Turkish women attacked at third European Transgender Council; police harrass, degender victims

The logo of Transgender Europe. The graphic is a cog-like circular design in yellow, and the letters TGEU are in blue.

Two weeks ago, Transgender Europe held the third European Transgender Council in Malmo, Sweden. The Council hosted over 200 delegates from thirty-five countries, and it offered a number of worthwhile speakers, workshops, and other activities. But cissexism cast a shadow over this event when random transphobes attacked two Turkish delegates; police degendered and harrassed the targets rather than protecting them.

On the evening of September 30, the first night of the Council, the two women went to eat at a restaurant. As they entered the building, a couple of bystanders began yelling slurs at them. These two men invited several more passersby to join them. When the women emerged, they were attacked physically, with fists and eggs, by a crowd of men.

The attack was apparently motivated not only by cissexism but also by racism. Turkophobia runs high in Europe and has for hundreds of years.

After the incident was reported to the authorities, the police on duty did not do their job and seek out those responsible for the hate crime. Of course not. They further penalized these activists for their nationality and their gender by referring to them with incorrect pronouns, questioning their right to be in Sweden, and otherwise humiliating them. The delegates described their treatment as "".

The hosts of the conference are understandably enraged, though not surprised:

“There is no safe space for transgender people in Europe. Last night's attack showed once more that transphobia and racism are not only a problem of certain countries in Europe. Transphobia is everywhere”, says TGEU Vice chair Julia Ehrt.


“We express our solidarity with our activist friends. We are sad and angry and call upon the police to do everything to persecute the perpetrators,” says Dr Carsten Balzer from the “Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide” TvT- Research project..


The largest European Human rights event on transgender issues deals among other topics with hate crimes and violence faced by gender variant people. In the last 30 months 33 transgender people were reported of being murdered in Europe according to TGEU's TvT-project. 79% of trans people are subject to negative comments, harassment, physical and sexual abuse and violence according to the European Hate Crime Study published by Press for Change last year.

In the US, Public and police mistreatment of trans people, particularly trans women, is often egregious and violent. Duanna Johnson was killed brutally beaten at the hands of police, and countless women have been sexually assaulted by officers.

But such abuse is not limited to the shores of my homeland. Women around the world are hassled, violated, raped, and murdered, and that hatred is intensified if they are trans. When they are also a member of a marginalized nationality, they are even more vulnerable to the violent agents of the kyriarchy. And like many marginalized people, the police offer no recourse but instead another avenue of victimization. Organizations like Transgender Europe and the brave activists who populate them are vital to dismantling the global system of racism and cissupremacy that endorses and encourages such treatment.

sources 1, 2, 3

Institutionalized racism on the court and in the classroom at Mullen High School

Last February, spectators chanted racist slurs at black players in a game between home team Mullen High School and opponents Overland. These slurs were not isolated and they were not stopped; officials allowed this harassment to continue throughout the game. No disciplinary action was taken against the students and parents who participated in this hateful cheering.

Why am I writing about this, a year and a half later? This is, to be sure, an awful act motivated by discrimination and hate. But such instances are infinite - why report on it now?

The admission of this action endorsed and grew an environment in which acts of systematic and individual racism are permitted and encouraged by race-privileged figures of authority. Recently, one of Mullen's most popular teachers, Timothy Thornton, was fired for a persistent pattern of racism after student Tyler Brown reported him to officials. According to students and confirmed by his own admission, he:

• told racist jokes
• used the n word as a slur, without critical context
• broadcast his obsession with the KKK to his students
• and just in case you thought that it was just talk, he bragged about giving students of color lower grades

He, of course, insists that he meant no harm by using his position of authority. He was just having fun. He is sure that it all would have been okay if he would have clarified that "he meant no harm by saying the things he said." Because intent makes everything okay! Because he's not racist, really! Because it's just a "stupid mistake"!

And of course, many students and parents have swelled up beneath him to clamor for his reinstatement:

Thornton's termination has fueled impassioned responses from the school and community at large, with a majority expressing outrage that a veteran and well-liked teacher should be fired for "a silly mistake," as one person suggested on a local news website. Students protested the decision by marching outside the school, while a number of alumni are said to have written letters to school administrators challenging the firing.

While Thornton enjoys this groundswell of support, the student who reported his egregious conduct is being vilified. He and his family are accused of playing the race card and of conspiring with black community activists to get the teacher fired. No one has bothered to speculate what possible gain Brown would realize by sharing the details of his teacher's racially motivated conduct.

Tyler Brown's reward for his bravery is harassment and suspicion. His treatment represents the other half of the creation and perpetuation of toxic racist environments: the silencing, second-guessing, and harassment of the people who actually receive racism. Brown is being punished for protecting himself in a real way. Instead of doing their job and protecting students from this kind of discrimination, school officials have left it up to their charges to do their jobs and call shitty teachers out.

This is how institutional racism is nurtured and weaponized in individual situations. Let one incident of racism go past without controversy or comment, and the school administrators feel like they've dodged a mine. But once that act of blatant hatred is past, another one trespasses...and another, and another. With every subsequent incident, white folks inclined towards active oppression realize that they're not going to see consequences - after all, no one else has - and so they push their oppression just a little bit further and a little bit further, and get a little more popular for it. With every subsequent incident, these people grow the power already granted them by the kyriarchy into something even more monstrous.  And of course, the school administrator wants to remain neutral. And so, they get away with it and get away with it, and the environment gets more and more toxic, and the racism gets more and more acceptable.

This is how kyriarchy silences students and encourages racism through education. These little things don't just add up, they multiply. Thornton's racist offenses towards his students got worse and worse, and Brown's attempts to counter his discriminatory acts only amplified the hate he received.

My major source for this post is Rhonda Hackett. A couple of the details I found in her opinion piece (specifically, that Thornton gave students of color lower grades) could not be found in my other sources for this article.

Josh Eastman arrested for paying child to recite racial slurs on YouTube video

Racism has flourished on the Internet. YouTube is particularly infested with this form of oppression where videos like "sparkling wiggles" present blatant racism and viral videos like Antoine Dodson smack of cultural tourism. These videos do not only perpetuate and nurture racism in humor - they encourage others to seek fame through active oppression. One such candidate for hateful celebrity, Josh Eastman of Bridgeport, CT, went so far as to actively indoctrinate a neighboring child into racism - and he's not the only one.

Eastman recorded and posted a video called "Swearing Kid" in which an eight-year-old boy swears and hurls racial slurs while being coached from off-camera. When the boy's mother caught wind of this video, she was appropriately horrified by this apparently uncharacteristic behavior from her son, who claims that Eastman paid him $1 for his grim performance. She called the police, who picked Eastman up and held him on an $2,500 bond on charges of impairing the morals of a child. Eastman said:

"If they didn't like the video they could have just asked me nicely to take it off, and I would have taken it off. They didn't have to go call the police and have me arrested for it."

Eastman felt comfortable paying their child to spew hate and promote it to the general public without asking, but he apparently expects the consideration and courtesy of a polite phone call when the offense is against him. Nice.

Racism is evil regardless of context, but training and tutoring the next generation of racists takes especial involvement in the kyriarchy. It communicates to both the children starring and the white viewers of these awful videos that they are entitled to spread racial hatred around; it harms the people of color they will interact with in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Eastman didn't see the problem with this; he claims that the child was known for such language, and describe the video as "fun and funny". But even if Eastman didn't teach him those slurs, even if he didn't pay him a dollar - such a small sum, representing his valuation of people of color - even if he didn't indoctrinate this child into the gleeful use of racist language, Eastman was teaching the child that racism is funny, that hatred is worth reward, attention, and praise.

Though Eastman will likely stop his practice of this particular brand of hatred, this video was not an isolated incident. While searching for this and the "sparkling wiggles" referenced above, I found a huge number of other children being encouraged to say racist things by friends, family, whomever. Many of these videos, including Eastman's, are taken down by YouTube administrators, but more simply pop up in their place.

The children in these videos are not learning the ideals of the postracist society the US sometimes brags of; instead, these young people, the douchebags like Eastman capturing their learning experience, and the people who watch, enjoy, and send on these videos are actively promoting and perpetuating white supremacy.

source: one two three four five six seven

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Domino's Pizza delivered with racial attack on Carla Robinson

Stacks of red and blue Domino's Pizza boxes. On the side of these boxes are the words "Take A Fresh Look". From Wikipedia.

Trigger warning for description of race-based harrassment.

Ordering a pizza should be a pretty uncomplicated and stress-free occasion. That's the point of delivery pizza: not having to cook, having it hot and ready for you when you want it. And most consumers can expect that their relatively low-maintenance meals will be free from the stress and degradation of harassment on the basis of race.

But for Carla Robinson, that was apparently too much too ask. On Friday, she ordered two large pizzas for delivery from her local Domino's in Apex, NC. After the driver left, her ten-year-old niece brought the receipt to her attention. The receipt read "N*GGERS DON'T TIP".

On its own, this would be reprehensible and disgusting, particularly considering that a young child was exposed to such vile and hateful language. But what happened to Robinson after the initial attack compounded the atrocity.

Robinson promptly reported this action to the manager, who was responsible enough to fire the culpable employee. Instead of accepting fault for their actions and moving on, the former employees continued their campaign of hatred by calling Robinson to further demean and intimidate her:

“They were saying basically the same stuff that was on the receipt. They were saying 'N-this, you got me fired, you did this, you did that,' just being real ugly to me, just being real mean,” Robinson said. “I’m thinking it is 2010, it's never good to do that. You can't do stuff like that anymore.”

Domino's is not exactly the organization to blame here; this is the act of one racist individual and it seems that the organization responded promptly and appropriately, accepting fault and offering an apology for their employee's actions. But though this is the act of one lone individual projecting their racism rather than systematic racism affecting millions, it is still very indicative of the racism that white America thrives on.

When social justice writers talk about how our kyriarchal society is far from post-racial, we often point to less obvious manifestations of white people continuing to get the edge over people of color: through housing policies, through standardized tests, through drug law. Racism is often presented as below the surface for many well-meaning white people, something we just don't think about because of our privilege, something we have to look hard to see in our actions and in the actions of others.

But this is very far from reality, both in acts unconscious and conscious. Individual acts of terrorism through blatant racism, as Robinson experienced, are a clear indication of the devaluation of non-white people in the US. People of color do not only experience institutional and systematic racism: they experience targeted attacks and harassment based specifically on their race. Robinson's supposition that in 2010, people will have the good sense to not attack others based on their race is not unreasonable, but sadly, it is too optimistic.

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Trigger warning for comments.

Racial disparities in organ donation

Image description: A black and white drawing of an enlarged kidney.

There’s a lot of evidence that rather than heading towards a post-racial society, racial gaps in the US are actually widening - in wealth, in test scores, and in organ donation. And recent studies have shown that white supremacy extends to whose life is and is not extended by organ donation (80% of which are kidney donations). According to the Madison Capital Times:

"There is an increasing gap between African-Americans and white patients," says nephrologist Byran Becker "Our health care system is heading the wrong way, and we should think of how to change that."..

A Capital Times analysis of data compiled by state and federal health agencies, private researchers, and the United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization that oversees this country's organ donations, found disparities at every step of the transplant process, from the prevalence of diseases leading to renal failure to the numbers of donors and recipients to death rates. 

To begin with, African-Americans are several times more likely to develop diseases like hypertension and diabetes that lead to kidney failure, according to countless studies. New research suggests this group is hit hard in part because of a genetic predisposition to the disorders; many African-Americans also lack the regular access to decent health care that can keep such conditions under control. 

African-Americans also make up a disproportionate share of the 354,000 people in this country - including 5,000 in Wisconsin - who need to go on dialysis. While only 13 percent of the country's population, blacks make up 40 percent of those on dialysis and a third of patients waiting for a renal transplant. Some of them will need to wait a long time. According to UNOS data, 39 percent of African-American patients who registered for a transplant seven years ago are still waiting or have died, nearly twice the proportion of white patients who suffered those fates.

Our health care system is deeply fucked up; it’s kyriarchal on just about every axis imaginable. This is one more indication that the medical industry values some lives more than others, and that ours is not a post-racial society.

Civil rights activist Victoria DeLee, 1925-2010

"I found out one thing: writin' letters and phone calls don't get action. Best way to get action: go there. They can't stand to see you comin' there. They'll act like they're glad to see you, but it's not. And when you come there, they will do things for you to get rid of you." - Victoria DeLee, 1971

Civil rights activist Victoria DeLee was born in South Carolina in 1925. She was a fierce activist in her home state, working throughout her life for the human rights often denied her as a black woman. In her lifetime, registering to vote, enrolling her children in school, pursuing political office, and demanding accountability from her congressional representatives were radical acts of protest that effected real change. She died in the state she dedicated her life to bettering on June 14th, of complications from brain surgery. Her eighty-five-year lifespan, as she described it, was "unbought, unbossed and unsold," and a model for all of us looking to make a difference.

Victoria DeLee first came to attention when she registered to vote in 1947. Exercising the electoral racism of pre-Civil Rights Act voting laws, the registrar required her to read an entire book. When she finished, she said, " 'Give me my registration certificate... If you don't -- I says -- 'Mister, it's goin' to be trouble.' " Throughout the next two decades, she registered thousands of voters.

As with many women leaders, Ms. DeLee’s motherhood was central to her activism. She raised ten children (seven her own), and organized day-care and literacy centers for black and Native American citizens. She began the fight to integrate South Carolina public schools in 1964 when she attempted to secure enroll her children in all-white schools.

The DeLee family faced not only death threats but physical violence for their attempts to acquire fair, quality education. She and her children slept on the floor to avoid bullets. “"We couldn't go out in the daytime or sleep at night," she said. "My house, before they burned it down [in 1966], looked like a polka-dotted dress. Every kind of bullet hole was in that house." Soon after that, she sought government protection when she received bomb threats from the KKK.

In 1969, Ms. DeLee helped to found the United Citizens Party in response to the South Carolina Democratic Party’s ban against black candidates. In 1971, the year before Shirley Chisholm ran for president, she campaigned for a seat in the House of Representatives with the UCP.

Ms. DeLee was also notable for her confrontation of Washington players. She was part of sit-ins at the offices of John Mitchell and Strom Thurmond, whom she later worked with. "When I go there to see somebody, I just don't take no for an answer," Mrs. DeLee said. "If I go to see the Attorney General and they say, 'Well, I'm sorry, he's up on the Hill,' I say, 'Well, that's all right. I'll stay right here till he come down off the Hill.' They say, 'Well, you haven't made an appointment.' I say, 'Appointment the devil!' "

Victoria DeLee is proof of the power of local activism and community organizing; her life and work show that fighting for one’s personal human rights is a powerful political statement. Ms. DeLee is not a woman I’ve heard of before, and not one that was commemorated in any social justice blogs I read. But her life and work are deserving of recognition and the utmost respect. Our generation of activists is far from the first; we need to remember and honor the accomplishments of Ms. DeLee and other women who fought for freedom and equality.

This post is based on Mike Schudel's excellent obituary. The picture of Ms. DeLee is from the same source.

7-months-pregnant Melanie Williams subject to police violence for seeking medical attention

Melanie Williams, an expectant Florida mother* in her last trimester, was recently driving alone when she began bleeding and feeling faint. She called 911, who told her to pull over before the call was cut off. Since William has sole rights to negotiate her body and health, she began rushing to the hospital to seek medical attention.

After she ran several red lights, the cops pulled her over, and instead of putting Williams' health first by escorting the pregnant, bleeding woman to the hospital and worrying about ticketing her later, they decided that it was more prudent to ticket her then. Williams, knowing her body and valuing the child inside her, decided she needed immediate medical attention and took off.

Barbara Pitts, who was sitting in the emergency room waiting room says it all happened within seconds: "A lady ran in first. A couple of seconds later two policemen came behind her and jumped her. They was trying to subdue her. So, once he had her down on the ground, his knees in her back trying to put handcuffs on her, she said help, just help me I'm bleeding and I'm pregnant."

JSO says, "From what we know. From what the police officers knew, they did what they were trained to do," says Chief Clark.

Melanie's family says the police treatment was too rough. The family also says Melanie has been in and out of labor since Sunday.

This is an example of disgusting police behavior. Police officers are trained to treat women and people of color as less than; their authority is a part of enforcing the kyriarchy.

This is an example of sexism. Women's bodies, particularly pregnant women's bodies, are public property: not theirs to negotiate, not theirs to decide when and how urgently they need medical attention. Their pregnancies are given lip service, but when push comes to shove, their health is a lower priority than a parking ticket, their wombs are less crucial than apprehending the concerned mother who owns them.

This is an example of racism. Black people are automatically suspect, and in traffic, their race is seen as an immediate indicator of wrongdoing. Police are allowed to use violence against them. Their medical needs are of a lower priority than enforcing police power; their bodies are simply not that important.

This is another example of how black women exist at an intersection that compounds racism and sexism that results in their particular form of oppression.

This is a racist, sexist society where Melanie Williams' care and concern for her health and the health of her unborn child is criminal.

Would this have turned out this way if she were white? I don't think so.

Via luxury problem

EDIT: Apparently, this actually happened five years ago. Williams and her daughter Malaysia are doing fine and recently received a settlement from the police. Sorry for the poor research!

*I use the language of mother and child to refer to Williams and her pregnancy because this is a wanted pregnancy.
ALSO, original title identified her as Michelle! Oops. Sorry!

New research confirms SAT racism

If you’re reading this, you probably understand that the election of a black president does not negate the systematic racism against folks of African descent in the US did not erase systematic racism against black people in the US. Cops still feel quite free to commit random and unwarranted violence against young black women. The wealth gap between white and black folks has widened. And black students score significantly lower on the standardized test that can determine admission to college, the SAT.

According to Maria Veronica Santelices of the Catholic University of Chile and Mark Wilson of the University of California at Berkeley at the Harvard Educational Review:

[Our research] throws into question the validity of the test and, consequently, all decisions based on its results. All admissions decisions based exclusively or predominantly on SAT performance -- and therefore access to higher education institutions and subsequent job placement and professional success -- appear to be biased against the African American minority group and could be exposed to legal challenge.

This is not exactly new news - it’s a confirmation of earlier research by Roy Freedle of the Educational Testing Service also published in the Harvard Educational Review. The College Board, which administers the SAT, faced similar claims in 2003. The administrative body that also administers Advanced Placement tests has previously dismissed these claims by saying that “since black students are less likely than white students to attend well-financed, generously-staffed elementary and secondary schools, their scores lag... American society is unfair, but the SAT is fair.”

Yeah, because classism is the only real form of oppression, and it’s not tied to racism at all! Because the College Board is somehow completely exempt from the racist kyriarchy that implicates us all!

Their findings on the verbal section were particularly damning, showing once again that language matters and that academic discourse heavily favors whiteness:

[T]he easier verbal questions favored white students. [S]ome of the most difficult verbal questions favored black students. Freedle's theory about why this would be the case was that easier questions are likely reflected in the cultural expressions that are used commonly in the dominant (white) society, so white students have an edge based not on education or study skills or aptitude, but because they are most likely growing up around white people. The more difficult words are more likely to be learned, not just absorbed.

Tests and admission standards are a part of the cycle of racism in our country, and a reflection and cause for the continuing inequality and oppression in education and professional life that reward whiteness and ableist, classist measurements of intelligence.

Racism beneath the surface in Thurgood Marshall Elementary

Blackamazon and s.e. smith introduced me to this story by Charles Mudede via Tumblr:

[J]ust last week, my daughter—who is 8 and happens to be the only brown person in her Accelerated Progress Program class at Thurgood Marshall Elementary—was ordered out of the classroom because her teacher did not like the smell of her hair. The teacher complained that my racially different daughter's hair (or something—a product—in the hair) was making her sick, and then the teacher made her leave the classroom...

If a white teacher—a person who is supposed to have a certain amount of education and knowledge of American history, and who teaches at a school named after the man who successfully argued before the court in Brown v. Board of Education for equal opportunities for racial minorities in public schools and went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court justice—removes a black student from a predominantly white class because of her hair, it is almost impossible not read the action as either racist or expressive of racial insensitivity, which amounts to the same thing for someone in that teacher's position.

There’s a follow-up story in which the school district responds:

But he insists race was not a factor. Any allegations of racial insensitivity or negligence are “wholly untrue,” O’Neill says, “because, well, because the district would not tolerate employment of a teacher that has racial animosity towards a student.”

How can O’Neill—who doesn’t even know if anyone has talked to the teacher or what is occurring in the investigation—be so certain about this one aspect? “Based on preliminary information I have, it is clear that the removal of the student, as inappropriate as it was, had to do with a health issue and not a racial issue,” he says. “To the extent of the health issues, what was said to the child, the circumstances, that is a matter that is still under investigation. Based on our preliminary investigation, it isn’t a result of racial animosity, as far as I understand.”

This struck me as very indicative of systematic white privilege.

The school district does not want to hire people who use the n-word, who are in the habit of committing hate crimes, who fly Confederate flags. They prefer to hire people who have plenty of black friends, who can quote MLK, who voted for Obama.

Racism is not just preventing a black child from entering a classroom. Its also about a white teacher who maybe feels a little less than comfortable when presented with just one child who is not “like her”, a child who is challenging not just because of her race and her hair and the olive-oil-based product she uses on it, but because she is bright, vocal, perceptive. From Mudede's article:

My daughter was aware of the racial nature of this expulsion not only because she was made to sit in a classroom that had more black students in it (the implication being that this is where she really belongs, in the lower class with the other black students), but because her teacher, she informed me, owns a dog. Meaning, a dog's hair gives the teacher less problems than my daughter's human but curly hair.

At some point, assertive black girls go from being read as sassy but unthreatening to an angry black woman. And maybe this teacher placed her student in the latter category.

The teacher probably did not think “this child is black, I don’t like black people.”

But the child was not considered. The child was not the one being protected. Instead, this white person exercised her privilege as an adult and a white person to disrupt this child’s day because she was suddenly, very suddenly, very very suddenly, sick.*

Why didn’t the teacher eject herself from the classroom, if she was the one getting sick? Why single out a little girl who is probably already othered in her environment? [note: those are a couple of good comments, but the rest of the comment section can get pretty bad]

And then the school district coasted on that privilege, allowing a little girl to go without education, or offering insufficient education, while they tended to other things.

This child’s concerns and being were de-prioritized for a white teacher, for a school system. This incident constitutes just one example of the systematic white privilege that white folks (like me) benefit from at the expense of people of color.

Sarah Palin is a feminist, actually - because she works against women.

Image: Sarah Palin stands next to a smiling soldier, aiming a gun. From Wikipedia.

Recently, Sarah Palin’s recent pronouncements of feminism have been attacked by quite a few major feminist writers. Their argument is basically that Sarah Palin works actively against women, which I guess is fair enough.

I do not like Sarah Palin myself - she's detrimental to this country. But I think that Sarah Palin is a feminist, because she enforces a long-held feminist tradition of hurting women.

None of the posts above consider s.e. smith’s awesome rebuttal on this very topic. If you haven’t, please go read it now. Here is my favorite part:

Liberal feminists are asking why Sarah Palin, a conservative feminist, should be allowed to call herself a feminist. They also ask why so many people want to distance themselves from feminism. Well, I think the parallels I’ve outlined here answer that question pretty thoroughly, and perhaps will open a few eyes. People who are outraged by Sarah Palin’s rhetoric and demand to know how she’s feminist now have an inkling of how people in marginalised classes who don’t identify with feminism feel. Because, let me tell you, many of us are surprised to see you calling yourselves feminists too.

Is Sarah Palin a feminist? Well, I’m afraid that I am not holding the Orb of Office this week and thus am not allowed to issue a formal ruling on who is (and isn’t) feminist. But I view feminists a lot like ducks. If an animal walks up to me and says ‘hey, what’s up, I’m a duck,’ it’s a fucking duck, ok, people?

Feminism is for everyone, as bell hooks put it – and that includes bigots.

I define feminism as working against racism, cissexism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, sizism, colonialism, sexism, and all those other innumerable implications of the kyriarchy.

And yeah, Sarah Palin doesn’t live up to that.

But you know what? Neither does the fucking feminist movement. Neither do I.

So my definition includes the problems, the baggage, the failures of this crucial movement. I am subject to these failures, and I am part of them. They are inextricable from feminism, and trying to bar Sarah Palin dismisses our baggage, our failure, when we should own it and admit that she is a feminist who hurts women, like many feminists, like every feminist.

We don’t do it all in the same ways, on the same stage, at the same level. Sarah Palin is hurting women on a more global level than I am when I fuck up, but privilege is a necessary and sufficient condition for hurting people (which includes women) and she is just a very famous example of a well-honored and still-continuing feminist tradition.

She is a feminist because she identifies as one. Trying to pretend that she isn't is trying to pretend that the movement's history of hurting women who are not white, not cis, not rich, not het, not able, not monogamous, not right. Because like Sarah Palin none of us are right, and all of us are wrong. We are trying to bar her because we see that she is like us, that she reflects the worst of us. But she is like us, and we are like her. Feminists, all.*

We, feminists, work actively against the rights of women because we use “lame” regularly, or create bills that restrict reproductive freedom, or appropriate and erase the work of WOC, or play host to ableism, or deny trans folks humanity. And I don’t see anyone getting up in arms about why Amanda Marcotte or Mary Daly aren’t feminists. Instead, I see women questioning feminism, and often abandoning or rejecting it.**

Maybe the question to ask isn’t “Why isn’t Sarah Palin a feminist?” Maybe it’s “Why does Sarah Palin want to be a feminist?”

*Though I use the plural first person here, I want to note that I know that you, reader, are not necessarily a feminist, and may have abandoned the movement for these very very valid reasons.

The Vancouver Sun tries to create context for Jonathan Rhys Meyers' racist language

Trigger warning for discussion of racist language.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who has been in and out of rehab and is now back in rehab, recently got drunk and was subsequently thrown off a flight. During the commission of the ejection, he yelled the n-word at a United Airlines employee. The Vancouver Sun explained it thusly:

Now however, further details have emerged about Meyers' JFK incident. RadarOnline report that the Irishman used the 'N' word during the scuffle. It's still unclear whether Meyers directed the comment at someone in particular or simply blurted it out with no specific target in mind.

I’m sorry. Is this ever a word to be “simply blurted with no specific target in mind”? What could be simple about it? N----r is a word that is, in most cases, very specifically directed at a specific racial group. It’s an extremely taboo word around the world for a reason.

N----r is not fuck. Or shit. Or Christ. It is not an exclamation out of nothing, out of frustration, out of context.

It is not something that slops over the lip of our mouth accidentally when our vocabulary is stumbling through alcohol. Even in anger, it’s not a word that just occur without a target. Even among racists. I’ve been around drunk and unrepentant racists, and it most certainly does slop over and out. In a joke, about specific people, the people in nearby cars, a service worker. It is always used to specifically prove their supremacy as a white person.

The wording above on the part of the Sun is probably a conscious attempt to give Meyers the benefit of the doubt. But used by a white privileged man towards people he considers beneath him (airline workers), there is no room for that benefit. This word choice reflects a choice to minimize the seriousness of this slur. Author inserts doubt about whether or not it was an act aimed at a specific person where it is unnecessary; the usual conditions for using the word make it clear enough that there was a target. This is an act of white privilege in action.

I suppose I could be wrong. I suppose the Sun could be right to give him the benefit of the doubt. I suppose it could be that there were no black people around at all, but while it is n----r is not limited to black people. I guess it is possible that everyone around Meyers was white.

But even under these rather unlikely conditions, it’s still horrifically fucking racist. Honestly, all that needs to be reported is the presence of this word in his rant. That is very well enough to tell me how to view Meyers in the future.

There’s not a lot more I have to say about my distaste for Meyers and the idea that this word is something that could just slip out (even if that’s what it is). But I'm going to turn it over to Siditty , who wrote on the still-present use of the word by white people last year:

White people still use the word. They don't always use it out in the open, but some do use it, and often. You should read my emails and the comments that don't make it on this blog. I can remember the 1st time I heard the n-word, my family and some of their friends were called the n-word by a man when I was a little kid at a carnival, not too far from a "sundown town". I was born after the era of Jim Crow, and my blog and email address were established after Jim Crow as well. I know this is shocking, but in the year 2009, racism still exists. I say this often, but people tend to forget this all the time, and it concerns me.

This is a disgusting act from Meyers, a sign of his considerable privilege as a white, rich, famous man. His language is already being erased in other accounts of the incident and his return to rehab. The presence of this word is reprehensible regardless of context, and the attempt to create one is indicative of the Sun’s privileged point of view.

Further reading:

Womanist Musings: "Go Ahead Say Nigger" & "The Power of Nigger"
What Tami Said: "About 'The N Word'"

Fashionable racism in Interview's "Let's Get Lost"

You know what industry is pretty racist? The fashion industry! Here's the latest evidence, courtesy of a Mikael Jasson shoot in Interview Magazine:





Here's the description of the images above:

"Let's get lost. The hour is late, the air is thick, and the evening is charged with a steamy sensuality. What works? Tone-on-tone swimsuits, slithers of silk, and plenty of skin, as flesh meets flesh, body meets soul, and Daria gets lost in the heat of the night."

In this feature, people of color are used literally as background material, like they're a cloth backdrop, or the color-coordinated car. They are framed as inconsequential: many bodies, limbs are draped about her; their dark, striking faces are mostly blank; they wear hats to cover their aberrant hair. The bodies of people of color in serve only as contrast for the beautiful white woman, Daria, the only person worth mentioning by name.

Though people of color, for once, outnumber white people, they are not the focus in this spread. They are models, doing their jobs well - all of them are quite striking and make the clothes look as interesting as anything Daria wears. But Daria is the specific focus of the camera, the lighting, the composition, the male model's bodies, are situated to frame Daria. Their clothes are universally earth tones or muted, while Daria wears bright colors.

Black people, here, are not people. In the context of this shoot, Sedene Blake is not a woman. Oriane Barnett is not a model. Raschelle Osbourne is not a woman. David Agboji is not a man. Salieu Jalloh is not a beautiful individual. Neither is Armando Cabral, or Carmalita Mendes, or Manuel Ramos, or Kelly Moreira, or any of the other models. They are framed instead as props.

Though this is in a fashion magazine and they are models, they and the clothes they wear are reduced to acting as part of the framework of the scene; you're supposed to look at the pretty white lady, not the pretty people of color.

In these pictures, people of color are equated with night; they are metaphors for a period of time. This is worse than animalization; this is dehumanization. People of color represent an abstract force, a concept. Not people. Beautiful, perhaps, but that's besides the point. Simply the environment in which a white person exists. Something a white lady falls back on. Something a woman in a swimsuit sits on, to make the swimsuit and her white skin look better.

Sonja Uwimama commented on this at Africa is a Country:

You would think that if they’re going to keep using Black people as the exotic background on which white people get to project their fantasies, they’d at least be more original with it. In the heat of the night? Really? Sorry, Interview, but the joke’s on you.

This is just the most recent incident of blatant racism in an industry with no shortage of it. Renee recently wrote on the topic:

The Black woman has long been seen as the ultimate un-woman and despite the supposed advances, race and gender continue to leave Black women at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Fashion is but one manifestation of the ways in which we continue to be “othered”. Black women are called angry when they rightfully lash out against blatant racism, because we are expected to accept our second class status without complaint. That it is exhausting to constantly wage a battle to be recognized as human and therefore valuable, is not considered. We are constantly told that our tone is why Whiteness does not listen; however, Black women are well aware that White supremacy is dedicated to maintaining the race and gender divisions, because it serves to cement power.

"Let's Get Lost" is evidence that gender privilege is not a shield against the racism of the fashion industry (or any other context). Even when models of color make up the bulk of the shoot, they are often treated as little but fodder for contrast and controversy. In this issue of Interview, men of color serve little purpose beyond "pushing buttons" and "being edgy".

Men and women of color, in this shoot, are little but something exotic in which a white woman can get "lost". This reinforces the idea that black men prey on white women by leading them astray.

What I've written above is just the introduction to everything that's wrong with this. This clearly and thoughtfully racist. It's trolling with fashion photography.

Further reading:

Tom and Lorenzo (an excellent fashion blog and my source for the shoot details)
Femonomics

Dan Fanelli's racism, and Alan Grayson's common sense

On the heels of this racist mess of an ad from Alabama would-be Governor Tim James comes this incredibly racist ad from Congressional candidate Dan Fanelli, who is running against Florida eighth district Congressman Alan Greyson (who is surprisingly awesome for a major-party politician):

Transcript: I’m Dan Fanelli with a little bit of common sense for you. Does this [motions toward older thin white man in a white shirt and tie] look like a terrorist, or this? [motions to a heavily muscled young man of color in a black shirt] It’s time to stop this political correctness nonsense and the invasion of our privacy. Let’s face it. If a good-looking, ripped guy without much hair flies an airplane into the Twin Towers, I’d have no problem getting pulled out of line at the airport. I’m Dan Fanelli, and I approved this message.

An older white man is totally fine to get on a plane. A younger Arab-American man is not. There is no other reason other than race that Fanelli thinks people of Arab descent are terrorists – because terrorism is very far from unique to the Middle East. These are racist scare tactics at their worst and most blatant, posing as “humor”. I’m not sure what privacy has to do with it – I guess he is saying that white folks deserve it at the airport, but people of color don’t?

This is what the recent changes to Arizona law have brought to political discourse. It is now officially okay to advocate racism – straight up, blatant, racism, there is no other word for it – in order to get elected.

He is saying that if you get him to Congress, he will make sure that white men are given legal privileges over folks of Arab descent.

He is saying that equal treatment under the law – as provided for in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution – is silly.

He is saying that the security theater is more important than the rights of American citizens whose skin is not white.

He is saying that racism is common sense. He is saying that preferential treatment for one race should be just a simple fact.

I'm editing to include the Council on American-Islamic Relations' reply to this advertisement:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on national Republican leaders to repudiate the ad. From their release (via the Washington Post blog):

"These outrageously racist and Islamophobic political appeals indicate that Mr. Fanelli falsely believes his constituents are as bigoted and intolerant as he obviously is," said CAIR Legislative Director Corey Saylor. "Local, state and national GOP leaders must speak out strongly against such racist and un-American campaign tactics."

Saylor said a number of recent terror incidents -- including the suicide plane attack on an IRS facility in Texas, the shooting of Pentagon guards and the alleged Christian militia plot to kill police officers -- disprove the crude stereotypes promoted by Fanelli's ads.

He said the anti-Islam hostility generated by the ads could result in ordinary Florida Muslims being targets for discrimination or even hate crimes.

Fanelli is arguing that voters should choose him over Congressman Alan Greyson, a Democrat who is in his first term, because of Greyson’s unwillingness to promulgate racial profiling. Grayson's reticence to perpetuate legal racism makes him a “bum” (which is, by the way, a rather classist slur.)

I talked to Greyson’s press secretary on the phone and through e-mail earlier today. He alerted me to Fanelli's regular participation in Tea Party demonstrations, and offers this rebuke from Grayson's campaign ads:

Scratch a teabagger, find a racist.

As Grayson points out, Fanelli's ad and involvement in the Tea Party movement are unapologetic. His pride in racism is indicative of the kind of rhetorical racist nonsense that's endemic to the Tea Party movement. As Monica of TransGriot puts it:

[T]hey have views and have acted in ways that put them in alignment with people who like to wear white pointed hoods on the weekends or play domestic terrorist soldier while spouting pseudo christian rhetoric or anti government slogans.

After reading Greyson’s response, I read up on his record. He’s pro-choice, voted for the Lily Ledbetter Pay Act, supports hate crime laws, and has fought tooth and nail for a more equitable health care system – he was the one who said “The Republican health care plan is this: 'Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”. He started a website remember those who died because they lacked health insurance. He has also continued to press for a public healthcare option, refusing to be content with Obama’s compromise.

I doubt he has a perfect record, and if you let me know about his more problematic attitudes and actions, I’ll be happy to edit this post to include them. But he’s working harder for people than many Democrats, and he’s got a lot more common sense about racism than his opponent.

Today, I donated $5 to Grayson’s campaign. I rarely give money to political candidates, and I don't live in Florida, but I think fighting racism in public discourse and supporting worthwhile candidates is worth a little pocket change. If you feel the same way, click on over here.

(I also wrote to Fanelli's campaign to register my disgust. The contact email is: contact@electdan2010.com.)

via Latin in America