that this sort of historical whitewashing and oddly ignorant presentation might well be a factor.

In the epilogue to Blood Done Sign My Name, Timothy Tyson recounts a more extreme experience. Tyson and his father took a group of forty college students on a two-week bus trip through the South, “visiting battlefields of the African American freedom struggle and meeting the local people who had overthrown old Jim Crow.” One of the stops was Destrehan Plantation, the site of a 19^th century slave uprising that ended in the slaughter of more than 200 African American people.

Though my students and I had studied the grisly history of this place, nothing could have prepared us for what we found as we stepped off the bus beneath the spreading live oaks with their canopy of Spanish moss. Private investors had turned the plantation house… into a monument to what one tour company’s brochure called “the good old days” of the antebellum South. Young women in swirling skirts and sun bonnets greeted us at the door. The presence of a mixed-race group made them visibly uneasy. The tour included virtually no mention of slaves or slavery, let alone the 1811 revolt…. “Our guide’s presentation was about prayer in schools, parlors, ladies’ portraits on the wall, tall ceilings, hand-carved banisters,” one of the students wrote in his journal. “It was surreal.” …Many of us, especially the African American students, could not hold back tears of frustration and sorrow…. I made a couple of polite attempts to get our guide to talk about the lives of people who had worked on the plantation, but she seemed to panic at the questions.

Not all experiences at historical sites are so awful. When my parents and I visited Colonial Williamsburg a few years ago, my mother and I attended an evening theatre show about black culture in 18^th century Williamsburg, and I participated in an excellent a two-hour walking tour called “The Other Half” which explored black experience in Williamsburg, including but not limited to the development and history of slavery in the colony. The tour guide not only encouraged visitors to learn more about African American history, she also tried to persuade visitors to join in modern abolitionist work.

I was pleased to learn that Colonial Williamsburg’s 30-year efforts “to interpret the African American experience in 18th-century Virginia” are not limited to these special programs. Alissa McElreath recently reported her own experience on the Love Isn’t Enough blog:

On Friday afternoon we sat with the kids in the area outside the old capitol building, surrounded by a crowd of visitors, young and old, and waiting for a re-enactment of the reading of the Declaration of Independence. Several “interpreters” (as the costumed re-enactors are called) dressed as working-class colonists milled around, discussing in loud voices to each other what independence meant.

There was much excitement in the air–it was hard to miss, even among those visitors who were more obviously rooted in the 21st century, like the man with the bluetooth device still hooked to his ear.

Before long a black man carrying a tool box and wearing the long pants and raggedy shirt of a slave joined the discussion, after first telling the onlookers loudly that his master had given him permission to listen to the reading.

“What’s this independence people are talking about?” He asked of all of us visitors awaiting the big declaration.

“What’s it mean?”

He turned to different people, the question hanging in the air, unanswered.

“I like the sound of this independence,” he continued. Then he pumped his fist into the air, to encourage excitement. “I like this independence!”

A few visitors cheered with him, but there was an unmistakable sense of discomfort creeping into the air.

He turned to the few who had cheered. “Does this mean I’m free? Does this mean I get to leave and find my wife and boy?”

Silence.

Some people looked away, their attention drawn to the soldiers on horseback who were approaching the capitol building gates. At that moment the Declaration of Independence was read, and all attention was focused on the front of the building. When it was over, the black man appeared again, shuffling into the crowd of visitors, his toolbox in one hand.

“Hey!” He shouted, at no one in particular. “They’re telling me this independence business doesn’t include me! Is this right?”

Then people turned away–not out of rudeness, but out of discomfort; they reacted the way we all tend to react when someone has challenged our sense of public space–what it is, and who we are when we are occupying it. I think our adult instincts are to turn away from what is most uncomfortable, what is unfair, what is unpleasant, and most people did.

“That’s not fair!” the interpreter continued. “That’s not fair!”

But what I did notice was that the children in the space around the black man did not turn away; instead, they stared at him, confused and questioning, looking for an explanation as to why this wasn’t fair. That was the teaching moment, I think; the moment parents needed to seize in order to teach their children not just about history, but about the right responses to it; that when our sense of the world is challenged in public space discomfort is okay and normal, but it’s what we do with it that counts. Do we sweep unpleasant facts under the rug? Do we teach them that it’s okay to walk away from racial injustice? Do we teach our kids to turn away from difference?

Or, do we kneel down in front of our kids, pull them close, and say to them, this is what independence should mean, this is what equality is, this is what we must always remember.

When Timothy Tyson visited, Destrehan Plantation tried to hide the truth. When Alissa McElreath visited, Colonial Williamsburg tried to unveil the truth. Both created some discomfort for the visitors, but with very different results. Destrehan Plantation, at least as Tyson described it, is ultimately hostile to African Americans and their allies. Colonial Williamsburg, at least in McElreath’s story, may be initially unsettling to some (especially white people who have the privilege of rarely thinking about their own race) but is ultimately welcoming to everyone willing to learn.

How have racial issues and travel intersected in your own experience, for better or worse?

Johnny Depp as Pancho Villa?

Johnny Depp to star in Pancho Villa biopic

The film, which reportedly will be shot in Spanish, is based on the James Carlos Blake novel The Friends of Pancho Villa. Variety notes that Pancho Villa “has previously been played onscreen by Antonio Banderas, Telly Savalas and even Villa himself in the 1914 pic ‘The Life of General Villa.’” Does the pick of Johnny Depp (who I like a lot, incidentally) strike you as curious, given his German/Irish/Cherokee heritage?  (Does the fact that I get all my facts about famous people from Wikipedia bother you as well?) My initial reaction was, okay, no doubt he’ll do a fine job, but I wish they’d cast a Hispanic actor.  I had this reaction not because I don’t appreciate Depp, but because of Hollywood’s long and inglorious history of casting white people as/instead of people of color. What do you think?

Mixed race is not “race-neutral”

Tiger Woods.  I avoided writing about him until now because…why go there?  It’s such a tawdry, icky, grossout bottom-feeder story.  And, after all, I am neither a Tiger Woods fan nor a golf fan, even though my grandma is both and once told me that Tiger Woods and I could have beautiful babies together.  (I was in the fifth or sixth grade at the time; you can probably imagine my response.)

Sure, I like miniature golf as much as the next gal who was forced to attend more than her share of grade-school putt-putt birthday parties, but I don’t pretend to understand the rules of the professional game.  I can’t keep all the tournaments straight.  I laugh when commercials for golf tournaments air while I am attempting to enjoy some other televised sport, such as college basketball, as if the fact that I watch a sport means that I am clearly in the market to watch any sport.  And, while I know that many kind and excellent people enjoy both playing and watching golf, some of the most awful, racist, sexist, classist tools I have ever had the grave misfortune to know fancied themselves phenomenal golfers, which didn’t exactly make me want to pick up the sport when I was younger.  It never seemed like something “people like me” did, and Tiger Woods didn’t really change that for me.

I don’t even want to touch the scandal or the media circus; what actually got me interested, if you could call it that, is some of the race-related commentary surrounding the story.  A few days ago, Jenée Desmond-Harris wrote in The Root, “Congrats, Tiger: You got the race-neutral response you always wanted”:

As the media frenzy over Tiger Woods’ reported marital infidelity gained momentum, I waited for the inevitable disappointment, irrational guilt and surge of frustration. I braced myself for the symptoms I expected: Knot in stomach, distraught head-shaking and melodramatic muttering of “Oh, Tiger, why, why, why? We don’t need this.” The “we,” of course, being black people.

But I felt nothing…

And I suspect that Tiger would be thrilled with my reaction.

As Tiger famously didn’t want to be seen as black, but rather “Cablinasian,” he would have resented any black-specific phantom pain on my part…

I have a black father and white mother and, due to somewhat ambiguous and pale looks, could make a convincing Cablackcreolejewishtina argument, but I’d never want to. Still, my reaction to Tiger’s self-made racial category wasn’t a value judgment about his refusal to self-identify as black as I do. I simply thought that, with his brown skin, it was naive to expect that he would convince anyone otherwise. Yes, race is a social construct. But in this country, the reality is that you don’t get to decide unilaterally that you’re non-black or some multisyllabic race-less combination utterly lacking in social significance. Sorry. This society still divides itself along black/white, either/or lines.

Our society divides itself just along black/white lines? Even if it does, it shouldn’t, right? I’m not wild about the term “Cablinasian,” either (though, in general, I don’t think it’s my place to tell other people what they should/should not call their own damn selves), but how is Tiger referring to himself in such a manner “race-neutral”?  Isn’t it like…the opposite of race-neutral, since it’s literally packed with racial identities?  Or am I reading it all wrong?

I’m not looking to set up walls, black vs. white vs. Asian vs. ______.  I totally agree with what Thea Lim wrote at Racialicious: “I can understand why the black community is hurt that Tiger isn’t more out and out as a black man.  As a non-black person of colour, I share that disappointment.  Here is this black guy who is maybe the greatest golf player ever, and he doesn’t particularly align himself with the black community.”

I also understand what Desmond-Harris is saying about how perception can turn into genuine, lived reality.  I’m sure that when many people see Tiger Woods, they do go straight to “there’s a black man” without thinking about any other part of his heritage.  And I don’t doubt he’s faced his share of discrimination based on that, and maybe that should make him more willing to be out there as a proud African American.

But that doesn’t mean that he loses his right to racially and culturally identify howsoever he chooses.  I wonder and worry about this a lot, as someone who is raising a child who is not one thing or the other.  I personally think it’s awesome that her heritage is mixed, although I don’t pretend to think it will always be easy for her.  I know that many multiracial children do feel stuck between two (or more!) cultures, and feel pressure to choose one group over the other(s).  I’d hate it if my daughter ever felt she had to pick one part of herself over the rest; her father and I want her to be proud of and fully own her heritage in its totality — Korean, Irish, and Lebanese.

I also don’t want anyone pushing her to choose one race over the other, because that pressure — and lack of empathy and appreciation for the whole person she is — will, I suspect, make it even easier, and more tempting, for her to want to self-identify as entirely white.  There is so much pressure on everyone in the minority to be as “majority” as possible, not even to be accepted, but just to survive.  I am 100% Korean and could never have passed for white, ever, yet there were plenty of times in my early life especially when I would’ve switched “sides” in a heartbeat if I could.  (For this reason, especially, I can’t blame Tiger Woods or anyone else who may be in a different place regarding their racial awareness/identity than, say…journalists and bloggers who get paid to think and write about these issues all the time.  It is not easy to be a person of any color in America.)

Regardless of what some people may think or say, surely what we think about ourselves, what we believe to be true, is more important than what other people think?  Surely it is critical for all people of color to refuse to let ourselves be defined based solely on what other people see?

In her essay at Racialicious, Thea Lim writes:

Maybe Tiger Woods doesn’t talk about race because no one really wants to listen to his experience as the mixed race child of mixed race parents.  Instead white and black America insist that Woods choose one or the other.  It’s bad enough that people are reading out that tired old script about how mixed race black folks always turn out to be race traitors.  But in Woods’ case its not even the right script…

Is it sort of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to be complaining that when folks discriminate against Woods’ mixed raceness, they’re not getting the races right? Maybe.  But this inability to see more than two tones it’s pretty indicative of America’s race problem, and the trials that some mixed race folk deal with everyday…

I’m sure it is true that the media considers Woods more black when he screws up.  But the insistence on designating Woods as solely black – and getting mad when he tries to articulate his ethnic heritage in a way that feels true to him – is about more than media bias towards black crime.  It’s about our need to simplify all complex racial phenomenons into the binary of black and white, effectively erasing anyone who doesn’t fit inside.

Tiger Woods seems like a jackass.  He cheated on his wife in a particularly flagrant way.  But that’s no reason to deny him the right to self-identify.

Even jackasses should get to tell us themselves who they are.

Amen.

Wherever you go, there you are

From American Airlines: Black Atlas: Your Passport to the Black Experience

You can see a list of domestic and international cities featured here.  The first video I checked out was this one on Rome:

And here’s another on the fair city of my birth.  I haven’t had a chance to watch every video, but the ones I’ve seen are all informative, interesting, and well-made.  (Makes me want to pack my bags and go on vacation — then again, what doesn’t, these days?)  Enjoy!

(Hat tip to my husband, who told me about this last weekend.)

Roles for Asian Actors (Margaret Cho)

A recent conversation with Nikki reminded me of these bits from Margaret Cho’s standup. Apologies in advance for the explicit language.

more about “Roles for Asian Actors (Margaret Cho)“, posted with vodpod

more about “Part 2“, posted with vodpod