There are other blog posts that I have promised to make. I’m still working on them. In the meantime, here’s a cool blog whose owner has has good links and great blog posts: Feminist Texican
Lean in close to your screen. I have something to tell you. Latinos use computers. It’s true. Know what else? There are more Latino bloggers than general market bloggers. I didn’t believe it either, but this week has seen a spate of industry reports saying exactly that and more.
Depending on the source, there is anywhere from 5.4 percent to 7.5 percent more Hispanic bloggers than whites in the U.S. The gap is due to the “liberating” effects of new technology, the skill set that online adroitness offers working-class Latinos and stay-at-home moms, and the longstanding cultural value on collectivism over individualism.
Not only are the numbers higher, but blogueros’ communities and commenters are more active and vocal than their general market counterparts. Latinos’ drive to blog is less about grandstanding and more about conversation. (Perez Hilton notwithstanding.)
In a handful of days, a trio of reports confirmed what Hispanic PR professionals have been buzzing about for years. Latinos are online and engaged more than nearly every other group (Asian-Americans are the leaders). AOL and Cheskin released their fascinating and beautifully designed Hispanic Cyberstudy on January 26, a day after BlogWorldExpo rolled out their list of power “blogueros”provided by the founder of LatISM (Latinos in Social Media). Florida State University’s Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication gave us a sneak peek at their forthcoming report about Latinos online.MORe
So this whole thing with Chris Matthews “forgetting that Obama is black” falls into that same range of racism as “Pretty for a black girl” and the “You’re not like those other black people” claptrap often espoused by the “I’m not racist, but…” crowd. They’re coded as compliments, but the subtext is still an ugly one that frames racism as being the fault of the oppressed. After all, if we’d all just be a credit to our race then our problems would go away right? Right. Oh wait, no that’s completely wrong.
Let me give you a quick history lesson on American race relations and what can happen when black people in this country are just going about their business. We can start with Rosewood, Florida. Now let’s move on to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and of course the riots that broke out right here in Chicago. What’s that? Oh, you think the early 20th century is ancient history? Okay. Let’s talk about a Baptist church in Selma, Alabama. Still too far in the past? Okay. Let’s come forward to cases like Lenard Clark’s or Abner Louima’s. Or this one on New Year’s Day 2010.
This incidents are as much a part of America’s racial history as the “I have a Dream” speech, traffic lights (invented by Garret A. Morgan, peanut butter, open heart surgery (successfully pioneered by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams), and all the other positive moments like the election of President Obama. I’ve heard people that claim to be colorblind (or post-racial) insist that the future hinges on seeing people without including race. Of course their future seems very…pale with some of the same people complaining about the continuing existence of institutions like the NAACP, HBCU’s, and other organizations that predate the Civil Right’s Movement.
I’ll buy that part of the problem is the failure of our educational system to teach history comprehensively, but that’s not the only reason for these attitudes. America’s efforts to “transcend” race are still about America’s efforts to forget the past entirely and of course to ignore anything happening right now that might require confronting reality. Racism isn’t going to go away as long as we try to pretend that ignoring race is a solution. The idea that race is something for POC to overcome is the equivalent of buying racism a new costume to replace the old hood.
And considering the fact that net neutrality is highly likely go the way of the dodo, I sincerely doubt I’ll be able to acquire Al Jazeera on youtube if I’m not rich enough to afford the extra cash, don’t you think?
At the root of the Court’s attack on popular democracy — and it is an attack, and it will promote if not guarantee rule by unaccountable corporate oligarchy — is the Court’s infamous 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision that said money equals speech. Left unaddressed in today’s decision — and others — is the absurdity of this formula. When money equals speech, outfits with more money have more speech. And that destroys the very principle of free speech.
Ask yourself this question. If you had to persuade your community about political opinion X, but corporations opposed your view, would you stand a chance knowing that their “political speech” was worth much more than your political speech? The answer is obvious. Mere people have been thrown on the scrap heap. The U.S. Supreme Court is lifting corporations to the top of the evolutionary ladder.MORE
Keith Olbermann goes into the ramifications in his inimitable style :Freedom of Speech has been destroyed.
From what I gather, there are only a couple of things to be done about this: shareholder empowerment or constitutional amendment, both of which are very, very difficult.
Take a hypothetical homeland security bill. Many people don’t know that Wal-Mart actively campaigns against tighter screening of cargo containers fearing that increased inspections will slow its supply lines. Yet many experts cite 100 percent screening of containers to be a necessary step in protecting our homeland against a terrorist attack. So what happens when a politician with a strong dedication to security matters but who has been bankrolled by Wal-Mart needs to vote on a bill that includes increased container screening? It’s not hard to imagine him rejecting such legislation to ensure Wal-Mart’s support in his re-election campaign.
This kind of political quid pro quo — trading campaign contributions for votes — is a serious concern in our current political climate. Just think how much worse it will be when corporations are free to spend whatever they like.
But even beyond the quid pro quo concerns is the firm belief, shared by multitudes, that more money in our political system is not the direction we should be headed. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) told me recently that the pressure on members of Congress to raise money is already worse than it’s ever been — and she’s been in the House for 26 years. Kaptur talked of one congressman who spent 90 percent of his time on the telephone fundraising. The obvious question becomes: How the heck did he get anything done? If the Supreme Court rules the way it’s expected to, situations like this will only get worse.
Those in favor of turning back the restrictions assert that special interests are simply groups of individuals advocating a particular issue or candidate, and that restricting what they can spend in this endeavor is the same as limiting their speech. But this is a specious argument. Rolling back campaign finance regulations would result not only in increased political influence by special interests and politicians spending too much time fundraising, but also in a huge increase in negative political ads, as well as the possibility — if not the probability — of increased corruption, and thus even more cynicism about our political system.MORE
Chris Matthews is on my tv carefully saying how much Haiti’s problems are due to its politics. He is also congratulating the US on how much its image will be burnished because of how quickly it is responding to the crisis. Really. Yes, really. And aren’t we the greatest country in the world?
And most of the reporters that are on my tv are emphasizing how poor and desperate Haiti’s people were before the quake. And how sad isn’t it, that this country has never been able to get its act together oh my! But don’t worry, America’s there to save them now. And aren’t we the greatest country in the world? And not ONE of the assholes has mentioned that the United States and the French were and are a main cause of the poverty, and dictatorship and blood shed. Let me just add to the education going on all over lj and dreamwidth What the US owes Haiti
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson – an owner of 180 slaves himself – became the third President of the United States. Jefferson, who was deeply troubled by the slaughter of plantation owners in St. Domingue, feared that the example of African slaves fighting for their liberties might spread northward.
“If something is not done, and soon done,” Jefferson wrote about the violence in St. Domingue in 1797, “we shall be the murderers of our own children.”
So, in 1801, the interests of Napoleon and Jefferson temporarily intersected. Napoleon was determined to restore French control of St. Domingue and Jefferson was eager to see the slave rebellion crushed.
Through secret diplomatic channels, Napoleon asked Jefferson if the United States would help a French army traveling by sea to St. Domingue. Jefferson replied that “nothing will be easier than to furnish your army and fleet with everything and reduce Toussaint [L’Ouverture] to starvation.”MORE
During the Cold War, the U.S. supported the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier and then Baby Doc Duvalier–which ruled the country from 1957 to 1986–as an anti-communist counterweight to Castro’s Cuba nearby.
Under guidance from Washington, Baby Doc Duvalier opened the Haitian economy up to U.S. capital in the 1970s and 1980s. Floods of U.S. agricultural imports destroyed peasant agriculture. As a result, hundred of thousands of people flocked to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince to labor for pitifully low wages in sweatshops located in U.S. export processing zones.MORE
Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF’s extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.
(I pause here to let loose a hearty FUCK YOU! in the IMF’s direction. The blasted parasites!)
But aren’t we the greatest country in the world? So generous! And they’ll pay us back! After all, this is such an opportunity to further exploit them! Oh come now, I hear you say. Those are just the far rightwing you say? We expect that from them! Oh yeah?
So, you want to help? Great. Here’s a list of charities. However if you feel the need to sound anything like Pat Robertson I’m going to need you to go sit down somewhere and be silent. The last thing anyone needs after a crisis is the bigots swooping in with lies to bolster their racism. And after all the things that have been done to Haiti over the years in the name of U.S. Foreign Policy the last thing they need is white American missionaries handing out condemnation and vilification in the guise of help. Aside from the major logical flaws in these arguments; what makes anyone think offering a helping hand in a crisis is dependent on approving of someone’s religious or social status? Oh wait, if you think that way then you’re a bigoted asshole. Stroking your ego by paying lip service to the idea of assisting victims while bashing them for some imagined sin isn’t true charity or particularly Christ-like. If you’re going to claim to be a Christian you might want to act like one.
Perhaps it is time for women to examine whether the largest organizations that claim to represent them are really delivering on their promises.
They’ve failed to organize the millions of supporters they have into a coherent and powerful movement. ‘Cause when your movement looks like an amateur mess compared with the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” teabaggers, you’re doing something wrong.
They’ve failed to frame the debate and influence how we talk about issues that affect women’s lives. While they’re still arguing about “choice” — a word that persuades no one and narrowly focuses the conversation on abortion instead of the full spectrum of reproductive health — opponents are thinking up clever new phrases to use incessantly and force into the public consciousness until they become law. “Partial birth abortion.” “Rights of the preborn.” “Culture of life.”
They’ve failed to make women’s rights a legislative priority for the very representatives they help send to Congress. And if their supposed allies don’t worry about losing support of the feminist organizations, certainly their opponents don’t lose a lot of sleep over invoking the almighty wrath of the feminists. What’s the worst they can do? Organize another march? Hey, that might actually be great news for Republicans!
They’ve failed to adapt their movement and their message to a new era and a new generation of would-be feminists. Where are the bumper sticker slogans, the tactics, the refreshed, revised 21st century approach to a problem as old as time? Are they using the internet for anything more than urgent emails and processing donations? Where are the clever YouTube videos by a new generation of feminists talking about how this or that bill affects them? Where is the television presence? Where are the bloggers? (Oh, there are plenty of feminist bloggers out there, but they’re not being supported or promoted or elevated by the feminist organizations, who still think the internet is primarily for sending email. For example, guess who the “featured blogger” on Emily’s List is? Why, it’s Ellen Malcolm, the president.) MORE
And, so the health care questions for women of color are: Who should I choose? Should I support a “lackluster” healthcare bill that will insure additional Americans? Or, should I choose women and their ability to have access to affordable abortions? And of course for women of color this is not an easy choice because on one level we know that more people of color lack access to healthcare. However, we also know the historical and current struggles (i.e. forced sterilizations, unaffordable abortions, state unethical use of Norplant) for reproductive health for women of color meaning that we know any encroachment on the ability of a woman to choose what is right for her body be it by law or by affordability is quite damaging for our struggles to ensure reproductive freedom for women of color (i.e. the ability to have a child and to terminate a pregnancy).MORE
To start, I’m sure many of you have seen or heard about the YouTube video of the black dude who shows that the webcam on the HP MediaCenter does not track his face but does track the face of his white co-worker. The vid is here, in case you haven’t seen. It’s pretty funny, too, because the dude (Desi) seems like a fun guy. When he says “I’m going to go on record and say HP computers are racist” you know he’s mostly joking, though it is really messed up that the camera doesn’t recognize his face as a face.
Now, this vid was uploaded to YouTube (ironically using the HP MediaCenter) on December 10th but it took a few days to really blow up around the ‘net. HP caught wind of it a couple of days ago and put up something on their blog mentioning lighting conditions and they were working to solve the problem and whatever. But that hasn’t stopped tons of commenters on blogs and Twitter and Facebook from declaring that HP is racist or, at least, its webcams are.
I find myself in a strange position here, because I’m about to say something I don’t normally say: people, there’s not racism here.
Those of you who know me personally know that in another aspect of my life I write about technology. I get to play around with a fair number of gadgets in order to review them and it’s a very cool job, generally. There are very few times when the ABW in me is activated by something that happens in the course of my tech writing, and when it does I’m often conflicted about where I should best express my concerns. Is the issue best discussed on theangryblackwoman.com or on my personal tech blog or even on my work tech blog? This time I’ve opted for ABW not because this issue is particularly anger-making (it’s more annoying), but because I feel like the readers here will discuss it more thoughtfully than those more tech-minded.
A few months back I reviewed a slew of digital picture frames all in a row. I had to set them all up and evaluate whether they made good gifts for grandma and grandpa. All of the frames came with some starter images to show you how the slideshow bit works before you put your images on, which is pretty standard. But as I set each frame up, I started to notice that all of the images that came pre-loaded were of white people. White families, white adults, white kids, white white white1.
Now, I realize that this is not all that different from regular frames (next time you’re in a Target or Wal-Mart or something, go stroll down the frame aisle. If there are pictures of people in them, chances are they are white people) but for some reason this struck me particularly as I was setting up these digital frames. I kept thinking: are there no brown people of any ethnicity available in stock photo bins? Or do they not even think, just choose the first pictures of happy people they see and put them in?
Then again, companies often control every aspect of a product down to the number of water drops on the image of a waterproof phone to ensure it doesn’t seem too waterproof and thus fool customers (yes, this is a real issue that came up once). Hard to believe that the photos pre-loaded on all of these frames weren’t mulled over and specifically chosen by someone.
I was reminded of this again when I posted on my work blog about good family holiday gifts and wanted to mention the frames. I was so sick of only finding images of frames with photos of white people inside that I went and found some brown people and photoshopped them in.
The reason this annoys me yet doesn’t really anger me is that it smacks not of malice or prejudice, but of unconscious privilege and blindness. Do the people who choose the images for the frame ever stop and consider that a Black or Latino or Indian or Native American family might buy the product and might appreciate if the pre-loaded photos maybe looked something like them? It’s a small thing, but would indicate to me that someone at the company was paying attention to the fact that not only white people exist in the world. And since the frame usually comes with 4 – 10 images on it, you can satisfy a whole slew of people by showing families of different races and ethnicities and also just mixed groups of people having fun and being together.
I guess I wish that people were more thoughtful. This is, I’m sure, far too much to ask.
Footnotes
I can’t be sure if there were only white people across the board because I’ve sent some of the units back, but about the third one I paid close attention and only saw white folks. [↩]
Walk in My Shoes: Surviving the walk to school. You know I understand the whole “If it bleeds it leads” concept of journalism. Really I do. But, we live on the South Side of Chicago too. I grew up here and all those sunny park pictures that I post of my family on my journal? They’re taken on the same South Side mentioned in this article. There’s more to this city than the blighted areas, and while we’re talking blight and violence let’s talk about how these neighborhoods (which used to be thriving healthy communities) fall apart.
Our society likes to wring its hands and bleat about the poor pitiful children once the shooting starts, but we don’t tend to pay attention to the roots of the problems before everything goes wrong. This latest spate of failed gentrification efforts are going to have brand new bad areas springing up as the residents struggle to make it with no tax base, poor infrastructure, and the same old issues of race and class. It’s ridiculous to paint these pictures of scary bad areas that are the result of some foreign event horizon that no one can understand when we know how places get this way.
For starters you get rid of the grocery stores, instead allowing liquor stores that sell food or whatever little corner stores spring up to be the only place within walking distance to get groceries. Then you take away (or never start) bus routes, and the ones that are in the area have shortened hours and limited routes so it’s difficult for the remaining population to get to work. Oh, let’s not forget schools that lack necessary equipment so the students are ill-equipped to succeed academically in a society where education is key. And of course there’s the added impact of poverty and institutional racism. Why the mention of racism? Well, how do you think we get to the place where only certain neighborhoods are allowed to turn into war zones? It’s no accident that I can get cops in my neighborhood to respond a lot faster than people living in Englewood.
Those conditions form the underpinnings of gangs and their powerful hold in these areas. As the money and the opportunity and the access fade away? People still have to eat, and despite the hype I have yet to meet a gangbanger or a street level dealer that wasn’t hungry, as in literally going to bed without enough food on a regular basis hungry when they decided to get in on the game. Drugs, crime, and poverty go hand in hand, but not for the reasons you’d think they do. It’s survival living and people do a lot of things to make it when the wolf is at the door. Generational poverty plays a huge role because these blighted neighborhoods don’t get that way in a week or a month. It takes time, and the people with resources move out relatively early in the process but there are always people left behind with no way out.
And without a proper foundation at an elementary school level, few or no role models, and of course the stress and trauma of living in an area that’s dangerous all the time the kids in these places don’t have boots, never mind bootstraps to pull themselves out. Or to pull their own kids out once they’re adults. Oh sure there’s always a success story that gets lauded, but the reality is that the combination of luck, support, and intelligence required for those stories to happen isn’t a recipe that’s accessible for every child. And to paint the South Side with such a broad brush instead of talking about the actual issues that lead to these conditions is just further exacerbating the problems. Less pearl clutching and more urban planning is the key here.
More than 80 countries around the world still criminalize consensual homosexual conduct between adult men, and often between adult women.[14]
These laws invade privacy and create inequality. They relegate people to inferior status because of how they look or who they love. They degrade people’s dignity by declaring their most intimate feelings "unnatural" or illegal. They can be used to discredit enemies and destroy careers and lives. They promote violence and give it impunity. They hand police and others the power to arrest, blackmail, and abuse. They drive people underground to live in invisibility and fear.[15]
More than half those countries have these laws because they once were British colonies.
This report describes the strange afterlife of a colonial legacy. It will tell how one British law-the version of Section 377 the colonizers introduced into the Indian Penal Code in 1860-spread across immense tracts of the British Empire.
Colonial legislators and jurists introduced such laws, with no debates or "cultural consultations," to support colonial control. They believed laws could inculcate European morality into resistant masses. They brought in the legislation, in fact, because they thought "native" cultures did not punish"perverse" sex enough. The colonized needed compulsory re-education in sexual mores. Imperial rulers held that, as long as they sweltered through the promiscuous proximities of settler societies, "native" viciousness and "white" virtue had to be segregated: the latter praised and protected, the former policed and kept subjected.MORE
And now? Here come the US Evangelicals, in search of power to add fertilizer and water to the poisonous plants that in this garden grow.
A new report released today details the role that US-based renewal church movements have played in mobilizing homophobic sentiment in at least three African countries. “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches & Homophobia,” written by Rev. Kapya Kaoma for the progressive think tank Political Research Associates, was the result of a yearlong investigation into the relationship between conservative clergy on two continents, which has hastened divisions within denominations and has “restrict[ed] the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.” Renewal groups and their neoconservative ally, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, have long sought to conservatize or split mainline American churches—frequently over gender or sexuality issues—and liberal scholars have traced many of the mainline schisms that have dominated headlines over the past several years to groundwork laid by the IRD and others.*
Increasingly, though, renewal movements have begun looking abroad for allies. Focusing on three mainline denominations under assault by these renewal movements (the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church USA) in three African countries (Uganda, Nigeria, and Kenya), Kaoma has documented a clear trend of the US Christian right exporting its battles over social and sexuality issues to Africa. There, churches have been pressured to sever ties with mainline funders in exchange for conservative support, and have become recipients of a more fiercely anti-gay message than the US Christian right delivers at home.
… This report describes growing anti-gay movements in African churches as a “proxy war” for US culture battles. Can you explain?
Since the ’90s, we’ve seen this shift from the American conservatives who are going to Africa, and they started spreading this anti-gay rhetoric across sub-Saharan Africa. We started getting a lot of statements from US evangelicals that homosexuality is wrong and that there is this Western agenda among gays to take over world. So it is coming from the West. Why is it a proxy war? In America, these politics have been going on for a long time—since the ’80s they have been used as a political tool to gain support in American churches.
But we saw a shift in the [tactics] to allow that war to be fought outside American soil: They’ve allowed Africans to get involved and fight on behalf of conservatives. You see [US evangelicals] going to Africa and making statements and having political access to leadership there, asking them to criminalize same-sex orientation. And now, when they do that, the Africans are benefiting the religious conservatives, because they’re helping them fight in America. But American conservatives are also benefiting African leaders in terms of giving them not just an ideological framework—the anti-LGBT arguments that have been used in America—but also providing them with legitimacy.
The second aspect is very interesting in a sense, because in addition to the ideological framework, they’re getting the religious leaders in Africa involved by telling them to misrepresent the progressive or mainline churches as evil—part and parcel of a gay agenda to take over the world—so you cannot deal with them. They say they’re going to partner with [African leaders and churches], if they can disassociate from mainline churches [in the United States], which are part of the gay agenda. So [the African churches] cut the relationship, and then the American conservatives take over financially.
That’s how the war is being fought. Thus, when the Africans come [to the United States] they have nothing to do with mainline churches; instead they side with American conservatives against mainline churches. And the mainline church in Africa is bigger and stronger than in America. So the conservatives are relying on the numbers of African leaders; they start fighting mainline church leadership using Africans to win the American battle, and come across as though they care about Africa.MORE
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