PostBourgie

Machete:”This Time they F@$%’d with the Wrong Mexican”

Naima — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:12:15 +0000

Mex-ploitation at its finest (or worst depending on who you ask) brings “Machete,” the Robert Rodriguez film about a machete-wielding Mexican superhero (played by Danny Trejo), border vigilantes, dangerous drug lords, corrupt politicians and cliche one-liners like “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” in in theaters Tomorrow, September 3. If you saw the Grindhouse series its a movie of the same vein…and so you know what to expect.

The movie is sure to piss off all sides of the immigration debate and although I haven’t seen it yet I don’t see how the flick can have any enduring value to add to the immigration conversation.

With that disclaimer, you have to admit–it’s pretty dope to have a modern Mexican protagonist, and one that’s actually played by a Mexican actor.Similar Posts:

On White People and The Blues

VC — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:24:01 +0000

John Lee Hooker – Hobo Blues

In an attempt to summarize a dining experience I had that didn’t exactly rub me the right way, I explained to a friend: “You know how white people will come home after work and turn on the blues? … It was kind of like that.”

Music for me can be a touchy and emotionally charged subject, and – for the most part – I try to avoid discussions that are driven by the sole need to essentialize genres according to race. While it is clear to me that certain music has origins in circumstances in which race was an unequivocal factor, I’ve grown into an understanding that much musical development occurred within an environment of cross-racial, -cultural, often transatlantic influences. Borrowing has happened, sometimes even mutually.

Still, there is such a thing as black music: music that is derived from or inspired by black people and culture. Among this music is the blues and soul – both of which have picked up a lot of momentum amongst white listeners – be they punks, hipsters, or music junkies.

My issue/criticism/complaint is that this music is often not understood within its cultural, historical, and emotional context. This music comes from someplace, and is part of the experiences – the pain, joy, struggles and historical memories of black folk. There is something assuming, unsettling, and comfortably privileged about a white person throwing on a Bessie Smith record they found at Salvation Army at a dinner party. In thinking specifically about the blues, it was birthed from the realities of being black and without resources. Rhythms were created with feet, hands, and mouths. Similar to how some jazz musicians used instruments discarded from the Civil War, the blues was born from the specific situation of not having: a situation which has been commonly entangled with being of color in the U.S.

What is it about white people getting off up under black music that is so troubling? Perhaps it is the romanticization of black experiences that accompanies the thoughtless enjoyment of the culture that is born from them? Or is it the consumption of black pain as product? There is something disturbing about being confronted with music that for me is significant, evocative, and tied to an actual feeling in a space such as a hip restaurant in Brooklyn. I’m here to eat brunch (first mistake) and you have Otis Redding muted on the TV (presumably) singing and jumping around on stage, and – as though to say “AHA!” – you are also playing a completely different album by him on the sound system. At first, I offered the restaurant the benefit of the doubt, considering that perhaps this was the decision of a black owner who, like me, loves southern soul. But, there was something distinctly white about this. Aside from its offensively conspicuous “down-home” New Orleans theme and obviously new location in gentrify hot-spot Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, the ease with which black expression was on display as a backdrop just reeked of the detached, uninformed consumerist indifference that is fed by commodity culture. It was like an exhibit of southern black feeling that most of the “mixed crowd” patrons probably could not have related to on any personal level but could rather mindlessly neglect while eating barbecued shrimp and grit cakes. Anyway, taken completely out of context, Otis became 30-something inches of energetic sweaty black man, invoked to rouse a fake nostalgia for a time that most white people would, quite frankly, rather forget.

Otis Redding – Try a Little Tenderness

In being white and, to an extent, in being a part of sub- and counter-cultures which value history and the creation of things, one is faced with an abundance of options for musical cultures that are available to be listened to, researched, experienced, and enjoyed. (Take for example the fact that being a rock n’ roll fan might lead you to the unavoidable fact that many artists, including The Rolling Stones and that Elvis guy drew directly (and in some cases stole) from blues influences, such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson.) There are endless musical cultures to be discovered, particularly when you aren’t exposed to certain genres in your childhood. But it is important to consider the stories, histories, pain, and oppression that such music has been inevitably steeped in, and to seek to really understand what it means, and where it comes from – culturally, historically, emotionally – as opposed to appropriating whichever part of its aesthetic seems useful. Everything is not simply for your listening pleasure or dining experience.Similar Posts:

Your Monday Random-Ass Roundup: Of Sheep and Honor.

blackink12 — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:22:05 +0000

Without much prompting or need, the good Reverend Dr. Glenn Beck and about 87,000 – or eleventy-jillion – of his minions rallied Saturday at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to restore America’s honor.

Which is all well and good. Assuming you believe honor is something to be valued above all else.

And all this talk about “honor” reminded me of an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Outliers, which delves briefly into “the culture of honor”:

“Cultures of honor tend to take root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas. If you live on some rocky mountainside, the explanation goes, you can’t farm. You probably raise goats or sheep, and the kind of culture that grows up around being a herdsman is very different from the culture that grows up around growing crops. …

… So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak. He has to be willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to his reputation – and that’s what a ‘culture of honor’ means. It’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth.”

Assuming you can buy that theory, it explains quite a lot. Particularly given that so much of the resistance to the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress has its roots in the South.

Just something to chew on.

Now time for some randomness:

1. Ann Friedman reports from Real America. (Blackink)

2. Five years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is smaller, richer and whiter than it was before the storm. “But this is largely a result of poor people leaving the city after Katrina and not returning.”

3. One of the reasons for these changing demographics might be the lack of affordable housing for impoverished mothers and children.

4. In spite of, or maybe because of these changes, Yahoo considers New Orleans one of our nation’s 10 dying U.S. cities.

5. If you’re interested, a handful of slideshows can illustrate the recovery – or lack thereof – better than a thousand essays. Here’s some images from NOLA.com, Newsweek, NYT and Sociological Images, to name a few.

6. Looking back at the chaos that unfolded following the flood, Frontline teamed with ProPublica and the Times-Picayune to uncover killings and cover-ups by police in the wake of Katrina. Also, the NYT ponders the gruesome sight of a corpse in broad daylight on Union Street and Matt Taibbi wades “into the nightmare of New Orleans.” (Blackink)

7. Violence against the homeless is at a 10-year high. (Nicole)

8. Planet Money explains how Wall Street made the financial crisis worse, and sorta knew they were doing it. (Monica)

9. Mexican marines find 72 bodies, possibly Zeta migrant kidnappings. (Nicole)

10. Rwanda dismisses leaked UN report, which accuses the Tutsi-led army of Hutu genocide in the Congo. (Naima)

11. More charges of sexual abuse have emerged from T. Don Hutto, a Texas immigration detention center that held men, (sometimes pregnant) women, and children until 2009 and now holds about 500 women. (Melissa)

12. Despite some high profile races, women are poised to lose seats overall in November. (Monica)

13. Marion Nestle on the half-billion egg recall. (Nicole)

14. Egyptian men and women want the church out of their marital ish. Currently the law says that a person’s religion dictates marriage and divorce petitions. (Naima)

15. “What’s this ‘we’ white man?” The Awl takes a closer look at Franzenfreude. (Melissa)

16. Binge drinking spreads to Italy? Guess binge drinking is an epidemic now…gorging foreign tourists ruin Italian restraint. (Naima)

17. The Millions asks if picture books are leading our children astray. (Melissa)

18. Robert Rodriguez‘ “Machete” comes out this week. Mexican superhero, immigration story, drug lords and corrupt politicians…perfect timing, eh? (Naima)

19. The president of the Wild Salmon Center found himself banned from a Portland sushi restaurant for pointing out the restaurant is serving endangered fish. (Nicole)

20. Over the weekend, Shaq took a spin through Harvard Square. (Blackink)

21. The Natalie Randolph regime has begun at Coolidge High in D.C. Unfortunately, it started with a loss. (Blackink)

More later. Enjoy the week. And honor America.Similar Posts:

Blogging Mad Men: Season 4, Ep. 6, “Waldorf Stories.”

Nicole — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:04:05 +0000

Mad Men episode with Don and company at the CLIO awards airing the same night the Emmys? Thanks for the synchronicity, AMC!

We open with Don and Peggy interviewing Danny Siegel, who can barely get through a sentence without mentioning Roger’s name. Most of the pitches are variations on the same idea: “_____: the cure for the common chair” or “______: the cure for the common bank.” After all but laughing Danny out of the office, Peggy complains to Don about the new art director Stan Rizzo. Don doesn’t want to hear it. “He’s talented and more experienced. Learn to work with him.” Don goes to Roger, thinking the interview with Danny was a joke, and learns that Danny is Jane’s cousin, and essentially hiring him is cheaper than Roger’s “personal gift expenditures” to Jane. (As an aside, what happened to Jane? Her interactions with Joan, both before and after she married Roger, were priceless. And I think she’s actually a worse person than Betty.) Don and Roger’s meeting also starts a series of flashbacks, where we learn how Don was hired — Don sold a mink stole (for Joan) to Roger, and when Roger remarked on the fur salon’s ads, Don mentioned he did them. He included his portfolio in with the stole and more or less hounded Roger until Roger got drunk at lunch one day and hired him. This same situation plays out with Don and Danny over the course of the episode.

Meanwhile, Peggy is sulking around the office, irritated at having to work with Stan, and upset that Don accepted congratulations on the Clio nomination from everyone but her, on a campaign she worked on no less. At the awards show, while the nominees are announced, and with Joan tightly clasping Roger and Don’s hands under the table, SCDP’s Glo-Coat ad wins. The celebration is interrupted by news that a potential client, Life Cereal, is at the office. Don drunkenly offers his pitch, and when the cereal men don’t like it, begin spouting taglines, until he eventually lands at “the cure for the common breakfast,” which the Life people love. Peggy tries to intervene, since Don stole the idea from Danny, but Don orders his secretary to book Peggy and Stan a room for the weekend, so they can work on the Vick’s campaign. Don heads out to a bar to celebrate his win, and works his way through every woman he encounters until he finds someone to take home.

While in the hotel room Stan goes on and on about how he’d be a nudist and stares at a copy of Playboy, making fun of Peggy and telling her she is ashamed of her body, or “ought to be”. Fed up, Peggy calls him out, saying he is lazy and has no ideas. She stands up, starts stripping, and says “I can get liberated.” Stan strips as well, and Peggy begins tossing out ideas for the Vicks campaign. Distracted, Stan eventually puts his clothes back on, calling Peggy ” the smuggest bitch in the world.” Smiling, Peggy puts her bra back on and keeps working.

Don wakes up Sunday to a call from irate Betty, who has missed a brunch with Henry since Don wasn’t there to watch the kids. Later, Peggy finds him to tell him he sold Danny’s stolen tagline to the cereal people. Back in the office on Monday, he offers Danny money for the tagline. Danny refuses, saying he doesn’t need money — he needs a job. Don reluctantly hires Danny, instructing an incredulous Peggy to take him to Joan to get settled. The episode closes with another flashback, to Don standing next to Roger in front of the elevator.

“Would you leave me alone?” Roger says.

“You hired me,” replies a surprised Don.

“I did?”

“You said ‘welcome aboard.’”Similar Posts:

Media Matters Rounds Up Glenn Beck’s Most Racist Moments

Naima — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:20:36 +0000

Crossposted from ColorLines:

As the nation marks the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin have taken to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to, as they put it, restore our nation’s honor. The Washington Post reports that “an overwhelmingly white crowd of tens of thousands” turned out for the event, which Beck has described as “a moment that you’ll never be able to paint people as haters, racists, none of it. This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. It is an abomination.”

In her own remarks this morning, the Post reports, Palin declared:

“We must not fundamentally transform America, as some would want,” Palin said. “We must restore America and restore her honor.”

“Here today, at the crossroads of our history, may this day be the change point,” Palin said. “Look around you. You’re not alone. You are Americans! You have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It is in you. It will sustain you as it sustained them.”

On a day of remembrance, it seems Beck and Palin have forgotten why some aren’t able to envision them as a part of King’s dream. Luckily, Media Matters hasn’t, and the group has managed to track some of the best of Beck’s race-baiting:

Beck: Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” On the July 28, 2009, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Beck said of President Obama: “This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” Beck added: “I’m not saying that he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem. He has a — this guy is, I believe, a racist.” The following day, Beck stood by the remarks: “I think the president is a racist.”

Beck suggested Obama’s name is un-American. On the February 4 edition of The Glenn Beck Program, Beck said of Obama: “He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”

Beck’s “funny ‘black guy’ character.” Journalist Alexander Zaitchik wrote in his September 2009 profile of Beck for Salon.com that Beck, as a younger man, had many “racial hang-ups.” According to Zaitchik: “Among the show’s regular characters was Beck’s zoo alter ego, Clydie Clyde. But Clyde was just one of Beck’s unseen radio ventriloquist dolls. ‘He was amazing to watch when he was doing his cast of voices,’ remembers Kathi Lincoln, Beck’s former newsreader. ‘Sometimes he’d prerecord different voices and talk back to the tape, or turn his head side to side while speaking them live on the air. He used to do a funny “black guy” character, really over-the-top.’ “

Beck forced to apologize for “mocking Asians.” In 1995, Beck and his co-hosts at KC101 in Hartford, Connecticut were made to apologize for mocking an Asian man who called into the program. The Hartford Courant reported in October 20, 1995: “When [Zhihan] Tong telephoned WKCI- FM to protest the broadcast as a racial slur, disc jockeys Glenn Beck and Pat Grey made fun of him. The two played a gong in the background several times, and Papineau, the executive producer, mocked a Chinese accent.”

Beck praised constitutional provision protecting slave trade. In his 2009 book Arguing With Idiots, Beck reprinted and praised the now-obsolete Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which prohibited Congress from ending the slave trade before 1808 and capped taxes on the slave trade at $10 per slave. Beck, without mentioning slavery, interpreted the provision to mean that “the Founders actually put a price tag on coming to this country: $10 per person. Apparently they felt like there was a value to being able to live here.”

Health care reform. “This guy is not who he says he is. None of his bills, none of his proposals are about what he says they’re about. The health care bill is reparations. It’s the beginning of reparations. He’s going to give — if you want to go into medical school, the medical schools will get more federal dollars if they have proven that they are putting minorities ahead.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 7/22/09]

Assistance to Native Americans. On November 11, 2009, Beck said: “When the president was sitting there, or standing there, and he was talking about Native American rights in the middle of a tragedy, Fort Hood, it didn’t feel right. And it seemed, maybe to me, that he was even promising reparations.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 11/9/09]

For the whole track of Becks racist tirades head to Media Matters.Similar Posts:

In the Back of the Kitchen.

quadmoniker — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:33:18 +0000

Top Chef’s contributions to the reality show genre don’t come from exciting cliff-hangers or the evil machinations of those who would only win by cheating: the ingredients that make it work best are good chefs cooking food that looks pretty and makes you want to eat it. Occasionally, there’s a key rivalry or a chef you want to hate. The two chefs everyone hated are now gone: possible-pea thief Alex left last week, and Amanda, the overly-intense, scatterbrained former addict who never seemed to get anything right, was finally voted off last night. But before that, another source of drama this season ended prematurely when Kenny Gilbert, whose long-simmering rivalry with Angelo made him seem more talented than he probably was, was voted off after the Restaurant Wars episode. (Restaurant Wars is the show’s bread and butter: two groups of chefs start restaurants and compete to win.)

Kenny inspired a lot of inappropriately racist, pimpish nicknames, like chocolate bear and big daddy, and, when he was kicked off, an unfortunate number of outdated South Park jokes (I think you know the one). But mostly he was a gregarious, lovable self-promoter; fans believed he was the big cheese because he said he was every week. In truth, his cooking skill seemed uneven. But whether you think he deserved to go or not, his absence highlights a longstanding problem with the show: there hasn’t been enough diversity, and it is particularly problematic in the way it portrays its black chefs. Diversity on a reality TV show might not seem the most important topic, ever, but it evidences two things: one, the dearth of people of color at the top of many fields extends to reality contests that purport to propel novices to the top of those fields; and two, shows like this in which contestants are judged subjectively still often pick white male winners.

First, some by-the-numbers history. The premiere season wasn’t bad: of 11 chefs, two were Asian, two were black and one was Latino. Only one, Lee Anne Wong, made it close to the top. The second season was worse: of 15, only three were of color. Cliff, a black chef from New York City, finished fifth, but his finish is the important part: he was the only person ever kicked off the show for becoming physical with another contestant. That season, all the chefs picked on a scrawny, whiny kid named Marcel, and on one of the last nights Cliff and the other finalists decided they were going to shave Marcel’s head. In fairness, head judge Tom Colicchio wanted to kick off all the other conspirators, too, who were just as mean to Marcel that night, and make Marcel the winner by default. But Cliff actually wrestled Marcel down to the floor, and was the only person to explicitly break the rules against physically fighting another contestant.

In the third season, the only black chef, Tre, a favorite in the beginning, was voted off after the Restaurant Wars episode because he didn’t lead his team well enough. (A Vietnam-born chef named Hung won that season). The next season, the only black chef was out so early I don’t even remember her, though, in a bright spot, a woman won for the first time that year. The fifth season marked the first Indian American chef, Radhika, and Carla, a black woman from D.C. who made it to the finale and who has had a real career-boost since the show. Season 6 brought us another Indian American and a chef from Haiti, both of whom were out in the middle of the competition. Of the six winners, five have been white and all but one was a man.

That brings us to the current season and its surprising diversity buffet. When it started, Kenny had three fellow black chefs, two Latinos and one Asian chef, which means that nearly half its contestants were people of color. It could be that the show’s producers, who chose to film in D.C. this season after the arrival of the Obamas gave the city a short-lived sizzle, became more cognizant of its diversity needs, or it could be that it’s been on so long now that it’s luring a more diverse applicant pool. Either way, Kenny’s timer wasn’t the first to go off early: Kevin, Angelo and Tiffany are the only chefs of color left.

So, what’s the problem? When a woman won for the first time in the fourth season, Colicchio wrote pretty elegantly about the problems women face in professional kitchens, which aren’t too different from the problems women face in many careers. The balance of work and life falls squarely on women’s shoulders, and a lot of sacrifice is demanded of top chefs. I don’t think anyone’s surprised to know that the challenge of overcoming discrimination in high cuisine is similar to the challenges people of color overcome in other fields.

But that doesn’t mean those problems have to be replicated on a reality TV show. Of course, the judges always say they pick the best dish, but we all know how the idea of “merit” mostly benefits white men. To a great extent, judging food is a subjective enterprise, and cultural expectations and prejudices play into what we think of food. It’s probably completely fair that Cliff was kicked off for being, admittedly, an asshole to Marcel: it’s true that Tre seemed to bite off more than he could chew when he led his team; and it’s likely just as true that Kenny wasn’t the cream of the crop. But when the judges talked about, say, Kenny’s dishes, they said they were “unsophisticated” and “unedited.” When Tre was kicked off, he was regarded a good technician but not a good thinker and organizer. Again, Cliff, a former football player, was kicked off for getting physical. All of those fit uncomfortably into stereotypes about black men, no matter how true it could be in any individual situation. To raise suspicions even more, Colicchio even compared Kenny to Tre in his blog post about the episode in which Kenny got kicked off. They both took on leadership roles and failed, but other chefs have been kicked off for that reason in different years, too. The thing Kenny and Tre most have in common is that they’re both black. Because we don’t taste the food, we have to trust the judges aren’t bringing stereotypes about the chefs to the tasting table.

There are bright spots, though. Tiffany, a black woman from Texas, has surged late in the game to win just about every contest, and is now positioned as a favorite, especially as Angelo’s work has fallen off. And in Top Chef’s sister show, Top Chef Masters, this year, an Ethiopian chef raised in Sweden, Marcus Samuelsson, won. In the finale, his dishes carried the judges through his life: his first food memory of smoky salmon, and the first meal he cooked, which was another Swedish dish. His final course had to be a vision of where he wanted to go as a chef, and he went back to his roots, cooking a classic Ethiopian fish dish. The fish was soft, and the meal, overall, was heavy, the judges said. Samuselsson told them, in just about so many words, that he didn’t care. That’s the way the food was meant to be cooked, and he knew the judges wouldn’t be used to it. But Americans have developed a palate for Chinese food, for South American food, and for all other kinds of cuisines, he said. He felt it was his job to bring African cuisine to higher regard in America, and it was their job to get used to it. He didn’t have to conform the cuisine to their liking; they had to learn to like something new.

So, it’s not that I think all of these contestants are losing because they’re not white. It’s that, as in most other fields, the inability of people of color to rise has a lot to do with subtle, complex interactions between prejudice and expectation that few have the power to wrest control over. We just often misunderstand who’s job it is to overcome that.Similar Posts:

If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, Part Two

feministtexican — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:28:33 +0000

Say what you will about Spike Lee’s polemics; the man knows how to craft a powerful narrative. Whereas Part One of If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise opened with the excitement of the Saint’s Superbowl win, the opening montage of Part Two—filled with footage of the havoc wreaked by the oil spill—set the somber tone for the final chapter of the two-part documentary series. The footage especially set the tone for the last hour of Lee’s documentary, which serves as a scathing indictment of British Petroleum and the government’s handling of the crisis.

At the beginning of Creek, Lee focuses on the broken New Orleans school system. There is a brief, uplifting story of community activism, in which citizens got together and gutted Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School themselves to begin restoration. Sadly, this is one of the few uplifting moments in Part Two. Using the story of this school as a springboard, Lee begins interviewing people who have contradicting opinions about Paul Vallas, the man brought in to revamp the school system, and the man largely responsible for all of the charter schools that have sprung up in the years following Katrina.

It is painfully apparent that more high-quality schools are needed; Part One of Creek touched on this fact when Catherine Montana Gordon mentioned how she couldn’t go back to New Orleans because of the lack of educational programs for her autistic son. However, it is also clear that school employees are currently ill-equipped to handle the students who are still struggling to cope with their psychological trauma. Several interviewees emphasized the need for teachers who aren’t afraid of the students and the community, especially of their black male students. They also emphasized the need for teachers to put emphasis on their students’ self-worth.

Violence has also skyrocketed in New Orleans, compounding the effects of the psychological trauma its citizens are experiences. The murder rate is 20% higher rate than the rest of the country, with 210 murders in 2007 alone.

Those who watched When the Levees Broke may recall Dinerral Shavers, the bright-eyed young man who give a tour of his devastated neighborhood while recounting the horrors of all the dead bodies left to rot in homes. In the years after Katrina, Shavers was a positive role model for his community, teaching at Robert Wayne High School and creating the Hot 8 Brass Band. In 2006, Shavers was shot in the back of the head and killed by a 15 year old.

Another person that viewers may recall from Levees is Donnell Harrington, one of the victims of a violent racial hate crime in Algiers Point committed by white men just days after Katrina hit. Though the man who shot him has since been convicted and sentenced, Harrington is still traumatized by the gunshots. Since Levees, Harrington was shot again, this time by a black man with an AK-47; it was a random act of violence, and Harrington lost part of his leg as a result.

Lee then segues into a section on police brutality, focusing on the murder of Henry Glover and subsequent police cover-up. He then turns his focus to the incident at Danziger Bridge. On September 4, 2005, just six days after Katrina struck, seven cops shot at several unarmed civilians, murdering 19-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, a mentally disabled man who was shot in the back. The police were charged for murder and a massive cover-up that included falsified witness statements.

In wrapping up his post-Katrina narratives, Lee turned the focus back on Mayor Nagin. Though Part One of Creek had seemed to go easier on him, Part Two was mostly negative. Some of the interviewees came to his defense, though others were far more scathing; M. Endesha Juakali, for instance, alleged that Nagin’s post-Katrina economic plan excluded majority of black and poor people. As for Nagin himself, he quietly reflected that there had been an eight hour window the night before Katrina struck, and that he often wonders if the outcome would have been any different had he called a mandatory evacuation earlier.

In the second half of part two, Lee turns a scathing eye on the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and its devastating aftermath. Much was made of how, in the months following the explosion, BP and the Coast Guard bedfellows became strange bedfellows; suddenly the Coast Guard was taking orders from BP, refusing to allow fishermen and the media access to oil-covered areas.

Lee astutely makes the argument that the BP spill is just another incident in a long line of disasters in which corporations take advantaged of disenfranchised communities. Parallels are drawn to other oil-related ecological disasters, particularly in Alaska and Nigeria. The problems of coal mining in West Virginia are also noted; all of these disasters are attributed to the lack of government regulations.

In the case of the oil spill, one of the biggest areas of concern is the use of Corexit, the chemical dispersant being used to break up the oil slicks in the ocean. The dispersant contains high toxicity levels and is not even completely effective, only working to break up about 50% of the oil. Once the oil is broken up, its particles sink and either settle on the ocean floor or are eaten by fish and other sea life, which then make their way into our food supply. As one interviewee ruefully stated, the people of New Orleans have been getting hit with dispersants ever since Katrina struck: charter school dispersants, affordable housing dispersants, private care dispersants, and now, chemical oil dispersants.

What New Orleans and its surrounding areas are now left to cope with are dead marshes and wetlands, a fishing industry that has been wholly devastated, and the fear of another hurricane stirring up all the settled oil and dumping it on land and contaminating fresh water supplies. Though the media was quick to dub the oil spill “Obama’s Katrina,” the interviewees seemed reticent to denounce President Obama for his handling of the spill, though they acknowledge that more support is needed. Their anger towards British Petroleum, however, is evident from the beginning; every interviewee is quick to express their outright hatred of the company, or their anger over BP’s negligence.

Creek is reminiscent of Levees in a lot of ways: the colors, several of the interviewees, the spoken word performance at the end by Shelton Shakespear Alexander. Like Levees, Creek closes with the interviewees introducing themselves while holding up a picture frame. This time around, however, everyone seems more somber and downtrodden from the fresh wound they have sustained. Creek offered Lee a chance to follow up on post-Katrina problems. The long-term effects of the oil spill remain to be seen, and one can assume that this will not be the last we have heard from Lee on the subject.Similar Posts:

Random Midday Hotness: Eliza Skinner Loves Tyler Perry.

Avon Snarksdale — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:55:40 +0000

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The Double Standard on Sexual Exploration.

quadmoniker — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:30:43 +0000

So, I’m guest blogging at Feministe right now and, in my first post, I pointed out how annoyed I get about the sexual double-standard when we talk about kids exploring their sexuality for the first time. When boys start to masturbate, it’s just natural; when girls do it, it must be a sign of abuse. This is the concern lots of Slate readers are having about the masturbation scene with Sally from the most recent episode of “Mad Men.” From my post:

Child abuse is a serious issue and, truthfully, is most often perpetrated by family members and friends. It’s not impossible Gene was an abuser, and maybe that’s where the show’s producers are taking it. But honestly, a ten-year-old boy masturbating wouldn’t arouse the same suspicions, and it’s not crazy that a ten-year-old would start exploring his or her sexuality. We have a tendency to think of the middle part of the last century as this pristine era, right before the sexplosion of the 60s, in which girls wouldn’t have known how to do those things. But think about it: did anyone have to tell you what to do? We certainly don’t talk much about masturbation now, and lots of girls do it.

It doesn’t mean, of course, the premature sexual knowledge isn’t a cause for concern. But that’s not what masturbation is. Masturbation is pretty normal, and it’s pretty normal for pre-pubescent girls to start figuring out their bodies. That’s particularly true if they have a creepy boy-neighbor-friend-who-has-a-crush-on-their-mom that tells you sex is when the boy pees inside the girl.

Are you all suddenly suspicious of Grandpa Gene, too?Similar Posts:

The Senator Your Senator Could Smell Like.

shani-o — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:46:05 +0000

Via.Similar Posts:

Some Nitpicking on Ebonics.

Avon Snarksdale — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:28:50 +0000

In rushing to dismiss the DEA’s call to hire speakers of Ebonics, a lot of people are getting a small but important thing mixed up.

Here’s the Black Snob:

Ebonics, depending on who you ask, is either a real or a completely imagined thing. Proponents argued that some black people were speaking a whole different language independent of English. Other’s argued that augmented or “bastardized” English is not a whole other language. For example, I don’t always understand what British people are saying because I don’t understand most British slang, but I still agree that British people obviously speak English and I would be able to communicate with a British native without too much difficulty. Slang is slang. Colloquialisms are colloquialisms. But it’s all still in English, just with a different accent, different idioms, sayings and affects.

Meaning: My Arkansas-born Granny Snob is not speaking a different language from me. We communicate just fine even though she uses a different dialect, slang, affect and terminology at times because … we’re both native English speakers.

So, yeah, I fall on the side of “Ebonics is not a real thing.”

Let’s get this out of the way first. Saying Ebonics is “either a real or a completely imagined thing” is sort of like saying that “Barack Obama may or may not be a Muslim with terrorist sympathies.” Um, no. Just because one of those things is a popularly held belief doesn’t make it true. Ebonics, or African American Vernacular English, has long been recognized by most linguists. And its loudest opponents were not linguists, but cultural conservatives who worried that the recognition of Ebonics — which first became a controversial part of the national conversation in the 1990s when Oakland’s school district tried to use it a tool to teach kids Standard American English — granted new legitimacy on what they felt was “inferior” English, or thought that it suggested that black people spoke some funky foreign tongue and were incapable of learning how to speak “proper.” Culture of failure, and all that noise.

No one, of course, is suggesting anywhere that The Black Snob’s grandmother isn’t speaking English; speaking in a different dialect is not the same thing as speaking in a different language. Ebonics is also distinctly different from slang, as it’s less about alternative nouns and verbs and more about syntax. In other words, Ebonics is less about what words you employ to say you’re “driving your car” and more about where and how those words fit in a sentence and how you pronounce them.

Update: At TAPPED, Gabriel Arana breaks it down a bit more.

I’d like to point out that African American Vernacular English (AAVE) — like all languages and dialects — doesn’t just refer to vocabulary differences. For some background: Linguistic differences tend to arise when groups are socially isolated. Over time, these difference can diverge so much from the original they are considered a different dialect or language (the litmus test is mutual intelligibility, so depending on whom you talk to, AAVE is either a dialect of English or a separate language). AAVE shares many features of the Southern dialect of American English, though as with standard English, there are regional differences.

Unfortunately, discussions about AAVE are generally limited to slang terms — in the case that Jamelle’s addressing, terms related to the drug trade. But in fact, there are a lot of other linguistic features that characterize AAVE.

On the syntactic front, AAVE speakers have a more granular tense-marking system. In standard English, for instance, “James is happy” can mean either that James is happy at the moment or that he is habitually happy. AAVE uses the verb “to be” to mark the habitual form, but omits it otherwise:

James happy = James is happy right now

James be happy = James is usually happy/a happy person

In terms of pronunciation, many speakers of AAVE have replaced the sound “th” — as in someTHing — with “f,” so you get “roof” instead of “Ruth.” AAVE speakers also pronounce vowels higher in the mouth when they precede an “m” or “n,” leading “empty” to sound more like “Impty” (this is common throughout the South).

These are just some of the features of AAVE that have been widely studied by linguists (for a look at others, you can go here). Not every speaker of AAVE needs to exhibit all of them, nor do they only occur in AAVE. For instance, in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you can hear him omit the “r” from the word “later” — a common feature of AAVE — but he otherwise uses the syntax and vocabulary of Standard American English. And omitting the verb “to be” is common in the world’s languages, including Hebrew, Russian, and Hungarian. Furthermore, speakers can switch between standard English and AAVE, a common phenomenon among bilinguals called “code-switching.”

Similar Posts:

If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise.

belleisa — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:46:35 +0000

We love to see the underdog persevere. It makes us feel good, and like all monumental sports wins, it glosses over truth and makes it seem like progress is immediately possible. It’s telling that Spike Lee begins his Katrina documentary If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise with the Saint’s Superbowl win. There’s no better example of local pride then watching their team win it all. But when the fervor of winning is gone and the parades are over, post-Katrina New Orleans is still mostly the same. Some people came back, some people didn’t, some just won’t and others simply can’t. Either way, everyone is looking to rebuild, but as always, in their own image.

There’s a level of intensity in Creek and urgency to pack in as much detail and story as possible. It’s seen in the aforementioned Saints game; the BP oil spill; reliving the Bush administration’s response (or lack of); the tearing down of housing projects; the rebuilding of homes; the high levels of formaldehyde found in FEMA trailers; the lawsuit and eventual monetary victory over the Army Core of Engineers; the displacement; the class wars; the government response to the comparable natural disaster in Haiti (a response that I remember several people, including me, referencing as having come from a kind of “Katrina-guilt”).

As always, it’s the individual stories, the characters, that add texture and nuance to Creek as it did with its predecessor When the Levees Broke.

Some people came back, some people didn’t, some just won’t and others simply can’t:

There’s Phyllis Montana-Leblanc, who opens up the documentary with a booming spoken-word-like performance of the title, and has a recurring role in HBO’s fictional look at post-Katrina New Orleans, Treme. There’s Kimberly Polk, who lost her five-year-old daughter, and returns to New Orleans to pursue her education and care for family after promising never to return. Kathy Phillips, who in Levees, had been accepted into a Utah community, has moved back to New Orleans, but is still experiencing trauma.

Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Houses, in the lower ninth ward, is framed as the do-the-right-thing organization. He reached out to architects and asked them to contribute their designs pro bono. As stated in the documentary, no family will pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing; the affordable housing is created with a mix of form and function: high design, energy efficient and above flood level.

M. Endesha Juakali, former lawyer and community activist frames the “incorrect way” to rebuild Katrina, which included the tearing down of the Lafitte Housing Projects. Juakali describes the new cheaply built homes like a supermodel: “It look good on the outside, but it’s anorexic and bulimic and probably full of drugs on the inside.”

Mother and daughter team, Clovina Rita McCoy and Catherine Montana Gordon are stuck in Texas. They provide one of my favorite sound bites: “Dear Army Core of Engineers, I just wanted to let you know that you fucked my life up.” Gordon is in Texas because New Orleans does not, and apparently never really did, have the ability to adequately care for her autistic son. And McCoy remains because she simply can not afford the rent in New Orleans. The exodus of the poor has made it possible for economic redevelopment and with higher rents.

The section with Michael Brown, who was the head of FEMA at the time that Katrina hit, was particularly interesting mostly because the documentary’s portrayal of him was surprisingly sympathetic. He was a noted Bush administration scapegoat, and we learn that he allegedly found out from a Vanity Fair piece on Donald Rumsfeld, why it took the 82nd Airborne Division five days to get to the disaster area: supposedly Rumsfeld was reluctant to send people in.

On the other hand, the depictions of former mayor Ray Nagin and former governor Kathleen Blanco were less accusatory in Creek than in Levees. In the aftermath, the federal dollars flowed in what Blanco referred to as a “political response” as apposed to the “proportional response.” Lee juxtaposes Blanco’s apparent distress over the retelling of these events with footage of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s Bull Connor-esque claim that “our people are not into victim-hood” and “went to work helping themselves and helping their neighbors.”

Some critics have stated the follow-up is disjointed, which isn’t entirely incorrect; the first half of part one jumps around a bit and doesn’t seem to find its feet until the second half. The beat builds when Spike dives into the overall lack of adequate medical care and the state’s insistence on keeping Charity hospital, despite community efforts, closed.

There’s a lot I didn’t talk about here. Lee’s filming for instance, is consistent with Levees: the warm colors, the dramatic shots of empty lots, rotted stairs that used to lead to homes and entry ways. Now they lead to nothing. And New Orleans culture, the food, the music, the unabashed force for which people show their love to city that’s got a history of not always loving them back.Similar Posts:

On Antoine Dodson and Memes.

shani-o — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:35:46 +0000

Coming in on the tail end of a meme is always interesting. Sometimes it’s just as hilarious as everyone who was on it from the beginning said it was. Sometimes it’s not hilarious, and rather, just pretty effed up.

Case in point: Antoine Dodson, also known as the “Bed Intruder” dude.

I was vaguely aware of the meme in its early stages — someone asked me about it. But I was distracted and had a negative reaction to the combination of the words “rape” and “autotune.” I promptly forgot about it.

However, today on Twitter, Monica shared a post by Loryn Wilson who tracked the meme from start to end:

By now most of you have seen the story about the woman in Lincoln Park projects who had a male intruder come into her bedroom. The video featured Antoine Dodson, the woman’s brother, who had a colorful message for the attempted rapist (see the above video if you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past two weeks).

Antoine Dodson has gone from an everyday Black man who lives in the projects to an internet superstar overnight. But what I was worried about is that people would be so busy lol’ing, lollerskating, and lmbao-ing over Antoine Dodson’s colorful monologue that they’d miss the entire point: the Antoine Dodson was a man who was protecting his family from a rapist, and that they felt as though they did not have protection under the law.

The video and the remix are below:

Wilson is right: as amusing as Dodson’s statements seem, look a little closer, and his frustration is evident. And shouldn’t he have been? A strange man climbed into his sister’s bed and tried to rape her. That’s no laughing matter.

The good news, of course, is that Dodson is trying to leverage his internet celebrity to pull himself and his family out of the projects. He says he gets some of the profits from the song being on iTunes, and he’s selling merchandise. I think that’s great. But I can’t help but be uncomfortable with the genesis of this meme: two white men making a “hilarious” song using footage of a black man outraged at the attempted rape of his sister.Similar Posts:

Your Tuesday Random-Ass Roundup: Chocolate (City) is Bad For You.

blackink12 — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:36:47 +0000

The Tea Party has advice for folks coming to Glenn Beck’s Aug. 28 rally. It boils down to this: stay away from black people. Which is something we thought the Tea Party was pretty skilled at doing, anyway. (Monica)

I’d also like to add, if possible, Tea Partiers should definitely steer clear of 2nd Amendment enthusiasts like those in the picture below:

Obviously, it’s hard to feel safe around a group of big black dudes who ply their trade for a franchise formerly known as the Bullets. Feels a little too much like a street gang to me – I mean, have you seen DeShawn Stevenson?.

Anyway, randomness to come:

1. Apparently, mosques also aren’t wanted near the hallowed grounds of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Adam Serwer explains that this is proof the terrorists have won. (Blackink)

2. BP to raise faulty blowout preventer to figure out what went wrong … yea they still don’t know. (Naima)

3. Following the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history, women are going through “cultural shock” as they attempt to survive in refugee camps. (Melissa A)

4. The perils of the resource curse, this time in India. (Nicole)

5. Whether he realizes it or not, President Obama is leading on gay marriage. He’s just leading in the wrong direction. (Blackink)

6. Newsflash: Credit card companies are still screwing you. (Monica)

7. For the record, Swedish prosecutors do not consider Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a rape suspect. (Blackink)

8. Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer nicknamed the”Merchant of Death,” will soon be extradited. Bout is wanted by the U.S. on terrorism charges (Naima)

9. The Kings Dominion rule. (Nicole)

10. Are Americans moving away from the McMansion? (Blackink)

11. Bloggers in Philly are getting taxed, whether their sites are profitable or not. (Shani-o)

12. Washington Monthly takes a look at our nation’s college dropout factories, about 200 schools with an average graduation rate of 26 percent. “No university, regardless of historical legacies or sunk cost, is worth the price being exacted from thousands of students who leave in despair. The sooner we acknowledge that, the better off those students—and the rest of us—will be.” (Blackink)

13. The Associated Press names a diversity editor. (Monica)

14. Take Foreign Policy’s whirlwind photo tour of 65 metropolises that made it into the 2010 Global Cities Index. (Blackink)

15. Locavore math. (Nicole)

16. Somewhere deep in the Brazilian Amazon resides “the most isolated man on the planet.” Government officials there have declared a 31-square-mile-area around him off limits to trespassing and development. (Blackink)

17. Check out the Miami Ink: Miami Beach tops the list of the 10-most tattooed cities in the U.S. (Blackink)

18. Glee apologists! (I refuse to call you people ‘fans’) See what you’ve done?? (Shani-o)

19. Former Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa grants a rare interview, telling Chicago magazine that the Cubs “threw me into the fire … they made [people] believe I’m a monster.” (Blackink)

20. How the “Madden NFL” video game franchise changed the game. The video game, that is. (Blackink)

Until next Monday or Tuesday, stay safe in those streets.Similar Posts:

PostBourgie: The Podcast #8: N-word, Please!

quadmoniker — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:43:06 +0000

PostBourgie: The Podcast #8: N-word, Please!

In this week’s podcast, Monica, Joel and Jamelle discuss the way people misunderstand culture and poverty, “emerging adulthood,” and Dr. Laura’s hilarisad use of the n-word on her radio show.

Key Links:

A Daily Dish reader blames the disparate life outcomes between blacks and whites on a dysfunctional culture, to which Monica responds over at the American Prospect.

The New York Times Magazine looks at “emerging adulthood,” a phenomenon in which twentysomethings are taking longer and longer to put away childish things.

And Dr. Laura shows her ass.

Shout-outs:

Monica shouts out some bourgie beer. Joel shouts out the PostBourgie running challenge. Get It! Jamelle shouts out the idyllic town of Kennebunk, Maine, not to be confused with the town with “port” at the end.Similar Posts: