Category Archives: this i believe
Maybe, just maybe, The People of Walmart has something to teach us?
Scene 1:
There is this new website, People of Walmart, that’s gaining the buzz. (Heck, even The Bloggess mentioned them as “shit-I-didn’t-write-but-wish-I-did-because-it’s-kind-of-awesome” for this week…)
(Note: Time.com also wrote about it on August 31, 2009, the day after this post was originally published.)
Here is one of the most excellent specimen, in all its glory:
(Do check out the guy’s YouTube site as advertised on the back of his jacket… Did I? Of course!)
Like a guilty pleasure and inexplicable obsession, I gawk at the pictures on a daily basis ever since I was alerted to its existence, shaking my head, unable to avert my eyes away from the grotesque. The proverbial Train Wreck, and I am one of the Rubber-neckers.
I tweeted. Sent the link to everybody I know. “Hilarious. You’ve got to see this!”
Scene 2:
Last week Jezebel.com brought this to our attention:
Glamour Shocks Readers By Featuring Plus-Size Model’s Belly
Lizzie Miller by all means is a gorgeous woman. We all agreed. The reaction from female readers to Glamour’s featuring her, tummy and thighs and all, is spetacular yet not surprising.
I want to believe with all my heart that this picture is going to stop myself from agonizing over my body image, to convince myself that what I see in the mirror is good enough – I am not greedy. I don’t ask for “gorgeous”. I am only asking for “confident”. But despite being a gullible person when it comes to panhadlers, I, decidedly, unconsciously, took a cynical stance towards this whole “Rah Rah Big is Beautiful” self-congratulatory outbreak of celebrations in the cyber space.
And as usual, I feel guilty because I desperately want to do the right thing.
Scene 3:
I came upon this blog post by chance:
News Flash! Average is Beautiful. Then Why Am I Having a Fat Day?
“Jane” eloquently put in words what I could not have expressed. The witty title alone summed it up. Here is the part that resonated with me, hitting me like a bucket of cold water and an injection of warm vodka at the same time:
So I sit here. Feeling fat. And all this media coverage saying size 12 is beautiful hasn’t made me feel much better at all.
Although many would consider my self-critique of being overweight as insincere whining, “Is she backdoor-bragging? That bitch!” Let’s face it, I am Asian, and if I am not willowy, I am considered fat. Also, I am just better at hiding the extra pounds:
Control-top panty hose, body shapers, smoothers, I have come to accept this, are my friends.
But are they really?
We have come a long way since the Corset scene in Gone with the Wind, or have we?
*See “Hattie McDaniel: What We Don’t Know About Mammy” for a re-reading of the Mammy character if this picture unsettles you, still, after you have seen it so many times…
Scene 4:
Back to People of Walmart, and this time, we encounter “Pink Belly“…
Part of me naturally gawked and tzzked at the unsightly middle bulge, the Muffin Top of all Muffin Tops, wondering why anybody in their right mind would let it all hang out like this.
“OMG, does she really think that is attractive?”
Part of me though wanted to say, sincerely,
“I salute you. I admire you for the courage that I do not possess. You go girl! Be yourself! Say No to corset! And wear whatever the fuck your heart desires!”
“You know, if only I could just make a decent cup of coffee, I could relax!”
If you really want to contextualize the social and cultural circumstances in which this Folgers commercial was made, then we can all go back to school and read upon all the feminist histories and theories. But this commercial simply makes me laugh out loud. It makes us feel better about ourselves, about how far we have come. Like the fact we now have an African American as the President, racism must be no more.
If only I could just make a decent cup of coffee, I could relax!
If only life were that simple…
p.s. Read the comments, and decide how far we have come.
p.p.s. I always wince when people lament about the Good Old Days. Read the comments, and see for yourself why.
Live squid is not part of the standard diet in China, or Asia for that matter
Once in a while I get all riled up with my mouth foaming like a rabid dog. My irrational anger especially loves a good target of Stereotype Mongers and Exoticism Panderers. This is that kind of moment.
PMS. Whatever.
The target of my rant today is this book:
Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid
Look at that title, and please tell me it is not being deliberately sensationalizing.
Mind you, I have a great sense of humor. Like all great Jewish comedians (by the way, I am neither) I have perfected self-deprecating humor. I can make fun of myself, ourselves, my people, my race.
BUT I was not impressed with the passages my husband quoted me from the book. My “stereotype police” and “pandering to exoticism” antenna immediately went up when the author starts the book by talking about a restaurant menu full of internal organs of a goat. He claimed that was the first restaurant he walked in when he landed in China. Just picked it out of the random. His good luck then. I would not even know where to find one myself.
Let me emphasize this again:
WE DO NOT EAT LIVE SQUID OR GOAT BRAINS AS A DAILY MEAL.
They are probably sold in some specialty restaurants. But NOT part of the standard diet. Can people just please get over it already?! Besides, you eat moldy cheese which is pretty sickening if you ask me. So there, we are even.
And seriously, I HAVE A QUESTION:
How come it is all chi chi, high class, cultured, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan to eat raw fish and octopus in a Japanese restaurant? And live squid is now, YEW. How disgusting. How barbarian.
FUCK ME!
After browsing through the reviews and seeing a high percentage of the people say that they knew NOTHING or little about the country and the culture before they read the book,
GREAT. JUST GREAT! I thought.
I am becoming more and more agitated by the existence of this book.
TTYL. Now I need to go find a book about how white people can’t jump.
The Ability to be Oblivious OR Is there a manual for the multicutural world we envision?
Warning: The following text contains ruminations on the color of our skins. If you feel uncomfortable discussing skin colors, wish that people would just stop obsessing over skin colors and go on with their lives, or believe that the insistence on talking about the colors of our skin makes the originator of the conversation a racist him/herself, there is nothing much I could do about it. But I thought I’d let you know since you may not want to read the following…
Like most kids, Mr. Monk, my 6 year-old, is fascinated by people that look different from him. The problem is, even though my children are half and half, Mr. Monk is able to “pass” if I am not around. His older brother, however, stands out distinctively and has experienced name-calling at school and at extracurricular activities, much to my chagrin and surprise.
Seriously. Which century are we in? BUT I also believe that my oldest will grow up to be stronger and more compassionate. It’s funny, or disturbing rather, how my children will grow up differently, shaped by how the outside world view them differently…
Despite my being an annoying PC Police, to my best intentions, I am utterly confused when it comes to educating the very young, especially my own. Even though I always wince whenever Mr. Monk refers to someone who is apparently not white by the color of their skin, I fear I may have lost my bearings…
The other day while I was trying to demonstrate to him that we do not refer to people this way and also to challenge why he does not refer to someone of Euro descent by saying, “The White Lady” for example, I asked him,
“So what color is your skin?”
“I am white.” He said without even a pause.
Shock. I did not expect this answer. Well, when we discussed this before, in the context of Crayola rainbow of colors and how we, thank goodness, no longer refer to the “Peach” color as “Skin”, we had agreed that his was “Tan”…
“Hmm. No. You are not white. You are only half.”
He started protesting. “I am white!”
“Ok. So what do you think mommy is?”
“You are white too!” (I am very obviously not and we both know it)
Now here came a moment when part of me thought, “I really should drop this. Maybe I should go back to school, take more child psychology and postcolonial theory classes, before we continue this discussion…”
Yet the other part of me insisted, “No. We have to discuss this especially when they are young and malleable and forming their self-identities.” Sometimes I think that if I were my mother I would hate me.
“Ok. Could you please tell mommy why you think you are white?”
“Because we learned in school there were slaves…” he stopped abruptly and would not go on.
Silence.
“Mommy. Are there still slaves in the world?”
Oh, gee. What is going on in that tiny head of his?
In the midst of trying to explain to him that in some parts of the world, yes, (WHY do I have to be so brutally honest with my children, I do not know. Damn liberals I guess…) but not in this country, Oh, god no, he does not have to worry about ever being enslaved, we dropped the discussion on the color of his skin.
Here is what I wish I had sometimes, with guilt of course, for myself and for my children:
The ability to be oblivious.
“You people!” is symptomatic of something that none of us want to admit…
(I promise. This is going to be the final rant from me. There is a bit OCD in my personality, and sometimes things just bother me and I cannot let go. Most of the time these are “trivial” by most people’s measure. But are they REALLY trivial? Perhaps they are only trivial because you are not affected by it?)
Here is what I have been thinking…
No matter where you are in the world, the advantage of being one of the majority, the mainstream, the dominant society, is that you have the freedom to just be you. No REPRESENT! No speaking for your race, nationality, gender, etc. No “Tell us something about your culture” as if by the nature of being who you are, you automatically are well-versed in the history/culture/geography of where you are supposed to come from. And nobody will ever ever say to you,
“You people…”
Wonder what Newt would say about this classic Eddie Murphy SNL skit “White Like Me”?
“No, Newt, You’re the Racist” Thank goodness someone more elequont wrote this rebuttal…
to the charge by some Republicans against the Supreme Court Nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, as being a racist against the white people, and specifically, white male people.
I first saw this charge when I was waiting to board the plane. (You know the CNN scrolling texts on the bottom that drive everybody crazy but, I have to admit it, was pretty useful when there was NO sound on!) I could NOT believe my eyes. But I was not surprised either.
In my head I was formulating all these rebuttals, clever comebacks, theories, arguments against charges of any type of Reverse Racism. The best I could come up with was: It is like the Royal Families complain about being prejudiced against because people are jealous of the privileges they enjoy.
Seriously? Give me a break!
Thank goodness for Vanity Fair. Here is again another article that I LOVE so much that I want to print it out and eat it whole. I really should be working since I am buried by projects that are all due YESTERDAY. But I need to get this off my chest before I explode into a pile of, YES, non-white, mess…
No, Newt, You’re the Racist by Michael Hogan (May 27, 2009)
Mr. Hogan, I assume who is white and male (NOT that there is anything wrong with that…), managed to deliver a rebuttal against this utter nonsense in an even-handed, non-didactic, non-preachy way.
Digression: I also appreciate much the fact his article does not invoke White Guilt either, for nothing is more annoying to me than condescension and patronization born out of White Guilt. No, thank you very much, we have managed along quite well. We do not need to be rescued by a knight in shiny armor. Give me outright Racism any day ( Disclaimer: obviously, I understand VIOLENCE committed on the basis of racism is no joke. Here I am referring to TALKS. DISCOURSES.) When it is veiled in White Guilt, I am at a loss as to how to react to it.
Anyway, the best quote from the article is as follows, although I do hope you read the entire thing if you have stayed with my rant so far…
The reason so few sensible people take [any charge of reverse racism] seriously is that there is no effective anti-white discrimination in America or, for that matter, the world. Being white is almost universally easier than being any other color, just as being male is almost universally easier than being female. (If you’re white, male, and still angry, the problem is you.)
Nicely done. Thank you.
If you happen to be white (in appearances) and you cannot see the implied privileges that come with your skin color, here is a great article/exercise that may resonate with you:
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh in 1990. Yes, it is decades old. But hey, some things never change… or at least, not much.
p.s. Once again, the comments steal the show and become the proof for the importance of writing the article being commented on in the first place.
Michael Hogan, poor guy, he’s being pummeled and maligned in the comment section. It is rather scary and disturbing what was said in those comments. I wish I hadn’t read them because now I am officially pissed. And scared at the same time. And disturbed. And dispirited.
Towards the discussion of race with a 6 year-old…
Every day is a trial and error in my effort to bring my kids up the “right” way…
Here is an incident happened last month which I have been chewing over and over:
My 6 year-old came home excited one day to tell me all about what he had learned at school about MLK, about Rosa Parks, about the civil rights movement, and about what it was like before for people of color. (Except, of course, he did not use the ultra PC term, “People of Color”…)
“Do you know that the white people had their own sinks, and they wouldn’t even let the colored people use them? And do you know that the white people get to sit in the front of the bus, and the colored people have to go sit in the back. And guess who gets to sit down if there are no seats left? The white people!”
On one hand, I was glad that he learned so much and seemed to be grasping the concept/idea. On the other hand, I winced every time he used the term “colored people”. I sat him down and gently asked him where he’d learned that term, he said from
a book he read at school. My guess was that the book describes the situations in the past, esp. in the South, and there were signs on which “Colored people only” and “Whites only” were shown. But as a Kindergartner, my son did not understand that the term is no longer in use. Political correctness is not factored into his choice of vocabulary yet.
Although he is probably too young to understand the concept of Political Correctness, I did try. I explained to him that we no longer use that term to refer to people with tanned skin, and that now we use the term “people of color”. For example, mommy is a woman of color. He looked at me, puzzled. I am not sure how much he understood.
I wrote the teacher a long letter and here is her response:
“We read the book last week. The book we read showed the signs for ‘Colored Only’ above water fountains and bathroom doors, as well as referring to those terms in the story. There was quite a discussion about unfair laws. We talked about everyone having color in their skin. People are not white or black – there are different tones of color. The phrase you used, ‘people of color’ was introduced. We also used, ‘African-Americans’ as a term as well.
I try to keep the concepts simple and easy to understand because the terms are so abstract. The main goal is to teach how we are all alike and all different as well as respect.”
By god this whole thing is complicated since NAACP has “Colored People” in its full name: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is confusing sometimes even for adults, let alone Kindergartners.
I was caught off guard again when my boys heard on NPR the term “Black women”, when a lot of discussions happened around Michelle Obama’s role as the first Black First Lady, and what it means for Black women, and also, especially, young Black women that are just forming a sense of themselves. My 6 yo asked, “What do they mean by Black?” Probably the first time he heard the term so loud and clear, and it registered in his head that it means more than just a color but something else.
So we started a discussion on “African American” = “Black”, but you want to be careful when you use the term Black because you need to use it appropriately otherwise people may be offended or hurt. And the most appropriate term is probably “African American”.
“Why do they call themselves Blacks? Their skin is not black, just tanned. Like your skin is tanned, just different. But Auntie R’s dad (who is Asian Indian) is not Black even though he has dark skin too?”
(I mused, inside my head, about the usage of the term “Blacks” to refer to any non-white people, including the large population of Asian Indians and their UK-born descendants in the U.K. That would have made my duty as a parent a lot easier! But I refrained myself… Maybe some other time…)
From there, we got into a discussion on why President Obama is African American and NOT African even though his father was from Kenya. And the conversation quickly turned (or deteriorated) into who is American and who is not… And the question inevitably came up: “So Samantha next door is Korean and not American?” “No, no, no! She is American just like you guys. It is just that her grandparents came from Korea and that they still honor some Korean customs and traditions… If you want to label her, she would be Korean American. But you know, it does not matter what kind of American you are, and you shouldn’t label people anyway. It does not matter: you are all Americans!”
So, yeah, I was mentally kicking myself for singing to the tune of “We are the World”… and secretly praying, “Gosh. Please please don’t ask me what being an American mean… Not on this car ride… I need to write a thesis just to answer that question!”
Abraham Lincoln rocked this house last night!
In commemoration of Lincoln’s Bicentennial on February 12, PBS is showing a series of documentaries on Lincoln, both his life and death. Last night, PBS aired the extremely well-made documentary on Lincoln’ death, “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”.
Ok, who has heard of a 6-year-old crying because he had to stop watching a documentary to take a bath? Mine did! He cried through the whole bath to the point of hyperventilating, and only stopped crying when he was led in front of the TV to finish watching the documentary. It must be because of all the things on Lincoln he has been learning at school this month… I wonder how much he was able to understand?
This is the same kid who exclaimed, “Abraham is so lucky! He was born on President’s Day!”
It was enlightening to learn that John Wilkes Booth asked for newspaper to be delivered to his hiding place (some pine bushes) so he could read about the public reactions to Lincoln’s assassination; he was surprised and saddened by the fact that he was perceived as this monstrous murderer and not as a savior who carried out God’s will to save the nation from self-destruction. He kept a meticulous journal while in hiding detailing his reasoning and conviction for doing what he had done, hoping that the future generation would see the light and agree with him.
In addition to “The Assassination”, there will be a series of shows dedicated to Lincoln this week. The most notable one, in my view, is the 2-part series by Henry Louis Gates “Looking for Lincoln“. Gates is an outstanding historian dedicated to African American histories. There have been considerable attempts to re-evaluate Lincoln as a pragmatic politician, as a man of his time (harboring the necessary biases and, frankly, racism). And in Gates’ own words, “My urge to judge Lincoln outside of his times is a strong one.” Of course, none of these theories or “re-reading” are taught at the grade school level.
My kids would probably never hear, from their teachers, what Frederick Douglass said about Lincoln at the dedication of the Freedman’s monument in Washington D.C. in 1876:
“He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the states where it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the supposed guarantees of the United States Constitution in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave states. He was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration.”
Like many prominent historical figures existed outside of the school textbooks, Abe Lincoln was a complicated individual, shaped by his times and circumstances, worked with whatever conditions he was thrown in. Frederick Douglass recognized this because he continued to say:
“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”
To be able to explain the complexities of who Lincoln was (and is), I will need to be able to explain to my kids the complexities of race. The school curricular seem to concentrate on teaching our kids that everybody is the same yet different at the same time, that in the end, it does not matter what the color of your skin is. By singing to the tune of “We are the World” (I am dating myself by bringing up this song…), the real issues of race and ethnicity and the reality of remaining racism are then glossed over.
Once again I asked myself: how much of the ugliness should I teach them and at what age? And yes, I am fully aware of their privileged position to even have such a choice about “when to learn about race and racism”…
p.s. The Freedman’s Monument is not without controversy itself. Many in the African American community are infuriated, and perplexed to say the least. You can see why from the picture of the statue itself…