12 posts tagged “race”
I just watched Epic Fu's great episode, which included a piece on The Face Transfomer. Beyond thinking that the Face Transfomer is cool, I started thinking about the social meaning behind this exercise.
Here I am pretending to be an “Afro-Carriabean” - wtf? I mean cool yes, sure, I want to see what I look like as a manga character and am curious to see what I look like as a black person, but there was something odd about trying on different races. Literally.
What does it mean for race relations and conceptions when we feel that we can freely try on different races? Have we become so comfortable with race that we can play around with it like shopping for clothing?
I am always really sensitive when people say that a person acts like a certain race or culture. It’s almost akin to imaginatively being another race - kinda like what we are doing with Face Transfomer. And you know I actually hear this verbal exchange most often among my white and black or latino friends. I’ve heard a black person say to a white person, “you know so much about black culture that you are black or at least must have been black in a past life.” Now I find that on one end to be a compliment, that the white person is accepted as part of the black community, but on the other end I find it difficult to swallow as a form of compliment because most often it is white people who have the most latitude to be absorbed into another race or cultural group. You don’t usually hear the reverse, that a white person will say to a black person, “wow you know so much about black culture that you are actually white!” It's like you hear in the movies where they say to white people, you can always come into our part of town, but we will never be allowed to come into yours.
For dominant groups, like Caucasians in the US, race can be an after thought so it’s almost like a novelty to pretend for a moment that one is another race or ethnicity. For people who look anything other than white in Western countries, there isn’t as much freedom to forget one’s skin color because they are reminded of it (usually negatively) in their daily interactions with institutions and people.
In particular, for non-whites, being a certain race or ethnicity can be a complicated process of accepting ones skin color and coming to terms with the popular (mis)conceptions of one’s race or ethnic group. A lot of times, this entails the imagination of being white before a full embracement of one’s race or heritage. For a time period when I was a teenager raised in an all white upper-class community, I wished I was white so badly so that I wouldn't have to deal with the racist jaunts by my classmates. And so here I am, trying on a "West-Indian" face. Kinda surreal. Now do I really want to imagine what it is like to look like an Indian female, let's say in the US? or in India? and from what class? what is my migration history? or was I born here? My point is that being another race is more than just trying it on for a few seconds digitally, but some how we've reduced it down to just that and I wonder if this novelty is an indicator of that we're comfortable with race or that we're just dealing with race in a more post-modern removed and techno-mediated way.
And you know it's usually people who are more affluent who have the opportunity become the "other," to learn about another culture and to transplant themselves into another ethnic group’s cultural world. So jokes made to white people like “wow you know so much about my culture, you must be Mexican” just make me uncomfortable because there’s a certain level of privilege that comes with learning about another “culture.” The fact that I make time and spend money to learn Spanish because I find the language beautiful and useful for my academic interests in Mexican migration is a privilege. Now it is a privilege that I embrace and am not embarrassed of and make no apologies for, but at the same time I am quite aware of my social position to even be able to learn another language more out of interest and less out of need.
So back to Face Transformer - does this mean America is comfortable with race (and manga, chimps and euro painters j/k) if we can freely try on different races? And what does this say about race when we can collapse large groups of people together into general categories? In Face Transformers all the blacks, Caribbeans and Africans are grouped into the afro-caribbean category, and all Asians are collapsed into the East-Asian category and I think the West Indian group is not referring to people from the West Indies but Indians and Middle-Easterners. This is an odd form of racial reductionism. And where are the Latinos – where do they fit in this? And Inuits?
I’ve always kept a tab on these Face Transformer-like sites and I think the fun in trying these online sites out is an expression of an underlying desire to temporarily imagine another physical body without fully committing to that body/face. And the kinds of changes rendered by these online sites point to a greater cultural obsession or let’s say anxiety with that rendering. So for Face Transfomers we could say this is an obsession with race and euro paintings:) Oh and with age also – you can chose to be a young adult, baby, teenager and old person.
One of the predecessors to Face Transformers was My Heritage and I wrote about the social meaning behind that too 2 years ago when it launched. So instead of transforming into a race or chimp, like Face Transformer, you can transform yourself into a celebrity and see which one you most closely resemble. So this points to an obsession with celebrities.
Well after my social diagnosis I think I will upload another picture on Face Transformer and see what I look like as a Male. Hmmm perhaps I have an underlying anxiety with switching genders? Well did anyone have these thoughts when they uploaded a face on Face Transfomer?
oh and one thing that I definitely learned is that I don't like good as a Caucasian! Good thing that I embrace my Chinese face!
Raquel originally posted this article from Tim wise. thanks mama!
"Your whiteness is showing.
When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation--the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity--you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque."
I was talking with a friend about why I wasn't into watching the superbowl. She asked if I least enjoyed the commercials - and I said no because most of the time I just don't find them funny and many of times I find the commercials offensive and just disappointing. This year, I worked straight through the superbowl, but I watched kenyatta's family on ichat watching the superbowl - now that was fun! Afterwards, I saw kenyatta's blog post about the commercials, titled "That's Hegemony! (Super Bowl XLII Edition)." His post highlights several commercials from Victoria Secrets to Hanes Underwear. I am reposting some of the videos he pointed out, but also some new ones - that especially show just how screwed up we are about race.
In America, we think we are over racism because we can talk about it, flaunt it, celebrate it and even be un-pc about it - hey you so Asian I love you - I have a black friend - Mexicans make great food! But at the end of the day our race problems are rooted in not being able to understand the "other."
Well here are two video from Sales Genie, one that shows some pandas speaking chinglish, another showing an Indian worker who can be a productive Indian with a bit of pressure from his overweight white boss. Then there's the taco bell commercial with Mexican mariachis who can make great mexican food, play mexican music and even seduce a white woman! Lastly we have the budlight commericial that just de-masculinizes Indian and Chinese men with accents while celebrating the glorious white man's ability to woo women.
Generic Asian Man: I have more money than you!
Crazy Monster: Oh Yeah? I have more cultural capital than you!
Generic Asian Man: I create your cultural capital!!
Crazy Monster: You little misrecognized structured bitch.
I drew this cartoon during a seminar discussion on Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction. Bourdieu is HEAVY - everytime I read him I become so depressed because I feel like no matter what, the working class, or the marginalized are always fucked. So to counterbalance this - I drew a cartoon, a la Bourdieu - but with a silly side. Would he find it funny? I don't know - but to understand this cartoon if you haven't read his work yet, here's a quick primer.
Bourdieu tried to show that there are more ways than just using money to dominate people - and that people use "culture" to also reproduce their superiority. So he conceptualized this as "cultural capital."
For example, he said public education is a way social hierarchy is reproduced. When the school sends their students on an art museu fieldtrip - this is form of trying to enforce the dominant class's taste of what is considered to be "artistic" and valuable for education. Bourdieu was trying to point out that the contradiction with public education is that it's supposed to INCREASE equality, but instead it PERPETUATES inequality. When teachers and textbooks force into black kids that they need to know about European art and memorize European history, this is one way of reproducing the hierarchy of whites on top, and blacks on bottom. Of course textbooks give Blacks one month for their anti-slavery heros, and a chapter on third world Africa, - and of course we say the West colonized Africa, but one month of heros or 1 chapter of lesson plans is not enough. Even though we are past the plantation days, school classrooms and curriculum ensure that racial superiority stays alive in more subversive ways. It's all one big structure of structured domination! AHHHHH!
Read and Laugh at Crazy Monster #1-4
As I watch this disaster unfold, I keep comparing how the news frames the San Diego 2007 Firestorm in contrast to how they framed New Orlean's Hurrican Katrina. Race and class are at the heart of the comparisons. So much of this sounds different when you are talking about SD's primarily Caucasian middle-upper class communities being affected by the fire - whereas in new Orleans it was primarily poor black people stranded in the hurricane.
we can see many differences just by comparing how the media and government talks about the evacuees who stayed behind despite a mandatory evacuation. In New Orleans, helicopters didn't rescue all the black people on their roofs, supposedly because they were hearing "gun shots." I remember the reaction from the news and online community was that those who didn't listen to the mandatory evacuation were complete "idiots" or people trying to defy the law- essentially those stupid poor blacks folks. In San Diego - firefighters can't focus their resources on fighting the fires because of the winds and because they are also busy doing emergency rescues on people who didnt' listen to the mandatory evacuation. HOWEVER - the news frames these people in a more sympathetic light - by saying well you can understand why these people are so attached to their beautiful homes they own because of all the hard work they've put into it and even though they should have listened we understand the pain they are - essentially we are sympathetic to middle-upper class folks for staying behind in the face of a fire if they are protecting their houses. White people again are reinforced as HARD-WORKING and PERSISTENT even when they FAIL to evacuate while blacks are framed as LAZY and UNOBEDIENT for not evacuating.
Remember how the media
said black folks were raping, murdering and eating each other in the
New Orleans Superdome? Now the media in San Diego frames the 10,000
primarily white middle-upper class folks from North County in the
Qualcom Stadium as peacefully sharing oral stories about their homes
and eating home-baked brownies dropped off by sympathetic volunteers, and getting massages by compassionate massage therapist volunteers!!!! And please notice the headline of the article by ABC about those who are giving massages, "CIVILITY REIGNS IN SAN DIEGO," as if the opposite - UNCIVILITY - reigns in other places. CIVILITY refers so much to those who are CIVILIZED and separates the civilized from the uncivilized. This implies that the situation in Qualcomm stadium is totally different from the situation in other uncivilized evacuee areas - like the Superdome, where the black evacuees were supposedly unpolite, violent, sweaty, dirty and smelly - and where the Black Evacuees were called REFUGEES. So at least San Diego has learned so much from Katrina - they are taking the names of people who enter the stadium, and they are not referring to them non-US citizens. We have no white refugees in San Diego- truly they are first-class civilized citizens! 
I have to admit that I am so upset right now that I am having a hard time finishing a deconstruction of this headline and the images - so if anyone wants to write more about this please do - and I will link to you.
I know the situations (Katrina and Southern California Wildfires) are completely different and do not stand for a sound comparison, but a comparison in media representation is worthwhile and reveals how the class and race of community matter. . For a reminder at how much race and class does matter in media discourse- here's a photo where I examined from the Hurrican Katrina and how the news framed a black man wading in water as "looting" while they framed a white man wading in water as "finding" floating goods. Btw- Many New Orleans evacuees are STILL homeless and not doing ok 2 years after the disaster. For those in Malibu and San Diego who had their mansions burn down - I wonder what will happen?
I am so mad that the city I live in is filled with so much sweet words of prejudice. Not that this doesn't happen everyday everywhere - but it's just really intense when your city is burning down and there is so much racial and class politics in the media. As Raquel has written - the whole South side of San Diego county is burning down, but it the press coverage is scant compared to North County of San Diego - where all the super-rich super-luxury mansions are loacted. It's where people, like this person, go to escape their 2nd home or to their friend's hotel or book a room at the Aviara for $350 a night with sculpted flamingos and golf courses.
(South County is more middle-low income, racially and ethnically mixed and 10-5 miles from Mexico.)
You can read my other thoughts about the National news coverage of SD fires here, distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here.
UPDATE: NPR just did a piece on how bloggers are either comparing or arguing against a comparison of Katrina vs.Southern Ca. Wildfires. They link to many other excellent blog posts that do some great comparisons.
this photo was taken by ABC News and was part of this story and part of The Stencil.
Natural wildfires regenerate the soil with nutrients and burn away potentially super-dangerous brush. Some tress, like pines, depend on fires to spread their seeds in their cones! Stephen J. Pyne, an ex-firefighter and Prof. of Ecological History - is a specialist on the social mis-management of fires in the US. He has written extensively about different societies over time have used actively used controlled fires to develop the land or to practice cultural rituals. From national geographic: "Today's fires can grow unusually fierce because Smokey Bear went overboard. For decades, the well-meaning policy of suppressing all forest fires allowed too much fuel—dead wood, underbrush, small trees—to build up on public lands, especially in the fire-prone West. What might have once been a minor grass fire now turns cataclysmic, like last year's Hayman Fire in Colorado."
This is also a chance for us to think about how much control we have over nature - people build homes right in the middle of forests and lands that are prone to fires. Is there anything logical to that? When we don't let natural fire happen, suburban homes on the edges become the unnatural barrier. I hope these San Diego fires get people to think more about ongoing fire management than fire suppression.
I took this picture this morning of the fire at UCSD - 8am and it's fire sky already. In the meantime - I am safe from the fires. The air is just horrific though - my eyes, nasal passages and throat burns. I worry about those who have asthma.
You can read my other thoughts about the racial class politics of San Diego fires here, National news coverage of SD fires here, distortion of wildfires here, emphasis of LA over SD here, and what a Sociologist would do during a fire here. this was photo overlay was created by tim
Leah posted this and said "his sums up my feelings about new england and race perfectly."
I am in shock after reading Jeff Chang's post on Davidjacob's Random Walks. - but then again having worked for the UN briefly - I am not in shock at the blatant insensitivity of this ad. And hello UNICEF - it's obvious from your insincere apology below that you don't understand why people are protesting this campaign - it's not about the cosmetic brown make up itself - it's about the racism and stetreotypes that the make up signifies.
From Can't Stop Won't stop:
Save Africa hipsterism reached a new low this summer with this UNICEF campaign by ad company Jung von Matt/Alster presenting German children in blackface. You can see them beginning here. More analysis here.
Even the taglines, meant to call attention to Africa's educational crisis, sound nuts. Here's one: ""In Africa, kids don't come to school late, but not at all."
Lost in translation maybe? Nein! After protests, there was this reply from a UNICEF official:
The idea behind is that children from Germany demonstrate their solidarity with children in Africa by showing up with a coloured make up. Their message is: "Children may look different but are equal - we all want to go to school." Absolutely no connotation of black children as "dirty children" was intended.
Before publishing the ad, we had carefully discussed possible misinterpretations and the agency had also tested public reaction in a survey in Germany, without receiving negative comments. Neither did we receive any negative reaction from the German public after publication.
The ad was published in a few high-quality print media like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Spiegel, Die Zeit, Stern, free-of-charge. These media had never volunteered to publish the ad if they would have expected a negative connotation. Obviously, the perception of the ad varies by country... We apologize if you feel irritated by the make up of the children.
Onward...to cultural understanding, oh UNICEF soldiers!
Originally posted by Zentronix from zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric
Good writing is a like a drug - it just makes you keep reading - paragraphs are not opportunities for breaks, but present a moment to soak in the words and immerse yourself in more amazing insights that are hinged on a beatiful bagel like cloud.Adriana's post on Singy Kids, "From Karachi to Cannes: A Review of "A Mighty Heart", truly shows off her ability to be a perceptive social commentator. She has the capabiliy to weave together multiple strands of social issues into a one cohesive and penetrative essay. The best social commentators have to be seamlessly multi-disiplinary in their knowledge, and I personally believe Adriana is one of the best I have read.
For example, her review is the first and only piece of writing on Mighty Heart that successfully addresses the uncomfortable yet difficult to articulate fact that Angelina Jolie is a white woman portraying a mixed woman, Marianne Pearl. Adriana addresses this topic in logically and convincingly. Here is an excerpt below on this issues, but by no way this is an excuse to read her essay in full,
Both Jolie and Mariane Pearl wish for us to believe that the casting of Jolie as a biracial woman is not problematic. "Aren't we past this?" Mariane retorted when asked to discuss the issue. "I am Cuban, but I'm also Dutch. Should a Dutch person play me? It's not about skin color, it's about how a person behaves that matters." If this was indeed the position of Pearl, Jolie and the filmmakers, then I wonder why they bothered with the considerable make up job they performed on Jolie. Why not simply cast her as she is, without alteration, if indeed, only the person "within" matters? In fact, why not cast the entire film without regard to ethnicity, race, culture and religion?
So you see, what I love most about her writing is that she writes about so many heavy topics so clearly! She never loses her audeince - her review grapples with race and ethnicity relations, literary interpretation, translation authenticity, film analysis, popular culture, and celebrity culture - but never does she belittle her audience with heavy academic jargon. She gives one of the best summaries of the film, it "had the opportunity to offer an inquiry and/or critique on this tension, present in Mariane's narration. Instead, it just reproduces it. "
Please write more stuff like this Adriana!!!!
