sold.

Political punditry and promises of change be damned! This is what it really takes to win over the American populace:




Take a slightly dorky light skinded dude, throw him a fedora and tell him to hold a cigarette like a doobie. That's my president.

via adrizzle.

More.

Barack Obama will eat your children

And turn the country Muslim, which is almost the worst thing ever, except that he also conspires on behalf of a radical organization called the Black Community.





via adrizzle

And now, a message from John McCain on his suspect allegiance to the Black Community:


via ill doctrine

Uh oh, Ye.

Kanye West debuted his new video for Love Lockdown on Ellen this week. And some diehard Kanye fans aren't pleased.

The reason? In the video, Kanye juxtaposes a modernist white background against representations of African warriors, percussionists and nude women. Loin clothes and spears, galore.

See the video:


And then, my friend Salim's response:


So, let's hear it. Did Kanye cross the line this time? Is this just art for art's sake? Or is he making a subtle artistic critique?

John McCain: That One Bigot

Via Adrizzle.

DNC Coverage: Fear and Loathing in Denver

I'm headed to Denver tomorrow morning for the Democratic National Convention. I'm excited to see folks, to see the shows and get a first-hand glimpse of the Democratic Machine. But in all honesty, I'm afraid.

Almost everyone is telling me how honored I should be to go to such a historic event. And no doubt, I'm humbled, privileged and flattered. But the Obama game, which I've never quite gotten into on the fanatic level that most folks around me have, is losing me.

Obama's recent selection of Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential running mate kinda sealed the deal for me. Biden might not be a bad guy. In fact, I don't know too much about his policies, his history in the senate, or his outlook for America. My lack of enthnusiasm is in part due to the fact that he's the antithesis of the Obama hype -- old, white and with a penchant to say racist shit. Like I've said many times before, the father the campaign rolls along, the more Obama looks like the new blackface of the political establishment.And Obama, because of necessity, has bad to brand his messages of hop and change in much the same way

A few months ago I spoke briefly to a well-respected, seasoned hip-hop journalist about his analysis of multicultalism and race in America. I'm probably taking his analysis way out of context, but his take went something like this: first the demographics change, then then culture changes, and slowly but surely, the political establishment changes. But change doesn't mean progress. Latinos are the fastest growing racial group in America, and already outnumber whites in the state of California. Yet immigration debates have reached an all-time high, and migrant workers continue to be imprisoned, deported and killed. From TJ Crawford to Soledad O'Brien in network newsrooms to Tyra Banks, Diddy, and the ever-so-classy New York, people of color are everywhere in popular culture. But when New York walks the streets of LA asking anyone she thinks might be Asian about Japanese culture, can you really call that progress?

And now there's Obama. Maybe I'm just severely uninformed. Or maybe I'm just a cynic. But putting a Black face on a white establishment just doesn't seem all that progressive to me. Groundbreaking? For sure. He's one of the most charismatic leaders in our nation's collective history. On par, if not far superior, to the allure of JFK.

And his campaign has been genius, the perfect combination of grassroots organizing, political and cultural branding, and the ever-so-important cool. He's changed the hip-hop game in ways that not even Jay-Z could fathom. He's an internationally bred, post Civil Rights baby who's Ivy League educated and listens to Jay-Z. Needless to say, hip-hop heads, mixed kids, Jack and Jill-type Black folks, most white liberals and baby boomer Black folks are all in his corner.

And according to the stats, I guess I should be too.

But as I get ready to leave for Denver, more than anything, I'm afraid. Afraid that the convention that will be like shopping at Wal-Mart during a 50% off sale -- oversaturated but with little substance. Afraid that I'll see the media cameras, the parties and the delegates and feel horribly out of place. Afraid that we've traded critical consciousness for political idealism. Afraid that we're confusing "change" with "progress."

Or maybe I'm just one of those oft-studied urban youths with street allegiances, hood cynicism and a college degree too insecure to plant one foot sternly in either world.

Stay tuned.

Next up: Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente and the Obama Movement.

SF Weekly Hates Heather Fong

Another week, another horrendous SF Weekly cover story. This week’s victim is San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong. The writer, Ron Russell, pens a sensational account filled with racist and sexist overtures. Fong, a hometown hero and the first Asian American women to lead a major police department in the country, is painted as nothing more than the frightening example of the dangers of affirmative action.



According to Russell’s portrayal, Fong is the deferential, subservient footstool for opportunity whore Mayor Gavin Newsom. Take this gem:

“Mild-mannered and deferential, Fong is the antithesis of Hollywood’s version of a big-city police chief. In a department whose chiefs have customarily come from the ranks of hard-nosed street cops…Fong spent only a few years as a beat cop on the not-so-mean streets of the Richmond before climbing the career ladder as an administrative tastemaker. Also unlike her predecessors, hers is the persona of a Girl Scout leader.”

Can’t get much more caricatured than that.
(Warning: this video below has incredibly cheesy music.)


The article goes on to mention how she’s kept her long-term boyfriend and deceased dog out of the public eye. Because we all know how important knowing whether your police chief feeds her dog puppy chow is to fighting crime. It also mentions how Fong allegedly fetched water for Gavin Newsom and his cohorts at a city meeting. Forreal.

I don’t necessarily trust cops. I also have a family history marred in the inaccuracies of the San Francisco Police Department. So I’d be the first person to criticize the department’s abysmal record in solving homicides and their overall ineffectiveness when it comes to building the community trust it takes to truly protect and serve. Yet this article is a glaring example of the tight-knit institutional hierarchy that contradicts the city’s utopian image. The hierarchy – call it white supremacy, male dominance, or a classic case of ‘the system’ – is often made up of white suburban transplants who own the city’s papers, run city government and report the city’s news with little regard for the historical context of their work.

Russell mentions how Fong replaced the old guard of hard-nosed Italian male police chiefs almost in passing (white male supremacy, anyone?) Mayor Gavin Newsom’s opportunistic ‘diversification’ of the city’s top ranks are also mentioned in passing (never mind that it’s a glaring example of co-opting multiculturalism to advance capitalism.) Instead, Fong is left to take the fall for decades of procedural blunders, institutional neglect and community distrust.

I guess this is what happens when your city – and everything in it – gets sold to the highest bidder.

Nas says f*ck fox news

(Disclaimer: I'm always perplexed when writing blogs in which there's a youtube video involved. I mean, ya'll can just watch the video, right? But no, chances are won't unless there some context. So here I go...)

Via Adrizzle.

I love Nas. Always have, probably always will. Yeah, he's a lot of hype, but...I love the hype, even when it's around his N-Word/Untitled upcoming album.

Less than a week before the highly anticipated album's offcial release, Nas' Sly Fox video hit the internets. Check it:

The Baby Mama and 'Terrorist Fist Jabber'

Fox news is bent on painting Michelle Obama as an angry, bitter Black woman who can't think apart from her man.

BraveNewFilms shows just how ridiculous their attacks hgave been:


For more, check out Michelle Obama Watch

For Shaniqua

What's in a name?

A recent post on Racialious got me thinking about names, tears and everything that happens in between.

I cried once during my time in Jamaica. Amid all the craziness -- the predominantly white group of American students who were in my study abroad program, the rampant homophobia of my Jamaican ally's -- there was only one time I broke down in tears.

It happened because of the name 'Shaniqua'.

After our mandatory SIT Gender & Development seminar, where we studied among ourselves and didn't interact at all with the rest of the University of the West Indies student population, the group of ten white women and myself made our way to the campus bookstore. I was annoyed, as always. My feelings were a mix of anger and confusion. I was angry because there were no other down students of color who I could bond with. Angry at the sense of entitlement that accompanies a white face and a liberal arts degree. Angry at the fact that these same white women who knew the lyric to every Bob Marley song that blared from their iPod speakers could look at me like I was crazy when I bonded with my Black Nationalist friends.

But I didn't want to be left out. So yeah, maybe I secretly wanted to know those random ass indy rock references they made. Or maybe I wanted to have a story about drug binges and beer pong to match theirs. But all I had were stories of the second-hand weed I smoked with my folks, and our late-night ciphers where we reminisced about childhoods, hip-hop and white people.

So on this day I weaved in and out of conversation with the attention span of an assassin. I participated from a distance, but paid attention to every word, every move. And then it happened.

"What would make you stop being my friend?" asked the white girl from San Francisco.

"I can't think of anything outside of you killing my family or something", replied the biracial (but always passing for white) girl from San Rafael.

"Hmh...what if my name was...Shaniqua!"

"Ugh, I'd kill you if your name was Shaniqua!"

In an imaginary world, I spoke up. I told them how fucking racist they were, how they were nothing but insecure little brats who deserved to have their asses kicked, their cameras stolen and their Visa's revoked. "Don't you know that Black women are killed everyday because of shit like that? Because of attitudes like yours? Because their names are Shaniqua's, or Tenisha's, or because they're too Black, too fat, too loud, too silent?"

But in the real world, I didn't say shit. I averted my eyes, swallowed my voice and stood there, in shock. By the time I processed what had been said, they were already on our chartered bus ready to go back to the program office. In that moment I hated being the only one to say something. Afterall, being brave is lonely. And as a Black girl, I guess I was used to being silent. Instead, my anger manifested itself throughout the rest of the trip, as I averted my eyes, disengaged from the group, and turned up my headphones.

The next morning I woke up from a bad sleep. Thirty five hundred miles away from home and everything that was familiar, music was my only salvation. So I turned to the only song I knew that addressed the issue I couldn't get off my mind: Talib Kweli's Black Girl Pain.

This is for Aisha, this is for Kashera
This is for Khadijah scared to look up in the mirror
I see the picture clearer thru the stain on the frame
She got a black girl name, she livin black girl pain

Then came the tears. I thought about all the girls I knew growing up: Myesha, Tasheanna, Chika, Naima. My best friends from childhood. I thought about how many times I wanted to go by my middle name "Nicole" when I was little because "Jamilah" was 'too ghetto.' I thought about how many times I had to slowly pronounce my name, or correct people when they mispronounced it. I thought about how many times I let people mispronounce it. I thought about Noah's bagles, or Jamba Juice, where I became "Jamie" our of 'convenience'.

And then I thought about what 'too ghetto' really meant, and if it was such a bad thing after all. Hell, it was the ghettoist girls I knew, named after democratic ideals, African goddesses or female versions of baby daddy's nicknames, who I could rely on when my mom drank too much, or who understood the concept of making a home out of mismatched nik-naks from Ross, broken dreams and laughter.

Now that I think about it, it would be wrong of me to place this just on white people. The pervasiveness of white privilege, and racist domination, most definitely. But it was my Black Jamaican host mother who called me "Jamie" for three months because it was 'easier.' And it was her cousin visiting from DC who laughed at my name after meeting me.

"That's an amusing name" she said.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, well I thought it was a play off of "Jam" in "Jamaica" and something else."
"No. It's Arabic. It means beautiful." I said.

More and more, it's people of color I hear who want to name their children the whitest names possible to save them from possible embarrassment. I was on that bandwagon for a long time, too. Now I realize there's something incredibly beautiful and empowering about names that can't be found on amusement park keychains. And that a name, along with someone simply being, is one of the strongest acts of resistance around.

So five, maybe ten years from now, when you meet my baby girl Sorraya, pronounce her shit right!

Who's Your Daddy?

Who saw Obama's Father's Day speech? See Racialicious for a real re-cap and analysis.

MIA's 'Finna Bomb On You

(And other far less sensational headlines.)

We love MIA. Even though, as Driz pointed out, we're slightly annoyed by her white teeny bopper fans.

Former LA Weekly staff writer Daniel Hernandez recently penned an interview with the style icon and political diva in Baby Baby Baby Magazine, based in Mexico City. She had some shit to spit about creativity across the pond, fashion and launching missles from Mexico if her US visa doesn't get renewed:

...from a series of questions about what it means to be an immigrant in the United States and the creative energy that the Third World brings to it:

"America has no more creative energy than England. England has way more. All this stuff that’s happening in Middle America, if you think about it, creatively, their political stance. People fly-posting, and ‘fuck this shit.' All that shit. If you look at the designers that make political T-shirts, ‘Fuck Nike, Here’s Mike.’ That actual attitude started in England. It didn’t even start in America while they were fucking going around bombing people all over the planet. It kind of came from Banksy. We were doing shit like that 10 years ago reacting to what was going on in America, because there was no reaction that was coming out of America. […] It couldn’t have come from America. You can’t make that happen in America because they’re not tolerant. That was the whole point."

She also said, about Kala, "I wrote the album for Mexicans, shit," and that if her visa is not renewed and she must leave her place in Brooklyn she will, jokingly, "Move to Mexico and start launching missles from here." And when I asked her if fashion influences her music or if music influences her fashion, M.I.A. unequivocably said, "Fashion comes first."

Cop it at your nearest American Apparel store. Yeah, seriously.

The REAL McCain part 2

Who's White? Who's down? And Who Am I?

Believe it or not, I have white friends. And a helluva lot of "white tendencies" -- a penchant for weird ass music, a tendency to annunciate and say the whole. word. like. this, etc. And some might even accuse me of having a "high yellow" complex -- you know, those super political folks who use Black radicalism to compensate for their lack of melanin.

I've lived a lot of my life on the fringes of expected racial behavior. I was the only Black kid at a predominantly Asian middle school bumping Alice Deejay, and the only queer kid in a Pan Africanist student organization at the University of the West Indies. So I'm well aware of the dangers that come along with trying to generalize about folks.

I like to talk about white people, and poke fun at white people, but who am I talking about when I say white people? All white people? All snobby white people? What about snobby folks of color?

I remember vividly some of the conversations I'd have with one of my good friends in college. She was an immigrant from the Ukraine, grew up under the harsh realities of Soviet communism, came to the US where her family struggled to make ends meet in Jersey, and spent her high school years in a comfortable upper middle class neighborhood in Oregon. Now she's an immigrant -- twice removed -- teaching English in Chile. She was often the only one in my circle who openly challenged me to define what I meant when I said "white people". Depending on the year, her experience either made her a perfect candidate for, or the antithesis of, the monolithic white person I targeted so much of my anger toward.

When it comes down to it, I think that we in the US have a very limited vocabulary when it comes to race. Then again, we have one of the most nuanced racial histories of any nation on earth. We're a land of immigrants where whiteness became a commodity that disenfranchised Irish, Italian and German immigrants bought into for their own economic survival. Sure, it's a social construct, but tell that to the lone Black girl in a suburban Minneapolis classroom, or the migrant worker dying in an ICE detention center.

White people are not evil; power is evil. Historically, certain white folks in the US have had unlimited access to that power, but now shit's changing. Take the Iraq war, for instance. It was lobbied for by a Black woman (Condi), sold by a Black man (Colin Powell) and legally protected by the grandson of undocumented Mexican farmers (Alberto Gonzales). Corrupt governments and viscous multinational corporations around the world are run by folks of color.

This weekend I heard Roberto Lovato make an interesting point:
"We can't confuse the defeat of George W. Bush with the defeat of capitalism, or the defeat of the GOP with the defeat of empire."

But maybe I'm going off on a tangent.

Back to white people. When I talk about white people, I don't mean white people specifically. In a comical sense, sure, since our historical imagination makes it much easier for the collective (affected communities; communities of color) to connect white people to power, and the abuse of that power. But when I talk about "white people", I'm most often referring to folks who either blindly have power, or don't question it. "White people" is my symbolic term. It's the easier, albeit ill-equipped, term I use in lieu of more academic language that doesn't hit quite as hard. My "white people" is a euphemism for whiteness -- that fluid concept of racial identity that enables capitalism, and all the other "-isms" to breed a dangerous amount of corrosive power*.

People of color can feed into this. Women can feed into this. Queer folks can feed into this. We all feed into this in one way or another because it's as abundant as the air we breathe. I guess the trick is to at least try to check ourselves on it. And it's those folks who I have issues with -- the ones who see nothing wrong with the status quo, the one's who speak without thinking, and then continue without questioning.

I absolutely do not think that you have to be actively 'working' to end the systems of domination to be considered "down"; the non profit/social justice world is problematic unto itself. To me, social justice means enabling folks the ability to live in healthy, happy communities. It never has to be a job, just a way of life. I say and do dumb/ignorant shit all the time, and I will continue to say and do dumb/ignorant shit for the rest of my life. I'm not going to magically wake up one day and be absolved of my prejudices. Maybe justice is a journey, not a destination.

----------
*There are plenty of folks of color who I'd consider white. Think of: Former SF Mayor Willie Brown. Along with being the first Black mayor, Brown also opened the doors to modern-day gentrification. Is he a tool? Mos def. Does he really run shit? Nah.

Juan Crow

I first heard Roberto Lovato speak on Juan Crow back in January. At first, I thought it was just a witty, satirical analysis on the current hysteria surrounding undocumented workers. Reading more into it, it's much more than satire.

In his piece in The Nation, he writes:

The toll this increasingly oppressive climate has taken on Mancha represents but a small part of its effects on non-citizen immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, and other Latinos. Mancha and the younger children of the mostly immigrant Latinos in Georgia are learning and internalizing that they are different from white--and black--children not just because they have the wrong skin color but also because many of their parents lack the right papers. They are growing up in a racial and political climate in which Latinos' subordinate status in Georgia and in the Deep South bears more than a passing resemblance to that of African-Americans who were living under Jim Crow.

Call it Juan Crow: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants. Listening to the effects of Juan Crow on immigrants and citizens like Mancha ("I can't sleep sometimes because of nightmares," she says. "My arms still twitch. I see ICE agents and men in uniform, and it still scares me") reminds me of the trauma I heard among the men, women and children controlled and exploited by state violence in wartime El Salvador. Juan Crow has roots in the US South, but it stirs traumas bred in the hemispheric South.

Read more here.

the most meandering post. ever.

FYI: Blogging might be a bit slow around these parts for the next week or so. Two of our esteemed homeslices, Sky and KG, will be leaving their respective cities to come to the Yay Area this week. Basically, this means we're gonna have hella emo conversations about life and passions and destiny. Sounds deep, no? Best believe, we roll deep, like Outkast:



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Season 2 of the Boondocks will be released on DVD on JUNE 10th!



See the press release here.

Now, anyone who knows me is well aware that I am 1.) always broke, and 2.) OBSESSED with Boondocks. And it's not just me. My whole crew rolls with the inflections of Uncle Ruckus' tirades. You know, that was a really bad analogy. But I'm too excited to delete that shit. Anyway, suffice to say that I'll be first in line to buy the new season and will also be attending a special LA DVD release premier for the occasion. Is it that serious? No. What that basically means is that I'll make my tri-monthly trip to LA, sit on the homies couch for two days while I eat and laugh like it was the spring of 2007 and I have class in the morning (...awww!).

Yeeeeah!

America isnt getting into heaven

Barack Obama's Speech on race and its relevance today in society, has been echoing throughout the media, schools, the workplace and everywhere in between. Even Condoleezza Rice has made comments reitereating the points raised by Obama, leading to more bigoted responses from people like Lou Dobbs

Obama was not the first person to call slavery America's original sin. People can refer to him as the man who made it a point during the 2008 presidential campaign, but lets not give him too much credit.

BUT! As essential as slavery was to the U.S's development as a dominant world superpower, to the creation of white ruling classes consisting of corporate and and inherited wealth, and to the general privilege afforded to white people, none of this would have been possible without the land they stole. America's original sin in my mind was the genocide wrought upon Native Americans from Canada down to South America and throughout the Carribean. A genocide fueled primarily by greed for land and wealth, not fear/hate of "savages"

Was that not the quintessential crust that makes up the American Pie?

"Remebering" tradgedies of the past isnt a shopping cart philosophy, we cant just pick and choose what is convienent. If we are gonna talk about America's sins we need to talk about everything. We cannot ignore the Native American genocide and the enslavement of Asian immigrants to build the railroads, and their immense contributions to the West's developments. The knowledge alone, that was stolen from them was/is a sin in itself. But what about the CURRENT inhumane conditions of immigrant workers in constuction and domestic jobs, and all the other systems that oppress people on the basis of RACE AND CLASS AND GENDER AND SEXUALITY. Why hasn't a presidential candidate talked about that? Until the public starts to account for the multiple "sins" and the current ones, its not going to get into heaven.

I'm nostalgic for some RAGE!

I know, I know, Rage Against the Machine is touring together again, at least around Europe, but I would love to hear new material to uplift my revolutionary heart.

In the mean time, here's this classic RATM video directed by Michael Moore in 2000. Filming of this video forced the NY Stock Exchange to close its doors after Rage members and Moore attempted to walk into the building, which resulted in an altercation between security officers and the band.

The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show

Banned Boondocks episodes:

Election 2008: Clinton vs Obama

Well, its official, Edwards and Guliani are out of the election.

The Republicans are still going strong with four Presidential contenders, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul and even though McCain is the front runner the votes could go anywhere once Super Tuesday rolls around.

But the democrats are now down to three candidates and only two that actually have a chance. Clinton, Obama and Gravel are still in the race. Gravel, a former Senator from Alaska has not done much campaigning and doesn’t have a chance, but he’s still sticking it out. Unfortunately, he was not invited to participate in tonight’s debate in Los Angeles.

Clinton and Obama will face off tonight. Millions will tune in to see who can most effectively insult the other while simultaneously convincing the American people that they represent experience, change or hope and all while smiling.

If I decide to watch the debate tonight I’ll be sure to post my reactions. I don’t promise anything substantive though.

Fuck you, Long Island Independent

In today's Huffington Post Alec Baldwin showcases the tact of his hometown paper. Can we really say that race isn't an issue in this election?
------------

In another slant to election news, I've been getting into some heated arguments recently over race in this sensational election. I must really like to argue because, frankly, no candidate has yet to capture my imagination. In fact, each time I hear Obama and Clinton talk about race and gender, I get annoyed. I'm a cynic, and amid all the left wing, grassroots fanaticism over this election, I often feel like I'm the only one. As Kameelah Rasheed wrote today on WireTap:

"When I say that I need more, this is the more I need. I need an alternative. I need more then the recycled script of hope. I cannot be hopeful when a candidate proclaims that the same free-market that binds me can also free me. I am not hopeful when candidates dance around and do everything but explicitly talk about racial politics. Hope requires not only the articulation of a one-syllable word, but the transformation of our values and structures so that this hope is grounded in some realistic possibility for change. I cannot hope for an end to poverty when that hope is confronted by the abruptness of continuing labor exploitation."

Give me more than dreams.