Beyond White Guilt

I remember the murder of Marwa El Sherbini being posted about here before.

I thought some people might be interested to learn that her killer has been sentenced to 15 years in prison without possibility of parole, which is the maximum possible penalty for murder in Germany.

(NYTimes article link)

November 9, 2009
Adopted From Korea and in Search of Identity
By RON NIXON

As a child, Kim Eun Mi Young hated being different.

When her father brought home toys, a record and a picture book on South Korea, the country from which she was adopted in 1961, she ignored them.

Growing up in Georgia, Kansas and Hawaii, in a military family, she would date only white teenagers, even when Asian boys were around.

“At no time did I consider myself anything other than white,” said Ms. Young, 48, who lives in San Antonio. “I had no sense of any identity as a Korean woman. Dating an Asian man would have forced me to accept who I was.”

It was not until she was in her 30s that she began to explore her Korean heritage. One night, after going out to celebrate with her husband at the time, she says she broke down and began crying uncontrollably.

“I remember sitting there thinking, where is my mother? Why did she leave me? Why couldn’t she struggle to keep me?” she said. “That was the beginning of my journey to find out who I am.”

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More proof that systemic racism can be just as harmful as intentional racism.

As a follow-up to Shopping While Black, here's Shopping While Muslim:

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In Lilburn, GA, a mosque seeking to expand and add a cemetery to accommodate its members faces opposition from local non-Muslims. There is a good, detailed article about that here. Here are some direct quotes from residents as to why they oppose the mosque expansion:

• “This is about hurting our community, this is about hurting our kids”
• “I just don't like Muslims and I don't want them taking over our neighborhood”
• “This is not what Lilburn needs. This is a Christian community, and they are anti-Christian.”

(real quotes from CBS Channel 9 and The Gwinnett Daily Post) According to the CBS piece, three people also told the reporter that they opposed the mosque because--in their own words--they were racist.

A completely separate mosque in neighboring Lawrenceville, GA is also facing a similar issue, with residents holding similarly racist views, saying things like "They are trying to turn a neighborhood into a mosque."

For those in the metro Atlanta area who wish to get involved in supporting the mosques and fighting Islamophobia, please leave a comment or message me - we need your support, and have an event planned for this month (November).

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In other recent news, please read about the censorship of an article about "how white gay activists can become complicit with this agenda by painting Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynist, and appointing themselves as the saviours of non-white queers." For more on this subject, see the following:
-OutRage!ous Censorship of "Gay Imperialism"
-Whitewashing gay culture in Lebanon
-'Stop using Palestinian gays to whitewash Israel's image'

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Finally, here is a great book review titled "Orientalism and Islamophobia in the American left," which deals with anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia not just in the American right, but amongst white liberals and intellectuals as well.

x-posted to ap_racism

Note: I'd like the discussions here to please stay away from unhelpful garbage like "wow Koreans are even more racist/sexist than Americans" and such.

ETA: I posted this to debunkingwhite because I believe it's indicative of how a western (aka white) POV can mix several different issues (xenophobia, nationalism, racism, etc) in a manner that serves to emphasize how much more racist some other race/ethnicity is, which in turn silently reinforces the notion that white racism isn't the real problem.

Original NYTimes article here.

November 2, 2009
South Koreans Struggle With Race
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL — On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain, a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend, were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurling racial and sexist slurs at them.

The situation would be a familiar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms. Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.

What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reported in the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging the man they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt, the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racist offense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rival political parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation that for the first time would provide a detailed definition of discrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.
( Read more... )

It's somewhat encouraging to see the mainstream media talking about racial attitudes from a non black/white focus, but I was still disappointed that they only mentioned the white colonialist impact in passing and didn't even bother to try to understand where it came from.

Dear debunkingwhite community,

Over the years I have learned so much from being a (mostly silent) member of this community. I do my best to be a white ally. I recognize that my actions may be flawed, but I am trying to educate myself and manage my privilege as best I can.

This is to set you up for the fact that I found three dreamcatchers among my possessions when I moved, and my husband (who is not nearly progressive) asked me how I justified dreamcatchers when I generally try to be so careful against appropriating things.

And I didn't have a good response. Dreamcatchers had been introduced to me at summer camp, and I had never thought critically about them. One is from a dear aunt, one is from pledging for the "hippie" fraternity at college, and one was a gift from a dear friend. I kept them as souveniers and didn't make the connection that they were, in fact, important cultural symbols.

So now what? Do I just throw them in the trash and apologize? Do I send them to a museum? Do I take them apart and use the pieces for other art projects?

My other question concerns smudging. On Sunday, five white liberals including myself bought sage bundles from the health food store to smudge our apartments. I took home the bundle to read some pretty horrible text on the back of the package, which made me realize how wrong it was to appropriate this tradition. Now what?

I realize that this post has Fail all over it, but I'd like to move forward in the most respectful way possible.

Any advice?

Young Muslims step in police's shoes

On the fifth floor of Scotland Yard in central London, live video feeds are coming in with news of a terror threat.

The 30 people in the room are forced to make decisions that could change lives - which homes do they raid? Who do they stop and search?

But they are not counter-terror officers, in fact many of them are not even sure they trust the police.

They are 17 to 25-year-olds from around London, nearly all of them Muslim, and they are acting as if they are officers responding to a terror attack as part of Act Now, an exercise run as part of the government's £140m Prevent programme.

It aims to stop young people feeling isolated or having mistrust for authorities - targeting those that the government and the police agree are vulnerable to radicalisation.


Youths had to face the decisions anti-terror police make in an instant

What do people think?
Wouldn't it be better for the police to step into the shoes of the Muslim youth? Rather than asking "see why we harass you?" Or am I being too cynical?

Cross-posted:

Discuss.

Picture if you will: a Native American man in a priest's cassock, standing at an altar on a reservation anywhere in the state. He raises bread above a large gold cup and addresses the crowd around him: "We are all one in the body of the Great Spirit of Roslyn."

No, this isn't a new version of the Catholic Mass, nor is the man a Catholic priest. He just "digs" the Catholic religion, "respects" its history and culture and finds himself inexplicably "drawn" to all things Vatican. He wasn't born Catholic; never attended Catholic church or schools. But this recent hub-bub about Jesus Christ and the DaVinci Code has grabbed his "inner spirit." He's thinking that's because "way back" his ninth cousin on his father's side may have been 1/16 Catholic. He just feels it.

So, he did some research, sat in on some masses, picked up an abridged version of the Bible and decided he'd start his own congregation. He calls it "The Cody Two Bear Church of the New Holy Grail." Visitors "donate" $100 minimum for this unique spiritual experience that will bring them closer to the Knights Templar, Christ and Mary Magdalene while discovering the healing capabilities of candle wax - long used in the church, but with little awareness of its true powers. Retreats are available at a higher cost.

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blackcigarette had a marvelous picspam about African style, "Don't Sleep On Africa", that gives the photographic lie to what "African" fashion is constructed to mean in the U.S. and Europe. (Examples of the construction: "African" Fashion, Representing Africa; Africans as props for white femininity; Ethnic Fashion; Zebras, "Tribal" prints, it's Afrika! -- posts from Sociological Images and Racialicious.)



Commentary on the picspam from Threadbared, a fashion blog written by two POC academics [emphasis mine]:

The photo-heavy post is a wonderful contrast to those editorials in American and European fashion magazines whose visual vocabularies for "Africa" are unbelievably narrow and alienating. The continued refusal to see the African other as coeval (that is, contemporaneous) with the so-called modern observer, most obviously manifested in the classification of tribal chic, betrays the still-haunting presence of colonial aesthetics in Western art and design.

Sorry if this has been posted before, this is the first time I've seen it:

If you're black and want to lead a Fortune 500 company, look cuddly.

It would not be remarkable that Richard Parsons, chairman of Citigroup and former chairman of Time Warner, and Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express, have a certain cherubic look—a rounded face, large forehead, smallish nose, and largish ears—except for one small fact. Several studies, including this one from 2008, had shown that among white men, having a baby face is correlated with a lower likelihood of reaching the top in the business or, to a lesser extent, political world. Especially in corporate America, we like our leaders to look mean and menacing, like “Neutron” Jack Welch or “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap. Had Parsons and Chenault, as well as other African-American business leaders, simply managed to buck that trend?( Read more... )

Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License By Louisiana Judge


A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

I don't even know what to say about this.

http://www.fox13now.com/news/kstu-mormon-leader-religious-freedom-at-risk,0,648952.story

The anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement, a high-ranking Mormon says in a speech to be delivered Tuesday...

In an interview Monday before the speech, Oaks said he did not consider it provocative to compare the treatment of Mormons in the election's aftermath to that of blacks in the civil rights era, and said he stands by the analogy.

Another choice tidbit:

"Those who seek to change the foundation of marriage should not be allowed to pretend that those who defend the ancient order are trampling on civil rights," Oaks said.

Change "marriage" to "White America", and spot the irony.

I've had enough of this talk about "bad" neighborhoods here in Vegas because a vast majority of it is either thinly veiled racism or just plain ignorance.

Based on statistics (rather than innuendo) Rancho High School (73% Latino, off Bruce and Eastern - a poorer, inner city neighborhood) reported fewer incidences of violence towards fellow students, none against school staff, no weapons possessions, and almost no instances of possession/use of illegal substances - compared to Palo Verde High School (59% white, in Summerlin - an affluent bedroom community) - two schools of which the opposite is typically expected from the locals, what with all the comments about wearing a bullet proof vest when you go to Rancho. I tell people all the time - I've worked in both of these schools. Based on the behavior I've observed at both schools, I watch my back when I'm at Palo Verde and feel very relaxed at Rancho.

See it for yourselves:
School Accountability Report - Palo Verde High School
School Accountability Report - Rancho High School

This only drives home the fact that the sentiment of Las Vegas' "scary" (read: filled with POC! OH NOES!!!!!!111) neighborhoods is bunk, at best - something I've known first hand for years. So, before you believe all the folks who are quick to talk trash from their insulated worlds in Summerlin, Seven Hills, and Anthem, get the facts first.

EDIT: the offensive skit is likely not going to be aired, as another rerun of the show had it editted out. Sorry for the bother. Original post is under the cut.


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Just saw the trailer for Chris Rock's new docu-comedy, "Good Hair," and thought it would be interesting to share here.

We've had several discussions about what it means to be a POC with natural hair, how hair texture and color can embody the physical colonialism of a white culture's imposition on one's appearance and self-image, and how having "interesting" hair seems to attract all the wrong kind of attention. Since I had never been aware of most of these issues before they were brought up here, I'm interested in seeing whether this movie elicits a broader conversation among white people about what their perceptions of other kinds of hair mean in relation to how we evaluate others.

I hope the movie doesn't come off as "Haha, women are silly and obsessed with their looks," or "It's just the beauty industry," and manages to address some more salient issues, but as it stands, it looks like an interesting conversation starter, at the very least.

The OkCupid dating website has crunched a lot of their first-contact data and come up with some statistics that they consider surprising, but which will not be so surprising to people on this community.  They couch it in a lot of "wow, people use race as a factor in dating" neutral language, but what I got out of the information was a stark reminder that white privilege is strong when it comes to dating and relationships. 

This set of statistics on includes man/woman interactions.  Due to OkCupid's huge user base and the large number of interactions they looked at, the statistics are almost certainly accurate at least for interactions within that website, and probably farther afield.  I've assumed here that the results are mostly US-based, though OkCupid does have some membership in other countries.

Salient points:

White men are "in demand" when it comes to dating, both more likely to get responses from women of any race than men of other races, and pickier about who they response to.

White women are more likely to respond to white men than men of other races, as are Asian-American women and Latinoamericanas.

When directly asked, white men and white women are much more likely to state that they "strongly prefer to date someone of [their] own skin color/racial background" than people of other races.  So much for that whole "color-blind" thing.

The statistics confirm that our culture specifically constructs black women as somehow unattractive or undesirable for dating.  Black women were less in demand by the same measures, namely people were less likely to respond to them and they were more likely to respond to others.

recent interview with angela davis @ the cbc, mp3 download.

xposted.

Recent Migrants and Inclusion in the Australian Arts Scene: Part 1 - Education

I did a hard sciences degree myself and am not much connected to the local arts scene, but this rang true with what I know and gave me a lot of food for thought (eg I wonder if I could have done more for the international students back when I was tutor/lecturer).

I imagine similar things could be said about America, the UK etc. Certainly I've noticed a disturbing focus on the West in the history course podcasts I've been downloading from Berkely, rather than getting a different perspective the best you get is the odd halfhearted apology that they probably SHOULD talk more about X but they don't know anything about it. Maths academia may be different, but one of the main things I had to learn during my Phd was pro-actively filling holes in my knowledge and deferring to those with more expertise, so either they're crappy academics or they don't really think it's important (or both!)

Shanghai ‘Black Girl’ Lou Jing Abused By Racist Netizens

and another angle from Yahoo news Can a Mixed Race Contestant Become a Chinese Idol?



An Interview with Lou Jing

I don't even know where to start...