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So The Last Airbender comes out this summer. Here’s a good summary of my thoughts on the upcoming movie.

The Blog of Gene Luen Yang – The Last Airbender Movie.

Elise posted this link in the comments of the last post and I thought it was cool enough to get a post of it’s own. You should check out the entire post (and the comments to the last post, as well as Elise’s blog) if you haven’t had the chance yet. Here’s a teaser.

The thing is, I knew when I was writing the e-mail that I was taking a risk.  I talk to white people about being “kicked out of the club.” It’s the moment that they realize that speaking up about race or racism distances them from other white people.  It’s when they find out that other white people won’t necessarily support them when they raise issues of racism.

via So now I know. « Resist racism.

P.S.  you should also check out the We heard it before page.

Anne Braden by Flobots

So here are some questions for discussion that most of my readers can relate to-

How do you deal when people you love and respect stand in opposition to you on issues that you are passionate about (like racism for example)?

Are you able to keep loving and being in relationship with them as you would before in spite of the difference?

Do you compartmentalize, and only share with those you love those parts that will not cause conflicts?

Do you limit your activism on this issue to preserve your relationship?

Share your thoughts, questions, stories, encouragement and discouragement in the comments. I know for some people this is a painful thing, and for others they’ve found it easy.  Comment below.

* Also check out the Flobots activism site

lowbright: New day in politics, same old racist world on the silver screen.

I was speaking with Gene Yang (author of “American Born Chinese” and National Book Award nominee) about the casting and he said it best: “It’s like a white Asian fetishist’s wet dream. All the Asian culture they want, without any of the Asian people.”

J.R.R. Tolkien never specifically described his central human, and human-like, characters as being “Caucasian” or “European” (as far as I know) in “The Lord of the Rings”, but it would be pretty stupid to think they weren’t when the entire story and the world in which it was set came from an obvious extrapolation of medieval Europe. Why should it be any different for Avatar?

Click the link for an interesting post, as well as an address to which you can write to make your voice heard.

Whew! It’s so progressive to have a movie about one of the world’s most popular Asian characters played by a non-Asian.

Unfortunately, we must still get hot Asian chicks with guns, because everyone love hot Asian chicks.

THE BEAT » Blog Archive » World reminded of Dragonball movie’s future existence; world goes back to crossword puzzle

There’s a lot to be learned about the portrayal of minorities in media from that quote alone.

Obama ran and won, I believe my kids can fly | emerging mosaic

My oldest son who many say looks like Obama and has a biracial and a immigrant parent in common insisted he stay up to see the results to their conclusion and Obama acknowledge the win. He thought nothing of saying after a basketball career at Princeton I’ll go on to the presidency. It was all within the realm of possibility and for the first time i could say without hesitation yes son you can.

His flight is no longer restricted to sports on this morning in America. A black man who has normally been relegated to the bottom of the social totem pole in America has risen to the highest office in the land.

Andre Daley (who is a Jamaican immigrant and who, as far as I can tell, is not related to me) articulates one of the huge statements that this election makes.  Earlier I talked about how if a kid is always being told everyday that the people who look like them can only be second in command, can only be important as an athlete or performer then they will believe it. This election, and for the next four years, African American children have one heck of a proof of concept.

I look forward to the first Asian American, Hispanic American, presidents as well.

I’ve often talked about the problem of race, bigotry and discrimination, so I figure if you’re still reading you are at least interested in the issue (or at best tolerant of my rants).  Asif (I would link to his livejournal but he rarely posts anymore) pointed me to an article on CNN that talks about racially segregated churches. There’s one quote that I thought was particularly interesting.

Via CNN: “Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated.”

The people in the pews must also do their share of adapting, scholars and ministers say. Only when ethnic groups no longer feel compelled to abandon their entire culture on Sunday morning can a church claim to be interracial, Brelsford says.

…

Interracial churches resist “taking one dominant identity and forcing everyone to fit into it,” Brelsford says.

I think this is the probably the hardest temptation to overcome when trying to create a church or other organization of mixed ethnicity, particularly if one is of the majority culture, you think that certain things are universal, as opposed to being part of your unique identity. It took me a very long time to get over the idea that if people just stripped away their American-ness/African-ness/Indian-ness/Whatever-ness then deep down inside they’ll be more or less Jamaican. This is often the error of people who say “why can’t we all get along” or “why do we have to talk about race/ethnicity”. They think that deep down, if you strip away all that “ethnicness” that you’ll be just like them.

It’s pretty easy to say that that’s not true. Speaking as someone who was born into an ethnic majority, it’s much harder to live it. There’s always that voice that says that ways that my culture have taught me to act, think and relate are “correct” or even just “normal” and that everything else is wrong or a distortion from the baseline of myself. I think that we start to silence that voice by deliberately being open to, and seeking to understand the spectrum of culture. I think that we also need to deliberately put ourselves in a situation where we are the minority, and we seek to learn from the culture in which we immerse ourselves. It’s always easy to jump into a culture from a position of “rightness”. We’ve seen lot’s of people do it, including some missionaries. The challenge is to jump in to a culture in a learning position.

Now, with all this being said, the advice that I’ve given above is for the individual from a majority culture. Some of it is probably applicable for people from a minority culture as well, but I suspect that a lot is different. And as the article talks about, members of minority cultures can have as many issues dealing with racial/ethnic integration as the majority. I do not mean to imply that those that are members of minority cultures have no responsibility in this pursuit, and may post some of my thoughts on that later. Their embracing or rejecting of the pursuit has absolutely no bearing on our responsibility to pursue equity.

In around 1939, during the trial of Brown Vs. the Board of Education, Kenneth Clark administered a test to several black children where he would present them with two dolls, one black and one white, and ask the children which they would prefer to play with and other questions of the dolls. These black children overwhelmingly chose the white doll . In 2006 a high school student decided to re-do the test to see how far we as a society have come. The film is below

I’m posting this partially because I’m surprised that I’ve never posted this before, but mostly to give a visual example of what living in a society where the media and culture tells you that your kind is inferior can do to you.

This past Halloween, Hamline University was shook up by a group of students from the football team assisted by certain members of its student government who had decided that it would be a good idea to dress in black spandex tights, faces painted black, grass skirts and fake bones and attend a party.

If you think that the description of the costumes sounds like blackface, you would be right. It looks a lot like blackface as well.

Apparently it was not intended to be dressing up in blackface, the students say that they meant to dress up as the tribespeople in King Kong (more on that later).

This raises a couple of issues in my mind, but first I must confess. I have to confess that my first reaction is anger. My first reaction is to almost take it personally, that the actions of these students are at worst malicious towards me and others of African descent, or at best completely callous towards the past injustices done towards those of African descent, and to current social and relational wounds in the United States between people of different ethnicities.

And there are wounds. One of the things that can be hard to grasp is the fact that past group sins still have repercussions in individual lives. The sins of the father are visited upon his children. By dressing up in what looks like blackface, these students reopen the wounds. The president of the black student group at Hamline asked the question “Is this what you think of us?” I cannot speak for her, but I suspect that underneath that question is encapsulated several other questions.

“I thought that we at Hamline were trying to heal those wounds, is that a lie?”

“In the past, those who endorsed blackface actively sought to deny African Americans their rights, now that you’ve worn blackface, how can I trust you to ensure my rights?”

“Blackface is part of a history of discrimination and violence against African Americans, am I safe around you?”

“You know that blackface is offensive to me, are you trying to offend me or is it that you just don’t care?”

“Your words say that you respect me, by dressing up as you did, your actions say that you think my ethnicity is one of savages and one to be made fun of. Which can I believe? Can I trust you?”

I will admit that it is possible that the students who dressed up never meant to imply hate, never meant to break trust, never meant to make other students feel threatened, but it has happened, and it has caused a gaping relational wound on campus. That wound needs to be addressed. I think I may talk a little bit more about how this wound should be addressed, but my thought runs possibly towards my look at Philemon from a while back (use the search feature, or it may show up in the related searches). In short, we need an appeal to both justice and mercy for reconciliation to happen here. What that looks like is another question

From the Star Tribune today: Long Way Back To Normal

Sprawled on his stomach outside a gas station in Golden Valley, Al Hixon had a police officer’s boot planted on his neck and pepper spray shot deep into his nostrils, scorching his lungs. Moments earlier, Hixon had been pouring oil into his blue Jaguar — a quick stop on what was going to be an ordinary Saturday of shuttling his daughters to birthday parties

“I couldn’t breathe and was vomiting mucus and gasping for air,” he said. “I thought I was going to die, and asked: ‘What did I do? What did I do?’”

Police were responding to a report of a robbery at a bank outlet inside a supermarket near the gas station. And Hixon — civic-minded, well-educated and black — had suddenly become a suspect.

“If this is a black thing, you’ve got the wrong black man,” Hixon remembered telling the officers. He said that one of them told him to shut up, adding: “That’s what you all say.” Except the 911 dispatcher had told officers repeatedly that the robber, who took $7, was white.

This happened, in 2005 in Golden Valley, MN. About 20 minutes from St. Paul.