OFFICAL week 7 (I think)

Read this article: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_74358.html

I want to focus on Race in sports, while this article only really focus's on the athletes, why is there also such a discrepancy in management as well....Few minority coaches at all levels and even less in upper administration...

I know the article is really just a preview of the author's book but it raises many of the stereotypes that exist in the minds of the average american (meaning average white joe plumber). How do these perceptions come to be and more importantly why have they seem to become more prevalent.

I asked friends of mine what they thought of the argument (they can be considered avg. white joe plumbers) and they unanimously agreed with it and tried to defend the article with comments ranging from: "well thats obvious look at the N.B.A. and N.F.L. today or they gave me interesting anatomical differences between whites blacks and asians that are commonly believed but not necessarily true.....

Our class has forced me to re-examine all my conceptions on race and sports (seeing as its been the near the center of my life for as long as i can remember) and i'd like to hear some other peoples ideas in any or all apects of it....

***OFFICIAL*** A Class Divided

I think that you all should watch the whole thin but I think that the Daring Lesson and Day 2 are the best.   By having one experience that makes you the "other" can that change your mindset for a lifetime? What are the real long term effects of an experiment like this? 

 click on the site... 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Journalist Julie justifies Jewish injustice

I am writing this letter in response to...

http://www.mlive.com/kalamazoo/stories/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1233984063217000.xml&coll=7

...where a recent political and social injustice representative of racist America was so nicely reduced to trivial child’s play by Julie Mack in her February 7th column, “Protestor protests the protest he caused.” And on a side note, I too would like to demonstrate my equal, perhaps superior, skill at crafting cute political alliterations.



Mack may be a self-proclaimed “free-speech kind of gal,” but she is clearly not an anti-racist kind of gal. She is a white kind of gal – the white kind of gal that is intimidated by her own white shame and white guilt. While this white kind of gal fails to acknowledge the race of the white male WMU DPS officers who physically assaulted me, and the race of the white male WMU students who defaced my property, she most definitely did not fail to mention my Muslim name. And she surely did not fail to mention “black crime” in her February 13th column. She seems to be working under the assumption that my Muslim name, of which I take great pride in, does not evoke a racist response in this political context. She seems to be working under the larger naive assumption that a group of bona fide, white, male, third-tier public university security guards did not internalize the beautiful milk-chocolate color of my skin, did not internalize my prominent and handsome ethnic features, did not internalize my intellectually-reasoned political dissent, did not internalize my Islamic faith, and lastly did not internalize me as just another brown, unshaven, big-nosed, American-hating, anti-Semitic Muslim terrorist.



Whether or not I was “looking to create a fuss” I have absolutely every bit of legitimacy in complaining about “the fuss that ensued.” Does breaking WMU’s “legal” ban on freedom of speech nullify racial victimization by a group of white male authorities? I was a fool to think the First Amendment was my permit to protest. And was the rabble-rousing Rosa Parks justly beaten for sitting at the front of that bus in Montgomery, Alabama? Rosa Parks was not a tired, old, black lady. She was trained by the NAACP to break the law and sit where she sat. She was trained to be arrested. Did that legitimize racist, white, male police brutality? After all, they were simply enforcing the law – making sure that justice was served. The Civil Rights Movement was professionally organized by black intellectuals and provocateurs – not by a group of underclass, jobless, uneducated free slaves. Does that legitimize the lynchings of black men by white America? Does that legitimize the legal rape of black women by white America? When did we forget Dr. King’s revolutionary theory on civil disobedience against unjust law? Probably when we were so preoccupied with painting him as just another hyper-sexual, black misogynist.



In an informal, e-mail interview with Mack prior to the publication of her column, she refers to my tactics as “doomed to failure” and “more intent on scoring points than having a substantial discussion on the merits”. I may have been “scoring points” in the paled opinion of this white kind of gal (and other white kind of guys and gals out there), but for us disruptive, tactless colored folk, scoring points is the daily lived struggle for freedom – freedom from the bondage and enslavement of white kind of guys and gals, like Julie Mack.



As an American-born Pakistani living in America, the mental and physical abuse I experience is justified in the name of patriotism and American nationalism. On the Web at mlive.com, what I assume to be another white kind of gal by the online handle “MarionGrace” responds to my January 17th viewpoint with “pity for Mr. Turk who is a citizen of a country, but who at the same time apparently has no respect or love for it.” Dear MarionGrace: 

save your pity for when another American building is destroyed by the innately hateful, war-mongering, Jew-despising, Quran-indoctrinated, Muhammad-worshiping, taxi-driving, Arabic-speaking Muslim terrorists. And when it happens, DO NOT ask why – that’s your duty as a good, silent (white) AmeriKKKan.

Race and the Human Genome Project

Here is a link to the conference proceedings on race, genetics, and the human genome project.

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/dynapage.taf?file=/ng/journal/v36/n11s/index.html

Unofficial- Human Origins and Migration

These two documentaries trace the origins of humanity, human migration, and with Diamond's documentary, the roots of human inequity. Neither is perfect, and I find the "Journey of Man" host especially annoying, but they provide some interesting theories.

I've post the first videos for both and if you're interest you should be able to navigate the entire documentary.


I would highly recommend the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, it does a better job than the movie outlining Diamond's theory and addressing counter-arguments.


Guns, Germs, and Steel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ




You can use the first video to get up through five. Here is six.






Journey of Man

This host is really frustrating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6A8oGtPc4

UNOFFICIAL, but officially amazing!

Here's a special response to the "Tea Partay" music video by Smirnoff. 

I don't think my reaction is appropriate in an academic setting.

Unofficial-An Interesting Tidbit

From Democracy Now! 2-13-09:

NYPD Makes Record 530,000 Stop-and-Frisks

Newly released data shows New York City police officers made a record 530,000 stop-and-frisks last year. The city’s data shows over 80 percent of the people stopped and frisked were black or Latino. Only about ten percent of stops were of whites, who comprise 44 percent of the city’s population. Last year, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the city, charging that it has a policy of conducting unconstitutional stop-and-frisks and singles out ethnic minorities.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/12/headlines

Unofficial- Music and Race

I think hip-hop music does a great job at addressing some very large issues on occasion. Both these songs go back to a week back or so. No need to respond but listen if you feel like it. There is gratuitous use of the n word so be warned. 

This Wale song does a great job confronting the n word. 

Wale- The Kramer

This Nas song is short but powerful. 

Nas- N***** Hatred

*Official* 6th week

I wanted to bring up something here that I did not have a chance to bring up in class about the reasons whites may have for giving up their white privilege.  It seems to be a tough sell to tell people to give up white privilege based on morality, and telling people it will improve society as a whole also seems not to receive much traction. Therefore, I think the strongest reason to deconstruct whiteness should be personal reasons. 

Historically, race has been constructed as a social divider. This was true at the foundation of whiteness and it is true today. These can be seen in historical examples throughout history, as wealthy whites, at the start of slavery, sought a solution that would separate the interests of poor whites and blacks, and this strategy was employed once more when unionization first began as working class whites were once again pitted against blacks. Race has been constructed as a difference that stands between what would normally be a more united working/middle class, but instead they are divided by a trivial difference such as race. (I say trivial in the sense that it is trivial in theory not in reality.) Considering that the greatest benefits of this racial state go to a small portion of wealthy whites I believe the argument to deconstruct whiteness would have significant benefits for many working class whites. 

In this sense, the deconstruction of whiteness among working class whites would prove to remove race a social divider among most of white America. Not only this, but without such a stark division by race and a more united working class, societal changes could be made not on race but instead on class. 

I think Obama is a good example of this as much of white America moved beyond an issue of race and voted for their personal interest. This same example can be applied to structures of power all over the country. 

Of course this surrender of white privilege does come at its cost. There is no longer that racial underclass that working class whites would always be above. But what will happen, as a result of societal changes that are sure to come from a more united working class, is an increased possibility for social mobility, for both whites and non-whites. 

The sell for upper-class whites is much harder. They will face increased competition from less class stratified society that would result from a more socially mobile middle/lower class. But they still will be upper class, which means they will still have money and as much a chance as anyone. It is capitalism after all so just compete. 

Official for 6th week

In what ways does what Tim Wise refers to as "White Bonding" (102-106) interact with Thandeka's concept of "White Shame" (12-13, etc.)? It seems to me that white bonding is the action which would cause the self to abandon parts of itself and to flee into whiteness seeking acceptance in a larger community. However, if this is how "whiteness" is formed it stands to reason that, just as operant conditioning requires occasional reinforcement, whiteness would require the same. Are instances such as racial jokes a form of reinforcement of the conditioned "whiteness"? Are they outlets for an individual to express that they are in fact part of that (white) community? Or do they serve both purposes, both representing and reinforcing that belonging?
Following the parallel to operant conditioning I feel that this experience of white bonding is the most likely suspect for the reinforcement of "whiteness" and from this follows that in order to break free from this racial conditioning is to confront it with punishment (either positive or negative) in order to bring about the extiction of the behavior.