Activism as Parody from the women of Wellesley College

A few months ago I was sent a link to a Youtube video by two Wellesley College students, Nicole and Meliora.  I didn't click on it because (a) I'm never sure if things are a "scam" and some awful virus would infect my computer (b) the email account that is connected to this blog isn't one I check on a regular basis.  So I saw it and then forgot about it.

Thankfully I decided that I should trust Niclole & Meliora (after all, they're women of a seven sister's school and I have a soft spot in my heart for all seven sister schools after having taught at Mount Holyoke College for 3 years).  What I found was a parody based on Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe"--a parody of Asian American stereotypes.

[Note: If you have NO IDEA what I'm talking about, just google "Call Me Maybe" and "Youtube" and you will find both the original music video that Jepsen did AND a host of parodies, most famously the US Swim team did one and my favorite is by "Corgi" Rae Jepsen]

Nicole and Meliora sent me a description of what inspired them to make this parody and what they hope to accomplish in terms of Asian American activism.  It's rather long, but let me quote a segment for you:

As we all know, the media is a conduit that allows artists and visionaries to express their opinions to the general public, and in many ways this expression can be very liberating and has become a staple of American society. What is not liberating however is the underrepresentation of minority groups in the media that runs the risk of portraying a race as one collective identity. Especially in communities where there is very little interaction between racial groups, the few representations the media provides can set societal expectations or stereotypes for how a race should be approached.

With the hopes of challenging these stereotypes my fellow classmate Nicole and I embarked on an exciting journey of composing, directing and editing our own music video about breaking down the typical Asian stereotypes projected in the media. Our goal is to see how influential we as two students, with limited political connections and resources, can be in getting our voices heard. We decided the best way to do this would be combining pop culture, activism, and the Internet.

The stereotypes Nicole and I address in this video are all ones that have been projected within the media at some point or another: submissiveness/ politeness; the excessive type A personality that excels in mathematics, chess and the medical field; the martial artist; the uncultured Asian that eats strange foods and speaks in broken English; the nerdy anime lover; the over sexualized Asian that will “love you long time” or engage in such strange fetishes as tentacle porn; the stereotype that all Asians look like; and of course the age old stereotype of bad Asian drivers. We try to address and conquer all of them. However, we are aware our video will be working against years of engrained racism that has targeted both Asian American men and women.

Anyway, please watch Nicole & Meliora's activism as parody in "Just Don't Call Me."  I, for one, applaud their desire to challenge stereotypes and educate us while making us laugh.

Dear Mixed Race America, it's time to stop the MADNESS

An Open Letter to everyone in the United States,

I am heartsick.  The recent violence in Aurora, Colorado and now the shooting at the Oak Creek, Wisconsin Gurdwara (Sikh temple).  So much violence.  And not enough outrage.

Oh, I know there are plenty of people who are angry at the shooters.  Angry that this "senseless" violence could happen.  There's lots of hand wringing and, in a case of what I consider to be misplaced fear and anxiety, gun purchases ratcheted up in Colorado immediately following the midnight massacre.

This isn't going to be a post just about gun control, although heaven's knows I believe in it--I believe that we absolutely need more not less gun control--there's no earthly reason why any individual needs semi-automatic weapons and so much ammunition you could kill a theater or temple full of people.  And I wish there was more concentrated outrage that will lead to stricter measures.

But what I want to concentrate on today is hatred.  The madness of hating someone else based on their difference--their racial and religious difference.

Members of the Oak Creek gurudwara listening to an FBI report on the shooting

That's the crux of the Oak Creek shooting.  Wade Page was a known white supremacist.  According to this New York Times article, the Southern Poverty Law Center had been keeping tabs on him due to his "ties to the white supremacist movement and his role as the leader of a white-power band called End Apathy."  While some officials are calling this an incident of domestic terrorism -- there are many who are clamoring to call this what it was: a hate crime. 

Page walked into the Gurdwara and opened fire because he had steeped himself in an ideology of white supremacy that taught him that it was his right to hate people non-white and his right to inflict violence on non-white people.  There has been some speculation that perhaps Page was confused about the Sikh religion--that he had meant to target Muslims and confused Sikhism for Islam.  But as my colleague Amardeep Singh so astutely and powerfully writes about in this New York Times piece:

Whether or not that target was actually the “right one” was beside the point for the Oak Creek shooter. . . . I also don’t think we should fool ourselves that all hostility will be resolved purely by education, nor should we presume that this shooter suffered only from ignorance. As a white supremacist, it seems safe to suppose, what mattered to the shooter was that he hated difference — and saw, in the Sikh gurdwara at Oak Creek, a target for that hatred.

Difference, the targeting of others based on racial difference, is the subject of Matthew Salesses piece in the Asian American Writer's Workshop:  "If you look different, you are treated differently. This is just how our world is. We are not in another, better place, where we each fit in for our individuality. There is a true power to appearances, and there is a true power to the words we attach to those appearances."

[Side note:  Matt is actually a former student of mine from Southern U, and I am so proud that he has become such an eloquent writer]

Another colleague, Viet Ngueyn, makes a very astute connection about various forms of global violence and racialized violence in the United States, writing that his essay will show "the direct line from the core of American culture and history to the Viet Nam War to the Oak Creek massacre and a couple of other massacres many of us have already forgotten about."  And Harsha Walia in Racialicious reminds us, quite forcefully, that the root of the shootings by Page are in racism--not an individual act of racism by a lone white supremacist, but racism in its institutionalized and systemic form:  "The crimes of white supremacists are not exceptions and do not and cannot exist in isolation from more systemic forms of racism."

The image above makes me weep--literally, the first time I saw it, I cried.  I cried because not only Wisconsin is weeping, but America is or should be weeping.  We HAVE to do better.  Better gun control, yes.  But we also need more allies of all races and religions to stand together and to say no more.  We are not going to continue to vilify one another.  We are not going to tolerate this kind of intolerance.  We are going to educate our children and teach them about the history of racism in this country and that they can do better than previous generations.  We are going to decide that we aren't just going to wait for the next generation but do better NOW for ourselves--for others--for our society and our nation.

We live in a Mixed Race America.  What happened in Oak Creek, Wisconsin hurts my heart.  It also reminds me that I not only can but must try to make a difference and be an ally to others who are oppressed and to not let the Pages of the world have the last word.  We can and must do more.  We can and must stop this madness.

Who do you root for?

Unless you've been truly living off the grid and avoiding human contact & any form of news, then you know that the London Olympics have started.

I must confess that I'm a fan of the Olympics.  I know that there are many critiques one can level at the IOC (International Olympic Committee), at the amount of commercialism, the problems of corporate sponsorship, and jingoism that can get out of control.  But there is something I find spell binding about seeing people push themselves to their athletic limits--to see them excel in sports that they have devoted themselves to for most of their lives.

Which brings me to the title of this post: Who do you root for?

The natural answer is the country you identify with--but for those of us with multiple heritages and/or passports, this can be a thorny answer.

One of the things I've realized is that I am drawn to rooting for people of color.

For example, I'm a Top Chef fan and at the beginning of every season, I find myself rooting for the chefs of color--unless, of course, they turn out to be super annoying, jerks, or just not plain good.  Which does happen.  In the last season, I was NOT a Beverly fan but I was so happy Paul won.

This isn't to say that I don't root for non-people of color.

If you've been following Olympic swimming then you must know who Missy Franklin is--and from the feel good piece that NBC did about her and her family, she just seems like an incredible athlete, with an amazing personality and a very down-to-earth family.  She has turned down extraordinarily lucrative endorsement deals because by turning professional she wouldn't be able to compete for her high school swim team.  You can't put a price on loyalty like that.

But if I have to be honest, I am drawn to the athletes of color.  Especially athletes that look like they may be multiracial, like Kyla Ross, a member of the Fab Five who just took home gold in the team gymnastics event last night. 

When I saw her and her teammates featured on the Today Show at the start of the Olympic games, I immediately googled her because I thought she might be mixed race.  And sure enough, I found an article that described her background--her father is African American and Japanese and her mother is part Filipina and part Puerto Rican. 

Then there's John Orozco, a gymnast who visibly looks black but who identifies as Puerto Rican.

 

There's a Washington Post article that talks about the increased diversity in US Gymnastics and lists Orozco along with Gabby Douglas and Danell Leyva.  No mention of Kyla Ross, which strikes me as a BIG oversight--I'm not sure whether being of part Asian heritage or being mulitracial kept her off the radar of the Post (or it could be that she's not one of the more prominent members of the Fab Five).  But it is good to know that diversity (a buzzword that I find annoying but I get that the Post is using it as a shorthand for racial diversity in a sport that is predominantly white and middle class) is being recognized/talked about in terms of the Olympic athletes.

[Note: There has been some speculation about whether Orozco is adopted or not--apparently this website suggests that he is, indeed, adopted, and might be of Dominican heritage--but on his official site and in news pieces his parents are described as his parents--whereas one of the things I find a bit disconcerting are the ways in which sometimes Dannell Leyva's father & coach is referred to as his stepfather and sometimes his father]

The last thing I'll end with is that sometimes rooting for the person of color or multiracial American can really backfire on you.  Case in point: I'm currently watching the TBS sitcom Sullivan & Son.  Starring Steve Byrne, a comedian who is half Korean and half Irish, Byrne plays the "son" of a Korean immigrant mother and Irish American father.

 I've seen 2 episodes so far.  Both were dreadful.  I could go on about the sexism, the local bigot who makes racist jokes, homophobic jokes, and sexist jokes (like some kind of archaic Archie Bunker figure--I figure in time he'll start in on the environment and vegans), about the not-so-subtle forms of homophobia (see above Bunker figure--it's like the producers get to have it both way--they get the old white geezer to make the gay slur and we get to laugh at the joke and laugh at the geezer and know that we shouldn't be laughing at the gay joke because it's wrong but we're still laughing anyway), and the really bad jokes about his Korean tiger mother.  But what makes Sullivan & Son so dreadful is that it's simply not funny.  The storylines aren't compelling.  The characters aren't well developed.  And again, they just don't bring the funny.

Why am I watching?  Because I'm that starved for images of Asian Americans and especially mixed race Asian Americans in popular culture.  (click here for a guest post I did at What Tami Said on this topic) Because aside from the debacle that was All American Girl there has not been a sitcom (or drama for that matter) that has starred an Asian American or multiracial Asian American person.  For the most part, Asian Americans are supporting cast characters.  Sometimes very prominent supporting cast members.  Grey's Anatomy, Hawaii Five-O, Parks and Rec, and The Office all feature Asian American cast members who get definite screen time and story arcs.  But they aren't the stars. 

So I'm going to give Sullivan & Son a chance.  There will be a tipping point -- there will be a moment when I won't be able to take it: the bad writing, the sexism/homophobia, the lack of funny.  But for the time being, I'm rooting for Byrne and hoping that he can shape up or else I'll just tune out.

Changing institutional culture -- thoughts on the Penn State sanctions

I do not follow collegiate sports, generally speaking.**  Nor do I watch major league sports.  I guess you could say I'm not a "team" person because the sports I'm attracted to watching (and playing) are singular activities: golf, tennis, running, biking, swimming.

I am, however, a tenured faculty member at a large southern university that has a very active sports culture (more basketball than football, but we have our share of football fans too).  And as a faculty member dedicated to the education and enrichment of the Southern U. student body, I am very interested and invested in discussions about the place of NCAA sports on college campuses.

Which is why I tuned in to the 9am EST press conference at NCAA headquarters to announce the sanctions against Penn State in light of the Freh report--the report that detailed the failure in leadership to report the sexual abuse that Jerry Sandusky carried out against scores of minor children he purportedly was mentoring.  The failure reached the upper echelon's of Penn State's administration and including the much revered and beloved "Joepa"--Joe Paterno, who had once-upon-a-time been the most winningest coach in NCAA collegiate football.

Before...

After.

I say "was" because among the penalties imposed on Penn State were

*The evacuation of the wins they accumulated from 1998 (the date at which the abuse came to light at Penn State and therefore the date that marks the failure of Penn State's leadership to end Jerry Sandusky's sexual predatorship of young boys) to 2011.

*The reduction in scholarships to be made available to their football program (10 scholarships per year for the next four years)

*A ban on post-season games (bowl games) for the next four years.

*A $60 million dollar fine (the equivalent of revenue that the football program typically generates during a football season) to be donated to an organization to help prevent sexual abuse and to support survivors of sexual abuse nationwide.

In a quick google search to reactions based on the announcement by the NCAA words like "brutal," "harsh," "unfair," and "too far" popped up.  Continually there has been a rhetoric of the punishments being meted out hurting innocent victims--the student-athletes and coaches who were not affiliated with the events of the past.  There are others (including the NCAA) who believe that the sanctions will help change the institutional culture at Penn State and other college athletics program.  In the words of NCAA's president, Mark Emmert:

"Football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people . . . the culture, actions and inactions that allowed them to be victimized will not be tolerated in collegiate athletics"

[for more on the sanctions, see this New York Times piece]

However, I'm skeptical of whether these sanctions will actually change the culture at Penn State, at Southern University, or any other college or university that fields a major sports team that competes on a national stage, particularly in division 1 sports.  It sounds pretty to say that we want to emphasize education over sports--that we value and privilege academics over athletics.  But I know that if I assign work the night of a basketball game, there's a great chance that only 50% of my students will do the assignment, study for the exam, hand in a complete final paper.  And they will grumble--at me and my colleagues--for not checking the basketball schedule and assigning work on a game night.  And heaven forbid if Southern U wins the national championship--I ended up cancelling class once I realized that students were simply not going to show up but would, instead, be headed over to the basketball arena to welcome home the national champions.

I like the Southern U students very much. They are an incredibly intelligent, diligent, responsible, and respectful group of students.  But they are also fiercely loyal to their sports teams--to call them sports fans is just a shorthand for saying sports fanatics.  When I first came to Southern U, I vowed not to bend to student pressure to revise my syllabus based on the basketball schedule.  After a decade of teaching here, there is a reality that has set in--an acceptance of the culture that I find myself in, a culture that prioritizes and privileges college sports--if not above academics then I'd say it's an event split--certainly academics are not placed about college sports by a vast majority of students.  And I don't think that the culture of Southern U is any different than at Penn State, USC, Michigan, Virginia...pick your Division I school of choice.

However before I end this post, I want to bring focus back to the real people, the real victims, we should be thinking of--the real reason why the NCAA has put sanctions on Penn State: the children (some of whom are now young adults) who were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky.  We should not forget that the reason we want to change the institutional culture of a "win-at-all-costs" atmosphere is that we never EVER want what happened to the sexual abuse victims to happen anywhere, especially not at a place of higher learning.  Two writers eloquently remind us of who we really should be thinking of today: Joelle Casteix,*** the Western regional director of SNAP: the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (click here for her statement) and Tom Kinslow, a Penn State Alumnus (click here for his essay), who reminds all of us of the lessons we should learn in the aftermath of Sandusky and the Penn State sanctions:

"These are values and mindsets that have to be established in each and every community across the country. Never believe for a second that you can put blind faith in your leaders to do what's right. As we've learned time and time again, people are fallible, and if unchecked they can do great damage to communities and the institutions they are trusted with."

**I have to add the exception of basketball at Southern U.  Not to watch Southern U. during basketball season is like not being a Red Sox fan when you live near Fenway Park--unheard of and it can be dangerous not to understand the culture of the community you live in.  The second exception, of course, is that I am a Jeremy Lin fan and watched as many of his games as I could during the past NBA season.

***Joelle and I went to UCSB together and is a dear friend of mine--and I am SO PROUD of the work that she does on behalf of victims of sexual abuse.

[Update--July 24, 2012:  Apparently Joe Nocera, NY Times Editorial columnist, is also deeply suspicious/cynical about the amount of change that will happen within colleges and universities as a result of the Penn State sanctions--although he does note that Penn State will have to take a long and hard look at its football program in the aftermath of these penalties.  Whether real and lasting cultural change takes root at Penn State remains to be seen, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  Too many people depend on Penn State to be a powerhouse football franchise--an NPR news report said that the local economy of the Happy Valley will be hurt by these sanctions since restaurants, hotels, shops, and all sorts of other businesses not directly affiliated with Penn State benefits from the football franchise]

T.G.I.F. -- Patsy Mink: Pioneer Powerhouse

While most people have probably heard of Title IX and think of its main application in terms of providing equal access for girls and women in high school and college sports, many people may not know that (1) Title IX was actually proposed with the idea of equality of education for women and covers 10 areas, including equality in sports (2) The principal architect and sponsor of this bill -- a bill that was subsequently renamed in 2002 to honor this congressperson's achievements, is Patsy Mink.

Patsy Mink in the 1960s when she first came to Congress

Patsy Mink was an extraordinary woman.  She was born Patsy Matsu Takemoto on December 6, 1927 and grew up on a plantation in Maui, Hawaii (although it should be noted that her father was one of the few college-educated plantation employees -- he was a land surveyor -- and received a very good salary, certainly better than the laboring plantation workers in the fields).  Mink wanted to become a doctor, but found that a combination of sexism and racism barred her from medical school.  So she got a law degree from the University of Chicago, but subsequently found that a combination of sexism and racism prevented her from being hired in both Chicago and Honolulu.

[Mink was one of 2 Asian Americans and 2 women in her graduating class--she also met and married her John Mink, a graduate student in geology, while at U of Chicago]

So Patsy Mink got involved in politics.  And while the path to Congress would take too long to recite in this blog space, the important thing to know about Patsy Mink is that she became one of eight women in the House of Representatives and, most significantly, she was the first woman of color, the first Asian American woman, the first Japanese American woman, to serve in Congress.

PBS is airing a documentary, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority, which you can watch on-line through July 31, 2012 (click here for the link to the Independent Lens website and here for a link to the filmmaker's website).  It's truly a wonderful documentary that chronicles the life of a truly extraordinary woman.  A woman who was a true liberal lion--who spoke out against the war in Viet Nam.  Who fought on behalf of women and poor people.  Who always spoke up for what she believed in, even when her opinion was a minority opinion and not well received.  She was one of the 66 people who voted against the Homeland Security bill post-9/11.  And, as noted in the beginning of this post, she fought for equal access for women in higher education--because Title IX forced colleges and universities to open up the admission process in graduate and undergraduate admissions to women, enabling the current equity we now see for women entering medical and law school. 

June 23 marked the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX -- I am a direct beneficiary of its passage.  I am a direct beneficiary of the legacy that Patsy Mink left in terms of her public service, in terms of her fighting for social justice, in terms of her breaking down barriers and showing up as an Asian American woman at a time when that phrase "Asian American" wasn't even in existence and when a woman's place was believed to be in the kitchen not the halls of Congress.  Title IX expanded educational access for women--I don't know the faces or names of the countless women who have been impacted by Title IX, but I do know the face of one woman who was key to its implementation.

Patsy Mink in the 1990s

Four years ago, I introduced a series called the T.G.I.F. Award, which stands for "The Great Impossible Feat" -- and although it's been a while since I last gave out one of these, I think it's very appropriate and long overdue to honor Rep. Patsy Mink for all her many contributions to helping people in the U.S. who would otherwise not have a voice--women, people of color, poor/working class people. 

Thank you Patsy Mink, especially on behalf of all young girls, THANK YOU!

 

“What you endure is who you are.  And if you just accept and do nothing, then life goes on.  But if you see it as a way for change, life doesn’t have to be this unfair.  It can be better, maybe not for me, I can’t change the past, but I can certainly help somebody else in the future so that they don’t have to go through what I did.”

--Patsy Mink

Linsanity moves to Houston

As most of the world who follows the NBA or Asian American athletes or the very fine intersection of the two in the singular figure of Jeremy Lin now knows, Lin is moving to Houston to join the Rockets because the NY Knicks wouldn't match the Rockets' offer.

Lin accepting the 2012 ESPY award for best breakout athlete

 The New York Times has a piece that describes the reasons for the Knicks failure to retain Lin, and Jeff Yang of The Wall Street Journal talks about the impact this will have on Asian American fans.  Yang quotes my friend and colleague, Tim Yu, whose astute observations bear repeating in full:

“I don’t care who he plays for — I’m a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan,” says Timothy Yu, an associate professor of Asian American Studies (and Jeremy Lin Studies pioneer) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “What I’m mad about is that the Knicks just completely cut him loose — and they’re blaming him for cutting such a hard-nosed deal with the Rockets. The fact of the matter is that even the team that benefited from Linsanity doesn’t believe it’s for real. That really burns me as an Asian American fan. But shed no tears for Jeremy: An Asian American athlete is getting paid like a superstar, because he is one — and that’s cool.”

Like Yu, I am a Lin fan, not a Knicks fan.  In fact, I have been a Lin fan from back when he was playing in the Ivy League and awarded him a T.G.I.F. (The Great Impossible Feat) back in February 2010.  Who knew that just two years later, I'd have caught the fever called Linsanity.

Farewell  Jeremy.  I hope Houston treats you right.  Most importantly, I hope that you have an AMAZING season/career such that the Knicks and all the fans in NYC and around the world will weep at this decision.  I, for one, am just excited to be seeing you play and to know that you are getting what you deserve--a salary and recognition to match your talent!

So long NYC! I'm headed to HOUSTON!!!

[Update: 1:46pm EST:  Just saw an interview that Lin did before the 2012 ESPY awards last week--it's just under 4 minutes and at around the 2 minute mark he gets asked about his impact on the Asian community and talks about what it's like for him as an Asian American breaking stereotypes about Asian American athletes--you just gotta love this guy!]






[Second Update -- July 19, 2012: Just saw this GQ article in which the author, Devin Gordon, talks openly about what no one wants to say was part of the whole Lin-to-Houston kerfuffle: Lin's race and ethnicity played a part in the calculations of Dolan, the Knick's owner, even if subconsciously.  Here's a quote from Gordon that says SO MUCH of what I, and many other Asian Americans, think/feel:

"But here's what I am confident saying about Dolan on the subject of Lin's ethnicity: he has absolutely no grasp of what Jeremy Lin really means as a cultural phenomenon. It does not pierce his bubble. It stirs no emotion in him. He doesn't understand what it means for millions of people in this country, and around the world, to watch the first Asian-American superstar athlete excel on the highest stage, and what it means to have that player wearing the uniform of his team. The pride, the joy, the inspiration, the transformative effect it can have on an entire generation of kids."

Read More http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2012/07/the-jeremy-lin-debate-no-one-wants-to-have.html#ixzz215OGDUTd

Fear of a Mixed Planet

This weekend I attended a friend's wedding.  It was absolutely lovely, a lot of fun, and the epitome of this blog--Mixed Race America.  The bride is a white Mennonite from Canada.  The groom is a Chinese American born to Taiwanese immigrant parents.  The guests were a mix of various ethnicities and races--and a great number of them were "foreigners" -- Canadian family members and immigrants (many of whom have since become naturalized citizens) from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guatemala, Viet Nam, and Argentina.  And there were multiracial guests: white-Chinese, white-Indian, Chinese-Guatemalan.  One of the running jokes was that I was one of the few true "Americans"--one of the few guests born and raised in the United States.

I take for granted that weddings like this happen and that it was celebrated by guests who were African American, white, Canadian, Taiwanese, Asian American, Latino, etc...

So it was jarring to receive this blog comment on an older post I had written back in December 2009 when Philadelphia Cream Cheese put out its first (at least I believe it's their first) commercial featuring a visibly inter-racial couple (in this case a white man and a black woman):

"A close look at the Word of God proves he is against mingling"

[Aside: Shouldn't it be "He" when referring to "God" and how do we know that God is even gendered male and do we even know for sure there IS a God--at least a God in the singular sense?  Couldn't there be gods, Gods, Goddesses, Divinities, a sense of the Sublime Divine?]

When I clicked on the commenter's profile, his handle is A.C.W. (American's Culture War), the description of who he is came up as:

"White Christian Male under attach from both left and right"

[Second aside:  It seems unkind and mean spirited to point out the obvious grammatical errors in his handle and profile description, right?]

I'm not going to link to his blog--I think it's best not to give air time to someone whose own views are clearly diametrically opposed to my own views.  I will say that A.C.W. decided that he wasn't content with just leaving a comment on my blog--he decided to take it a step further and contacted me through an email address that I have on my blog (and which everyone who wants to contact me is free to use--just click on my profile page and you can find my contact info--it doesn't have any personal information within it, which is why I use it for this blog).  Anyway, this is what someone named H.J. Rossi with a gmail account wrote to me:

"race mixing is a sin . Not on a sin, its the sin that brings genocide to one race or the other..currently in 50 years the white race will be a minority in the USA
your comment caught up with you"

[Third aside: I cut and pasted it exactly as it was written--he also included a link back to the blog in which he originally commented, which I didn't bother to include since I embedded the link above.]

Now--let me be clear.  I'm not trying to pick on H.J. Rossi.  Yes, he doesn't seem to want to engage in real dialogue and debate, as I encourage, and yes he may have violated rule #2 for comments on my blog--being respectful.  I mean, I don't think that it's respectful in the slightest to say that God is against mingling (by which I'm assuming means race mixing) -- after all, how can he or anyone else nkow what God thinks???  I am, in part, shedding light on Rossi's comment because there is a small part of me that got this queasy feeling when I saw that he took the time not only to leave a comment but to email me--wondering if he was going to take this a step FURTHER and try to find me and harm me--because it's hard to know how to take 

"your comment caught up with you" 


I may be over-reacting, but it sounds vaguely threatening, definitely sinister, absolutely not friendly.


So in part I'm calling on the collective wisdom of my blog readers--should I be worried and/or should I report H.J. Rossi's comment to Blogger and/or to Gmail--is it threatening?  And/or is shedding light on his hatred just putting oil on the fire?  That dawns on me too--that I am giving him exactly what he wants--a platform for his vitriol.  An audience whom he can irrationally antagonize.  So one thing I'm really going to ask folks to do is to NOT leave comments on his blog--to NOT engage him and give him air time.  I'm sure this is why he has his own blog and why he left the comment on my blog and emailed me--he wants to goad me--he wants to get me mad.


I'm not mad.  I'm a bit nervous that he might decide to take this too far and harm me, but mostly I see his comments to me as a reminder that there is still hatred out there.  Rossi may be an outlier in terms of his particular brand of mean spiritedness and his blatant racism--I mean, it's been a while since I've actually had someone tell me that "race mixing is a sin."  In fact, I don't know that I've ever had anyone say those words to me directly or write these words to me before.  Which is pretty remarkable when you think I've been blogging at this site for over five years and this is the first time that a real true died-in-the-wool racist who hates multiracial people, inter-racial couples, and the idea of people of different races being friendly actually leaving a truly racist comment.


Although I don't identify as Christian (I'm a lapsed Catholic who is agnostic and open to various forms of spirituality in the sense that I wouldn't say anyone's faith is better or worse), I think that the Christian thing to do with Rossi is to try to approach him with a spirit of loving kindness rather than rancor or rage.  I'm sad for him--because living with that much anxiety and fear of a mixed race America must be an awful way to live--an awful weight to carry around, even if he isn't feeling it as such.  I suppose another perspective is to wonder about mental health issues.  I'm not trying to be patronizing, but in this day and age, with a mixed-race president and so many inter-racial couplings and multiracial people, you have to wonder whether or not it's a sign of pathology to invoke genocide and sin with the idea of race mixing. 

Finally, Philadelphia Cream Cheese came out with a second commercial featuring an inter-racial couple--this time a black man and a white woman enjoying breakfast in bed--ENJOY!



 

Why blog?

I realize that I've been a sporadic blogger.  I promise that I'm not going to begin every blog post in which I haven't posted in over a week with this kind of apology, but I've been trying to figure out why I haven't felt the need to blog on a regular basis.  I was looking at the stats in my archive (right side bar) and in 2008 I was at the height of my blogging life--I was probably blogging at least twice if not 3 or 4 times a week.  And then things tapered off, with last year as the all-time record low of 34 posts--less than a post per week. 

So I have to ask myself--why blog?  Why do I keep this blog--and what do I want to do with it?

I suppose I've been thinking A LOT about blogging because for part of my new book chapter I've been reading a lot of blogs (part of it deals with blogging--not ready to talk in specific details about the book chapter yet, so I think I'll just leave it at that) and I've been remembering back to 2008 when I was blogging on a regular basis and I had this whole community of people leaving comments and probably folks who were lurking and linking back to my blog.  And I met so many amazing people--fellow bloggers like Tenured Radical and Tami from What Tami Said and the folks at Love Isn't Enough.

What was different in 2008?  I was on leave (technically I was on leave from Fall 2007-Spring 2008)  I was beginning my book manuscript (the same one that I'm still working on).  Which makes sense that in 2009 it dropped off as I was in the thick of teaching and writing.  And then BAM, April 2010 I get my cancer diagnosis.  So it, again, makes sense that 2010 and 2011 were not going to be big blogging years for me.

And now I find myself, 5 years from when I started this blog, on another year-long leave from the classroom--this time finishing the book project on racial ambiguity (back then I thought I was writing about passing).  I also find myself missing having a regular community of commenters and being a regular commenter of the blogs that I used to read on a daily basis.

I guess I've also been thinking about this because my friend "D" sent me this link from The Guardian about the need for more minority scholars who blog (click here) and I am, of course, reminded (as the article alludes to) about the whole AWFUL and RACIST blog post that happened on the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Tressie Mc's wonderfully astute and insightful and intelligent analysis and response to it (click here--out of full disclosure I should also say that I'm proud to call Tressie a friend and I knew her back before she was blogging so elegantly and eloquently)

What this all means is that I really hope to be blogging more regularly and to be reading blogs more regularly.  There are some mighty smart folk writing about race--and I want to be part of that community again.  Or perhaps more accurately, I want to be a more active participant in that community.  Here's to good intentions!