More Afro-Asian connections in sports and US culture

Mark Anthony Neal has to be one of the smartest people I know who thinks about, writes about and talks about issues of race, especially on his blog, New Black Man. Neal also has a weekly webcast, Left of Black, and today he had on two scholars who look at race and sports, and they discuss Tiger Woods -- the original "Cablinasian" and apt symbol (and apt problematics--and by this I mean the problem of being read as mixed race in the U.S. not that I think Woods is a "problem" although his golf game is currently problematic, but that's a different post for a different audience) of a Mixed Race America. Watch now.

I like "Stuff White People Like"

There is a blog that is sweeping the nation. The LA Times has written about it. Kanye West put in a plug for it on his website. And I've received several links from friends telling me about

"Stuff White People Like"

Created by Christian Lander, a transplanted Canadian currently living in California, this blog is both satirical and smart about race. Because what Lander seems to be doing in this blog is to shine a light on whiteness--to talk about being "white" as a racial construction--to highlight that being "white" like being "Asian American" or "African American" or any of the other racial and ethnic permutations we can think of, has a set of cultural values and assumptions and stereotypes.

Although many of the comments have noted that the entries are oriented to a middle and upper-middle class background, and therefore aren't necessarily race-specific and should be called "Stuff Yuppies Like" or even if racially inflected, should be refined to "Stuff White Hipsters Like," Lander's point in creating "Stuff White People Like" was to call out the assumptions people have about what it's like to BE white--and part of the default to whiteness is an assumption about class--that if you are white you are middle class, college educated, and have certain cultural tastes.

(By the way, the comments are incredible--every post gets between 150-300 comments, and they range from people loving the site, both white and non-white commenters, to people who are offended by the site, both white and non-white commenters, to down-right racist and angry people who create their own "lists" of things "Black people like" which includes every egregious stereotype imaginable. This site has OBVIOUSLY hit a nerve!)

Lander was interviewed on "The Assimilated Negro" blog and you can read the interviews in two parts (Part 1 and Part 2). Be sure to check out the interview and this blog post--#81 "Graduate School" did hit home with me. Although I'm not white, I did identify with many of the things written about graduate school, especially a PhD program in English--this is my favorite quote:

"It is important to understand that a graduate degree does not make someone smart, so do not feel intimidated. They may have read more, but in no way does that make them smarter, more competent, or more likable than you."

Oh...it's so true.

Haunted by Waters (a book plug)

Today a friend of mine told me about a book that is soon to be released by Professor Robert Hayashi, an acquaintance I *briefly* knew while I was doing a stint at Mount Holyoke College (Robert was finishing up his dissertation in American Studies at UMass Amherst). Anyway, his book, soon to be released by University of Iowa Press, is called Haunted by Waters and this is a description from the publisher:

"Even though race influenced how Americans envisioned, represented, and shaped the American West, discussions of its history devalue the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities. In this lyrical history of marginalized peoples in Idaho, Robert T. Hayashi views the West from a different perspective by detailing the ways in which they shaped the western landscape and its meaning.

As an easterner, researcher, angler, and third-generation Japanese American traveling across the contemporary Idaho landscape—where his grandfather died during internment during World War II—Hayashi reconstructs a landscape that lured emigrants of all races at the same time its ruling forces were developing cultured processes that excluded nonwhites. Throughout each convincing and compelling chapter, he searches for the stories of dispossessed minorities as patiently as he searches for trout.

Using a wide range of materials that include memoirs, oral interviews, poetry, legal cases, letters, government documents, and even road signs, Hayashi illustrates how Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian, all-white, and democratic West affected the Gem State’s Nez Perce, Chinese, Shoshone, Mormon, and particularly Japanese residents. Starting at the site of the Corps of Discovery’s journey into Idaho, he details the ideological, aesthetic, and material manifestations of these intertwined notions of race and place. As he fly-fishes Idaho’s fabled rivers and visits its historical sites and museums, Hayashi reads the contemporary landscape in light of this evolution."

It sounds like a very interesting book, and on a professional/academic note, I am interested in seeing how he incorporates his own personal reflections and family memoir into this study of the American West and race relations. Although I haven't read it yet, it has a compelling premise--to think about the ways in which race has always been a part of our understanding of the American landscape, both its geographic terrain as well as its social topography. I think it's easy to think of places that seem largely *white* and absent of people of color and imagine that they were always all-white spaces or not to realize that whiteness is a itself a racial category, one often marked by its difference to others. Anyway, I think the book looks promising and if you are in the mood for something that combines the personal with the academic, this may be a good read.