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Filipino Masculinity & Infidelity
(This post originally appeared on FOBBdeep)
Two dates on the calendar could not come any sooner. The first is January 20. The second is December 6.
Fight fans understand the magnitude of the match between de la Hoya and Pacquiao; a match, that on paper, favors the Golden Boy. For the Philippines and the people who have been dispersed across the globe due to a shared diasporic experience, there is no shadow of a doubt that the victor will be the Pacman. Pacquiao’s presence has allowed for a redefined Filipino representation, whereby masculinity lost by centuries of colonization has been reclaimed. In watching the E:60 feature, “Thrilla”, one leaves certain of the fact that Pacquiao is a badass who will demolish his much larger and older opponent.
To add to the hype experienced from watching the ESPN video, HBO has recently aired the first in it’s de la Hoya/Pacquiao edition of 24/7. For those unfamiliar with the award winning series, 24/7, documents the story of two fighters for weeks up to the fight, making for a suspense building experience. Fans are able to see the fighters in their natural setting, in training and in candid moments with family. Fighters are humanized or in the case of “Money Mayweather: demonized.
For many viewers it is their first glimpse into the sheer scale of the regard Pacquiao has over the Filipino people. He is not just a fighter, but an icon.
Watching the first episode, I was filled with adrenaline as the excitment for the tale of the tape draws closer. Then a particular scene came and left an unsettling feeling: seeing a pregnant Jinky Pacquiao supporting her husband in the US but isolated in her own separate apartment. While Manny sings on the Magic Mic, an odd distance can be felt as his wife watches him from behind a couch. A disconnect in the relationship between the most recognizable Filipino and the mother of his children is evident. HBO does not attempt to delve into what may exist under the surface of the relationship, and it is to be seen if they continue to sugar coat the relationship so that Manny appears to be the care taking father who is capable of becoming a successful Filipino politician.
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The Blame Game
(This post originally appeared on Mervyn's blog)
I poured myself a glass of rum and coke, on the rocks. The networks hadn't called it, but i did. When Pennsylvania and Ohio went, I thought, “it's over.” I looked across the room, filled with black folks that I loved, everyone waiting. Waiting to suspend the disbelief that hung over the room that evening. We were a jaded crew -- organizers, communications staff, writers. Born and raised of military families, black panthers, royalty, and southern decadence.
Then the networks finally called the presidency for Obama. We rocketed from our seats, cheering and hugging, some were crying. you could feel the energy in the room, expended from years of working so hard. We were tired and re-energized, weary but triumphant.
The next day, the world hadn't changed all that much. California’s Proposition 8 passed into law, effectively banning gay marriage. White gay men were up in arms, blaming black folks for the stinging loss. Unfortunately, Black voters voted overwhelmingly in favor of the ban. I struggle with the level of racist vitriol that comes from those folks. They are in many ways like my father, a liberal white gay man. I want to be mad, but all I can do is laugh it off. This time, though, I have to speak up.
While many groups voted for the passage of Proposition 8, black folks are being singled out for not caring about civil rights during such an historic moment. The irony is thick, but I’m used to it. It was, as the president-elect would say, more of the same. And here's why.
The gay advocacy groups have not built up a ground game in black communities. No field offices, big rallies, nothing. Plenty in San Francisco and in West Hollywood. But when I drove in East Oakland, they were absent.
They chose instead to run ads toward the end of the campaign, when they knew they were losing, highlighting key moments in the civil rights movement. They hired Samuel L. “Snakes On A Plane” Jackson to narrate these pithy ads. Those ads did nothing but beat the civil rights movement into black folks' heads, as if they didn't know what it stood for. As if their parents hadn't fought it. In short, they were incredibly patronizing.
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Equality Deferred
The candidacy-and now election-of Barack Obama has elicited an avalanche of commentary on race across the political and social spectrum.
Some pundits have posited that we now inhabit a "post-racial" society that has transcended racial differences with the victory of an African-American presidential candidate. That a nation which held blacks in bondage, and refused to grant them justice long after slavery was abolished, could elect a black man for the highest office in the land appears to most observers as a striking victory for the cause of racial unity and tolerance.
Lost in this celebration, however, has been any serious treatment of the Arab and Muslim question. Obama was ceaselessly and openly pilloried by conservatives as a foreign, exotic, unpredictable quantity, not only because he was of mixed racial heritage, but also because he was wrongly said to be Muslim and Arab. And while the Obama campaign fought firmly and intelligently to overcome voters' fears about electing an African-American, they rarely took the extra step of condemning the anti-Arab and anti-Islamic caterwaul of their opponents' campaign.
In this context, serious studies of how Arab and Muslim Americans are treated inside the United States should be welcomed to the discussion. One such study comes from Dianne Shammas, an American activist of Lebanese heritage pursuing her Ph.D in at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her thesis is the latest comprehensive study of racial discrimination against Arab Americans at community colleges in southern California and southeast Michigan.
She surveyed 753 Arab Christian, Arab Muslim, and non-Arab Muslim students from 21 community colleges using a 92-item survey and three focus groups to learn how this population viewed prejudice on campus and interacted with the larger campus community.
Previous studies have shown high levels of discrimination: a 2007 Arab-American Institute survey showed 76 percent of Arab-Americans ages18 to 29 experienced discrimination, and a 2004 Muslims in the American Public Square report showed 50 percent of American Muslims ages 18 to 24 experienced discrimination in the school and workplace.
However, Shammas said her findings did not bear out these previous reports. She found that Arab and Muslim students tend to cluster and form friendships on religious and ethnic lines, as do other minorities on college campuses. Examining 570 written responses, Shammas found that 38 percent of students formed friendships based on sameness of culture, heritage, and religious belief more than any other criteria.
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At Hip Hop's Birthplace, Residents Prepare For the Worst
(This post originally appeared on Jeff's blog, Zentronix)
As the House of Representatives rejected an economic bailout proposal brought on by the national mortgage crisis, tenants of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue and their supporters awaited word today of the fate of the most famous address in hip-hop.
It was a day in which the drama of the nation was being mirrored at a place right the heart of hip-hop history, as tenants and their supporters began planning to save their homes while real estate developers scrambled to close a speculative deal against declining prospects for credit.
Late last week, a judge cleared the way for the landlord group behind the West Bronx apartment building to begin preparations to sell the building, whose value has been assessed at about $7 million.
The building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell threw their first party in late August 1973, is one of a declining number in New York City covered under an affordable housing mandate called the Mitchell-Lama program. It now represents the continuing decline of urban affordable housing.
But the judge's order allows the landlord group to pay off the rest of its outstanding $5 million mortgage and remove it from the affordable housing program.
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Kabobfest Culture
Blogging isn’t easy.
Just ask May Alhassen, one of several contributors to the mostly Arab-American blog, KabobFest. She succinctly describes the website as “an Arab-themed Daily Show in blog format.” From tongue-in-cheek biographies where contributors describe themselves as attendees of “madrassas” (which simply means “school” in Arabic) to blog entries featuring Obama in Saudi-style headwear, the alternately acerbic and irreverent sense of humor is on full display.
But the issues KabobFest dissects are serious. “[The humor] is mostly meant to illustrate the absurdity of…attempts to politicize and demonize our people, language, culture and religion,” May said.
One striking example is a delightfully absurd five-minute video production on the Kuffiyah, a piece of cloth targeted by hyperventilating conservatives as an infectious symbol of Islamist terror.
For May, America's stereotyping of American Muslim women as draped in headscarves, veils, and burqas is particularly problematic, as she has noted in blog entries. A Muslim woman who chooses not to wear hijab, May says those who judge her are most often not other Muslims, but non-Muslims.
“I meet a lot of judgment and ignorance from the general public and my piety is constantly called into question,” she said.
May was born in America but raised with Arabic as her first language. Upon entering public school she was dumped into English as a Second Language (ESL) class. “They thought because I spoke Arab that I was a dunce,” she said. “That's how they perceive you if you speak any language other than or in addition to English.”
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Will Black Ever Be the New Black?
Black. Is there anything more iconic, more essential to fashion? More than just a color, it is an aspiration - sexy, classic, provocative, demure, slimming. It's Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and punk pioneer Sid Vicious. Black is never out of style - except when it comes to skin color.
Outrage and concern over the fashion industry's obsession with super skinny models and exotic furs, but little thought is given to its underlying racism.
Last year, only three Black models were cast in New York's fashion week. Across the pond in London, a whopping one model of color was used. Things were even worse in Milan percentage-wise where of the 1,084 times an outfit was sent down the catwalk, it was worn by a Black model a mere fourteen times.
The numbers for Asian and Latina women were just as anemic and disturbing, but the representation of both ethnicities was still better than Blacks.
The print industry is no better. A couple of months ago a writer for The Times of London scoured through 25kgs (about 55lbs) of the top fashion magazines from the United States, Europe, Japan, and India. Wading through thousands of pages of editorials and advertisements, the journalist found paltry 163 photos of non-White models. Fourteen of this already laughable statistic were of Africa descent. In an industry where exposure is such a vital part of success, the absence spoke volumes.
Not to be left out, the beauty world is doing its part to promote a less colorful society. "Tanorexia" may be on the rise amongst our porcelain-skinned peers, but the aversion to dark skin that began on plantation fields 400 years ago is not only present, it is thriving in the 21st century.
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Dread Not
A few weeks ago I was waiting for the bus on San Francisco’s iconic Haight Street when an ebony-skinned man with short dreads carrying a bag of aluminum cans passed in front of me. He paused, looked me in the eye, and shook his head in disgust before passing me by. I couldn’t hear him clearly, but I was able to string together something along the lines of:
“You wearin’ dreads ‘cause it’s a hairstyle, not ‘cause your life is right.”
On my ride home I thought about why his words felt so intrusive. Was he right to pass judgment? Was I part of a new generation of youth who blindly appropriated cultures I had no historical appreciation for?
I’ve worn my half-black, half-white, fiercely curly hair in one natural style or another since I got out of high school. But it wasn’t until I spent a summer in Costa Rica that I finally just let my hair turn itself into dreadlocks. I decided to grow dreadlocks two years ago after a decade of admiring them on other people. I’m not religious, but even if I was, my hairstyle would be the last thing my faith would affect.
For followers of the Rastafarian faith, wearing dreadlocks is a complex statement of political and spiritual autonomy. Their dreadlocks are their “crowns.” Rastas wear them in accordance to the biblical injunction in the pre-King James version of the Christian bible to never cut their hair.
Yet aside from religious freedom, dreadlocks have also historically been symbolic of Black Nationalist struggles against racism.
Mop top, shit locks, dreads, locks – today’s nicknames for dreadlocks are as varied as the people who wear them. They originally got their name in Jamaica back in the ‘30’s. White landowners were said to dread the sight of them because those who wore them stood in stark defiance of the British Colonial system. Back then, and even after Jamaican independence, the hairstyle was a barefaced political statement against the white dictatorship in Jamaica.
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Black in America Misses The 'Why'
(Editor's Note: This was originally posted at Youth Speaks South Shore.)
The cable television program “Black in America” focused on several different socio-economic issues that affect African-Americans in today’s society. Aired on CNN, host Soledad O’Brien takes the viewer on a journey through various neighborhoods; effectively shedding light on dark issues that have plagued Black America for some time.
Issues such as education, marriage, pregnancy, and violence in different communities throughout the country were highlighted, giving the viewer insight into a plight that only the Black community often feels. While O’Brien did a fantastic job telling the stories of various individuals she interviewed, little emphasis was placed on the story behind the story. Not much focus was given to the “why” in these particular scenarios.
In a country where racism is still alive, it is important for White America not only to see, but also to understand our story as well. For too long only a partial testament been given to the adversity that affects millions of our people on a daily basis.
Take an inner-city Houston education scenario as one example: An effort put forth by the community to try and enroll drop outs back in school is a fantastic effort; one which O’Brien brings to the forefront of her program with adept ease. Here she is with television crews, interviewers, and community activists petitioning at a doorstep for a boy to come back and enroll in school.
However, we fail to analyze the context in which this Black boy is placed. A 17-year-old male stands outside with no shirt on, gawked at not only by several people at his doorstep, but also interviewers, television crews and producers as well as the millions of Americans who will watch him through their television screens.
And that is exactly how they see him – a young shirtless male, with an apparent disinterest in returning to school, emphasized by the fact that he turns immediately on his heels and walks back into his house.
Now readers please ask yourself this question – how would you react if complete strangers showed up at your house in the afternoon, bombarding you with pleas to return to your job? Under the gaze of television cameras and reporters that just so happened to be there as well?
Most likely you would walk back into the sheltered safety of your humble abode. Why wouldn’t you? It’s safe from prying eyes, is it not? No one can intrude on your personal space there, broadcasting all of your personal business on the public airwaves for millions to see. Of course we do not consider this, with just the mere fact that the boy is finally persuaded to (1) put a shirt on (2) return to school and enroll a full month late and (3) finally as his story closes, we see that after only a day in school, he drops out once again.
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How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?
Rasha was 19, frightened, and upset. Woken up by government agents in the middle of the night, she and the rest of her family—except two younger brothers born in the U.S.—were hauled off to a holding cell and later to prison for almost three months. Grilled about terrorism and held on immigration charges, she and her mother were often reduced to tears, despondent and depressed.
And then she was released, without much fanfare, along with her father, mother, sister, and elder brother. As the family made its way out of prison, an immigration official handed them a court date and helpfully observed that they were, in fact, eligible to file a residency petition.
Moustafa Bayoumi’s book, How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, depicts the struggles of Arabs who are growing up in the shadow of post-September 11th America and confronting the paradoxical mix of capricious and prejudicial attitudes evinced by its institutions.
An associate professor at Brooklyn College (CUNY), Bayoumi crafts his narratives, drawn from the lives of seven Arab American youth in the Brooklyn area, with careful, considered prose. Wisely, he often maintains a distance from his younger subjects, adding germane facts and historical context to illuminate the stories. Further, he chronicles not only their conflicts, but their successes and their ambivalence in the face of daily frustrations.
A less attuned academic might have taken the opposite route, relegating people’s voices to the periphery of a drawn-out polemic or perfunctory rundown of immigration patterns.
Instead, here we learn of the bonds formed between Rasha and her sister while in jail, the distant state her brother fell into after release, a school petition signed by 200 classmates on the family’s behalf, and a chance encounter with a smug prison official in Times Square.
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Perez Hilton Hates Yellow People
(This post originally appeared on Disgrasian and was reprinted on Racialicious.)
Ever wonder how an internet meme gets started? Or, for that matter, how it then spreads and metastasizes until it becomes accepted fact?
Over the last week, we’ve seen one particular meme develop about China: “China Hates Black People” (courtesy of Perez Hilton).
This idea didn’t, however, originate with Perez Hilton. It started last Friday with a story in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, “Authorities order bars not to serve black people,” which alleged that Chinese government authorities were secretly planning to ban blacks from bars during the Olympic games. Reporter Tom Miller based the story on the claim of one anonymous source:
“Uniformed Public Security Bureau officers came into the bar recently and told me not to serve black people or Mongolians,” said the co-owner of a western-style bar, who asked not to be named.
Then Miller quoted another unnamed source, a “black British national who lives in Beijing,” to further shore up the story:
“Chinese people are prejudiced, but I would have hoped that the government would set a better example as it debuts on the world stage.”
The story was then picked up by legitimate news sources like Reuters, The Globe and Mail, and The Age, and that was before it hit the blog-o-sphere. Four days later, around the same time that the Chinese government officially denied that such a ban existed, Perez Hilton posted the story, et voila…a meme is born. In the two days since and at the time of this writing, 649 comments have been made about Perez’s post, and many of them are loaded with xenophobia, racism, and hate, and not just for the Chinese:
National Hip Hop Political Convention Opens in 2 Weeks
(This post originally appeared on Vibe.com and on Jeff's blog, Can't Stop Won't Stop.)
Since the first National Hip-Hop Political Convention was held in Newark New Jersey in the summer of 2004, young voters have come to the polls in big turnouts, driven by a landmark surge of young voters of color. This surprised many long-time political observers, but not the organizers of the Convention--full disclosure: I was there--who had seen the growth of hip-hop activism and organizing around the country.
After the Convention, those efforts continued around the country, joined by high-profile voter registration campaigns by Diddy and Russell Simmons. Those efforts continue today. Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit Action Network has taken Hip-Hop Team Vote to a number of campuses. T.I. is joining the Hip-Hop Caucus's efforts to register and turn out young people to vote in 12 target states, including swing states like Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio.
When the third National Hip-Hop Political Convention opens in Las Vegas on July 30th--in the heart of another swing state, Nevada--it can boast of its role in expanding the field of hip-hop generation elected officials and candidates, including co-founder Rosa Clemente who will be addressing the body as the Green Party vice presidential candidate. Representatives of the Democratic and Republican National Committees will also be speaking. The focus will be the Convention's political agenda, first forged in Newark in 2004.
2008 Convention Chair Troy Nkrumah took time away from a heavy load of emails, text messages, and phone calls to talk with Vibe.com about the importance of the Convention and its agenda, and what role it hopes to play in this historic election and beyond.
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Hip-Hop Leaders: Jesse Jackson's Time Is Up
(Via RaceWire:)
Kevin Powell and Nas both think that it’s time for a guard change among Black political leaders. Calling it a generational shift made most noticeable by the success of Barack Obama’s message within the Hip Hop generation, both men think they are members of this next wave of leaders to take the torch from older Civil Rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Kevin Powell is a writer and activist, known to some for his early 90s appearance on the first season of The Real World, who is running for Congress in Brooklyn. Nas, born and raised in Queens, is arguably one of the greatest emcees in the history of hip-hop who is has been stirring up lots of controversy leading up to his latest album, Untitled (formerly the N word).
Powell says:
I certainly acknowledge and appreciate what the Civil Righters have done, but we younger African Americans are saying now, loudly, the jig is up and it is time for you to go, especially if you have not created hope and plans of action for our communities. The days of marching and protesting without a clear purpose are over. The days of voting for someone just because they are Black are over. Indeed, the multicultural legion of young Americans who've flocked to Obama's campaign suggest that we want leadership that builds bridges, not be stuck in the rhetoric and realities of the past. I have witnessed this as I've been campaigning. Yes, I must represent the concerns of Blacks and Latinos in East New York. But I cannot ignore the Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg or the young White professionals in Fort Greene. They are all my people. Until we have Black leaders who understand that the America we need now is one where an Obama can be president and a Nas can make a rap song like "Black President," both condemning Obama doubters and reminding everyone of the inequities that still exist, then we will continue to have leadership that is operating as if it is 1968 instead of 2008.
Nas seems to echo Powell's sentiment, and he says that he and other rappers have already begun taking their place within this changing Black political heirarchy (Listen to audio):
Hip Hop's leaders are definitely riding the wave of momentum created by Barack Obama's campaign, and they want their turn at the mic. Do you think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should "grab nuts" and be out?
Hipster Racism
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Racialicious, and was updated on AJ's blog The Cruel Secretary.)
By now, you've seen the latest New Yorker cover, with the Obamas garbed in the gear of the latest fear-mongering Americans' wet dream.
Of course, people at Michelle Obama Watch, Daily Kos, Politico, and other blogs have expressed rightful and righteous outrage over the cover.
The Washington Post's and CNN's Reliable Sources' Howard Kurtz said: "I talked to the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, who tells me this is a satire, that they are making fun of all the rumors," Kurtz added. (Source)
Bill Burton, The Obama campaign spokesperson, responded: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree." (Source)
My current live-in partner, who works at the New Yorker, just couldn't believe that so many people responded so angrily at the cover at the Daily Kos and other sites. He "wanted to see [my] reaction." When I emphatically told him that I didn't find it funny, he said, "You're so angry."
"Of course I'm angry. What do you expect? This is my reaction is to your employer doing something so racist." "I'm trying to have some fun here."
Humph, you gotta love hipster racism.
I define hipster racism (I'm borrowing the phrase from Carmen Van Kerckhove) as ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another's person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning "ironic" nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy. This racist and sexist balderdash that's the New Yorker cover fits squarely into that definition. So, honestly, does the behavior of my partner, who prides himself on coming from a California family of educators who taught him to be colorblind and on working at a magazine renown for being, well, urbane, witty, educated, liberal, and trendy yet likes to view me as the Angry Negress.
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Gang Injunction Approved in Southern California
(Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Luis Rodriguez's blog.)
As expected, and despite opposition from a number of community leaders, a gang injunction against the San Fer gang has been imposed by the courts on a nine-and-a-half square mile area of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, encompassing most of Sylmar, a northwest portion of Pacoima and all of San Fernando City (most of the rest of Pacoima has already been under a gang injunction for years against the Pacoima Flats, Projects Boys, and other Pacoima gangs).
This is reportedly the largest gang injunction area in Los Angeles
Already, young Latino men I know -- not in gangs -- have been stopped, arrested, and in one case almost photographed (to be part of a statewide gang data base). This last case was stopped when the young man's parents became involved and demanded their son not be photographed or placed on this data base. Finding that this young man had no gang ties, he was eventually released.
As I predicted, many youth not in San Fer, but also alleged San Fer members not involved in crimes, will be harassed and even arrested. Our juvenile facilities, jails and prisons are teeming with youth who shouldn't be there -- a gang injunction makes illegal what is otherwise legal activity: association, using a cell phone, or having tattoos. Now alleged gang members will find themselves going to jail for things that are not criminal.
If you make more laws, you make more lawless.
My work, and the work of many gang intervention workers, is to keep these young people out of the criminal justice system. Our work now has become twice as hard as these injunctions -- and other laws down the pike like the Runner Initiative slated for vote in November -- end up placing poor and often neglected youth behind bars faster and longer.
It's easy now to end up in jail -- it's harder to find treatment, help, jobs, schooling, viable alternatives to street life.
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Mideast Youth Takes On Afghan Media
Last year, we profiled Mideast Youth, an independent blogging network dedicated to eliminating extremism from the Middle East and North Africa. I thought I'd check back in with the group to see what they've been up to. Sure enough, they've been busy as ever. But their new project is both fascinating and really cool.
Mideast Youth has launched Afghan Press, a blog whose purpose is to "use digital media to show the world what currently goes unreported" in Afghanistan. The journalist-activists who started Afghan Press want to cover daily events in remote villages and interview locals -- everyday people -- who are never represented in the media. And they hope to do this using all different forms of media.
Afghan Press has also become a place to announce journalism training opportunities for Afghan journalists. In this way, Mideast Youth hopes to contribute something to Afghanistan's media.
From the Afghan Press mission statement:
Afghanistan is a country riddled with poverty, illiteracy, censorship, human rights abuses and corruption. There are hardly any progressive and independent news sources functioning within it. We aim to change that!
We want to create a powerful Afghanistan through new media technologies. The internet is our only gateway to free speech and global outreach...It is time for Afghanistan to have a successful digital media outlet that is by the people, for the people, to the world and whose mission is to improve the country.