Tumgik
#than risking being seen as racist towards Asians.
thealexchen · 2 years
Note
It’s so weird to me that people in this fandom get called abuse apologists or some other inherently horrible and damaging label for simply liking certain characters. Whether it’s for liking Chloe, Rachel, Victoria, Finn- hell, I’ve even seen Alex stans get hate bc some people think she’s too needy and that she expected too much of those she talks about in her journal. 🤦🏼‍♀️But even if that were true, you can like a character w/o thinking every aspect of them is perfect bc everyone is flawed.
It just blows my mind because one of the basic principles of character writing is that characters need to be flawed to be written well. You don’t have to be a professional writer to know that; humanity is imperfect and that is a universal and eternal truth. We fuck up, we say things we don’t mean, we have limited perspectives, and we are always learning. Also, if people weren’t allowed to enjoy media with some problematic elements because it was indicative of their personal character or values, then we’d never be able to consume any media that was more than 5-10 years old, and even that is debatable. Like, even ATLA could be written off as problematic and unwatchable for having white actors voice Asian and Indigenous-coded characters or that the ships are inherently flawed, and that would be a damn shame.
I noticed that the characters in True Colors, and TC in general, tries harder to be inoffensive and sanitized. Its stakes are lower, its tragedy is more muted and understated, Alex’s backstory is very dark but is presented and resolved in one neat nightmare sequence, its violence is downplayed (Gabe is the only character to die, and mostly offscreen, and Alex is shot but is never shown to be in any danger of collapsing or dying during chapter 5). It also tackles fewer social issues and with a lighter hand, such as the structural flaws in the foster care system and its coverage of mental health. It expresses its opinions far more quietly than LiS1 or LiS2, if at all. Whereas in those games specific characters represented very extreme political views (David’s comments on women, Chloe’s comments on guns, all the racists in LiS2), nobody outright vilifies the Chen siblings except maybe Mac. The main characters are all older and more mature, and nobody pressures Alex into making morally dubious decisions like in the previous games, but they lack the “bite” of previous companion characters that might have made them more memorable or relatable to some players. I don’t think this is bad writing, but it’s clear how LiS2’s critical reception compelled D9 to dial back on the politics in TC.
And even after all that, people find ways to hate on Steph for being “overrated” and Ryan for being “boring,” or they fixate on his one mistake of not believing Alex (which is entirely conditional) as a reason to hate him and call him irredeemable. Or people write off TC as forgettable, boring, or overhyped as well. While I love TC, I do think that it took much fewer risks than previous games to alienate fewer fans. If D9 wants to write its games like this, that’s great for them, but as fans, I think we can afford to play these games with a little more nuance and, well, empathy toward its characters, including their flaws. It’s what TC is all about, after all.
Thank you for sending this ask!
31 notes · View notes
mags169 · 2 years
Text
Race(ism) in Real Life and in the Media
Hypodescent: This is the one drop rule, if you have a black ancestor you are considered black. A great example is Barack Obama, who is a biracial man. He was born to a white mother and a Kenyan father, but is viewed as black. This was highlighted when he initially ran for president, people were happy that a black man was winning. On the other hand, racist people made dolls with his face on it and hanged them, mimicking the hanging of a black man.
Tumblr media
Nativism: This is putting white people or long term inhabitants over others. A great example would be what is happening in Ukraine. There is a war going on, and people want to escape on trains. However, anybody who is not white is left behind, being told that “Ukrainians need to get out first.” I have seen countless videos of black people being blocked from boarding the trains to Poland and other neighboring countries.
Tumblr media
Racialization: This is the assigning of a certain attribute to a racial group. An example is the angry black woman. In this cartoon from Australia’s Hearld Sun, Serena Williams was sadly (and racistly) portrayed as an angry black woman. With context, you would know that the incident was warranted, she was yelling at the ref about a play. There is a pacifier in the image, portraying her as a big baby, along with exaggerated facial features and proportions.
Tumblr media
Microaggression: A common phrase or behavior towards a person of a certain racial group, gender, sexuality, religion, age, or mental ability. This phrase or behavior is always hostile and unwarranted. I will link a video, in it there are little girls. The black girl says she took a test, and the Asian girl says “What did you get, an f?” This comment was so unnecessary, and sadly the Asian girl learned such behaviors from her family and friends. 
 https://twitter.com/Shimekaveli/status/1293333627061837830?s=20&t=uG-3l5KnN3M6qo6qtjIG_A
Intersectionality: 
Tumblr media
Intersectionality is a way to explain how different aspects of ones identity can intersect to create a unique experience. I am black, a woman, and bisexual. All three of those identities put together put me at risk for three types of discrimination; racism, misogynoir, and homophobia/biphobia. My experience is different from a black man’s experience. This is important because people need to understand how intersectionality works, certain experiences cause people to act a certain way. An example would be me saying I hate men, someone would think that I am being a misandrist or that I literally hate men, but the experiences that I have had with them make me feel on edge in my day-to-day life.
Institutional Racism:
Tumblr media
This is the enforcement of racism in institutions such as schools, banks, the government, and airports. The image that I chose shows redlining, which is the practice of refusing loans to or withholding funds from peoples or places deemed as unsafe. In this cartoon, the difference in how much money is allocated to each school is shown. The white school had nearly twice as much money allocated to their students while the black school barely had more than 12K for each student. This act keeps black people in a continuous cycle of poor conditions.
2 notes · View notes
dweemeister · 3 years
Photo
Tumblr media
NOTE: This is the third film released theatrically during the COVID-19 pandemic that I am reviewing – I saw Raya and the Last Dragon at the Regency Theatres Directors Cut Cinema’s drive-in operation in Laguna Niguel, California. Because moviegoing carries risks at this time, please remember to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by your local, regional, and national health officials.
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
As Raya and the Last Dragon, directed by Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada and written by Qui Nguyen and Adele Lim, made its theatrical and streaming bow, the United States was grappling with a wave of highly-publicized hate incidents towards Asian-Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This spike in racially-motivated verbal abuse, assaults, and homicides began with the pandemic and, frustratingly, had only been receiving national attention in these last few weeks. Despite the nation’s racist origins entwined with chattel slavery of black people and its continued unequal treatment of minorities including Asian-Americans, I am not qualified to say if the U.S. is “more” or “less racist” than other countries. But I can hardly think of any other people that interrogate racial inequality and oppression as much (and as publicly) as Americans – an undeniable strength. There was no way Raya and the Last Dragon’s cast and crew could have anticipated the film’s fraught timing, but the film provides a much-needed, positive, and heavily flawed, action-adventure romp drawn from Southeast Asian cultures.
The very notion that Walt Disney Animation Studios was attempting to craft a film using an amalgam of Southeast Asian cultures stoked my excitement and dread. Southeast Asian cultures – including, but not limited to, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam – are often lumped into those of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan), which dominate Asian-American depictions or Asian-influenced media in the United States. What gave me pause is that Disney’s track record in films featuring non-European-inspired characters and places inspired by non-European cultures is mixed. Aladdin (1992) and Pocahontas (1995) are aggregations of (and indulge in stereotypes towards) Arabs and indigenous Americans alike, especially in their presentations of “savagery” (Pocahontas in particular is guilty of false equivalences).
Cultural aggregations in fictional settings are not insensitive, per se. Yet, Disney’s stated intentions on this film are undermined by a voice cast ensemble almost entirely composed of actors of Chinese and Korean descent – you can bring up Adele Lim’s response to the voice casting controversy all you want, but her response contradicts the film’s promotion. Amid its gorgeous production and character design, Raya manages to avoid the worst mistakes of its Disney Renaissance predecessors. But its hero’s journey is too cluttered and too littered with the anachronistic and metatextual jokes plaguing the last decade’s Disney animated features.
Five centuries before the events of Raya and the Last Dragon, the land of Kumandra saw its people live in harmony with dragons. That relationship, however, would be devastated by the appearance of the Druun – a swirling, purple vortex that turns living beings into stone. In the conflict against the Druun, the last dragon, Sisu (Awkwafina), makes a fateful sacrifice to save Kumandra by concentrating the dragons’ collective power into a magical orb. Soon after, Kumandra’s five tribes – Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon (named after parts of a dragon) – fight amongst each other for control of the orb (Heart eventually gains possession of it), effectively partitioning the land. In the present day, the Heart tribe’s Chief Benja (Daniel Dae Kim) proposes and hosts a feast-summit to discuss and heal Kumandra’s divisions. Benja has taught his daughter, Raya (Kelly Marie Tran), the ways of a warrior and the necessity for Kumandra’s tribes to realize their oneness. At the feast-summit, Raya befriends Namaari (Gemma Chan; Jona Xiao as young Namaari), the daughter of Fang Chief Virana (Sandra Oh). Predictably, Namaari betrays her new friend in an orchestrated ploy to pilfer the dragons’ orb for Fang. Just as the Druun make a surprise invasion of Heart, the botched heist sees the orb break into five, and each of the tribes makes off with part of the orb. It will be up to Raya to recover the other four pieces of the orb, lest Kumandra succumb to the Druun.
The film’s screenplay is, charitably, a mess. Though Qui Nguyen (primarily a playwright) and Adele Lim (2018’s Crazy Rich Asians) are the credited screenwriters, Raya’s phalanx of story credits (mostly full-time, white employees at the Disney studios) suggest studio interference. Raya seems as if it is trying to cleanly differentiate certain tribes as based on a certain Southeast Asian nation. Instead, it comes off as a brew of mish-mashed parts (this problem extends to the otherwise stunning animation). With the exception of those from the militant Fang, the bit characters from the various tribes do not behave any differently from the members of other tribes. The partition of Kumandra, five hundred years before the events of Raya, feels like as if it had never existed for lengthy stretches in this film.
After Kelly Marie Tran, as Raya, narrates the mythology and history of Kumandra in the opening minutes, the film’s structure tethers itself predictably to the monomyth. The fracturing of the dragon’s orb into five parts sends Raya onto a tedious adventure: the physical travel to a new part of Kumandra, introduction of a sidekick (all of them are comic reliefs), an action setpiece involving a necessary assist from new sidekick, and the integration of that sidekick into Raya’s ever-growing party. Lather, rinse, repeat. To squeeze the four other tribes into the film’s 107-minute runtime and set up a climax and resolving actions results in a frantically-paced movie. Almost all of the film’s dialogue is subservient to its structure, the hero’s journey. This disallows the viewer to learn more about our lead and her fellow adventurers. In arguably the most important example in how the dedication to story structure undermines the characters, take Raya’s repeated mentions to her newfound confidants that she has difficulty trusting others. Six years have passed since the day of Namaari’s betrayal and Raya’s discovery of Sisu. How has Raya’s sense of distrust evolved over time, and how does it manifest towards those of other tribes? Does it appear in moments without consequence to her quest, in gusts of casual cruelty? In terms of characterization, Raya is showing too little and telling just the basics – a dynamic that also applies to the film’s most important supporting characters.
Ever since Tangled (2010), the films of the Disney animated canon have increased their use of metatextual and anachronistic humor (e.g. Kristoff’s comment about Anna’s engagement to a person she just met in 2013’s Frozen and Maui’s Twitter joke in 2016’s Moana that still makes me gnash my teeth when I think about it). Invariably, the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has seen its brand of pathos-destroying humor bleed into the Disney animated canon and Star Wars. Like so many films in the Disney animated canon, Raya takes place in a fantastical location in a never-time far removed from the present. From the moment Raya meets Sisu, the circa-2020s humor is ceaseless. For Disney animated movies set in fantastical worlds, this sort of humor suits films that are principally comedies, such as The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) – a work that owes more to Looney Tunes than anything Disney has created. Instead, Raya’s comedy will suit viewers who frequent certain corners of the Internet, “for the memes.” Do Disney’s animation filmmakers believe the adults and children viewing their films so impatient and unintelligent about human emotions? That they will not accept a scene that deals honestly with betrayal, disappointment, heartbreak, or loss unless there is a snide remark or visual gag inserted within said scene or shortly afterward?
Raya seems like a film set to portray its scenarios with the gravity they require. But overusing Awkwafina’s Awkwafina-esque jokes and a DreamWorks- or Illumination Entertainment-inspired infant causing meaningless havoc will subvert whatever emotions Nguyen and Lim are attempting to evoke. These statements are not arguing that Raya and Disney’s animated films should be humorless, that Disney should stop casting an Awkwafina or an Eddie Murphy as comic relief. Instead, Raya is another case study in how Disney’s brand of ultramodern humor is overtaking their films’ integral dramatics. Raya is noisy, clamorous – no different than anything Disney has released in the last decade, save Winnie the Pooh (2011).
Production designers Helen Mingjue Chen, Paul A. Felix, and Cory Loftis have worked on films like Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Big Hero 6 (2014), or Zootopia (2016). Each of these films feature glamorous, near-future metropolises or sleek digital worlds. Where the tribespeople of Kumandra might not be behaviorally-differentiated, the color coding, lighting, and biomes of each of the five lands comprising Kumandra ably distinguishes Fang, Heart, Spine, Tail, and Talon from each other. As if taking cues from the production designs of Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo and, to some extent, The King and I (1956), it is difficult to pin down specific influences on the clashing architectural styles within the lands, in addition to the unusually empty and cavernous palaces and temples and varying costumes. As picturesque as some of these lands are, the art direction does not help to empower the characteristic of the tribes and their native lands. Nor does James Newton Howard’s thickly-synthesized grind of an action score, which prefers to accompany the film’s excellent combat scenes rather than stake a clearer thematic identity for its own. Howard uses East and Southeast Asian instrumentations and influences in his music, but, disappointingly, they are heavily processed through synthetic elements and are played underneath the film’s sound mix.
Character art directors Shiyoon Kim (Tangled, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Ami Thompson (2017’s MFKZ, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet) embrace the (generally) darker and varying skin complexions of Southeast Asian peoples. The skin textures are among the best ever produced in a Disney CGI-animated feature, and the variety of face shapes – although still paling in comparison to the best hand-drawn features – is a pleasure to witness.
The number of films starring actors/voice actors of Asian descent (all-Asian or majority-Asian), animated or otherwise, and released by a major Hollywood studio makes for a brief list. Raya and the Last Dragon joins an exclusive club that includes the likes of The Dragon Painter (1919), Go for Broke! (1951), Flower Drum Song (1961), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Among those movies, Raya is the only entry specifically influenced by Southeast Asian cultures. Its cast may be headlined by Kelly Marie Tran (whose skill as a voice actor is one of the film’s most pleasant surprises), but most of the roles went to those of Chinese or Korean descent. No disrespect intended towards Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, or veteran actress Lucille Soong, but the majority East Asian cast only serves to further monolithize Asians – as the amalgamated story, plot details, and production design have already done. I will not second-guess any fellow person of Southeast Asian descent if they feel “seen” through Raya. What a compliment that would be for this film. How empowering for that person. But the life experiences of those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent are markedly different. Disney’s casting decisions in Raya – all in the wake of the disastrous Western and Eastern reception of the live-action Mulan (2020) – have revealed a fundamental lack of effort or understanding about the possibilities of a sincere attempt at representation.
To this classic film buff, the discourse surrounding Raya strikes historical chords. When Flower Drum Song was released to theaters, the film was labeled by the American mainstream as the definitive Asian-American movie. Opening during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement, the film (and the musical it adapts) looked like nothing released by Hollywood (and on Broadway) at that time. In that midcentury era of rising racial consciousness and the lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood, the marking of Flower Drum Song as the absolute pan-Asian celebration was bound to happen – however unfair the distinction. Even though Rodgers and Hammerstein (two white Jewish men who made well-meaning, problematic attempts to craft musicals decrying racial prejudice and social injustices) composed the musical and zero Asian people worked behind the camera, those labels remained. With some differences in who wrote the source material, The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians have followed Flower Drum Song’s fate in their categorizations. Will Raya? Time will be the judge, the only judge.
Before time passes judgment, we have some present-day hints. Though not released by major studios, the quick succession of The Farewell (2019) and Minari (2020) point to an experiential specificity that Raya attempts, but never comes close to achieving. Whether through aggregation or specificity, Hollywood benefits from the perspectives of underrepresented groups. Widespread claims that Raya too closely copies Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008) reflect that dearth of East Asian and Southeast Asian representation in American media. For too many, ATLA is the Asian fantasy. These simplistic observations and bad-faith criticisms (one could rebuke Disney’s vaguely-European princess films on the same principles, but I find this as lazy as the bad-faith ATLA criticisms) also suggest a lack of understanding that Asian-inspired stories are drawing from similar tropes codified by Asian folklore and narratives centuries old. If one reads through this reviewer’s write-ups, you will find an abiding faith in the major Hollywood studios – past, present, and future – to be artistically daring and to genuinely represent long-excluded persons. Many might see this faith as misplaced. But even in the major studios’ flawed attempts to depict underrepresented groups, like Raya, they concoct astonishing sights and form moving links to the cinematic past.
Assuming you have not skipped to this paragraph, the write-up that you have read may seem scathing to your eyes. Raya is no Disney classic – there has not been one for some time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my first viewing of Raya. After a few weeks’ worth of keeping my agony private over the recent uproar over attacks on persons of Asian descent in America, it was a surreal experience to see even an amalgamated celebration of Southeast Asian culture. Over this last year, we have lost people and things that emboldened us and ennobled us. In this season of unbelonging and otherizing feelings for Asians in America, Raya’s timing is fortuitous. It is emboldening and ennobling.
My rating: 6/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).
For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.
15 notes · View notes
voidhunting · 3 years
Note
I hadn't realized you were the Kai'sa-mun accused of being racist all those months ago... while comments like that still hurt regardless of ignorance/intent (esp as an Asian myself), and the way you've partaken in the ongoing situation could be seen as "self-righteous" considering what you did, you've also apologized and have actively worked towards deescalation/resolution for those who were hurt since then, so for that, I thank you.
/
first, i’d like to apologize again for that joke. it wasn’t made with the intent to be harmful, or to even be seen as targeting a group of people. when i made it, i had never considered the possibility that it could be seen as an attack on anyone as the only thing i had in mind was a personal experience. that was insensitive, that was ignorant, and i should have marked a stop to reconsider things rather than get defensive like i did. those were mistakes and i’ve learned from them so it doesn’t happen again. 
i won’t lie, i was extremely hesitant to speak up at first for that specific reason of appearing as self righteous and that’s partly why i didn’t bring up my own issue to let others share their own stories until much later. i didn’t want to risk overshadowing or undermining their experiences because i would have shared my own and people would have brushed it off as ‘yeah that’s the racist kai’sa look at what kind of people are speaking up’ like frosty was shown to do in dms to other people or like how aria was brushed off at first. i only shared my stuff when those involved pretended otherwise and it didn’t sit well for me. at this point i made it personal and i’m not too happy about doing so, but i needed closure too after those past months.
thank you for speaking up if you did, thank you for listening if you did. now i wish to the people involved to be able to come to terms with this and heal, and i hope to see things moving forward and for the better in the future. i might not be around as much as i used to be but i’d still like to see this rpc be a welcoming and creative place like it used to be.
7 notes · View notes
politicaltheatre · 3 years
Text
Empathy, pt.3
Let’s start with this: Jamal Kashshoggi was a man.
Do you remember him? He was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories.
He was also a journalist. After years of supporting the Saudi royal family and their authoritarian regime, he was murdered in 2018 for writing and speaking out against their abuses and, eventually, their war in Yemen. That was the version of him who fled Saudi Arabia, and the one who was marked for death by the Saudi crown prince he had once called a friend.
Last fall, the Saudi regime commuted the death sentences of the men it offered up as his murderers. Three months ago, an investigation confirmed that it was the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who had ordered his death.
We’re forgetting him. Even now, reading this, we are already forgetting. We can’t help it. At least, we tell ourselves we can’t.
In many ways, Kashshoggi was a lot like Alexei Novalny. Novalny hasn’t left the news quite yet. Like Kashshoggi, he supported the corrupt, authoritarian regime in his country, Russia, before turning against it. The attempt on his life, by poison, failed. Barely. He’s still alive, locked up in a Russian prison, a cautionary tale for those daring to oppose Vladimir Putin.
How long before we’ve forgotten him, too?
It’s a lot to ask of ourselves, remembering everyone around us. Sure, in some abstract way most of us try, “Good will towards men,” and all that, but we have the luxury of looking away and of not having to commit ourselves to thinking of others the way those two men did.
For each of them, it was an inescapable empathy for the suffering of they saw around them that compelled them to risk their lives to draw attention to it. They did so knowing the cost.
That cost - personal loss, imprisonment, death - is enough to keep most of us looking away. So much of what we do is to enable us to look away, to keep unpleasant reality at a distance. When others are already physically far away, it only makes it that much harder for us to do the right thing.
Looking out past our borders, the world today is filled with men, women, and children suffering, more than a few at the hands of authoritarian regimes, and of them far too many paying that cost for standing up against abuse.
The most present case this past week, because videos on social media have made it impossible to ignore in ways that it has been, has been that of the Palestinians.
The facts of this latest series of abuses against them should not be in doubt. During the last days of Ramadan, Israelis began forcing Palestinians out of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district in East Jerusalem. This was followed in quick succession by Israeli troops occupying the Al-Aqsa mosque following a confrontation between Palestinians at the mosque for Friday prayers and Israelis celebrating the capture of the mosque in 1967.
This was all a deliberate provocation, beyond the aggressive offense of what the Israelis were doing. The timing of it, during the Muslim holy month while right wing Benjamin Netanyahu struggles to cling to power, was intended to add insult to injury.
It worked. Clearly.
Hamas, ever eager for an excuse to be violent and to be seen to be violent, gave an ultimatum that would make Netanyahu’s regime look weak if accepted, Netanyahu gratefully rejected it, and Hamas began firing rockets, knowing that Israel would escalate and retaliate with a kind of brutality that can only be described as criminal.
The unpleasant reality is that both political powers rely on perpetuating the conflict between them, doing so at the expense of the people they claim to want to serve and protect. And those people pay the cost of it.
Note, please, how I have avoided referring to those instigating these atrocities as Muslims or Jews. That they use their religions and their histories as justification for violence and abuse should not be taken as representative of either religion. If anything, it should be taken as a kind of cruel irony, or perhaps an insight into how the abused, as individuals or groups, can become abusers themselves.
Zionism is not Judaism. It never was and never will be. It grew out of two things: the technology-driven late 19th century belief by Europeans, and their North American ��cousins”, in their right to colonial domination of non-Europeans; and the centuries-old, routine and systematic attacks on Jews - pogroms - especially in Central and Eastern Europe that led millions of Jews to flee for their lives, many of them to the United States.
The establishment of Israel in 1948 followed the same pattern: that same, late 19th century belief in the right to claim or assign ownership of others’ land - no matter that it had once belonged to your ancestors; and the routine and systematic attempted genocide of all Jews in Europe - the Holocaust - by Europeans who chose to believe Jews not to be Europeans but some other, lesser race from West Asia.
That, of course, has been the assigned role for Jews the world over: they are accepted as insiders when times are good and scapegoated as outsiders when times are bad. To be Jewish - I am - is to understand that this never quite goes away. There’s always somebody having a bad day, always a big lie ready for justification.
Technically, it is true that Jews are Asian, in the way that Palestinians are also Asian, and that Egyptians are, too, but also African because different people have had different maps which they used for different purposes at different times.
Also true is that these things are only true due to the arbitrary drawing of continental lines on maps made by Europeans, from the ancient Greeks to those carving up the “New World” in the century after Columbus to the 1885 conference in Berlin carving up Africa for colonial exploitation.
This is not, strictly speaking, a European thing. Every culture has a tendency to see themselves as the center of the world. Just ask those living in China, or as they call it, Zhongguo, the “Middle Kingdom”.
The difference here is that modern day Israel was carved out of Palestine, a colonial “protectorate” which was itself carved out of the Ottoman Empire and awarded to the British following World War I. As a spoil of war, formerly-Ottoman Iraq, with its vast oil reserves, had greater value to the British. Palestine had ports on the Mediterranean - “the center of the world” - but was otherwise an afterthought.
Not, however, to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. We must remember that the rest of the world didn’t want them. Jews attempting to flee the atrocity they and everyone else couldn’t help but see coming were turned away by everyone else, including the United States.
This in no way justifies what was done in Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, it’s just to place it in context. By turning Jews away, by attempting to forget them and their suffering, the world gave weight and power to right wing groups within the refugees.
Starting in the 1930s, those groups began to engage in terrorism against Arabs to force their position into Palestine and against the British to force them out. Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) and later the Stern Gang carried out assassinations and killed hundreds of Arabs and British with bombs.
After what the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe, memorialized in newsreels for all the world to see, who would take the Arabs’ side? Who could? The British were in no position to hold onto their colonial possessions anywhere, so they gave up and pulled out and in 1948 the state of Israel was born. Palestinian Arabs were forced from their homes and stripped of rights they had held under the Ottomans and even the British.
Again, this was not Judaism. As the name “Irgun” suggests, those terrorists were a right wing, nationalist militia doing what right wing, nationalist militias have done before and since, using an ethnic or religious identity to justify committing atrocities to take land and property.
After standing by and allowing the Nazis to do what they did, the world vowed never to forget; part of the price they were willing to pay - that they were willing to allow the Palestinian Arabs to pay - was to forget what Irgun and the Stern Gang had done, and to turn a blind eye to anything the Israelis did going forward.
There was a racist element to it, to be sure. This is part of the pattern of colonial withdrawal, negotiating a partition of land and possessions among the colonized groups, pitting them against each other, and then letting them fend for themselves. Nothing like creating a power vacuum to draw out the worst of us.
The British did the same thing in South Asia in 1947, pitting Muslim and Hindu groups against each other, erupting in spasms of violence before settling into a Cold War, complete with nuclear weapons. Even in their most secular eras, religious nationalism has defined the politics and leadership of each nation.
The result of this, naturally, has been an increasingly corrupt leadership exploiting religious hatred and mistrust to gain more power and wealth for themselves. It should be noted, yet again, that the political entities of Pakistan and India, though led by religious nationalists, do not represent Islam or Hinduism.
Their actions and failures do not represent those religions in any way. They are the actions and failures of men and women seeking power, seeking to acquire it and seeking to hold onto it. They are no different than the Netanyahu regime or Hamas, or our own right wing leaders in the United States.
For all of them, it is in their interest to cling to memory of conflict as a means of manipulation; in Israel and Palestine, nationalist leaders preach as if 1948 or 1967 are now; in India and Pakistan, it’s still 1947; and for America’s white nationalists, it’s either 1865 or 1965, take your pick. For the Serbs slaughtering thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica twenty-six years ago, it was 1389, the year the Ottomans conquered the Balkans.
The wars, cold or hot, can never end because time is never allowed to change. This, again, is a function of proximity. By freezing themselves in the increasingly distant past, the leaders and those choosing to follow them do not have to accept the changes facing them in the present. Their fantasy is to return to that idyllic, earlier time, when they possessed everything and did not have to be accountable to anyone.
And they will all fail for the same reason: in the present or near future, we will have reached a point at which we can no longer allow ourselves to ignore those suffering and in doing so forget them.
That is what we have done to the Palestinians. What has been done and what is being done now is in no small part because we forget them, routinely and systematically and purposefully.
The videos sent from Gaza of children being pulled from rubble should help us remember. They should. Ideally, they will have the same effect as those of last year’s Black Live Matter protests, but the people of Gaza remain far away. For many of us, it will be enough that the missiles and rockets have stopped.
Videos sent from India’s emergency rooms and crematoria should help us remember, but they, too, remain far away. Already, we’re starting to put India’s crisis behind us.
Will we remember either of them a month from now? Two? Or will they fade into the background, as the imprisoned Hong Kong democracy protesters have, or those dying of Covid-19 in Brazil, or those shot down in the streets fighting police brutality in Columbia, or those caught between warring factions in Ethiopia’s Tigray region? Or, for that matter, those half a century ago in Argentina who were simply “disappeared”?
What about the coup in Myanmar? Remember that? How about the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya people, supported by the now-deposed and jailed regime of fallen-hero Aung San Suu Kyi? What was done to them was no different than what was done to the Armenians in what is now eastern Turkey by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. That genocide was recently recognized by President Biden, an act of official, international recognition that took over a century and which itself is already being forgotten. The Rohingya may have to wait as long to be remembered themselves, or longer.
The point of all this isn’t that we forget, try as we might, but that despite it we find ways to remember. That Biden recognized the Armenians came because they did not forget and did not allow that crime to be forgotten. 
If this sounds like what nationalists all claim to do themselves - always demanding that everyone remember this date or that insult - remember that actual justice never seems to be their goal.
Justice requires memory, full memory. For us to remember anything fully, we must take the good with the bad. We must recognize the good and bad in each of us and in each group and in each series of actions. We must understand that for the worst act done by anyone in the name of any group or religion, there remain those within those groups and religions who stand against it.
So, let’s end with this: George Floyd 
George Floyd was a man, a human being, and like any of us he had hopes and dreams and memories. He died one year ago today in no small part because we forgot him. 
We remember now, today especially, because of what was done to him on this date, but we should recognize the role that forgetting him and people like him played in the events that led to his murder. We as a society have looked away from the suffering of minorities in this country, and from the violence done to certain groups within our society.
The easiest thing to say, certainly as we watched that video and the countless videos of police brutalizing non-violent protesters all last summer, was that “all cops are bad”. They aren’t. Hard as it may be to hear, they aren’t.
They are, however, led by men and women who push an adversarial culture, who encourage violence and racism, who are corrupt, and who thrive on the failure of reform. And most of them, far, far too many, stand by in silence as men and women are murdered in that culture’s name. In that silence, they have failed us all.
If we want to change that culture, we need those who would stand for justice to stand up and speak. They are there, just as they are in Israel and Palestine, and in Pakistan and India and elsewhere: intimidated, ostracized, and struggling to be heard.
Of course, May 25th, 2020 wasn’t just any other day in America. It was Memorial Day. That is a cruel irony. Another is how little we do to honor that day. It was created to honor those who died for this country, to remember not only them but what they did and what they supposedly did it for. Instead, we grill meats and drink beer and forget our troubles for just one day.
Few deaths may have the lasting impact on this country that George Floyd’s has had and will have, and he died in no small part because he, too, had been forgotten. This coming Memorial Day, let us take a moment to remember him and all of the others everywhere in this world who have died and deserve to be remembered.
- Daniel Ward
3 notes · View notes
internet-woman · 3 years
Text
My Son Is Bullying His Asian Classmate About the Pandemic
He’s already suspended, but how else should we punish his racism?
By Nicole Chung
March 03, 2021 5:59 AM
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 9-year-old son was recently suspended, and may be expelled, for “teasing” (bullying) an Asian American student. My son harassed the other student and regularly insinuated that he caused the pandemic and got his classmates to join in. I’m appalled. I have no idea where he heard these types of messages, because neither my husband nor I have ever even come close to suggesting anything like that. He only goes to school and comes home, so it’s not like there are other adults in his life he could have heard this from. I’ve never heard any report of him bullying others—he was actually the one being bullied last year! He’s grounded from all electronics for six months, but that doesn’t feel like enough. What is the appropriate punishment for racism?
—Mortified in Maryland
Dear Mortified,
Our kids live in the same country we do. As Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, “Prejudice is one of the inescapable consequences of living in a racist society. Cultural racism … is like smog in the air. Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in.” Even if your son didn’t hear this garbage at home, the former president spent months shouting about the “China Virus” and the “Kung Flu,” and there are still all the other kids and adults in your son’s life—plus a whole internet out there.
Resisting racist scapegoating of the type we’ve seen directed at Asians since the pandemic started requires more than the passive hope or assumption that your kid won’t hear such hateful things or believe them if he does. Given the society we live in and the narratives we’re all being exposed to whether we like it or not, helping our kids first recognize and then reject racist lies like this requires our active, ongoing work. There’s no neutral choice or position here: If we’re not challenging and educating our kids about racism, we leave them at risk of perpetuating it—or enabling it, standing by and silently watching while others are harmed. This, also from Tatum’s book, is something I think about a lot, because I know that I also have and will always have work to do in this area:
Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am I perpetuating and reinforcing the negative messages so pervasive in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them? If I have not been exposed to positive images of marginalized groups, am I seeking them out, expanding my own knowledge base for myself and my children? Am I acknowledging and examining my own prejudices, my own rigid categorizations of others, thereby minimizing the adverse impact they might have on my interactions with those I have categorized? Unless we engage in these and other conscious acts of reflection and reeducation, we easily repeat the process with our children. We teach what we were taught. [emphasis mine]
You wrote asking what the “appropriate punishment” is for racism. It’s not that I think there shouldn’t be consequences for bullying, but your child has already been suspended and may be expelled. If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to get too mired in the task of meting out just the “right” punishment. All the punishment in the world isn’t going to make someone less prejudiced. Even if your kid no longer says racist things because he doesn’t want to get in trouble at home or at school, it’s his thinking you want to change—it would not be great, I’m sure you’ll agree, if he went through the world believing awful things about his fellow human beings and just not voicing them. (And let’s be real: He would probably voice them! At least, he would if the only thing currently keeping him in check is that you’ve taken his iPad.) The question is not so much “How exactly should you punish your son for the one racist thing he’s said that you’ve actually heard about?” but “How are you going to talk with him about the racist thing he did and the other racist beliefs he might be harboring?”
The good news is that you can try to teach him and redirect his thinking. He did a terrible thing, but at 9, he’s probably still reachable. (I do want to warn you that you may have only so long to intervene before he finds his way to a scary part of Reddit or a far-right site focused on recruiting.) Since the example you have is his anti-Asian racism, you can start with that: He should receive the immediate, unequivocal message that racially targeting and blaming Asian Americans for the coronavirus is wrong. He should hear this from you, and you should help him understand why. It sounds like maybe you assumed he would know better just because you never personally encouraged him to be suspicious of or hateful toward Asians. But he clearly needs more than merely the absence of conscious, stated racism—he needs you and others to have real conversations with him about this, to challenge him on his lack of compassion for his classmate as well as his biased thinking, to point out how today’s pandemic scapegoating and attacks are part of this country’s long history of anti-Asian prejudice (which, in turn, can’t be considered without confronting anti-Blackness and the violence and harm done to other communities). You can make it clear that behavior like his could feed hatred and incite violence, that that is the legacy he’s part of when he targets his Asian classmate and gets others to join in.
It’s not too harsh to tell him this—he needs you to give him the truth and to make the implicit explicit. It will take more than one conversation, and that’s OK. These discussions with our kids are meant to be frequent and ongoing, and should increase in nuance and complexity as they are able to understand more. In the end, your son may not actually change his thinking based on what you say, but he should still be told that what he did was racist, that continuing to say and believe such things is racist, and that racist statements and behavior won’t be tolerated at school or in your home.
As a kid, I too was “teased” for being Asian. It started when I was younger than your son. A particular bully lived near me, and after a typical day of having him yell slurs at me during recess (which I think I still might prefer to being accused of causing a pandemic that’s killed millions), sometimes I’d see him around the neighborhood. One afternoon I tried to call him out, albeit feebly, in his mother’s earshot—it was the only time I told an adult what was happening, even in a roundabout way, and I couldn’t tell you what got into me, unless maybe I thought his mom was the one person who’d care about his behavior. She heard me saying he was racist for making fun of my eyes and calling me “names” (I didn’t know to call them slurs). She turned to her son and said, “If this is true, I don’t know where you learned it. I thought you knew better.”
Can you understand when I tell you that, to me, it’s never really mattered where he learned it, or whether he had his Game Boy taken away, or whether his parents punished him at all? What matters is that his mother had a chance to do something that day, with the new information she had. She could have decided to take necessary, ongoing action—perhaps uncomfortable for her and her son, but morally right and potentially life-changing for a lot of people, including him. She could have followed up with meaningful questions, reached out to my parents and our teachers, and, above all, started seriously, intentionally talking with and educating her son about the humanity of all his classmates and why he shouldn’t say or believe racist things. I suspect she did none of this, though I have no proof beyond the fact that he continued being a racist and a bully. The point is, as his parent, she had an opportunity then, just like you have an opportunity now. I hope, for the sake of your kid and countless others, that you take it.
3 notes · View notes
Text
gamers have no rights
SEIZE THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION
Oh and Minato actually using crude (like he always speaks very politely)  speech for the last big shot was a good moment. i rather like minato  and you can  see how dear kaburagi is to him. Minato gets Kaburagi put on mod duty instead of being destroyed or sentenced to life at the waste facility. Minato then stops Kaburagi from getting destroyed a second time and even keeps his avatar which would have gotten him killed. and he does all this without Kaburagi asking him, without Kaburagi ever knowing. Minato in the finale then risks annihilation to see kaburagi in the finale and is willing to gamble his life by staying in deca-dence to execute the plan. if he hadn’t helped, kaburagi would almost certainly be destroyed by the bubble wipe. Minato just wants to be near Kaburagi and be a part of his life. me in the distance: “gaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy”
when the admins threw donatello into the poop jail, did no one think to take the arm gun?
Yuzuru Tachikawa  has a lot of good stuff. death parade, mob psycho 100 II, assistant director for zankyo no terror.
once a limiter is released, can you put it back on?
http://decadence-anime.com/en/ incase the website ever goes down and i have to use the wayback machine
5.5: ok so i did forget the part where they say that Solid Quake and the other mega corps manufacture the cyborgs. ah and the cyborgs are also property of Solid Quake. real last stage capitalist dystopia. and some cyborgs’ job is to play the mmo. Like the company mandates download of the game upon cyborg activation. yeah if solid quake has the resources to manage a population of squishy monsters and have absolute control of all matter in the bubble they totally could have dealt with the air pollution on the rest of the planet. There’s also at least 4 other structures/companies on the planet. I wonder what they are up to. i was wondering about the ruins, so they were made as set pieces/background art for the post apocalyptic story.
Tumblr media
so cyborgs did originally have their roots in biological humans. but currently and all the ones we see are assembled by Solid Quake. I wonder about the cyborg cores, they have the same green glow as oxyone. And one of the characters (minato? kaburagi?) says that cores aren’t controlled by Solid Quake, so the cyborgs have free will.
So I doubt minato ever switched departments though I guess its possible, meaning when he says he wants to fight along side kaburagi again he means this metaphorically, he wants to be able to once against work towards the same goal as kaburagi side by side. Also Minato calls Kaburagi “Kabu” no honorifics or anything and the subtitles bastardize this into just “Kaburagi”
they ended up making a game that involves throwing around a cyborg core. isn’t that a little...
Though everyone helped out a little, the finale was all about helping kaburagi where as I would have preferred something like everyone working and changing the system rather than kaburagi having a chat and the deca dence system letting him do what he wants. but I suppose that’s a hook for season 2. So seen on its own deca-dence has a good solid ending but not a spectacular one. But I am so glad it has a good ending, you don’t know how many shows have gotten my hopes up in the first couple episodes only to fizzle out and flop. I am so happy this show stuck the landing even if there was a little wobble.
I watched all of Deca-Dence in one sitting and wow do I love this show. It's just a good solid show. There's no weak point, each episode is solid, the writing is good, the animation is striking, and most importantly the show holds itself together throughout its entire run.
funny thing is. When I first saw the promo material for this anime back in spring of 2020 i went like ”ugggg not another one of these” where the remnants of humanity fight against annihilation at the hands of some monsters like shingeki no kyoujin or kabaneri of the iron fortress mostly because I’m been thinking a lot on compassion for the Other and a lack of that combined with propaganda about how the Other is a threat to the existence of the in-group forms the basis of a lot of modern facism and white supremacy groups that justify their existence against an imaginary threat use this same kind of logic framing themselves as the last bastions of humanity (whiteness) against a monstrous other (muslims, immigrants, ethnic minorities, usually people of color/not white people). Now the premises of humanity fighting against annihilation by monsters in of itself isn’t necessarily racist, but after a year where violent racism exploded against asian americans and BLM had a lot of attention, my mind can’t help but be in that space. However by the time I watched Deca-Dence on January 25, 2021 I had completely forgotten everything and anything about the show. All I remembered was some people crying about it on tumblr and twitter whose posts I skipped over once I realized they were about a show I hadn’t seen. So I went into this with a completely blank slate, I didn’t know that this was scifi, or that there was a giant fortress city, I didn’t know that Kaburagi was featured in the promos alongside Natsume, and I didn’t know we would be fighting monsters. But the first episode was just so well directed that I was excited for a second one despite the premises, and also i was still processing that last shot when i clicked the next episode button. It was the second episode that sold this show for me.
Oh I totally forgot to talk about natsume’s arm and how the show handle’s disability. Also I don’t have a prosthetic so take this with a gain of salt. Natsume occasionally feels self conscious about her prosthetic arm since people will comment on it and it adds barriers in her life, disqualifying her from joining The Power and making it more difficult to adjust the nozzle on her pack. She has added struggles in her life that others don’t, but the show never portrays her as lesser for it, its just something she has to consider and work around in her life. The line about how its not her weakness, but her power was a good line. And she literally turned it into a weapon, that’s so cool.
Corporations generate capital for the enrichment of their shareholders. But in the world of deca-dence there are no shareholders at the end of the pipeline. The machinery of the capitalist firm continues to spin, squeezing out as much cheap or free labor as possible, and acquiring assets, but for nothing and no one. Its a system made to benefit the Few, but whose beneficiaries no longer exist (or at least we never see them in the anime). The exploitation of the Tankers and cyborgs serve no purpose but to continue the existence of Solid Quake and its system.
dissonance grieving tankers at funeral to cyborgs chatting about how fun the last raid event was. bright cartoony artstyle to the dystopia of neoliberal capitalism (and the labor camp). the cheery game trailer and company intro style exposition for the apocalypse.
The reason the ending was only good instead of spectacular is because it doesn’t engage with the themes laid down in earlier episodes enough. The ending provides an emotionally fulfilling ending for its characters but only a lukewarm one for late-stage capitalism. There’s two narratives going on in Deca-Dence. The personal narrative told through Natsume and Kaburagi about learning to try again, improve yourself, make your own decisions, live on your own terms, and push your limits. Then there’s the secondary narrative about overcoming structures and systems of oppression. The anime team did a great job at the first one, but kinda meh about the second one. When we are introduced to the people of Deca-Dence we see them stratified into classes like Gear/cyborg and Tanker. However this is a false narrative perpetuated by Solid Quake to maintain its control of both groups, after all Solid Quake owns both the cyborgs and the Tankers as literal property. Ideally the Tankers and cyborgs would realize the divide between them is false and team up to tear down not only Solid Quake but the systems that allowed mega corps to exist in the first place and build more equitable and just social systems. And we do get some of this in the ending with changes in how Solid Quake is run (no more punishment of “bugs”, got rid of the gulag), but all this is shoved to the background. Essentially management and company policy changed but the fact that the corporation or its structures exists, didn’t. I can't tell if its deliberate or not though. Its common with single cour anime to leave dangling plot threads as a bid to the funding for a second season and most of them never do. So I can see it like that, but eh I still never liked this approach. Its also a limitation of the single cour instead of being produced as a 24 ep anime where they would have had lime to develop that second narrative.
1 note · View note
recyclingbin · 4 years
Text
The Ugly Truth About Korea: Racism
Growing up moving around England, U.S. and Korea, I was always taken as ‘ching chong Chinese’ or a ‘Jap’. What hurt me even more than the racist name calling was that my country wasn’t even known well enough to have a nickname. With the success of Samsung, Hyundai, K-pop and the Hallyu wave, this is not the case anymore. People still mistake me for Chinese or Japanese, but when I tell them I’m Korean, almost everybody knows the country now. As a child, this would have made me very proud, mostly because I wasn’t smart enough to think about the side-effects of my country’s development.
In the year 2000, during my freshman year of high school, my family moved back to Korea and I started learning about those side-effects. With the developed economy and improved education, Koreans didn’t want to work in manual labor anymore. Like history has shown in developed countries, those jobs were filled by immigrant workers from Southeast Asian countries or India. The name calling and harassment by Koreans were shocking. People would walk up to foreigners on the bus and tell them that they ‘smell’ and they should get off the bus and walk. There was an instance where an old man complained so much to the driver that the driver asked two Indian men to get off the bus. I knew exactly how those two men felt, but couldn’t say anything as it is considered absurd to question the elderly in Korea. I was seriously confused about the values I learned through experience and the values that everyone else around me seemed to have. The two never felt so apart. In the Korean high school history book, it even stated that Koreans are to be proud of the ‘single race’ nation (한민족 국가).
But as I had done growing up in different cultures, I learned to adapt to Korea too and the acts of racism that I occasionally encountered got muted away, until one day, when I was forced into an even worse situation that I remember clearly to this day. After graduating high school, I spent a lot of my time enjoying nightlife at Hongdae. I made a lot of friends that seemed to be into arts and culture and they seemed to be much more open to foreign culture and foreign people. One night, I was at a bar with some friends when a female friend of mine noticed a foreigner with dark skin drinking alone. Rap and hiphop was big back then and my friend showed an interest towards the foreign guy. She asked me to invite him to our table and we started hanging out. He did not speak any Korean so I had to translate between him and my friends. I failed to notice that after about 10 minutes, my friends didn’t like the translating situation and wanted the foreigner gone. Of course, I had to be the one to tell him. I could tell that he was trying very hard not to show that he was offended. I was so embarrassed about hanging out with racist friends and angry at the same time that those so called ‘friends’ had put me in that situation. I decided to leave with the foreign guy and repeatedly told him how sorry I was and how Koreans are not accustomed to having foreign people around. But somehow every word I said made me feel worse. I never went back to that circle of people after that incident.
At this point, some people might think that these are isolated incidents and shouldn’t be generalized to the entire Korean demographic. If you’re one of those people, here’s an even worse shocker. In 2004, a Korean comedian impersonated foreign workers on national television. Foreign workers were portrayed as having poor language skills and often ignorant and lacking common sense. What’s worse, the whole country loved it and “Sajangnim Nappayo”, meaning ‘My boss is not nice’, became a popular phrase in Korea. Think of Dave Chapelle’s jokes about African Americans, but told by a Caucasian. Children would yell this phrase to foreigners on the streets with a forced accent. The severity of racism and ignorance was incomparable to what I had been subjected to growing up in England or the U.S. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like living in a foreign country where literally the whole country would make fun of me for being a foreigner.
Believe it or not, racism gets even worse. In 2017, accommodating foreign refugees and immigrant workers became a huge issue in Korea. To be fair, there had been incidents where immigrant workers were involved in sexual offense cases. However, the discussions regarding this topic on national radio and television were shocking to say the least. Racist and nationalist comments were taken seriously by the show hosts and discussed as legitimate opinions of the Korean people. Some discussions were actually based on assumptions that foreigners are potential criminals. There was even a discussion about whether the economic benefit of foreigners working manual labor was worth the risk of the foreigner causing social nuisance. The reasons for opposing immigrants were so appalling that it was hard to believe that this was a discussion taking place in 2017. Even worse, nobody questioned the ethics of such ridiculous framing.
The problem is, those subjected to racism in Korea usually don’t have a voice that can be heard around the world. Most Koreans are very kind to people from western cultures. It’s the people from developing countries that are subjected to unspeakable acts of racism. Yet, earlier this year, some Koreans, with the help of another national television broadcasting service, MBC, accused KLM of acts of racism at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic. The reason was that the flight crew on one of KLM’s flights had posted a note on the lavatory door saying ‘for flight crew only’ in Korean. MBC immediately framed this as an act of racism and many Koreans were outraged. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about how Koreans were treating Chinese people at the beginning of the pandemic. There were even rumors online stating that Chinese people had to have used bats as sex toys to have had the virus transmitted to people. At the beginning of the pandemic, Asians were considered more likely to be carrying the virus. Even myself as an Asian living in Europe stayed away from other Asians in case they had recently been to China, Korea or Japan, where the pandemic was more serious than elsewhere. KLM ended up apologizing publicly in Seoul. Have I ever seen any Korean organization or company apologizing for racist acts? Never in my life.
As a child, I would have given anything to be from a country that is wealthier and more powerful so that people wouldn’t call me names. But with the tables turned, I feel much more disgusted to be associated to racists than being subjected to racism. Korea is the single most racist country I’ve lived in and the severity is incomparable to any form of racism I’ve experienced. This is a serious problem that even the government is failing to recognize. Historically, Korea has had problems after trying to shut itself away from the rest of the world. Korea is heading straight back to those problems and major drastic changes will be needed to avoid being left behind globally. I thought wealth and prosperity of my country would make me proud. What a short sighted thought that turned out to be.
Comedian Jung Chul-Gyu on KBS making racist jokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veoPkZZUBgs
10 notes · View notes
Ok, so I started watching Jenna Marbles a little more than a year ago, and I was really surprised bc even though I had never even seen a video of hers, I already had an opinion about her because she’s a big youtuber who had 17 million subscribers at the time when a video of hers came up in my Recommendeds on Youtube. So I was pleasantly surprised at how funny and normal she is, so i spent a few days bingeing her videos from within the past 4 years or so, and then i decided to go way back to the beginning of her channel and I saw how different she was, and her content back then was pretty cringey. So I was impressed by the personal growth I saw.
Anyways, something I really appreciate about her (and about Julien as well) is that she seems so genuine. She’s just out there on Youtube making her videos, minding her own business, being an OG youtuber- no sponsorships, no collabs, no merch, no clickbaity thumbnails, no acknowledgement of youtube drama... just a really cool person making some really fun quirky content.
And I’ve seen people bring up her supposed blackface video occasionally on Twitter over the past year+ that i’ve been watching her, but it was literally her in a wig with a fake tan doing some kind of Nicki Minaj skit in 2011. Like, blackface wasn’t even the intention. She also made that video private like a long time ago. And I’ve seen people bring up a video where she was kind of slut-shamey. And apparently there was another video she made private a long time ago without people specifically bringing it up- it was kinda racist towards Asian people. like ok, this was 8-9 years ago. I’m pretty sure she also already apologized for the supposed “blackface” video a long time ago.
So today she owned up to it, made a formal apology, said she doesn’t want to risk offending or hurt anyone anymore, basically saying “hey, I’m human, I make mistakes, I had some lapses in judgement in my past and I recognize they’re offensive so I removed those videos, and sincerely apologize. Then she says she’s leaving her channel temporarily or permanently- she’s not sure yet. I don’t blame her because imagine the pressure of making sure you’re not offending literally anyone? And also, I can’t believe that people came for her like that- like “hey, lets dredge up some racist things Jenna has said, whether she meant to or not, from 9 years ago and demand that she apologize (while planning on not accepting the apology, apparently).
And it’s frustrating reading Twitter because all of these people who haven’t watched one of her videos since like 2012 are coming out of the woodwork like, “oh yeah, she’s a big youtuber. it’s a stunt to get people interested and then she’ll come back next week.” And then people who are like, “I’ve never seen a Jenna Marbles video, but see ya later, racist.” Like, she makes an apology video about stuff she said 8, 9, 10 years ago, and people who are just going along with the crowd take it out of context to mean she just left Youtube because she got called out on like current material or something, not knowing that it’s been 8 or 9 years since she’s done something that could be deemed as racist.
4 notes · View notes
Text
I’ve seen some stuff going around about issues related to controversial lyrics in the last hours, so since I was going to make a post about this anyways, I want to weigh in on the ‘cancel culture’ issue in social media we seem to have.
First of all,
There is no obligation for you to follow someone or support someone’s idea if you don’t agree with it - if you do not agree you’re in the right to unfollow something, especially if it triggers you in whatever way possible. You’re not, in any way, obliged to conform to others’ opinions.
HOWEVER
You can have your own opinion but do not discredit others opinion in the process, especially if it involves personal experiences as it is a sensitive trail to tread on when you do so. -  IF the issue is not afflicting you directly and you do not have enough insight or experience to know what the other side is talking about, then stay quiet instead of invalidating their opinion. For example, I am someone who due to trauma caused by abuse have a strong stance on children’s rights and do not believe parents have a ‘free pass’ to do or say whatever they want to their child if this can harm them in any way. I’ve witnessed first hand what it is to be gas-lighted for decades, manipulated, threatened, etc. and people within the circle of the abusers rarely believe me because these monsters put up a fake image of sympathy to earn others trust while in their back they will talk miserably about them. If you were to try to invalidate my experience by saying I’m a ‘liar’ or that ‘others have it worse’ I would lose my shit with you, and the same logic applies to other people who have struggles. You cannot tell a black person or a native American or a Hispanic or a person from an Asian country that their experiences with racism or oppression are invalidated as a white person (this is one of the most commonly referenced examples I can give and that I believe, a vast majority agrees with, unless you’re a Nazi sympathizer or racist).
Just because someone criticized your fave(s) it doesn’t mean they ‘hate’ them. criticism helps build character as long as it is done correctly. Giving pointers like ‘Oh, they did this... I understand they were not aware since they’re from x country or city, but this is something that is considered toxic in y.’ is better than ‘omg, this b*tch did this, I cannot believe, CANCELLED’ is utterly unwise. Unless it involves something that stems from common sense and basic morality (like physical violence or any form of abuse, cultural appropriation, racism, sexism, misogyny, exclusionist rhetoric, homophobia, transphobia, aphobia, etc.) willingly exerted over an innocent individual or group while being completely aware of the consequences it entails, and there is considerable proof (such as written or recorded) to support it, taking that kind of action is something completely immature not to mention you’re behaving like an extremist and that won’t earn you any respect from others, not even towards yourself.
In that same manner, this does not give you free reign to send anon hate to someone regardless of what they say or do. You’ll be the one brimming with negative energy for lowering yourself to their level or even a lower level than the receptor of your derogatory messages and this does not help you in any way.
In the same manner, if you would not accept a certain behavior from an average citizen, then do not condone it just because it is your fave(s) that did it. For example, Seungri and the scandal connected to the prostitution rings and human as well as sex trafficking he is involved in and how some fans still stand up for him because it’s their fave? Some people still defend him to this day. Yes, humans can also go to this extreme.
There are some people who can change, there are others whom it’s not worth losing your energy with and that is something you need to find a balance for. I will not say it is easy, I struggle with this myself as well, but realize that people sometimes come from different backgrounds and stances, probably didn’t have the access to the same resources and information as you and therefore could not ever guess certain knowledge and data you possess. Propaganda is everywhere, and we’re not immune to it. To have a truly impartial opinion is impossible because to defend morals in itself you have a biased opinion already, however, we recognize that to guarantee the safety of not only ourselves but others we must be biased and by that, I mean that we must have morals that affect us in our everyday lives, in our rights to fundamental freedoms and basic necessities, in our way of behaving according to our culture, etc. In that same sense, there are some people worth spending a whole 2 hours explaining a topic to them and in a calm manner, not in a continuous condemning and offensive way as the listener will not feel inclined to hear you out if you behave abrasively. I know it’s tough but there’s a difference between being assertive (being guided by logic and a calm manner while establishing your needs without trampling on others) and being aggressive (being guided by emotions and going on a slaying rampage towards others, not even caring to take into consideration how you treat others - like Trump does). If you cannot find a common ground and are wasting time and energy, then it’s not worth it, don’t waste your time, be more productive with those who might listen and above all, if they do not agree then avoid furthering the issue if you see that it’s a sensitive topic, because you’re just wearing yourself out.
Changing ideas is normal and productive.  - pretty self-explanatory here. Knowledge is always changing, don’t trust everything the media says and don’t go by just one source. The world is built on propaganda, learn to question everything you read or watch.
Cussing out others when you cannot build an argument yourself does not make you look smarter or more reputable.
Just because a majority agrees with something, it doesn’t mean it’s ‘right’ to do or support. - For example, I see the majority of the population lately not wearing masks nor respecting social distancing. Does that make them ‘right’ in doing so? No! Because the threat of the virus isn’t over! The majority isn’t always right, and you should be able to make your own conclusions and act on them, don’t just ‘go with the flow’ because you fear social reprisal for taking a different stance!! In the same way, before you jump at someone try to learn the whole story behind it, even if it’s a friend of yours because people. have. biases!!!!
It’s completely fine if you do not know enough about a topic and cannot make a well sourced argument or take a stance on it due to it. -  Much better than taking a stance and then looking like a fool because you did not know enough about it beforehand.
What to take from this post:
Humans can go from one extreme to the other, and this is why philosophers like Hobbes are right in saying that we must have the rule of law and cannot be left to fend for ourselves in a ‘state of nature’ because we could have complete anarchy where the masses judge unfairly and condemn innocent people. On the other hand, philosophers like Locke who believe that without the ‘state of law’ we could also act on our benevolent principles and conduct justice where it’s not being delivered (which is why we’re seeing the protests in the USA in defense of the victims of racism at the hands of cops so far) is also true. As people, we must find the middle ground to achieve balance because we are beings who live off of extremes and by doing so we never achieve true happiness, not to mention we steal others’ happiness at times to achieve a ‘fake’ sense of happiness ourselves; sometimes we willingly ignore the voices of the vulnerable to go to sleep more well rested whereas others who possess no empathy are true monsters and could not care less. 
Learn to improve yourself and ‘break free’ from external influence but also do not forget basic values that could put at risk others’ safety and dignity.
2 notes · View notes
ademocrat · 4 years
Text
Coronavirus and HIV Parallels: On Racializing and Queering Illness Bias, fear, and ignorance are the biggest threats of all.
By
Hannah Yore
February 27 2020 1:51 AM EST
By now, we have all heard of the coronavirus (also known as 2019-nCoV) and the toll it has taken on human life both throughout China and globally. The outbreak has prompted significant research since it first presented in humans last December and investigations regarding transmissibility and treatment remain underway. Unfortunately, the virus has also catalyzed a rise in Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism.
As the number of reported cases of the coronavirus continue to grow, individuals of Asian descent around the world face stigma and increasing rates of violence. In an example from Los Angeles, a man riding public transportation was recorded making disparaging remarks against Chinese-Americans and blaming China for the spread of the virus. Videos showing aggression towards Asian New Yorkers have also gone viral, prompting city officials to speak out against discrimination. In Canada, too, accounts of anti-Asian discrimination have surged and Asians living in France established a Twitterhashtag “#Jenesuispasunvirus” (#Iamnotavirus) to shed light on the mistreatment they have received in recent weeks. These examples are among dozens that have been reported.  
National governments have also contributed to this phenomenon. Some global health experts believe China’s rivals have a political incentive to isolate China and spread misinformation about the virus. Although WHO Director General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged countries not to enact travel and trade restrictions, countries have instituted laws barring those travelling from China and other Asian countries. Ghebreyesus stated:
"We reiterate our call to all countries not to impose restrictions that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade. Such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."
Of course, the WHO has declared the coronavirus an international public health emergency and some measures must be taken to contain the virus. The WHO, for example, has praised China’s travel restrictions on individuals living in and around Wuhan. Even still, these efforts are having unintended consequences. Residents in Wuhan have reported that they have been forced to walk miles to access care as the transportation systems have been shut down. A lack of supplies, caused by the lockdown, has also resulted in patients being refused care.
While experts may disagree on which measures will be most effective, it is clear that the responses of both national governments and civil society alike perpetuate anti-Asian racism. This is part of a historical narrative marking Asians, and particularly Chinese, as “disease carriers.” In many ways, this discourse is reminiscent of the ways in which queer people, and in particular gay Black men and trans women of color, have also been scapegoated as threats to public health. We can look specifically to the HIV crisis to understand the parallels between the racialization and queering of illness. World Health policy analyst, Laurie Garrett, explains:
"The virus (coronavirus) doesn’t know the race, the politics, the religion of the human it infects, nor does it give a darn. It’s only we who aid and abet, and we’ve seen this in one kind of epidemic after another, the worst case one being HIV. It is we humans who aid and abet the spread of disease by carrying out our own discriminatory, racist, bigoted attitudes towards other humans rather than tackling the virus."
The HIV crisis taught us that homophobia both within and outside medical settings prevents individuals from getting tested, notifying their partners and obtaining care. Studies show, for example, a correlation between societies with antigay legislation and increased rates of HIV. LGBTQ and HIV activist, Joel Nana describes that these practices “discourage health-seeking behavior, deny access to key health services and sustain the increasing incidence of HIV infection among men who have sex with men and transgender people."  
In the same way, a culture of fear and alienation around the coronavirus can dissuade individuals from seeking treatment and promote the spread of misinformation. For example, experts warn that in the case of the coronavirus, measures like the travel ban may prompt individuals to lie and underreport their risk factors and symptoms when crossing borders. National governments’ desire to avoid negative media attention and international shame has also contributed to the mismanagement of the virus and inaccurate reporting. Ultimately, anti-Asian racism and discrimination, like homophobia, have very real consequences on health outcomes and behaviors.
Though anxiety about a life-threatening illness is understandable, discriminatory panic and ill-informed policy do little to effectively curb the spread of disease. As queer people, we have a unique obligation to confront harmful stereotypes around “infectious” bodies when they affect other populations. While we monitor public conversation around the coronavirus in the weeks and months to come, let us remember that misinformation and bias is perhaps the greatest public health threat of all.
Hannah Yore is a New York-based writer. Find her on Twitter @HannahYore.
Tumblr media
4 notes · View notes
124globalsociology · 4 years
Text
Institutional Racism
Definition: Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of racism expressed through political and social institutions. It is shown through gaps between wealth, employment, housing, political power, education, etc. and is often implemented against people of color. 
What is the difference between subtle and overt racism?
Subtle racial discrimination is indirect and much harder to identify. Some examples of subtle racism are being accused of something unjustly or being treated suspiciously. Overt racism, on the other hand, is more blatant and direct. Some examples of overt racism are using racial slurs or physically harming someone based on their race. In this project, we will be looking at subtle racism in America. 
Institutional Racism at its Core
Two factors make fighting institutional racism difficult: 
1. The classical American path to mobility is disappearing
Job mobility has disappeared as employers advertise to their target audience, the white working class. The economy is becoming more polarized, meaning that jobs are divided into ones that pay a living wage and ones that are not sustainable to raise a family and maintain daily life. For many people of color (POC), this becomes an inescapable problem. Conquering poverty can appear impossible, and children of low income families also struggle to break out of poverty. This is a downward-spiraling cycle only reinforced by subtle institutional racism. 
2. Job networks
The institutional racism behind job networks is where jobs are divided into two major groups: skillful jobs and unskilled jobs. Part of the issue is that in today’s climate the skillful jobs category is mostly dominated by the white race due to institutional racism. Jobs then spread from a white person to their white friends, family, etc. A similar situation occurs in unskilled jobs, which is primarily full of POC also due to institutional racism. Then the job networks spread through POC communities and stay there for the most part. There has also been legislation in the past designed to prevent POC such as African Americans, Indigenous People, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and other marginalized ethnic groups from being able to obtain jobs in order to keep them from competing in the market with white workers, who were viewed as more deserving than they were. This is clearly not true, but sadly that was the way the world worked back then.
Tumblr media
A diagram of the web of institutional racism and who it affects
Impacts on Education  
Educational segregation in history has left lasting effects on the education system. Yet, many people today do not realize that the system is still unequal because segregation is seen as a thing of the past, a past that our nation is not particularly proud of. 
In 1954, after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, the United States was theoretically desegregated. Yet, white Americans expressed their disapproval by resisting de facto segregation, believing that they themselves were the victims. They believed that spots in elite colleges and opportunities were stolen from their white students. Although there have been acts of legislation such as Brown v. Board of Education case, schools around the United States today still remain segregated.
Because public school funding is largely a result of property taxes, as well as financial support from state and federal governments, poorer communities have lower funded schools, less resources, and less qualified teachers. Thus wealthier, and often whiter, communities will spend more capita per person because their communities can afford to do so. This puts students in these lower-income communities at a disadvantage, making it more difficult for them to succeed and be accepted to a university, let alone afford one. For Hispanics and African Americans, dropout rates are much higher in schools and college attendance is much lower than with white students. Often times, students will drop out and get a low-skilled job to help support their families and succeeding at a university can be seen as unrealistic. The institutional educational racism from the past has left a cycle of poverty for many communities today, discouraging youth from moving upwards in life.
Impacts on Housing
In the mid-late 20th century, whites had an advantage in an overtly racist system, which is different than the type of racism we have today. The effects of this more noticeable racism still have long-lasting effects today. When schools became desegregated, white people that were afraid of this change moved from inner cities to suburbs, from public to private schools. They were also able to afford private schools, while most people of color were not. This meant that segregated white communities on the outskirts developed, and they all lived in the same neighborhoods. Housing today is getting more expensive, and gentrification favors the white upper-middle class. Cities and landlords realize they can raise their prices and white people will still be able to pay due to the inherent discord in the education system and how that relates to jobs.
Tumblr media
Diagram of gentrification based on annual income for a family of four
It is very difficult for people of color to finance the property they do have. For example, African-Americans, are consistently denied mortgages by lenders, roughly twice the rate that whites are denied. Credit is also harder to establish, and the terms of loans tend to be much more severe. The homes that these poor African-Americans work to finance are often in segregated, destitute, isolated neighborhoods known as ghettoes, which continues to be the most racially segregated residential areas in the country to this day, while many white people live in privileged, suburban areas. The consequences of this disparity are high, as they affect access to education, jobs, and sufficient health care. The absence of a variety of stores to shop from often means that the prices from the ones that are there are much higher, further pushing POC into debt. Because well-paying jobs are difficult to come by, many in ghettos turn to illegal job markets as ways to earn money. Therefore crime rate increases.
Tumblr media
   Suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles                                  
Tumblr media
Skid Row, Los Angeles
Impacts on Health
Institutionalized racism does have a serious impact on the health and well-being of many POC. They are more likely to live in areas surrounded by highways where they experience significant amounts of noise and air pollution. They are also often times forced to live in proximity to chemical dumping sites, increasing their susceptibility to cancer and other major diseases. Poor people of color also end up being forced to live in areas prone to natural disasters, such as floodplains.
These health risks are especially noticeable in the Latinx community. Many live in cities with buildings not up to code, and high levels of pollution and lead contamination. Because of this, Latinx children often develop asthma and/or cancer and other dangerous diseases.
Latinx people also receive less sufficient health care than white people do- they have less access to health insurance and doctors ethnically similar to them who understand their cultures. The health care they do receive is often less on par than with white patients. For example, they are more likely to be misdiagnosed and undergo invasive procedures such as amputation, and many are not given painkillers for painful injuries such as bone fractures. 
Institutional Racism Today                                 
For many white Americans today, racism is a relic of the past that is an issue people no longer have to be concerned about. To these people, the only racism that exists is overt racism such as slurs and name-calling, rather than subtle institutionalized racism that much more prevalent today. Despite the fact that we are living in an increasingly more liberal society in which more people of color have access to universities, police departments are desegregated, and more POC are seen out in day-to-day life, still we see the implementation of institutional racism, where POC are either consciously or subconsciously prevented opportunities in the workplace, education system, government, and other areas. 
Institutional Racism in Global Sociology
In summary, much of the inequality and racism in our world can be seen over time in our nation’s institutions. The system of institutional racism inhibits progress between people. When the system grants inherent advantages to a certain group of people, progress is stopped regarding relations between countries. People then become distrustful of other groups, and this is only reinforced by the media and institutions.   
Why is the world unequal?
Under the lens of institutional racism, the world is unequal because Europeans a couple hundred years ago believed that people of darker skin were inherently inferior and treated them as such. Instances of this include segregation in the Western world and the slave trade lasting through the 1800s. Even today, the systems of housing, education, and healthcare are unfairly bent towards white people, and the ideal person being white is reinforced throughout the globe. This is obviously unjust and we need to act against this subtle white supremacy 
Application
Today, the long lasting and problems of institutional racism can appear daunting, especially to the people it affects most. However, to make real progress against this injustice, we must gather as one and fight to make change, as did activists who fought for equality among POC. Steps to enact change can start with legislation or even activism in our own communities. Starting small, expanding the knowledge of the privileged, and working to make change in our local institutions are steps we must make to change the norms of our society.
Discussion Questions:
1. Are there other places subtle racism manifests itself? Where are these places and what do they have in common?
2. How can we counteract racism, especially if it’s inherently part of the system? How can we spread awareness of this kind of racism?
Resources: 
#racism #institutionalracism #gentrification #systemicracism #subltevsovert #education #housing #healthrisks #segregation #jobnetworks #jobmobility #whiteprivelige #culturalnorms #changethenorms #fightthesystem #changetheinstitutions 
Peer-reviewed:
Miller, J., & Garran, A. M. (2007). The Web of Institutional Racism. Smith College Studies in
Social Work, 77(1), 33-0_15.The Web of Institutional Racism
Rucker, Julian M, Enrique W Neblett, and Nkemka Anyiwo. “Racial Identity, Perpetrator Race,
Racial Composition of Primary Community, and Mood Responses to Discrimination.”
Journal of Black Psychology 40.6 (2014): 539-62. Web. Perpetrator Race, Racial Composition of Primary Community, and Mood Responses to Discrimination
Not peer-reviewed: 
“Institutional Racism, Part I: The Impacts on Access to Education and Employment.” Nation’s
Cities Weekly 12 June 2000: 1. Business Insights: Global. Web. 7 Nov. 2019. (Institutional Racism Part 1: The Impacts on Access to Education and Employment)
1 note · View note
sage-nebula · 6 years
Text
On Callum’s Heritage, and Viren’s Resentment
There’s a popular theory going around right now that Callum is a half-elf. Many people have made posts on this, so there isn’t one specific post I can link to, but the theory goes that while his mother, Queen Sarai, was human, his biological father was an elf. This theory draws on evidence such as Callum’s talent for magic, the fact that we’ve been told that half-elves exist and yet no other information about them was given (despite the fact that Aaron Ehasz was directly asked about them), and the fact that we have no idea who Callum’s biological father is at this point. It still is a bit of a shot in the dark that he’s part-elf, but I believe there has been enough spice sprinkled in to stir up suspicion, which is why the theory has gained the traction and weight that it has in the fandom.
But while the tidbits mentioned above are enough alone to draw some to the conclusion that Callum is a half-elf, there’s something else that I haven’t personally seen discussed, but that I think adds even more weight and credence to the theory, and that something else is Viren’s attitude toward Callum.
In 1x03, Callum rushes to the tower in order to tell King Harrow about the dragon egg. He’s stopped outside the doors by Viren, who refuses him entry. The two argue, and Viren steals Callum’s voice. When he does, he says this:
Tumblr media
Of course, a screencap can’t display it, but when Viren delivers this line, he does so with particular emphasis on that last word: mongrel. From the standpoint of wanting to hurt Callum, it makes sense; though calling Callum “impudent” is of course deriding his attitude and behavior, the word “mongrel” is more than just an insult. While many think of it as just another way of calling someone a dog due to it most commonly being applied to dogs, it’s actually a derogatory term / slur for people with mixed heritage.
Tumblr media
Now, here’s the thing: We already know that, canonically, both Callum and Ezran are biracial. Ezran is biracial because his mother was Sarai, while his father was Harrow. Callum is biracial because his mother was Sarai, and his biological father was . . . well, we don’t know. We just know that his biological father was not the Katolian equivalent of Asian. But although both princes are biracial, Viren doesn’t seem to have any resentment or prejudice toward Ezran. True, he never mentions or interacts with Ezran at all, but we learned in the stream yesterday that Viren was possibly planning to steal Callum’s voice for “a while,” and also that Viren “may have always felt this resentment for Callum” but that calling him a mongrel was “over the line” (understatement). If Viren was simply racist against all mixed race individuals, why is it specifically Callum that he holds resentment for, and specifically Callum’s voice that he wants to steal?
Could it be because Callum is half-elven, and Viren knows it?
We all know that Viren hates elves, and hates them rather passionately. He refers to them as monsters, has taught his children (or at least Claudia) to see them as tools that can be used, gleans joy from their torture, thinks moonshadow elves are “the worst kind,” and so on. Moreover, Viren sees dark magic as “clever and practical”; he sees absolutely nothing wrong with killing magical beings in order to use them for his spells, and this includes elves. He sees humans as superior, sees only human lives as those worth saving. To Viren, elves are disgusting and only have use as batteries for his magic.
So to that end, it would make sense that Viren would disparage---perhaps even loathe---a romantic union between a human and an elf. He seems the type of person who would consider this to be treason against humanity. And if that is the case, then surely he would despise any children borne of such a union---would see them as unworthy, and even dangerous (particularly since we know that he is not above seeing children as weapons---just look at what he told Claudia about Azymondias’ egg). By calling Callum a “mongrel” as he does, he’s not only disparaging him, but dehumanizing him. And again, it makes sense that he would do that if he knows of Callum’s heritage, and knows that he finally has the chance to say what he has been thinking and feeling for years because there will be no repercussions for his actions because he had already put Harrow’s soul either into Pip or into a coin. (These are also popular theories, and I’m grasping onto them because I dearly do not want Harrow to be dead.)
But, you may ask, why would he want to steal Callum’s voice? What purpose would that serve? And the answer to that, my friends, is:
Magic. As Justin Richmond explained during the Reddit AMA:
Tumblr media
If Callum is part-elf, that means that he has some natural inclination toward magic---that he has some inherent connection to a primal source, which means that he would be able to draw on it even without a primal stone, so long as the conditions were right. And as we know, in order to use primal magic you need three things: access to a primal source, the ability to correctly draw the rune, and to say the correct incantation. After all, Callum couldn’t properly use the lightning spell until he learned that fulminus was the incantation for it. And if he had no voice at all, then even knowing the incantation wouldn’t help him, because he wouldn’t be able to say it. (Since he has to draw the rune and hold his fingers in place, I imagine he couldn’t sign the incantation. Maybe he could sign it one-handed, though; I’m not sure.) If that’s the case, then it’s entirely possible that the reason why Viren was plotting to steal Callum’s voice for a long time was because he didn’t want to take the risk of Callum learning that he could use magic by drawing on a primal source due to his elven heritage. Of course, Callum doesn’t know that he’s half-elven, but if Viren does, Viren wouldn’t want to leave that risk unattended.
But then that begs the question: How does Viren know? Well, the answer to that one, too, is simple:
Harrow.
As we know from the stream, Harrow and Viren have known each other since childhood. As we know from 1x03, Harrow trusted and cared for Viren so much that he had Viren by his side during his coronation painting, and allowed him to run unchecked in a high position of power for a long time despite many in the kingdom (such as Opeli and Amaya) not liking him. It makes sense to me that, if Viren truly was Harrow’s best friend, Harrow might have mistakenly confided in him that Callum’s biological father was an elf. (Or perhaps it was even Sarai that did it, knowing that Viren was Harrow’s best friend, and thus assuming he could be trusted with this knowledge because she didn’t know him well enough yet to know that he would be prejudiced against Callum as a result.) Upon Viren revealing that he did not at all approve of Callum’s race, and certainly didn’t approve of him being Harrow’s heir, he was sworn to secrecy and forbidden to breathe a word of it to anyone, and particularly forbidden from saying or doing anything derisive toward Callum himself. Viren, mindful of wanting to keep his place by Harrow’s side, agreed . . . but also couldn’t help but express his distaste in lowkey ways in private and at home, which in turn influenced how Soren treats Callum today. I know that in the stream Aaron and the others said that perhaps the reason why Soren bullies Callum is because he’s jealous that Callum gets special treatment despite being bad at everything, but in my opinion, I feel that Soren doesn’t display any real animosity toward Callum. Don’t get me wrong, as a person from a step-family I absolutely despise the way Soren rubs salt in the “step-prince” wound and insinuates that Harrow isn’t Callum’s real father, but I also notice things like how he pretends that Callum stabbed him so that Callum can impress Claudia, and how when things get serious, he says, “But . . . he’s the prince” and puts his hand on Callum’s shoulder to protect and offer him comfort when the moonshadow elves arrive. Soren doesn’t seem to hold any real animosity toward Callum, and I get the feeling that the mindset that Callum isn’t a real prince, that he’s only a step-prince, and that he’s not really Harrow’s son is a mindset that he internalized due to things Viren said to him in private. That, and perhaps these were the only jokes that Viren laughed at or agreed with (given that Viren wouldn’t approve of Callum being one of Harrow’s heirs), and thus Soren doubled down on them in an effort to get some form of approval or validation from his father.
In any case, while this still isn’t definitive proof that Callum is a half-elf, I do think that Callum being half-elven helps explain so many things, as well as lays the groundwork for what we can expect next season (such as how he’ll be able to use magic now that he no longer has a primal stone). If it isn’t Callum’s elven heritage that Viren has a problem with, then I really wonder what it is, particularly since the writers could have had Viren call Callum anything, and yet they specifically chose a word that is used derogatorily for people of mixed descent (while at the same time, again, never breathing a word or showing a hint of Viren having the same resentment toward Ezran). 
It’s just something to think about.
29 notes · View notes
aion-rsa · 3 years
Text
From Le Carré to Artificial Intelligence — The Inspirations of When the Sparrow Falls
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
This post is sponsored by
What if human consciousness could be digitized? Would the digital version still be human, or would it be a meaningless string of data that no longer has a soul? In Neil Sharpson’s When the Sparrow Falls, the Caspian Republic is the last holdout nation of natural born humans. There, the populace refuses to submit to the Machine, believing that neither digital humans nor AI have souls. Unfortunately, the Caspian Republic is also a totalitarian nightmare of a nation, where not one but two police organizations could come for you in the night, and you’d never be seen again.
Nikolai South, whose first-person narration leads readers through this strange future, is an agent for State Security (StaSec, or The Old Man). When he’s called in to the office of the Deputy Director, he believes it’s the end: though he’s stayed under the radar of both the State and Party Security (ParSec, or The Bastards) for more than twenty years, he’s finally done something to get himself killed. Instead, he’s given a new assignment. Popular Party writer and anti-Machine scribe Paulo Xirau has been outed as an AI, and his wife—also an AI—has been given honorary human status to identify Xirau’s remains. South is to be her babysitter and bodyguard during her visit, which is, very likely, just a very fancy way for StaSec to hand him his death sentence after all. Even worse, when Lily Xirau arrives, the clone she uses for a body is the spitting image of South’s dead wife, whose death sent South into a spiral of depression that’s held him in the same position in StaSec for the last twenty years.
South’s voice is reminiscent of a protagonist from Kafka: he’s one soul in a nation out to get him. But unlike K, he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on, and why, and his cynicism wars with the internal voice of the Good Brother, who reminds him of why he should rejoice in the successes of both the State and the Party. He’s also clever enough to realize that Xirau’s death, Lily’s arrival, and the work of Needleman Yozhik, a criminal responsible behind a ring of illegal consciousness transfers—contrans—in the Caspian Republic, are all connected. But like any good spy mystery, it’s not in the most obvious way, and the stakes of the case keep changing around South as past events come back to haunt him.
The novel is taught and intense, with hints seeded so stealthily that the big reveals (and, with the twists, there are a few) give a feeling of both surprise and inevitability. It’s hard to believe that the project, with its philosophical deep discussion of human souls and its ever-shifting spy narrative, began life as a stage play.
“I’d been tinkering with the play on and off for around six or seven years by [2017],” Sharpson explains to Den of Geek, “and when I finally finished it everyone I showed it to had more or less the same reaction: ‘Why are you doing a dense sci-fi story with tons of world-building for stage. You twit.’” While his friends may have been critics, the play looked like it would do well, and Sharpson didn’t feel he had the time to turn it into a novel. Then disaster struck: “I had two massive opportunities (a commission from the national theatre and a greenlight from the state broadcaster) both go up in smoke. In the same month,” Sharpson says. “I very briefly became suicidal and I realised that I had to divorce my sense of self worth from how well my writing was doing. So I started to write Sparrow (or The Caspian Sea, as it was then called) as a form of self-therapy. It was just so I could write something where I could say ‘I don’t care if this never gets published or if anyone even knows I wrote it. I’ll know, and that’ll be enough.’”
Despite his initial reluctance, the process of writing the novel “was a dream,” he says. “All the hard work had already been done, the story structure, themes, etc. were mostly already there. So it was literally the process of writing a book where you only have to do the fun stuff like expanding on the lore and fleshing out the characters. Writing the play took years. Writing the book took me from November 2017 to February 2018.”
Though the atmosphere may be reminiscent of Kafka, Sharpson drew on other inspirations as he built the world, particularly the film 2011 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy starring Gary Oldman. “1984 obviously was another huge influence,” Sharpson says. “Writing a future dystopia that’s not influenced by Orwell is kind of like writing high fantasy that owes no debt to Tolkien.” But one of the other inspirations for the story came out of history, in the figure of “Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet Air Officer who deliberately ignored what his system told him was an incoming American nuke and thereby may have saved the entire world,” Sharpson recalls. “I was very taken by the idea of a hero who is heroic not because he’s a man of action but because he refuses to act.”
The idea of consciousness transfers has both the shiny glow of a new technology—and the feeling of limitless possibility that a digital world inspires—and an air of menace. In part, that’s due to the distrust of the Caspian Republic toward the Machine, but Sharpson also gives hints about how things operate in the rest of the world with asides at the beginning of each chapter. In one, a U.S. politician explains a move from being opposed to building a super-intelligent AI to realizing that the U.S. must do it, if only to keep up with China.
“I’m every bit as worried as I was five years ago, if not more so,” says Sharpson. “But where we are now, asking ‘Should we create super intelligent AIs?’ is like asking if we should be using protection while we’re going into labor. The question is pretty moot. The baby is here. China has uncorked the bottle and let the genie out and the results speak for themselves.” Another is a clone-suit advertisement from a Tehran company, geared toward “female-identifying intelligences looking to add some Asian glamour to a romantic getaway in the physical realm”—which shows that racist stereotyping remains healthy and well, regardless of how post-human consciousness wants to believe it has become.
Still, in a world where contran is possible, where humanity has unlimited potential through the digital space, why set the story inside the anti-Machine territory, where the possibilities wouldn’t be explored? Sharpson explains that it came from wanting to write a Cold War thriller. “I was terrified of getting the historical details wrong,” Sharpson admits, “so I reasoned that if I created my own nation with its own history, I would be able to tell the story I wanted without getting irate emails from people who were living in East Berlin in the seventies. As I was writing, the real world was trundling along and it became a story of the world today but imagined as a cold war; Caspian is a country for people who are afraid of the future and have retreated into a nation built on nostalgia for the past.”
As for the potential in contran, Sharpson remains reserved when asked if he’d try it himself. “In the world of the book, there are two competing views on contran: The Machine World view is that you are still ‘you’ after you have been contranned. The Caspians, however, see contran as a genocice occurring in plain view,” he explains. “People are being contranned, their souls destroyed and being replaced by a highly sophisticated AI simulacrum. They view this as the AIs way of eradicating mankind. Now, as the author of the book, I know this isn’t the case. But if someone were to come up to me in real life and offer me contran I would have no way of knowing if it was on the up and up. In fact, given the inscrutable nature of human consciousness, the Caspian position would seem far, far more probable. I’d be tempted, no question, but I don’t know if I’d consider it worth the risk.”
Though the science as presented in the book makes the idea of a digital transfer of humanity seem not only probable, but an inevitable result of the growth of AI technology, Sharpson says the experts he conferred with told him “contran is flat out impossible. It’s digitising human consciousness, and we fundamentally don’t understand what that is, let alone how to render it as data,” he says. He got around that impossibility by saying “we (humans) didn’t figure out contran, we created impossibly intelligent AI and they figured it out for us. Which is really the whole meat of the setting: the AI passed us by.”
cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });
Though the novel concludes quite definitively, with perhaps one lingering question about the whereabouts of a character, the questions it opens up remain interesting to play with after putting the book down. What would it be like to live in an all digital realm? If you left your body behind, would you still be you? And what would that say about the nature of the soul? The post-humanity conceits in the story, and the very grounded dystopia that comes from trying to live in the past, work together to create a sense of hope, that despite the regrets of the past, there is a future. It might be terrible and glorious at once, but it’s there, waiting for us to enter it.
When the Sparrow Falls hits bookshelves on June 29th. You can order the book here.
The post From Le Carré to Artificial Intelligence — The Inspirations of When the Sparrow Falls appeared first on Den of Geek.
from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2UitqiB
0 notes
meetveronicablack · 3 years
Text
IF YOU AREN’T ANGRY, YOU SHOULD BE.
How dare these spineless cops take the life of Ma’khia Bryant so senselessly and violently?! What GIVES them the right to determine who lives or dies under their-so called jurisdiction!
Today, was a moment of fucking accountability. It wasn’t justice being served. It showing the world the way criminals and murders abide by the laws made. Chavinpig MURDER in cold blood a black man. This time DIDN’T cushion didn’t keep him from falling and keeping a normal life. No, he will rot in jail for as long as rotten heart keeps beating.
But ... Ma’khia Bryant... what did she do?! Let me ask you all this: WHAT have black people done that makes white people so scared and heartless towards them?! Huh?! How dare a cop, who supposedly symbolizes protection, kill a young 15 year old black girl. She called the cops because she was scared and was trying to defend HERSELF from someone wanting to hurt her!
Not even a warning was given and the cop shot her down. I mean, I’m shaking with fury as I type this right now. She CALLED them so she could FEEL SAFE and they did the fucking opposite of making her feel safe. They shot her! These rotten, stone cold, gross racist cops shot a young black girl.
COME THE FUCK ON MAN. How can you not see how messed up this system is?! What about cops is trustworthy?! Because I haven’t seen one thing that makes me think cops are there to protect me or others for that matter. Look at how many black lives have been lost due to police brutality?!
This study was done in 2019 and I quote: “Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police. Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men...”
Like I said the last time. Numbers don’t lie unless you change them. Do you see these staggering numbers?! I mean, do you REALLY see?!
Let me give you some more: “Police in the United States kill far more people than do police in other advanced industrial democracies (13). While a substantial body of evidence shows that people of color, especially African Americans, are at greater risk for experiencing criminal justice contact and police-involved harm than are whites ...”
I mean that last paragraph above has me in shaking with fear and anger. Fear that black lives constantly live and amplified by 1000%. I know I will never completely understand this fear or level of anxiety. But, Every fucking day, they wake up to some news or form police brutality towards their community. Every day, the live in a constant state of stress and anxiety due the news coverage updates. Every day, they try to put on a brave face and walk out that door ... to wonder if they, their siblings, partners, parents, family members, children, friends will be alive or make it back home.
Black families HAVE to have discussions on how to talk back to police officer if they ever get pulled over. Do you know much pain, trauma, and stress that gives a person?! Let alone a person who works so hard to move past all this internal and external conflict, so they don’t crumble into a spiraling abyss of depression.
How do you not have a heart after learning that?! How do you not empathize every time you see a headline of black life lost?! How do you sit there unaffected by all this pain, death and tragedy?!
I know the answer is simple. But YOU need to answer it, White America. YOU did 1% of accountability today. A very, very small step but it happened. But you took it back real quick with the death Makiah Bryant.
I don’t care about your entitled insecurities. I don’t care have that you have no taste when it comes to food in your bland life.
I do care about your blatant disrespect and disregard for black lives, indigenous lives, latinx lives, Muslim lives, Asian lives, LGTBQ lives and for every different person out there.
I see your refusal to acknowledge and take accountability for actions YOUR people have been putting on the marginalized for generations after generations. You, WHITE AMERICA, don’t get to decided what lives to take.
The world is going to keep fighting against you. Until there is nothing left but waste. You WILL lose. I, for one, will keep fighting against you. I will do whatever it takes to dismantle white supremacy. You are nothing but a shriveled little pathetic men inside a pretend scary monster, White America.
Ma’Khia Bryant, I hate that you didn’t feel safe. I hate that you called upon a suppose symbol to help you feel secure. I’m sorry that instead of trying to hear you and listen to your fears, they took your soul and voice instead. You had so much ahead of you, beautiful girl. I’m so sorry that you don’t get to go home today. I’m so sorry that your parents will not see you anymore. I hate that this fucking system would rather see you take your last breath instead of protect it.
Fuck, I am so so sorry Ma’khia Bryant. To the Bryant family, I wish I could take away your pain. I wish I could bring you back your daughter. I hate that tonight and forever, you won’t see her smile. My love. My prayers. My strength. My will. My guardians angels are with you all tonight.
Every black soul lost due to police brutality: rest in power. Find peace in the heavens above with your ancestors.
I promise to do the work. I promise for my words to match my actions. I WILL stand with you all. I WILL fight your life if it’s the last thing I do. Your lives MATTER EVER FUCKING DAY.
Say her name. Say his name. Say all their name. Black Lives Matter every second. Black Lives Matter every minute. Black Lives Matter every day.
Links and Resources:
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
https://blackmentalhealthmatters.carrd.co/
1 note · View note
easyfoodnetwork · 4 years
Text
I’m Through Being Silent About the Restaurant Industry’s Racism
Tumblr media
Alexandra Bowman
As a Black server and diner, I’ve seen how racism in the restaurant industry plays out on both sides of the table
This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to [email protected].
A few weeks ago, I watched my tattoo artist, Doreen Garner, post an Instagram video about the racism in her industry, and saw Brianna Noble get up on her horse and demand change in the equestrian world. They inspired me to go on Facebook to address the racism where I work: the restaurant industry.
As I wrote in my Facebook post, the restaurant industry is extremely racist: Its racism is inseparable from the history of dining out in this country. Restaurants here flourished after the Civil War, a period when Black people in the hospitality sector were still technically working for free due to the widespread adoption of tipping, which allowed employers to avoid paying their workers. Racism literally shaped the restaurant landscape, too: Here on Long Island, where I live, the racist practice of redlining prevented Black restaurateurs from obtaining business loans or leasing buildings in particular towns — and thus denied them the same opportunities as their white counterparts.
The effects of such discrimination have been everlasting — something that I have learned firsthand as both a Black server and diner. In the six years I worked in restaurants, I never saw BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) in management, or even a Black bartender; most people of color were forced to remain in the back of house, or as bussers and runners in the front of house. And as a diner, I’ve seen how the industry’s culture of discrimination plays out from the other side of the table, too.
I began working in restaurants in 2009, while attending grad school. The first place I served was a corporate Southern-themed steakhouse on Long Island; not long after I started there, a coworker was fired for using racial slurs about a Black family who was dining with us. The restaurant’s owner individually apologized to every Black employee, and the swiftness of his actions assured me that racism would not be tolerated. The following year, I began my career in fine dining at a popular seafood restaurant on Manhasset Bay. The staff was mostly BIPOC, and included several Black females. This restaurant had its issues, but during the two years I worked there, diversity was not one of them.
But when I returned to the industry in 2018, after a six-year hiatus, I discovered that my previous experiences were anomalies. One evening, while I was training as a server at a farm-to-table restaurant, I asked the trainer how she made recommendations. “Well, they’re Asian, so I recommended the octopus because Asians eat weird food,” she said of the table we’d just served. “Excuse me?” I replied sternly. She tried to backpedal, saying something about how “Italian guys” also loved octopus.
Months later, I caught one of the managers and two servers discussing the treatment of Black people as it relates to our work ethic: The manager implied that there were times we were treated better than we deserved because of our skin color. The two servers looked shocked, but neither corrected her. Being the only Black employee and server of color, I quit immediately. But that evening, the restaurant’s owner and I had an honest conversation. She advised me to not let ignorant people affect my wallet, and she had a point: I was broke and living in my mom’s guest room. So I stayed. But, in hindsight, I should’ve demanded that this manager be fired. Although she was eventually let go, it was for her inferior management skills, not her continued racist antics.
Although the guests at that restaurant usually treated me with respect, I was degraded on several occasions. One evening, while I was recommending wine to a table, one of the diners, a white man, winked at me and said, “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. Am I right?” There was so much I wanted to say, especially to his wife, who just laughed nervously. Instead, I recommended the tempranillo and walked away. Who could I tell? If a manager wouldn’t be checked, how would a guest?
I stayed at the restaurant for a year and a half. Shortly before my departure, one of my customers, a senior citizen, grabbed me. “You know what they say about Black women?” he whispered in my ear. “You taste like chocolate.” He then attempted to kiss me. I pulled away, but I didn’t want to hurt him — I could already imagine the headline: “Black Server Abused Elderly White Man at Long Island Restaurant.” So again, I walked away. But this time, I cried in the hallway while my coworker consoled me. Others seemed to think I was overreacting, as if the customer had complimented me. I didn’t have the energy to point out that Black women are neither a fetish nor a fantasy, and that the sexual harassment we often experience is linked to the ways we’ve been hypersexualized throughout history.
Most recently, until the pandemic began, I was working as a server and marketing consultant at a new Long Island steakhouse. Three of my coworkers were equal-opportunity racists who made derogatory comments about everybody: from the Latinx staff members to a table of Black people, no one was off limits. Almost everyone who worked there was aware of it, but the attitude was one of “You know how this industry is.” One time, when I defended some guests whom one of these coworkers presumed were Jewish, he asked if I was a “Black Jew.” In response, I referenced “First they came...” and expressed that I stand up for everyone, and then politely told him to shut the hell up. He did, but continued to be openly racist towards me — the restaurant’s lone Black employee — and the Latinx bartender.
When you’re the only Black employee at a business, you realize that you’re an exception to its discriminatory hiring practices.
While the restaurant’s clientele was generally kind, there were still the middle-aged white men thinking they were Tupac, telling me I was the prettiest Black girl they’d ever seen. And the white women who felt the need to be “down” when I approached the table. “Hey girl!” one of them told me. “Your makeup is on fleek. We’re trying to get lit.” Know that I am laughing at you, I thought. You sound like Len from 30 Rock. You are 45 years old in a Talbot’s pant suit. Please stop.
When you’re the only Black employee at a business, you realize that you’re an exception to its discriminatory hiring practices. It is debilitating to constantly defend yourself while remaining professional, and exhausting to become a representative for the entire community. One elevated pitch in your tone may verify a stereotype. And so for your own self-preservation, you learn to ignore it and not react. No matter the profession, we’re conditioned to be silent.
But as a patron, I do not have the same restraint. I always inform the manager. When I do, I’m sometimes offered a discount or a free round of drinks. I appreciate that, but still wonder: Did they hear me or were they just trying to appease me?
Because ignorant servers have tells. The finger across the neck, signaling that you do not want me in your section. The “couldn’t care less” attitude when greeting my table after making me wait for 10 minutes. The interactions with me in comparison to the white people next to me. We all have bad days as servers. But I am one of you, and I know the difference between a bad day and bad behavior. And so I’d ask you to recognize that your low tip is not a derivative of a guest’s skin color, but often, the result of your behavior toward them because of their skin color.
And to my fellow Black female servers, especially those in fine dining, remember you are worthy and your integrity is priceless. I am broke and tired too, but change is no longer a request — it is an ultimatum. Many servers are currently in a position of power; as restaurants try to reopen, employers are struggling to staff up. So before you literally risk your life by returning to work, make sure your professional environment is safe from health risks and racism.
To non-Black restaurant owners, I’d ask you to be introspective. Acknowledge that you benefit from a problematic system, and that your restaurant isn’t immune to racism. And if you still haven’t developed and posted a Black Lives Matter action plan of solidarity, do so. I am empathetic to the fact that you recently took a hit from COVID-19, but racism is also a deadly virus. You cannot plead for pandemic support by posting “We’re all in this together,” but choose to remain silent now. Diversify your staff. Schedule a mandatory team meeting to discuss racism and how to personally combat it — and explicitly state that it is immediate grounds for dismissal. If you have BIPOC staff, reassure them that they are protected and supported; keep in mind that you are legally liable when employees, and guests, engage in discriminatory practices. And remember: The Black dollar is strong. It is imperative that we are appreciated and welcomed at every place of business.
I gave similar recommendations to my most recent employer. As his marketing consultant, I urged him to write a statement of solidarity; as one of his servers, I demanded that my racist coworkers be fired, and a meeting be held to discuss racism at the restaurant. Yet again, my concerns were dismissed and overlooked. But this time, I am through being silent.
Lauren Allen is an experienced marketing specialist in the live entertainment and food hospitality sectors.
from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2ZLs4vY https://ift.tt/3eeV7NA
Tumblr media
Alexandra Bowman
As a Black server and diner, I’ve seen how racism in the restaurant industry plays out on both sides of the table
This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience. First-time writer? Don’t worry, we’ll pair you with an editor to make sure your piece hits the mark. If you want to write an Eater Voices essay, please send us a couple paragraphs explaining what you want to write about and why you are the person to write it to [email protected].
A few weeks ago, I watched my tattoo artist, Doreen Garner, post an Instagram video about the racism in her industry, and saw Brianna Noble get up on her horse and demand change in the equestrian world. They inspired me to go on Facebook to address the racism where I work: the restaurant industry.
As I wrote in my Facebook post, the restaurant industry is extremely racist: Its racism is inseparable from the history of dining out in this country. Restaurants here flourished after the Civil War, a period when Black people in the hospitality sector were still technically working for free due to the widespread adoption of tipping, which allowed employers to avoid paying their workers. Racism literally shaped the restaurant landscape, too: Here on Long Island, where I live, the racist practice of redlining prevented Black restaurateurs from obtaining business loans or leasing buildings in particular towns — and thus denied them the same opportunities as their white counterparts.
The effects of such discrimination have been everlasting — something that I have learned firsthand as both a Black server and diner. In the six years I worked in restaurants, I never saw BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) in management, or even a Black bartender; most people of color were forced to remain in the back of house, or as bussers and runners in the front of house. And as a diner, I’ve seen how the industry’s culture of discrimination plays out from the other side of the table, too.
I began working in restaurants in 2009, while attending grad school. The first place I served was a corporate Southern-themed steakhouse on Long Island; not long after I started there, a coworker was fired for using racial slurs about a Black family who was dining with us. The restaurant’s owner individually apologized to every Black employee, and the swiftness of his actions assured me that racism would not be tolerated. The following year, I began my career in fine dining at a popular seafood restaurant on Manhasset Bay. The staff was mostly BIPOC, and included several Black females. This restaurant had its issues, but during the two years I worked there, diversity was not one of them.
But when I returned to the industry in 2018, after a six-year hiatus, I discovered that my previous experiences were anomalies. One evening, while I was training as a server at a farm-to-table restaurant, I asked the trainer how she made recommendations. “Well, they’re Asian, so I recommended the octopus because Asians eat weird food,” she said of the table we’d just served. “Excuse me?” I replied sternly. She tried to backpedal, saying something about how “Italian guys” also loved octopus.
Months later, I caught one of the managers and two servers discussing the treatment of Black people as it relates to our work ethic: The manager implied that there were times we were treated better than we deserved because of our skin color. The two servers looked shocked, but neither corrected her. Being the only Black employee and server of color, I quit immediately. But that evening, the restaurant’s owner and I had an honest conversation. She advised me to not let ignorant people affect my wallet, and she had a point: I was broke and living in my mom’s guest room. So I stayed. But, in hindsight, I should’ve demanded that this manager be fired. Although she was eventually let go, it was for her inferior management skills, not her continued racist antics.
Although the guests at that restaurant usually treated me with respect, I was degraded on several occasions. One evening, while I was recommending wine to a table, one of the diners, a white man, winked at me and said, “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. Am I right?” There was so much I wanted to say, especially to his wife, who just laughed nervously. Instead, I recommended the tempranillo and walked away. Who could I tell? If a manager wouldn’t be checked, how would a guest?
I stayed at the restaurant for a year and a half. Shortly before my departure, one of my customers, a senior citizen, grabbed me. “You know what they say about Black women?” he whispered in my ear. “You taste like chocolate.” He then attempted to kiss me. I pulled away, but I didn’t want to hurt him — I could already imagine the headline: “Black Server Abused Elderly White Man at Long Island Restaurant.” So again, I walked away. But this time, I cried in the hallway while my coworker consoled me. Others seemed to think I was overreacting, as if the customer had complimented me. I didn’t have the energy to point out that Black women are neither a fetish nor a fantasy, and that the sexual harassment we often experience is linked to the ways we’ve been hypersexualized throughout history.
Most recently, until the pandemic began, I was working as a server and marketing consultant at a new Long Island steakhouse. Three of my coworkers were equal-opportunity racists who made derogatory comments about everybody: from the Latinx staff members to a table of Black people, no one was off limits. Almost everyone who worked there was aware of it, but the attitude was one of “You know how this industry is.” One time, when I defended some guests whom one of these coworkers presumed were Jewish, he asked if I was a “Black Jew.” In response, I referenced “First they came...” and expressed that I stand up for everyone, and then politely told him to shut the hell up. He did, but continued to be openly racist towards me — the restaurant’s lone Black employee — and the Latinx bartender.
When you’re the only Black employee at a business, you realize that you’re an exception to its discriminatory hiring practices.
While the restaurant’s clientele was generally kind, there were still the middle-aged white men thinking they were Tupac, telling me I was the prettiest Black girl they’d ever seen. And the white women who felt the need to be “down” when I approached the table. “Hey girl!” one of them told me. “Your makeup is on fleek. We’re trying to get lit.” Know that I am laughing at you, I thought. You sound like Len from 30 Rock. You are 45 years old in a Talbot’s pant suit. Please stop.
When you’re the only Black employee at a business, you realize that you’re an exception to its discriminatory hiring practices. It is debilitating to constantly defend yourself while remaining professional, and exhausting to become a representative for the entire community. One elevated pitch in your tone may verify a stereotype. And so for your own self-preservation, you learn to ignore it and not react. No matter the profession, we’re conditioned to be silent.
But as a patron, I do not have the same restraint. I always inform the manager. When I do, I’m sometimes offered a discount or a free round of drinks. I appreciate that, but still wonder: Did they hear me or were they just trying to appease me?
Because ignorant servers have tells. The finger across the neck, signaling that you do not want me in your section. The “couldn’t care less” attitude when greeting my table after making me wait for 10 minutes. The interactions with me in comparison to the white people next to me. We all have bad days as servers. But I am one of you, and I know the difference between a bad day and bad behavior. And so I’d ask you to recognize that your low tip is not a derivative of a guest’s skin color, but often, the result of your behavior toward them because of their skin color.
And to my fellow Black female servers, especially those in fine dining, remember you are worthy and your integrity is priceless. I am broke and tired too, but change is no longer a request — it is an ultimatum. Many servers are currently in a position of power; as restaurants try to reopen, employers are struggling to staff up. So before you literally risk your life by returning to work, make sure your professional environment is safe from health risks and racism.
To non-Black restaurant owners, I’d ask you to be introspective. Acknowledge that you benefit from a problematic system, and that your restaurant isn’t immune to racism. And if you still haven’t developed and posted a Black Lives Matter action plan of solidarity, do so. I am empathetic to the fact that you recently took a hit from COVID-19, but racism is also a deadly virus. You cannot plead for pandemic support by posting “We’re all in this together,” but choose to remain silent now. Diversify your staff. Schedule a mandatory team meeting to discuss racism and how to personally combat it — and explicitly state that it is immediate grounds for dismissal. If you have BIPOC staff, reassure them that they are protected and supported; keep in mind that you are legally liable when employees, and guests, engage in discriminatory practices. And remember: The Black dollar is strong. It is imperative that we are appreciated and welcomed at every place of business.
I gave similar recommendations to my most recent employer. As his marketing consultant, I urged him to write a statement of solidarity; as one of his servers, I demanded that my racist coworkers be fired, and a meeting be held to discuss racism at the restaurant. Yet again, my concerns were dismissed and overlooked. But this time, I am through being silent.
Lauren Allen is an experienced marketing specialist in the live entertainment and food hospitality sectors.
from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2ZLs4vY via Blogger https://ift.tt/2ZcBvFu
0 notes