Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Channing Kennedy
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Why is Hollywood So Afraid of Black Women? [Reader Forum]
05 days ago
![Why is Hollywood So Afraid of Black Women? [Reader Forum]](http://colorlines.com/assets_c/2010/11/comment_073010-thumb-640xauto-471-thumb-640xauto-1216-thumb-640xauto-1288-thumb-240xauto-1550.jpg)
It’s Oscar season! Actually, the Oscars aren’t until the end of February, so we’ve got another few weeks of hype and speculation and scathing critical analysis. Fun stuff!
But before we get into all that… Gender Matters columnist Akiba Solomon takes down a new Washington Post report that seeks to dissect (in Akiba’s words) “Blackus Womanamina Americanus,” and yet manages to ignore every structural force that might make a black woman’s life the way it is. The Washington Post concludes that black women haven’t defined themselves. Akiba concludes differently:
Black women have been defining ourselves since before Sojourner Truth made her infamous 1851 “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, black women tell, no scream, about our humanity, complexity, legacy, pride, sisterhood, spirituality, money problems, romantic desires, bone-deep sadness, moral conflicts, sexuality and joy. Some of us are dying for a “Sunday Kind of Love.” Some of us think we’re cute and “Cleva.” Some of us aren’t that damn deep. The problem isn’t that black women haven’t defined ourselves for ourselves. It’s that mainstream media DON’T LISTEN.
Reader parkwood1920 cosigns and adds:
And after screaming to anyone who will listen about your basic humanity for three-plus centuries, you get fucking tired. And that’s when the sharks really go in for the kill. That’s exactly what I think about the corporate media’s attack on Black women now—sharks, the lot of them.
We don’t need to look far to see how this plays out in Hollywood. Akiba wrote a beautiful rejection of The Help‘s ‘historical whitewash’ way back in August, but unfortunately for all of us, Akiba’s not on the Oscars committee. So The Help is up for a slew of awards, and the resulting media coverage is ripe for examination.
When our superstar pop culture blogger Jorge Rivas isn’t shooting interviews with the director and star of black lesbian coming-of-age film Pariah, he’s keeping us updated on breaking news at Colorlines.com’s new /NOW blog. And with Oscar season in full swing, The Help is generating all kinds of headlines — and not always constructive ones, like when Best Actress nominee Viola Davis started to talk about structural racism in Hollywood, then got derailed by Charlize Theron and George Clooney. Really. As reader cantankerous_crone said:
Yes, Theron was speaking from white privilege–I mean really, saying “I have to stop you there” in order to focus on Davis’ looks? But Clooney, although smoother than Theron in his timing, dominates the entire conversation using his double-barreled white + male privilege. He positions himself as the best qualified person to speak about sexism in the film industry which is ridiculous. Notice how few words the other women present have while he relates his anecdotes, subtly making himself the authority on the issue.
Seriously, isn’t it time to stop let charming white men off the hook for their racism/sexism just because they claim to be on the right side and they’re smooth? A few years ago, at the Oscars, Clooney praised the film industry for a history of being forward thinking about race because Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for Gone With the Wind. Yet he completely failed to mention that McDaniel had to sit at a separate table at that awards ceremony. The man is blind to his own enormous privilege, but his looks and smooth public persona get him a pass.
Instead of shooting fish in a barrel by criticizing only those who have a sliver of the privilege pie (and true, should learn to own up to that fact), let’s look at those who hog practically the whole pie and use a veneer of charm and liberalism to get away with it. The myth of Prince Charming on a horse of white privilege righting all wrongs needs to die.
Jorge also reported this week that the Association of Black Women Historians released a statement condemning The Help for its distortion of history — and also, that The Help was invoked in a more positive light at a domestic workers’ rights rally in Sacramento, as a hook for constituents to understand the issues at stake. Not everyone thinks social justice should be making nice with Hollywood whitewashing. Here’s an excerpt from a comment by Brickbat Revue, kicking off a thought-provoking conversation about the tough choices organizers make within their campaigns:
Why would people use this movie. I just don’t understand. It’s not an independent film. It’s insulting to African-Americans, especially those who are most active in regards to being allies in the fight for social justice. This is disturbing on so many levels. Did they not hear the very valid complaints that African-Americans had of this film. This film as well as the book was a lie. Why use a lie to push your truth forward. This film is an untruth filled with stereotypes that that totally minimize the African-American experiences in the US. I’m insulted that Colorlines would run this story without a very critical eye.
[...] Being a domestic worker in the Jim Crow south wasn’t like this, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t light. Being black in the south in this 30s, 40s and 50s was about something way deeper than this movie portrayed. People who did it in the 30s mothers may have been born slaves, they themselves may have been born slaves. Women were raped, men were lynched their testicles were cut off. My great aunt was raped every week for years by respectable white men of the community until she fought back and they burned her house down and got away with it in the south. That’s the south that they left out. I had an uncle who was lynched as a boy just north of where this movie took place….I’m just appalled that people in the struggle can with a straight face defend the lie that this movie vomits onto the American public.
And here’s Jessica Mowles, in the same thread:
I’ve been a domestic worker, following my mom, who was for years. Questioning these domestic workers’ motives for supporting this film further erodes their/our agency, which is already so lacking. Yes, the movie was horrible for all the reasons above. But the fact that domestic workers/activists are strategically latching onto such an incomplete representation of domestic work says A LOT about the level of visibility of such work in our culture (virtually zero).
And so, as Hollywood takes agency away from Etta James over her own life’s portrayal, it packs the Oscars with white actors. The result? A good person-of-color narrative is hard to find. As reader Aliza Flores writes:
For Halloween, my sister and her roommates dressed up as The Incredibles. We were exactly 7 (the mom, the dad, the boy, the girl, the baby, the costume designer and the friend). My cousin got to be Frozone, the friend (If you have not seen the movie, Frozone is a cool superhero that can freeze anything… and he’s black – ftw!). Most of the white kids when they saw the whole group went for the baby or the dad, but most of the black kids went for Frozone. Why? Well, let’s just say that there is not enough positive representations of people of color in movies, especially black. This is just a cartoon-ish movie, but it is the case for most of the media. Remember the outburst that the black/Latino Spiderman caused? Yeah, that’s what happens.
And urbanskin:
Racism and Hollywood go hand in hand. Look no further then Marlon Brando rejecting his Oscar for Best Actor in 1973 for his performance in the Godfather, because of Hollywood’s historical RACIST portrayal of Native Peoples.
Show producer Howard Koch threatened Sacheen Littlefeather, who rejected Brando’s award for him, to be arrested if she spoke more then 60 seconds.
Flash forward to 2012, Johnny Depp has been casted to play Tonto and Indian character. WTF! Depp go the nod over a REAL Native, Adam Beach, Flags of our Fathers, who also auditioned for the role.
The racism continues.
And finally, while George Lucas deserves major props for defying Hollywood and producing Red Tails with a black cast and director… well, reader Daniel Dušek Wilkes‘ review is hard to refute:
I think the cast of Red Tails deserve recognition for their valiant efforts in the face of the worst-written script of the year.
Each week, we round up the best comments in our community. Join the conversation here on Colorlines.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.
Will Racist ‘Food Stamp’ Rhetoric Get Gingrich the Presidency? [Reader Forum]
01 week ago
At present, Newt Gingrich is still a longshot for the GOP presidential nomination, much less the general election. But his recent victory in South Carolina means he won’t be leaving the race any sooner than he has to — and that means more press for his decades-old racebaiting populism, like his repeated references to Obama as the “food stamp president”, a line that’s been met with audience cheers at GOP debates.
Our reporter Seth Freed Wessler has written extensively on the impact of racialized attacks on the safety net, speaking with families, caseworkers, and organizers for ARC’s Race and Recession report. And as Seth wrote on Thursday, putting Gingrich’s comments into context,
Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years. He’s been waging the conservative counterrevolution against economic justice for a generation, using whatever Southern Strategy relics he can get his hands on.
For two decades, Gingrich and the GOP, often with the support of Democrats, have torn to shreds many of the New Deal and Great Society era programs that kept poor folks from total destitution — and that specifically sought to close the racial gaps in economic opportunity that black children inherit from generations of American apartheid. The conservative assault on these programs has often come with racially loaded caricatures of benefit recipients as lazy, greedy and criminal.
Yet, the food stamp program is among the last functional parts of the nation’s economic safety net. Food assistance has actually expanded to meet growing need.
The program, now officially called the Supplemental Food Assistance Program, serves 46 million Americans, 13 million more than in January 2009 when Obama took office. While cash assistance, Section 8 housing assistance and other programs have been slashed close to death, food stamps have held on and expanded thanks to an infusion from the stimulus package. For many families, it’s now the only thing that’s stopping hard times from turning into total catastrophe.
Is appealing to the worst part of the white American psyche a viable campaign strategy, even in the year 2012? Or is the campaign just a vehicle for the message? Here’s what you had to say.
Churchlady320:
Gingrich embodies one of the prevalent conservative Christian mantras – the “deserving” vs. “undeserving” poor. That harks back to Social Darwinism of the late 19th century and the notion that the rich are rich because they are more “fit” while the poor starve and must labor at the worst tasks because they are undeserving. Add in Dominionist Christian views, with some Catholics participating, that GOD determines “The Elect” with the rest of us deserving of nothing, and this becomes a truly pernicious idea of embedded inequality in America. No services, no rights, no Constitutional protections can come to those of us who are undeserving.
If you think of all he says, and the implied and overt racism within, you can see that the dismantling of the “Great Society”, the “New Deal” social contract, are both just the tip of the iceberg. Newt, Santorum, Perry, and all the others want people of color, the poor, and liberals all to be stripped of their RIGHTS as well as resources. We are beneath their contempt.
Macdadione:
[...] Gingrich never referred to George W. Bush as the “food stamp president”, even when the economy turned south and the deficit swelled under his watch. His suggestion that black children don’t have working role models ignores the reality that there are millions of hard working African-Americans, and that those who aren’t employed don’t have jobs available to them. He didn’t suggest that white kids get janitorial experience, when the majority of those receiving food stamps are whites.
Politicians like Gingrich pander to the racist lowest denominator because it reinforces the bigoted perspective of their constituents, the same one’s pump primed to accept all manner of baseless lies because it poses no contradiction to their core bigoted and hypocritical beliefs. The baseless implication of Gingrich is that Obama prefers handouts to a work ethic. He’s a representative of a party that went to the mat over tax breaks for the wealthy, yet that’s somehow not considered a “handout.”
poyweson:
Don’t forget most poor work, and most unemployed are temporarily unemployed. Every time I hear Gingrich use the word “fact” I want to explode. It’s really scary when people cheer for lies, especially when they know they are cheering for lies.
KateNW:
It’s easy for the “haves” to scorn the “have nots” and perhaps they forget that the basic food stamp program was put into place to avoid malnutrition and starvation in this country. Consider the alternative! There is no shame in avoiding hunger through this support – it’s a valid and necessary program. He should be ashamed of criminalizing poverty. I believe that his comment was a thinly veiled code word that slams families of color, but reality is that the majority of persons on public assistance are white.
A civilized country should always care for their most vulnerable persons, of any age. Believe me, being poor is a full time job in itself. Ever try to stay on top of weekly job search, applying for unemployment, public assistance, social security, etc.??? The amount of paperwork, follow up tasks, documentation, appointments, travel between offices, trying to find childcare and transportation to achieve everything needed- it’s never ending! All he does is to emphasize that Newt has never eaten a USDA subsidized school lunch, gotten a food bank donation or eaten a free sack lunch because he’s a person of privilege. Is that something to emphasize? He should remember that the poor may not be privileged, but they can vote, too.
Each week, we round up the best comments in our community. Join the conversation here on Colorlines.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.
Do Tebow’s Politics Get a Pass Because They’re Conservative? [Reader Forum]
02 weeks ago
Last week, our news editor Jamilah King dug into the hype around Tim Tebow, a noted football… player… guy. Look, I don’t know sports. Fortunately, Jamilah does:
There’s no doubt that Tebow is a world-class athlete [...] but the fervor surrounding Tebow has little to do with his actual playing ability. He’s an evangelical Christian who proudly and publicly backs conservative causes. That, of course, is not an anomaly in professional sports, nor should it be all that controversial. Yet it’s a prominent part of the narrative being written about Tebow as sports’ supposedly most endangered species: the underrated “good guy.” Or, through another lens: the white, God-fearing athlete who believes in so-called “traditional” family values.
Through that latter lens, Tebow’s narrative represents an enduring double standard in sports, one in which athletes are free to endorse conservative causes, while others are hounded as bad apples for progressive political stances, particularly those involving race.
Jamilah goes on to break down the history of pro athletes’ political options in a way even I can grasp, and puts Tebow’s relationship with far-right Focus On The Family in context, with input from Dave Zirin and David Leonard. Race, politics, religion, reproductive rights, and football. No contentious topics there! Here’s a very small sample of what you had to say.
Gari Buttar:
So, according to Tim Tebow, I do not face discrimination, which is total bullshit. And, according to Tim Tebow, I’m a person who is deviant and immoral, simply for trying to live my life in as honest and true a manner as possible. I’m sorry, but this does not in any way seem to me to be a position of love towards ALL human beings. Tebow is a very exciting player to watch, but he holds some personal beliefs which are quite damaging to others, and which have led some to even end their lives via suicide. So, sorry if I am not jumping on the Tebow bandwagon.
wadegraham:
Hadn’t heard about the backlash against Hodges, that’s shameful. Was heartening to see several Green Bay Packers players (although not the big names) last year come out in support of the mass protests in Madison against Gov. Walker’s attack on labor and teachers. There are definitely professional players out there ready to stand up for something, but they rarely get media support unless it’s backed by a professional, expensive campaign (i.e. Focus on the Family).
Shelli Victorino:
Wow, what a logically unsound and narrow-minded article. First off, your comparison of Tebow and Rashad is not a very solid one. If you are going to make an issue about about race, present some better examples. Secondly, you make a huge assumption when you say “Tebow explicitly endorses a political agenda” just by thanking God at games. I have never heard him say anything about politics.
As an ardent feminist, I honestly do feel it’s a breath of fresh air to hear a public figure say that he’s excited to spend time with a little girl who’s had 73 surgeries, rather than public figures who publicly degrade women. How can you hate on that? You spend more time talking about Focus on the Family than Tebow himself. It is quite clear that although you obviously consider yourself a progressive, you are very narrow-minded in your analysis. Don’t be so quick to judge, and open your mind to the idea that not everything is so binary.
Respectfully yours,
A brown, gay, Stanford educated Christian liberal.
shannahk:
The big point here (and i’m not seeing too much on it) – the way Tebow getting lifted up onto the pedestal/altar, whatever you want to call it is exactly what the article says – the boy is WHITE.
More evidence – i’m in the laundrymat, listening to some Clear Channel station DJs babble about him. I’m neither proud nor embarrassed of my football ignorance, but couldn’t remember exactly who this guy is. The moment they said, “sure, I get tired of the hype, but it’s so nice to have a football player who’s being recognized for something other than drug use or violence against women…” — as soon as they framed it like that, i says to myself, “damn, i get it – this guy’s white! that’s why they’re so excited.”
So what it really says to me (other than pissing me off that people once again want to tell my what MY uterus produces and when) is the level of hate dished out on black football players.
Jnique27:
As a Christian and women’s and Black rights activist, I am sad that in today’s culture Christians are always portrayed as right-wing, anti-abortionist, anti-Gay haters. There are some of us who have Christ as our head and also believe that the State should not determine a woman’s right to choose and that white supremacy, racism, homophobia, and sexism are not of God and should be eradicated to create a society based on compassion and Love.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34-35, New International Version)
Each week, we round up the best comments in our community. Join the conversation here on Colorlines.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.
Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri: Rapper, Jokester, Community Organizer?
02 weeks ago
Queens native Himanshu Suri is getting reacquainted with his borough. Suri, better known as Heems of the globetrotting race-politics-and-silliness rap outfit Das Racist, has joined the board of SEVA NY, a community organization serving the Richmond Hill area’s working-class immigrant community. And while Suri is no stranger to confrontation, having served the last few years as indie music’s smirking racial conscience, the new job title means a new kind of work.
“If you’re on SEVA’s board, that means you’re a community organizer now, and you do the work,” says Gurpal Singh, SEVA’s cofounder and a former ACORN organizer, speaking by phone on Thursday. And right now, that work is a years-long redistricting battle, an uphill fight against a legacy of backroom deals that have cut Richmond Hill into powerless pieces.
“Forty seven perfect of Queens is immigrants, but almost no elected official is an immigrant, and that’s because of the gerrymandering,” says Singh. “Immigrants are the most disenfranchised group in the state, and Richmond Hill is the most gerrymandered neighborhood in the state — we belong to seven different assembly districts, two state senate districts, and three city council districts. And when a constituency is gerrymandered, nobody’s advocating for them.” The results are plain; as an example, Singh says Richmond Hill’s high school’s graduation rate hovers at 50 percent, with 600 percent overcrowding. SEVA’s solution to the root problem is to present an unignorable united front, so that elected officials see that supporting gerrymandering will be bad for their careers.
What does this mean for new recruit Suri? For starters, he’s releasing his first solo mixtape, Nehru Jackets, through SEVA’s website (click through to download). The mixtape, which features verses in Punjabi from some of SEVA’s young members, launched with Heems’ first-ever solo performance, at SEVA’s Art For Justice Community Mehfil last night.
The event also served as a coming-out party. While Heems is famous in the (predominantly white) indie music scene for being a politically astute Indian dude from Queens — and rightly so, as seen in his Alternet op-ed on the ten-year anniversary of Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder — he’s all but unknown to this political organization for Indian people in Queens. That disconnect, perhaps, is part of what’s drawn him here. “This event is reversed from the usual. It’s more about us introducing Himanshu as a new board member,” says Singh, speaking before the show. “He doesn’t know this yet, but we’ll be playing a video we made about him and his life — oh, he heard me and he’s giving me the worst ‘shut-up-man’ look right now. I’m going to delete it right afterwards.”
And while Singh doesn’t sound too concerned about getting his community organization on the hip music blogs — “talk to us in 2014 and we’ll see how it helps,” he says — Suri is preparing a new mixtape with an all-SEVA lineup through his own trendsetting record label, Greedhead, dovetailing with SEVA’s programs providing creative outlets for their youth. If the contributions of members Pawan and Lovedeep to Nehru Jackets are any indication, the Richmond Hill gang will be taking over the music blogs and the town hall meetings in a year’s time.
Colorlines interviewed Suri by email on Wednesday about his new role, and his thoughts on the South Asian identity in politics and in pop culture.
Most rappers don’t get involved in redistricting battles, but you’re not most rappers. What brought you to SEVA and this fight? And do you see this board membership as a natural progression of your career so far, or are you a little surprised to see yourself here?
Suri: Most rappers may not get involved with redistricting battles, but they certainly talk about their neighborhoods and voice the concerns of their communities. Most rappers paint a vivid picture of what happens when certain communities aren’t offered the same protections of law as others.
Ali Najmi of SEVA and myself grew up together in a community like this: a heavily South Asian neighborhood in Queens. He told me about the community organizing work he was doing, and I immediately offered the time I have outside of Das Racist to help in any way I can. I wouldn’t know what a natural progression of my career would look like. I’m 26, and I’ve both worked on Wall Street and toured the world in an art-rap group.
“Nehru Jackets” is your first proper solo outing, and you’ve talked about how you’re digging into some more life-story-specific subject matter on it. What are you rapping about here that you’ve left off of Das Racist tracks? Was it a struggle to find a rhyme for ‘gerrymandering’?
Suri: I didn’t rhyme anything with ‘gerrymandering.’ Although if I had to, I would rhyme it with ‘petty pandering.’ I began rapping about my experiences as a South Asian American more directly on our last album, Relax, and these new songs are an extension of that. I don’t think people enjoyed it on our last record, and I’m not sure people will on this record, but I’m writing about what I know.
One of the fruits of your involvement with SEVA is that some SEVA members are guesting on Nehru Jackets, rapping and singing in Punjabi, and there’s talk of Greedhead releasing a mixtape of SEVA members. You’ve worked with plenty of bands before through the label, but what’s it like working with these kids? What are they listening to that we should be jumping on?
Suri: I’m not sure what they’re listening to, although I can tell you on my mixtape I did two songs with them and both are about girls. They’re extremely hardworking Punjabi kids from Queens. I’d like to think I fall in that category, although I can’t sing or rap in Punjabi nearly as good as any of them.
For a lot of activists, Queens’ defining political moment of the last ten years came in the wake of 9/11 — mass deportations of fathers through the Special Registration program and the economic collapse in their absence, ICE-deputized police in schools, racial profiling, some really scary shit. But Queens contains multitudes. Was this part of your political awakening? What does Queens’ political legacy look like from where you’re at?
Suri: Having gone to school blocks away from ground zero, 9/11 was definitely part of my political awakening. 9/11 reacquainted me with a certain type of racism. Meeting with the guys at SEVA was also a huge part of my political awakening. I had always been concerned with politics and how they affect myself and my family, but not at the local level. Working with SEVA, I saw how racism is institutionally affecting my community, with Richmond Hill, Ozone Park, and Woodhaven split into 7 assembly districts.
Pop-culturally speaking, it seems like South Asians are doing pretty well in the U.S. in 2012, showing up in all sorts of high-profile, historically white-dominated positions in society: in boardrooms, on TV, on Pitchfork, in the GOP. Identity politics and Outsourced aside, that increasing positive presence is probably a good thing.
But politically and economically, it’s very different. As an Indian rapper from Queens who’s gotten quizzed a lot about his white fanbase and his time at Wesleyan and on Wall Street, and who’s now in an explicitly political battle for the power of South Asians over their own communities — what do you see? Are Nikki Haley and Tom Haverford both just grist in the model minority myth, or can cultural presence make a real difference for community empowerment? In your opinion, what does the path to justice, not whiteness, look like?
Suri: That dissonance has been here since 1965, when they changed immigration laws to allow Indians to enter the US. They almost entirely chose Indian people with graduate degrees in the sciences and refused to let their family members join them until ten years later, with the passing of a law in 1975. The message now is the same as it was then: we want your labor, not your lives.
I think visibility is extremely important. It becomes difficult to dehumanize a group of people when you see them on TV acting ‘just like us.’ At the same time, I think community organizing is the way to make a real difference for community empowerment, and until district lines are redrawn so as not to split South Asian communities into multiple districts under the representation of politicians who serve only constituents that look like them, community organizing is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, that’s what SEVA aims to do, and I hope to help in any way I can.
What If Nobody Told You Your Daughter Had Been Mistakenly Deported? [Reader Forum]
03 weeks ago
Two big stories captured the conversation on Colorlines.com last week — and since it’s clear we’re only seeing the beginning of Franchesca Ramsey‘s career, let’s look to the other news item.
Jakedrien Turner ran away from home in April 2010 at the age of 14, and has only been reunited with her family on Friday. Details on the story are still forthcoming, but what’s clear so far is that the United States government was complicit in keeping Jakedrien separated from her family — because they mistakenly deported her to Colombia. As Julianne Hing wrote on Friday,
Dallas’ WFAA reports that Jakadrien’s grandmother Lorene Turner, who waged a relentless campaign to locate her granddaughter, received a phone call last night informing her that her Jakadrien would be returned to U.S. officials this morning. [...] The Dallas teen, who spoke no Spanish and is a U.S. citizen, reportedly told police that she was a native of Colombia after she was arrested for shoplifting last year. According to news reports, the name she gave immigration officials matched that of a person who was wanted on other charges, and even though Turner’s fingerprints didn’t match, ICE deported her anyway. Turner’s been living in Colombia since April of last year and making a living working at a call center.
It’s concerning that ICE puts more stock in the fibs of teenage runaways more than actual fingerprinting science — and it’s concerning to think of how many people this has happened to that have never been heard from. Here’s what you had to say.
Adrienne Mon Chéri Blossoms:
Have a ‘missing’ child or wayward teen? You might want to check ICE for them. If you are a parent, this story should REALLY bother you. Something tells me this wasn’t a one-time ‘hiccup’ for a system hell-bent on bigotry over safety. This 15-yr old child was DEPORTED to another country where she had NO relatives and didn’t even speak the language. I work with kids so I’m not buying that she was that good of a liar or that sophisticated to ‘fool’ an ENTIRE legal system.
George B has little sympathy:
This girl is her own worst enemy. Giving false information to authorities is a crime. She should be held responsible for all expenses in this case.
Psyclic replies:
At the VERY LEAST, ICE needed to confirm the grl’s identity and age. Otherwise, George B could be picked up some evening without any ID and be told he was being deported back to Haiti.
gslim2436:
Honestly, none of us know 100% why she left home. They could have mistaken her by appearance because there are Colombians of African decent. But, in all, ICE did fail her. Why? Because I’m pretty sure she gave them her real name once they told her she would be deported to another country as a 20-something illegal alien. They also took fingerprints, and they had to have had the original suspect’s fingerprints on file in Colombia, otherwise they couldn’t confirm the identity without a photo or someone pointing the suspect out. This obviously was the girl’s first case ever if they didn’t have a record of her at all in the state, so she was probably an easy target of some corner cutting desk man at central booking.
Once an officer of the law, no matter what agency, branch, or division, feels he or she has made a righteous bust, all benefit of the doubt goes out the window. When the authorities get a hit on a name they don’t care what was true and what was false. It’s kinda like how a referee is in the NBA. I’ve seen a brother doing time for his older brother because of matching tattoo’s and a slight resemblance but this is ridiculous.
spikepine:
This is really getting scary, people. We need to read more and realize that deporting people from America has become big business. Read about all the new prisons being build by private prison contractors, who are making millions of dollars holding what they call ‘illegals’ for deportation. This child lied, but she got caught up in what is happening in this country. People are being detained, imprisoned and deported for a profit.
Between the time this child was arrested and finally deported, someone made thousands of dollars. Someone was paid to shelter and feed her; and someone was paid to transport her to Colombia. There is money being made for human suffering and this is only the beginning: READ.
H Saron Livingnloving Free:
Many Afro-Indio people in Colombia, so she’d fit right in (her features don’t look that different from others of African & presumably Native American – per her grandma – descent). folx may’ve thought she’d lied about not speaking Spanish …
another perspective:
Do you know how many undocumented peoples get arrested & returned to their homelands after serving jail or prison time and thus acting as free labor? Wonder how many of those folx aren’t actually the ones police sought out? Wonder, too, how many supposedly undocumented peoples are sent away regardless of the fact that they ARE in fact documented?i’m just saying — people didn’t cross borders, borders crossed peoples …
To give some context to the forces at play in the disappearing of a fifteen-year-old girl, read Seth Freed Wessler’s newest investigative piece, “Dispatch From Detention: A Rare Look Inside Our ‘Humane’ Immigration Jails,” a continuation of his incredible work for the Shattered Families report. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand the real circumstances that people face before, during, and after deportation.
In the comments on Seth’s newest piece, we’d like to thank 0msihaveavoice1 for sharing with us her firsthand account of detainment:
Great article! I have been in detention in Florida at the Broward Transitional Center In Pompano beach; it was a bitter experience. You are treated very inhumanely; if you are sick, you must fill out a request to see the doctor (it can take up to a week to see the doctor). A lot of the women detained suffered from excessive bleeding during their periods; some had stopped menstruating (a sign of psychological stress). There was an inmate who had tried to commit suicide; the doctor placed her under surveillance for one day and then released her back into the regular population. She was always drugged up with medication and spent the entire day in bed.
It was very hard for me as a young 24-year-old woman to see the great inhumane treatment that such detention centers practice. Many people who were not able to speak English were treated differently by the officers; some were neglected and ignored. There was an issue with bed bugs; a lot of women developed rashes. Once again, if you felt sick you would have to wait a week, which by then you will either feel better or worse. I remember always feeling watched over, even in my sleep. I had very bad headaches, always had nightmares. When we had to be counted around 2:00 AM, the officers will come in the cells yelling and waking us up. Sometimes they will come in at any given time in the wee hours of the night and will take some detainees, and we never saw them again. I didn’t know where they were taking them to and neither did they. It was scary to think that you could not even sleep due to being afraid and always thinking ” will I be taken away next?” “where will they take me to” …
I met great women in detention; their stories will forever be engraved in my heart. These women were undocumented, but they were all great souls. A lot of them ended up there due to lack of drivers licences. Many of them like myself had no criminal records yet still forced to be detained under “a threat to society” or “terrorism.” In the detention center where I was, we were supposed to have “Arts and Crafts” every other day; I never attended any of them – since I never witnessed such classes. The food at commissary was very unhealthy; milk had to be sipped quick since we had no fridge to store it. When we had a meeting with one of ICE’s top directors of the center we asked if we can please have healthier choices at commissary. We felt that since we had to pay for the food ourselves we might as well demand fruits and vegetables. The answer we received from him was: “Ladies, I did a lot regarding the food we provide you with – It was my idea to have salt and pepper provided during lunch and dinner meals” . . . .
Each week, we round up the best comments in our community. Join the conversation here on Colorlines.com, and on Facebook and Twitter.
‘Yo, Is This Racist?’ Andrew Ti’s Tumblr Has Your (Hilarious) Answer
01 month ago
“I am by no means any kind of authority on anything.”
For an authority figure, Andrew Ti has an unorthodox personal statement. And he stands by it, too, regularly reminding his readers that the only authority he has is what his audience projects onto him. The frequent hatemail he receives often makes this very point about his lack of credentials; he publishes it and agrees with it, just to piss off the author even further.
Ti is the sole human behind the Tumblr site “Yo, Is This Racist?”: part advice column, part humor site, part schadenfreude shooting gallery. The concept is simple: he answers questions from the Internet-at-large about whether things are racist (and if you have to ask, the answer is probably yes), while swearing a lot. “If there were a tagline for the site,” says Ti, a photographer who claims no relevant academic credentials, “it would be ‘Fuck You, You Racist Sack of Shit.’”
Topics to date include racially charged pro-life billboards, ‘Indian pudding,’ and organizing your bookshelf by color, to name a few. And despite Ti only listing one sort-of qualification on the site (“If it’s absolutely necessary for you to know, I’m not white”), YoIsThisRacist.com has blown up. Ti set up shop on November 1, and after 24 hours and a few well-placed blog shoutouts, he found himself with over 2,000 Tumblr followers. He’s answered over 500 questions in the eight weeks since then, with another 4,000 unanswered questions in his inbox.
“It grew out of an office conversation,” says Ti, a native Midwesterner now living in Los Angeles. “I was talking to my friend at work about Yosemite Sam, since that’s what you do in an office, and we were talking about his litany of swears, his fake cartoon swears, and the phrase ‘cotton-picking’ came up within that. And my reaction was ‘Yo, that is racist!’ And it literally went from that, to blog, to people picking up the blog and running with it.”
Of the submitted questions, Ti estimates that only a third genuinely want to know if something is racist; the majority are from people wanting an ‘impartial arbiter’ for a debate with a friend. Or the questions come from trolls hoping to trick him into admitting a deep-seated bias against whites, usually with a few racial slurs thrown in. Do they use the race-appropriate slurs? “No. Never. 99 percent of the people assume I’m black,” says Ti, whose full name appears at the top of every page of the site. “The idea that the word ‘yo’ is the sole purview of black America… that boggles my mind, personally.”
Of the site’s readers, however, it’s safe to say that nearly 100 percent enjoy seeing Ti exercise his unlisted point of authority: his spectacularly profane pyrotechnics.
–
Question: Yo, I’m an upper-class white kid with upper-class white friends. Is it racist that we all call each other nigga?
Answer: Yo, for real, I wish every hardship and sorrow upon you and your racist friends.
–
Question: Asking for a Callista Flockhart when you want a flat white coffee?
Answer: Yo, for real, do you actually do this at your local Starbucks, just so you can then clarify your shitty, sexist joke to the dude pulling the levers on the espresso machine? You know everyone hates you, right?
–
Question: Yo is it racist if I don’t want to include my really good Indian (dot not feather) friend from my wedding party because all the other bridesmaids are white and I don’t want her to steal attention in my wedding pictures?
Answer: Holy shit, I’m genuinely having trouble trying to count up the ways in which you are absolutely the worst person.
–
Question: you make me feel shitty for being white. based on most of your answers that’s racist right?
Answer: Yo man, if there isn’t enough shit in the world to make you feel good about being White, I can’t help you.
–
Not all of YITR’s published questions are as baldly horrifying; many are genuinely thought-provoking, or enjoyably silly, like this one about white people’s poop. But for anyone who’s lost good brain cells to the comments section on a local news article, reading Ti’s one-sided swearcraft against a volunteer army of anonymous racists is some sweet vicarious payback.
“One thing I’ve learned,” says Ti, “is that there is a significant portion of white people on the Internet who are looking for nothing more than some justification to say the n-word, no matter what it takes. It is all they are looking for, all day. Anything they can take. ‘Can I say it in this? What about rap music?’
“It’s just… what is the appeal? Let it go!”
Some people just want to make sure they’re not eating anything racist, and for them, Ti maintains a list of foods that sound racist but aren’t. Not everything makes the cut, though. “Brazil nuts, they’re colloquially known in the South as, um, ‘n-word toes’ — that’s pretty openly racist,” he says. “But there’s a lot of colonial things as well; speaking specifically, someone asked about ‘monkey bread,’ and while I didn’t do enough research to figure it out definitively, the stuff I found was pretty pretty horrifying.”
Ti’s advertised absence of qualifications works as a subtle satire of racially alleviative figures like Herman Cain. Is he concerned that the joke will be lost on the people who most need to get it?
“It’s a worry that people are using me as a token, or as a person of color who can speak for all people of color, which I do not purport to do,” he says. “If people see me as a crutch they can use, I hope I don’t give them that crutch. I never try to confirm that people’s racist or pseudo-racist views are, in fact, OK. I err on the side of ‘this is super-racist, fuck you.’ I feel like that’s a safer place for me to be.”
In other words, Ti isn’t interested in using sweet talk to enlighten anyone. He sees it as ineffective, and worse yet, not funny — and ultimately, any higher mission he has will have to be accomplished under the unforgiving rules of Internet comedy. As he says of his tone, “I’m taking the rhetoric to the Internet’s level. And for people who are on the fence, who are potential allies, I’m bringing them in on the joke — of making fun of people.”
And, naturally, the same no-permission-necessary approach that makes the site so endearing has garnered some misses. He expresses genuine regret for an easy punchline about thin black male comedians dressing as fat black women, saying he wishes he’d taken the time to find a funny way to unpack what he calls the practice’s “wildly problematic” history. He’s gotten pushback for his decision to use the colloquial interpersonal definition of racism, rather than the social activist definition of prejudice-plus-power. Even when discussing one of his favorite responses, to an anonymous woman who asks why “there are no sororities FOR white girls” (to which he gives an atypically long answer with both bullet points and ad-hominem disses), Ti sounds a bit cautious. “I don’t feel that I’m doing damage by calling this girl racist and dumb, even though it’s super mean and probably unnecessary. But it was funny! Is it a net positive? I hope so, but I understand if someone says it isn’t.”
The reason for Ti’s light tread is likely his readers, and not the racist ones. As he says he’s discovered since launching, Tumblr has a magical combination of accountability, shareability, long-form format, and youth; as a result, a large number of enthusiastic young social justice geeks have found a home among (and within) the cat gifs. They’re big fans of YITR — and like Ti, they don’t wait for permission to say when someone’s privilege is showing. “I’ve certainly been called out for inadvertently saying sexist things, or things that are not quite on point,” he says. “And I’ll see, from reblogs of my posts, conversations going back and forth with people in these communities. It’s great!”
In keeping with his goal to “try not to make the world a worse place,” Ti’s compromising his position as an unqualified expert and putting together a list of reading material, culled from reader suggestions. He describes it as “a resource for when people are done reading my dumb jokes about race and want to actually learn something.”
Ti’s not looking to move from jokes to academia, nor is he interested in interrupting his soliloquy of disses, “unless someone, and this is for all the readers out there, has a really great zinger that I missed.” The reading list, then, shouts out the social justice community while leaving the jokes their own space. Popular suggestions so far include Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?,” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog at the Atlantic.
“One of the things that’s actually taking so long,” says Ti, “is that I want to at least, you know, try to read some of these things, to educate myself and to make sure I’m not suggesting anything horrible. And it’s not a bad education for me to have.”
“What I would like to have, the resource that seems most needed based on the questions in general and the hatemail from indignant white people,” says Ti, “is just an examination of white privilege, and of all privilege in America. That’s what I try to bring to the table, without being too serious about it: an examination of privilege. Because at the end of the day, I’m making jokes and making fun of people, and if that sting of embarrassment can make one in a hundred people think, ‘why is that? Why do I feel this way?’ That’s what I can bring.
“Uh, besides being hilarious, which I totally am.”
If You Were A White Forbes Columnist Commenting On Black Kids… [Reader Forum]
01 month ago
Way back in December 2011, Forbes Magazine technology columnist Gene Marks penned a piece with the title “If I Were a Poor Black Kid,” and which went downhill from there. The Cliff’s Notes version (get it?) is that black kids could end education disparity overnight if they’d just go to better schools. No, really.
We ran two pieces, one by our Gender Matters columnist Akiba Solomon and one by our favorite comic (and ARC board member) W. Kamau Bell. Akiba and Kamau were able to stop rolling their eyes long enough to write two provocative, incisive responses to Mr. Marks’ blindered optimism. And the Colorlines community turned out in force to contextualize, debate, and giggle.
In all honesty, I debated whether to pick on Gene Marks these weeks later by highlighting him in Reader Forum. But let’s be real — the fight against privileged condescension didn’t end when the New Year’s ball dropped. And besides, you commenters were on point!
Let’s start with the reactions to Kamau’s “Five Signs You’re Acting Like A White Guy, Or, How Not To Be Gene Marks.” Here’s reader Shannon LC Cate:
This looks so familiar, as a teacher of white guys (among others). The girls (of whatever race) will come to class uber-prepared, then hem and haw and pre-apologize that maybe “this isn’t the right answer” then the guy with the backwards baseball cap who stumbled in ten minutes late and never even bought the books let alone opened them, starts opining without even raising his hand.
Julie Murphy:
Ha! My favorite – in a women’s studies literature class we were discussing female creativity, and the prof asked if we felt a difference in creativity during our periods. First person to answer – was a white guy! And yes, it was a trick question because he always answered questions first and at length…
36stmexican adds:
More signs you are acting like a white guy:
1] you move to Arizona or another state that once was Mexico.Then you decide there are too many Mexicans there.So instead of packing your stuff and moving back to SnowFalls, you pass a law forcing us to show papers to prove we belong.
2] You move to a large southwestern city close to Mexico.You get mad because so many people speak Spanish.So you yell out loud at Walmart “Speak English.This is America” Because… you didn’t look at a map to see where you were before you came here? White male privilege means never having to check where you are before you open your mouth.
ace24 dissents:
hmmm… I thought tolerance was all about not treating people differently based on race.. I guess I was wrong.
Let’s end racism with racism.
Karari Kue contextualizes:
I understand your sentiment. Believe me, I appreciate that there are folx out there who genuinely believe that racism is wrong and shouldn’t exist.
The problem is, the definition of racism that we are taught in school ISN’T what racism really is. In order for racism to work, their has to be institutional power ensure it happens. Without POWER it really isn’t racism.
I know it’s hard for most folx to understand, especially when we have been brainwashed in grade school to believe that racism effects everyone and anyone. The problem is NONE of our discussions on race include the important notion of white privilege.
THAT’S what this piece is tackling, not his racial identity. It’s about his privilege of being white. THAT’S what give him the courage to speak out about something he has no personal experience about. THAT’S what makes him THINK that he can and should always say something.
jeremy springer agrees and dissents:
Racism is the systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement of one group of people by an establishment which holds power. If you are disenfranchised, you don’t have immunity for discriminating, but you have no real power to hold back someone of a different race as a result of your discriminatory feelings.
With that being said, I AM a white guy, and don’t pretend to know what it’s like to experience racism, but I was still offended by the discriminatory nature of this article. If you take the worst attributes of any guy who has ever been white and attribute them to white guys, even those of us who don’t share those attributes, you’re going to piss off a lot of white guys who might even agree with your core point.
For which W. Kamau Bell, um, ‘apologizes’:
I am truly sorry, white guy. Please forgive me for offending you. I will try to do a better job of pleasing you and all other white guys in the future. You are correct to note that it is not smart of me to piss any white guys off. Thank you for the correction. I hope this didn’t ruin your Kwanzaa.
And Kermit dissents in the opposite direction:
Some issues:
1) Bell always backpedals a bit, probably as not to alienate the more “understanding” members of his white audience. Like this: Now of course, you don’t have to be white or a guy to act like a “white guy.” Appeasement. There’s a reason it’s called “acting like a white guy”, right? Let’s not let them off the hook by saying “Oh BUT, everyone does it!” No, everyone does NOT do it, and that’s exactly the point. White men tend to be entitled, oblivious, paternalistic jerks, and it is precisely BECAUSE they are white and male. We didn’t all draw straws and they just so happened to pick the ones that said “Jerk” on them.
2) The first point doesn’t apply to Marks, because he did give “solutions”. They were just shortsighted, stupid, and blatantly obvious. Black kids should do well in school? Well, golly, Gene, why didn’t they think of that! He’s implicitly calling them all poor black kids stupid for not coming up with his revelatory solutions to their problems. And the real problem is that Marks isn’t looking at systemic reasons for low achievement.I know Bell’s a comedian, but if you’re gonna venture into the sticky realm of social commentary, especially on matters as charged as race and privilege, you can’t squint or cower from what needs to be said. Take off the kid gloves, homey.
On Akiba’s “If I Were A White, Male, Middle-Aged Forbes Columnist,” here’s reader Andrew Ridley:
Gene Marks is prescribing advice based on a fictional world he has invented where black kids simply exist, completely free from all outside forces and influences. Marks makes no reference to nor shows appreciation for the true context in which they live.
brigidkeely:
As a Chicagoan, one place his ignorance REALLY lept out was his blithe recommendation to look into a magnet or charter school. Magnet/charter/classical/SES etc. schools in Chicago get literally a thousand-plus applicants every year, to fill a very small number of seats. One magnet that’s been closed because of neighborhood school overcrowding has 70 open seats each year, and 1500 applications. So even if a kid does take it upon themself (or has parent/guardians who do it) and apply, the chances of actually getting in are VERY slim because those seats are mostly taken up by children of affluent families who’ve had access to tutoring and extracurriculars and all the things money can buy.
An except of a long, thoughtful comment by soulwork, which y’all should read in full:
Capitalism is based on the exploitation of labor; this means that capitalists must work to either keep people working at a low wage or unemployed. This is just a fact of capitalism, and racism is a convenient justification for closing the doors on Black people, and assuring that Black students have less than a fair shot. The American Dream has always been a nightmare for someone. For capitalism to run at 100% efficiency, that is, full employment, the bosses would have to forego their astronomical profits. And if they were going to do that they would not have taken their companies overseas to exploit a near starving labor force; one to whom they could pay a much lower wage, and so drive down the wages and job opportunities for the entire global work force. Racism is not an accident, nor is classism. They are justifications for the abuse of minorities, working, and poor people.
urbanskin:
I’m a Lakota male who got the high GPA’s, went to community college, transferred to a University, got a BA and STILL had a hard time finding employment opportunities. While I have currently found work for the past 8 years in education, and a job I love working with our Indian youth, I still make considerably less then the median salary of an “American” worker. Yes, education can help, but it is no silver bullet.
Sophia Giddens:
If I were a poor black kid, I sure as hell would not be able to afford a copy of Forbes Magazine at $4.99 an issue. Nor would I be from any community that would easily afford me access to “resources that are available. Like technology.” So to whom exactly is Marks preaching? Maybe he’d like to remove all limitless opportunities afforded his own children–private schools, tutors, after school programs, the dignity and self-assurance of an upper middle class lifestyle, 3 guaranteed healthy meals a day, a safe neighborhood, the security of knowing you aren’t and won’t ever be a police target–and try this sink-or-swim by your bootstraps test on them.
Perhaps too risky a test? Yes, I think the poor black kids are well aware of that.
rdsathene:
Gene Marks is the reason I can’t read Paulo Freire enough! Mark’s next essay: “If I wasn’t a white privileged paternalistic bigot.”
parkwood1920:
If I was a white and entitled Forbes columnist, I would whitesplain to poor Black kids about struggle and pain that I know absolutely nothing about. I would then ignore all substantive critiques from people of color and antipoverty activists, and continue to insist on my right to talk down to poor Black children who catch more hell on their best day than I could ever imagine. I would then assert that I stand by the original whitesplaining nonsense column that I published earlier.
Wait a minute—that’s already happening! Never mind.
Matt Balano:
How about, “if I were an upper-middle class white guy, I would hard to understand my privilege, do my best to dismantle systemic racism, and commit myself to being an ally, which means sitting at the table w/people of all backgrounds, actively listening, and promoting self-determination for all. I will use my privilege to be both subversive and overt in my lifelong efforts to create a more equitable world. I will not be paternalistic, patronizing, or pretend that I am an expert on situations with which I have no experience whatsoever. Explicitly, I vow to…” Damn, this dude got me all fired up…
last word goes to Javier Chajon:
[...] What white folk like Gene Marks doesn’t recognize is that whether intended or not, his comments fit a long-running narrative constructed by neoconservatives that that implies that socioeconomic inequality is ultimately based on a lack of effort, smarts, determination or enterprise on the part of black and brown folk — and fails miserably in understanding how systemic racism works or in identifying institutional barriers faced by young children of color.
U.S. Somalis Can’t Support Families During Famine, Thanks To Anti-Terror Laws
01 month ago
Like a lot of small countries on the wrong side of post-colonialism, Somalia’s GDP is deeply dependent on remittances, money sent back home from abroad by migrants who leave the country to find work. But unlike other countries, Somalia has spent twenty years with no government worth mentioning; as a result, Somalia has no banks to receive money transfers. Even predatory transfer centers like Western Union can’t set up shop. So, Somali innovators have created hawalas, money transfer companies that relay money through a midpoint in a neighboring country’s bank.
This system has worked well enough for years — but since 9/11, hawalas in the United States have come under increasing federal scrutiny and complex anti-terror laws, so much so that most American banks simply won’t work with them. Today, one of the few remaining banks that serves the Somali community in this way is Minneapolis’ Franklin Bank, part of Minnesota’s Sunrise Community Banks network. Because of the Twin Cities’ massive Somali community (and to the reticence of other banks), Franklin Bank has become a hub for hawalas across the country, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in small-amount transfers to family members back home, and helping Somalia deal with a horrific famine crisis.
Now, following the conviction of two Minneapolis women accused of using hawalas to finance Somali radicals al-Shabab, Franklin Bank has announced that it will be ending its hawala program in the next two weeks; although the bank has been an ally to the Somali community for years, the risk of inadvertently violating federal anti-terror laws is simply too great. And while estimates vary as to how many hundreds of millions of dollars in remittances get sent from the U.S. to Somalia each year, nobody doubts that the economic results with have deadly consequences. Not to mention, of course, the golden opportunity this will represent for al-Shabab.
To find out how Somali community organizers are fighting for their loved ones abroad, I spoke with AFSAN’s Hassan Warsame, a financial consultant and activist with twenty years of experience in anti-money laundering regulations. He’s in Minneapolis working with Somali Action Alliance and other groups, to help reach an arrangement between Sunrise Community Banks and Somali remittance companies.
Most of the reporting on the story so far has described hawalas as an ‘informal’ money transfer service. Is that accurate? And why are hawalas so important to Somalia’s economy?
Well, first of all, when people hear ‘hawala’ they think of something that’s underground and informal. This is totally different; it’s a legal business that has a license with the Department of Treasury, as well as with every state in which it operates.
Second, this remittance business is unique. The reason is, the customers are sending money to Somalia, or to Somali refugees in neighboring countries like Kenya, and that means there is no alternative to send money to a loved one or family member. The only way to get money to them from the U.S. or anywhere else is through this remittance system, because there’s no banks in Somalia! Money-wiring services like Western Union and MoneyGram do not operate in Somalia.
The livelihood of millions of Somalis depends on these remittances from the U.S. and other western countries. And the fact that there is no other alternative, this puts at risk millions of people that will not be able to feed themselves, kids that will not be able to go to school, will not be able to get medical attention because they don’t have money. The whole Somalia business economy, really, is built around remittances — so that, also, will collapse. It’s a very, very serious issue that could easily impact millions of people; it’s as big as or bigger than the famine problem that’s happening now in Somalia. And it will contribute to the chaos and instability.
So this is a bad way to fight terrorism.
Oh absolutely, this is the wrong way — this would be a gift to al-Shabab, the radical group that’s operating in Somalia. They will use this as a propaganda tool. And also, this is not the way to gain the trust and the confidence of the local population! If you want to win people’s hearts and minds, this is absolutely the wrong approach.
And it’s a humanitarian issue. Hawalas are probably by far the largest aid facilitators in Somalia. I mean, there is no aid organization that handles the amount of money that goes to Somalia from the diaspora. Hawalas sustain a lot of people that don’t have any other income besides this one hundred dollars, or fifty dollars, from somewhere in the U.S., some small town, by a hardworking Somali who’s probably working two shifts to sustain family members in Somalia.
What are the alternatives?
Well, let me talk about what’s going to happen, actually. If Sunrise Bank closes those accounts, the remittance agencies will go out of business. When they close their doors, those Somali customers who normally send that fifty or one hundred dollars will not have an outlet to send that money. Which means that the beneficiaries in Somalia who rely on that hundred dollars to buy food and other necessities will not be able to do that. So the immediate impact is that the business will stop, but the real impact is on those people on the ground in Somalia that have no other source of income.
There is no alternative. The Somali customer here who sends that money cannot just walk into a bank and wire money. They cannot go to Western Union or MoneyGram to send that money.
What’s the strategy, then? Are you talking with Sunrise Bank and saying, we’re going to pull our accounts?
Actually, Sunrise Bank has been very good to the Somali community. They have been the only bank to provide service to Somali remittance agencies, for a very long time. And as you know, they gave a two-week extension, and they’re also very much open to solutions. So there’s a discussion among Somali remittance operators to work with Franklin Bank and come up with a long-term solution, and we believe that’s still possible.
What does a best-case scenario look like, for this fight?
The best case scenario will be for Somali remittance agencies and Sunrise Bank to sit down and come up with a workable long-term solution, so that those millions in Somalia and in Somali refugee camps can continue receiving the money sent by their loved ones here in the U.S. The best scenario is to keep those accounts open, and to solve any concerns or questions that Sunrise Bank or Franklin Bank is having. A next best solution is to look for other banks, so there are alternatives.
Who are your allies in this fight?
We’ve been working closely with a lot of officials here in the state. Keith Ellison has been a great help, Al Franken has been working hard, Amy Klobuchar… All the elected senators have been heavily involved and have really put in a lot of effort into talking to the Department of Treasury, the White House, the State Department, the Attorney General. Everyone realizes how important this issue is. It’s an issue of life and death for millions of people, and that will have a direct impact on U.S. security.
And Hassan, if I can ask, do you have family in Somalia that you send remittances to?
Yes, I do. I send money regularly to my mother in central Somalia, in a small town that never had a bank — and of course there’s no Western Union of Moneygram there, but there are at least four Somali remittance agencies in that city. So every month, she gets $200 from me. I walk into a remittance office, and that can be anywhere — if I’m travelling, it could be out of state. If I deposit the $200 tonight, for example, my mother will pick it up tomorrow. They will actually call her and tell her, ‘you have money available.’
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Who Pays the Price for DC’s Morning-After Pill Decision? [Reader Forum]
01 month ago
In the ongoing battle for reproductive rights, losses are to be expected. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less when our powerful allies turn their backs on us. In her latest Gender Matters column, Akiba Solomon fills us in on how Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat serving a Democrat president, reversed the FDA’s decision to let a morning-after pill be sold over the counter. (Obama has since stated his support of Sebelius’ decision, invoking his status as a father of two daughters.)
The FDA says that Plan B is safer than aspirin — which, incidentally, is available over the counter. And beyond the identity politics of ‘good girls’ vs. everyone else, Plan B is designed to be exactly that: a backup plan that acknowledges that there is no failsafe plan A. Akiba lays out the added costs of Sebelius’ decision, financial and otherwise; once again, the group that’s going to pay it is young women of color, especially those without access to trustworthy free clinics.
The Colorlines.com community is none too impressed with the decision either. Here’s what you had to say.
Alice Bowron:
Obama is losing perspective. His daughters basically live in a palace at taxpayer expense; he & his whole family have excellent healthcare coverage, again at taxpayer expense. No wonder he’s getting that “ivory tower”/abstraction kind of ‘reasoning’ vs. REAL WORLD WISDOM. It’s not about how ‘good girls’ behave – or about what ‘should’ happen – it’s about helping the girls who fall through the cracks, who have no real backup, and whose lives will become a total mess if they don’t have early access to help keep them out of multiple childrearing before the age of 18. GET REAL PEOPLE.
Anna Gabrielle Viveros:
Has any one noticed that boys under the age of 17 don’t have to get parental consent to buy condoms? Another way that a patriarchal system is controlling women’s bodies and yet excuses men. :/
Jay Robert:
Gray Davis vetoed a law that would have made birth control coverage mandatory. His false excuse: It would hurt small business. Democrats are a fragile & fair weather friend of reproductive choice.
LoriWisconsin:
Currently, many adolescent girls under 17 don’t have health insurance. Minority girls have a higher rate of being uninsured. That means that these girls, who have only 3 days for Plan B to work, must not only raise $35-$50 for the pill, but also more money for a medical appointment so she can get a prescription. This will raise the cost too high for many under-age-17 girls to afford. Minority girls under age 17 will be disproportionately priced out of the Plan B option.
liveurlive:
First off: girls under 17, we all know, are more than likely to be having sex. They better not be thinking how to raise $30 for a pill; save $25 and go and buy 4/$5 condoms. Better yet, if they don’t know let me inform the grown & the teens….Take your azz to the free clinic to get some free condoms & stay in school and get an education! For people to be upset about this issue is just silly, stupid, & moronic!
Emily Graff:
Condoms break sometimes, free or not.
Tate Jawdat:
Couldn’t agree with this article more. This decision hurts young women and especially young women of color. This was most definitely a political move – just as much as negotiating away funding for abortion in DC.
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Charles & Ray Eames Get Some L.A. Love From Ice Cube
01 month ago
It may surprise some of our younger readers to learn that before Ice Cube was rich and famous, he used to be a rapper. (Rimshot.) And it may surprise our readership in general to learn that before he was a rapper, he studied architectural drafting. In this new video by Los Angeles arts campaign Pacific Standard Time, he speaks from the heart about his love for Los Angeles’ great buildings–especially the Eames House, longtime home of the pioneering American design power couple, Charles and Ray Eames.
Chales and Ray Eames were famous for their work with prefabbed materials, a medium they came to because of its availability to the general public. (Yes, you can probably blame Ikea on them.) And the Eames House represents the pinnacle of the married couple’s make-it-work, design-for-all ethos; though the plans for the building were published in 1945, wartime shortages kept the construction materials (all prefabbed) from being delivered in full until 1948. By that time, the Eames had fallen in love with the undisturbed valley they would build on… so they redesigned the entire building, working under the self-imposed constraints that they’d only use the materials at hand, and that they’d make a building in harmony with its surroundings. The result? The gorgeous, flowing house that Ice Cube tours in the video above, made using every stock window and wall called for in the original plans, plus a single extra steel beam.
“It’s not about the pieces; it’s how the pieces work together,” says Cube, alluding to the parallels in hip hop’s recontextualization of sampled music. “They were doing mashups before mashups existed.”
It’s easy to see how the Eames’ egalitarian, available-resources philosophy of art could spark something in a poor young artist from a resource-starved neighborhood. And hearing Ice Cube talk about it so plainly is pretty special, even if he does call us a “bitch” at the end (did you know he used to be a rapper?).
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