Book of the Week

Michigan-born author Zev Chafets investigated the racial complexities of pre-riot and post-riot Detroit in his 1990 book Devil's Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit. It was one of the few books about Detroit that I found to be worth reading even if Chafets leaned a bit much upon personal anecdotes in order to make a point sometimes.

Of course, in the wake of recent events, some might argue that Chafets tried a bit too hard to end his book on a happy note. But I know many Detroiters who would beg to differ.

Then again, one of the reasons I chose to buy this book back in 1990 was because the author name-dropped the name of a Detroit journalist to whom my favorite first cousin was then married so perhaps I'm not the most objective critic this book could have.

Close But No Cigar: Race

There is undoubtedly a great movie to be made about the modern-day political conflicts between American Latinos and African-Americans back in the 1990s -- but the 1998 movie Race is not it. It gets credit for at least trying to acknowledge some of the issues involved in such conflicts, but I all too often got the feeling while watching it that the movie was deliberately pulling its punches in regard to the main plot.

Perhaps most symbolic of the movie's problems was a scene in which a black political candidate (played by CCH Pounder) asked a group of white senior citizens to tell her their concerns -- only to receive a lot of trivial complaints about black basketball players. I don't doubt that such a scene might have happened in real life but I also can't help but wonder whether all complaints from white voters about various ethnic groups should be presumed to be that trivial. After all, mainstream op-ed writers frequently trivialized the complaints of blacks and Hispanics back in the 1990s -- and even today, when white Americans are presumably more "woke", there's a tendency to blow off any concerns expressed by minority voters any time such concerns conflict with the concerns of white people. So why is it in the interest of blacks and Hispanics to encourage such trivialization when the shoe is on the other foot?

In any event, the movie Race started out promisingly, then threatened to turn into a Mexican soap opera till finally settling for an ending that seemed all too believable yet also wrapped things up in way too convenient a package. As much as I wanted to love the ending, I could not help wondering how realistic it was for the screenwriters to conveniently blame a white non-Hispanic villain for the conflicts between the two lead characters (a black political candidate and a Hispanic political candidate) when real life has shown over and over again that the origin of such conflicts is not that simple. Anyway, I don't doubt that there are a lot of white non-Hispanics who get a kick out of playing the divide and conquer game in regard to blacks and Hispanics. But I also believe that a lot of black and Hispanic candidates who have issues with each other often have their own motives for such conflicts. To pretend otherwise is to pretend they're not human. And quite frankly, there are already enough people in this country who think that way without encouraging it.

Trailer of the Week: Fight Club

Remember the good old days of the late 1990s when it was considered perfectly acceptable for film critics to like movies that encouraged you to root for poor white losers who turned to violence to solve their problems? Of course, few critics back then bothered to point how different this movie would be if Tyler Durden were black or Hispanic. So apparently racism did not exist back then...

Detroit Is Other People

Where's Jean-Paul Sartre when you need him? There's something very No Exit-ish about the way people keep implying that the premise of the 2017 movie Detroit is okay with them while in the same breath arguing that it's better suited for other people. It makes me kinda surprised that the studio didn't simply rename this movie Detroit, c'est los autres (Detroit is other people) or better yet, Detroit est pour les autres (Detroit is for other people).

In an odd way, that makes me kinda proud to be a native-born Detroiter.

Of course, when you grow up hearing your Mexican-born father tell stories about having to sit in jail and listen to the sound of his friends getting beat up by various members of the Detroit police, it's hard not to consider a lot of the stuff in Detroit to be old news. Yet I would like to think I learned something from this movie anyway.

A Day in the Life

I recently started bonding with a black co-worker over our shared love for the country music with which we both grew up.

Yet more proof that you never know what you'll have in common with someone.

Of course, some would argue that it's politically incorrect for blacks and Hispanics to like country music because it's "their" music. Then again, you don't always get to pick what type of music speaks to you and many times it would be foolish to try.

Nonsequential Links X

As always, all my comments are in parentheses.

Well, no kidding. Every group seen as cruel and repressive has reasons for what it does. Pick the nastiest groups in history, and you can bet that with sufficient study one can come up with reasons why they behaved as they did. And indeed, it’s worth doing that. A view of history in which dangerously bad bogeymen do horrible things simply because they are bad is a shallow view of history that teaches us nothing.

If you say, “Those Mexicans do the jobs Americans won’t do,” what you’re really saying is “We should continue to rip off these foreigners because they have no choice and they have no way to go to court and stop us.”

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not inclusive casting that I’m objecting to. I just want black women to get their own stories.

What’s insulting is the thought that we’re supposed to be happy with whatever representation we get, without understanding that what we crave and demand goes far beyond the simple presence of a person of color on screen. It’s about substance. It’s about the opportunity for an actor or actress of color to be able to stand on their own merit and not in the shadows of their white predecessor. It’s about the importance of highlighting original stories by and featuring talent of color — without presenting it through a white gaze.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Neighborhood: "Welcome to Thanksgiving"

In this episode, actress Marilu Henner of Taxi fame plays a racist grandmother who hails from the state of Michigan.

For what it's worth, I, Tonio Kruger, also had a racist grandmother who hailed from the state of Michigan -- and Marilu Henner's character is so mild compared to her that I can't help but wonder how many real-life racists the producers of this episode ever actually met.

I realize that there's not much room for intellectual discussion in a thirty-minute TV show but I can't help thinking about the many Norman Lear sitcoms I saw growing up that were far more edgy than this. Whatever happened to them?

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Neighborhood: "Pilot"

There is undoubtedly a great TV comedy to be made about modern-day race relations in the U.S. -- but this isn't it.

However, the scene in which one of the white guy's neighbors tries to explain why a black man can't possibly be racist seems quite funny in the light of recent events -- but not in the way that the screenwriter intended.

The Things We Are Not Supposed to Talk About

A good friend of mine told me today about how one of her granddaughters recently got beaten up by a fellow student for:

1. singing a "black song."

2. responding to a question by said student about whether or not she wanted to be black by saying that she actually wanted to be Latina.

3. admitting that she was in actuality an Arab.

Needless to say, none of these reasons deserved punishment but that's what the poor girl got anyway. And unfortunately, such incidents are not rare. According to my friend, the girl's older half-brother got similar treatment from bullies when he was younger even though he was half-black. For that matter, so did the girl's biracial mother.

And sadly enough, the student responsible did not apologize until several days afterward -- and even then the grandmother suspected that the bully's true motive for apologizing was not genuine regret but a desire to avoid prosecution for a hate crime.

I could go on to say more but then again it should not matter what else I could say. The fact is that the little girl was bullied and I can't help feeling very angry about it. It should not matter if the girl responsible was white. It should not matter if she was black. It should not matter if she was Arab or Latina or Asian or anything else. A bully is a bully is a bully is a bully is a bully and anyone who tells you different is probably either a potential bully or an enabler of bullies.

I know that is fashionable in some sections of modern society to pretend differently but I prefer not to think that way. After all, when a former co-worker told me about how her younger sister had once been bullied by Mexicans, my first reaction was not, "Yeah, you Anglo girls deserved that." It was "My God, how would I feel if something like that happened to my sister!"

I also know that it is fashionable to rationalize the desire to not talk about such incidents on the grounds that such talk will only encourage people to get the wrong idea about certain minorities. This is an understandable sentiment but unfortunately, it is also a bit shortsighted if for no other reason that most of the victims of such bullies are themselves minorities. And even if they were white, the same attitude would still be shortsighted. After all, few white people -- especially white liberals -- would be flattered by the idea that there is absolutely no difference between them and the average white bully. Yet this is very often the type of assumption that white liberals are expected to make in regard to nonwhite bullies: that there is no difference between, say, the Mexican who beats up on little kids and the Mexican who does not beat up on little kids. And even if such assumptions could be "proved" to be just, the fact still remains that most people -- regardless of race-- resent like hell the idea that it's okay for people to beat them up.

In any event, this is not a recent problem. Some of my older Mexican-American cousins used to complain about the bullying they experienced in Detroit schools back when they were young. And I somehow doubt that they were the only ones who experienced such problems.

For that matter, I don't kid myself that any one ethnic group has a monopoly on school bullies. But I also don't kid myself that any ethnic group is immune to the temptation to bully.

As for the notion that we just should not talk about it:

1. The one thing we should have learned in the 1960s is that major social problems don't just go away because certain people don't want to talk about them.

2. Said problems are likely to affect people's behavior and attitudes whether we talk about them or not. So it is not very helpful to society to just pretend such problems don't exist.

3. Just because you don't want to talk about certain problems doesn't mean that people are going to stop talking about them. They just won't talk about them to you. And that attitude, needless to say, can come back to haunt you.

Liberals and Conservatives

For every person who conforms to the conventional stereotype of conservative or liberal, there are many more who fall somewhere in-between. Some people are liberal on some issues like abortion and conservative on others like gun control while others are just the other way around. Indeed, even some conventional conservatives are more complicated than they appear at first glance which might explain why the one female co-worker I knew who fought hardest against a male co-worker who was a sexist jackass was also the same woman who listened to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. (I'm not going to pretend that all Limbaugh fans are like her but she was definitely different than what I had expected.)

That said, liberals historically tended to be more pro-active at fighting against racism, sexism and the like while conservatives rarely participated in such fights. Granted, there were exceptions like Lincoln and Eisenhower but even these were more often than not reacting against a situation. For example, Truman took it upon himself to order the racial integration of the military while Eisenhower's decision to support the integration of Little Rock was more a reaction to events than a pro-active decision.

As for Woodrow Wilson, I would like to believe that he too was an exception since he chose to expand the limits of Jim Crow during his time in office despite his reputation as a very liberal president and not many presidents on either side of the aisle did that. Then again it was not unusual to find many Democrats -- especially in the South but also in the North as well -- who were not exactly in favor of integration.

Indeed, many of the "moderate" civil rights views that some conservatives like P.J. O'Rourke take such pride in today were once considered very radical as recently as the 1960s. For that matter, I can say the same thing about certain "moderate" views concerning feminism.

What's Race Got to Do with It?

When I first saw the 1993 movie What's Love Got to Do with It?, I found it sadly amusing how much they played down the influence of racism in the life of Tina Turner as if the average moviegoer was supposed to believe that it was possible for a black woman in 1960s America to go through life without meeting one white person who was mean to her.

However, I did not realize how ridiculous that assumption was until I started adding up the number of white women I have known who have been beaten by white men (either husbands, boyfriends or whatever) -- and found that number to be depressingly high. (And I'm an introvert. Just imagine how many women in that category a more outgoing person would know.)

Yes, I realize that even the best movie in the world can't cover every pov in view in the space of two hours but there seemed to be something obscene about the way the script seemed to imply that white men -- as opposed to non-white men -- were above that type of thing. As if it somehow improves the problem of domestic violence if we can "prove" that it's their problem and not our problem.

Then again I guess I'm biased because one of those women I mentioned above was not only my best friend but a woman who later on saved my life.

Quote of the Week

Look, without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as People of Color, nothing about fanboy or fangirl culture would make sense. What I mean by that is: if it wasn't for race, X-Men doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of breeding human beings in the New World through chattel slavery, Dune doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn't make sense. If it wasn't for the extermination of so many Indigenous First Nations, most of what we call science fiction’s contact stories doesn't make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understood that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible, yeah. In the Green Lantern Corps, we are the oath. We are all of these things -- erased, and yet without us —- we are essential.
--Junot Díaz

Comic Book Image of the Week

That's funny. She doesn't look like Eva Green.

In fact, the lady in the above drawing does not look that much like a white woman at all, especially given the angle from which she is drawn. I don't know whether or not that is intentional. After all, Sin City creator Frank Miller has not been shy about drawing people of color in the past. Yet he usually is not so ambiguous in his creation of such characters either. So could he be trying to tell us something by making Sin City resident Ava Lord out to be a black femme fatale? Or am I just seeing things?

After all, dark-skinned minorities are more often than not absent from most classical examples of the film noir that inspired Frank Miller's Sin City. Even Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely -- which made little effort to downplay the fact that its hero's office was located in a poor black neighborhood and that its first major conflict involved a white gangster throwing his weight around in a black-run tavern -- was considerably whitewashed when it was adapted for the movies and renamed Murder, My Sweet.

Then again, you don't exactly have to be a rocket scientist to guess why Frank Miller would not want his fans to instantly perceive Ava Lord as a black woman. After all, if there is anything more politically incorrect than a unrepentant femme fatale who brags about herself being evil, it's a black femme fatale who does the same thing. Yet one of Frank Miller's characters in one of the other chapters of Sin City is a black prostitute and yet another is a female Japanese assassin so it is not like he's above drawing nonwhite criminals.

I guess only Frank Miller knows for sure which race Ava Lord is supposed to be and so far he's not telling. And since director Robert Rodriguez has chosen to cast a white actress in the part, I suppose that should settle the question.

And yet I can't help but wonder what difference it would make if Ava Lord were black. Or Hispanic. Or Asian. Ideally, it should make no difference but then we don't live in an ideal world.

Then again one could argue that dark-skinned actresses have enough problems without being cast as evil women. So it should be all right to leave those roles for white people. After all, no one objected too much when the producers of the Broadway production of Miss Saigon chose to cast a white guy as a biracial and half-Asian pimp...

Oh, wait. They did.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Davey and Goliath: “The Polka Dot Tie”

It has become so hip nowadays to make fun of the old stop-motion animated children's TV series Davey and Goliath that I sometimes forget how progressive this show could be. For example, this series once devoted an episode to a 1962 parable about racism which never quite mentions racism yet comes closer to mentioning it than most other animated shows of the era. Yet today hardly anyone remembers it.

Granted, messages of racial tolerance were not rare in 1962 when the African-American civil rights movement was in full swing, but they certainly were not very common in most American cartoon shows. And given the fact that Davey and Goliath is usually considered a conservative show because of its emphasis on overt Christian messages, the anti-racism message in this episode seems especially astounding.

To be fair, the episode never comes out and overtly argues on behalf of racial tolerance. But it was one of the first episodes to feature a black character and it is not very hard to connect the dots between the fuss title character Davey makes over said character's polka dot tie and the fuss many real-life adults in 1962 would have made about said character's skin color.

Of course, this being a positive show, Davey eventually comes around and accepts the friendship of the black character after his sister Sally spends the entire episode treating Davey as a fool for initially doing otherwise. And no one thinks anything of it.

It would be nice to believe that all racial conflicts were so easily settled back in 1962, but alas, I suspect otherwise. However, it is nice to see that even back then, some people's hearts were in the right place.

Quote of the Week

My father is black and Venezuelan. My mother is Irish and an opera singer. I am me.
--Mariah Carey

My comment:

I suspect Ms. Carey's comment would be more popular if it did not sound so much like the racial equivalent of "me no Alamo." If not "I'm all right, Jack."

Then again writer Matt Ruff expressed the contrary sentiment a lot better with this quote.

Quote of the Week

Then, I realized something. I was all of four-foot-nothing. He was a six-foot-two cop. He had a police car. He had a baton. He had handcuffs. He had a radio that he could use to call for more policemen with more police cars and more batons. He had a gun. He had bullets. And... he was afraid of me.
--Brian Copeland, Not a Genuine Black Man: Or, How I Claimed My Piece of Ground in the Lily-White Suburbs

Quote of the Week

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America?
--W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Pop Song of the Week: "Puttin' on the Ritz"

This is obviously not a Mitt Romney campaign video. And I doubt Barack Obama would approve of it either -- though I did find it ironic that the blackface sequences were censored by the same MTV which refused to play black music videos until David Bowie shamed them into it.

Trailer of the Week: Bulworth (1998)

An O.J. Simpson joke in 1998? Oh, Warren, what were you thinking? And whatever made you think that it was only black voters who felt especially betrayed by the Democrats?

Oh, well. I guess I could give you credit for trying. But not a whole lot seemed to have changed since 1998. So, er, gracias por nada*...



* Spanish for "thanks for nothing."

Quote of the Week

My cousin, who divides her profession and her marriage between Houston and Dallas, told me her yuppie friend’s little girl spied an equally yuppie black woman strolling her own daughter down the sidewalk and the delighted little white girl said, “Look mommy, a baby maid!”
--Debbie Nathan, “Lives of the Maids,” The Texas Observer, March 11, 1988, vol. 80, no. 5

My comment:

Needless to say, neither Ms. Nathan nor I endorse the mentality illustrated in this quote though I find it all too believable. Worse yet, I suspect that the only thing that has changed since that quote was first written is that today the little white girl would point to a Mexican woman's daughter before saying the same thing. I pray I'm wrong but still...