we don’t need another anti-racism 101

Mai blogs:

i used to be an antiracism trainer for a progressive organization a few years ago.  i was really really good at.

this year i finally realized after a lot of soul searching that teaching white folks how to be good allies is not helpful to anyone.

…

its like us giving white folks all the correct rhetoric just allows for them to be able to better racists, because they are able to justify their racism using anti-racist rhetoric.

in that they are able to say things like: i realize that such and such is a function of racism and then they continue to do the same fucking thing that they just acknowledged was racist.

[Hat Tip: Restructure]

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Happy Birthday Oscar Grant

xMabaitx blogs about race, racial identity, skin color, and Oscar Grant:

I have determined that my former desire to ”fit into” a certain racial or ethnic distinction has very little bearing on my own sense of personal self-worth. The greater issue rather is how the white man’s ideas of race and ethnicity consequently force unwanted social meanings upon my body.

Democrats and Republicans

Raw Dawg Buffalo blogs:

I was optimistic that Obama meant what he said, and would do accordingly. But I am slowly becoming disillusioned. He spoke of change, and not having the “good old boy” network of “Washington Insiders” in his administration – yet he does. I won’t even get on the usual talk of tax reduction, war ending and other stuff that all democrats and republicans chant like some Taoist mantra.

Gentrification and Community Organizing

Jack blogs:

This Friday I’m heading to Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn for the premiere screening of Some Place Like Home: The Fight Against Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn, a documentary by Families United for Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE, a community organization lead by and comprised primarily of low-income women of color, has been rallying the community in a fight against the rampant development that’s going down in Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding area. While developers, big business, and politicians alike claim they are only trying to improve the community, the development is being conducted with little care or concern for the residents and small business owners who are already there. Some Place Like Home documents the struggle of FUREE, the neighborhoods’ residents, and small businesses against the forces that are trying to push and bulldoze them out. Check out the trailer below.

Clinton and Misogyny

Brownfemipower blogs about the recent lose of Hilary Clinton (we’ll, technically not a lose yet):

I feel your loss, I understand why it hurts to see a woman lose, probably (I disagree, but I am willing to see your point) because of sexism.

But some of us who care about institutional misogyny don’t feel a loss at Clinton not being elected. There would have been no barrier broken if she were elected. I personally don’t look at Clinton and think–geez, look at all she accomplished–now I can do the same thing–I think–geez–she supported the militarization of the Mexican/U.S. border. There are women now being raped, arrested, imprisoned, and ripped from their children because she actively supports increased militarization at the border.

Revolution and White Privilege

Neela blogs:

I’ve recently watched a couple of documentaries about radical movements in the 1960s and 70s:Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, The Weather Underground and a narrative film about the Naxalite movement in West Bengal called Calcutta My Love. 

Both of the first two films were fascinating but left me feeling irritated at the ludicrousness of it all – especially at the white privilege that protected many of these so-called revolutionaries, whereas members of the Black Panther Party faced a decidedly different fate.

Racism: It Ain’t Just for the Hooded Type

Resistance writes:

The reduction of racism to hate, however, both conceptually and politically limits our understanding of racism and the ways we can challenge it. Racism has been silently transformed in the popular consciousness into acts that are abnormal, unusual, and irrational – “crimes of passion.” Missing from all this are the ideologies and practices in a variety of sites in our society that reproduce racial inequality and domination.

No Justice for Sean Bell

Brotherpaecemaker blogs about the acquittal of the homicidal cops from New York:

People in the black community need to rethink our relationship with the dominant community. The disparity between the two communities is getting wider and wider. Police murder us in the streets and suffer no repercussions while black pastors are demonized for preaching about racial disparity in our communities. Even when the most extreme forms of this discrimination is caught on tape it is dismissed as our fault because we didn’t prostrate ourselves in front of the cop fast enough or the police officer was having a bad day and had to release his frustrations on the black citizen or whatever. We are in danger every time we come out in public from the very people sworn to protect the public. The police and the courts are doing their best to protect the public from black people.

BrownFemiPower’s Final (?) Words

BrownFemiPower says:

I wrote what I wrote to say that there either is a feminist movement or there isn’t—and if feminists can’t even be called on to point to the work that other feminists are doing—if simply pointing to a whole sphere of pro-immigration bloggers (because, to be clear, I stated pro-immigration bloggers and men and women bloggers of color NOT brownfemipower) who have been blogging incessantly about this is too much work for feminism—well, then there’s no fucking feminist movement.

…

I never said that it’s important to recognize that I had the idea first. I don’t give a shit who came up with the idea first—even if it WAS me. I don’t give a shit who thought of what first. I don’t fucking want credit for anything outside of existing. (For those who care, what I really said: There’s a lot of women of color (and men of color!) who have talked about immigration. There’s a lot of women of color and men of color who have examined how sexualized violence has been the foremost result of the “strengthening” of borders. There’s been a lot of us who have insisted for a long time now that immigration is a feminist issue, goddamn it, get your head out of your ass.

I even wrote a whole speech about it (link not available–BUT for those who DID see the speech, do you happen to recall that long list of LINKED work at the beginning of the speech?).

…

This was NEVER ABOUT FUCKING BROWNFEMIPOWER except in the sense that I BELONG to immigrant communities and I BELONG to pro-immigration blogger community and I BELONG to the women of color community and I THOUGHT I belonged to a feminist community.

This was about women of color constantly being written out of feminism, being written out of our own communities BY feminism—then being beaten up by feminists with JUST DO IT, JUST DO IT, JUST FUCKING DO IT YOU LAZY SPICS.

…

I know I’m brownfemipower and I want to end violence against women. And I wanted to do that with all the women who keep insisting to me that we are all in this together and we have common problems that we have to work against and we’re all sisters, and there is such thing as a commonality of experience between us all—as I said in my original post—I thought feminism was important because it brought women together (I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.)

…

I realize now that “feminism” and I stand in direct opposition to each other—that the feminists who aren’t actively working against me and my community are, like Seymour Hersch, few and far between.

This has caused a radical shifting in my thinking. A shifting that I have no desire to work through online—but that I need to think through before I can act. I am not giving up. I am just thinking. And resting. And reading my beloved books and soaking my tired dogs.

Cuz giiirls, my dogs are TIRED.

As I said in my last post—I will find you, and you will find me.

Support the Fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College

Rage, at down on the brown side, blogs about the fight for Asian American Studies at Hunter College:

I’m writing this in response and in support of the righteous students and organizers at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, who are organizing and pushing to protect and expand Asian American studies at their school. I stand with these students and urge any reader here to check out their information (here’s an article to start) and see how you can be supportive of their cause. I’ll post more information up as I get it about how allies and supporters around the nation can show them love and let them know that we stand with them in this struggle.

“Hands Off the White Woman!”

Brother Peacemaker blogs about America’s infatuation with white women:

It would be easy to blame the media for such obvious white women favoritism. But the real problem is our culture that places such emphasis on looks, youth, sex, race, money, and other features and factors people use to compensate for the shortcomings of their character. Media is only a hapless pawn serving to feed the insatiable hunger of its master the character weak, wealth exchanging, public so tremendously concentrated in the white community. Until we have a more even distribution of wealth among all racial communities and/or a realignment of people’s priorities away from the secular and more towards a true all encompassing community oriented spirit, be prepared to hear more stories in the news from the undiscovered Susan Smiths and Natalie Holloways that are destined to become pawn in society’s perpetual endeavor to make pretty white women the focus of our attention.

In the Age of Obama

Sherrilyn A. Ifill blogs at the Beacon Broadside, a blog for Beacon Press:

In the flush of the current presidential campaign, when crowds of blacks and whites caught up in Obama fever chant together, “race doesn’t matter,” and even the mainstream media seems delirious with the possibility that the U.S. may be poised to elect its first black president, it’s hard to remember that only a few months ago college campuses, high schools and workplaces from Louisiana to New York were sites of racial intimidation. 2007 was the year of the noose. Dozens of incidents, in which nooses were hung in places designed to intimidate black workers and students, seemed to engulf the country.

Black History Box

The newest blogger, Sara Rosell, of Double Consciousness blogs about Black History Month:

We definitely need to teach what contributions blacks have made, but before we teach about that we need to first talk about what it means for those contributions to be absent when it comes to the teachings of History itself. The problem is that our Anglo-centric educational system boxes “Black History” into a month, separating it from “U.S. History.”

Sundown Towns

Ann blogs about the history of sundown towns and their continued existence today:

Many Americans ask themselves why is that black citizens remain the outsiders in this supposed moral society that rewards hard work.  Many people wonder why black citizens have made so little progress in the following 143 years after the abolition of slavery. What they do not know is that there was a time when black Americans lived in better more racially diverse conditions during the 1870s and the earlier 1880s, when Reconstruction was struggling to avoid the vise-like death grip that burgeoning white supremacy had caught it in.  Many Americans do not realize that de jure residential segregation grew progressivly worse until around 1968, and that it did not start to somewhat decrease until the 1970s, 1980s, well after the Civil Rights Movement had ended.

IQ and Genetics

Amardeep Singh blogs:

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest in the New Yorker is a must-read for anyone who’s been stuck arguing with an IQ fetishist at a dinner party (sadly, this has happened to me once too often). Gladwell relies heavily on the work of James Flynn, who has a new book out called What is Intelligence?. Flynn shows that IQ scores, in various parts of the world, tend to rise over time — and delves into the implications of those changes for how we understand IQ scores

Asian American Immigrants and Schooling

Stacey J. Lee, over at Asian American Empowerment, blogs about Asian American immigrants and the lack of support they get from the U.S. educational system:

Despite the growing number of immigrant students in schools throughout the country, many schools lack the expertise to adequately serve second language students. In fact, many school districts face a shortage of certified bilingual and English language learner (ELL) teachers. Although there is a significant body of research that suggests that bilingual education programs are most effective, most Asian American students who are English language learners are placed in English as a second language (ESL) classes or other English-only environments (Hakuta & Pease-Alvarez, 1992; Ramirez, 1991).

Invisibility of Whiteness

Carlo Montemayor, a blogger at Double Consciousness and fellow Blog Bullet editor, blogs on the invisibility of whiteness and on some comments that Oprah “transcends” race since most of her audience is white:

What the writer here implies is that Oprah’s personality as well as her show are “race neutral” because most of her viewers are white. Likewise, Obama has opted for a more “universal” (meaning white) appeal. “Transcending race”, according to the writer, means tailoring your image and persona so that it appeals to mostly white people — as if whites do not belong to a racial group. Because both Oprah and Obama are now reaching out to blacks, their actions are viewed as racial.If we are truly aspiring to achieve racial justice then we need to look at racism (and by that I mean a system of ideas embedded into our institutions which gives whites unearned advantages over people of color) as a white problem rather than just a problem that people of color face.

On (White) Feminism

BrownFemiPower blogs about the book Full Frontal Feminism, on teaching it at university women’s studies classes, her own experience as a woman of color in such classes, and the overall arch of teaching feminism in general:

It’s time for all of us, but in particular, women’s studies departments, to stop pretending that these interactions between women of color and white women never happened or don’t count. It’s time to stop pretending that the voices of white women speaking about women of color is sufficient enough of a history for women of color. It’s time to stop pretending that universal agreement between women of color is necessary before white people can interact with an engage with a particular critique of women of color. It’s time to stop pretending that any critique by women of color exists within a timeless vacuum that demonstrates some ancient racism of a feminism from time past.

Race and Law

The Field Negro blogs about a recent murder case in Northern California involving a white home owner shooting and killing two (of three) robbers who broke into his house and were Black:

OK I must admit that this case has me torn. On one hand I am thinking that it was racism why this Northern California prosecutor chose to charge this young man with first degree murder under the rarely used “Provocative Acts Doctrine.” On the other hand I am thinking; Renato, just what the fuck were you thinking when you broke into that man’s home with your friends?

Your ignorant ass actions set into motion an act that cost two of your friends their lives, and now you are on the verge of losing your freedom; and if the good folks of California have their way, maybe your life as well.
But please don’t think I am letting Mister homeowner off the hook either. Yes, he has a right to defend his home, but he doesn’t have a right to shoot two fleeing individuals in the back. Had I been the DA I would have charged his ass with at the very least, voluntary manslaughter. But we know how that works; small county, every one knows each other, no one wants to upset the order of things. Heck I am sure the DA was a friend of Mr. Homeowner, or maybe even a family member.

Race and the Vote

JanInSanFran writes:

When you can’t win an election on your own merits, wouldn’t it be great to pick own your electorate who you can trust will vote for you? That’s why politicians like to draw district boundaries to ensure one-party dominance. A new study [pdf] from the University of Washington’s Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality shows pretty conclusively that by demanding voters show photo IDs, Republicans ensure that more voters are white, older, and affluent. Others, likely Democrats, get pushed off the rolls.

Indiana’s photo ID law is being challenged as discriminatory in court. Researchers set out to find what it really would do voter eligibility. They polled carefully randomized samples of voters and non-voters about their IDs. The results show clearly that the ID requirement is designed to build a Republican bias into the universe of voters and potential voters.

Republicans and the Race Card

Lambert, on Corrente, blogs about a recent article by Paul Krugman on how the Republicans used race to gain the upper hand over Democrats in the South and have been playing that card ever since:

Today, Krugman—Yay! No pay wall!—gives the Conservative apologists for the Republican’s racist Southern Strategy a good old-fashioned beating, and would leave them whimpering if they weren’t all the idelogical equivalent of The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Brainwashing

Donna blogs on white privilege and male supremacy effecting bloggers in their thinking and interactions with each other. Here is one small piece of her blog post:

…all of us in American society are brainwashed by white supremacy/male supremacy to some extent. Projektleiteren doesn’t notice that she is expecting us to treat whites better than they treat us, because it is “natural” to see them as superior and therefore grant them more benefit of the doubt, chances, understanding, etc than they ever grant to us. If you think I am being sarcastic, you’d be wrong. We do get so used to being treated like we are wrong, like our opinion doesn’t matter, like we don’t know ourselves and our own families, lives, world; all of these things contribute to internalized racism. You know the grass is green and the sky is blue, but daily it seems like everyone else around you is saying the grass is purple and the sky is yellow. You may start to question your reality, believe that they are right and there is something wrong with you…

Resistance Gardens

 The blogger at wsfoft.heart blogs about a book on Japanese internees in World War II:

I recently learned about a book called Defiant Gardens, which includes documentation about gardens planted by Japanese American internees in the internment camps during WWII. I love the way that these gardens provided a transformative and life-affirming mechanism for resistance.

Minority Faculty

C.N. Le blogs on a recent study on people of color in college positions:

The study also suggests that there seem to be enough underrepresented minority Ph.D.s out there in the candidate pool, but for various reasons, they aren’t being hired in their same proportions. I’ve covered some of the challenges that minority Ph.D. students face, but for those who make it to the end, one would think that colleges would be eager to hire them to help their schools improve such dismal representation numbers.

But alas, that particular ideal doesn’t seem to match the practical realities, as this study shows. So the question is, why is that the case? I think we in academia need to take a hard look at not just institutional policies at the college level, but also the nitty-gritty details of deliberations at the departmental level and how a particular department chooses their new hires.

In other words, it’s one thing for a college to proclaim that they want to improve their proportions of underrepresented faculty, but it’s another issue altogether for each individual department on that campus to take the initiative to actually hire an underrepresented minority candidate.

Stop Police Brutality on Women and Trans People of Color

Brown Femi Power writes:

The amazing women of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence have created a powerful brochure about how to end police violence against women and trans people of color. My recommendation? PRINT IT OUT AND DISTRIBUTE!!!!! Also, if you would like copies of the brochure, you can also e-mail incite_national@yahoo.com, with the number of copies you’d like and an address to send it to!