Today, We Document the Silence: Be Bold, Be Brave, Wear Red

Today, I'm wearing red and preparing a talk for an anti-violence rally that I've been invited to, so will fill you in on the details in a later post.

In the meantime, Document the Silence: Stop Violence against Women of Color.

"Your silence will not protect you." - Audre Lorde.

Trouble at Mama Oprah's School for Girls

Wow...I know I was one of those critics who disapproved of Oprah's "neocolonialist" fantasy of building her "dream" school for disadvantaged girls in South Africa. It was actually my very first in-depth post that I entered into the blogosphere. Despite all my concerns about the implications of African American myopic visions with regards to helping out Africa, I must say that I did not foresee this latest drama! Apparently, one of the school girls had recently run away from the academy and told authorities that she had been sexually molested and mistreated by one of the school matrons.

There obviously must be some truth to the allegations for "Mama Oprah" herself made two recent visits to South Africa to investigate the situation and has since given a public apology.

"I've disappointed you," our favorite talk-show queen said through her tears.

Sigh.

But one father replied, “It’s not your fault. We don’t blame you... You trusted them. You have more passion for the school and its existence than anyone else in this country, including us parents.”

Ah, let's always forgive Americans for our cultural ignorance and "innocence." We always, always mean well, don't we?

Not sure what to think, especially since the academy has been plagued with so much criticism and complaints from the get go- including from parents who bitterly complained that they were not allowed to keep in touch with their daughters (to which Oprah haughtily replied that if these parents didn't like the rules that were set up, they can take their daughters out of the school since there were many other girls who would willingly take their place).

Still, concerns that the school was run like a "prison," and "cultural differences" that led two students to quit the school, all seem to read like one of the worst offenses in colonial history. Why, oh why, do these stories sound so much like the kind of abuses that Native American children suffered when they were forced to attend boarding schools run by missionaries and scary officials who did treat boarding schools like a "prison" or military training camp?

Obviously, this darker, far more sinister allegation is starting to turn her "dream school" into a nightmare. And I'm not feeling too sympathetic to "Mama Oprah" (as the girls have been encouraged to call her), whose ignorance in local customs and in South African history (this is after all a country not too long ago that practiced legal apartheid in which the young girls who were gathered into this academy would have been treated with the worst contempt: it sounds like the treatment continued, regardless of the fact that they were enrolled in such an elite, posh academy) repeats the worst offenses of African Americans - who still think we can create common bonds through skin color without bothering to understand local differences within the African Diaspora and the distinct flavors of global racism in transnational contexts. Still, Oprah's own early beginnings in a racially apartheid state like Mississippi should have provided her some cautionary knowledge that her screening policies should have been far more critical when selecting teachers and "dorm matrons" for her school.

How did things degenerate so quickly? The year isn't even over! I was already concerned that not enough cultural understandings were in place to ensure open lines of communication - I was very disturbed, when watching Oprah's TV program special about her school, that she showed nothing about the school itself in terms of the curriculum and how educators were selected. Instead, we were treated to all the details of the luxurious surroundings of the students' new dorms (replete with flat-screen TVs in their rooms and fine-linen spreads and not one detail about what they were going to, in fact, be learning). Such a superficial focus, in light of the latest scandal that has emerged.

I guess we will have to see what develops from this venture of Oprah's, as I fear that this is just the beginning of her troubles with this "leadership academy."

How to Avoid Racist Subtext in Halloween Decorations

I usually enjoy my walks at this time of the year, even though the weather gets a bit chillier. But, the colorful trees and Halloween decorations make up for it, especially when I try to push myself to keep up with regular walking exercises (in particular since I ate more than I needed to over the weekend).

However, no matter how inventive your neighbors get when decorating their yards for Halloween, somehow you're still never prepared to be insulted - or, worse - to suddenly find yourself fearful for your life.

This morning, while taking my usual route through my neighborhood to get to a nearby park, I came across a house that thought to hang ghosts from its front yard tree. I've seen many ghost decorations in trees before and in previous Halloweens, but this time, the spectacle gave me a jolt. The ghosts were hanging from NOOSES!

Now, before anyone accuses me of paranoia and overreaction, please keep in mind the number of noose hangings that have occurred this season, not to mention the far too regular appearances of blackface costumes at fraternity parties on college campuses; plus, I had recently seen a Klan member at one of my favorite coffee house hangouts. Needless to say, the appearance of these ghosts hanging from "lynch ropes" gave me a very bad vibe.

I do want to give my white neighbor the benefit of the doubt, to not imagine him as a card-carrying member of the Klan or any other white supremacist group, to instead imagine that he and his kids innocently hung their ghost decorations without any thought about the racist subtext implied by the ropes used.

But that's just the problem, isn't it? A friend and I had recently discussed over the phone how the prevalence of racism precludes either group to be able to successfully perform racial satire, because racism functions in such a way that one group might get the "joke," while the other one cannot take it for granted that the racial performance isn't to be read literally. How do we really know if somebody hanging ghost decorations from nooses isn't really trying to create racist subtext, especially if - when called on it - (s)he can pretend innocence or, worse, "Can't you take a joke?"

Obviously, as we've seen from the Jena 6 incident and other noose hanging incidents, there's nothing funny about racist jokes, performances, decorations, or costumes. When people are still being targeted for violence, based on their skin color, we are certainly not in a particular historical space where we can assume that everyone is in on the "joke."

So, now that it's Halloween and everyone is pretty much invested in stepping out of their own skins, perhaps to try on someone else's, and even to slip under the radar some of their racial baggage, which pops up in unexpected ways (like in Halloween yard decorations and costumes), I thought I might offer a helpful guide to those of you who don't consider yourselves to be white supremacists on how to avoid racist subtext.

1. Don't use lynch ropes in trees: Here's a useful website, Without Sanctuary, that provides the kind of lynch iconography (as captured in lynch photography) that has shaped racial history in America. It might be helpful to see what actual lynch victims looked like and also why African Americans are particularly sensitive to any references to nooses and ghosts hanging from trees with ropes around their necks. Yes, when I passed that yard this morning, I thought about the "ghosts" of lynch victims and how their relatives and descendants have yet to receive any reparations since our nation is very much in denial about our own history. When we forget the pain of that history, we're likely to see its repetition in various displays. If you must hang ghosts from trees in your yard this Halloween, use wires, hooks (as shown in the above image), duct tape, anything else but rope.
2. Don't use blackface for your Halloween costume: It has already been noted that far too many college youth are "innocuously" dressing up as their favorite black person (usually some "gangsta" rap artist) and darkening their faces to do so. BAD IDEA! Do you need a Minstrelsy History Lesson? If so, please visit this informative PBS site. I once had a friend who talked about how hurt she was, back in grade school, when her white friend thought to "flatter" her by dressing up as "Aunt Jemima" (replete with blackened skin); my friend was a heavyset kid and she still is, so, you know, there is nothing like the betrayal of a white friend who you thought was cool until they do something completely demented as to don "blackface"! It's meant to be insulting, I don't care what Eric Lott says in his book, Love and Theft (he basically claims that, behind the mockery of black skin, white people are really acting out some complicated homoerotic stuff). I don't care if it's based on "love" or "hate," it's racist, pure and simple.
3. Don't choose racist icons for your Halloween costume: I'm sure you remember all the hullabaloo when Prince Harry showed up at a costume party wearing a Nazi arm band. Yeah, I'm still not over it, and again, I don't think our society has evolved enough for anyone to even attempt racial satire when they dress up as a Nazi soldier or a Ku Klux Klan. What they represent is systemic slaughter against an entire people. Sure, Halloween is a time to dress up as somebody dark or evil, like the devil, or a witch, or a vampire. Take note, however. One kind of evil is based in mythology (although, being that I'm Christian and believe in an afterlife, I believe the devil is real and so are some ghosts), the other evil is all too real, and again, what kind of racist subtext are you trying to send out when you show up at a costume party with a swastika on your arm band?
4. Don't arrange your ghosts so that they resemble racist icons: I'll never forget the horrendous feeling a group of my friends experienced when attending a museum exhibit, around Halloween time, on the history of African American's migration from the South to the North. In the exhibit, we reached a hall that focused on the reign of terror that supremacist groups visited upon segregated black communities. Why did that demented curator think it was cool to arrange a Klan costume in the style of a ghost, hanging right above our heads? It was hideous, and I imagine the curator wanted us to experience what that kind of reign of terror was like at a historical point in time. However, considering that they're still around and that victims like Megan Williams was nearly lynched, there's nothing "cool" or "spooky" about creating Halloween-type decorations with racist icons.
5. Use your front door when answering trick-or-treaters: How about the story a friend of mine shared with me of when she was young and growing up in the South, how one of her racist white neighbors insisted that she and her other black friends who were trick or treating come around to the side of the house to get their "treats." No sooner than she and her friends moved on that she saw another group of trick-or-treaters, this time, white kids, who were greeted at the front door. Apparently, this was a standard way for whites living during Segregation times (with remnants today) to treat black people as inferior, by deeming them unworthy to greet at their front door. My friend said she didn't know any better and promptly told her parents, who then subsequently threw out the candy. Because such actions are based in a historical attempt to demean people, I think it behooves all of us to avoid perpetuating such actions, whether or not you have a reason to not use your front door. It's best to treat everyone with respect, including the little ones who come to your home for trick-or-treat.

In other words, the obvious lesson here is this: Avoid the very appearance of evil. Yes, Halloween is a time to step out of ourselves, have fun, and dabble with the darker side of the season. But, it's just one day, why spoil it with racist actions that will then spill out to ruin the rest of your year? If we learned to address racism out in the open, maybe we wouldn't let it seep inside of us, until it spills out in the most inappropriate ways, like in the racist subtext of Halloween decorations.

I offer this post, not to encourage censorship, but to foster respect and accountability. Have a Happy Halloween, but please don't exhibit your racist side this season. I'd rather answer my door to a devil-wearing reveler than a Nazi!

Sacrificing Women in War Films (Spoilers)

I'm so glad, when I went to see Ang Lee's Lust, Caution last night, that I ignored the majority of movie critics who reduced his latest film to little more than a sexy movie with explicit scenes. Obviously, its NC-17 rating drew very few intelligent critiques of what's obviously going on in this latest of movies, set during a different time period than ours just so the filmmaker can explore some hard truths about war, occupation, and the desperate measures individuals take when faced with the everyday violence of treachery, espionage, and oppression.

Perhaps what's most haunting to me is how women, in the case of our heroine, Wong (portrayed in an Oscar-worthy performance by Tang Wei), are completely militarized and positioned in narratives of resistance and warfare precisely because their gender affords them the ability to remain hidden, to go undetected by the enemy. The story concerns Wong, a fairly patriotic young Chinese woman who is seduced into joining the "resistance" during Japan's occupation of China in WWII. She has an opportunity to join with her fellow cohorts in the setting up of the traitor Mr. Yee (played by the reserved and understated talents of Hong Kong star Tony Leung) for assassination. We feel, as the youngsters play "grown up" games of espionage and entrapment, the impending loss of innocence that will accompany them, not least of which is the transformation of "innocent" Wong into a capable seductress called Mak Tai Tai. Of course, Wong, who is willing to throw her entire body into the project of seducing and, hence, leading Mr. Yee to his death, recognizes in so many different ways that her "punanny" power, as it were, is no match for her deeply violent enemy/lover (their first sexual encounter is very much like a rape). She may have the power to turn his heart, and even capture his soul, but - alas! - her own heart turns traitorous on her! As is so typical in many patriarchal films, our heroine can only ever be "heroic" if she can keep hold of her "innocence," her "goodness," which she does (for we are to understand that, despite all the various Karma Sutra positions - I know I'm using the wrong Orientalist reference here, but you get the picture! - that she entwines with her lover) by letting her heart and soul dictate her body, indeed, by having her choose her lover over her political allegiances, she can achieve redemption.

So, it is to her great misfortune and the misfortune of her fellow collaborators that, when the moment comes, to lead Mr. Yee to his assassination, she cannot go through it (this moment comes when Mr. Yee, who is so in love and enamored with her, presents her with a priceless diamond gift). I understand that we are to read Wong's actions as heroic because, for her, sex cannot be divorced from her heart, and had she been so coldblooded as to use sex to entrap Mr. Yee (who really is a traitor because of his collaborations with the Japanese) , we might read her in a different context of "femme fatale," or even in Asian stereotyping of the "dragon lady."

Still, when Yee is left standing, while Wong and her collaborators are executed, once their plot has been discovered, part of me was truly disgusted, for I saw yet another narrative of female sacrifice. Which to me, if we're going to portray a woman, joining armed resistance due to patriotism, then yes, complicate her motives and her actions, but can we not envision women's militarized resistance that doesn't always get compromised because of matters of her heart (interestingly, Yee can't save Wong, even though Wong saves his miserable life, because women are to be sacrificed in war, and we are to sing melodious songs and film glorious movies celebrating their martyrdom!).

Give me my hardcore female villain, like the suicide-bombing Meghna in the Bollywood film, Dil Se, who no matter how much she loved her lover, she was prepared to take him out for her political cause! Granted, she too was also "sacrificed" by film's end, but at least the moral of the story was that the two lovers, together, had to be sacrificed because of the turmoil produced by state-sanctioned violence and warfare that prevented the easy romance of love and marriage. In that movie, it wasn't female sacrifice alone that rested on the heroine's "redemption."

In some ways, Lust, Caution reminds me of another movie, which debuted last year, the German film, The Lives of Others, in which yet another movie heroine, Martina must sacrifice herself, when she too is forced to turn traitor on her lover, as a result of living in the oppressive, Cold-War era of East Germany. Having found herself in an untenable situation where the secret police force her into turning in her boyfriend-playwright for writing and smuggling subversive material beyond the Iron Curtain, her treacherous ways are too much for her. So, alas, to "redeem" herself, she throws herself in front of a truck.

The movie's end is gut wrenching, and I have no firsthand knowledge of living in such an oppressive environment, but I do know that in many ways, female characters are used in movies about wars (cold or hot ones) to comment on the "loss of innocence," more about women's "innocence" that is destroyed, either due to their use of sexuality for politics, for manipulations, or for espionage. There is something in these movies that seem to suggest that, when it comes to traditional gender roles, women's place is still "properly" within the confines of home, where sex is preserved for romance, marriage, and family. God forbid that same sex is used in the marketplace or, worse, in war strategies.

However, our inability to recognize women--cinematically or on the battlefield--beyond these roles allows such women to strategically function in surprise attacks in the first place. Because we continue to underestimate women’s militaristic actions, they will likewise continue to maintain the element of surprise in wars.

Perhaps even more telling is when the movie heroine is not a "woman" trapped in her sexual body but a little girl, who is still trapped somehow in her romantic ideals and fantasies. The little girl, Ofelia, in Guillermo del Torro's Pan's Labyrinth also has to be sacrificed to illustrate the cruelty of war, in which the "blood of an innocent" is seen as a necessary sacrifice for the rebirth of a world or nation. The saving grace of this film, though, is that it relies on subterfuge as both Ofelia and Captain Vidal's maid, Mercedes, entrap and undermine his reign during the Spanish Civil War, suggesting that women are still very much needed in warfare.

While I might find these portrayals of heroines in movies about war very problematic, I'd like us to think more about why these movies are now popping up in our movie theaters. What's the overall subtext being presented? What subliminal messages are they giving us about our own present wars? These movies are all very much post-September 11 films, relying on either recent or earlier memories of other wars to tell us a story about the loss of innocence or the destruction of "home" and "love," as told through their female characters. There is this continued opposition between the masculine nature of warfare and its reliance on the destruction or sacrifice of femininity. I for one would rather see new visions (even if we're signifying on older narratives and older wars) that can trouble these easy gender breakdowns when discussing warfare and how men, women, and children behave in times of national crises.

Then again, considering that one of the trailers that I saw while waiting for Lust, Caution to begin, stars Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep in an over-the-top, not-very-subtle dramatization about the war in Afghanistan, called Lions for Lambs (ugh!), I'll take these foreign films' subtlety and nuanced dramatizations of war subtexts over Hollywood's preachy crap any day!

Is Blackwater Moving into Your Neighborhood?

Thanks to a poster on Professor Black Woman's blog, I was able to check out this video, featured on Bill Moyers' Journal about Blackwater's attempts to expand in U.S. neighborhoods, under the pretense of offering emergency assistance: first in New Orleans, where they roam the streets in search of "looters," and now in Southern California, where they have offered their assistance in fighting the wildfires, as well as cracking down on "illegals," of course. Let's be on the alert! Slowly but surely, this privatized military is spreading; let's not be caught off guard!

Blogging While Brown Conference

Don't forget to register by next Thursday, November 1, for the Blogging While Brown Conference in Atlanta, summer 2008. Please visit this site for more information.

Racist Science: Past and Present

I just read the news that pioneering Nobel Prize laureate, James Watson, who uncovered the secrets of DNA, has retired, according to the New York Times, no doubt in large part to the controversy that he stirred after suggesting that people of African descent are inferior to people of European descent. He said that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" since "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."

Such remarks prompted the Science Museum in Britain to cancel his scheduled lecture, according to the BBC.

Mr. Watson, in addition to winning a Nobel Prize for his DNA work, also headed the US government's part in the international Human Genome Project. And, of course, no sooner do I read this information than I'm bombarded with ads about the DNA Ancestry Project!

Let's think about this for a moment, shall we? After all, if Watson, whose worldviews have already shaped international scientists' work on DNA and other genetic materials, retires because his remarks are unacceptable, what other ways have he and others perpetuated these ideas? Aren't the legacies already in place?

I know my scientific racism history. I know that in the early nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson called on science to prove that his slaves were really inferior (so that he wouldn't be a hypocrite for promoting freedom and democracy while he owned slaves). I know that George Cuvier served as Napoleon's surgeon general while he performed an autopsy on famed South African woman, Saartjie Baartman, also known as the "Hottentot Venus," and carved out and preserved her brains and genitalia in jars that were later put on display to showcase that Africans were really "inferior," "animalistic," and "highly sexual." I know that, later on in the antebellum period, the scientist Louis Agassiz, influenced by Cuvier, did "scientific" studies on slaves in South Carolina and described them as "inferior," as the daguerreotypes taken by Joseph T. Zealy were supposed to demonstrate (in the above image, I included the ones that artist Carrie Mae Weems reframed in an exhibit called "From Here I Saw What Happened, and I Cried").

I know that various pseudo scientists justified Western imperialism and U.S. segregation by borrowing from these half-baked studies of "racial" anatomy, physiognomy, and all that nonsense, to prove the "inherent" differences between the so-called races. Worse, I know the Nazis took this concept to the nth degree by creating "scientific" propaganda films and film strips that borrowed from these arguments of African "inferiority" and transposed them to Jews and Roma people by locating within these "Semitic" types traces of their supposed African ancestry.

Then, in 1962, Watson and his cohort discovered DNA, and the rest of the us have been enamored with the wonders of this genetic mapping, now turning away from "physiognomy" and "anatomy" to still find some inherent construct of our "race" or "ethnicity" (because, honestly, what is all this Human Genome Project and DNA Ancestry Project stuff but another way of repackaging the same eugenicist obsession with "race" for the 21st century)?

All of this is to say: Watson may be stepping down, after being called out for his racism, but now that he has done so, will we still uncritically listen to all of our findings and scientific stories about DNA without realizing that Watson is not an anomaly, that he has in fact continued in the legacy of racist science?

March Against Hate Crimes: Mark Your Calendars Again!

This time, courtesy of Beautiful Also Are the Souls of My Black Sisters and Professor Black Woman, I've received updates about the West Virginia Case, which includes a legal defense fund and plans for a march against hate crimes on Saturday, November 3. Please visit this site for more information.

All Hail the Imperialist Queen? Give Me a Queen of Resistance!

So, what number is this latest cinematic treatment of Queen Elizabeth I? We've seen her portrayed by Bette Davis, by Helen Mirren, by Anne-Marie Duff in Masterpiece Theatre's The Virgin Queen, and, of course, in the first installment of Elizabeth by Cate Blanchett, who reprises her role in the sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I'm not sure what's more ironic: this movie being shaped by former British colonials (Indian director Shekhar Kapur and Australian star Blanchett) or this movie's pretenses for religious freedom and finding in its preservation a heroine like Queen Elizabeth I, while creating a series of "divine" glorified iconization of the queen appearing like a porcelain-white Virgin Mary (i.e. "Virgin Queen") and as the heavens open and strike "just and divine right" lightening and thunder to facilitate in the destruction of the Spanish Armada!

Keep in mind, this deification (irregardless of historical accuracy) of that naval battle is still regarded as the turning point for eventual English domination over the waves and, later, over the entire world. So, naturally, it gets Hollywood and operatic treatment here, alongside Queen Elizabeth. However, far more glorified is a repeated aerial shot of Elizabeth gliding over a Map of Europe, as if the world were but a hopscotch game, and wherever her foot fell, there her armies and navies would go! It's a striking image that, I think, undercuts all pretenses that white and Western feminists make about their "lack" of gendered power, or rather, heightens the way that such feminists have failed to address the colonialist legacies that set in place the gendered hierarchies that placed them over women of color - who at this particular moment in history were just being discovered.

I went to the movie because I enjoy this part of English history - its deeply layered gendered and sexualized narratives (from Henry VIII's insufferable misogyny, which led to his beheading of Elizabeth's mother, Ann Boleyn, to his placing on the throne his only son Edward, as young and sickly as he was, over his older sisters, to the poor martyred Lady Jane Grey, who ascended to the throne a mere 9 days before Queen Mary's supporters wrested control and sent her to her death at the Tower of London, to finally the Queen going insane as "Bloody Mary" when she executed anybody who wouldn't practice Catholicism, before Elizabeth even got to be the "Faerie Queen" and the feminine figurehead that helped usher in British, and by extension, Western imperialism). But, of course, the movie would rather waste its precious time following an insipid plot about a love triangle (yawn!) instead of fully exploring in much greater detail the far more interesting subplot involving the alleged treason (because I'm one of those scholars who is willing to give Mary Queen of Scotts the benefit of the doubt) of her cousin (Samantha Morton impresses here as Mary Queen of Scotts), who was a threat to Elizabeth because she was next in line to the throne since the "Virgin Queen" was childless. All this political intrigue because the queen refused to make things easy by entering into heterosexual marriage and offering her womb to political power!

Apart from some uneven direction and an over-the-top score, Cate Blanchett shines in her reprisal as the highly esteemed ruler. But, honestly, it's time we start seeing new movies with different kinds of queens, for Elizabeth I was hardly the only female ruler to make her mark in the annals of history. And, better yet, I'd prefer a Queen of Resistance, rather than a Queen of Imperialism. Here are three queens (all women of color) I'd love to see on the movie screen, for their stories are just as worthy of a cinematic treatment.

Queen Hatshepsut (ruled in Ancient Egypt from 1479 to 1458 BCE) - I've been impressed with this ruler since I got to visit her temple when I vacationed in Egypt last summer. And, even though it's hard to imagine such a movie being made that doesn't reproduce those gorgeously junky and overdone "Cleopatra" type productions of the past, let's at least hope that, this time, they get this Nubian queen appropriately represented in all her dark-skinned glory! Besides, any queen who dons a beard and demands to be treated like a man, while also plotting to ensure that her daughter ascends the throne after her, so as to subvert the male dominance of her kingdom, is a woman whose story needs to be told!

Queen Nzinga (1583-1663) - I learned about this African queen, who ruled over what is now Angola, in a Black History lesson. And while I was disturbed by the way she treated one of her "ladies in waiting" - she turned one of them into a "seat" when the Portuguese, in their attempts to disrespect her when she met with them, expected her to sit on the floor while they sat in chairs - I still like the story of how she led her people in armed resistance against the Portuguese and prevented them from becoming captives in the slave trade. Although she joined the Dutch by way of building an alliance against the Portuguese and even converted to Christianity when she thought it was political to do so, her story reveals some important lessons about resistance and accommodation. She never surrendered.

Queen Lili'uokalani (1838-1917) was Hawaii's last sovereign queen whom I view in the tradition of the "queens of resistance," rather than "queens of imperialism." Although she was raised and educated in an age of Western imperialism, her story tells us another important lesson about history and the gendered nature of power and surrender. When she ascended to the throne in 1891, Queen Lili'uokalani tried to restore power to the monarchy and voting rights to Hawaiians, which of course met with the ire of the American and European elites on the island. She also had the temerity to save her people from a small pox epidemic that broke out in Hawaii, due to migrant workers from China who were brought to the sugar cane fields. Once the source of the problem was identified, Queen Lili'uokalani closed the port, which infuriated the wealthy sugar growers. Although she was finally defeated in 1895 when she was arrested for trying to take back control of her throne, and the United States annexed Hawai'i in 1898 before it became a state in 1900, I still view Queen Lili'uokalani as a worthwhile ruler and "warrior queen" of sorts, whose story has yet to be cinematically told.

While we are made to endure a dozen and more films about one Queen of England, is it too much to ask that we herald some other queens, preferably those who resisted imperialism instead of perpetuating it? Maybe I should start making movies...

Bloggers without Borders: Riverbend is Back!

After a long hiatus, during which time, Riverbend, author of the blog, "Baghdad is Burning," was forced to leave her home in war-torn Iraq, she has finally been able to write a new post today! The title is appropriate: "Bloggers without Borders." I gotta tell ya: her harrowing story of living as a refugee in Syria, being in exile, has really helped put a lot of things in perspective for me (including understanding our culture of hate over here, as it is directly a result of that unjust war that's being fought "over there"). Don't forget to visit!

More Strange Fruit!

The threat of "nooses" strikes again! This time in Palmdale, California - the same site where a high school security guard used excessive force on a 16-year-old black girl. According to Professor Black Woman, leaflets were distributed, which featured caricatured images of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson hanging from a tree.

I said it before and I'll SAY IT AGAIN: do not be surprised when the real lynching actually takes place! I'm not trying to prophesy gloom and doom, but this figurative and symbolic stuff is outta control.

And just last week, I went to one of my favorite coffee houses in town, only to encounter a member of the Ku Klux Klan working nonchalantly on his Mac laptop! (You know they're the ones harrassing all of us who blog about social justice and antiracist issues.) Added to this, just the other day I received an email from a former student who's now teaching and dealing with a white supremacist in her class who has been writing about and distributing to students her views on sterilizing poor people (read "people of color") to make room for the "wealthier and more intelligent" races.

This culture of hate is threatening to engulf us like that blob thing from the movie, The Blob, and I don't see enough of us doing what we can to combat this. And I for one am definitely getting "sick and tired of being sick and tired."

This Brings Back Memories

Thanks to a good friend of mine who sent me the YouTube link to Janet Jackson's "Pleasure Principle" music video back in the day! This is definitely one of my all-time favorite music videos ever! Or, at the least, tied between "Love Will Never Do" and "Rhythm Nation" among my favorite Janet videos. Obviously, apart from the Pre-Superbowl Janet image, is the 20-year-old Janet breaking free from parental control and striking out with a new sound for her smash-hit album, Control.

Imagine, if you will, me at 14, standing before my TV screen, mimicking every single dance move (hee). Yeah, I even did the chair-toppling move (when my mom wasn't around, of course!). It was graduation of sorts since I used to do the same thing when I was 10 and watching her brother Michael. At any rate, I watched this again and was just stunned that a female pop artist could do a complete music video - in T-SHIRT AND JEANS!!! - just showcasing her dance skills. Sigh. Those were the days!

Anyway, just wanted to share and to take a break from all of the heavy-themed subjects I've been posting of late.

Primal Scream Moment

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!," said I, after a friend of mine asked me, "Did you hear, on top of all the lawsuits they're bringing, the Duke Lacrosse players just signed a movie deal?"

NO! NO! NO! SAY IT ISN'T SO!

Apparently, this news item was heard on NPR, so on top of all the historical rewrites of this case, we're now going to be offered a Hollywood version?

BURN, HOLLYWOOD, BURN!

And, God help the two black actresses who are foolish enough, desperate enough, traitorous enough, and crackheaded enough to sign on to this in their portrayal of the two strippers.

Can't you just picture the Hollywood rendition of the infamous party scene? Can't you just see the depths to which they would sink even to showcase the racist and misogynist display of what transpired at that party (regardless of the rape charge, let's think of everything else that happened, which was just so ugly and so hideous, I don't want to see that shit on my TV screen or any movie screen)?

Sick! Sick! Sick!

I can't deal! I'm getting nauseous the more I think about it.

Where is the shame! Where is the bottom! How much lower will we sink!

NO! NO! NO! Just ... NO!

Shaking My Head

The buzz among black bloggers concerned the appearance of two of the young men from the Jena 6 - Bryant Purvis and Carwin Jones - on the red carpet of BET's hip hop award shows. Not only did they enjoy a moment in the limelight, but they also had the privilege of presenting an award with Kanye West!

Now, naturally, many are upset that these TEEN AGERS are "thugging out" and preening like they are suddenly celebrities, and in a perverted sort of way, they are (they've got rock stars contributing money to their defense fund and making songs and music videos about them, not to mention thousands who were willing to drive cross-country to protest on their behalf). Unfortunately, the tragedy of what occurred in Jena, Louisiana, is soon turning into a trivial affair with the likes of BET and hip hop celebrities inviting the youngsters to join in their "pimp stylization" lifestyle.

Am I disappointed by their "posing" in the red carpet photo? I'm still shaking my head. But, I would like to caution everyone that they are young and immature, and part of a generation that has grown up to want and expect instant celebrity status, thanks to reality shows, American Idol, and non-talent acts like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Would I be surprised if they became a hip hop act? Of course not!

But, before everyone looks at these new photos as signs or "proof" that these boys are not "worthy" of the support they garnered nationwide, let's remember that what started it all - nooses hanging from a tree - has since circulated to many more copycat hate crimes in which nine cases of hanging nooses targeting African Americans across the country have occurred. Shame on BET and shame on the hip hop community for encouraging our youth to behave with such tackiness in the face of a growing and life-endangering problem!

Women in Red: Mark October 31 on Your Calendars!

Not because it's Halloween, but because it's a day to "Document the Silence." There is a growing campaign among women of color to organize a protest on October 31, against the extreme violence facing women of color. Those supporting the protest are encouraged to wear red on this day, to observe October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and specifically to call everyone's attention to the outrages that occurred against such women as Megan Williams, who was raped and tortured in West Virginia, and the Haitian-American woman who was brutally gang raped in West Dunbar Village, Florida, among many other nameless victims whose stories we have yet to hear.

I invite any of you who have ideas on some useful strategies on organizing protests - locally, on campus, on organized trips to the sites where the most publicized acts have occurred - to please post here. Here's a link to a long-standing, international antiwar women's group, Women in Black, who have regularly staged silent protests against wars.

In case you haven't noticed, there's a war against women, a war against people of color, and those of us who intersect those identities, suffer the most from existing in the margins.

Let us work to move "from margin to center" on October 31st!

Image: "Oya Yansa," Yoruba/Santeria Goddess of War, Wind, and Storms.

The Challenges of "Teaching While Black"

I've been so excited with the way I've assembled my newest course syllabus on the subject of women and popular culture, in which I strove for a multiracial, global perspective of women's representations. So, imagine my surprise when one of my white students responded to the only black student in class on our online classroom discussion board (the black student shared a YouTube link to a montage on black women's images in advertising, which she did after my lecture on the constructions of black female sexuality in opposition to white female sexuality):

"Thanks for sharing. I feel that the image of black women in the media hasn't been looked at as closely as that of white women in our class."

Keep in mind that she's saying this after:
1.) I assigned an essay by bell hooks.
2.) I assigned an essay on beauty pageants in Jamaica, and how race shapes local ideals about beauty.
3.) I gave an extensive lecture on the black/white female sexuality divide that I mentioned above.
4) I spent the last two weeks addressing representations of Latinas/Chicana women, including looking at the Juarez situation, and I assigned essays that explored representations of Native, Asian,and Arab women's representations.
5.) Out of all the various readings and videos that I assigned so far this semester, only 3 have looked exclusively at white women. I actually thought there would be more protest that I haven't looked primarily at white women's representations!

I guess I am concerned that the majority of women of color that we studied somehow got translated in my students' minds as "white women." Worse, the "complaint" that we haven't "looked more closely at black women" is also their way of saying: "You're a black woman professor! I expect you to focus more on black women."

I'm not going to worry about this assessment right now because, the next two weeks will be devoted to black women's representations in hip hop and on television. So, you know, we will get to that subject, which I deliberately scheduled later in the semester because I presented a historical overview of various representations of race and gender.

What annoys me is that, as usual, when I make efforts to move beyond "white women" or even move beyond "black women," this somehow becomes problematic. In some instances, when I teach a great deal of women of color narratives, sometimes these women of color are instantly viewed as "black" simply because their work is taught by a black woman. This particular semester is interesting: my pop culture course has raised expectations that I would only deal with black women, hence the comment that we've only been studying representations of "white women" (little did I know that Native, Latina, Arab, and Asian women count as "white").

In another class, a black female student was so excited when I began the course addressing black feminist issues, but as soon as I switched to Native and Asian feminist issues, she's been acting like I've betrayed her. What the hell?

So, this is not even just about what white students think, but also what black students think and expect from us as well. My students nearly went apoplectic because I assigned them in my other course a text written by a Vietnamese woman, who unapologetically wrote in a challenging way to deliberately disrupt Western hegemonic expectations of narrative. It took my Taiwanese student who expressed to the class - "finally! I got to read a book where I didn't have to translate, it was like a breath of fresh air and a break from the rigid rules of English and American culture" - for the rest of my students to calm down and think through the importance of why we need to really and truly honor diversity and diverse perspectives (including expressions and representations).

I guess I'm just pondering how I can teach multiraciality that all students can respect, without the expectations that "as long as I'm learning about me, then it's all good because I don't care about anyone else."

I teach beyond the black/white binary of racial discourses, and it's time that all students and the rest of our society get on board.

Al Gore: The Great White (Male) Hope?

Let me start off by saying that, yes, I voted for Al Gore in 2000. And, like so many others, I was deeply disappointed when he didn't ascend to the White House (despite having actually won the popular vote in the presidential elections). Seven years later, I still feel the severity of his having lost that crucial election, as we all have - what with the largest economic deficit in U.S. history (this, despite Bush Jr. entering the White House on an economic surplus), two devastating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the disasters of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and the continuing erosion of our Civil Rights laws.

On the other end of this, Gore has made a monumental comeback (while his 2000 political rival has suffered greatly from being incredibly disliked) by winning Academy Awards, Emmys, and now - the BIG prize: The Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising awareness of global warming and climate change.

No sooner do I read this news in the papers and online this morning than the TV morning shows start speculating big time: Will he or will he not run for president in 2008?

As pleased as I am about Gore redeeming himself after such a crushing defeat in 2000, I can't help but criticize what these speculations really imply: finally, a white male Democrat who might really have a chance at winning the damn race!

I heard the message loud and clear: whatever popularity (or lack thereof) Democratic front runners Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama may actually be enjoying at present, in the long run, the nation is still not prepared to take either candidate seriously. The fact that news pundits are now drumming up excitement because a former vice president has now garnered an internationally esteemed award means that they've been looking (or at least waiting) for a viable white male candidate to emerge in the race with enough popularity and international reputation to become the new (and possibly "rightful"?) front runner in the race to the White House.

Whatever we may think about the personal politics of either Clinton or Obama (isn't it interesting? I had to consciously refer to Hilary Clinton by her last name when I didn't when writing about the guys!), I think we should all pay attention to the undercurrents in various political reportage that suggest, no matter how progressive everyone thinks we are, that our nation really isn't ready for either a female president or a black one.

At this particular juncture, I personally don't care about history-making in the next presidential elections. The present regime has caused so much damage - domestically and internationally - that I'm going to have to vote on the next candidate based on their abilities to both A.) establish a diplomatic and can-do presence in the executive office and B.) subtly work with while subtly undermining the power of corporations and the various powerhouse people who lobby for them - all while avoiding getting assassinated, I might add. Which, to me, means being subtle enough, sophisticated enough, and wise enough to do the job. Who among our candidates can do this both in Washington and on the world stage? And, when pondering these questions, can we do so without belaboring our anxieties over that candidate's race and gender?

Meanwhile, I have not missed the message delivered this morning: at the end of the day, America still expects a white man in the Oval Office, hence asking if Al Gore is, indeed, "the Great White (Male) Hope."

Toning Down My Professorial Tone: Or, Trying Not to be Perceived as an Intellectual Snob

I was once banned from a popular entertainment discussion board (where all we talked about were TV shows of all things - and no, I will not name this particular forum), and the reason given to me by the moderator was that I "lectured" too much. In a forum in which anyone said anything, and ANYTHING was said, from the most obscene expletives to various explicit descriptions of people's personal lives, as well as name-calling and shouting matches, it took me arguing a point in a somewhat "professorial tone" that got me banned from the group ... forever!

I don't consider myself to be elitist (otherwise I wouldn't deign to even participate on such a board), and I do believe in engaging with various online communities to share in my love of discussing entertainment, politics, and black culture. So, imagine my alarm that I would yet again invite displeasure in another online setting - this time on another blog, where the blog owner chastised me for "lecturing."

Perhaps it's because I lecture for a living that I would invite this kind of criticism, but after a while, I cannot help but wonder: is it the mere fact of my lecturing and, hence, appearing to "look down my nose" at other people in the online community, or is it my choice of words, the very tone of which screams that I have a PhD without my announcing this? I've always known that language is power, but do our very word choices and phrasing signal to others that we are in a powerful or privileged position, so our very presence makes others uncomfortable? And, I mean really uncomfortable, for if I get banished from a forum for "lecturing" while others talk trash, obviously one form of communication is considered intimidating while the other is considered "acceptable."

At least in the blogging context, the blog owner explained - when I protested her singling me out in what she called a "shouting match" between myself and another poster - that I didn't need to bring all of my "elitism" and "sanctimony" in the mix, which had the effect of making the other poster feel "dimwitted" and "unenlightened." That was certainly not my intention, but when the other person lashed out at me, because of this perception, and I defended myself in response, I'm the one who got smacked down and subsequently "lectured" for being such an elitist, intellectual snob, and how dare I breach this online agreement to not bring my intellectualism along with me.

Sigh. I guess I never got that memo.

So, I'm in an awkward position - now feeling very anxious that I don't participate on blogs or in discussion forums in a way that calls me out as an academic, to at least dial down my "professorial tone." It's a tone that I've acquired after 10 years of training, so it's really hard to go back to what I was before I became an academic. I strive to write in ways that others can understand me, I try to avoid jargon, and I in no way use any jargony expressions online, so I realize there's something else to pay attention to when others call me out for being an intellectual snob: it's an undercurrent of knowledge that encodes with it a sense of power and privilege, not the only kind of knowledge or power that exists but the kind that gets legitimized (see, there I go using one of those words that call me out: but this is my blog so I'll write the way I feel most comfortable here).

At the same time, I would like to write and express myself in my comfort zone without freaking others out, especially in a society that celebrates anti-intellectualism. I'll always remember the self-silencing I once imposed on myself when participating in a community activist group that invited people of color to address anti-war in the context of anti-violence, and I immediately knew that I dare not speak up, for what came out of my mouth would be perceived as "too much knowledge" or "too much education" or, worse as a black female intellectual trying to connect with her local community, "she thinks she's all that!"

And while I remained silent, all the lawyers and preachers and physicians (in short, the other middle-class professionals of color) took the lead in speaking for their working-class sisters and brothers and were not "smacked down," in fact, their knowledge and their power were immediately recognized, appreciated, and, most importantly, respected.

I guess I'm wondering how academics can truly speak in a way that other non-academics can understand and respect. I'm not talking that street-mimicking, clown-foolery of the Michael Eric Dysons of the black intelligentsia (who even Chris Rock makes fun of as that "scholar who talks fast and quotes a lot of rappers") but in a way that keeps the discourse real yet intelligent (versus "intellectual"). How can we talk without non-academics immediately feeling "dimwitted" and "unenlightened," or in the case of a Dyson, "too much talk and not enough walk," whenever we have a point to make?

At the end of the day, I'd just like to be accepted on my own terms, without anyone having to "feel stupid" when I have something to say. Because, honestly, I'm really not looking down at anyone, and if anyone has ever felt like that, then I apologize for giving that impression.

Ground Zero for Violence Against Black Women: The Rape Epidemic in the Congo

Here is an update on the widescale sexual violence against African women, as reported in the Sunday New York Times.

Just a vivid and horrific reminder that when we engage in warfare, financed by a global economy, our bodies (especially the bodies of women of color) receive the brunt of the terror.

On "Would Be" Lynchings: Hate Crimes, Rape, and the Military Industrial Complex

As much as I really need to take time away from this blog to tend to more pressing issues in my daily list of duties, I felt the need to respond to three things that I read today. Here is the laundry list:

1. Transcript featuring Megan Williams' testimony on what had happened to her when she was held captive and tortured by white supremacists in West Virginia.

2. An Op-ed piece in The New York Times on Blackwater by Maureen Dowdy.

3. A childhood idol, John Mellencamp, has joined in the fight for the Jena 6 (much like another childhood idol, David Bowie) with a new song and video called "Jena". See The Nation article, which includes song lyrics.

Somehow, these three stories are connected. I've read and heard some deeply shady things about Blackwater - from their present deployment to the streets of New Orleans (where they may perhaps carry out the same carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq - covertly or not) to their beginnings as a militia group in 1996 (just one year after the Oklahoma City bombing, when the media pretended that Timothy McVeigh acted in isolation) to their founder having not only been an ex Navy SEAL but an arch conservative who funded anti-abortion groups (who for all we know may have been behind those abortion clinic bombings) to, now, carrying out sinister deeds the world over as a privatized army funded by Halliburton.

Against this domestic and foreign backdrop is a series of hate crimes - which the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented as on the rise and which more and more bloggers have been spreading the word about.

I keep making the argument that we as feminists - especially as feminists of color - have GOT to address these local issues in global or transnational perspective. The old paradigms - black-on-black violence, sexual violence, etc. - have become far too complex for us to have these conversations in isolation. I had already noted that, over the summer, two horrific crimes - the Newark murders of three black college students and the Dunbar Village rape - reminded me too much of Latin American and Caribbean style executions that only a secret police force trained in a terrorized police state would administer (it turns out, in the case of Newark, that the murderers were most likely former secret police from the Dominican Republic who are infamous for gunning down Haitian workers and Dominican labor activists in similar ways that the Newark youth were killed, and I still maintain that the Haitian-American rape victim in Dunbar Village, Florida may have been targeted by youth who were trained or have been influenced by Haiti's brutal Tonton Macoutes police force).

Unfortunately, because of the myopia with which we here in the U.S. have learned to view such news, we have overlooked some serious transnational issues. What many of us immediately viewed as extreme versions of "inner-city" black youth violence may actually have connections to a much larger and far scarier global state police presence where militaristic torture and violence are standard tactics, now visited upon the most vulnerable of the U.S. population - people of color.

While Blackwater is now under investigation in Congress, and as West Virginia law officials investigate the Megan Williams case, will we continue to view these events without connecting the dots? I certainly had not missed the Abu-Ghraib-like torture tactics employed against Megan Williams - after all, one of the perpetrators in Abu Ghraib also hails from West Virginia.

Meanwhile, when Megan lets us know that her perpetrators threatened to "lynch" her (and we still want to debate if this is a hate crime?), the threat of nooses hangs in the shadows of Jena and at the University of Maryland, even at Hempstead University (where a black professor was threatened with a noose hanging outside his office).

For my students who struggle to understand how racism, sexism, and imperialism intersect, we need only look at Blackwater, founded by a man who linked anti-abortion with U.S. imperialism. While we may not understand how these 'isms connect, those in power sure do!

Now that the Bush regime has let corruption and lawlessness reign, let us resist and protect ourselves in this culture of hate. We can pretend all we want that our borders are safe and that we are protected from the "terror" that exists "over here." But, terror has always existed here, and those of us who have been targeted know that this didn't start with 9/11.

As John Mellencamp sings: "Take your nooses down."

Speaking of Brothers Who "Love Us the Way America Loves Them"

In the wake of Clarence Thomas's new autobiography, Anita Hill finds herself on the defensive again, this time offering an opinion piece in today's New York Times: The Smear This Time.

Please check it out; it's worth a read. I'm inundated with a great deal of work and pending deadlines at the moment, so cannot offer a more detailed critique. But, I just wanted to get the word out, lest you overlook it.

Brother Outsider: When Black Men Speak Out Against Sexual Violence

I've been thinking about Gina's challenge to brothers over on What About Our Daughters to speak on the issue of violence against black women since this month is National Domestic Violence Awareness month. Lest any brothers are tempted to say something less than illuminating on this important issue, I thought I would resurrect some poignant words from a sensitive and gifted poet, Essex Hemphill, a gay black man who died of AIDS in 1995. I believe his poem, "Conditions XXI," which originally appeared as "To Some Supposed Brothers," and was republished as part of a larger poem cycle, in his book, Conditions, still resonates and was recently featured in Aishah Shahidah Simmons' documentary film, No!

This "brother outsider," like his "sister outsider" counterpart, Audre Lorde, rightfully places the problem of intraracial sexual violence within the national context of racialized and heterosexist violence:

You judge a woman
by the length of her skirt,
by the way she walks,
talks, looks, and acts;
by the color of her skin you judge
and will call her "bitch!"
"Black bitch!"
if she doesn't answer your:
"Hey baby, whatcha gonna say
to a man."

You judge a woman
by the job she holds,
by the number of children she's had,
by the number of digits on her check;
by the many men she may have lain with
and wonder what jive murphy
you'll run on her this time.

You tell a woman
every poetic love line
you can think of,
then like the desperate needle
of a strung out junkie
you plunge into her veins,
travel wild through her blood,
confuse her mind, make her hate
and be cold to the men to come,
destroying the thread of calm
she held.

You judge a woman
by what she can do for you alone
but there's no need
for slaves to have slaves.

You judge a woman
by impressions you think you've made.
Ask and she gives,
take without asking,
beat on her and she'll obey,
throw her name up and down the streets
like some loose whistle --
knowing her neighbors will talk.
Her friends will chew her name.
Her family's blood will run loose
like a broken creek.
And when you're gone,
a woman is left
healing her wounds alone.

But we so called men,
we so called brothers
wonder why it's so hard
to love our women
when we're about loving them
the way america
loves us.