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Irish-Americans, Racism, and the Pursuit of Whiteness
Posted by: | CommentsFrom the archive (originally posted 03-17-2009): Today in New York City and throughout the U.S., Irish-Americans will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Irish heritage(
photo credit: ktylerconk). What few will acknowledge in this day of celebration is the way in which the Irish in American deployed whiteness in order to deflect the racism they encountered in the U.S.
Like many immigrant groups in the United States, the Irish were characterized as racial Others when they first arrived in the first half of the 19th century. The Irish had suffered profound injustice in the U.K. at the hands of the British, widely seen as “white negroes.” The potato famine that created starvation conditions that cost the lives of millions of Irish and forced the out-migration of millions of surviving ones, was less a natural disaster and more a complex set of social conditions created by British landowners (much like Hurricane Katrina). Forced to flee from their native Ireland and the oppressive British landowners, many Irish came to the U.S.
Once in the U.S., the Irish were to negative stereotyping that was very similar to that of enslaved Africans and African Americans. The comic Irishman – happy, lazy, stupid, with a gift for music and dance – was a stock character in American theater. Drunkenness and criminality were major themes of Irish stereotypes, and the term “paddy wagon” has its etymological roots in the racist term “paddy,” a shortening of the name “Patrick,” which was used to refer to the Irish. However, this is also a gendered image and refers to Irish men, specifically. The masculine imagery of “paddy” hides the existence of Irish women, but did not protect Irish women from racism as they were often more exposed to such racism through domestic jobs. Women typically played a key role in maintaining Catholic adherence, which resonates closely with Irishness and difference. The “model minority” (if you will) stereotype of Irish-American women is of a “Bridget,” recognized for her hard work and contribution to Irish upward class mobility.
Simian, or ape-like caricature of the Irish immigrant was also a common one among the mainstream news publications of the day (much like the recent New York Post cartoon). For example, in 1867 American cartoonist Thomas Nast drew “The Day We Celebrate” a cartoon depicting the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day as violent, drunken apes. And, in 1899, Harper’s Weekly featrued a drawing of three men’s heads in profile: Irish, Anglo-Teutonic and Negro, in order to illustrate the similarity between the Irish and the Negro (and, the supposed superiority of the Anglo-Teutonic). In northern states, blacks and Irish immigrants were forced into overlapping – often integrated – slum neighborhoods. Although leaders of the Irish liberation struggle (in Ireland) saw slavery as an evil, their Irish-American cousins largely aligned with the slaveholders.
And, following the end of slavery, the Irish and African Americans were forced to compete for the same low-wage, low-status jobs. So, the “white negroes” of the U.K. came to the United States and, though not enslaved, faced a status almost as low as that of recently-freed blacks. While there were moments of solidarity between Irish and African Americans, this was short lived.
Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century, Irish Americans managed to a great extent to enter and become part of the dominant white culture. In an attempt to secure the prosperity and social position that their white skin had not guaranteed them in Europe, Irish immigrants lobbied for white racial status in America. Although Irish people’s pale skin color and European roots suggested evidence of their white racial pedigree, the discrimination that immigrants experienced on the job (although the extent of the “No Irish Need Apply” discrimination is disputed), the simian caricatures they saw of themselves in the newspapers, meant that “whiteness” was a status that would be achieved, not ascribed.
For some time now, Irish-Americans have been thoroughly regarded as “white.” Evidence of this assimilation into whiteness is presented by Mary C. Waters (Harvard) in a recent AJPH article, in which she writes that “the once-rigid lines that divided European-origin groups from one another have increasingly blurred.” Waters goes on to predict that the changes that European immigrants ahve experienced are “becoming more likely for groups we now define as ‘racial.’” While I certainly agree that the boundaries of whiteness are malleable – it is a racial category that expands and contracts based on historical, cultural and social conditions – I don’t know if it is malleable enough to include all the groups we now define as ‘racial’ Others.
As people rush to embrace even fictive Irish heritage and encourage strangers to “Kiss Me I’m Irish” today, take just a moment to reflect on the history of racism and the pursuit of whiteness wrapped up in this holiday.
Mainstreaming White Supremacy
Posted by: | CommentsThere are a couple of news stories in recent days that suggest a new level of mainstreaming white supremacy in American culture. The first story (via the SPLC and Charles Johnson of LGF) that Robert Stacy McCain is once again blogging at the Washington Times. In case you’re not familiar with him, here’s a little background on McCain (via SPLC):
Robert Stacy McCain, a former key Washington Times editor who has suggested that “perfectly rational people” react with “altogether natural revulsion” to interracial marriage, apparently has returned as a free-lancer to the newspaper he left in January 2008. In a “Special to The Washington Times” article published today, McCain covers a congressional race in upstate New York involving a candidate with connections to the Tea Party movement.
A casualty of the housecleaning that occurred at the Times three years ago, McCain left the paper on his own accord after managing editor Fran Coombs, with whom he was close, was terminated (Coombs had his own connections to white supremacy).
Once identified as a member of the neo-Confederate hate group League of the South, McCain’s reporting while at the Times was always controversial. As editor of the “Culture Briefs” section of the paper, McCain used excerpts from racist publications including American Renaissance magazine and the anti-immigrant hate site VDARE.com. In fact, McCain may be the only mainstream newspaper reporter to have covered four American Renaissance conferences. Twice, he offered no description at all of the group he was covering, which is devoted to race science. Once, he said it was “critical of liberal positions on race and immigration.” Only in 2004 did he note that some viewed it as racist.
While conservative-leaning, the Washington Times is mainstream news outlet, and the re-hiring of McCain – a man with clear ties to overt white supremacist groups – is a noteworthy step toward mainstreaming white supremacy and rendering these kinds of views more acceptable.
The mainstreaming of white supremacy is not new. White supremacist groups in the U.S. since the 1970s have tried a number of strategies to make their views seem more acceptable and their agendas appear benign, such as changing hoods-and-robes for suits-and-ties to participating in the “adopt a highway” program.
The fact is, even apart from these sorts of efforts, the white supremacist ideology resonates beyond these extremist groups.
This is an argument I highlighted in my first book (White Lies, Routledge, 1997). While many people may find the idea of white supremacist ideology an anachronism in the post-civil rights era, the fact is that the views of extremists are reflected in mainstream American culture. For example, the idea that white people – and specifically white men – were the primary force behind building the U.S. (as illustrated in this image from a racist publication) is one that resonates with large portions of the population and is widely repeated by leading news commentators on mainstream news channels. Other examples include when extremely popular shock-jocks such as Don Imus and Howard Stern boost their already-considerable ratings by villifying young, black women. Who needs to bother with joining a white supremacist group when you can listen to Buchanan, Imus and Stern spout the same ideas?
The second story is from Newsweek, which argues that white supremacists are “rebranding hate for the Obama era.” The Newsweek story (released on the web March 12 and set to be released in print on March 22) is a good bit of reporting about extremists groups by reporter Eve Conant and photographer Bruce Gilden. They visited two groups on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group list: the Knights Party, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan (during a cosponsored event with the Christian Revival Center), and the Detroit-based National Socialist Movement (NSM), one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. However, I’m not that persuaded (and don’t think most readers of Newsweek will be) of their argument about the success of these groups at “rebranding hate.” The photo essay by Gilden (from which the image above is taken) is compelling but somewhat at odds with the text of the article. The people photographed do not, I would argue, fit the image of “mainstream” but rather trade on notions of white supremacists as “other,” as extremists not at all like most Americans. It’s an interesting tension.
In a related piece from Newsweek by Joshua Alston, he notes the trend in popular television shows that rely on white supremacists as the go-to bad guy:
“…the supremacy surge seems to be much more acute in Hollywood than anywhere else in the country. The second season of Sons of Anarchycentered on a turf war in the town of Charming, Calif., between a white-separatist group called the League of American Nationalists and a motorcycle gang who are plenty unsavory, but at least they’re not bigots. Your friendly neighborhood serial killer Dexter has dispatched his own supremacist, and all three iterations of the Law & Orderfranchise have featured stories in which murders lead to an underground white-power cell. Even a recent episode of the sci-fi puzzler Fringefeatured a Nazi villain who tries to poison folks at a meeting of the World Tolerance Initiative. In this tenuous moment, when we talk about post-racial America as though saying it can make it so, there’s no more frightening a bogeyman than the occupational racist.”
Alston goes on to offer some analysis of this phenomenon:
“The reason the card-carrying white supremacist lingers in the public imagination is not just because he’s scary, but because he fortifies our self-regard in an area where we all occasionally need some convincing. …to acknowledge—or even inflate—white supremacists is to assuage our guilt with the knowledge that there are people out there far more prejudiced than most of us could ever be. … For writers, these characters have even more appeal. Their beliefs are so stigmatized, there’s no need to bog down the story with motives and expository monologues.”
This, too, is something I’ve noted in the earlier work (White Lies, Routledge, 1997). At the time, television talk shows regularly featured white supremacists as sure ratings-boosters. Providing white supremacists with this kind of platform – whether in fiction or non-fiction television – contains the threat of white supremacy by identifying specific targets (”those are the white supremacists – there”) while it simultaneously lets other whites off the hook. So, the not-so-subtle message gets conveyed that those of us sitting at home watching white supremacists on the television have nothing to worry about.
What’s remarkable here is that two mainstream news outlets – the Washington Times and Newsweek – are calling our attention to the mainstreaming of white supremacy (although there’s clearly a difference of intention and political allegiance between the two news organizations). The question is how will the rest of the U.S. respond to this attempt to ‘rebrand’ hate?
Laughing at Racism
Posted by: | CommentsIt is hard to find anything to laugh about when it comes to racism and anti-racism, but damali ayo (her capitalization) has put together some humorous and satirical books, How to Rent a Negro, and the 2010 book, Obamistan! Land without Racism, to demonstrate the nonsense about a post-racial world with humor and insight.
She has an art background, and has also been involved in eco-activism. Her website describes her approach as “Now Art”:
She describes Now Art as being immediate, participatory, and engaging social issues. Ayo believes that “art should make you think and feel.” She eschews art that is primarily for decoration. She believes that artists and comedians have a special task to push our culture to understand itself in order to change itself.
One of her interesting “Now Art” pieces is a
free practical guide of ten steps to improving race relations titled I Can Fix It! This guide gives ten simple solutions to address our current “third grade level of race relations.” … damali brings the I Can Fix It! guide [download from here] to life in her stage shows where she uses humor, stories, and slides to inspire people. Presented simply and directly, ayo’s approach to race relations is unforgettable. She makes people pay attention to what is going on inside and around them and to take responsibility for changing it. And damali has plenty of first-hand experience doing just that- she started at a young age by integrating her school’s doll collection with Black Raggedy Ann and Andy.
The commentaries by numerous whites on her book point up the impact of even a humorous look at white racist stuff on many whites. The positive and confirmation comments from people of color and some whites are even more interesting and revealing about its truths. Strategies against racism come, and need to come, in many different forms.
Racist Campus Climates, Again in California
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The San Diego Union-Tribune has an article about a racist “ghetto” party by University of California (San Diego) students off campus:
An invitation to the “Compton Cookout” event urged participants to wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly, according to wording circulated by outraged students and verified by campus administrators. As a guide for girls attending the event, the invitation read, “For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks — Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes. …”
White students at many colleges and universities have had these “ghetto fabulous” parties in recent years. Clearly, these white students are acting—likely regularly–out of a racist framing of whites as superior, and of African Americans and other Americans of color as odd and inferior. In this case their mocking images of African Americans seem to accent a modest range of rather old stereotypes, and include a reference to a black community in the Los Angeles area (Compton). Their emotions and narratives of superiority are on display here too.
Note too that “Outrage over UCSD Party Mocking Black Culture” is the title of the newspaper article, revealing a white racial framing by the newspaper writer or editors which appears similar to that of the white students. Gold teeth, fighting, cheap clothes seem to be their view too of “black culture.”
The university has so far responded like the racist performances are no big deal. The chancellor does not seem to be taking the racist partying very seriously since she only issued verbal statements saying “we were distressed” at the offensive party and strongly “condemn” it, but her administration has indicated that the university-recognized fraternity connected to the party will receive no sanctions of any kind for its hyper-racist activities. The meek university response includes a call for students and faculty to attend a teach-in in a few days “to explore how such incidents continue to occur today and to discuss the importance of mutual respect and civility.”
A bit slow and meely to the mark, since this is not the first such incident. University administrators seem uninterested in doing anything serious about their racist campuses, such as some required, term-length instruction in the basics of Stereotyping 101, Respect for Others 101, or Racism 101. One faculty member was also quoted in the Union-Tribune story noting there are few black faculty and students on campus, and that the university has had trouble recruiting them because “There’s something about the climate here that drives black students away.”
Indeed, “something” is not so vague, and it does drive the students away: large-scale white racism.
The article writer/editor also seems favorably inclined toward the fraternity since the article concludes by accenting (and quoting a student who graduated named Washom) that the fraternity
is known for having strong athletics, organizing philanthropic events and being diverse. “I never really found someone who wasn’t courteous or respectful of other people,” Washom said. “I couldn’t see someone doing anything deliberately racist.”
Well, I guess now he has seen it? And have the writer and editor?
Gorillas in The Mist?
Posted by: | CommentsHere ye’!
Here ye’!
Here ye’!
Come one! Come all!
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye [Dante's Divine Comedy].
Come and see the mysterious, allusive, dangerous, and sexy promenade like a powerful lion across the concrete safari. Dare to come face to face with the results of an unequal system that many of you so blindly, but between you and me; internally desire and need to validate your hold on power and resources in this great country we call America. This Los Angeles tour of “the hood” (LA Times: “The ‘hood as a tourist attraction: Activists hope to use money from bus tours for community good.”) will allow you to experience the real flavor of Black and Brown people. Smell poverty, injustice, and disillusionment. Learn jive talk 101! Increase your Swagger, or as the natives call it, “Swagga.”
Through us, you will also be able to hear the loud 21st century drums and safely experience the people as they have traditional dance offs between their rival neighborhood crews. On site, for a small fee, get your authentic graffiti tagged T-shirts. This item of clothing is a sign to your friends when you get back to your segregated neighborhoods that you were actually in the Hood and survived the animals. Even without the scrapped and controversial plan to perform fake water gun drive-bys on tourists, you and your family still will have a memorable time.
Legal Disclaimers: LA tour does not guaranteeing accidental shootings, absence of tears falling from witnessing the pain of others, and that one’s wife will not develop a fetish for Black men, and husbands’ love Black women when witnessing them dropping it like it is hot when dancing.
Boston Cop Fired for Racial Slur in Email
Posted by: | CommentsBoston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said Officer Justin Barrett was fired yesterday for violating department rules when he sent the e-mail on July 22, 2009. In the email, Barrett called Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a “jungle monkey.” The email was sent following the incident in Cambridge last summer when Prof. Gates was arrested in his own home on a disorderly conduct charge. “(Gates’) first priority should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a … jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance,” the e-mail said.
Barrett, for his part, said at the time, “I am not a racist.” Barrett sent the email to several individuals and to the Boston Globe. He went on to explain, saying, “It was a poor choice of words. I did not mean to offend anyone.”
No doubt some will argue that Barrett’s “right free speech” has been violated with this decision, but from my perspective it seems like an appropriate step on the part of the Boston Police Department, and a step in the right direction for those interested in equal protection under the law.
More on Haiti: Will Racism Hinder Relief?
Posted by: | CommentsThere’s a lot of good news about relief efforts to Haiti. As just one example, Haiti-born musician Wyclef Jean’s online and mass media efforts to help his home country have raised $400,000 in the first day. Yet, at the same time, there is a strong current of racism directed toward Haitians that may hinder relief to this devastated Island nation.
In a conversation with Dr. Goddess on Twitter yesterday, she brought my attention to the casual racism of this individual (if her profile is to be believed, a young, white female who loves both beer and Jesus in equal measure):
But surely, I can hear the objections now, this is just the misguided rant of an uneducated person. This young woman is surely an outlier, the exception, rather than the rule. Perhaps. About the same time, I heard the reports of Rev. Pat Robertson explaining what had happened in Haiti:
“…something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, Napoleon III, or whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you get us free from the French. True story. So the devil said okay it’s a deal, so the Hatians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since then they have been cursed by one thing after another. Desperately poor, the island of Hispanola is one side, on the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts et cetera, Haiti is in desperate poverty. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come, but right now we’re helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable.”
So, rather than a proud history of resisting colonial oppression, Haitians are – in Robertson’s mind – aligned with the devil. This seems rather stark racism, in my view, but certainly coat-and-tie racism. While it’s easy to dismiss Robertson as a crank, his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) has a global television audience. CBN was at one time the largest supplier of 24-hour cable programming in the world, claiming to reach 66 foreign countries through 150 local stations, 2,500 satellite cable systems, and even through the U.S. Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. Although the influence and reach of the network has declined in recent years, it would be a mistake to underestimate Robertson’s influence on his audience. The Haitian Ambassador, Raymond Joseph, offered an eloquent rebuttal to Robertson’s nonsense on Maddow’s show last night, saying:
“I would like the whole world to know — America especially — that the independence of Haiti, when the slave rose up against the French and defeated the French army — powerful army — the U.S. was able to gain the Louisiana territory for $15 million. That’s 3 cents an acre. That’s 13 states west of the Mississippi that the Haitian slave revolt in Haiti provided. Also the revolt of the rebels in Haiti allowed Latin America to be free. So, what pact the Haitian made with the devil has helped the United States become what it is.”
Unfortunately, Maddow and the rest of MSNBC do not hold much of the audience share compared to conservative outlets, such as Fox. So, while this thumping by the Haitian Ambassador is getting lots of play by liberal and left-leaning bloggers, it’s not making much of a dent in the conservative reverberation chamber.
And, that brings me to the largest (ahem) conservative pundit of them all, Rush Limbaugh, sometimes referred to as the de facto chair of the Republican party. Limbaugh seems to be the hands-down leader so far in efforts to use racism to hinder relief efforts to Haiti. His recent remarks on the earthquake:
“In the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentleman, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, ‘we have another crisis simply too good to waste,’” the conservative talk show host remarked. “This will play right into Obama’s hands, humanitarian, compassionate.”
“They’ll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in the light-skinned and black-skinned community in this country,” Limbaugh added. “It’s made to order for them. That’s why he could not wait to get out there. Could not wait to get out there.”
In fact, as Allen McDuffee points out at his blog, Governmentality, it’s right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation, that are eyeing the Haitian earthquake opportunistically.
Limbaugh also suggested falsely that the U.S. has “already donated” to Haiti through U.S. income. Limbaugh, like Robertson, would be easy enough to dismiss were it not for the large audience his show commands and the rather remarkable political power he wields.
And, then there is the liberal racism of mainstream television shows that obsessively report about white, Western victims of the earthquake while spending comparatively less time on the majority of indigenous, Haitian residents, as if whiteness is the sine qua non for personhood and empathy.
Whether or not racism – from the crass Twitter comments, to the racist propaganda of Robertson and Limbaugh, to the white hegemony of television talk shows - will hinder relief efforts to Haiti, only time will tell. My hope is that this crisis will, in the words of Ferentz Lafargue, prompt us to think not only “about Haiti’s plight today, but to whatever extent possible two years and two decades from today” (h/t @dumilewis, @DavePurcell).
Muting Rihanna and Commercializing Domestic Abuse
Posted by: | CommentsJanuary’s GQ Magazine features singer Rihanna on the cover, with a story about her recent experiences and upcoming CD. As has been widely reported in the press, earlier this year Rihanna was badly eaten by her ex boyfriend, singer Chris Brown. Claire Renzetti wrote about social class, race and intimate partner violence here last March.
Since then, Chris Brown has pled guilty to charges of felony assault, is attending domestic violence classes, and is currently on probation. He has apologized for beating Rihanna and has appeared on several news outlets to discuss the events.
Rihanna’s GQ cover is one of a few cases where she’s talked publicly about the events of “that night.” (She spoke to news correspondent Diane Sawyer prior to sitting down with GQ.) In GQ, she says that she welcomes the opportunity to speak to young women and to give them insights, that she finds discussing her situation liberating, and that doing so helps her to “move on” and to avoid being defined by this one event. This is an admirable goal, but in the article, there are precious few examples of the insights that she wishes to share with young women. When asked specifically, she says that the biggest insight she learned is
“really really really that love is blind. It took a lot of strength to pull out of that relationship. To finally just officially cut it off. It was like night and day. It was two different worlds. It was the world I lived for two years, and then having the strength to say, ‘I’m gonna step into my own world. Start over.’”
She also states,
“I didn’t realize how much of an effect it had on young girls’ lives, and that’s part of the insight that I wanna give. Stop blaming yourself for that outcome. There’s nothing you can do, ever, to excuse a man’s behavior like that.”
The reporter goes on to ask Rihanna if she ever blamed herself, to which she replies that
“I never blamed myself, but I wondered, what, what did I do to provoke it?” (italics in original.)
At this point, Rihanna’s manager tells the reporter to move on to a different subject.
I found this interview rather troubling on a number of levels. For one thing, there can be no question that Rihanna’s choice to speak out now about her abuse does not just happen to coincide with the release of her new album. GQ speculates as much when they assert that “in the record business, domestic violence isn’t just a tragedy; it’s an image crisis. So now Team Rihanna had to decide how to ‘handle it.’ Their plan was this: She’d talk about it for the release of the album. She’d do Diane and Glamour and announce that she wanted to help young women who’d been in her position. Even if that meant addressing what really happened that ugly night last February” (pp. 56). This isn’t hard to believe, given that Rihanna didn’t immediately discuss her abuse at Chris Brown’s hands, and the more obvious likelihood that she’d be reluctant to offer such a painful, traumatic incident up for public consumption. However, by talking about her experiences with various media outlets around the time that her album is released, she is doing just that.
What I find problematic is that by encouraging Rihanna to do interviews based on the expectation that she’ll discuss her abuse—but then cutting off interviewers who attempt to discern her insights about it—her experience becomes trivialized and commodified in the worst way. What insights are young women supposed to gain from Rihanna if handlers only allow her to repeat platitudes about domestic violence (e.g., it’s never your fault, it’s hard to leave)? Essentially, these interviews lure people to buy the magazines or watch her interviews with the expectation that they’ll hear Rihanna share the salacious details of what was probably one of the worst nights of her life. They get a teaser that fortunately spares us the worst, but also doesn’t provide much in the way of actual insights or inspiration. What does emerge is a carefully calculated, if transparent, effort to use Rihanna’s tragedy to encourage people to buy her CD.
The tragedy of this is multifaceted. It’s horribly unfortunate that a young woman’s trauma is seen as something to be “handled” and “managed” as a way to boost record sales. What’s equally significant is that Rihanna’s abuse touched on many racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes that go unaddressed when her discussion of it becomes cynically packaged and sold as currency. Following the initial stories that Chris Brown had beaten Rihanna, many blogs, discussion circles, and conversations resonated with the predictable discussions over whether she “brought it on herself,” but also evoked comments that “island women are crazy” and that black men’s shortcomings and mistakes receive more attention and criticism than those of their white peers. All of these points warrant greater analysis and/or debunking, but using Rihanna’s experience so callously precludes her from actively being part of this. Perhaps most tragically, some of these statements about Rihanna’s culpability in her assault came from young women of color, who are disproportionately likely to experience domestic assault from boyfriends, lovers, and husbands. They are also the women who are usually overlooked if and when the media does decide to focus on issues of domestic abuse and violence. Ironically, then, some of the very women who maligned Rihanna are perhaps those who might benefit the most if she were to make the informed, autonomous decision to offer whatever insights she’s gained.
This is not to say that Rihanna should now be obligated to take on this role. I think if she wants to maintain her privacy about this, she should be entitled to do so. But it does a disservice to Rihanna and to all women to commodify abuse in an effort to climb the charts, and it obscures rather than drawing attention to the depth and extent of domestic violence and abuse among women of color.
Anti-Asian Racism: Toby Keith and Mocking Asians
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According to news reports at a Nobel Peace Prize party in Oslo, the United States country singer Toby Keith used the standard physical gesture of eye stretching to mock Asians (”yellow”) during an impromptu singing performance. Numerous Asian American groups have condemned the brief performance. The Asian American Justice Center made this comment:
Toby Keith embarrassed himself and his country, denigrated the Nobel Peace Prize and offended Asians and Asian Americans by using a crude, racist hand gesture.
The Media Action Network for Asians made this comment:
By doing this, he is telling Asian fans, ‘You don’t matter, you’re not on my radar.’
The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the country’s oldest continuing Asian American civil rights group also issued a statement condemning the old racist gesture:
His behavior has drawn criticism from the Asian American community, yet Mr. Keith still has not acknowledged the offensive nature of his gesture nor issued an apology. As the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization, the Japanese American Citizens League joins other organizations in condemning Mr. Keith’s actions, and demands that he acknowledge and apologize for his racist behavior.
When he pulled back his eyes to symbolize “yellow,” Mr. Keith reduced Asians to a demeaning caricature that has long been used to alienate an entire race. Though the gesture lasted no more than a second, it evoked powerful and painful emotions in the Asian American community, a reminder of schoolyard taunts and childhood bullying. It was an immature and insensitive action that only served to humiliate Asian Americans through racial mockery.
Mr. Keith’s silence following the Asian American community’s response to this incident suggests that he does not take our community’s concerns seriously. By not issuing an apology even one week after the event, Mr. Keith has clearly chosen to compound his indifference towards the Asian Americancommunity. This type of attitude underlies a pervasive stereotype of Asian Americans, where physical differences imply a foreignness that hinders an acceptance of being considered as true “Americans.”
Keith has not yet apologized. Oddly enough some in his group made this comment:
“No one at the concert thought Toby was out of line,” his camp said. “Everyone was impressed with his rapping skills and that’s it . . . all of the artists liked each other, hung out, and it was a very friendly, genuine, and supportive atmosphere.”
I guess they do not think Asian folks watch rapping or country music? Or that some other folks might take offense at such racist stereotyping seriously too? At a minimum, we do not teach Stereotyping 101 (or even Human Manners 101?) and thus what racial framing is learned as children lasts a lifetime. Friendly racism?
Numerous social science studies have lately shown how widespread the facial mocking and language mocking and other stereotyping of Asians and Asian Americans are these days. Not to mention the racial discrimination that often flows out of such mocking framing. Such anti-Asian stereotyping/mocking has been part of the white racial framing of Asians since at least the 19th century, as the late Ronald Takaki, among others, has often shown.
Dances With Aliens: James Cameron’s Avatar Movie and White “Saviors” (Updated)
Posted by: | CommentsIn our book Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) we discussed two types of white hero that often appear in American movies: the white messiah and the racial masquerader. The narcissistic fantasy of the a white hero who leads people of another color in a struggle of liberation presents whites a pleasing images of themselves as saviors rather than oppressors. The racial masquerade is another fantasy solution to white guilt in which the white hero crosses over and pretends to be black or native American.
James Cameron’s “Avatar” combines these two archetypes in a movie that might be called Dances With Aliens. What is new in the movie is the eye-popping visual effects technology, with its detailed, stunning creation of an alien planet, complete with exotic flora, fauna, and indigenous population with its own language. But the plot is a pastiche, recycled junk from a dozen movies about the adventures of a mythic white hero in a distant land or on a distant planet, including “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Star Wars,” “Star Gate,” “Dune,” “Pocahontas,” “The Matrix,” “The Last Samurai,” and “Dances With Wolves.” The story is predictable: the coming of the messiah is foretold, he shows tremendous ability and charisma, quickly learns the indigenous ways, marries the beautiful native princess, is inducted into the tribe, and ends by uniting with and leading them in a struggle for survival and freedom against evil outsiders. The white American racial imagination seems to require such stories.
On the one hand, “Avatar” sends numerous positive messages to an American and a global audience: it is pro-environment, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and pro-gender equality. It also mercilessly mocks the rhetoric of the George W. Bush administration about “pre-emptive strikes” and “shock and awe” and the use of mercenary armies such as Black water. On the other hand, these messages provide cover for a regressive myth about a white messiah and the noble savages—a white messiah who is reborn as the noblest savage of them all, as in The Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, and the other movies mentioned above.
In ““Avatar,” we have the paradox of the most expensive movie ever made, American corporations investing $230 million plus another $150 million on promotion to disseminate an apparently anti-corporate and anti-white American message. Why? Well, first of all, the formula still works: this visually astonishing action-adventure fantasy will be enormously profitable globally through cinema, video game, and numerous ancillary products. Second, it assuages the guilt of a white American audience about what we continue to do to racial and ethnic minorities here and abroad. And third, it reassures the global audience about the morality of white America, which can criticize and confront its own evils, at least in the movies.
Finally, “Avatar” is a racial fantasy for the Age of Obama. Like Obama, the protagonist Jake is racially mixed: although he starts out as white guy, he ends up inhabiting the body of an aboriginal on an alien planet. And like Obama, Jake is accused of being anti-capitalist and anti-white. Yet the movie is a supremely capitalist product which resolves white guilt. It does so by dividing whites into two sides: the maniacal white mercenaries who destroy the environment and kill the native population on behalf of the greedy corporations; and the noble white messiah who goes native and leads the tribes in a successful battle to preserve their land and their way of life against the evil whites. This movie is supposedly set on the distant planet Pandora, but it really takes place close to home, for it opens up the Pandora’s box of the American racial unconscious.
Updated by admin 01/11/2010: Looks like David Brooks, NY Times columnist, has been reading here and drawing heavily on the same ideas. Would be nice to get a link back from the NY Times, eh Mr. Brooks?
