Today's youth are more ethnically and racially diverse than ever before. This unprecedented diversity of Millenial's (pdf) though is not fully present at the voting booth, because of our antiquated Electoral College system.
After people of color and women won their right to vote, women have voted in high numbers, outvoting young men since 1972. Young people of color, on the other hand, still lag behind their white counterparts when it comes to voter turnout.
This voting gap between young people of color and whites highlights the problem with today's strategic electoral campaigning in 'swing states' -- a product of the Electoral College system.
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Pro-Tibet Protests: Sports Lovers Meet Torture Victims
UPDATE: We've been holding the corner of Embarcadero and Washington streets since 10 a.m. this morning in San Francisco together with Tibetans, Students for a Free Tibet, Darfur activists, and then of course pro-China folks have been right here with us. Intense emotions abound as sports lovers meet torture victims.
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I'm sitting with a mix of folks from Students for a Free Tibet, Ruckus, RAN and others at the jail where the seven Tibetan rights activists who pulled off the stunning Golden Gate bridge action have been held since being whisked off the bridge yesterday.
Our latest news is that they're coming out any minute now -- that's been the word for two hours. I think of them through the labyrinth of halls and walls beyond the door so sleepy, sore, with perhaps no idea of just how far reaching their tremendous action has been for two days.
This isn't the first action on the Golden Gate Bridge, but a good friend pointed out that its probably the biggest action since 9/11. But the actions in this campaign so far have all been big -- Mt. Everest, the Great Wall, the Eiffel Tower. Well, almost the Eiffel Tower. Police presence in Paris was too high for the action to get going, so they defaulted to a nearby bridge over the Seine whose name escapes me now, writing this on my phone from the waiting room of this jail.
The demands -- no torch run through Tibet, an end to human rights abuses, and ultimately the liberation of Tibet -- are on the front page of newspapers worldwide.
The victory in many ways is already complete for the campaign on the torch. The Olympics were supposed to herald a new China. Thing is, the Chinese government thought it could get the symbolic stamp of approval without actually changing its behavior. As Tibet has escalated their campaign for international attention, China's government has shown its unwillingness to improve their violent history.
The activists are released one by one, first the women, then the men, swamped by journalists and then enveloped by loved ones.
They are free! Tibet is next!
Vogue Resurrects Old Stereotypes
I should have known it wouldn't last. The year began with such promise. America was starting to look beyond rehashed stereotypes. Progress and possibility were everywhere. Barack Obama was on the verge of breaking into the ultimate Good Ol' Boys network. Sports writers were waxing poetic on Tiger Woods' status as the greatest of all time and quest for golf's Grand Slam seemed inevitable.
Then Vogue announced LeBron James would grace its April "Shape" issue alongside uber-model Gisele Bundchen, and ... my excitement crumbled.
I know it's just some athlete posing for a picture, but the news of James' coverboy status on the venerable fashion mag had me almost as excited as the other milestones. Vogue is notoriously picky (or prejudiced depending on how you look at it) when it comes to who is allowed on its cover. In its 118 years in publication, there have only been two men and three African Americans to appear on the front cover. (To be fair, Vogue is an equal opportunity discriminator. The designers of Rodarte were recently told to go on a diet and get a personal trainer if they wanted to be in this month's release.)
So, to hear that a Black man was chosen for such a popular issue ... surely, this was a good sign.
If only. What I had thought would be a stylish symbol of cultural growth, was nothing more than a lesson in Black Stereotyping 101. The suave, graceful superstar we see on and off the basketball court was replaced by a snarling, Scary Black Man. Whatever hope or pride I had felt in anticipation of the April cover was replaced by shame and dissappointment. I am pretty thick skinned, but this stupid little picture hurt.
The photo, which bares a striking resemblance to classic King Kong posters, plays on deep rooted beliefs of the past. The image of Black men as animalistic, predatory thugs is apparently still going strong.
Of course, not everyone sees a tinge of racism in James' cover, which is exactly why I find it so disturbing. Obvious injustices -- like nooses swinging from a tree in Jena -- are easy to spot, easy to confront. It is the small, subtle slights that go unnoticed and end up holding us back.
WireTap Writer Biko Baker Becomes the Director of the League of Young Voters
WireTap is thrilled to announce that our editorial board member and writer, Robert "Biko" Baker became the Executive Director of the League of Young Voters this week. Congratulations to Biko and the League!
As Billy Wimsatt, the founding visionary of the organization and former executive director, explained in an email, "Biko has been with the League since 2003. He came up through the ranks from Local Organizer to State Director to National Organizing Director ... . When I started the League back in 2003, my greatest dream was to build a powerful national youth organization and leave it in good hands. Today, my dream has come true. ... It's the perfect time for me to move on, and pass the torch to the next generation. ... "
I first met Biko in person at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit. Biko was on a panel with the author and activist Grace Lee Boggs and talked about the power of "collective activity of everyday Americans." He argued that the Civil Rights history is dominated by stories about strong primary leaders -- Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. -- and how while they are important, their work wouldn't have lasting impact, if their rallies weren't attended by crowds of ordinary people, and more importantly, if the unsung heroes -- like Ella Baker -- weren't organizing tirelessly behind the scenes to bring people out to these rallies and engage them in the long term.
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YM Blog-a-thon: Our Silent Majority
(Editor's note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the second Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month's topic is violence. Check back frequently for updates and feel free to join the discussion.)
I'm in an awkward position. On the one hand, I'm a member of the media. What that really means, I still don't know. So far I've gathered that it has something to do with writing and making decisions about what other people read. Take this here, blog-a-thon, for instance. I've been harassing encouraging people for almost two weeks to tell their stories of how violence impacts their lives and communities.
Midway through sending out a mass text message, I started to have second thoughts. It's not easy to get people to write about anything, much less something as personal as violence. And then I began to reconsider what I would write about. I had made the decision long ago to write about topics from a distance, especially those that were closest to me. It was a decision based more on personal protection than journalistic objectivity, and it's always easier to write about something you're removed from. I was going to google some statistics, quote some song lyrics, maybe make a reference or two to The Wire, and then write about it all in some vague, circular way, make sure all my links were on point, post, and then peace out.
But that would make me a hypocrite. After all, I can't ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself.
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Obama Gets Real, and Reflections on Take Back America
I'm at the Take Back America conference this week, seeing the event with the dual eyes I have been using for viewing this entire election season thus far.
This is the most exciting election of my lifetime and most of the folks I know have to say the same, whether they want to admit it or not. everyone's talking about it, the speeches and debates are water cooler conversation for more than the usual (political nerd) suspects.
Our next president will be a black man, or at the very least a white woman, according to the masses at this conference (nicknamed the "progressive convention"); the passion is in people's eyes, their bodies aquiver with the idea of advancing progressive ideals. it's been a while since we had a national moment of victory.
The speakers here are talking about green jobs, healthcare for all, workers' rights, Martin Luther King -- things/ideas/people I take seriously, believe in, need. and more than ever before, the speakers and participants here are referring to a history of nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience, the idea of protecting our democracy with actions that make our words mean something. So that makes me happy.
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National Day of Action Targets Fast Food Giant
First it was Taco Bell, then McDonalds, and now Burger King. We’re not talking about greasy fried things, we’re talking about poor working conditions for immigrant farmworkers.
Boycotts and protests by the Student/Farmworker Alliance got Taco Bell and McDonalds to buckle under the pressure and give back just a tiny fraction of profits to ensure decent working conditions for tomato farmworkers struggling with poverty.
Now it's Burger King's turn.
On March 31st, farmworkers, students, and activists from across the country come together to fight the good fight against the home of the whopper on the SFA National Day of Action. Farmworkers and students will hold local protests, screen films on Burger King and farmworker poverty, and collect petition signatures.
The SFA won victories with Yum Brands (in 2005) and McDonalds (in 2007), forcing the corporations to take responsibility for the poor working conditions of their tomato farmers. After years of boycotting, Taco Bell and McDonalds came to agreements with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to nearly double workers’ sub-poverty wages, pay a penny more per pound for Florida tomatoes, and enforce codes of conduct for agricultural suppliers.
But Burger King just won’t back down. The fast food monarch even joined with the tomato industry to launch a campaign threatening the deals made by McDonalds and Taco Bell.
Fortunately, the SFA won’t back down either.
On the SFA Day of Action, Burger King will learn just what farmworkers and students think of the big bad fast food chain. If the protests and boycotts don't eventually do the trick, the bad press hopefully will.
Visit SFA to find out how to get involved with National Day of Action events in your area or to find out how to organize your own events.
Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative -- they colonise us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of storytelling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.--Arundhati Roy
I know aunts and great-grandparents who through the alchemy of Southern racism, intermarriage, self-hatred and survival managed to live their life passing either as white or just not that Black. I never thought of myself as passing because I had no desire to and and such an attempt would be futile as the deep darkness of my father's skin trumped the coveted lightness of my mother's skin much to an unnamed grandmother's silent disapproval. Swooned over as a baby because I happened to be much lighter than my father's side of the family, I was warned about sitting in the sun to long and getting "too black."
And I got blacker because I liked the sun and it was not until age 12 that I understood what being "too black" meant. Like my father I had tiny eyes and when I smiled my chubby cheeks enveloped my eyes only leaving tiny slits earning me the obviously problematic named "China eyes." I was taught that I should be excited about this because it took me one more step away from blackness.
I used to rock cornrows until I begged my parents to let me get my hair pressed. Kids were making fun of me because I was the only kid without straight hair and mind you this was at the same time I was being called a white kid because liked school. I explicitly remember my grandmother paying to have my hair pressed every three weeks. When I came home, she'd smile, play with my hair and told me how pretty I was. In a too late caveat, she noted that I had "good hair," but straight hair was always the best option even if the pressing process was tedious, smelly and time-consuming.
While I always understood the nuances of race and blackness within the tiny and dysfunctional community of confused Black folks I grew up with, the nuances of race and blackness were a different monster as I began mixing with non-Black Muslim communities. This became another monster because I felt that not only was I being asked to mute some elements of my Blackness, I was also being asked to adopt another identity that, while being foreign to me, was considered coveted and authentic to others.
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YM Blog-A-Thon: The "Postreality" Appeal
(Editor's note: Youth Outlook and WireTap are kicking off the first-ever Youth Media Blog-a-thon. This month's topic is the 2008 presidential election. Check back frequently for updates and other voices.)
"[Obama] doesn't just talk about change; he looks like change. His persona and his platform are virtually indistinguishable. Obama, like Tiger Woods and Angelina Jolie, has one of those faces that seem beamed from a postracial future, when everyone will have a permanent, noncarcinogenic tan." -- February 11th issue of Time Magazine.
It's been four, maybe eight years since thousands of voters went to the polls and voted for George Bush. Their reasons were simple. It had very little to do with his domestic policy -- just ask thousands of bankrupted white farmers in rural towns throughout the Midwest. It had even less to do with his foreign policy -- just ask the families of dead, AWOL, medically neglected and frustrated soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The real reason: his personality.
Bush was likable. He was the type of dude you could go grab a beer with after work. Someone you could sit with and watch Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo stumble in the playoffs. Al Gore was too tired, and John Kerry walked with a stick up his ass. Bush, on the other hand, was the mythical "everyman" who appealed to the sensibilities of millions of folks looking for a best friend.
Now, they're all probably sitting on the steps of their recently foreclosed homes, scratching their heads while they read the classified section of their recently bought-out town paper. Oops.
Barack Obama is definitely not George Herbert Walker Bush, but I'm afraid that he's slowly, methodically and dangerously trying to paint himself in much the same way: the mythical "everyman" who you can kick it with and watch re-runs of Dave Chappelle. But he's doing it by avoiding the very subject that's undeniably at the center of his campaign: race. And while he preaches about "hope" and "change" like they're the chorus of his favorite song, all the while holding onto his "it's not about race" platform," conservatives guarding the gates of white privilege are sitting back, pleased that important discussions about race seem to be fading from the American consciousness.
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So I picked up my morning paper this week and saw two prominent stories on the state of Black America according to white people. The first was the usual coverage of Barack Obama, in anticipation of Super Tuesday.
The second, just below the fold, was an utterly disturbing story on a low-income Black community in San Francisco. Obviously written from an ignorant ethnographers point of view, the story was filled with references to cheeto diets and chronic laziness, with the occasional vague reference to 'peripheral' causes like institutional racism and gentrification.
What bothered me most was the writer's claim that "most" of San Francisco never sees this neighborhood unless they're playing golf at the nearby golf course or if they took the wrong exist off the nearby freeway. Based on that account, the archetypal San Francisco resident is probably young, wealthy, white and works for Google. Ugh.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since people of color have been the ethnographic playground for white folks since the days of Sara Baartman. But stories like this still make me cringe, especially in places that pride themselves on being liberal utopias. Perhaps because of all of this, I thoroughly enjoy things that attempt to dissect the interests of white people privilege.
Enter: Stuff white people like, a brilliant blog that takes a witty approach to the scientific study of white people. It has an ongoing list of things that are staples of white American culture, things that include: Top 10 hip hop songs white people love, Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops, Vintage and Religions their parents don't belong to.
As a true ode to the irony of white privilege, my white friends are obsessed with it. There were, of course, a few angry folks who were all "what if I made a blog that listed all the stuff that Black people like?!" Could it be that in this day and age people of color could still be painted as mere caricatures? Then I thought to myself, that would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happen.
Heavy Rotation: The Rise of Filipino Radio Representation
Cassie, that one Asian guy from the Neptunes, the other producer who did that skateboard track for Lupe Fiasco, that main girl from the Pussy Cat Dolls, they're all at least part Filipino, right? Walk into a workshop focused on Filipino-American media representation, and this thin list of musicians would likely be all that the group would generate.
Though, the lack of talent in mainstream music is a result of the Filipino American community getting shafted by clueless A&Rs, radio broadcasters, and all the other corporate types who attempt to dictate what music gets heard. Enter Heavy Rotation, a new online radio show aimed at showcasing Filipino-American talent not given the opportunity by the likes of Clear Channel.
Already two shows recorded since its inception, Heavy Rotation is building itself to be a strong monthly medium exposing listeners to the deep musicianship in the Filipino community. Operating under the mantra, "The rise of Filipino Hip-Hop and R&B," there is an implied attitude that the presence of Filipinos in American pop culture will soon reach a tipping point. Who better to break folks off with the coverage of what could be a new cultural renaissance than a group of youthful individuals who have been working in the industry for some time?
DJ Marlino, nineteen-years thick in the DJ game, decided to set up shop in a small studio in San Diego as a base of operations. Along with co-hosts, Rich, Diane, and Jeff, the crew hopes to use the music to make the show. With much untapped talent yet to be heard by many music fans, the selection of music won't likely get dry any time soon.
Tuning into the two-hour program, sounds of boom-bap resonate from the Upstarts and Son of Ran, bullet-riddled political lyrics from Bambu and Kiwi (members of the now defunct Native Guns), and jazzy grooves from Freddie Joachim and Choice 37 can be heard, along with a hand picked selection of other artists found from Myspace and various cultural festivals. For some, listening to a show can incite thoughts of, "Oh, snap, these cats are actually Filipino?"
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In this day and age, wearing your race and religion on your sleeve has become the current fashion. We identify ourselves as Indian American, Muslim American, Sikh American, African American, Mexican American, and even Hindu American. It's easy to feel left out if you don't have some sort of religious and/or racial tag, because everyone's got one!
A lot of this comes from the ideology of multiculturalism. Remember Multicultural Week in elementary, high school, and college, where we celebrate "diversity"? We're brought up on a diet that America is a "mixed salad:" each of us has a distinct flavor, color, and classification; those of us who are "ethnic" are ingredients that spice things up in this enormous American salad.
Often, this multiculturalism encourages us to publicly display ethnic culture and identity. You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been around a cultural club booth on a college campus. We're taught by well-meaning teachers, friends, and the media that differences exist, and those of us who are not white and Christian can put on a show for everyone else so that they can learn about these differences. But these "differences" are usually superficial, innocuous, and easy to consume: food, dress, and music. Rarely do we actually learn about the politics, history, and social dynamics of a non-US geographical location.
The other source comes from forces beyond us. Consider what happens when there's a major national news event and a nonwhite and non-Christian culprit's race and/or religion is highlighted: The group is singled out, stereotyped, and thrust onto center stage in our media and politics. For instance, Muslim Americans had to make it known that they did not condone 9/11, even though many did not identify as Muslim Americans prior to being actually tagged as such. Korean Americans had to stress that the Virginia Tech shooting appalled them. These events create a modern day piazza where a supposedly homogenous group is branded, scrutinized and tried in full view of the public. Is it any wonder that we feel forced in one way or another to either assert a label and/or defiantly redefine and wear it loud and proud?
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"Athletes in society have an elevated status, they entertain, they inspire, and perhaps, most important, they serve as role models," U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, sentencing Marion Jones to six months in prison.
"Cash rules everything around me." - Wu-Tang Clan
Ten years ago the story went something like this: I was a little 12-year-old standing in a circle of friends waiting for the bell to ring at my middle school. My appointed bully, let's call her Lipgloss, struts over from her end of the yard smelling like all sorts of processed strawberry and kiwi body sprays. Lipgloss is all "N'sync this..." and "Leonardo DiCaprio that" before she gives me a full length body mug and goes, "you know Jamilah, if you didn't wear Nike's and play basketball, you'd be such a nerd."
And she was right. I was all skin and bones with bad acne, a slight obsession with the Civil War and a mean jumper. But it was 1998 and women in sports were, quite literally, the business. There were two professional women's basketball leagues, the WNBA and the now-defunct ABL, not to mention a host of national women's sports idols adorning the pages of the nation's top sports magazines: Jamila Wideman, Kate Starbird, Lisa Leslie, Mia Hamm, just to name a few. In North Carolina, a young guard on the UNC women's basketball team was putting the finishing touches on her legacy after helping the team win a national championship and making a name for herself as a star dual athlete in both track and basketball. After decades of organized resistance, women were finally reeking the benefits of Title IX, stampeding doors into sports arenas and breaking glass ceilings to reach the next level. Little girls like myself and millions of others paid close attention to our sheroes, emulating their cross overs and practicing well after dark to grow up and be just like them.
Now, the story has many of the same characters, but a very different script: the ABL is gone and most folks are surprised to know that the WNBA still exists. That basketball player in North Carolina, Marion Jones, who would go on to win Olympic gold in 2000 and become one the highest paid sports darlings of our era, admitted to using steroids, was stripped of her medals and was today sentenced by a federal judge to six months in prison for lying to federal investigators. The backlash against feminism is complete.
Jones' punishment by the federal government, the media and fans has by far been the harshest of any professional athlete linked to performance enhancing drugs. She's now the precedent for punishment in the sports witch-hunt, and while everyone asks the question of who, very few are asking why athletes chose to use the drugs in the first place, and why Jones' punishment has been so harsh in comparison to more high profile white male athletes accused of similar crimes.
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