Filed under: Current Events, Eric, Middle East | Tags: Keffiyeh, Palestine, Rachel Ray, Terrorism
I will start by saying that from the very little I know of TV host Rachael Ray, I find her incredibly annoying and rather stupid, possessing the personality of a Jack Russell terrier or a similarly excitable small animal. I also know that my mother owns one of her misleadingly titled 30-minute meals cookbooks that contains not a single recipe that could possibly be prepared in 30 minutes or less. I get the impression that Ray’s audience (like that of most daytime talk show/cooking show hosts) is generally composed of middle-aged, middle-class, women of the white variety. So, given the demographics of her audience and her own dim-wittedness, I find it hard to believe that either Ray or those who follow her (or the vast majority of the American population for that matter) had even the slightest clue to the significance of the keffiyeh that she donned in a recent Dunkin’ Donuts ad.
That’s not a Dunkin’ Donuts Iced Mocha Latte she is holding, it’s a fully functional bomb!
Naturally, there was a backlash to the advertisement, eventually resulting in it being canned. Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin took a break from defending the internment of Japanese-American people during World War II to chime in: “The keffiyeh has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.” I guess one person’s “murderous Palestinian jihad” is another’s “struggle for national liberation against a brutal apartheid regime.” We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one Michelle. In any case, this situation has brought to the fore a few issues I have wanted to write about for a while now:
By Chloe Wayne
I’m a little late on this, but check out this photo a blogger at Daily Kos, “the largest progressive community blog in the United States,” made and posted on the site (only to be taken down hours later):
What can be worse than the overt racist is the well-meaning, “colorblind” white liberal who is “down for the cause” but is seriously ignorant. I was shocked to find that the blogger in question posted the photo as a medium of support for Michelle Obama, and an attack against the Republican Party for their campaign tactics. The person even wrote underneath it: “Copy and send out as you wish.” Are you serious??????
In the question of Black freedom, the textbook answers are 1863 and 1964: the years of the Emancipation Proclamation and a landmark Civil Rights Act, respectively. But when, if ever, have we been emancipated from the mental and psychological stronghold our racially muddied history has had on us? It boggles my mind that the poster could not foresee people’s outrage at such an image, as if the pain of such atrocities no longer weighs heavily on our hearts and minds, as if racism and white supremacy are vestigial flickers of decades past that bear no implications for today.
While perusing the CNN headlines last week I stumbled upon an article entitled “White valedictorian: A first for historically black Morehouse.” I initially didn’t think much of the piece (surprised that there were actually white people attending Morehouse). But I clicked on the link anyway and found:
The article proceeds to describe the ways in which Packwood is one with the black community. Packwood explains that his mother’s second marriage was to a black man. The relationship didn’t work out and things were tough at home (another fact the CNN reporters highlight during their schpeal about Packwood’s ability to identify with the black community). Because of these conditions, Packwood was forced to live with a close friend and his family (also black) where he finished his high school career and prepared for college. Packwood states, “A large majority of my friends, like all my girlfriends have been minorities… So it was very, it was kind of strange that I always gravitated toward the black community.”
Joshua Packwood (left) & brother (who will attend Morehouse next fall) pictured with unidentified ethnic child
By Chloe Wayne
Yesterday would have been the 83rd birthday of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz…Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell gives us her thoughts on the significance.
Ossie Davis’s rather powerful eulogy for Malcolm:
So far removed from the Civil Rights generation, I find it difficult to assess the extent to which his legacy today reflects his actual impact during his short life, or his posthumous deification or commodification. Who was Malcolm Little, really? How can one grasp such a prominent, polemical figure when his words and images are thrown at us left and right– often scattered, disjointed, and even contradictory– without any historical context or sense of continuity in which to ground them?
I think it’s important for us to commemorate Malcolm, and it is equally so to acknowledge the difficulties we face in making sense of him. Whether we agree with his (varying) ideological stances or not, his relevance today reaches much farther than the one-dimensional personas we have erected in his place.
To duly honor him is to dig a little deeper to study him and the forces/structures that birthed him. Accordingly, if the 1980s and 1990s consigned his countenance to T-shirts and posters, let this generation reject the hoary catchphrases and angry-faced photographs as inadequate representations of the man, and return him– and more importantly, truly progressive and radical action– to the forefront of our political consciousness.
As I have told many, my mother has been the greatest musical influence in my life. When people notice my 27,000+ (I am shameless) song iTunes Library, I consider it a reflection of the wealth of knowledge that my mother gave me at a young age. What must be understood about my life is the fact that as a child we did not listen to the radio. Instead our car was inundated with the sounds of Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Roy Ayers, and Donald Byrd. Even as I grew older my mother introduced me to Lauryn Hill (Miseducation Tour with my mom was my first concert ever…), Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Mary J. Blige. Being a musician herself, my mother understood sounds and harmonies on a level unbeknownst to the average listener. This translated into the musical selection that she passed on to me.
Because of this, I first heard that familiar piano cadence without an accompanying drum loop. When I first heard those notes, smooth yet aggressively stroked piano notes, they were then Ahmad Jamal’s “I Love You” from his 1970 classic The Awakening. However, many of my contemporaries would understand the piece in question as Nas’ “The World Is Yours” produced by legendary producer Pete Rock. It’s moments like these that I cherish in life—I listen to a hip-hop record to find a song from my past; from music’s elongated history
“Hip Hop is like what you would call the bastard child of a lot of different forms of music…” ~DJ Jazzy Jay of the Universal Zulu Nation on “Rock and Roll (Could Never Hop Like This) Part 2Filed under: Current Events, Eric, World | Tags: Burma, Cyclone, Invade, Katrina, Myanmar
As I write this more than 23,000 people are dead and an estimated 37,000 are missing in the wake of Cyclone Nargis’ landfall over Burma (also known as the Union of Myanmar) on May 2nd. Many expect the death toll to reach a staggering 100,000 by the final count. Just to put this in perspective, as a result of the September 11th attacks and Hurricane Katrina 3,017 and 1,836 died respectively. I do not point this out to suggest that these two tragedies are in some way less significant than what has happened on the other side of the world, nor do I wish to let our government off of the hook for the unnecessary hell that Huricane Katrina wreaked and continues to wreak on the people of New Orleans—you know me, that is the last thing I want to do. I make this comparison merely to remind people that in the insulated media market that is the United States, it is easy to lose sight of the pain and suffering that goes on in the parts of the world that most people would be hard pressed to find on a map.
In case you slept through geography class…
So what can we learn from the devastation that resulted from this Cyclone and Hurricane Katrina?
I have mixed feelings about the “youtube-ification” of American politics. On one hand you get hilarious stuff like this:
“B**** got eyes like the GEICO lizard…”
On the other hand you get stuff that is hilarious for all of the wrong reasons:
By Chloe Wayne
I’ve been meaning to write this for weeks. And I’m not referencing our tacky-ass lack of posting (due to final exams and such…stupid college kids), I mean that I haven’t been able to find the words.
As the fifth anniversary of Nina Simone’s death passed a few weeks ago, I struggled to catch the slippery sentiments afire in my brain, but failed to string them into anything longer than…What happened to activism in popular culture like that? Where are public figures who have grown weary of simple philanthropy and tired liberal rhetoric?
Nina Simone – Mississippi Goddam
I long for a new “Mississippi Goddam” (take a listen– link is above). The piano pulses and agitates as urgently and frenetically as Simone’s exhortations; it’s difficult not to believe a torrential one-woman apocalypse will be wreaked upon America if she does not get her way.
Today, how many people know that Simone risked her musical career and livelihood several times to headline benefit concerts—for the likes of SNCC, SCLC, and the NAACP among others—for free? When popular cultural memory remembers Simone, musical masterpieces such as “I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” come to mind (Common recently sampled the latter on Finding Forever).
But what about “Pirate Jenny” on one of her live albums, In Concert? The narrator, a poor black female laborer, imagines counter-violence against her oppressors, “deciding whether they should be killed ‘now or later.’ In a powerful whisper, devoid of any musical accompaniment, Simone offered her protagonist’s answer: ‘right now’” (Ruth Feldstein, “I Don’t Trust You Anymore”). I cannot think of any 21st-century pop culture figure who has put forth such an explicit, angry, radical attack on the status quo.
Speaking of radical icons of the African-American musical tradition– Flava Flav, I spit on thee! May the destruction of a thousand locust plagues descend upon thy being (just kidding….sort of).
Gag me with a fork.
Filed under: Uncategorized
To Our Loyal Readers,
The last few weeks have been finals season at UPenn, thus explaining our recent lack of activity. We have not forgotten about you and we intend on bringing you some new posts in the next few days as finals wind to a close.
Thanks,
ETHOS
