CHOICE FOR A NEW GENERATION

--O.W.

RACHEL RAY: DUNKIN' FOR TERRORISM?

What.

The.

F---.

Rachel Ray accused by Michelle Malkin of promoting terrorism.

Malkin couldn't self-parody herself any better than she is now. Somewhere, Ann Coulter is probably trying to figure out if the Neelys are secretly Muslim.

Dunkin' Donuts took a cowardly way out. Their response should have been: "Ms. Malkin - relax and have a donut!"

--O.W.

FIRST POISONING, NOW PENISES

It doesn't pay to be a Russian dissident...

--O.W.

ARIZONA BLUES

hey, where's his American flag pin?
I know Arizona is like the new Mississippi when it comes to retrograde racial politics...it's hard to fathom how a state would take pride in voting down MLK Day but AZ manages somehow. Still, this new legislation passing through their state house is astonishing:

"Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.

SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group."

This passed out of committee 9-6 and is now headed towards a full legislative vote. Maybe I'm naive but even for AZ, I can't see the whole house going for this, especially in an election year. Somewhere, McCain is slapping his forehead, counting all the Latino votes he's losing behind this.

By the way, given that "Hispanic" isn't technically a racial category under the U.S. Census, I'm not sure how this bill would be able to go after a group like MEChA (though I suppose, African and Asian American groups might have problems). And let's not even mention the obvious First Amendment issues.

--O.W.

SHORT CUTS

Horton's a pro-lifer? (NPR's Morning Edition)

Cal Poly Obispo's deal to build engineering campus in Saudi Arabia allows women to be excluded? (NPR's All Things Considered)

If most of the MIT students from the real story behind 21 were Asian, how come the main leads are now White? (Reappropriate.com)

WTF? I'm speechless. (Feministing.com)

Just because I like the name of the blog. (Disgrasian)

--O.W.

THE R-WORD

the last good racist?
Former Village Voice/Time Magazine writer Ta-Nehisi Coates recently voiced something that has been bothering me for a while now. Writing in Slate about Geraldine Ferraro's claim that Obama's success is largely due to race, Coates notes how despite a plethora of unambiguously racist comments - from Don Imus to James Watson to Michael Richards - this seems insufficient to actually sustain a charge that speakers of such invectives are, in fact, racist.

In other words, one can spew racist comments with aplomb but god forbid anyone should actually be described as a racist in the process. Coates writes:

"The bar for racism has been raised so high that one need be a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party to qualify. Had John McCain said that Hillary Clinton was only competitive in the presidential race because she was a woman, there'd be no dispute over whether the comment was sexist. And yet when the equivalent is said about a black person, it's not only not racist, but any criticism of the statement is interpreted as an act of character assassination. "If anybody is going to apologize," Ferraro told MSNBC, "they should apologize to me for calling me a racist."

Coates goes on to suggest that, ironically, this has come about partially through the success of the Civil Rights Movement:

"In some measure, the narrowing of racism is an unfortunate relic of the civil rights movement, when activists got mileage out of dehumanizing racists and portraying them as ultra-violent Southern troglodytes. Whites may have been horrified by the fire hoses and police dogs turned on children, but they could rest easy knowing that neither they nor anyone they'd ever met would do such a thing."

As Coates concludes, with some sarcasm: "All of this leaves me wondering, Who does a guy have to lynch around here to get called a racist?"

This raises a question of language and whether or not nomenclature is getting in the way of more substantive progress? On the one hand, I wholly understand where Coates is coming from. The racist apologists are a curious, thriving breed amongst talking heads - people who will insist that someone couldn't possibly be a racist because [insert boiilerplate defense of your choice] and in the process, they can actual detour the focus on hand from the content and implication of a particular racist act and instead, push all the focus onto some arbitrary litmus test for "are they a racist?"

I believe this is partially what Stanford's Richard Thompson Ford was referring to in his recent interview on KPCC's Airtalk: "How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse." The gist of the argument is that "the race card" is a distraction and that people get so caught up with slapping on or slapping away the R-label, that the actual issues around racism and its deleterious effects are going ignored.

Ford promotes this idea of "racism without racists" and I admit: there is something alluring here. As I discuss in my classes on social problems when we talk about racial inequality, one of the things that makes systemic, institutional racism so insidious - not to mention resilient - is that it doesn't require the active, conscious participation of people committed to racist action. Rather, by simply maintaining the status quo, inequalities built into our institutions and social structures are allowed to survive and perpetuate. Hence, racist outcomes can occur despite the best intentions and interracial cordiality of the people behind them. That's the essence of racism without racists.

Without intending to, I think Coates actually echoes this point when he writes: "most racism—indeed, the worst racism—is quaint and banal. There's nothing sensationalistic about redlining or job discrimination."

Indeed, the kind of racism highlights is some of the most damaging because it goes beyond individualized exchanges of racism and gets at actions which affects huge portions of the public, often times hiding their racist intent from plain view but whose impact can be measured quite easily, whether it's the disproportionate amount of people of color in poverty - especially women of color - or the over-reprsentation of young men of color in the prison system. Surely there were some outright - perhaps even self-affirmed - racists responsible but more likely, it's entire systems of social organization that create those outcomes, many of which operate quite efficiently to maintain and perpetuate racial inequality without ever needing a Grand Wizard of Oz pulling chains behind the curtain.

The thing with "racism without racists" that bothers me a little however is that though it directs attention back to systemic forms of discrimination, it also feels like some semantic hair splitting. The loan officer who regularly denies business loans to applicants from poor neighborhoods of color - maybe he's not racist in the Bull Connor sense of the term but if the action and outcome are clearly racialized, what is the rhetorical gap between saying, "your actions are racist" vs "you personally are racist"? In other words, is it so important to people that we distinguish between the racism of their actions vs. the racism of their "being"?

---

This all said...I have another rhetorical hair-split question to ask: I don't believe that race alone explains Obama's appeal; it's not as if Democratic and independent voters were waiting for the first Black man to run for office so they could throw their lot behind him.

However, isn't it rather reasonable to claim that Obama's Blackness is at least partially behind his appeal to many? Especially many people of color? Let's be absolutely clear: I'm not suggesting that the mere fact of his Blackness is the sole, deciding factor. I am suggesting that race is hardly irrelevant to his appeal however.

This isn't an attempt to address Ferraro's particular comments one way or another. Rather, I'm trying to decipher the ways in which race does or does not factor into Obama's ability to make this run for President. I think it's a definite liability with some voters but just as notably, I think it's also an asset too with other constituencies.

This said then - where exactly is that thin line between over-crediting race or not crediting it enough?

Going back to Slate, I might have to agree with what Mickey Kaus says on the topic.

--O.W.

WRITE YOUR OWN CAPTION

I'm still trying to figure out how that frown is even anatomically possible.


To add: for once, I'd like to NOT see the wife there on some, "you bastard, go twist in the wind alone" tip.

b/w

idle thought but Spitzer's wife looks like Jennifer Aniston + 10 years, no?

--O.W.

A PRINCPLED STAND?

sitting out of the general election?

All Things Considered had an interview today with Mark McKinnon - John McCain's campaign manager - and he told Michele Norris that if Obama becomes the Dem nominee, McKinnon will not manage McCain in the general election. When Norris pressed him to explain why, he said:

"I would be uncomfortable being in a campaign that, inevitably, would be attacking Obama...it would be uncomfortable for me and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign."

Naive as it may be, I read this is a principled stand on first glance...that McKinnon doesn't want to play a role in tearing down Obama as, presumably, is bound to happen if he and McCain are the two candidates.

I was talking about this with my wife and she had a different take. Given that McKinnon was part of Bush's team in 2000 - when they took down McCain in South Carolina on some incredibly shady, racial smear tactics - and she thinks McKinnon would excuse himself as a way to avoid drawing undue attention to his possible role in that campaign.

Thoughts?

--O.W.

I [HEART] HUCKABEE!

Victory!

Congratulations to Governor Mike Huckabee on winning Iowa's Republican Caucus.

This is great news for those of us who ...

• ... equate gays and lesbians with pedophiles and necrophiliacs
• ... do not believe in evolution
• ... think school shootings are caused by abortion
  
• ... consider environmentalism equivalent to pornography
  

Hooray!

(Seriously, could this not be the best news for the Democrats?)

*

Update 10:12 pm: I'm thrilled that both Edwards and Obama beat Clinton. I prefer Edwards on the issues, but Obama's victory speech was goosebump-inducing good.

Despite the historic win for Obama, here's what I consider the most heart-warming news of the night:

Total Voter Turnout:

356,000

Percentage of total vote:

24.5% Obama
20.5% Edwards
19.8% Clinton
11.4% Huckabee (R)

Source: Group News Blog

--Junichi

WHICH WAY YOU LEAN?

No doubt, this sinks my chances at getting nominated to the Supreme Court (that and the fact that I haven't gone to law school).

Economic Left/Right: -8.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.18

The Political Compass

--O.W.

ON THE EXODUS OF TURD BLOSSOM

Rove. Out.

You might assume that I've been celebrating, or perhaps masturbating to, the news that Karl Rove is leaving the White House at the end of this month.

But you'd be wrong.

In my opinion, free time for Karl Rove is not a good thing.

While he claims he will spend more time with his family -- Karl Rove has a family?!? -- the Architect will undoubtedly be busy calculating which reactionary GOP candidate to prop up in the White House to make his Death Star operational for another eight years.

Plus, if he's not in the Oval Office, he has even more wiggle room to leak the names of undercover operatives, not to mention spread fear, smear the record of veterans, set back gay rights another decade, fix the next election, and snack on puppies.

More importantly, with MC Rove out of DC, the Bush Administration has a better chance of deflecting calls for accountability and avoiding embarrassing subpoenas.

Scariest of all, here's the math for the remaining 17 months of the Bush Administration:

Bush - Bush's Brain = Brainless Bush = Dick Cheney in total control

So there isn't much celebration happening on my end.

You can, however, count on me cheering when I see this ...

or this ...



and maybe this.

--Junichi

QUESTION OF THE WEEK #114

Not the 19 sexiest people alive

This Week's Question:

If you were forced to vote on a 2008 presidential candidate solely based on appearances (e.g., how they dress, their physical appeal, and the image they exude), whom would you support?

--Junichi

BARACK - BE REAL BLACK FOR ME?

One of the more interesting angles of criticism that Barack Obama is enduring at this early point in his (soon to be) Presidential bid is perhaps one that most wouldn't expect: he's not Black enough for some critics.

For background, here's NPR's Mary Curtis summing up some of the key issues. You can also view this NYT article. There's also Debra Dickinson's Salon.com piece, "Colorblind" that flat out says, "Obama isn't Black."

And why isn't the junior senator from Illinois earning his certificate in Official Blackness™? Two primarily reasons: the lesser is that he has a white mother though this probably takes second chair to the bigger reason that's being cited: his father is from Kenya. Ergo, Obama does not trace - in any obvious ways - his roots back through American slavery. By that virtue, Obama is presumed NOT to have an understanding of Blackness in the same way the majority of African Americans do on account of their generational connection to the wages of race, running back 400 years.

This isn't a new issue. As I think I've written about here, tensions between African Americans and West Indian immigrants has risen considerably in many cities, especially in the East, as these two communities have eyed one another warily. To distill the basics of that tension, African Americans see the West Indians are people who didn't have to pay the price for gaining the kind of civil rights and social benefits that are accorded to Black people. West Indians wonder why their American-brethren aren't as well-educated or upwardly mobile as they are. This is glossing over a lot more complexity but it still comes back to the same core points: that for some, Blackness is earned. Merely looking Black isn't enough.

What's ironic about part of this debate though is that, on one hand, the point being made is that Blackness isn't monolithic...except that, in the way that Dickerson frames it, Blackness actually IS kind of monolithic. She writes,

"At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term."

I hear what she's saying here but does that mean that a third-generation Harlemite shares the same perspectives as every other African American (of slave-descent) in every other part of the country? Does the Blackness experienced or internalized by said Harlemite equal that of a Black person from Baldwin Hills? Or Chicago's Southside? Or Hunter's Point? The point here is that you can't have it both ways: either Blackness is a fixed identity (a philosophy that plays all too well into racist hnads) or it's broad enough to include a range of Blackness beyond just the authenticating force of slavery's legacy.

Personally, I think what this points out is that Blackness - as well as anti-Black racism - has at least two distinct dimensions: one is historical and one is experiential. The experiential basically would include anyone "who looks Black," at least, Black enough to suffer from the kinds of anti-Black racism that live within the immediate world of human, social interaction: catching a beatdown from cops, being unable to catch a cab, having people cross the street when they see you strolling, etc. For Black immigrants or children of immigrants, these experiences of racism help shape a shared sense of Blackness with others, regardless of genealogy.

However, there is also the historical element of race that arises from the legacy of slavery, of Jim Crow, of myriad laws and practices that have structured not just day-to-day discrimination, but also become embedded in any number of social institutions as well as within the collective psyche of America itself. This is, I think justifiably, a qualitatively different experience of race. After all, a racialized identity is more than the product of your skin color and hair texture. It's also the product of unique strands of history that cannot and should not be forgotten/glossed over even to forge bonds of solidarity with others who may resemble you on one level, but whose lives and experiences trace through very different times and spaces. To deny this difference is to do violence to the historical memory of America's unique brands of racism.

This all said however, I think it's incredibly shortsighted and parochial - not to mention politically moribund - to force that these distinctions be honored to the point of exclusion. I would think the point here is to use people like Obama to reflect the sprawling diversity of Blackness, as a way of suggesting and showing that there is no monolithic Black experience, that this community is built of myriad histories and peoples and that, to discuss "Black issues" means understanding that complexity rather than simply presuming that there's a single "Black agenda" or "Black point of view."

However, it's one thing to say, "Obama's Blackness is different from my Blackness." It's something else entirely to say, "he's not really Black," especially since, in the eyes of most non-Black Americans, these distinctions are completely meaningless. Call me crazy but my perception is that for the majority of non-Blacks, whether Obama's father was born in Kenya or Kansas makes very little difference.

Dickerson argues that one reason she's upset at Obama's popularity is because she thinks Obama's non-slave-roots gives Whites (liberal and otherwise) a pass on White Guilt since they view Obama as a "different" kind of Black person, one not encumbered with constantly reminding them about what their ancestors did to his ancestors[1].

That's an intriguing idea except that it, in my mind, gives "the average American" far too much credit into actually taking into account national origin when it comes to race. She only need to ask any Asian American or Latino American - whether first or fourth generation - if our experiences with other Americans is any different based on how long our families have been here. (Hint: the answer would, "hell, no.")

Some non-Blacks might see Obama differently from other African Americans but I have a hard time believing this is any more than a relative handful. If Obama were to make any kind of Presidential ticket, I doubt the majority of Blue or Red state voters would see him as the son-of-a-Kenyan-national-and-white-mother rather than, "that Black guy running for Prez/VP." It is, of course, unfortunate that Obama's Blackness will inevitably be an inescapable part of his campaign (just ask Harold Ford...or heck, Tony Dungy or Lovie Smith) but insofar as that's true, it seems highly doubtful that he'll be seen as anything BUT Black to the majority of voters deciding to cast for him or not.

In any case, I wanted to also take time to include the perspective of Joan Morgan, writing on Mark Anthony Neal's blog. Joan is Jamaican-born, South Bronx-raised and she has this to say, especially in regards to Dickerson's article:

"...it should be painfully obvious (and I'm mean painful as in post-verbal-ass-whooping painful) that when it comes to Blackness that African-Americans do not hold the monopoly. Nor do they hold the monopoly on the equally painful legacy of colonialism, slavery and imperialism that descendants of West African slaves have experienced around the globe. Same shit, different boat."

"...when are folks like me, we "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" considered Black? Because according to Dickerson and brother man in the barbershop it certainly isn't doesn't happen when I look in the mirror every morning and damn sure see a black face. I don't get that honorary pass every April 15th when I pay my taxes or on the daily as I raise my American born black son."

"When black people immigrate to America we are not at all exempt from the experience of being Black American and not only because we will inevitably be subjected to American racism. We learn your history. We absorb your culture. Some of us even acquire your accents. We do this as a matter of both acclimation and survival because we recognize the potential power we unleash by finding the distinct commonalities between our histories and our culture."

"Because really, the difference between rice and peas and black eye peas is hardly as great she, the barber or anyone else questioning Obama's blackness might think. It's the distance between stops on slave ship."

---

UPDATE: Just to hone in on part of what I'm skeptical about...one of the reasons that's been given for Obama's popularity - specifically amongst White folk - is that his immigrant heritage allows White, whether consciously or unconsciously, a free pass out of White Guilt over slavery. Just to be upfront, I'm already skeptical over whether White Guilt actually exists to begin with; I don't see a host of examples, especially in contemporary times, where a mass of White voters have done much in the name of resolving America's slavery past. In fact, the only people I usually see trotting out the White Guilt thesis is White Supremacists (or at least political conservatives) who argue that the only reason why policies such as Affirmative Action or the Fair Housing Act exist is because White liberals allow White Guilt to influence their actions. There's a grain of logic in there somewhere but to me, that would be called "White Responsibility" or better yet "social justice." But let me not digress.

So, if I understand the argument correctly, here's the thinking of the average Obama supporter (White): "man...that Obama sure is great! He's so articulate, so fresh, so clean. And best of all, because he's a 2nd generation immigrant, when I think of him, I'm not reminded of all the terrible things my ancestors may have done to Kunte Kinte and his people 200 years ago!"

Not being White, I can't speak from personal experience, but does that last thought actually enter into the minds of White people when they think about Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or hell, Michael Jordon or Denzel Washington? Just so we're clear, I'm more than willing to believe that any number of racists thoughts may enter one's subconscious when Black and White meet but 1) White Guilt over slavery isn't high up that list and 2) I'm not at all convinced that someone like Obama wouldn't trigger White Guilt (if it exists)



[1] Given Kenya's colonial past with European powers however, who's to say?

--O.W.