ENGL 2880: BLACK POWER, YELLOW PERIL @thisworldfeelsheavy-blog - Tumblr Blog

Consuming Media with a Grain of Salt

While working on the outline for this Tumblr post I decided to take a short, mindless break to browse my Quora newsfeed. I came across one question that asked, “What myths do we most commonly realize are false in our 20s?” For those of you who are unfamiliar with Quora it’s a website and app where you can ask questions and a community of users interested in the same topic as you can answer it; the most upvoted answer gets pinned as the official answer for others to see while browsing questions in the same topic. There was one answer I not only particularly liked, but also thought ended up relating to the content of this post in the most tangential yet significant way. Quora user Maggie Sutherland Cutter responded, “Myth: That the world is full of people who care. Actually, it’s full of people who don’t give a shit, and some truly evil people too. There are good people too, but the nasty ones make a lot of noise and the others are as quiet as a mouse.” Immediately after reading her take on “the nasty ones” that make a lot of noise and “the others” who are as quiet as mouse, I was able to tie together a few of my own and two of my classmates’ Tumblr posts for the below…

One of the purposes of ENGL2880′s weekly Tumblr posts was to continue the dialogue of Black Peril, Yellow Power outside of class, and one of the main ways we could do so was by writing out our thoughts on what we had read or seen in the media that week via various media sources. These media sources tended to be online news outlets but varied in “softness” and ”hardness” (From Twitter and YouTube videos to LA Times and The Atlantic Op Ed’s).

When it comes to talking about race in America, it becomes incredibly risky to fully rely on any news sources, whether soft or hard, as an objective source of information because first, there are powerful corporate media conglomerates that decide what news the public consumes – we’ll label these people as “the nasty ones” in relation to Cutter’s Quora answer above. All news is curated by what I like to view as gatekeepers (who often fail to be 100% objective, hence “nasty”), and so it becomes the public’s task to carefully trudge through a plethora of in order to form their own well-formulated opinions.

Within the realm of media, it is both a blessing and a curse that for the public today, word spreads at the speed of light in due to its digital aspect. In Keywords for Cultural Studies’ “Digital” section, Tara McPherson notes how computers, which were based on an analog computing system at its inception, have fully transitioned to digital computing; this transition from analog to digital “suggest that digital machines win out because they are more precise, have greater storage capacities, and are better general-purpose machines.” But I’m not sure that I can agree with this statement. I can easily pick out news articles from the digital news world that fail to account for or even acknowledge racial minorities in the ways that they want to be heard and represented.

Take Pat’s “The Racialization of Hanley Ramirez” post. Hanley Ramirez, a Red Sox player who at one point was considered to be the best prospect in the MLB, has been shut down time after time by Boston media. Both hard (The Boston Globe) and soft (Red Sox fans on Twitter) media have made constant, racially charged, and therefore unjustified jabs at Ramirez ever since he returned to play for the Red Sox in November 2014. What was supposed to a “welcome home; we’re rooting for you despite the many injuries you may incur this season” from the Boston media ended up materializing as a series of “fuck you; you can do better”-esque articles and Tweets. Everyone gets injuries, everyone player has rough patches… but wait, why does it even become necessary for me to defend Ramirez with these statements? Because as far as I’m concerned, Ramirez isn’t to blame for any of these situations that media likes to corner him into. What’s unfortunately at play here is the broader dominant stereotype of Latinos in America being reflected directly onto Ramirez, and what’s troubling about this is that absolutely anyone with a voice in the digital space, AKA anyone with access to the Internet, can freely and ignorantly apply the “lazy,” “unintelligent,” and “criminal” stereotypes without facing negative consequences.

Speaking of consequences, McPherson’s concluding statement in the “Digital” essay seems to rectify her initial statement regarding digital computing. She writes, “We must remember that the digital is embedded in an analog world even as it increasingly shapes what is possible within that world. ‘Digital’ emerges from and references particular histories, and these histories have consequences. By examining how these histories came to be, we will better understand and, perhaps, shape our present.” While McPherson manages to remind readers to keep “particular histories” in mind, her statement seems optimistic at best. Hanley is a “lazy slob” to the Red Sox team and fans because in the greater American culture, Latinos take up space and don’t contribute much else. Could the same be said about a White MLB player who underwent the same exact circumstances? Would the same patronizing tone in news article, same overly vulgar words in Tweets, have been used?

The jabs don't stop at Hanley; they are also directed at teammates Pablo Sandoval and David Ortiz, who, despite their huge 2015 contributions, share the racialized victim spotlight along with Hanley. Below, a Boston Globe article published just two days ago (December 9, 2015):

In addition to written bias and the consequences the authors of these articles don’t face due to the larger umbrella parent companies that protect them with a security blanket, there are also tons of public figures in media who can say and do as they wish without being reprimanded. Public figures (ex. actors, singers, athletes) have an unfathomable amount of power to influence the public in a positive way. Yet Matt Damon recently willingly put his foot in his mouth in the filming of HBO’s Project Greenlight. Matt Damon is a White and male actor (producer in terms of this show) who shut down Black, female, and (do I really need to insert) widely acclaimed, producer Effie Brown in the Project Greenlight clip below for not being familiar with his definition of (and apparently the standard definition of) diversity. In Darling’s “Separate But Equal” Tumblr post, she points out the visible hurt on Brown’s face as she is reprimanded by someone who, just by being a human being, should be respecting other points of view. Choosing to be ignorant about race and gender does not fall into the action of such respect. Damon is seen here telling Brown that diversity is fulfilled as long as it’s done through the casting of the film where actors and actresses are visible on-screen, and that it couldn’t be less of a priority if there was no diversity among the producers and directors behind the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHRaVXrB7E

This brings me to scholar Ania Loomba’s argument in the “Media” essay of Keywords and Cultural Studies in which she notes, “People of color, women, sexual minorities, and other subaltern individuals posess less power within the media system, which has often represented them in stereotyped, limited ways. In other words, mass media do not hail all bodies equally.”

But of course, all of this isn’t to say that all media is bad. As Quora’s Maggie Cutter notes, “There are good people too, but the nasty ones make a lot of noise.” Indeed, the nasty media make a lot of noise. In stark contrast to the Tweets bashing Ramirez we can see how journalist Shaun King recently used Twitter as a tool to not only further proceed with his inquires (to Chicago Police Department and city officials) regarding Laquan McDonald’s murder, but also to drive McDonald’s story to the forefront of the news agenda. His Tweets from the week of November 25 have interestingly all been deleted, which raises the questions: What is the media’s agenda really? And does a digital outlet exist in which one can voice the truth? One of King’s Tweets from the week of November 25 read, “5 new videos of #LaquanMcDonald. All 5 have faulty audio, seem edited. The police explanations are shady at best” and when you try to access the actual Tweet from a Google search, all you get is this:

Although, this Tweet from yesterday which reads as an objective statement has yet to be deleted…

Let’s not forget that there are also hard news outlets that help to alleviate the nasty side of digital media. Like this article:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-doctors-can-confront-racial-bias-in-medicine/

And this video by Slate: “This Is What Happens When Writers’ Rooms Aren’t Diverse”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/10/19/when_writers_rooms_aren_t_diverse_people_of_color_often_suffer_from_misrepresentation.html

Fresh Off The Boat and Empire are two shows that have managed to let Asian and Black communities have more agency in media, but there’s undoubtedly still a long way to go for completely unfiltered characters to be portrayed on shows written by more diverse writers’ rooms. Many of the racial minority families and communities being portrayed in these shows are, at the end of the day, shown because they are palatable to White writers’ rooms otherwise known as White standards.

But when digital media can be overbearingly painful to sift through, where else can we turn to? Forms of literature. Literature doesn’t just serve as an alternative to online news and long-form pieces, but is the gracious element in ENGL2880 that provided us with groundwork to form critical thoughts and opinions on anything we consumed through digital media. In Keywords for Cultural Studies, Sandra M. Gustafson is quick to point out that literature is not limited to poetry, drama, or books. Literature takes on oral forms and the oral genre is particularly important for ethnic-minority writers. But Gustafson also notes, “today, the rise of electronic media poses important challenges to print culture. Beginning in 1990, a series of books and studies has tracked the impending ‘death of literature,’ linking its demise to social trends such as the rise of the World Wide Web.” Speaking on behalf of the mainly print-based literature we’ve read in class this semester, it would be naive to accuse it of dying simply due to the a cultural shift to a digital network of information. Literature provides us with a critical discourse with which we can choose to digest or not digest the range of hard and soft news that is being churned out to us daily.

For instance, Stokeley Carmichael’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America looks into submission-aggression syndrome, the tendency for a Black employee/worker to “willingly” accept the strategies suggested by a White leader in a meeting room. After said meeting “the Negro precinct workers will tell you that they had to ‘go along with all that talk’ in order to make sure that they were represented.” In reading about this, I then can read and think about William Petersen’s “Success Story, Japanese-American Style” NY Times article through this new perspective. If Petersen is a modern-day, hypothetical, White newsroom head honcho/employee whose article has just been given the OK to proceed with, then we can easily picture the minority reporters in the same meeting room experiencing submission-aggression syndrome. Going off of Maggie Cutter’s answer on Quora, the “nasty ones” thus continue to make a lot of noise and “the others,” AKA minorities with valid voices are forced to be “as quiet as a mouse.” Boston Globe writer Nick Cafardo, Matt Damon, and White writers’ rooms resemble Petersen in that they all play off of integration in a non-problematic way.

So, there’s the good and the bad within the digital world of news, and it’s critical that we are tastefully picky about which sources to turn to. In consuming news, knowing the type of content a particular publication tends to lean towards can be known by looking at the history and ownership of the publication. But being that doing so takes some extra work, it can’t hurt to turn to scholarly readings to continue to confront oppressive norms, like the fact that news in America has and continues to convenience Whites over minorities through the Internet, arguably the largest medium of influence in America today.

Trip to the Johnson Museum

Our class’s trip to the Johnson Museum was informative because we didn’t just zip from room to room trying to absorb as much as we could for the sake of time. We instead thoroughly examined just a few pieces of art. I was particularly drawn to the first piece we saw, which was Mickalene Thomas’ Sleep: Deux Femmes Noires (2013).

When Priscilla and I observed this work, we asked ourselves - why did she make it a collage? Even their bodies are kind of split - they’re together but it looks like they could easily come apart or be forced apart. Their facial expressions - they don’t seem happy but they don’t seem like they’re in pain either. Their bodies are comfortable with each other. It also looks like they have a need to be together. We also looked at the cutouts surrounding their bodies, which, looking at the type of print Thomas chose, are rather noisy patterns. I wondered if the cutouts could perhaps represent some sort of clutter, and we eventually came to interpret them as society’s objection to the women’s sexuality and race.

Our guide then told us to keep in mind a 3-step process when examining any work of art, which was 1) Look at what is in front of you - just examine, don’t do anything more or less. 2) Analyze: Look for patterns, any repetitions 3) Interpret: What do you make of the patterns you’ve observed? What do they mean? In following this process, our class collectively examined this work again. We focused on the two bodies, wondered what type of body language being represented, and came to a broad but concrete agreement that the two women’s body language was pointing to a critique of institutional racism.

A fascinating takeaway from this class was our guide’s insight on the museum’s layout. I had never thought to think beyond the fact that there are categorized rooms of different types of artwork (by culture, by artist, etc.). But within each room, there’s a reason that a certain painting is hanging with a lot of extra wall space and displayed at eye level, compared to a collection of 3D objects that are displayed together under one broad label despite each item being from distinctly different cultures.

#mickalene thomas #johnson museum #deux femmes noires #sleep #mixed media

darling897-deactivated20190901

To tackle it, doctors need to think hard about what it means to be “objective”

Medicine has a Race Problem

This article is about a recent study that shows that doctors were far more likely to fail to order medication for a person of color.

“Doctors are less likely to diagnose black patients with depression yet more likely to diagnose psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Hispanic HIV patients are twice as likely to die as white HIV patients, and black HIV patients are less likely to get antibiotics to prevent pneumonia. There is, however, one procedure that doctors are more likely to perform on black patients: amputation.”

Doctors are more biased when diagnosing someone because of their race. This connects to The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Brave Orchid is a doctor, yet she can’t practice medicine when she come’s to this country. Instead she has to work in jobs that require no education. This also connects to how easy we found it to diagnose her with some kind of mental issue when we couldn’t relate to what she was saying in the last chapter. This ties in with our discussion of modernity and how people who are educated and more “progressive” are supposed to be more advanced. You would think that someone like a doctor would be objective and not be influenced by race. We are supposed to be more open and understanding because we live in such a liberal country, yet we let people die all the time because we still cannot embrace all the different races.

The study found that being uncomfortable is what drives most doctors to rush out of encounters with patients of other races. To solve this issue we need to encourage more people of color to practice medicine because they understand that race is a social experience, not just a biological fact that predisposes certain patients to certain diseases.

There’s another study on The Atlantic that found that there are differences in the quality of care in hospitals between a Black and a White person. But the differences are very small. There has been so much improvement made in this area. Now a Black person in a hospital is treated almost as good as a White person. Blacks in hospitals are treated twice as better as they were 10 years ago. This is of course still not what we want. We want equal treatment for all races. There are still many hospitals that do not treat all their patients the same because of their race. Even though the quality of care has improved, the treatments have not. Other races have a shorter life expectancy and are prone to more health issues.

thisworldfeelsheavy-blog

toreadandriot

All too often, when people depict others as threats to freedom of speech, what they really mean is "Be quiet!"

So let’s talk about the difference between Freedom of Speech as a RIGHT and Freedom of Speech as an IDEAL.

As the article above points out….people these days are really missing the point about what really matters.

Whether it’s on purpose or not, the issue of institutional racism rampant on college campuses is being overshadowed by arguments about the 1st Amendment.

And don’t get me wrong. The 1st Amendment is great! It allows me to write posts like this and participate in protests (at least when there’s not too many people of color involved because then we just become a “mob of thugs” or some shit).

But back to the two meanings of free speech.

So Freedom of Speech as a right.

It is protected by the government.

There are time, place, manner restrictions

ex. porn is shown on TV only after a certain time in the night

There are also content-based restrictions

ex. Yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre

ex. Slander or use of fighting words

And then there’s Freedom of Speech as an ideal.

The idea that you should not silence others.

Being allowed to disagree with others

In a modern liberal democracy, who should say what to whom and how?

To morally criticize someone is not censorship

Yes, we are allowed to say what you want for the most part. But that does not exactly mean that you should.

Don’t start telling jokes at a funeral…..it’s not a law but seriously….why would you?

Don’t yell the word “penis!” in the middle of a classroom…unless you want a bad grade.

Don’t call anyone the n-word. EVER. Just NO.

When it comes to the recent college campus protests, which are moral criticisms of the institutional racism present on campuses and the administration’s lack of action against it, critics are denouncing their efforts because they are “infringing” on those racists’ right to Freedom of Speech.

If someone has the right to turn black girls away from frat parties or write racist graffiti around campus or tell students that it’s OK to dress in whatever offensive Halloween costume you want…..then it is also OK to criticize these types of acts and call for the implementation of a hate crime policy on campuses.

This is not an infringement of the 1st Amendment. It’s about calling to action against racial discrimination on campuses which is inherently as REALLY GOOD THING.

Using the Freedom of Speech argument to defend your racist slurs is invalid and morally wrong. You would just be shifting the conversation from what truly matters….on purpose.

The matters of institutional racism on campus and the importance of the lives of black bodies have simply been degraded and have instead been called matters of “hurt feelings” or “self-entitlement”.

This is the kind of reaction people are having towards to protests that aim to establish the importance of the lives of people of color.

In relation to the Keyword “Affect”, it is interesting to note that emotional expression is seen as a negative or irrational response. Critics use the feelings behind these protests as a way to bash the way college students these days are too coddled or immature or they even use it as a way to tone police speech and actions taken by the protesters.

However these feelings are a response to the issues of racism that have never left the social and political sphere in the US and should not be ignored or undervalued.

“Burger King came out publicly and stated that Chicago Police deleted their footage on the murder of #LaquanMcDonald https://t.co/VFA3unJWps”

Alys Eve Winebaum writes of the word “nation” in Keywords for American Cultural Studies: “The idea that nations need narratives to exist - that they need to be narrated into being - has resonated for an entire generation of American studies scholars.”

One particular narrative that city gov’t of Chicago has attempted to skew and conceal for too long is the story of Laquan McDonald. “The story would have disappeared had it not been for an anonymous city employee telling freelance journalist Jamie Kalven and University of Chicago civil rights attorney Craig Futterman that the video [footage] would tell a very different story.”

On Nov. 20th, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered for the video footage of Laquan McDonald’s murder to be released by Nov. 25th. Emanuel said in a statement, “Police officers are entrusted to uphold the law, and to provide safety to our residents. In this case unfortunately, it appears an officer violated that trust at every level.”

The problem with Emanuel’s statement and course of action is that it is a little too late and therefore not all that effective at this point. If anything his statement goes to show where he stands in terms of his intentions to stop violence in that city... AKA, not a top priority if a priority at all, lazy, “dgaf,” protect CPD at all costs. It’s concerning enough to see cops protecting each other by implicit code of silence as exemplified by the seven other officers who stood at the scene doing nothing as officer Jason Van Dyke shot 16 times at non-threatening, in-the-midst-of-walking-away Laquan McDonald as well as the time a group of officers walked into the Burger King shortly afterwards to “review” footage but actually ended up deleting 86 minutes of the recording which includes the time of the shooting.

District Manager for Burger King: “We had no idea they were going to sit there and delete files. I mean we were just trying to help the police officers.”

When did officers’ badges give them a right to unlawfully intrude as well as a warrant to kill? Not to mention, the $5 million settlement money that was offered to the McDonald family this past April was a rather poor attempt to cover up the case especially if investigations were going to continue -- great way to circulate the narrative of corruption!!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/shot-laquan-mcdonald-emotionless-court-arrival-article-1.2445077

“Attorneys, activists and journalists have been pushing for the video's release, but the Chicago Police Department had refused, citing the ongoing shooting investigation. But Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama ruled last week that the department did not have the legal right to withhold the video because other agencies including the FBI are the ones investigating, not Chicago police.”

#shaun king #laquan mcdonald #corruption #power #unlawful

Misrepresentation vs. Underrepresentation

“The problem is that Latino actors aren’t just misrepresented but they are also underrepresented.”

Despite the Latino population in the U.S. having increased by 43% from 2000 to 2010, participation and inclusion of Latinos in the media has seen a decline

Not only are just a few mainstream roles reserved for Latino/Latina actors, the few that do exist seem to cater to a stereotypical role

Mic’s experiment spoke mostly to the misrepresentation part of the problem of Latinos in media

Comical aspect: “Fantastic. I heard the whiteness. If I wasn’t convinced you were white before, I am convinced now.”

Arturo’s new show, Alternatino: “Challenging stereotypes directly”

How to address underrepresentation?

“Put the blinders up, just do whatever they say”

Another cringey issue of concern, not exclusive to this video:

^ Comment written in response to the Mic video above

^ Written at the peak of media coverage of Mizzou protests last week

#media #representation #underrepresentation #minorities #television

Brian Hall on “Diversity Crisis” in Silicon Valley

Brian Hall’s article - taken down by Forbes in less than 24 hours, reposted by TechRaptor: http://techraptor.net/content/there-is-no-diversity-crisis-in-tech-by-brian-hall

Dexter Thomas’s re-cap article: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-forbes-tech-meritocracy-20151007-htmlstory.html

“The success of Silicon Valley is not due to diversity — or to any bias. Rather, to brilliance, hard work, risk taking, big ideas and money.”

Brian Hall’s Forbes article stresses meritocracy as the sole key to succeeding in Silicon Valley. To say that Silicon Valley’s companies are “swimming in money and success” and that all it takes to join this crowd is just a little bit of hard work is to completely be oblivious to his privilege as not just a white American, but also a white male. The ability for one to showcase his/her “brilliance, hard work, and risk taking” are severely limited to and by the venture capital investors who decide what projects to fund. Dexter Thomas notes that a majority of the these investors are male+white: “92% of senior investment teams are male, and 78% are white.” Naturally, the lack of diversity is a huge factor in which entrepreneurs’ projects get funded. On top of this, VC investors are a close-knit group who’d rather hear about potential projects via introductions from a mutual friend than consider blind applications.

“Wait. It gets better.

Silicon Valley doesn’t just create greatness, it’s probably the most open, welcoming, meritocratic-based region on the planet. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that disproportionately more Chinese, Indians, and LGBQT succeed in Silicon Valley than just about any place in America. Guess what? Everyone earned their job because of their big brains and ability to contribute.

Is that you?

Then come here! It’s an amazingly inclusive place.”

Inquiries for Hall:

What anecdotal evidence? Does he have personal examples?

Where is he drawing these far-fetched claims from? Where is the statistical data?

Would the token one-two Indian employees in [x] firm agree that they feel “amazingly included?”

You attempt to account for race and meritocracy but where is the explanation on inclusiveness of females?

#silicon valley #diversity #crisis #gender inequality #racial inequality #brian hall

The Met's new Costume Institute exhibit, "China: Through the Looking Glass" shows that Western designers' perceptions of China have often been based on fantasy, but it's time for labels to get real about Chinese shoppers' massive spending power.

“For the fashion designers with pieces on display, it will ultimately be wealthy Chinese consumers who make the final judgment call on this issue—with their wallets. China can no longer exist just in fashion labels’ fantasies if they want to stay in business, and the perception that a garment is culturally tone-deaf will now lead directly to decreased profits.”

“In a recent interview with Andrew Bolton (Met Gala curator) published in Vogue, designer John Galliano noted that he has made this shift consciously since he began including Chinese motifs in his designs decade ago. “I was fascinated with the culture. In retrospect, I think it was because I knew very little about it. Before I visited China, it was the fantasy that drew me to it, the sense of danger and mystery conveyed through Hollywood,” he said, noting that “much later, I learned more about the real China through research—paintings, literature, architecture. My design process involves in-depth research, and I make a scrapbook for every collection with images that show my current thinking. But, yes, my initial interest in China was fueled by movies, by their fantasized and romanticized portrayals.”

While it’s great that Chinese consumers have been receptive to recent years’ designs coming out of these lux European fashion houses and are comprising a larger and larger portion of brands’ customer profits, China’s economic presence shouldn’t be the main factor that prompts European designers to simply begin to consider what symbols, fabrics, colors are true to Chinese history and culture.

[As of 2014] “Chinese consumers make up 38 percent of Prada’s customer base, 37 percent of Gucci’s, and 35 percent of Bottega Veneta’s and Burberry’s, according to estimates from Exane BNP Paribas.”

Another area of concern is the fact that this China-focused exhibit gave voices only to Western/European designers for their perspectives on Chinese aesthetics --> which is technically completely fine, but if that’s going to be the case then I don’t agree with the gala being a collective Western projection of idealistic, fantasy-based thoughts that ultimately gets conveyed to the public as an appropriate way to understand fashion through the Chinese consumer’s lens. It’s this structure of selectively allowing voices and shutting down others that resulted in a bunch of gowns, while beautiful and elaborate, to reinforce old Hollywood tropes such as "the dragon lady.” A structure that Liz Flora, writer of the article, calls “sartorial equivalent of Orientalism.”

Flora: “While many of the dresses being displayed don’t go full-on “dragon lady” and often just take inspiration from films actually by Chinese directors or from Chinese artwork, most of the ones revealed so far do represent the sartorial equivalent of Orientalism”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VOGUE.COM Interview with Andrew Bolton, Gala curator -- 4/23/2015: “From Chanel to Valentino, a First Look at the Dresses in the Met’s ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’” http://www.vogue.com/13253748/china-through-the-looking-glass-met-gala-2015/

Bolton: “While the Met’s show addresses the racial stereotypes—’the lotus blossom, the dragon lady,’ a greater aim, Bolton (curator) explains, is to recast Orientalism in a more positive light as ‘an exchange of ideas and an honored source of influence.’”

...

____________________________________________________________________

While on the topic of sartorial orientalism, another recent instance (this time in the beauty industry) of cultural appropriation being “recast in a positive light”:

http://www.racked.com/2015/9/28/9392021/lime-crime-doe-deere-hated-xenia-vorotova

Beauty brand Lime Crime released a makeup palette in 2012 called the China Doll palette and the description read: "Don't let her milky skin, pouty mouth and flushed cheeks fool you, underneath the poised facade, there lies a heart of a tigress."

“The brand described it as a fantasy based on China, which launched conversations about orientalism and cultural appropriation immediately thereafter. Lime Crime did acknowledge the criticisms, and published a (now deleted) blog post in response to the criticisms. They did not issue an apology for their Asian fantasy — they apologized that people were offended by it. Which is not precisely the same thing as apologizing for their mistake. In the post, Deere describes cultural appropriation as "cultural exchange," and says it is vital to ending racism, bigotry, and misanthropy, and that "what really matters is intent."

#orientalism #cultural appropriation #fantasy #china #america

Kroch Rare Books Archives: Digitized Material Vs. Material Born Digitally

While browsing the different artifacts that Lance laid out for us on the tables, I kept going back to the newspapers of Barack Obama’s presidential victory circa 2008. Newspapers are so commonplace in our everyday lives -- they’re not necessarily something I’d look at and categorize as an artifact. “Artifact” screams “old,” and sounds old. And while newspapers are probably considered “old” to most of the millennial generation (assuming that most of us get updated on current events through social media and news apps, for ex.), it was interesting to think about what “old”/”outdated” means to us students versus Lance, a curator. He had mentioned that while walking past a newsstand in an airport terminal, a magazine cover (that he thought would be a worthwhile addition to the collection) caught his eye, he bought it, and added the copy to the collection once back on campus. It’s almost as if seeing print publications through the lens of a curator allows material to be salvaged before it’s truly gone, because if you think about it, last month’s issues of all magazines have been recycled by bookstores and newsstands by now. So the extra sense of urgency and need to preserve is particularly interesting to think about when it comes to everyday “artifacts” that we don’t think of in the curator’s way.

As for content that only exists online, another question arises: If the millennial generation’s news sources exist only online whether through a specific online news site or Facebook newsfeed, what’s the appropriate method of preserving those communities and entire databases of information for future generations? And what happens when computers, hard disks, other machinery become outdated?

For instance, conversations that revolve around hashtags like #blackpoweryellowperil on Twitter --> represents a community of people that exclusively exist online, with each user from a different region of the country/world contributing a singular digital space. So first, what methods can be used to preserve an intangible network for future generations? And then how do we convey all the further and more complicated race/gender politics within this network?

#curation #museum #obama #newspaper #artifact #library #collection #twitter #community

Great news! TV is more diverse than ever, with an array of shows on both network and cable that feature three-dimensional characters across different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Unfortunately, the writers’ room—where the decisions of who will be represented onscreen and in what way are decided—hasn’t quite caught up yet....

This video speaks on many of the generic tropes we’ve discussed in class: “The Black Best Friend,” “The Ostensibly Asexual Asian Male,” and "The Weird Foreigner” -- the list goes on...

Shows like Fresh Off the Boat, Jane the Virgin, and Blackish are more successful at communicating diversity (in comparison to Girls, That 70s Show, Big Bang Theory, for instance) because many of the writers who comprise the writers’ rooms of these shows understand diversity; they are quite literally the subjects being falsely portrayed. We’re talking people who have lived and continue to live under an oppressive society. And entertainment television so subtly but so powerfully shapes people’s reality and understanding of their identities. It’s not uncommon for a viewer in today’s entertainment media-driven age to be more informed on the Big Bang Theory’s plot line than the key points from the Democratic Presidential Debate. So a room full of only White writers making educated guesses on what it feels like to be non-White just won’t cut it -- wrong delegation of responsibility.

“A majority of White writers aren’t quite sure what to do with the Black characters” so... killing them off is the most convenient, logical thing to do? “If a show isn’t diverse on-screen or off,” then throw in a couple Latina maids as extras? <-- These seem to be typical methods of Hollywood writers’ rooms to resolve racial ambiguity and achieve clarity for themselves. But not knowing what to do with a Black or Asian character essentially translates to utter disinterest and zero desire to uncover the steps that can be taken to ensure character development and value equal to a White character’s.

Racial categories are so dominant in the way that people think about things (whether implicitly/explicitly, about tangible/intangible objects) in the US. Even the objects and events that aren’t initially intended to be discussed in regards to race, can often legitimately be linked to race in one way or another. In a time and place that demands that extra awareness and consideration be given not just to a vague “other” but rather everyone, it’s disappointing that a majority of Hollywood’s writers’ rooms continue to racialize the living crap out of Fez (That ‘70s Show) and B.D. Wong (Law and Order).

Other thoughts: Slate’s video specifically focuses on scripted series, but I wonder how the developers of reality shows would frame an Asian dude for a season of The Bachelor or if there’d ever be more than one Black token judge on Food Network’s Chopped.

Asian and Black communities have certainly been able to expand their agency in media through shows like FOTB and Empire, but the communities of characters within these shows are ultimately able to be televised because they’re palatable and appealing to White standards. As Phi mentioned in Yellow Lines: Asian Americans and Hip Hop for example, there hasn’t yet been a happy medium to accurately portray what exactly an Asian American community is to a White audience because Asian American is such a broad term in itself.

Anyway, have you watched this, @MattDamon?

That leading opera houses have continued to use blackface into the 21st century may be more surprising to many people than the news that the Met is ending it.

Francesca Zambello, artistic director of Washington National Opera: “If I were casting ‘Otello,’ I would work hard to find a black man who is vocally and dramatically appropriate for the role,” she wrote in an email. “But if I could not, I certainly would not present another singer ‘blacked up.’ The great stories and characters fascinate us because we recognize something of ourselves — for better or for worse — in them, and not because of the color of their skin.”

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Zambello’s affiliates herself with the idea that she would make it a priority to cast a black singer if she could, but immediately contradicts her own statement by reinforcing the Western double standard that race is irrelevant in discussions of art forms. This is a pretty worrisome, anxiety-inducing disposition and she’s not the only one who thinks this way, as anyone could easily see in the article’s comments section --> NYT Picks. Does Zambello not consider dark makeup to be “blackface” since the public declaration that she’d willingly cast a black man (if only she were given the chance to) acts as a security blanket for her to think in such an outdated manner?

Her comment that there is a lack of diversity in opera today brings me back to Shimakawa’s analysis of the Jonathan Pryce controversy. Theater directors would go as far as to say that there was no Asian man 40 to 50 years old that matched Pryce’s highly skilled, invaluable acting background. If this was the case, then it should have been applied to all applicable characters. But no one dared to question the casting of the Asian female character since the American perception of Asian women could only be met by matching the images in American audiences’ minds with an actual Asian woman. Pryce could “pass” because of his on-stage grace, presence, and ability to evoke all the necessary emotions out of an audience, but even makeup was inadequate in the case of casting an Asian female character. Juxtaposing/reading this article alongside Shimakawa’s piece shows that opera and theater are lenses with which we can see how faux-color-blindness and orientalism remain prevalent.

#shakespeare #blackface #yellowface #orientalism #colorblind #controversy #otello #play #opera

Lupe Fiasco & Talib Kweli were not happy that a Complex writer used them as examples in article on why people shouldn't hate Drake & Future. Details here.

#lol

I think it goes without saying that when a music genre has stemmed from a particular race as an oral art form, with the purpose of depicting experiences and frustrations in response to cruelties experienced by living as victims of America's racial history, that that particular race should be looked to as the key dominant players of the music genre. In regards to Asian American rappers from outside of the States eyeing the US hip-hop and rap scene as a viable platform to jumpstart their careers, I can definitely see how this evokes frustration and eye-rolls within the African American community. As much as Keith Ape claims to have grown up in admiration of the genre's sound and wanting to spread that sound to a music scene that he clearly knew was lacking, he may not be aware of the extent to which he may be perpetuating black stereotypes through “It G Ma” & other songs (or aware of perpetuation as a concept), as he seems to be implicitly giving himself the OK for admiration of the sound/energy/positive vibes of turn-up music to override the concept of perpetuation:

“Language was a barrier, of course, but he related to “the sound more than the lyrics,” he said. Eventually he decided to make “songs people could turn up to” — raucous party songs, full of energy. In South Korea, “they don’t have that there at all,” he lamented.”

^ This bit from Jon Caramanica's NY Times article brought me back to Jared Sexton's Proprieties of Coalition: Blacks, Asians, and the Politic of Policing and Elaine Kim's representation of Korean storeowners during the LA riot in particular. She notes that postcolonial Korean subjects were "overexposed to American popular culture and history." According to Kim's framework, Keith Ape is allowed to become "infatuated with the rowdier side [of hip-hop], especially music from the South" without historical/background knowledge since Korea isn't as educated on racism as America is, generally speaking. If this is true, then is OG Maco 100% valid in accusing the music video of being inauthentic in terms of the way Keith Ape + co. dresses, the way they talk/walk, and their overall lifestyle (note: Makgeolli, Cass beer, etc. @ http://noisey.vice.com/blog/keith-ape-jayallday-loota-okasian-and-kohh-it-g-ma-korean-u-guessed-it )?

Race shouldn't determine what music people can and can't listen to, but I do think it's necessary to be aware of and recognize the historical/social context that hip hop/rap as genres are biologically linked to. Commercialization's especially blurred the lines of what the genres consist of in today's age, so my guess is that many of us are a bit confused in terms of how to categorize "turn up" music like Keith Ape’s in relation to the storytelling of rap and hip hop. Playlists with artists like Migos, Fetty, YG, A$AP Ferg on rotation excite and occupy the minds of many young audiences today and is widely considered to be rather fitting for turn-up/party situations, so I guess a question I have is, where do the artists of these songs stand in relation to the artists who story-tell and make political statements via lyrical legitimacy (ex. Talib Kweli)?

___________________________________________________________________

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/arts/music/getting-rowdy-keith-ape-and-real-rap-in-korea.html

KEITH APE “He’d listened mainly to South Korean hip-hop before being exposed to Nas’s essential 1994 album, “Illmatic” — via its 20th-anniversary reissue. Initially, his taste veered toward New York classicism. But the more he researched American hip-hop online, the more he became infatuated with its rowdier side, especially the music from the South.

OG MACO

“He was being sincere,” OG Maco said. “I took a certain joy in that he was able to succeed doing his version of something I made.” It likely helped that an arrangement was soon reached: OG Maco would be credited with part of the publishing royalties of “It G Ma.” He declined to be on the song’s remix, though.

_____________________________________________________________________

http://www.complex.com/music/2015/07/keith-ape-trap-star-interview

Wesleyan University's twice-weekly student newspaper since 1868.

I’m very disappointed, to say the least, in the Argus for publishing this. The editors seem to be distancing themselves from all responsibility of cleaning up the mess that they've made, merely defending themselves with the fact that this article is an 100% opinion-based piece. What both the editors and writer fail to realize is that the framing of the writer's argument backed by his lack of, or faux-research, reads as/is an attack on the black community, plain and simple. Who is Bryan Stascavage to say that the Black Lives Matter movement has room for improvement? His excessive emotional investment in and concern for the wellbeing of police force completely trivializes black lives, and sheds light on both his white privilege and lack of understanding of institutional racism.

________________________________________________________________

"I talked to a Black Lives Matter supporter, Michael Smith ’18, who recoiled when I told him I was wondering if the movement was legitimate. This is not questioning their claims of racism among the police, or in society itself. Rather, is the movement itself actually achieving anything positive? Does it have the potential for positive change? There is evidence to support both views. Police forces around the country are making more of an effort to be more transparent, have undergone investigations to root out racist officers and policies, and have forced the conversation to the front pages after being buried on the back pages for far too long."

"I know many of us here at Wesleyan realize that most police officers are good people simply doing a service for their community, and that there are only a few bad apples."

--> I'm not sure how the Stascavage went about conducting his research prior to writing these claims, but this link shows otherwise regarding the “few bad apples” policemen: http://killedbypolice.net/

________________________________________________________________

Lol’ing at this point: "It boils down to this for me: If vilification and denigration of the police force continues to be a significant portion of Black Lives Matter’s message, then I will not support the movement, I cannot support the movement. And many Americans feel the same."

"An organization cannot be labeled based of a small percentage of their membership. There is a reason why so many have shown up to protests across the country: there is clearly something wrong, and wrong enough to motivate them to exit their homes and express their frustration publicly. That is no small effort.”

"At some point Black Lives Matter is going to be confronted with an uncomfortable question, if they haven’t already begun asking it: Is this all worth it? Is it worth another riot that destroys a downtown district? Another death, another massacre? At what point will Black Lives Matter go back to the drawing table and rethink how they are approaching the problem?"

Jennifer Ho's book 'Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture' looks at social and historical issues with Asian Americans and how they are perceived.

Seeing Asian-ness as White-ness 4:25 - Ho: When I was about to move to the South (had gotten my job at UNC) and was living in the Boston area, I talked to my friends about my concerns being asian in the US South. Both of those friends, one of whom was white and one of whom was black, but both had been raised in the US South, told me that I shouldn't worry because for all because for all intents and purposes, people will treat me like i'm white. But I didn't know how to react to that, right? Because what does that mean that people regard all asians as white? They're not going to see me? Or that racism against blacks is so prevalent that being a nonblack will be seen as a protected minority? I mean, it didn't make me feel reassured. It only raised these questions that I have about how do we perceive race and in particular, how are Asians being perceived? Because I don't feel white. I don't really think I get treated as a white person although I will recognize that, not to play into oppression olympics, I do recognize that asians in the US get treated in a different way than african americans.

-Ho’s friends seem to be placing her into the Superior/Insider spectrum of Claire Kim’s field of racial positions graph, which Ho then perceives as Asian Americans being treated “differently” than African Americans. The word “different” strikes me as too vague/simple of a word choice here because it could be referring to different treatment by solely class or solely race (which Sexton points out should be viewed together for successful multicultural coalition). I’m interested to read Ho’s book to see if and how she expands on or touches upon racism and tension among minority groups (ex. Asian-on-black racism), aside from just recognizing the basic hierarchy of White --> Asian --> African American.

Privilege 14:54 - Stasio: There must be some privilege. Something would seriously be lost if i let go of the idea that whiteness is white and pure and everything else is something else. I could only hold onto that if I would lose something else that was a kind of privilege, it seems to me. Why else would I not want to see people as who they are and not where they're from?

-Stasio’s take on privilege is pretty refreshing to hear since I feel like a majority of the “privileged” typically don’t pick up on/don’t know where to even begin on understanding the benefits they reap daily thanks to the racial hierarchy that oppresses the minorities below them

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On Ho identifying as a Chinese-Jamaican 9:08 - Stasio: The idea that if I look at you or if I listen to you speak, I'm going to assume that you're not from the United States so I'm going to ask you where you're from and I'm not going to take any answer like San Diego.

Post-racial America? 10:13 - Stasio: There is nothing like a post-racial America. That that is ultimately important to us -- where you're from, what nationality you are, is a marker. “I can't think about you until I know what ethnicity or what race you are.”

On Racial Binary: 13:08 - Stasio: How is it that the country that prides itself on the melting pot always divides into a binary? (Asking how US’s binary differs from Europe’s -- what?!) Ho: I think there's a lot of contradictions to being in the US, and to being part of American culture. We want things to be simple even though things have always been more complicated and more complex than seeing things as a binary will allow. The US holds a lot of contradictions: We're about freedom but we don't want freedom in a certain way. We want to think that there's only one American but then we have this idea of what that American looks like. + We have had a very complicated history of immigration and settlement. That is different than Europe, certainly.

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