MaNishtana has an awesome website aimed at creating community for and by Jews of Color (JOC). The site has a facebook-like network, bios of amazing activists and message boards. Plus, as a white Jew who is committed to anti-racism, it reminds me that we ALL need to do a better job of creating communities where people of color and (more specifically) Jews of color can thrive. I know that isn't the case right now.
I saw this tweet today by MaNishtana:
"so...im broke this month and my host is looking to delete my site pretty soon. help a blogger out and donate?plz? http://tinyurl.com/24ycxvp"
Today's classroom discussions about Christopher Columbus have left behind the hero-heralding trope I remember from grade school. They've shifted, allowing for a more accurate, more complicated, and certainly less rosy portrayal of Columbus and his impact on North America and its peoples. Some of them may even delve into why it's a good thing Columbus's ship didn't land in 2010 Arizona.
Today, we reflect on the myriad contributions tribal communities have made to our Nation and the world, and we remember the tremendous suffering they endured as this land changed.
But for many, it's not enough to reference the critical impact on indigenous peoples. Should Columbus Day be one of only 10 federal holidays? Not everyone thinks so.
Tamiko McKeiver-Riley is the Director of Human Resources at JFSJ. On top of being an awesome support to all of the staff at JFSJ, she has also been working for three months as a cast member in St. Paul Community Baptist Church's MAAFA presentation. This whole week at St. Paul's are lectures and performances focusing on "the historic struggle and survival of people of African ancestry in an unparalleled and empowering light." The large production that Tamiko invited the JFSJ staff to is the central event.
Major League Baseball is scheduled to host the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix in July 2011. BOOO!! Other than the World Series, the All-Star Game represents the most high-profile and prestigious game every season in baseball.
So many baseball players are Latino and there is a huge Latino fan base, too. How could baseball responsibly hold a game in Phoenix when they know much of their fan base could be harassed for being "suspicious" i.e. brown skinned while in town to attend the game? Some fans are cleverly trying to get the game moved outta Phoenix. Check out their fight, sign the petition and drop a freaking banner, why don't ya!
The NAACP formalized its concerns about the Tea Party's hate-mongering by unanimously passing a resolution about the Tea Party's race-baiting. Here's part of NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous's statement about the resolution:
We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy. What we take issue with is the Tea Party’s continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements. The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism & anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement.
By now, you probably know that this resolution has spurred a "debate" -- call it curiously conceived, call it absurd -- in which the Tea Party attempts to turn the tables on the NAACP, accusing one of the nation's most influential equal-rights proponents of playing the race card and being "bigoted."
"The naacp has opened up a wonderful opportunity for the tea party movement," Gingrich wrote a tweet. "Local tea party leaders across america should reach out."
Throwing around the word "bigot" when it's not warranted for the sake of tar-balling your opposition? Pretty despicable. Most of us left that brand of insult-hurling behind when we were tots, not just because they're rooted in character smears not dialogue, but because we learned that there was no truth, logic, or sense in the phrase "I know you are but what am I?"
OH MY GOD. This Sandra Bullock thing is too weird. I know US exceptionalism is wrong, but this story literally could only happen here. This story manages to expose almost every element of white people's craziness.
Okay, the one-run-on-sentence summary:
Sandra Bullock, a non-Jewish white woman, who won an Oscar for being a movie where she is a white savior to a black child, while married to a sorta-white supremacist, adopted a black child from New Orleans, a city that's black population was and continues to be abandoned by the US government and together they gave him a bris (a Jewish religious ceremony).
Wow, that's a lot of crazy. It's also a really good opportunity for white people who see that racism is a complicated interwoven system to talk about it with people. If you pick even one part of the sentence above and go deeper with it, you can take things out of the realm of celebrity drama into a public reflection on what it means to be white in the US.
Okay, I want to hash out what I mean after the jump..
Ephphatha Poetry reprinted a very thought-proving essay by anti-racist writer and activist Tim Wise. He asks us to imagine how conservatives would respond to protests and actions by tea partiers ifthe protestors were black (or Muslim), rather than white. Very small excerpt (check out the full post at Ephphatha Poetry):
Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.
I was intrigued by this headline of a Salon column: Too Much Tea Party Racism.
The piece in Salon focuses on several racist and homophobic incidents that occured at yesterday's anti-health care rally at the Capitol, which seems to be anchored by tea partiers. In part:
...it's worth more of my time to say what many resist: The tea party movement is disturbingly racist and reactionary, from its roots to its highest branches. On Saturday, as a small group of protesters jammed the Capitol and the streets around it, the movement's origins in white resistance to the Civil Rights Movement was impossible to ignore.
Leads me to wonder, how much racism is too much? How do you determine if racism is fundamental to the movement or just attracts racists?
It would seem a Republican activist in South Carolina has gotten himself into hot water. On Facebook (and let's put aside the conversation about how far we've come into the age of new media), Rusty DePass said that a gorilla that had escaped Riverbanks Zoo was "just one of Michelle's ancestors" in reference to the current First Lady, Michelle Obama.
DePass is a former chair of the state election commission, and he's admitted that he was referring to the First Lady. CNN is now carrying video on the story from its local affiliate, but let's get beyond the actual story. It was a clearly stupid comment that probably gets made by any number of white GOP (and non-GOP) activists in the south (and the north, east, west, etc.), but in this case it was made on a public website.
Bob Coble, mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, says in the video that DePass should apologize, and more important that it is a racist comment. Because, it obviously is a racist comment. Imagine, for a moment, this comment being made about a white First Lady. It wouldn't even make sense, outside of the racist bigotry that equates blacks with lower-order apes.
The video kind of glosses over that, and when it comes back to Coble, a rival of DePass', he talks about the long tradition of First Ladies and how none of them deserve that kind of comment. But none of them, up until Michelle Obama, would be on the receiving end of that kind of comment. For obvious reasons. None of them before Michelle Obama has been black.
So let's not frame this in terms of the stature of her office. Let's call this what it is in more explicit terms. A white, southern GOP blowhard called a black woman an ape in order to demean her. It's almost predictable to the point of not being news. Does it even matter that she's the current spouse of Oval Office occupant?
