black kids in white houses

I know this class is basically over but I wanted to post one last thing on here before we call it quits.  I am sitting at home trying to finish all my final papers and I just read the latest issue of my favorite online newspaper: The Stranger.  Usually I head straight for "savage love" because frankly I just like awkward sex questions, but this time I decided I would actually read the other articles first.  Good thing because I found an excellent one.

The topic of this article?  Black kids who live in white houses.  No it's not a pun on Barack Obama, it's a look into transnational adoption.  I've met Angelina Jolie's son Maddox and I think he has to be one of the most adorable kids ever but as this article points out, Maddox is just part of a trend.  What is the argument here you ask?  Think about the fact that in transnational adoption the parents are generally rich white people who are asking for small young children from foreign countries.  The parents of other races are completely out of the picture and the children are subordinate to their white masters.  What the hell does this look like?  

But I don't think it is that cut and dry.  Who is going to pay a lot of money to adopt a kid they don't really want?  Who is going to spend hours upon hours doing paperwork and having their entire life held under the microscope so they can adopt a child of color unless they legitimately want that child?  I'm just about certain that the answer to these questions is no one.  But there still is one problem, white people raising children of color presents these children of color with problems of which race to identify with and if it is not the white race how they learn identity tactics of their own race.

I have not done a ton of research on this topic but I think that it seems like something the class would be interested in.  If you care to read it at all you should definitely check it out at http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/black-kids-in-white-houses/Content?oid=787542

Two Crazy, Totally Unrelated Things

Ok, so we're getting on towards Christmas and of course the ads start rolling in in order to convince you that the power bill can wait and that you really need those shoes.  Great.  But I did just see a first in an ad...deaf love in a diamond commercial?!?  A white heterosexual couple is sitting by the Christmas tree exchanging gifts and signing to each other while subtitles tell you what they're saying at the bottom of the screen.  This blew my mind..I just wouldn't have thought of it.  So I was very happy to see a very marginalized group get some air time. I think it was a Jared commercial or one of those mainstream diamond retailers if anyone wants to try and find it.

Also, I was just amazingly disgusted to read the motto "we tame our women with the banana," tossed out flippantly and with a tongue to the cheek.  This little gem was spoken in reference to one cultures practice of gang raping any woman who goes against her gender role.  While the man who said this was part of a tiny subculture in New Guinea, it is too easy to dismiss those cultures as backward and determine that to be the root of this evil approach to life.  Look at what this idea really says.  This is a view that gender role is law and that any breach of that law is punishable and the punishment is always gang rape in order to return to the status quo.  You think we don't have that here?  The sad thing is that I have to say that we do this in the United States as well.  While it seems that the culture in New Guinea doesn't have the same kind of conflict between the "whore/virgin" aspect to their culture, it seems as though many men unconsciously rape because they are trying to enforce the "laws" of manhood and gender role that we are conditioned to abide by.  I absolutely hate that someone could say something like that and have a cavalier attitude about it.  But this asshole's comment actually helped further my thinking for my paper so I guess I can be happy about that.  Any thoughts peeps?

Our Culture

Ok so we're supposed to make this our space, and I've been meaning to for a while, so I'm going to.  I've spent a little bit over 45 minutes on YouTube watching Def Poetry Jam videos and wanted to share a few that I thought were of particular meaning to me.  I'm going to put up 3 videos, the most striking of which is one of Suheir Hammad and her poem "First Writing Since" which deals with her experience as a Palestinian woman post 9-11.  These 3 poems gave me a lot of perspective and a lot of food for thought about the topics of religion, the word nigger and it's use today, and how we deal with living in a world after 9-11.

Here's the link for the Suheir Hammad video-

This is Julian Curry "Niggers, Niggas, and Niggaz"-

This is Talib Kweli with "Hell"-

I think sometimes that we can get caught up in a lot of things that detract from the real root of the issue, and that these poems helped sum up a lot of the feelings that I've been having about these issues and cutting through a lot of the spin and opinion presented as fact.

I hope that these links work...

Cult-ture?

This video that Matt mentioned on facebook had me interested in writing a blog about..religion.

Religion always seems to be a touchy subject, alongside many other taboo subjects. I've found that it's hard to talk to a lot of people about religion, because there are those that try to push their religion on you, those who believe so deeply in their own religion they won't listen to you, those that live their lives how their religious leaders say they should and it all just turns into a huge mess.

I don't think religion should be a touchy subject personally. But then again, not everyone is open to listening to opinions.

With the elections, and particularly Prop 8, many have turned to religion, using it as a kind of fire power to convince people that same sex couples should not marry. Because it says in some part of the (new testament CHRISTIAN) bible that homosexuality is a sin. And I would just kind of laugh when I heard things like this, coming from people driving in their luxurious cars, pending divorces or previously divorced, wearing their clothes made of multiple fabrics, eating their hamburgers with the buns made from more than one grain, and outwardly slandering someone because they are not the exact same as themselves. To turn around and say that two people who love each other are not allowed to take part in something that all people should be allowed to take part in if they want to or not, it's laugh worthy I thought (alongside severely pissing me off). People so easily fall for something they think is religious because someone tells them it is, whether it's right or wrong. And many people consider religion as part of their "culture" and "heritage". Which led me to the interesting discovery I wanted to touch upon.

Culture has the word cult in it, I don't think it's at all related. But, cults are generally seen as those thing where people are like wearing all black and chanting nonsense and all killing each other at the same exact time...but I decided to look up the definition and find out what the meaning of cult is. And, ironically enough, the Oxford English Dictionary defined it as:

1. Worship; reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings. Obs. (exc. as in sense 2). 2. a. A particular form or system of religious worship; esp. in reference to its external rites and ceremonies.

Religion. This also made me laugh as I thought about all the people who go to the big "The Rock" churches and the Mormons (Latter Day Saints) with their large temples...Cults. Religion.

Hypocrisy.

I guess I don't really have a point to make. I would rather get people's opinions on what they think about religion as a "Cult-ture" because I find this interesting...

close read to the Desis Reprazent article.

There is a paragraph in the reading by Desis Reprazent that I am curious to see how everyone is responding to. The paragraph is the second full paragraph on page 361 starting with "The Gendered edge of this popular culture is laced..." So I was just thinking about how the particular culture is defining gender roles, how the members are responding to these definitions, and how or if it changes between races? There is a particular sentence I'd like to discuss, "Fantasies of sexual purity and fears of polluting seductiveness are part of a larger ideology of ethnic authenticity at work in this popular culture are linked to a larger moral and political discourse about ‘pure’ tradition and ‘corrupted’ hybridity." As well, I was thinking about how the article is talking about race relations within the subculuture and how everyone is responding to that?

Also, take a look at this video its a Bhangra music video featuring Bally Sagoo who is mentioned in the article and tell me what you think. And then the second one as well is a little different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PScUxGkgKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVcEiVJDzCw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlu20VUz-rg

Obama for change?

Given the fact that Obama just made history I thought it might be appropriate to talk about him in context of the readings we had for class last week.  

The readings last week were about black homophobia and what is meant about black popular culture.  Obama fits into both of these categories in one way or another.  Stuart Hall says that "cultural hegemony is never about pure victory or pure domination; it is never a zero-sum cultural game; it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture".  How much more true could this get?  Obama just shifted the balance of power in favor of democrats, in favor perhaps of all minorities, in favor of being "the other".  While it is still true that he is not "the blackness (that) is most black" that Isaac Julien wrote of the congregation answering with, he is black in at least some meaning of the word.

Obama has now shifted the balance of power and he is the destined to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world (you can feel free to disagree).  My question is what this means in terms of cultural hegemony.  Does Obama now have a hegemonic rule over this country?  He clearly has a group of dedicated supporters but has he really changed anything yet?  My answer is that yes it's easy to say that he has changed some hearts and some minds.  However, I qualify my answer by saying that because it has been such a long road to get to that shift, he is going to have to be nearly perfect.  He not only has to do better than Bush (such a difficult task right?) but he is setting a precedent whether he likes it or not. 

The other article we read about black homophobia that related to the movie by the same man is an interesting idea when thought about in terms of Obama.  We now have a cultural minority leading this country but he has taken virtually no notice of the gay community, much less the black gay community.  And why not?  Seeing as how he is the most "liberal" man in the entire senate I am going to dare to say he is probably not a gay basher, that his personal beliefs are probably pretty close to where gay people would like them to be.  The problem is what Julien writes of on pg. 257, that the family and church are two major institutions in African-American communities.  This is not just true of African-American communities, however, this is true of a large part of America and it's the ticket that Obama really ran on.  He was a family man, a church going man, someone that did these things that the rest of America is doing.  Though I'm not by any means a political genius, I think it would be incredibly difficult for Obama to have won had he come out and been a vocal gay supporter.  He never made any negative comments but instead chose to simply ignore the subject, part of the true problem with homophobia.  

I guess that sums up my comparison to Obama and the two articles from last week.  I hope everyone is getting ready for change because in just a few months we are going to see some great things happening.  SWEET!

Role of the Audience

We didn’t have much time today to talk about what black art is but I had brought in a series of poems from the “Voices from Leimert Park: a poetry anthology” for us to look at and interpret. Can black art and even art as a category be more than what we perceive? What role does the audience play in how the art is produced? What happens when your intended audience is not your actual audience? When we talked today in class about the Harlem Renaissance I thought it was incredibly interesting where the artists were getting the money to survive, which was of course the white population. I wonder how much that defined what the artists produced and how the actual black community viewed the art. And then to talk about the role of audience a little more I think it would be an interesting dialogue to have in class about certain pieces of art, and try and understand the meaning behind them. Here is a poem Mikael Ahadou called “Armed Camp.”

Armed camp
Occupation army

We must find a solution,
they say, as the barricades fo up;
stop traffic! That's not oppression;
spend the night handing out citations.
We'll turn Crenshaw into a gaunlet;
Let those who dare, run the rapids;
If the Motorcycles miss them
Its certain the cruisers will sink them.

Armed camp
Occupation army

Highway patrol on the one hand
and LAPD on the other;
to turn Leimert, they'd rather,
into an armed camp; if need be
we'll call on the deputy.
The occupation army
Has to stay up late
Workng strenuously
to keep up the pace.

Armed camp
Occupation army
It's not enough to cite the poor sucker
We'll make sure he can't get out from under.
We'll tow his vehicle
And make him walk home.
With taxes and penalties
He'll be sure to stay broke.
If he recovers his vehicle
One thing is for certain;
Without fair and equitable law
We'll just do it again.

Armed camp
Occupation army
Revolution army.

On a slightly different topic I want to bring up the importance of audience in film. For instance the movie Boyz in the Hood. The movie was critically acclaimed, nominated for both best director and original screenplay in the 1991 Academy Awards and said to be made to inspire the youth in these poor neighborhoods. The movie was the first of its kind creating a new genre that inspired many movies after its release. However after the movie was released the black population in inner-cities were infuriated, not only did the movie sugarcoat what was actually going on in their neighborhoods but it was aimed more for an outside audience than the actual people being portrayed in the movie. Less than two years later Menace to Society was released in response to give a more realistic portrayal of “the hood.” Although the two movies were very similar in theory the intended audiences were incredibly different. This difference in audience created one movie that was seen by the rest of the world as a masterpiece and incredibly inspiring, but who exactly did it inspire? Who were the speeches in the movie, given mostly by Laurence Fishburne’s character, aimed at? When you watch both movies there is a very big difference in the way they were made. While Boyz in the Hood was incredibly inspirational and a seemingly insightful view of how ‘the hood’ really is or was, Menace to Society is incredibly violent, real, and sad portrayal instead of apparently inspirational. The monologues that occur in Menace to Society deal with survival and telling a seemingly more real tail of how things were at the time. Was it just the fact that they were two different movies, or was it the different audiences or even intentions?