After watching a few episodes of Mr. Robot last night, I'm still trying to understand how the show didn't come across my âȘ#âMuslimFacebook⏠at all.
Forget about the fact that it's an Arab dude who created the show or there's an Arab dude who's playing the main character. Whatever.
But there's a hijabi character in it â when I saw her in the first episode, I thought I was making her up. Because, if there was a hijabi character on a show like this, why didn't I even hear about the character OR the show?
And then, I thought: maybe it's because a hijabi character working with an [illegal] underground hacking organization that is trying to dismantle exploitative corporations doesn't jive as well as a hijabi character working for a law enforcement agency that thrives and profits off of the dehumanization of Muslims as terrorists (cough, cough Quantico).
what up, fam? why are we so keen on buying into the "bad" muslim, "good" muslim binaries set up for us? I am super PSYCHED to see where the (currently token) hijabi character in Mr. Robot goes. And I absolutely REFUSE to watch Quantico.
I'm not about 'representation' for the sake of 'representation.' I'm about good entertainment with legit politics, and Mr. Robot is some damn good entertainment with a side of politics that is on point. It's also what I thought Scandal was going to be when I started watching it, tbh. Such a relief to see a show like this not only on TV, but also getting the awards it deserves. Waiting to see where this goes.Â
childrenâs book:Â happy slaves make george washington his birthday cake!
Yes, this book is real. Published by Scholastic.Â
A description of the book reads:Â
Everyone is buzzing about the president's birthday! Especially George Washington's servants, who scurry around the kitchen preparing to make this the best celebration ever. Oh, how George Washington loves his cake! And, oh, how he depends on Hercules, his head chef, to make it for him. Hercules, a slave, takes great pride in baking the president's cake. But this year there is one problem--they are out of sugar.
Clearly the problem here is that âthey are out of sugarâ and not, you know, the fact that Hercules and his family are slaves. Â
But this all just adds to the fact that diverse writers are not enough to change the landscape of literature. We donât just need more writers of color. We need writers who are politically aware and conscientious of the impact of their work.Â
The more I [intentionally] read books by people of color, the more Iâm coming across extremely problematic works of literature ââ works that are âlegitimizedâ because of the authorâs ethnic and/or racial identity, but carry problematic and racist undertones.
It is not enough that the author simply be a person of color. We need to hold our own authors to higher standards for the protection of our own communities.Â
âOur strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness â and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones weâre being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling â their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
to those telling us to mitigate our tears | anger | pain | responses â because drones because US foreign policy because Pakistani government because Pakistani army because media we're telling you: because children when we have spent years trying to make you understand US foreign policy - to look at drone attacks - to sympathize with the children, women, and men being murdered by the US government in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and now Syria - to notice the Pakistani government's complicity in drone strikes and the "War on Terror" - to notice the relationship between what happens in this country and what we do to other countries - to simply see. our. pain. we were told those places are no longer our "homes" - right here is where we should place our concern - not on Gaza - not on Pakistan - not on "foreign" nations - stop sending your money "there" - to not link what happens "here" and "there" because we're co-opting struggles - to. be. numb. so now I'm requesting you to stop. co-opting. our. pain. our. children. our. foreign. nation. our. lives. we are not your case-study. for Pakistan. for Islam. for foreign policy. for war. for political struggle. we are angry. we are in pain. we just lost another batch of <our> children | <our> teachers | <our> parents. we are not suddenly in need of your [academic | Islamic | fair-minded | neutral] insights.
"Slavery did not die because it was unproductive or unprofitable, as some earlier historians have argued. Slavery was not some feudal remnant on the way to extinction. It died because of violent struggle, because enslaved workers continually challenged the people who held them in bondageânowhere more successfully than in the 1790s in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti, site of the first free nation of color in the New World), and because a courageous group of abolitionists struggled against some of the dominant economic interests of their time."
â Sven Beckert in Slavery & Capitalism
âOur strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness â and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones weâre being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling â their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.â
â Arundhati Roy, War Talk
Because international solidarity is important. Because we understand solidarity does not only constitute holding up a sign. Because we have to work towards fighting anti-blackness in our own Pakistani communities. Because we are in this struggle together. Because both brown and black bodies are done violence to by white men in uniforms, different as those uniforms may be. Because we have seen black communities protest against drone strikes for our right to life. Because you too, have that right to life. Because we want you to know you are heard. Because we want you to know you are not alone in this struggle. Because we want you to know we are with you.
Because we want you to know that you have all our love and support until all our peoples are liberated and free to live in peace.
If you are Pakistani and would like to contribute to this campaign, please send your picture to this page or upload your picture on any platform using the hashtag #Pakistan2Ferguson.
"Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women of the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I could have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man- when I could get it- and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [Intellect, somebody whispers] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negro's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure-full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!
And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say."
If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.
'While Ferguson captures the worldâs attention, why do these Asian-American stories remain comparatively unknown?
'One possible answer could be found in the model minority myth. The myth, a decades-old stereotype, casts Asian-Americans as universally successful, and discourages others â even Asian-Americans themselves â from believing in the validity of their struggles. But as protests over Ferguson continue, itâs increasingly important to remember the purposeof the model minority narrativeâs construction. The doctored portrayal, which dates to 1967, was intended to shame African-American activists whose demands for equal civil rights threatened a centuries-old white society. (The original story in the New York Times thrust forward an image of Japanese-Americans quietly rising to economic successes despite the racial prejudice responsible for their unjust internment during World War II.)
'Racial engineering of Asian-Americans and African-Americans to protect a white-run society was nothing new, but the puppeteering of one minority to slap the otherâs wrist was a marked change. The apparent boost of Asian-Americans suggested that racism was no longer a problem for all people of color â it was a problem for people of a specific color. âThe model minority discourse has elevated Asian-Americans as a group thatâs worked hard, using education to get ahead,â said Daryl Maeda, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. âBut the reality is that itâs a discourse that intends to pit us against other people of color. And thatâs a divide and conquer strategy we shouldnât be complicit with.â
'Through the years, that idea erased from the public consciousness the fact that the Asian-American experience was once a story of racially motivated legal exclusion, disenfranchisement and horrific violence â commonalities with the African-American experience that became rallying points in demanding racial equality. That division between racial minorities also erased a history of Afro-Asian solidarity born by the shared experience of sociopolitical marginalization.
'As with Ferguson, itâs easy to say the Civil Rights movement was entirely black and white, when in reality there were many moments of interplay between African-American and Asian-American activism. Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama worked alongside Malcolm X until he was assassinated in front of her. Groups protesting Americaâs involvement in the Vietnam War, like the student-run Third World Liberation Front, united resisters across racial lines under a collective radical political identity. W.E.B. DuBois called on African Americans to support the 1920s Indian anti-colonial resistance, which he compared to whitesâ oppression of blacks. Chinese-American activist Grace Lee Boggs, who struggled as a female scholar of color, found passion in fighting similar injustices against African-Americans alongside C.L.R. James in the 1950s. Though Afro-Asian solidarity wasnât the norm in either groupsâ resistance movements, the examples highlight the power of cross-racial resistance, and what hardships they shared as non-whites.
'The concept of non-whiteness is one way to begin the retelling of most hyphenated American histories. In Asian-American history, non-whiteness indelibly characterized the first waves of Asians arriving in the mid-1800s in America. Cases like People v. Hall (1854) placed them alongside unfree blacks, in that case by ruling that a law barring blacks from testifying against whites was intended to block non-white witnesses, while popular images documented Asian-American bodies as dark, faceless and indistinguishable â a racialization strengthened against the white supremacy of Manifest Destiny and naturalization law. Non-whiteness facilitated racism, but it in time also facilitated cross-racial opposition. With issues like post-9/11 racial profiling, anti-racism efforts continue to uphold this tradition of a shared non-white struggle.'
Ridley Scott on 'Exodus': Profit > People of Color
âI canât mount a film of this budget, where I have to rely on tax rebates in Spain, and say that my lead actor is Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such,â Scott told Variety. âIâm just not going to get it financed. So the question doesnât even come up.â
the white manâs new burden: rewriting history by erasing people of color from itâs pages. or, you know, putting them in their place as simply slaves and servants to their white masters.
'Watching foreign news treatment of Michael Brown is particularly illuminating. In Japan, newscasters call him âBrown-sanâ, using the honorific suffix â-sanâ out of respect. In Mexican coverage, he's referred to as a âjovenâ, in Brazil, a âjovemâ, in Taiwan, a âxiaonianâ - all words for a âyoung manâ. In other words, he is treated as a person.
'But in the US, we are warned that Michael Brown âwas no angelâ. We are told that he made rap songs. We are reminded that he was quite tall (just as tall as his killer), and a bit overweight (this part makes him scary). Fox News has worked to cast doubt on whether he was headed to college or not. Any facade of humanity that Brown might have had has been stripped away, all the better to show us the terrifying monster within.'
