Beyond White Guilt

Spike Lee Calls Out Clint Eastwood.

CANNES, France — Spike Lee is slamming Clint Eastwood over his two recent Iwo Jima movies, saying the filmmaker overlooked the role of black soldiers during World War II.

Lee _ whose next film is this fall's "Miracle at St. Anna," the story of an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during the war _ said Eastwood's 2006 movies "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima" were whites-only affairs.

"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where he was a judge in an online short-film competition.

"Many veterans, African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood. In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple as that. I have a different version," Lee said.

Eastwood was in Cannes for his missing-child drama "Changeling," starring Angelina Jolie. At a news conference for the film, a reporter tried to ask for his reaction to Lee's criticism, but the moderator cut her off and told journalists to limit questions to Eastwood's own movie.

Due in U.S. theaters in October, "Miracle at St. Anna" centers on four Americans _ played by Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller _ in the Buffalo Soldiers division in Tuscany.

Randomly flipping channels I came across this news article about a documentary "Liyarn Ngarn" on aboriginal reconciliation and racism narrated by Pete Postlethwaite. It turns out it came out last year.

Anyway, has anyone seen it? Any good? I'm going to try to track down a copy. I found this ANTar page about it which has some interesting looking links.

So one of the things that's been working my nerves this election cycle has been the rush to paint every single bit of language uttered by Obama that could be gendered as proof of his being sexist. The furor over the word periodically was wacky enough (as was the hype over him saying the claws are coming out) but I think Sweetie-gate has officially taken the cake. Was it the brightest thing to say? No. But, that doesn't necessarily mean it was sexist. Like a lot of MOC Obama has been raised to be very polite to women. Almost ridiculously so. Can you guess why? It's very simple. He's a MOC and women (especially white women) are being raised to perceive him as a threat. I can't tell you the number of time black male friends of mine have shifted their body language so as to be perceived as non-threatening even though they weren't being threatening in the first damned place. Or the the number of times black men I didn't know have felt the need to tell me they weren't a threat if I glanced at them as I was walking alone at night. Hell, the number of comments I've gotten about my husband "letting" me walk alone at night from other MOC who have clearly been raised the same way he was to think that protecting women is part and parcel of being a man is a story in and of itself.

My husband and his brothers have all been taught a specific way to interact with women. Now that lesson comes from a few places. Some of it is just what's referred to as good home training, namely that you're supposed to be polite to women at all times, you're not supposed to intimidate them with the difference in size or make them think they're unsafe in your presence. If someone else is making a woman feel unsafe then you're supposed to step up and put a stop to that behavior. You open her door, you pay for dinner, and you generally follow the script that says that even though you know she's strong and can take care of herself, you're showing her respect by being willing to take care of her. Our communities tend to run off a paradigm where the only men that are likely to show us respect and engage in chivalry are MOC. We're not objecting to it in the same way that white women might because we get enough of being ignored, treated like one of the guys, or disrespected by men outside of our communities, and by the knuckleheads inside our communities. It's nice to know that I don't have to deal with that crap at home and it's exceptionally nice to be treated like a princess when the rest of the world wants to treat me like a pack mule. Do we always agree about his attitude? No. But, I know he doesn't think I'm less than he is or incapable of taking care of myself so much as he is trying to show me love and respect in the way that he knows best and I love him for that effort.

Some of that aforementioned training is an acknowledgment that MOC (particularly black men) have gone to jail or been lynched behind looking at a white woman the wrong way. My sons are being raised to engage in the same behaviors because I want to protect them from being a statistic. Look up the Ryan Harris case if you're wondering what can happen to young MOC that the police decide are predators despite all evidence to the contrary. There's this perception of black men in particular (though it extends to other MOC) that they're sexual predators at all times. Look at the reaction to hip-hop as though it was the first genre of music with songs bearing misogynistic lyrics to hit the airwaves. Apparently people have forgotten rock and roll, heavy metal, and country music's contributions to the sexism that is part and parcel of our society. Not to mention the reality that hip hop ≠ sexist any more than every country song is sexist. Somehow sexism is a major problem when MOC are engaging in it even though quite often according to internal cultural standards they aren't being sexist or their "crime" isn't particularly egregious. It's not really a surprise of course. After all it's par for the course for imperialistic cultures to refuse to consider the validity of other cultural norms or to recognize that their standards are not necessarily the best option. I've got no problem with Obama being called out for engaging in overtly sexist behavior (which has yet to happen) but this rush to condemn him for engaging in behavior that is already pretty subjective (periodically as sexism? really?) while ignoring the reality of life as a MOC in America is ridiculous.

Not many responses yet. Please take this poll:

Poll on Race Conversations http://community.livejournal.com/pg_race_matters/18424.html

Here's a great article on the way comedy shows that talk about race and oppression are not necessarily 'attacking' political correctness. This is great for anyone who's run into people who "loooove The Office because it's soo politically INcorrect, teehee!" but hasn't been able to put why they disagree into words.

Here are some choice quotes:

Stephen Merchant, co-writer of The Office and Extras with Ricky Gervais, says: "We're endlessly cited as being non-PC, and yet we sit and agonise for ages over what we put into the scripts, and over whether our choices can be defended, both morally and intellectually," he says. "We may push things, but we're always motivated by satirical imperatives." But the duo's scripts do use non-PC language? "Yes," explains Merchant, clearly slotting back into a tramline he has had to follow many times before. "But we deal in taboos and hot areas by appearing to approach them from a non-PC standpoint, but as soon as you even introduce topics that PC has declared off limits, people assume you are trying to be dangerous and politically incorrect. Often we're all unsure of what to say, for example, in the company of someone who is disabled. These are areas ripe for comedy because of social anxiety, not because the subject itself is intrinsically funny. A joke about race, and about how we react to race, is not necessarily a racist joke. That is fundamental. Political correctness has made the world better for those who might otherwise have been unfairly marginalised, but there is the problem of the idea that you cannot discuss different areas for fear of being politically incorrect."

Peter Baynham is one of the unsung heroes of British comedy over the past two decades - he wrote the famous "Michael Heseltine Is Dead" bit for Chris Morris's radio show, and helped sculpt Patrick Marber's Alan Partridge character from its chatshow incarnation into its fully realised sitcom version. But it is as one of the co-writers of Sacha Baron-Cohen's Borat movie that he has finally won a British Comedy Award, the industry's least valuable honour, and earned enough money to buy David Hasselhoff's hair from him and wear it as if it were his own. So what does he think of the attacks on the Borat film? [...]

Baynham is philosophical about the way Borat has occasionally been received. "It's weird to see the film seized upon by people who hate political correctness, and think it's a bad thing, when PC was clearly just an understandable reaction to 70s racist awfulness," he says, on a rare trip home from Los Angeles to the native land he now scorns. "In my own pretentious, terrible opinion, which may not be shared by the other writers, the Borat movie is not anti-PC at all. When Borat says a black politician has a 'genuine chocolate face' he is a) clearly an idiot and b) from a naive, fictionalised foreign culture. But it's also a good thing to do because that bit absolutely wouldn't have been funny 25 years ago, precisely because that sort of thing was more openly said by people. It's a little kick, a little reminder, of why we don't say those things, and it's weird when you read people saying it was deliberately offensive. The laugh is a laugh of 'Oh my God, you can't say that!' People are laughing with shock, because we've reminded them of why it's wrong to say that black people have chocolate faces." At this point, Baynham seems to be approaching something profound and timeless about comedy, that stretches beyond petty concerns about political correctness.

The idea that "whiteness" as an identity is something that an individual can choose to embrace or reject is purely a product of white privilege.

It is philosophically founded on identity as the product of individual choice rather than societal assignment. The idea is itself manifestly false. I am white not because I have chosen to be white, but because society has coded me as white. I am white because, being coded as white, I am afforded white privilege.[1]

Part of the white privilege I am afforded is the ability to ignore the fact that I am afforded white privilege in a thousand ways every day, even if I explicitly act to nullify every aspect of white privilege under my control. Cops will not pull me over for driving while black if I reject my whiteness. Employers will not quietly discriminate against me if I reject my whiteness. I won't start getting worse service in stores, or followed around be security, if I reject my whiteness. ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I also won't suddenly stop having the racist attitudes that come as a consequence of having the privilege of not understanding all the privileges I am afforded. I won't suddenly stop exercising the privileges I exercise by reflex because I don't realize they're the product of privilege. That stuff is the product of work, and I cannot do that work if I don't explicitly acknowledge that I am coded as white and shine a spotlight on it each and every time it tries to crawl into a corner and operate unseen.

All that happens if I reject my whiteness is I get to feel good about myself because I'm pretending to strike a blow for racial justice when in reality all I'm doing is complying with white supremacy and hiding it with a thin coat of paint, secure in the knowledge that not one consequence of being coded non-white that befalls people of color every day will come to my doorstep. The racetraitor folks put themselves at more risk when they can, but to be a racetraitor is to specifically embrace being white.[2]

That's white privilege. It's white privilege because it perpetuates white privilege. It's white privilege because people of color don't get to pretend they're not coded as people of color. That's a good way to get killed, and that's no exaggeration even in this day and age.

And now it's debunked, and that's what we're here to do in debunkingwhite

[1] Because I am Jewish, there are times and places where I was specifically coded as "not-white." In those times and places, specific structures such as the judenstern and ghettos were instituted to get around my people's light skin. The United States in the twenty-first century is not one of those places, so let's have no foolishness on that front.

[2] Else, what is there to betray?

The original article posted on Morehouse College's first white valedictorian, Joshua Packwood, did not really address his reasons for wanting to attend the school, but CNN came to the rescue, filling that gap for us. In Packwood's own words:

"I gained this interest in African-American studies and I thought that Morehouse would probably be the best experience," says Packwood. "I think of it in terms of 'study abroad.' If I really want to learn it, if I really want to understand it - maybe it's best if I immerse myself in the culture."

The full article is here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/16/white.valedictorian/index.html

While I'm certainly not opposed to white people in the field of African-American studies, I find it absolutely shocking that this young man, after four years at an African-American studies program at Morehouse, of all places, thought that comparing his decision to a 'study abroad' program was acceptable.

Maybe it's just me, but the image I have of an American 'studying abroad' is a rich white kid patronising the local culture, from a position of cultural supremacy, without ever bothering to question his own assumptions and to learn something from the people he patronises.

The accusations never went away and Roma are arguably the most abused, derided, discriminated against and maligned group of people in Europe. And they're not ignored in the USA either, with accusations of 'Gypsy gangs' and racial profiling being commonplace. The use of racist terminology abounds, and we don't even think about it: being "gypped" is just one example. This article mentions an old accusation often thrown at Gypsies that of 'stealing babies'... that a crowd applauded this kind of behaviour, the behaviour of alleged 'civilised people' is no less than appalling.

A fellow member of roma_andfriends posted this article to that group, and I thought I'd share with this group.

Italian tolerance goes up in smoke as Gypsy camp is burnt to ground

By Peter Popham in Rome
Friday, 16 May 2008

In cruel and unusual concert, Italy's new government, its police and paramilitary carabinieri, and even its gangsters, have turned their joint might against the nation's enemy number one: the Gypsies.

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI and a small number of left-wingers raised lonely voices in central Naples against the national hardening of hearts towards Europe's perennial outsiders. To little avail: the Pope's appeal for a spirit of welcome and acceptance was met with a hail of angry rejection in blogged comments on news websites. ( Read more... )

Edit: Naples, the city that burns Roma and Rubbish. A coincidence? Perhaps the fumes from the piles of rubbish are getting to them... Naples Buried Under a Heap of Trash - though an old article, people are still dealing with this. (No I don't think it's an excuse... but I dare say these Neapolitans consider themselves civilised...)

What do you say to someone... who doesn't understand why he's possibly offended another person (a stranger) by asking him in front of other people on the train "Do you mind if I ask what that is called?" in reference to something the other person is wearing (the piece of clothing is likely attire traditional to his culture).

I got into this discussion with a friend of mine, after he did ask this question to and seemed to offend a man wearing something I think might be from India, as I recognize it as something I've seen worn by my friend's father, who regularly dresses in traditional Indian attire. As soon as he'd finished asking the question, I tensed up because something just felt wrong about it, and I've seen the mistake happen in the past. The man got quiet and seemed embarrassed and annoyed, as he answered. This seemed perfectly understandable to me but I couldn't fully articulate why I thought this was so. My friend completely didn't comprehend why he shouldn't consider his action offensive and why he should not do something like that again in the future. He says he has the right to ask what he wants so that he can learn. Usually he never tries to defend himself against the claim that he has white privilege, so I was suprised, but I guess it's one thing to admit we have a systematic privilege and another to fully understand everything that entails---and thus to take responsibility when you offend someone with an ignorant personal action.

I told him I wanted to put our discussion on hold until I got more information/opinions on people who know better than I do about the topic, because I know I also have white privilege and can't understand this first hand. I could speculate more about this and share what I said to my friend, but instead of trying to believe I really know what I'm talking about for sure, I'll leave the discussions for the the comments? 

edit--- something I should say, I know that this man's reaction isn't representative of how every person of color would feel or respond. And maybe his reaction could have had to do with some other reason, like he was tired or shy. But this is something I've observed happen in the past, and it isn't just this particular case that is troublesome to me as much as it is my friend's reaction to the general context of the situation, in other words not acknowledging why this might be offensive and that there is a time and a place for certain questions.

The following is a very disturbing article about the drugging of INS detainees, which I will repost below. It reminded me of a similar story I heard yesterday on Talk of the Nation about the criminal neglect and low medical "standards" being supplied to people in INS detention. Here is the link to that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/immigration/cwc_d4p1.html

Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation
Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason
by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest | Washington Post Staff Writers
Page A1; May 14, 2008

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.
( Read more... )

I've been seeing some interesting phenomena lately around the idea of 'Black by choice'. Specifically, this fascinating notion that Blackness is something that white people in particular can lay claim to by way of intention, rather than ethnicity, race, culture, ancestry, ancestors, etc.

It seems to be kinda like generic Pretendianism to me, but I do have my moments of unforgiving essentialism.

If only because it seems to be very much invested in everything but the burden. Claiming Blackness conveniently in terms of art, culture, expression, etc., but not in stuff like hypertension, dying more of asthma, incarceration rates, police harassment, general stereotyping, etc.

Discuss?

I seem to be posting a lot on UK specific issues lately. If it's inappropriate, please tell me and I'll stop.

I read this on a friend's LJ this morning, and thought it was something this community might want to hear about. It's about the new Mayor of London's crackdown on knife crime.

( Text for the link phobic )

American Indian tribe called bogus

By Paul Foy, Associated Press Writer | May 5, 2008

SALT LAKE CITY --A federal judge ordered a $63,000 civil-fraud judgment against four people who claim to be chiefs of an American Indian tribe in eastern Utah.

The men, who got organized at an Arby's restaurant and claim to have hundreds of tribal members, refuse to recognize U.S or state laws, have issued their own drivers' licenses and filed countless lawsuits against Utah authorities for ignoring their sovereignty.

In a decision Monday, following a trial last week, U.S. District Judge Stephen P. Friot ordered the men to stop pretending to be Indians and pay Uintah County damages. He called their tribe a "complete sham."

The group calls itself the Wampanoag Nation, borrowing from the name of two federally recognized Massachusetts tribes.

Gayle Andrews, a spokeswoman for the Mashpee Wampanoags, said the Utah men are obvious impostors. She said the tribe often deals with phony membership claims. In the most feeble attempts to prove tribal affinity, others have offered pictures of their grandmothers dressed as Indian princesses, she said.

( princesses? )

OK look.

I'm reluctant to poke this eye-popping mess with a long, sharp stick, but many similar discussions have been coming up recently, and I need to reiterate:

debunkingwhite is dedicated to discussing WHITENESS, INSTITUTIONAL RACISM, and WHITE PRIVILEGE. That's it.

ANY OTHER DISCUSSIONS are definitely not appropriate for this community, and are likely to derail the conversations we are trying to have here. This community is specifically for white people to get the fuck over themselves and address their whiteness and white privilege.

When posting OR REPLYING TO ANY POST HERE, please consider the audience, the community's specific intent, and the fair to awesome potential for derailing the discussion.

General political debate, intra-POC conflicts, and other topics that do not encourage-slash-force the white members of this community to examine themselves, their whiteness, their racism, and their white privilege are not productive here, and belong somewhere else.

EVERY post should be examined and responded to with the goal of DEBUNKING WHITENESS foremost in mind. If your reply does not address this first and foremost? Please post it in another community. Or don't post it at all.

Please think carefully about engaging in a thread that may derail the conversation away from WHITENESS, INSTITUTIONAL RACISM, and WHITE PRIVILEGE. If your reply does not address these topics, there is probably a place for it, but that place is NOT Debunkingwhite.

It is all too easy for white people to wriggle out of, avoid, or imagine away their WHITENESS, INSTITUTIONAL RACISM, and WHITE PRIVILEGE. Man, white people love to have the heat on another burner so we can pat ourselves on the back and not think about our complicity in scenario XYZ. Please, do not make it any easier for the white people in this community by derailing the conversation.

Also, for the record? I don't personally believe it's in any way possible to separate institutional racism from immigration issues, particularly in a postcolonial world. Whether you agree with me or not, discussions about immigration issues in this community MUST remain focused on WHITENESS, INSTITUTIONAL RACISM, and WHITE PRIVILEGE. Please, keep other aspects in other communities so as not to derail the intentions of this community.

Thank you, and SORRY FOR ALL THE WACKY EMPHASIS CAPS OMG.

compare and contrast:

Gay marriage upheld in California

HIV-positive man gets 35 years for spitting on Dallas police officer



Study Questions:

Who benefits from gay marriage?
How has the "face of HIV" changed over the past 10 years?
Why has HIV seemingly disappeared from contemporary GLBT political discourse?
Why wasn't Lambda Legal there for Willie Campbell?

From this story in the Charlotte Observer:

N.C. community colleges are the first statewide system to bar illegal immigrants from seeking college degrees, according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The move has shaken up the academic world by going beyond the nationwide debate over whether undocumented students should pay lower in-state tuition.

"This has really caught the attention and caused a lot of alarm," said Dan Hurley, the association's director of State Relations and Policy Analysis. "Charging them out-of-state tuition is one thing, but barring them entirely is another."

This issue is separate from the deportation issue, because this action is intended to force illegal immigrants into choosing to leave. Preventing a hard-working person from obtaining an education serves only to cripple them. When the average difference in salary between having a high school diploma or college degree ranges from $8,000 to $32,000, it consigns the person to a lower quality of life. Forcing a segment of the population into a lower quality of life is the very definition of a broken society.

From this story:

The popular cable TV reality show "Dog The Bounty Hunter" was abruptly canceled last year after a taped phone conversation was made public in which ["Dog"] Chapman could be heard using the "N" word, referring to his son's African-American girlfriend.

The bounty hunter and his family appeared with Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality to announce that the show is back in production. Innis said African-Americans have forgiven Dog.

"Absolutely. We forgave him on day one when we got a chance to meet him and got to know him, and know his story," Innis said.

There have been many discussions in this community about how food production and consumption are intertwined with privilege and power, so I thought this article was relevant.

"What Michael Pollan Hasn't Told You About Food," Interview with Author Raj Patel by Onnesha Roychoudhuri.

Excerpts:

"Free markets in food and certainly global markets in food are a very new thing. They are barely 200 years old and their origins have everything to do with colonialism. The world's first free market in grain was the market in wheat in the 1880s. This market was forged in imperialism and conquest, particularly by the British over the grain baskets of South Asia.

"The social safety nets that existed in India under feudal society had been knocked away by the British. If people couldn't afford food, they didn't get to eat and if they couldn't buy food, they starved. As a result of the imposition of markets in food, 13 million people across the world died in the 19th century. They died in the golden age of liberal capitalism. Those are the origins of markets in food."

***

"NAFTA has resulted in a vast influx of American consumerism. For me, the two startling facts are firstly that Mexico is the world's second most obese country after America. Also, the closer you get to the American border from Mexico, the fatter Mexican teenagers are likely to be. I don't think people realize quite how much food culture and body image really matter.

"The example that comes to mind is Fiji. Anorexia and bulimia were virtually non-existent before 1995 when television was beamed in. Within three years of predominately U.S. television, 12 percent of teenage Fijian girls were bulimic. That's batshit crazy yet I think we are so inured to all the advertising and food culture that is around us that it feels normal. There's nothing normal about it."

Read the rest here.

/cross-posted to my own LJ

A little late in reposting this, but I thought many here would appreciate it. Apologies if it's already been shared.
 

http://www.prisonradio.org/4-30-08ObamaMumia.htm

By ERRIN HAINES
Associated Press
Published on: 05/12/08

From his first day at Morehouse College — the country's only institution of higher learning dedicated to the education of black men — Joshua Packwood has been a standout.

His popularity got him elected dorm president as a freshman. His looks and physique made him a fashion-show favorite. His intellect made him a Rhodes Scholar finalist. His work ethic landed him a job at the prestigious investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in New York City.

( continue... )

source

A few thoughts:

I don't the like the tone, inferring that whites somehow aren't welcome at Black institutions. They've BEEN going to black colleges.

I don't like the presumption that the reverse is a similar struggle. It's not. I've been to predominantly black schools and the few whites there were always treated extra-special with kiddie gloves.

And lastly, his presence doesn't legitimize an institution that's had a distinguished 141 year history with alumni the likes of MLK.

I really wish the interviewer would've asked more about his reasons for going to Morehouse.