Women's products advertisements are for privileged women only.

I've been sick lately, which means I've been watching a lot of stuff on Hulu. And since my gender on Hulu is still set to "female," I get a lot of ads for products geared toward women. Products like KY Intense, menstrual pads (y'know, if you don't want to think about your pad you might consider a cup), yadda.

And what I've noticed is that all of these ads are geared toward straight women.

Take the KY Intense commercials, for instance. It's being marketed as "specially formulated to create female satisfaction" (whatever that means). Yet in every commercial I've seen, it shows a man and a woman (clearly married) discussing how much better it has made their sex lives.

I'm all for women's sexuality being shown in a positive light, really. The general message of these ads - that women deserve to be satisfied in bed - is a good one. However, while the sexualities of straight, cisgender, thin, white, married women are being encouraged, the sexualities of virtually every other kind of women are being erased.

For instance, all of the couples are cis and hetero. Despite the fact that the marketing of this product has, ostensibly, nothing to do with testosterone-fueled penis bearers, you can find one in every single commercial. Two women having sex using KY Intense and having a great time? Unheard of. A het couple wherein both members have estrogen-fueled bodies and vulvae? Unheard of. (Not that I'd expect to see that in this day and age, but erasure is erasure.) I am left uncertain, as well, as to the usefulness of this product for trans women of varying body types. Since the product is "clinically proven to enhance female satisfaction," I assume that it was specifically formulated to work on womb-generated vulvae and left at that. Given that we are at a point where trans women are visible and being recognized as women, it would be great of KY to try to include them in this shallow quest to make a buck.

All of the couples have been white, as well. The sexual satisfaction of black women, Asian women, etc.? Doesn't matter. Well, it matters inasmuch as "they'll see the ads and buy this product too, so we're good" but that's it. There's no real interest in promoting the idea that there are happily married non-white couples out there, having gratingly traditional hetero sex and using KY Intense to make things more pleasurable. I don't know that I have the depth of information necessary to explain why this is so harmful, but it has to do with stereotypes regarding black people never getting married, and Asian men being emasculate/feminine. Basically, they're not considered physically capable of engaging in a "normal" relationship.

And, of course, they are all thin, young, and able-bodied. Heaven forbid we hear about fat, old, and/or disabled people having any kind of sex life - much less talking about it on television. Sex is gross if the people involved aren't perfect.

(And they're all couples. Despite the fact that a woman might want to get some "female satisfaction" without a partner. I guess solo sex is still too nasty for TV.)

For other ads, this becomes even more grating as there are even fewer reasons to put the woman in a relationship, yet she somehow manages to hook up with Mr. Wealthy McCisgender every time. An ad for menstrual pads, for instance, includes a woman saying good-night to her lantern-jawed white date at the end of the night, while fantasizing about giving him smoochies. Ads for other products show our thin, frequently white heroine preparing dinner for her family, roughhousing with her children, and arguing with her husband - all expressions of privilege in some way or another. Not every family is white - for better or worse, black folks have garnered a position as the other "American" race and appear infrequently. Yet we never see a man of Asian descent playing the dim-witted, meat-chomping foil who fails to detect his wife's yogurt. We never see a mother in a wheelchair sharing a special moment with her child. Never an old woman preparing dinner. God forbid we have some combination of these.

Even as young, white, thin, able-bodied, straight, married, cisgender women are being oppressed by many of these ads, every other kind of woman is being erased.

There's one exception that I know of - the Hamburger Helper commercial, which is a completely disgusting and exploitative piece showing why poor single moms should stop eating fast food, which is making them fat, and buy someone else's unnecessary product instead. Good times, yo.

"Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever." A rant.

Firstly, the new "Teen Wolf" TV series is coming out on June 5th. That's five days from now. I am so pumped.

I know it's going to be terrible. It will be full of melodrama and teen angst and privilege denial; you know, the usual. I'm hoping, at least, that it will be the kind of terrible that I can stand to watch instead of the kind of terrible that makes me throw up my hands and wail in despair.

It's not looking good, though. I was browsing the promotional website and I found this gem:

Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever.

At first I was like...
And then I was like...

It boggles my mind how the phrase "just a regular guy" is still considered a valid descriptor. It shouldn't, I realize, but it does. It really bugs me that this descriptor is being applied to this Scott guy, who judging by the promo videos is anything but regular. I mean, he's...

1. White.
2. Straight.
3. Cisgender.
4. Completely able-bodied and -minded(as far as I can tell).
5. Middle-class.
6. Late teen-aged.
   
7. Conventionally attractive.
8. A sports player (lacrosse, specifically).
9. A citizen of the United States.
   

Do you know anyone who is like that? Anyone at all? I certainly don't. And I'm not just saying that because I hang around queer circles. I'm saying that because I have never (knowingly) met a human being who was that privileged. For instance, nearly my entire extended family is low-class. Most of us are not conventionally attractive (a few of us are bald, in fact), nearly every one of us who would actually admit to it is gay, bisexual, or pansexual, several of us are gender-nonconforming, the majority are over the age of forty, and nearly all of us are disabled somehow. It's the same basic thing on the Internet. You run into a few people like Scott, and a lot more people who are outside the cishetero demographic, physically or mentally disabled, poor, homeless, conventially unattractive, into unconventional fashion, members of plural systems, non-white, and/or non-States citizens. Most of us don't fall under all of these categories, but very few of us fall under "none."

So when these guys say that Scott is "just a regular guy," it occurs to me that it has no real-world applications whatsoever. Scott may be regular for someone with as much privilege as he's got, but he's not regular as a human being. Regular people, near as I can tell, aren't almost completely perfect until we get bitten by werewolves. Regular people want to be cheerleaders but don't make the cut. Regular people are lesbians. Regular people are middle-aged, single bookworms who wouldn't know how to date if the opportunity was staring them in the face. Regular people become construction workers because they can't afford college. Regular people become independent, then run out of money and have to live in their parents' basement. (True story.) Regular people are smart enough to be lawyers but aren't because even if they wanted to, they haven't had the opportunity. Regular people fall in love for reasons that don't make any sense, with people whom they have no business falling in love with for actual reasons that have nothing to do with societal expectations, and sometimes it works out anyway but usually they just break up. Regular people don't make the same predictable mistakes over and over - instead, they make ridiculous, embarrassing, mind-blowing, life-ruining, and/or trivial mistakes that most writers aren't creative enough to think of.

So until you can make your characters at least as normal as the casts of Buffy and Angel, don't call your protagonist "just a regular guy." The only thing regular about Scott is that he is exactly the kind of person people use as a cheap protagonist.

Children with privilege are the only ones who matter.

I will asplain.

I just read this post on Womanist Musings: Oh Oh, Bigots Steamed Because Sheriff Woody Endorsed 'It Gets Better Campaign'.

According to Alan Chambers, an "ex-gay" fellow who spends not inconsiderable portions of his time turning his internalized prejudice onto his fellow GLBP folk, it is saddening and disappointing to see a children's movie character speaking up about something that, to quote a quote, "at this point children have no need to know about."

Where do I start with this?

Firstly, I assume he's talking about the bizarro version of gayhood wherein it is a horrible, horrible curse and everyone who has it struggles with their feelings of abnormalcy and just wishes they could be straight, unless they're complete perverts.

Secondly, he also seems to be talking about the bizarro version of gayhood that magically kicks in at puberty (whereas straight children are straight from the age of four or so).

And thirdly, as usual, the only children that Chambers is worried about are the straight children.

This is a typical claim from bigots who are trying to prevent education in "politically-charged subjects" from happening at an early age. (Ironically, these are usually the same people who believe that children need to learn Christian Creationism in public school science classes.) I read about this frequently on Womanist Musings. White people say that children don't need to learn about racism, because it is just too horrible for their delicate little minds and their innocence needs to be maintained - plus, by teaching them by racism we might encourage them to be racist! Onoez! Of course, "children" is a misnomer -as Renee points out repeatedly, children of color in the United States start learning about racism as soon as they are cognizant enough to understand what the words mean (pretty much as soon as they have a good grasp on English.) So what they're really worried about are white children.

The same argument has been made re: disability. In another post, Renee shares the story of a woman who, in the process of giving birth to her children, sustained an injury that has rendered her unable to move any part of her body except her eyelids. The children's father, with classic sympathy, took advantage of her incapacitated state, took the children, and ran. Since then he has refused to let the children see their mother because he fears that it might scar them.

Really? SCAR them?

Scare them, maybe. The kiddies probably aren't used to interacting with someone who is paralyzed (definitely, if Dad's behavior is any indication), and it will probably concern them, and they might not know how to act at first. But if they were actually allowed to spend time with their mother and interact with her, they'd get used to it. They could have a wonderful relationship and it wouldn't bother them in the slightest. Because KIDS ARE FLEXIBLE.

Which brings me to my next point.

Kids ARE flexible. They're also in a state of perpetual learning. Kids are open-minded, and often very compassionate (once they develop empathy). There is no better time for a person's life to begin learning about oppression and develop the desire to fight it than when they are a child.

And it doesn't take much. A child only has to witness one act of blatant discrimination to figure out that it's messed up (and yes, even privileged kids have the ability to figure out when someone is being put down) and speak out against it or even start a charity to fight it. (Not saying that the kid's going to be perfect at it, but the motive is there). You can read countless stories on the Internets and Highlights Magazine about a child who does something that seems incredibly plucky, like mowing lawns to earn money to buy shoes for poor kids, or refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance until true equality has been reached, or whathaveyou, all because they were given information about the issues in question.

But most children are not given this opportunity. Instead, we "shelter" them from these issues, protecting them from as much badness as we can. And what are they shown instead? Straightness, cis genders, whiteness, able bodies, single minds. At the point in their life when kids are most able to learn tremendous amounts of things about the world, we so rigidly filter their intake that they can only learn the most privileged side of the story. And the kids, being kids, suck it all in. Their understanding of the world, of society - of what behaviors and bodies "should" exist - becomes framed to prioritize these privileged bodies.

The result of this is that when these kids do begin to gain information about a new perspective, they have no idea what to do with it. When they begin to meet people who are fat, or need special equipment to move around, or have "weird hair," or "talk funny," they don't know how to react. They might know how to pity the crippled child, or to accuse the child who speaks out about racism of making things up or being too sensitive - the limited types of interaction that are conveyed in mainstream entertainment. But they don't have any real knowledge of how to handle these people on a tangible human basis.

Some kids are more flexible than others, of course. Some of them are very open-minded and will instinctively treat nearly everyone with some level of respect and kindness. But a lot more will not. Children who have learned that the world is a place of sunshine and roses and SCWAT bodies will freeze up when they meet someone who is different. They may refuse to deal with the "other" person. They may make fun of that person to assuage their own confusion. Or they may look to their peers to learn how to deal with the person - and their peers, having roughly the same upbringing, will teach them how to scorn the nonconformist.

As the privileged child ages, unless someone intervenes in xir life, nothing is likely to change. Instead, the problem crystalizes. By the time this "innocent" child has become a teenager or young adult, xe is now convinced that the world is exactly as xe learned it, or close enough, and xir reaction to a different perspective will likely range from disbelief to an outright refusal to consider the possibility. Sure, xe is now old enough that xir innocence is probably not considered an issue, and others might finally decide that it's time to teach xem about oppression - only to find that xe is lacking the core education needed to understand these concepts. The core education can be had, of course. And the education that builds upon it. And teenagers and young adults are, relatively, more impressionable than older people. But at this point there are two things stacked against them: firstly, they may not have access to the information they need, and secondly, they may simply decide that they don't want to learn because they have other things to worry about (like building their own life).

A young child doesn't have other things to worry about. A young child's job is to learn about the world. By preserving "innocence," by shielding them from anything that might be considered controversial or "too harsh" (apparently the real world is too much for children to handle), their parents are instilling a worldview that is one-sided and profoundly naïve. Not only does it hurt the marginalized - by implicitly training children to ignore their lives and struggles - but it hurts the child, by limiting xir ability to function with various "other" persons on a fully human level, as well as xir capacity to understand why extra work and sanctions are needed to protect marginalized persons.

As for gay children, transgender children, children of color, disabled children, and many others - all of them are getting a firsthand education in some form of discrimination. "Innocence" is a luxury that they cannot afford, at least for those realms to which they are privy. Through sheer happenstance of birth or life events, we were rendered clinically incapable of retaining this quality that is supposedly so valuable to a child's healthy development, and somehow we managed not to be ruined for it. Yet this inconvenient fact frequently gets swept under the rug by people who continue to insist that innocence is the most valuable thing a child could have - not understanding that maintaining the innocence of a privileged child often means destroying the innocence of marginalized children.

Your Serving Of Awesomesauce

So, I'm not writing stuff right now. Partly because someone told me I've been incoherent lately (which means that before I move on, I need to go back and polish some stuff), and mainly because I've been working my butt off and don't have time for everything.

So if you're here, and you're white, you need to go to this site:

http://www.counter-racismnow.com/

This site is the closest thing I've ever found to the elusive "magical fountain of knowledge about racism" (at least as it affects black folks.) Each post seems to be part of a coherent analysis of the role that racism plays in the United States' society, and it's fucking brilliant. So read it and learn something.

(Warning: The blog is a VERY straight and cisgender space. The Web site with which the blog is associated, http://www.counter-racism.com is likewise dominated, and particularly in the forum there is a LOT of heteronormative and downright homo/transphobic thinking. I ain't saying these guys are perfect, just awesome.)

A Breakdown Of "I Kissed A Vampire"

"I Kissed A Vampire" is a web musical that spans three episodes. Directed by Chris Sean Nolan (not to be confused with Christopher Nolan), and starring a whole slew of white people, it tells the story of confused teenage vampire Dylan, his girlfriend Sarah, and Dylan's self-appointed mentor vampire Trey.

Dylan is played by Lucas Grabeel. Those who have seen the High School Musical films know him as Ryan Evans, Sharpay's fey underdog of a brother. Sarah is the adorable Adrian Slade, who previously had not done any film acting but has a history in theatre. And Trey is filmed by Andrew Seeley, the singer who filled in for n00b Zac Efron in the first HSM film and a decent actor in his own right.

The first episode opens with Dylan, angsting about his newly-acquired vampirehood. Not only is he having problems with fangs and blood cravings, but he's really worried about his best friend and proto-girlfriend, Sarah. Any time they get too close, he gets a sudden urge to go for her neck and the whole thing gets awkward. It's a simple and obvious allegory for teenage sexuality and the Awkward Boner, but it works well enough. He performs the song "Outta My Head," expressing his regret that he can't get close to Sarah but also can't stand to be apart from her, with plenty of imagery that seems to be borne of his vision of himself as an intrinsically corrupted and dangerous thing.

After that, the story switches to Sarah, who expresses herself with "Forbidden Planet." The song, with an interesting mixture of aggressive and submissive imagery, conveys the fact that Sarah is very much in love with Dylan and really, really wants to just get it on with him already, but his avoidant behavior is leaving her confused and frustrated. Finally, she decides to visit him and find out what's going on already.

The end of the episode introduces Trey, and the beginning of the second episode fleshes him out. Trey's basically the opposite of Dylan. He's confident, to the point where he is aggressively sexual, and tries to encourage Dylan to be the same way. The song "Love's In Vein" is pretty much Trey's ode to casual sex, implying that a monogamous relationship is a waste of time and that what Dylan should really be doing is sowing some wild oats, with a backup dance crew of seductive lady vampires to drive the point home. Dylan's not into it, which frustrates Trey.

Who should show up at this point but Sarah? She's here and she wants to know why Dylan's being so weird. Trey, sensing opportunity, decides to use Sarah to try to manipulate Dylan into vamping out, and uses his vampire powers of hypnosis to convince her to come to a party. Dylan is against it, but Sarah, under Trey's influence, advises Dylan to "live a little" and they leave.

The third episode opens at the party, where Trey's backup dancers are revealed to be his harem of hypersexual vampires. Trey gives Sarah a drugged drink, then encourages Dylan to take advantage of her altered mental state and kiss her. Dylan refuses at first, but when Trey pushes him he goes for it. His fangs come out again, though, and he stops himself. Trey gets frustrated and decides to seduce (read: rape) Sarah himself. Through the song "Just A Little Peck," Trey and Sarah dance and flirt with one another while Dylan, who is being held back by the dancers, continues to angst about the possibility of hurting Sarah.

The scenario climaxes when Trey starts to bite Sarah, which gives Dylan the courage to break free of the dancers and fight him off. This apparently causes Sarah to snap out of the effect of her drink, and she asks Dylan what's going on. Avoiding the topic of vampires, he instead goes on the "confession of love" tack, and Sarah kisses him. The last song, "Happily Afterlife," consists of Sarah and Dylan vowing to be together forever, no matter what weird stuff might happen.

It's pretty silly, but it's also very interesting, which I will now get into.

First of all, you have Dylan. Realistically speaking, there's nothing groundbreaking about this character; he's the typical virgin whose horny best friend is encouraging him to do something he's not ready for (straight out of an 80's movie.)

However, his character is important, both as a role model to teenage boys and an example of a genuinely good (i.e., safe and dateable) vampire boyfriend for young women.

Dylan's character bears a great deal of similarity to the better-known Edward Cullen, whose refusal to have sex with his girlfriend is only matched by his determination to control everything she does for her own "safety" - manipulative at best, abusive at worst. Dylan, on the other hand, is against manipulating Sarah in any way. Certainly he does not find it necessary in the end to terminate their relationship just because there is a chance that she might be hurt.

The downside to this is that he doesn't give her a chance to terminate the relationship based on that, though. He avoids letting Sarah know that he is a vampire repeatedly. This is largely because he's convinced she won't believe him, but it has the unintended side effect of removing her ability to make an informed decision and is NOT COOL, GUISE.

Sarah is, without a doubt, my favorite character. When she's first introduced, she is the epitome of what white teenage femininity is "supposed" to be - wholesome, blonde, yadda. But within a short time of her introduction she is revealed to be quite sexual, and unapologetically so. Yet she is never portrayed as a "slut" - in fact, the clothes she wears in sexually-aggressive mode are almost as wholesome and modest as her regular outfit. She's a good girl who also has needs and isn't afraid to vocalize them.

Again I feel the need to compare the story to Twilight, as its mortal, vampire-loving heroine is also wholesome-seeming but with a not insignificant sex drive. However, there's a huge difference between the stories. Whereas Bella's sexuality is portrayed as rashness, and Edward as a sort of hero who saves her from herself by refusing to have sex with her, Sarah's needs are shown to be valid and worthy of fulfillment.

Trey is the character whom I feel is most likely to be misinterpreted. This is because of certain traits that, to be honest, cause me some pretty mixed feelings. Basically, one way to look at Trey is as an incredibly powerful, confident, and dominant vampire - in other words, sex in a can. He's hot, no doubt about it. But he is also manipulative, misogynistic, self-centered, and an attempted rapist, and this is in no way a good thing.

My main problem with that is that I don't feel the story comes down hard enough on him for what he did. Dylan does stop him, but really he suffers no consequence for manipulating Sarah - in fact, while the main lovebirds are confessing their love for one another in the final number, Trey is in the background having fun with his harem. The message appears to be that Sarah isn't a toy, but all those nameless girls in the background are. The fact that the vampire women have a significantly "sluttier" appearance than Sarah - big, curled hair, sensuous movements, more pronounced makeup, and more revealing clothes - gives the unfortunate impression that any girl who acts in such a manner is fair game for an asshole's collection of sexually available women. Not awesome.

There's also the fact that the "good" characters have blonde hair - often used as a shorthand for purity - and the "bad" characters have brown hair, implying some kind of corruptitude. Yeah, right.

I have to say that I really have a soft spot for this musical. There are some unfortunate implications (a nice way of saying "harmful messages") in the story, but it's also got some good things in it, and the soundtrack kicks ass. So does Drew Seeley in that funerary suit, yes indeed.

Mississippi Goddam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBiAtwQZnHs

An old video, but one that I expect most young white people haven't seen. The song was written and performed by Nana Simone in the 60's as a protest against recent acts of racist terrorism. More on Wikipedia. The lyrics allude to numerous acts of daily racism, most of which are still committed to this day. It brings a certain depth of poignancy to the struggles of black people that can never be attained through white-produced media.

Threats to Western Femininity: as a matter of fact, they are.

A lot of things went through my head when I watched the "Women Are Heroes" trailer (source: Womanist Musings.) One of them was that, without a doubt, African women are a threat to the monolithic worldview that is white Western femininity.

The women in the video are not delicate. Many of them have prominent noses, pronounced brows, thick hands - features that, in the Western world, are not so much reserved for men as they are considered to be an intrinsic part of the "man package." They're not soft, like our women who often spend hundreds of dollars on moisturizers to maintain what men see as a natural trait. Many of them have crooked or brooken teeth and short hair - again, traits that the white man reserves only for the male of the species. Perhaps most shockingly to Western assumptions is their voices. The "soft lilt" that our men would have us believe is an inborn trait for woman is simply not there.

And yet they are real women. Their bodies (trans women aside; they were not featured in this video) and lives are a testament to that. Every day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, they are real women. When they eat, they are real women. When they get dressed, they are real women. When they make faces for the cameras, they are real women. Contrary to local rumor, they do not stop being actual women just because they don't perform the elaborate act that Western femininity requires.

In other words, their very existence is a threat to our concept of femininity.

I think it was around this point in my thought process that I connected it to what I had been hearing from black women all along - every female of their race is a threat to white Western femininity. Not to the women, who would actually be better off if their genuineness of the member of the female sex didn't hinge so delicately on their ability to fit the construct, but to the empire. The female side of the kyriarchy. Just by being there, by being a real woman who naturally has some trait that white men have deemed "not natural," they are a threat.

With that in mind, I've poked around the Internet and found some photos of such women - beautiful women, real women, who challenge our ideas of what womanhood is just by existing every day. They are wonderful and deserve to be celebrated.

http://www.wtsp.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/090926101407_Helen-Hodges.jpg
(Helen Hodges, everyday Californian woman and victim of size discrimination. Via Dvorak Uncensored: "Big Fat Black Lady" On Receipt, Woman Upset)

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/9943850/2/istockphoto_9943850-pregnant-african-woman-smiling-in-traditional-attire.jpg
(Stock photo. A very happy, pregnant African woman.)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQD8rCVsW9jTb5YZSqW2_876DJGvGHs-meSsZglH6bJZagDaXkjJB3EQjnSSbaL8ORUs577W696VlJAZq8JImltY0eZtpb_MWKC8dCJCLwhIZFG87DOzIOjzTRmtWiXy-5UOClaPZ2BQVD/s1600-h/BlackWoman
(Naked, fat black woman with the writing "Too Old To Be In An Anti-Aging Ad." Via Telling Secrets: Fat is Still a Feminist Issue)

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1436/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1436R-252672.jpg
(Stock photo. Young, fat, black woman posing.)

http://www.costume8.com/images/Funny/A1141-Fat-Boy-Disco-Hat-in-Black-Sequins-large.jpg
(Hat model, via costume8 - no link because I'm not pleased with some of their products.)

http://www.fashionfame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gabourey-Sidibe.jpeg
(Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her role in "Precious," rocking a dress so gorgeous that even I'd be tempted to wear it.) Via Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as Mammy)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzuRg9OaDnOOKEYuTy8uTthpOAeQSdGSk6Nwnk3B8g5eiRiuM7qd8az4BlFV0r9BhwNGa3KnI_DqMTo9E9yXdLejQx0Y-RmInu-A3LhBJ4CG__VNPURXCBxrkQDWIu3UWEhZmEQn47ZKP/s1600/obeseblackwoman.jpg
(Obese black woman. Via Acting White: Black Women Series - Weight, Body Fat and Attractiveness)

http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sisman-zenci-kadin-resmi-fat-black-woman-picture-234x300.jpg
(Unsure origins. Fat black woman in a black velvet dress.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2011/03/laquitablockson.jpg
(Dr. Laquita Blockson, the "Business Renaissance Guru." Via Your Black Woman: Professor Laquita Blockson Studies the Black Female Entrepreneur.)

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/11/donnabrazile2.jpg
(Donna Brazile, CNN commentator. Via Donna Brazile: Young Voters, Black and Latina Women Can Shape the Future)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes5/beautifulandfat.png
(Black woman with her back to the camera, being fat and beautiful. Via Shakesville: Happy-go-Lucky.)

Africa Page: Beautiful Black Women On Parade
(A collection of various black women. Some of the photos seem on the exploitative side; I'm not sure about this one.)

Be they fabulous, scholarly, happy, disgruntled, famous or completely unheard of, every one of these women is just as real, just as female, as Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe or Natalie Portman.

Oh, yes, Pokémon Black & White is racist.

(I went back and forth on this one for a while, trying to figure out whether to do it or not... I need to call this stuff out, but do we really need another white guy talking about racism? Etc. But it's got to be done, and since I'm a pretty big Pokémon player at the moment, I may as well do it.)

There were a lot of jokes going around when Pokémon Black Version and White Version were first announced. In America, the term "black and white" is practically synonymous with the race divide (as well as a particular damaging way of viewing the world, but that never got brought up), and a lot of people would going around saying things like "Black and White is racist!"

It was ridiculous and untrue. The names "Black and White" have very little to do with the race makeup of the game, and much more to do with the concepts of Yin and Yang, nature versus technology, and general color schemeyness. Still, I admit when I heard the title I had a sinking feeling that this was going to be awkward... and boy, was I right.

It started when it was announced that Pokémon Black and White would be the first game to feature a black gym leader: Aloe (Lenora in America), the "Natural-Born Mama." I cringed as soon as I saw that, and her character design was no better: a wide-hipped woman with a big cloth hairband and an enormous apron draped over her front. Apparently the character designer thought it would be a good idea to design the first black woman in the games after a mammy.

And it doesn't get better. The next black character to be introduced is Iris, another gym leader. She, at least, does not appear to be based on a racist stereotype (though I could be wrong). And despite being a young girl, she is the most powerful Gym Leader that the player faces in White Version.

But...

In the anime, Iris is depicted as a "wild child." She roams around the wilderness and swings on vines to get from place to place. To compound how savage/untamed this character is, she lets her Pokémon live in her hair. This isn't the first time a game designer has done this - a recent Final Fantasy title featured a black man who raises chocobos and has a chick who lives in his hair. It seems to be popular opinion in Japan that natural black folks' hair is no better than an animal's nest. This isn't cute. It's disgusting. Equally as disgusting is their choice to play on the "untamed animal" stereotype for the character.

In the Black version of the game, Iris doesn't show up for very long, so you'd think they wouldn't have time to mess up... aside from the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS problem of "she spends most of the story arc babysitting a white/Asian girl whose Pokémon has been stolen." Yep, when poor Bianca is just too fragile to handle things on her own, Iris steps in to hold her hand through the ordeal. Which is not positive. It is racist.

Also, Iris is only available to fight as a gym leader in White Version. In Black Version, the final gym leader is Drayden... a white guy. Ho-hum.

The third black character is Marshal, a member of the Elite Four and the only black man in the Unova league. The first time I saw this guy, I got a pretty good of impression of him - he didn't seem to draw directly from a specific stereotype. Now, I'm not entirely sure. He uses Fighting-type Pokémon, and is depicted as a large, beefy brawler, which is par for the course with Fighting-type users, but it's also a common feature of black men in white entertainment - the thug or the soldier or prizefighter or whathaveyou. (I will point out that there is a lot of difference between a prizefighter or a soldier and a member of the Elite Four and master of martial arts. Namely, honor. But it feels suspicious to me anyway. Put this one down as a "maybe.")

Discussing this issue with a friend the other day, she and I agreed that the best way to start diversifying a game is in the non-League NPC's - the guys who just sit around towns and routes waiting to be fought. See, you can add in some Gym Leaders and the like and that's great, but unless they're also being represented in the general population, they become an exception, even an import, and are made foreign as a result.

Nintendo made some efforts in this regard. Firstly, the male backpacker sprite was given black-race-hair (although the character himself has fair skin, meaning he's probably mixed race, which is fine too.) And they added two black trainer types to the game: Dancers and Football Players.

Yes. The mind boggles.

Clerks? White or Asian. Fishermen? White or Asian. Female backpackers? White or Asian. EVERY CHARACTER TYPE WHO ISN'T A DANCER OR A FOOTBALL PLAYER? White or Asian.

They didn't even make any black cops.

In case I really need to point it out, this is another stereotype put into action: the idea of black physical prowess. Black men in Pokémon Black and White consist of excellent dancers, athletes, and one martial artist, period.

Oh, and Lenora and Iris are the only two black women in the game.

Now, I would be remiss if I said there weren't some good points as well. They're just not at the forefront of my mind, usually, because HOLY COW IS THIS GAME RACIST.

Mainly it centers around Lenora, because I've only seen a little bit of Iris and I'm not far enough in the game yet to see what Marshal is like. So we'll see what they did with her.

Firstly, in the American release (and in response to criticism from black Pokémon fans and allies), Lenora's description is changed from "Natural-Born Mama" to "The Archaeologist with a Backbone." And this makes many kinds of sense, since Lenora is, in fact, an archaeologist. Which brings me to my next point: aside from her design, Lenora is one kick-ass character. She's the lead archaeologist in Nacrene City. She has a significant participating role in a storyline that you have to play through in Nacrene before you can leave the city. She owns the museum. She's smart and in a position of power (as a Gym Leader.) And she is happily married to one of the researchers who works at the same museum (a white/Asian guy, of course, but she IS in a happy, monogamous relationship.)

In other words, she's one of the few black female characters I have ever seen that I feel like black children could be exposed to without the kick-in-the-teeth that accompanies so many portrayals. Now, I could be wrong - there could be something I've missed, and of course there's still the nasty role of explaining the "mammy" clothes, which could be more harmful than I'm giving it credit for. (Which makes me wonder how many white parents aren't explaining to their white kids what Lenora's outfit means. But then we're getting into "teaching tool" territory, and that's a subject for another post.)

Also, for once none of the black characters are criminals.

A final point: so far, I've limited this discussion to how the game treats two recognized races: black and white/Asian. And aside from the black/white mixed-race backpackers and an ambiguously tan male Psychic (who might be mixed race of any kind, Latino Mexican, indigenous North American Filipino, southern Japanese, or anything else you can think of) these are the only two racial groups depicted in the game. Meanwhile, the myriad of other races that comprise the visual and cultural makeup of the United States (and particularly New York, on which the Unova region is based) continue to be erased.

(By the way, I refer to the majority race in Black and White as white/Asian because the way these characters are typically seen is largely dependent on where the game has been released - the average Japanese player is going to see them as Japanese, whereas the average European-descended player is going to see them as European-descended, and the artists went to absolutely no effort to make a distinction between the two. Also because the region is based on an American location rather than Japan, so there's no way of telling which the artists intended.)

Quote of the Day

A comment on the Womanist Musings post "There Are More Sites Of Oppression Than Gender":

I'm a WOC, and when I look at gender in movies,I don;t get to neatly parse out where gender ends or race begins. Cos they exist simultaneoulsy. Cos yknow, WOC EXIST.

Intersectionality. It's a tough one. It's easy to get it into our heads that we can break down the ways that we are oppressed into easy-to-categorize boxes, but you can't. Just like I couldn't leave a comment (on a post about class privilege) about my class disadvantages without mentioning all of the non-class factors (religious beliefs, education, gender identity, etc.) that have a very real impact on how desperately I need the money for my own safety as well as how much money I will have to spend for it.

Intersectionality means that we are more than the sum of our parts. A black woman is not just black + woman; she is a unique individual that suffers a unique set of stigmas and stereotypes. For instance, she may be expected to erase her race from her hair for the sake of beauty - something that neither white women nor black men are expected to do. Likewise, a trans gay man is not just gay + man + trans. People may assume of him, if he has a vagina, that he wants to be the "bottom" in a sexual relationship. This isn't something that happens to cis gay men OR to trans straight men (though it happens frequently to trans and cis women).

Intersectionality is one of the hardest facets of oppression to learn, because you can't just learn the rules for each category of oppressed persons and then stack them up like Dominos to figure out what each person is suffering from. Which I think is the point - an identity isn't just a list of labels. It's a melting pot that uses all of the ingredients put into it to create a person, and a set of stigmas for that person, that will taste similar in some ways to those who share ingredients but also has a taste of its own.

That may or may not make any sense.

I am very, very angry today.

In my state, we have a sizeable Latin@ population. Mostly descendants of Mexicans. A lot of these Mexican-descended people are lower-class - you can tell, because they make up between ten and twenty percent of the local population but until the economy crashed they made up a sizeable population of the people shopping at Wal-Mart (yet were almost never seen at Costco or Fred Meyer).

The other day, while my mother and I were shopping for groceries, I stopped to look at a stand of Valentine's Day cards (or Singles Shaming Day cards, whichever you like). I discovered that all of the cards that depicted humans were showing peach-skinned people (to no surprise on my part). I pointed this out to my dear white mother, who immediately informed me that (to paraphrase) "they probably get the cards in from somewhere else where they don't have that population; I doubt they have any control over what they get in."

Later, my sister remarked that if I asked the store employees (again, to paraphrase), "they'd probably tell you that they have the cards with animals for the non-whites."

I've been thinking about this today, and I'm still mad.

• I'm mad because my low-class, brown, yet straight neighbors - be they Mexican-descended or any "other" race, can't afford to shop at a store that actually cares enough about them to represent them in the merchandise.
• I'm mad because that's exactly what the damn store employee would say.
• I'm mad because if I want to get a card for me and my hypothetical significant other, I have to fully transition (whatever the hell that means - T, chest surgery, phallo) and spend the rest of my life with a white woman; any other possibility rules me out of the group. And if I didn't toe the line in relationship terms, and complained about the lack of cards representing us, someone would point me to the animal cards. And it's the same way for most people in queer relationships, regardless of their skin color. For the same reason that they won't make cards with brown people for my non-peach, but straight neighbors - THEY ARE BIGOTS.
• I'm mad because, when I shop for cards, I can expect any card that shows a man dominating a woman to be "funny" in a "yuk-yuk, he's in charge, all right" way and any card that shows a woman dominating a man to be "funny" in a "yeah, my wife walks ALL over me, too - why can't she do everything I want?" way. NEVER MIND the lack of same-sex and/or brown people cards depicting this, much less in a positive light.
• I'm mad because anyone in a committed relationship with more than one person, even if they are peach-skinned and heteronormative, can give up on finding ANY card representing them, even if they're white. Even if they're rich. Not even the animals. Heck, if they tried to get a custom job done they would risk gross-out reactions, bigotry, and potential threat to their physical selves.
  
• I'm mad because if I complain about this to someone who doesn't have any problems finding people like them on greeting cards, I can expect to be answered with "Well, I can't find people who look just like me, either," (i.e., HAVE THEIR EXACT FACE) or "So just don't get one with people on it," or (class privilege a-comin') "So just make a custom card with your faces on it. That would be romantic." LIKE AS IF I OWN A PRINTER.
• But I'm mainly mad because my straight brown neighbors who shop at Wal-Mart are a VISIBLE DEMOGRAPHIC, and a not insignificant one, and Wal-Mart puts out its merchandise like they don't even exist. My non-heteronormativity (and that of my neighbors of all colors)... well, I know that they actively hate it around here. And yeah, that pisses me off, but the failure to acknowledge brownness, specifically, feels like they don't even care. WHY THE FUCK DO YOU NOT CARE. Owait. Because white people all around you keep telling you how demanding those brown folks are and how ignoring them is the best way to deal with racism. Yup yup.
• The cards depicting fat people aren't exactly charitable, either. We're either slobs or we've somehow "fallen apart."
  

GUYS.

I have a friend, a woman incidentally, who is always finding gray smudges in her house. On the walls, on the refrigerator, in the food. It's no mystery how they get there - her husband works with vehicles and he's always coming home with filthy hands because he's something of a slob.

Nothing weird there. Nope, nope, nope.

But my friend is ALL the time bitching about these "black" smears. Hubby comes home, his hands are "black." Touches the cheese with dirty hands, the cheese is "black." Smears gray stuff on the front door, the door is "black."

This kind of microaggressive behavior falls into a pretty gray area. Even a lot of black people are hesitant to say whether this is really problematic, because it's so commonplace and nobody really thinks that black skin = dirty, do they? (At least, not anymore... not most of them, anyway.)

I'm going to stick my white foot out here and say YES, this is problematic. YES, calling something "black" when it is dirty will breed racial prejudice. For exactly the same reason that calling something "gay" or "retarded" when it is wrong, meaningless, or just plain unliked breeds prejudice. Calling something "dark" when it is, in fact, morbid or morally wrong breeds prejudice - how can we associate darkness with things we are afraid of and not become afraid of things that are dark?

If my white audience isn't convinced, picture this - a small, black child listening to my friend, or any other human adult in earshot, exclaiming "This is black! It's disgusting!" Remembering what my life was like as a fat child, I can guess how xe would feel. Unclean. Unwanted. A burning urge to jump in the bathtub and scrub xis blackness away so that xe could be clean and white and right. The idea of putting a child through that kind of identity trauma is nearly enough to give me flashbacks to my own.

It's not harmless, it's not meaningless, and the kid sure as heck isn't going to figure out that when you said it you didn't mean "black-black." So please, for the sake of a child's innocence and self-worth, KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.

So, It's Black History Month.

The one time of year when talking about black folks' suffering in "the mainstream" doesn't make you PC or oversensitive or whatevs. And, according to Renee of Womanist Musings, white people spend loads of time talking about the bad stuff we used to do to black people and isn't it nice that we don't have to do that anymore.

At the risk of making it all about white folks, aren't we a bunch of douchebags. (I use "we" in the loose sense, not the literal sense, though I have plenty of douchyness to account for.)

At the same time, I feel like I can't pass up this opportunity to bring awareness to a form of history that is often forgotten (or believed not to exist), inasmuch as the alternative for me is to erase it even further. So here are a few things to get white brains going in a less self-absorbed direction:

Womanist Musings: Why I Am Skipping Black History Month
Womanist Musings: Black History Month
Womanist Musings: Cotton Picking Day
Womanist Musings: Black History Month For Sale
Womanist Musings: Jim Crow Renaissance This Is Celebration?

Blaque Ink: Black Adversity: The Opposite Of White Privilege
Womanist Musings: For Rent: Whites Only
This one's so about white people: Love Isn't Enough: How to Be An Anti-Racist Ally
TransGriot: What You Don't See Is As Important As What You Do See
TransGriot: 'Reverse Racism' Are White Racist Words
TransGriot: Renee's Rule

These are a few posts that share some of the basic concepts of racism as it exists today - equally as important as black history. And remember, social justice isn't just for one month. It's an all-year thing. So read these posts, then bookmark the sites for later and keep on reading. I may not look like it because I prefer not to blog about race issues (being racially privileged, I'm not exactly qualified to comment) but I spend a good chunk of my off-time doing just that.

No, blond jokes are not funny.

Anyone remember this joke?

There were two sisters who wanted to buy a bull. They had $500 to spend on it, so money was tight. They spent a long time looking, and finally found a bull who seemed to fit their specifications for $499. They wanted to be sure before purchasing, so one of the sisters went to check out the bull. She looked him over, talked to the previous owner, and decided it was worth the price. Now she just had to tell her sister to bring the trailer to pick it up. Unfortunately, after paying for the bull she only had $1 left, and telegram rates were high: $1 per word. (This was back in the time before cell phones, natch.) What was she to do? She agonized over it for a while, and finally came to a solution: she told the telegraph operator to wire her sister the word "comfortable."

"Comfortable?" he repeated, quizzically.

"My sister's blonde," she explained. "She'll read it very slowly."

Or how about this one:

A blonde woman is looking for a job. She finds employment in road repair, and her first assignment is to paint lines on the road (by hand... I don't know why). Her employer sends her out to the road with a bucket of paint and a brush and tells her that she needs to paint two miles of lines a day to keep up quota. The first day she paints four miles of lines, and he's impressed. The second day she only does two; it's good enough, but he's concerned. The third day she only does one. Her employer notices her steady decrease and asks her what the problem is.

Her answer: "The bucket keeps getting farther and farther away!"

Yes, ladies and gentlemen and various non-gendered persons, not only are blondes slow readers, but they are so lacking in common sense that it never occurs to them to pick up the bucket and bring it along.

There are hundreds of these jokes floating them around. Some of them have "a blonde, a redhead, and a green-haired girl," and the blonde is the punchline. Others dispense of the supporting cast and just go straight to insulting the fair-haired. Meanwhile, as a blond-haired person, I am told by the people who tell these jokes that I do not have the right to be insulted because "nobody believes this stuff" and "I didn't mean any insult."

NEWSFLASH, GUYS: Nobody else got the memo.

Film studio executives and writers are patently unaware that being blonde does not make you less intelligent. This is why we have productions like "Legally Blonde" and "Lizzie McGuire" - shows that play on the idea of blondes being stupid (Legally Blonde, at least, was a subversive effort) or just plays them as shallow, clothing/boys/drama-obsessed, and/or generally worthless. (See also: The Vampire Diaries, especially the book series.) The stereotype isn't limited to the female sex: blond men are often portrayed as very physical men, lacking in the brains department.

Of course, "dumb blonde" isn't the only stereotype out there - for variety's sake, you can witness the "popular blonde," who may or may not be low of intelligence but is almost certainly gorgeous, earning the jealousy of the brown-haired protagonist and the attention of many, many mens. (And make no mistake: the Popular Blonde is almost always a supporting character, typically used as a foil for the less adored, brunette "everygirl.") This character features in such productions as Lizzie McGuire (again - the ditzy blonde protagonist gets a bitchy blonde foil), The Princess Diaries (Lana and Josh), Huge (Amber), Animorphs (Rachel - a rare leading role), Danny Phantom (Dash), and High School Musical (Sharpay). (Another classic example: Rocky.) If a potential love interest comes into the picture - say, Nate Cooper (The Hottie & the Nottie), Scott Howard (Teen Wolf), Troy Bolton, or Stefan Salvatore - then the Popular Blonde is the protagonist's competition, and the love interest must learn to look past her superficiality (make no mistake, blonde is nothing but) and choose the "plain" brunette. (Except for Troy Bolton, who must blow her off repeatedly because Gabriella kicks ass.) On the other hand, if the protagonist is male, he may just be required to date her - her blonde self is a prize for the triumphant man to obtain (She's Out Of My League).

(This does no favors to brunettes, either. The beauty of a brown-haired woman is almost always presumed to be "inner", or based in her facial features - brown on its own cannot be beautiful.)

A subset of the Popular Blonde is the Bitchy Blonde, who is not only fawned over by everyone, but is so self-centered that she cannot stand not to be fawned over by everyone - or, at the least, cannot stand to see someone else get positive attention. Twilight features Lauren and Rosalie, both of whom exist largely to be jealous of Bella; Dash, Lana, Josh, and Sharpay also make a comeback. Stacy Hansen of the Girl Talk series is a classic example, and she's joined by Casey Cartwright (Greek), Johann (The Hottie & the Nottie - it has a male version too!), Sally Peep (The 10th Kingdom), and Caroline (Everybody's Doing It). It's A Boy/Girl Thing has Woody and his girlfriend Breanna (though it does feature one subversion). Kyle (Beastly) is a unique example - a Bitchy Blonde in the protagonist role, who is cursed by another Bitchy Blonde for being shallow.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the Wholesome Blonde. You already know her; you probably grew up on her movies. Cinderella. Sleeping Beauty. Rapunzel. The fair maiden with flaxen hair who has been horribly imprisoned by an evil wizard, whom the hero must rescue so he can put her shining tresses on display for all to see. And here is the insanity - while blonde hair is degraded for its supposed association with low intelligence and poor attitude, it is simultaneously prized for its allegedly singular beauty. It seems that a blonde woman is a wonderful thing for a man to have, but a very poor thing to be.

Not every blonde character falls prey to these stereotypes. Non-comedy settings with adult characters usually dodge them altogether. It is also true that these character types are occasionally used for brunette characters. However, brown hair is not used to emphasize their character traits the way blonde hair is. No one talks about a "dumb brunette." Brown hair does not shimmer dramatically in loving close-ups. Story writers do not make special note of an annoying character's brown hair.

These stereotypes didn't pop out of nowhere. And that's what leads me back to the blonde jokes. People crack them all the time, thinking they're harmless. Someone else hears them and has it reinforced in xir head that blonde people are a certain way. They get on board a movie, and produce these stereotypical characters of fair hair. People watch the movie, and when they walk away they remember more than the movie - they remember a well-written brunette character (if there is one) playing off against a badly-written caricature of a blonde character, and so they come to believe that brunettes are deeper, smarter, nicer, more complex, or more interesting. And that it's all right to make blonde jokes because "nobody believes them anyway."

The Owner's Manual To Your White Brain: An Intro

That's right, guys. A manual. To YOUR White Brain.

Well, we need one. I sure as heck didn't know how to run mine when I first started trying to understand racism, so it's a foregone conclusion that anyone else who's just started doesn't, either. In addition to the aforementioned fuckup, I've gone through so many dumb ideas and misunderstandings and complete failures to figure out what people are saying that it finally hit me: white people probably don't need to learn as much about racism (in the first few months of their education) as they need to learn how to learn about racism. It's not something that can simply be conveyed through memes and quick ideas (though I do love me some memes), nor is it something that can be understood just by knowing the facts that it is made of. It is something that has to be felt, as close as the white brain can possibly come to grokking it. Unfortunately, you cannot tell someone to feel something and cause them to feel it. You have to communicate in the right way, and sometimes they just won't get it until one day it sinks in and then they're going to wonder how the heck they could have been so stupid.

What I want to do is provide a resource for white people to start untraining themselves without making a mess all over PoC's work space - an online workshop, if you will. I'll be staying away from buzzwords - which newbies tend to stare at befuddledly before wandering off for a game of checkers - and relying on allegory, the resources I have found that have helped me to get it, and parables. (Unlike Jesus, I will not make fun of people if they fail to understand them.) During the process, I hope to draw from and bring light to the work and resources of people of darker persuasions (and their pale allies, as relevant), without whose efforts I would still be completely clueless.

I cannot teach someone about racism. I can only teach them how to learn about racism. And that, I hope, will be worthwhile.

I Fucked Up

What else is there to say? I fucked up.

I'm referring to an earlier post, "Criticism of the SWPD Community." There I ranted about how every time I wandered into a thread I found someone rageing about whatever I happened to be thinking about, calling it a white thing and (in my mind) accusing me of being some kind of savior and yadda. So I wrote a lengthy, ranty post on it.

Maybe I needed to write that post. I'm sure the catharsis at least helped me to get through that phase so I could eventually get to somewhere more stable. Doesn't matter. The fact is, it was a bad reaction. See, there is a lot of rage in old posts on SWPD. Rage directed against white people and their fuckeduppitude toward POC. And when I read those posts, I ended up absorbing that rage and feeling like it was directed toward me. And then I took it out on the writers, who I don't think really deserved it.

So, I fucked up.

Question is, what am I going to do about it? Well, the one thing I can do: use my fucked-up white experience to try and prevent further fuckuppitude in the future. How? Well, the takeaway lesson from this experience is that there's a lot more to Anti-Racism 101 than a single blog post or epiphany. I thought that since I'd read the post I was off too a good start, but all I had was a bad case of Novice Disease. I learned that breaking yourself of whiteness, no matter how good your intentions are, how smart you are, and how well you think you've got it, takes more than a few minutes of shock followed by a few days of radically rethinking your worldview.

BIG SHOCK, right? I know, I read that from people of multiple races. But I thought I was different. I thought I was getting it. That's something that a lot of white folks tend to do: assume they're getting it. Of course, assuming you're getting it + a safe space to blather about whatever you're supposedly getting without criticism or even a capacity to understand why you might deserve it = fail.

Starting now, I'm going to try and fuck up less. I've realized a lot of things that I think are going to help. I'm also going to try and turn my biggest disadvantage - my fucked-up white brain - into more of an advantage. I've figured out a few things, and I think that if I can explain them in a way that the white brain is actually capable of understanding, I can do some good. So I'm going to start there.

I'm really sorry, guys. I can only imagine that any POC who read that post (if any of them read it - I rather hope they didn't) were gobsmacked, disgusted, and probably enraged by the sheer amount of fuckedupittude. I don't blame you. And I expect any future readers to be good and cynical about what I'm about to do next.

(On the other hand, if you have no idea what I'm talking about and this post looks like so much existential baloney, feel free to ignore it.)

Y'know what really pisses me off? Tsu'tey.

I know, I know. With all the things wrong with Avatar (White Savior Syndrome, the portrayal of Native Americans/Na'vi as amazing and powerful super-nobles who just don't have enough chutzpah/imagination to rescue their own sorry asses, yadda) I pick Tsu'tey, of all things, to bitch about. Why?

Well, I'm a writer - one that loves well-developed characters characters. And despite all the changes L.A.'s had, there's one thing our gold-rush pioneers in Hollywood are still good at doing in spades: pissing on tertiary guys, especially brown/blue ones. Case in point, Tsu'tey.

Who is this mysterious blue man? Well, according to the movie, he's a Na'vi warrior in Ney'tiri's tribe. Nobody knows where he came from, what his credentials are, or how he is in any way relevant to the plot - all we know is that he is engaged to Ney'tiri (what is with those apostrophes?) and slated to become the next tribe leader. Throughout the movie, he does such pivotal things as (1) standing around staring disapprovingly at Jake, (2) teasing Jake, (3) losing his fiancé to Jake, and (4) dying so Jake can take over the tribe.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I'm sure some people don't see why this is a problem. Y'know, every story has characters that aren't integral to the plot. They're there to give it some depth, y'know, make it look like there's an established world. They don't have to do great stuff.

Not Tsu'tey. He doesn't exist to give the story additional depth. He exists so that Jake can take everything he has.

I'm not even kidding. In the beginning, Tsu'tey is betrothed to Ney'tiri, the totally hot catgirl who ends up helping Jake out. It's stated that she's engaged to him. Jake is warned away from hitting on her because of this. Tsu'tey mocks him constantly and tries to get him killed because of this. Because of this, and the fact that they're supposed to be the next leaders of the tribe, you get the general idea that there engagement is kind of a big deal.

And then what happens? One day, without warning, Jake and Ney'tiri just go off and get laid/married. There's no explanation as to why this is suddenly acceptable. Jake just hits on Ney'tiri, and she's like "Oh, fuck tradition! I like you, let's get hitched." I'm all for her having the choice, but it pretty much flies in the face of all the setup about her Very Important Engagement. And what does Tsu'tey do when he sees them the morning after their wedding night? He's indignant for all of two seconds and then he's like "Hmph, whatever," and walks off.

I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty damn pissed if my FIANCÉ went and married someone else and didn't even TELL ME and I didn't find out until I walked in on their honeymoon. So what's with Tsu'tey? Maybe he didn't care because they didn't actually like each other that much (Hollywood Rule: Arranged = Loveless), but we never find out.

Okay, so what else does Tsu'tey do? Well, he becomes temporary leader after the old one dies, and he translates for Jake when addressing the other Na'vi, and then... he dies. That's it, that's his big accomplishment. It's a hugely badass scene, and it does end up saving everybody, but... well, let's just say he's not getting the girl.

Like I said, he exists just so Jake can take all his stuff. Take him out, and nothing would change in the plot (except Ney'tiri's dad would have to live a while longer). He is nothing more than a colossal "fuck you" to the Na'vi - a way for Jake to appropriate their things for his own benefit while Cameron appropriates the Natives' for his, and making it okay by giving his half-assed permission. And he's badly written to boot.

The way I see it, that "translate for me" exchange can only be interpreted two ways:

SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU'TEY: I absolutely consider your cheap token of respect to be equivalent to your phenomenal token of not giving a damn about my people or their traditions.

Or:

SULLY: Brother, please accept my asking you to translate for me as appropriate recompense for my stealing your girlfriend.
TSU-TEY: What, Ney'tiri? You can keep the bitch. Hell, I owe you for taking her off my hands.

Strangely, the least potentially canon option is also the most plausible. It could have been an interesting plot twist, but JC doesn't even give us that.

Rethinking This Whole "Racism" Thing

Between Tim Wise and Noel Ignatiev, I've been doing me some thinking.

And I'm thinking they're right. (I know, I know... I think the white guys are right, what a concept.) I do think that attempting to disclaim whiteness when dealing with PoC is an utterly stupid idea, because the only thing it could possibly accomplish is to disenguilt the pale people of their connection to and at least former complacence in racism - not a good idea. So if a PoC refers to you as white, live with it.

On the other hand, what good does it do for you to identify as white to white people? 90% of the time, the only thing it will do is get you privilege. If you're very careful - if you make it pointedly clear to everyone you interact with that while you may be white, you are against racism - you may lose a tiny bit of that privilege, but still, "not playing by the rules" is a more forgivable offense than "not being white."

Many PoC have used the phrase, "The master's tools will never demolish the master's house." While I sort of grasped the general concept of "your oppressor will never try to help you unless he can do so without undermining himself," it has become clear that there is more meaning in it. In some countries - and certainly in the United States - being white is like being a member of the Catholic Church.

For those who haven't had the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic (or read about someone having the displeasure of being an ex-Catholic), here's how it works: Every person born into a Catholic family is baptized into the church as a baby. They go through the ceremony, get wet, yadda, and get their name enrolled in the Church's records. And in most cases, your name stays there for life. Even if you apostatize, even if you swear off everything your church stands for, even if you become a dedicated Satanist for the rest of your life, unless you fight tooth and nail to get your name taken out of the roster (and sometimes even then), you are counted as a member of the Catholic Church. This wouldn't be too bad if it was just a clerical issue - whoever's in charge of your new religion probably doesn't care what some fusty old church has to say, particularly if you've become an atheist - but it's not. Instead, the Church will use their artificially bloated member list at every opportunity to try and get power. You don't think Catholic law should become dominant in a given country? Look how many card-carrying Catholics there are in that country! Want to prosecute the Pope for complacency in child rape? You're going after a nation, and I have the papers to prove it. (This is the really insidious part: even Catholics don't have a say in how they're represented. Even if they hate the Pope. Even if they approve birth control or would like to sell the Vatican and use the proceeds to buy food for the hungry, their names still get used to back up the very things they oppose.)

Likewise, when you have the right set of genes to be assumed white and don't do anything to make people think otherwise, even if you don't agree with the principles that Whiteness has dropped on the country, you will be used to support its principles. Answer "White" on racial surveys? Politicians will point to the enormous white majority to justify racist laws. Be yet another pale face in your social circle? Somebody will think of a racist joke to "share," and they won't hold back on your account. Even arguing your innocence of a speeding ticket could cause a problem - the cop might give it to you anyway, or he might let you off and go home feeling happy and secure that he's helped out another innocent white person.

The Master's tools may not destroy the Master's house, but the unfortunate fact is that this concept of white supremacy will not be destroyed as long as us pale people remain complacent. A hundred well-read, well-argued, and intensely frustrated voices of color can explain the problem over and over again, but as long as white people believe that the pale are all on their side, most of them are never going to listen to them. This isn't fair, it isn't right, and it's supremely racist, but it's a fact. And us pale people - be we racially "white" or not - are in a unique position to do something about it.

But am I saying that the pale hold the sole power to end racism? Hardly! This is only one facet of anti-racism work, and it does not happen a vacuum. People like Noel Ignatiev and I have only come to realize this was even a problem because of the hours of hard work from PoC. And even if the white majority can be made to stop believing in the sanctity of the white race, that effect will not dissuade them of the inferiority of other races. Nor can it end oppressive lawmaking, increased poverty in communities of color, and many other issues that PoC face. In many aspects, PoC have and will continue to take the lead, with white/pale people assisting as is necessary and beneficial. This just happens to be one issue (possibly the only one) that pale people, specifically, must fight on their own.

No Ordinary Family: Pilot

This review is also belated - not because I didn't watch the episode, but because I had some other things to get out of the way first, but here goes.

First of all, the plot is as insipid as I expected. A middle-class white family's middle-class whiteness is causing them to become dysfunctional. GO FIGURE. That lifestyle is bad for you, you know. Of course, their failure (according to the story) is also that they are not heteronormative enough - Dad is taking care of his family instead of saving the world, Mom is working a full-time job instead of taking care of her family, and the daughter is (get this) USING HER OWN JUDGMENT TO CHOOSE HER BOYFRIEND. Which, according to tradition, means that he is a total douchebag who (as it turns out) is sleeping with her best friend and lying to her about it.

ANYWAY.

I was going to take the race angle first, but this mess is just too complex. The fact is, I have absolutely no quibble about a story about a white family. I have EVERY quibble about a story that just "happens to" choose a middle-class, heteronormative, almost entirely able (more on that later) white family as The Most Average People Imaginable. Like we haven't seen that a bajillion times before (Sky High, The Incredibles, The Gates, plus a slew of older shows and films) and done better to boot (see also: The Incredibles). A lot of people seem to think that this is acceptable because European-descended people comprise the majority in the United States. This kind of thinking betrays huge ignorance about the population breakdown of individual cities within the United States - many of which have non-white majorities. Yeah, I'm not buying it.

Then there's the "black best friend" angle, which is also popular in television and brings nothing new to this show - except severe unfortunate implications, as George is all too willing to donate his garage and significant quantities of resources to his white friend's newfound powers. Only the addition of Stephanie's white friend, who is equally enthusiastic, and the Rule Of Superhero Worship (as follows: IT'S GONNA HAPPEN) keep this to an even tolerable level. Additionally, the person I took to be a nameless thug of color turned out to be a white guy in an Obama mask, so we're not throwing random POC-as-criminal stereotypes around yet.

Speaking of Stephanie's white friend, her inclusion and the conversation the two have about Stephenie's powers (and Kitty Pryde) means that this show passes the Bechtel test. Which says nothing about its validity as non-oppressive entertainment, obviously. Especially given the things I mentioned above: Stephanie's prioritization of career over family being repeatedly depicted as the wrong choice, and Daphne's atrocious taste in boyfriends (nothing less than a sexist/ageist stereotype).

We'll start with Stephanie (and by extension, Jim). The show does not expressly condemn the mother's choice to pursue her career, or the father's choice to take a less demanding job so that he can spend time with his family - instead, the characters express frustration at their roles, indicating the writers' sentiment that their family is somehow "broken" because of this. I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they were just trying to twist up the usual order. There have been plenty of stories (such as Multiplicity and 17 Again, also films about heteronormative white people) where the father wants more time with his kids and the mother wants an outside life. Problem is, the original formula is vaguely subversive of the traditional heteronormative family unit. Reverse it, and... yeah. Getting super-speed enables Stephanie to achieve that magic jugglement of career and family, which is what every woman should aspire to, right? Right?

NO. This is an unreasonable goal to set for a mother, even one with superpowers. A more realistic solution would be for her to negotiate some time off from her job so she can spend some more time with her kids. Her boss would totally go for that, even. Also to accept that maybe sharing the parenting job with her husband is OK.

Next up we have Daphne, the teenage daughter who is obsessed with her personal life, sucks at choosing boyfriends, and wants nothing to do with her parents... where have we heard that one before? (Hint: 17 Again, Modern Family, The Vampire Diaries.) It's not so much that her parents don't approve of her boyfriend, but that she doesn't appraise them of everything going on in their relationship, which is punished soundly when she learns that he is boinking her best friend behind her back. And of course it's not his problem for being a lying douchebag - it's her problem for having the naivete to actually trust the guy. Eeeeeyup. In addition to cluing her in to her boyfriend's shenanigans, her psychic powers force her to actually spend some time talking to her parents (yet another way in which they magically start fixing the family).

Remember, girls: your growing independence from your parents as you age is a bad thing. Mommy and Daddy know what's best for you, so make sure you attend all your Meaningful Family Talks, and always do what they say!

Now, I could be completely off on this. For all I know, Daphne could turn out to be an intelligent, independent character (as much as is reasonable for a teenage girl) whose opinion is valid and valued by her parents... but I'm not holding my breath.

Next up is JJ, the token learning-disabled kid. Knowing as little as I do about the learning disabled, I'm not going to take this one on in detail, but even I can tell that they're doing it wrong here. First of all, there's his mother, who is a total asshat about the problem. Paraphrased: "They want to put him in a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. MY son. In a SPECIAL EDUCATION class. This is ridiculous! I'm a middle-class white mother! WHY are they punishing me like this?" Seriously, she acts like it's about her, rather than about the actual difficulties her son is having. Her temper tantrum, and the rest of the show's context, further lead one to believe (without ever confirming) that there's nothing actually wrong with JJ, that he's perfectly intelligent and would be getting good grades if only his mommy was around to help him with his homework. This, of course, casts the school officials who want to put him into a special-education class as clueless monsters who just don't understand how speshul her kid is, and really denigrates the reality of being learning disabled.

Secondly, none of it matters, because GUESS WHAT! Getting dunked in a lake full of magical glowing stuff has made him a SUPER-GENIUS! Ha ha, and you thought he was actually going to have to deal with his problem for a second. You noob. This is another fantastic example of disability erasure - where any character who is disabled either has some superpower to compensate (Daredevil, Percy Jackson et al), or is magically cured of it before the plot ever starts (many amateur Mary-Sue stories), which makes it completely moot. Anyway, becoming a super-genius magically fixes JJ's bad-grades problem, re-encouraging him to apply himself to his schoolwork and Be Successful.

Now here's the thing: Faildelivery aside, I'm enjoying that they've cast a supergenius into a main role. I'm a smart guy, and my kind are often deeply misunderstood in TV. Like Gil Grissom, Data, Bones, or House, they are typically brilliant but lacking in social ability; they have no sense of humor but are always played for laughs, and in many cases they are cast across a less-intelligent protagonist with whom we are supposed to sympathize for having to live/work with a stuffy, clueless know-it-all. Furthermore, we allegedly have only the nerdiest of hobbies - crossword puzzles, sci-fi shows, or randomly building amazing devices in our garages over the weekend (depending on the target age of the show in question).

Now, JJ wasn't raised smart, he became smart. So culturally, he should be more like a real smart person - calculating, liable to overthink things, continually frustrated that everyone around him is so dense, but otherwise no different from anyone else. On the other hand, I don't want his character to become worthless because he doesn't have a physical ability like his parents. If he ends up building incredible physics-defying devices and giving them all to Superdad, I'm going to be pissed. On the other hand, he could be more like Syndrome or Kick-Ass, which would be well worth my viewing time.

Now that that bit of ARGHWHATTHECRAP is out of the way, we'll go to Jimbo!

Jim is the protagonist of the story. This white, middle-class guy was written by white, middle-class guys, and it shows. He's an overall great guy; he works as a police artist, but his job isn't so demanding that he doesn't have time for his kids. He doesn't get his kids, to be sure, and he's convinced that their burgeoning independence is a sign that his family is falling apart (a sentiment the writers obviously agree with), but with a family as obviously dysfunctional as his (workaholic Stephanie, selfish Daphne, emo JJ), what's a guy to do? Man up! Force the family on a vacation to South America, where you continually nag them to enjoy themselves and do Family Things (read: the stuff you want) until you all get into a horrible plane accident. Then just go home and keep nagging them until BAM, they get superpowers, forcing your kids to turn back to you and Mom to help them. VICTORY!

But what's that? You want MORE? You want to fight crime and help people and other stuff you're inexplicably not doing just by working for the police force? Well, no problem! Just recruit your Black Best Friend for a sidekick, promise your wife that you're not going to start doing what you're about to do, and then launch yourself into deadly situations with absolutely no experience or idea of what you're facing.

GAAAAAAAW.

First there's the ageism. Jim's kids are growing up, which means that it is totally unreasonable for him to expect that they stay under his thumb. Not that they don't still need his guidance, but maybe he should try engaging them as the nearly-adult minds that they are instead of the children he expects them to be. (Yes, I know that's difficult. Real life usually is, even if you have superpowers.) Furthermore, Stephanie ignores her son's insistence that he is genuinely disabled in favor of her Important Adult Opinion that he only has self-esteem issues that he needs to get over. (She's never proven wrong, either.) Then there's the sexism. Jim somehow thinks it's okay to lie to his wife about his activity because he "needs" to "do this." He has a burning urge to fight crime which somehow supersedes his marriage vows, and apparently we're supposed to be okay with this. Well, I'm not.

Furthermore, he has no problem with co-opting George's garage for a superhero base. Now maybe it's just me, but I think if my best friend volunteered that much time and resources, I'd be a little hesitant. I might even say something like "Who there, Black Best Friend. You have a life and a family and stuff. I appreciate the offer, but you don't need to be the Magical Negro on my behalf." Again, it's about the wedding vows. Their families should be coming first - especially with the way Jim keeps carrying on about his.

Now that I've done ripped this show to shreds, you might find it crazy that I'm going to keep watching it. And you may be right. But one of the crazy things about us Smart People is that we find value in watching stuff that is crap, so we can analyze it, figure out why it is crap, and maybe educate others about the problems in it. Besides, I am curious, in a completely non-stereotypical-smart-guy way. The show managed to wrap up nearly every problem it started with in one episode. I really want to see where it takes the next. Hopefully somewhere where the kids learn to use their abilities to empower themselves and Jim realizes he can't control his family and run off to do whatever he pleases.

MUST SEE: Tim Wise on White Privilege

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc

Full transcript:

'Cause if you know the history of the whole concept of Whiteness, if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason, you know that it was a trick - and it's worked brilliantly.

See, prior to the mid- to late-1600's in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race - those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term, really ever, before then. In fact, in the old countries of Europe, we had spent most of our time killing each other. We didn't love each other; we weren't one big, happy family. The side of my family that comes from Scotland, hell, they didn't even worry about fighting people outside of Scotland. Highlanders and lowlanders just fought the hell out of each other. So there was no white race, but in the colonies of what would become the United States, what did we see in the 1660's-1670's? We began to see that Africans of indentured servant status (many of them not enslaved yet, they were not necessarily permanently enslaved; some were, others were indentured like many poor Europeans for periods of seven to eleven years - they could work off their indenture and then they would be free labor, technically) realized, as did the white indentured servants, the Europeans (who hadn't even been called white yet) that they had a lot of things in common, like the fact that they were all getting their clock cleaned by the elites. And so they would get together, more than our history books taught us. To fement(?) rebellion against the elite, to try to get a better deal for themselves on the basis of economic necessity and economic justice.

And what did the elite do? When you see that you're outnumbered by black and white folks who are penniless, landless, peasants, you have to do one of two things: you either have to kill them all, but you can't do that, 'cause who's gonna work? Rich folks weren't going to. They had to get poor people to work. The whole point was to be a person of leisure, back in those days. That was the goal, was not to work. So you couldn't kill them all, you didn't want to kill them all, you'd have to do the work yourself! You'd have to build your own levy. Build your own house. No. Pick your own tobacco! Harvest your own cotton... no. We're not going to do any of that. So you can't kill them, but you can co-opt them, and so the elite in Virginia, for example, in the colony, begins to give certain carrots to people of European descent, saying things like "You know, we're going to let you own a little land. Not much, but just a little. And we're going to get rid of indentured servitude, now you're free labor - and by the way, once you're free labor you get fifty acres of land. Just because you're free labor, see, so we're going to cut you in on this deal. We're going to let you enter into contracts. We're going to let you testify in court, and here's the best of all: we're going to put you on the slave patrol. To keep those people in line," right? The idea was, "you're still going to get your clock cleaned. We still don't like you. We still aren't really going to empower you or change your economic subordination, but we're going to make you honorary members of this team, and you're going to help us keep those other people down."

And so they got a little taste of power, and it did effectively divide and conquer those coalitions - those rebellions began to stop almost instantly. Fast forward to the Civil War era, you have rich white folks in the South where I come from, standing up and openly admitting that the reason they're prepared to secede from the Union - and the only reason they ever articulated publicly, EVER - was to maintain and extend slavery and white supremacy, not only where it already existed, but into the newly acquired - that is to say, stolen - territories from Mexico, to the west. That was what they said. Now we lie about it. We say it wasn't about slavery. That it was about state's rights. Yes, the right of the states to keep and maintain slaves, exactly. But back then they had no shame, so they didn't try and cover it up. They only said it, but once again the rich didn't want to go and do the work - are you kidding? No. They're going to get poor people to go fight for them. And the poor folks didn't even own slaves. Now think: how do you get poor people, who don't even own the shirt on their back - let alone slaves - to go fight to keep your slaves for you? You've got to convince them that their skin is more important than their economic interest, because think about it: if I am a farmer who has to charge you a dollar a day or two dollars a week to work on your farm, to harvest that tobacco or pick that cotton, but you can get a black person to do it for free (because you own them), who's going to get the job? Not me. In other words, slavery actually undermined the wages, and the wage-based economic floor, of the typical white working-class or low-income person. But they were told, "if these people are free they're going to take your job." No, fool, they got your job. That's the point. And so at some level, again, working-class white people being harmed by white privilege. Relatively, being advantaged, right? Being given a leg up, being given a membership to the club, but in absolute terms being kept economically subordinated by the very thing that gave them a sense of superiority. How's that for irony?

Then in the present era - this hasn't stopped, this is not ancient history - now we have people running around insisting that we should close the border with Mexico because, if we don't, the wages of working-class people will continue to fall, the implication being that the only reason workers are paid like crap in this country is because the border is opened. But if you believe that, you would actually have to believe that if that border were closed, then all these owners of capital and industry would just say "Oh, well, you figured us out. Here, it's a raise." Do we really believe that the only thing keeping bosses from paying people more is the presence of low-wage, medium-semi-skilled labor from south of this artificial border? Is that really what we believe? We know that if that border was closed, it isn't going to be closed to capital. It isn't going to be closed to goods. If you have a border that can be crossed by capital, looking for the highest return on investment or goods, looking for the highest price, but labor is chained to its country of origin, how is that going to work to the benefit of working people? By definition, it doesn't. By definition, it emiserates the working class. Divide, and conquer.

But the best example of all, perhaps, in the contemporary era - in the greater New Orleans area after Katrina - here you have two communities that were the worst hard-hit: the Lower Ninth Ward, mostly black community, 94% African-American, about 40% official poverty rate, heavy working-class community, and right across the canal, St. Bernard Parish Chalmette, 95% white, also working-class, high levels of poverty, economically very similar. And at the end of the day, in those first few days of September 2005, more similar than they probably would have realized. Because when those levies broke, they all got their stuff jacked. They all got their stuff destroyed. But if you had asked the white folks in Chalmette - and I've done it - who was the cause of the problems in the greater New Orleans area part of that flooding, they would have pointed across the canal at those black folks (wouldn't have called them black folks) and would have said "there, that's the problem." 70% of the white folks in St. Bernard Parish voted for David Duke, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, former head of the largest Ku Klux Klan group in the United States, when he ran for governer in 1991. Seven out of ten gladly voted for him, because he was blaming black folks for all of their problems and they bough it. What's the irony? The irony is that while they were blaming black people for their problems, while they were blaming black people for the conditions of the greater New Orleans area in which they lived, nobody was paying attention (least of all they) to the fact that these white elite politicians, either in Baton Rouge or in Washington, whose job it was to secure those levies, to make sure that levy funds were spent in the proper way and that they were spent at all, those mostly white and mostly elite politicians did nothing at the end of the day, it wasn't just the black folks in the Lower 9th Ward they didn't care about, they didn't give a rat's ass about those poor and working-class white folks either. And yet when the people of Chalmette - people of St. Bernard Parish - got back into session, first time they had a city council meeting, parish council meeting after the flooding, the lights aren't even on yet. The water isn't even hooked up, and the first order of business was to pass an ordinance saying that you couldn't rent property in St. Bernard Parish to anyone who wasn't a blood relative. Now I'll leave it up to your imagination as to why they'd want to pass a law - that law had never existed before - but now that it's been emptied out and you don't know who might be coming back, that's a damn good way to keep black people out, isn't it? 'Cause if you're 95% white to begin with, if you pass an ordinance that says that, that's a great w-you can't say "no blacks need apply," you can't say "no blacks allowed," but that was an ingenious way to get around the law. Now, they got caught, there was a lawsuit threatened and they got rid of the ordinance. But my point in bringing it up is to say, once again, "divide and conquer" is working. These white folks in Chalmette need to march across that canal and join hands with the black folks who've been sitting there, more than willing to work with them for an awful long time, and march on Baton Rouge, and march on DC, and march on the Corps of Engineers, and recognize their commonality of interest. But the whiteness, and the lure of whiteness, has tricked these have-nothing-in-their-bank-account white people into believing that they got more in common with the rich white folks on St. Charles Avenue, that didn't lose anything in that flooding, than they have in common with the black working-class folks who live about five hundred yards away.

This is a brilliant, powerful, and utterly illuminating piece. One of the biggest flaws I have noticed in anti-racist work (at least on the blogosphere), from people of any color, is the simple inability to connect with white allies. They express the problem, they express their rage, and they have that right, but it is rare for someone to actually communicate, to cause the white person to truly appreciate that they useful in the battle against racism and in fact have a sizeable stake in it. This communication may not be cathartic, and one often feels that the other party does not deserve such treatment, but it is vital in the acquisition of allies - something that other marginalized groups have already discovered. Tim Wise (likely by virtue of being white himself) has managed to communicate with the white mind, bringing to light one of its greatest flaws - to believe, because of the repeated affirmation of their whiteness on all sides, that even the most disenfranchised white person has more in common with their own oppressors than with their fellow oppressed. This is, in a word, bullshit - and I will try to remember that in the future.

(I will also remember to double-check my sources. I wasted a huge amount of time transcribing the talk, optimistically thinking that I was doing something useful, when there was already a PDF version available. Oh, well.)

(Via stuff white people do.)