Angry White Kid

On half-ness and white privilege

This piece was written by my partner, "Angry Asian Girl."

I am a half-white, half-Chinese woman who identifies as such: Hapa, the Hawaiian word for half, or “Amerasian,” the American Asian amalgam that sounds awkward at best.  I prefer to check two boxes, one for each half, or “Other” given no other option.  I am both  outside and a part of white and Chinese culture – granting me an unusual perspective into racial identities and white privilege. 

The saddest, most difficult part of my half-ness for me is the fact that I look more Chinese than not and yet can never blend seamlessly into Chinese culture because I don’t speak the language and I am too Americanized.  To white people, I look Chinese in addition to apparently looking Latina, Native American, Korean, and Japanese.  People in Chinatown know at once that I am half – my height alone gives that away.  The Chinese always feel comfortable asking what I am, and nod in satisfaction when I tell them.  They know, just as I know, that I am different.

White people are the most frustrating part of being hapa.  I am so comfortable in white culture that white friends often don’t recognize that there could be an issue of race in my life or in our friendship.  Too often, I can never make them understand my perspective when an issue of race is brought up, making me angry at ignorance I can’t blame them for.

What many white people probably don’t realize about people of color is that we talk about race and ethnicity all the time when they aren’t around.  I prefer to talk with other “twinkies” like myself – who are particularly aware of the problem of loving your white friends until they do something naïve or offensive.  The most common example in my own life is how white people fetishize Asian culture: the characters (the written language), the clothes, the food, the acupuncture, the martial arts, the women, the brush painting, and the philosophy.  I want to say to those collectors of all things Asian: “I am not your fetish.”

But for those of you who don’t see cultural appropriation as colonialism, and fetishization as stereotyping and lacking in historical awareness and respect, I’ll give a different example: I walk into a room of 500 white people and get the willies.  It makes me uncomfortable.  There, I said it, call me prejudiced.  Ask me why, and I couldn’t honestly tell you.  It’s like those commercials on TV about bladder problems, where the woman on the commercial feels like she walks into a room and everyone sees her problem even though it is hidden. The commercial illustrates this with a big board she is wearing around her neck proclaiming her bladder problem.  My problem is in the shape of my eyes and the color of my skin, so I don’t even have the benefit of it being hidden.

A good question that I often think about is: what do I think might happen in that room of 500 white people?  Probably nothing, I know how PC we are today.  That thought, however, doesn’t stop my awareness of the situation and my feelings of vulnerability. 

Someone recently asked me if I could pass as white, would I?  This struck me as particularly funny because I am friends with many white anti-racist activists who I believe would love to have a culture to be proud of.  And I am so proud of being Chinese and Swedish and German and French and Welsh.  I was struck again by thoughts of affirmative action and how during college admissions people acted as if you were so lucky to not be white. 

But the sad truth is that sometimes I do wish I could pass as white. In other parts of the country where the only Chinese people own a restaurant or in that room I was discussing previously, I feel like a target.  Other times it is because white people have to learn the consciousness that people of color are born with – that the standards of beauty, the interactions with the police, the food eaten, familial relations, the ideas of man and women that are considered “normal” are actually white norms.  Everyone else is doomed to be thought of in demeaning stereotypes.  Sometimes I wish I could wash the consciousness out of my brain and truly believe that we are all humans, all equal, all the same. 

To those of you who believe in sameness let me explain my thoughts this way: biologically we are all nearly identical, yes, but sociologically, historically, and legally we have been created unequal.  Simply, we are the oppressed and the oppressors.

Minutemen: Not so tough without their guns

Minutemen attack protesters at Columbia.

Today a friend chided me for not blogging about the shutting down of the Minutemen at Columbia University last week.  I've been negligent.

For those who missed it, on October 4, Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, and two other anti-immigrant activists were invited by the College Republicans to give a talk at Columbia University.

The first speaker ranted for 45 minutes. Then, as Gilchrist started his speech, students - led by Chicanos and Latinos - took the stage with a banner reading "No one is illegal."  While Gilchrist  quickly fled in the face of opposition, other Minutemen goons attacked the anti-racist protesters, kicking one in the head, as can plainly be seen in this footage from Univision.

The right wing media went nuts, condemning the protesters and coddling the vigilantes. Ignoring the facts, the rest of the mainstream English-language media got in the act and the demonstrators have faced near-universal denouncement.

Even Jon Stewart attacked the anti-racist activists. (Have the White Nationalists he's been interviewing, like Lou Dobbs, Trent Lott, and Pat Buchanan, gotten to him? Is there a direct correlation between the increase in racists and the decrease in humor on that show?)  Yet the protesters remain unbowed:

We want to state clearly: We are proud to send the message to the country that racist and fascist groups are not welcome at Columbia or in New York City.

As Chicanos and Latinos, alongside African Americans and progressive people of other nationalities, we took it as our responsibility to give voice to the undocumented immigrant families who live in fear at terrorist vigilante groups like the Minutemen. Armed patrols by these groups force more and more people desperate for work to find even more hazardous ways into the United States. Over 3,000 people-including hundreds of children-have died in the desert. Their blood is on the hands of Gilchrist and his thugs.

They now face possible disciplinary actions by the university. We can help by signing a petition supporting them.  ANSWER has also set up a way to fax Lee Bollinger, Columbia's president, a statement supporting the demonstrators. As the students' statement says, "Fascist scapegoating is not up for academic discussion."

For more on this, I highly recommend today's Democracy Now! program, where yet again, in the face of reasoned opposition, this time from Karina Garcia, Political Chair of Columbia's Chicano Caucus, Jim Gilchrist stammers and flees like the racist coward he is.  May the Minutemen be greeted similarly wherever they show their heinous faces.

PS: For more anti-racist fun - St. Louis style - check this out.

Review of "Katrina's Legacy"

Though I have not yet read the book myself, many on the left are discussing Katrina's Legacy by Eric Mann.  Michael Novick, of Anti-Racist Action L.A./People Against Racist Terror (ARA-LA/PART), wrote a very interesting review for ARA's Turning the Tide and has let me put it up here in full.  Check it out.
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Eric Mann, founder of the Labor Community Strategy Center (LCSC) in Los Angeles, has written a book worthy of being read, and re-read, by anyone concerned about social justice and social change in the early 21st Century. The book is important to grapple with both for its significant strengths and for its equally critical weaknesses.

Mann correctly identifies the Black-led struggle over the human-made disaster of Katrina as vitally important to the possibilities for confronting imperialism and for transforming a destructive and unsustainable social, political and economic order of white supremacy and imperialism. He illustrates how capitalism, colonialism and imperialism have devastated the environment and human lives, and more important, how the struggles of oppressed and colonized people for liberation hold the key to building a new, more just, humane and ecologically-sound society.

What are some of the key strengths of the analysis that Mann puts forward with the assistance, and on behalf, of his comrades in LCSC? Mann listens to, and quotes from, Black organizers on the ground in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He understands the central role of white supremacy, not only in its organized, self-proclaimed forms such as the Ku Klux Klan, but in the social order and social construction of white racism, as a key prop of the system of capitalism and imperialism. He shows how at various periods in US history, this system has been weakened by, and then regrouped itself against, threats from Black liberation, indigenous, Mexicano and other anti-colonial struggles by people of color.

Mann says that "the central objective of 'Katrina's Legacy' is to reinforce the historical perspective, rooted in centuries of struggle by the Black Liberation Movement, of four interrelated strategic demands - land, Reparations, full democratic rights, and the right of self-determination, up to and including …secession from the United States." (p. 12) This places Mann squarely in the ranks of authentic anti-racism and anti-imperialism, and makes his book a challenge to white supremacy and privilege in the left and "progressive" movements. Yet Mann throughout seems to contradict or undercut his own insights.

Murdered by the State

Yesterday at 6:18 PM (CST), the last day of Black August, the State completed its sterile, mechanical murder of 29-year-old Hasan Shakur (Derrick Frazier).  He was the 20th person executed by the state of Texas so far this year.  One more than all of last year, while seven more souls wait in the wings - "scheduled to die."  Death made routine, murder by appointment.

I won't pretend like I really knew Hasan.  Over the past couple weeks we exchanged a couple letters, and that's it.  But those letters - his vibrancy, energy and resolve - really moved me.  He didn't want to dwell on his situation, he didn't want my hope, he wanted to push the movement forward.  He had vision and was going full steam until the end to make it happen.  There was no halfway.  There was an urgency, above and beyond his personal situation, to give all that one could to fight this rotten system.

"It is turning out to be these people are just simply hell bent on killing me and that's the only conclusion one could come to in this situation and that's real," he wrote on August 26.  "Continue to make sure that the word gets out far and wide.  Matters not if I am alive or dead, NEVER stop putting the word out in the world and such because my movement and the movement as a whole will not die.  We must continue to push and continue to make sure that something great comes out of this situation."

Now that the bloodthirsty rulers have stolen his life, their racist, classist actions cloaked with the "legitimacy" of the State, we are left with his words and his legacy and the numerous projects he has put into motion.  An empty void in the heart and a fire in the gut.  Thousands more await a similar fate, one of the myriad of ways - bombs, bullets and poison needles - the State doles out death.

I send my deepest condolences to his wife, friends and comrades, and am honored to have known him for even a brief moment.  As he wrote, "I will close, but in closing, do know that all have the capability of making a difference in this world and making something great come of what you do...KEEP THE MOVEMENT ALIVE!"

Save Hasan Shakur ~ Cruel and Unusual Punishment - Fight for Freedom

Hasan Shakur: A Maroon on Death Row

Before (or after) reading the excellent article below, call and fax Governor Perry and ask for a stay of execution:
Phone: (512) 463-1782
Fax: (512) 463-1849
Email: www.governor.state.tx.us/contact
www.HasanShakur.com

Hasan Shakur: A Maroon on Death Row
Written Aug. 29, 2006

By Walidah Imarisha

I am sitting in my rented Chevy Equinox outside of the Polunsky Unit, in Livingston, Texas. The middle of farm country, there are stables right next door to the prison, within pissing distance of the electrified fence and concertina wire. I wonder if they belong to the prison. How much of this farmland is the prisons? The inmates wear all white here. It is ghostly figures I see pushing wheelbarrows, carrying rakes through a manicured lawn with flower boxes shaped like the star of Texas. This place reminds me so much of the California state prison my adopted brother Kakamia is in, the town, the hotel I’m staying at, the prison itself, that I walked into the visiting room expected to see my afro-haloed hermano. But I guess maybe all prison towns start to look the same.

The processing is the fastest I‘ve ever been through going to a prison. I have had to wait hours before to be cleared. I do not know if it is this prison, or the fact that I’m visiting at off times, or the fact that I am visiting someone who has an execution date set. Set for Thursday. Days are bleeding away, the 29th is just a breath away from the 31st.

Hasan Shakur, aka Derrick Frazier, aka #999284, is dressed all in white as well. Visiting is only through glass, and Hasan sits in a cage, the telephone pressed to his ear. He is as big as I figured he would be. He stands up to go to the bathroom, sticking his hands through the slot so they can put the handcuffs on him and he towers over the three guards around him.

But what doesn’t come through in the photos on his website is his baby face. 29 years old now, with a face of a 15 year old. He barely made it to 29, wasn’t supposed to make it. His life reads like a text book case of black ghetto life (“I always felt more comfortable in the ghetto, you know?” he says, eyes clear as spring water): dad gone, addicted beloved mother gone, didn’t graduate high school, slanging and banging and hardening his face to survive, and here he sits, for 9 years, on Texas’ death row, dressed in baptismal white. He was reborn here, held not by heavenly loving hands but by night sticks and pepper spray. Not gently laid back to be quietly submerged, but head pushed into toilets, and balls crushed under boots. Hasan Shakur born out of Derrick Frazier, not through water but a hail of bullets and billy clubs, child of George Jackson and Angela Davis, Mumia and Sundiata and all the political prisoners. Grandchild of Nat Turner and great great grandson of Seminoles and maroon colonies and quilombos. He takes his heritage serious as a heart attack, induced by a pound of poison shoved into your veins by the state.

"From the love arising from the flying machete's edge"

From LA Indymedia

So it seems pretty clear that Mexico's election was stolen.  Fraud big time.  But the question is, who cares?  I don't get all these left groups, who have spent the past several months denouncing not just Madrazo and Calderon, the "center" and "right" candidates, but Lopez Obrador, the one on the "left" as well, are now all pissed about the fraud and want to make sure the "left" candidate wins - as it appears Lopez Obrador did indeed win.

If there was no fraud, would they have been as excited about a Lopez Obrador victory?  What makes him that much more likeable and worthy of support now?  Fraud or no, he's still a ruling class hack.  He can mobilize his own supporters, he doesn't need the actual left's help.  Sure, critique the joke of a system that serves itself - fraud or no - but don't support the jokers involved. 

Meanwhile, fraudulent spectacles aside, peoples struggles are still going on in Oaxaca and Atenco.  In Oaxaca, a Popular Assembly resulting from a teachers strike and rebellion is threatening to replace the state government and all political parties. 

And Atenco, already autonomous and dealing with the aftermath of the state's latest massive assault, is extending its solidarity northward, to the South Central Farm, which is still fighting off attacks from slimeball Ralph Horowitz.  (More on the Farm and LA in this in-depth article.)  Atenco states,

We received with deep indignation the news of the despicable repression against the farm and we feel broadly identified with you.

We are here, resisting, understanding more and more that the problem underneath is this kind of sinister social organization, this vile system which just as well massacres in Palestine or Iraq, Atenco, Ecuador or Los Angeles, and in every place in which dignity shows its glowing splendor.

The specter of state violence looms in Los Angeles, too.  And not just at South Central Farm.  The LAPD went nuts last Saturday and started brutalizing anti-Minuteman protesters for absolutely no reason.  (video 1|video 2)  Further evidence of the collusion between racist kops and racist vigilantes.

But from Mexico to Los Angeles and everywhere else, the people will always resist.  Cliché, but true.

Who will be next?

More flags than brains in San Jose

This piece is by my partner, the self-proclaimed "Angry Asian Girl," reflecting on an anti-immigrant protest we went to counter on Saturday in San Jose.

I was angry today.  Mean, spitting, red in the face about to cry, angry. It was because of these racist, xenophobic idiots. Waving their American flags, preaching their desire to uphold fucked up laws, and smug in their belief that somehow a group of people are to blame for issues our government is clearly responsibly for.  In this case, it was an anti-immigrant group attacking undocumented migrants, but it could have been my people under attack.  It could have been targeting any group of non-white peoples.

I am from this country.  When someone today told me to go back to where I came from, I truthfully told them I was born here.  But I know that as soon as China – the country of my ancestors - does something to threaten the United States, I could start calling an internment camp my home.  I could have to register myself with all the other Chinese.  The Japanese were in interment camps in WWII (not the German immigrants).  The Arabs had to go to special registration.  It is unfortunately an all too real possibility.

Do you remember the spy plane incident?  The U.S. was spying on China, its plane went down, and China kept it a little too long, though they released the crew right away (you know the U.S. wouldn’t have done the same).  Immediately after that, outbreaks of racist attacks against Chinese occurred all over Middle America.  It is because of the threat of detention without cause, the threat of being perceived as smart and untrustworthy, crafty and cunning, that I protested against these racists today.  The fact they have no sense of humanity and are xenophobic morons doesn’t hurt either.

I know when I see them that I am looking into the face of my future oppressor.  These same people first hated the Arabs when they were the trendy group to hate, and now hate Latin@s because that is what is in these days. These people probably blame blacks for high crime rates. These people will hate me when China does something against the interests of the U.S. 

I am not Chinese enough to be even accepted by my own people.  I am a self-acknowledged Twinkie (white on the inside, yellow on the outside) that doesn’t speak the language and learned more about the culture from my white mom.  My Chinese-American dad instead taught me about the Chinese Exclusion Act and how our family got into this country “illegally” as paper sons.  But I look Chinese enough to be untrustworthy.  I look Chinese enough to be interned, to be registered, to be perceived as a threat. 

We as people of color and white anti-racists have got to stand up for our Arab brothers and Latina sisters.  They may be in the hot seat now, but you know it could be me - or you - that suffers the outrage of being blamed for something we are not even slightly responsible for.  Except for the indigenous, we are all descendents of immigrants or colonizers.

Racists have national protest, again; and no one comes, again

Building off the resounding success of their last national protest, the Minutemen today held a national protest in Washington, DC.  This was to cap off their weeklong caravan that began with them getting run out of Los Angeles.

At each stop the Minutemen bragged that they were picking up thousands of supporters and would have a 2 million strong march at the capitol. 

Total Minuteman turnout: 38
Counter-protesters: 50-60

Best chants (see the video):
"You forgot your hoods!"
"You're racists, you're classists, you're xenophobic fascists!"

The Minutemen claim the country is behind them.  Must be waaaaay behind them.

May Day was a Great Day

Only a section of the main march in San Francisco.  From Indybay.

I hope you all had the opportunity to celebrate May Day as it was meant to be celebrated - in the streets.  The professional liars in the corporate media said 1.5 million of us were out there, but there were at least a million in California and 750,000 in Chicago alone, making that number a bit on the false side. 

I haven't found a place with a comprehensive roundup of the protests, though hopefully one is in the works.  Indybay has summaries of all the California actions and links to other sites with coverage and MediaRights is trying to gather a collection of May Day videos from all over.  In a quick scan, I found that Bombs and Shields, Disillusioned Kid, Delete the Border, and Infoshop all have good roundups - with pictures!

What did you think about your local May Day rally? 

My favorite part of the day was the first, 8:30 AM march - unpermitted through the streets of San Francisco's financial district (see photos here).  The kops were completely caught off-guard and we managed to more or less have our run of the place for a while.  The two best moments were when we met up with a march of high school kids who had walked out and taken the streets themselves, as well as seeing otherwise reserved folks get crazy excited once we got into the street.  It wasn't without it's flaws and downsides, but it was an ambitious effort and people did what they could.

Arriving at the 11 AM main march brought a mix of emotions.  I found it absolutely amazing and inspiring that so many people came out, many of them risking their jobs and more to be there.  It was a message and image that could not be ignored - both in terms of the numbers in the streets and the economic impact it had. 

At the same time there was much I found frustrating.  The vanguard organizations were all out in full force.  And on a day that was supposed to be a boycott - no buying or selling - they were all selling their papers and books and signs and flags.  Hypocrites.  The security at the march seemed to spend more time harassing and yelling at march participants that it did providing any actual "security" - not to mention the stifling role that peace police play at any action.  The speakers at the beginning were boring and predictable, alternating between praising god and country and urging people to contact their senators.  The march was slow, the U.S. flags nauseating, and the speakers at the rally afterward again so predictable that people left by the thousands, effectively quashing the spark of an energetic afternoon. 

I feel very important issues went unaddressed.  All these cries for legalization beg the question: "And then what?"  What does it mean to be "legal"?  What does it mean for those who have yet to cross the border?  Is this kind of mobilization going to have to happen periodically, to "legalize" the next wave of immigrants?  What of the forces that cause migration?  NAFTA, CAFTA, FTAA, WTO - capitalism?  What of the fact that most likely when you arrive you'll have to work a bad, low-paying job?

This situation provides the perfect context to be asking these questions and challenging the hegemony of ideas like capitalism, citizenship, states and borders. 

But at the same time I was thinking about all these questions and griping about aspects of the march, I was grounded by one comment left on Indybay in regard to complaints about the U.S. flag.

How are we suppose to appeal to most Americans. Most aren't knee-jerk anti-flag fanatics. We didn't come here to revolutionize the working class. We came here to work, and want to be treated like humans, not second class Americans. The flag waving helps us gain inclusion and not face hostility from racism veiled as anti-immigrant.

I don't agree necessarily, but while I spew my ideas, as someone who is not an immigrant, it's important for me to remember and recognize the place that many of these folks who were out in the streets are coming from. The struggle continues, and Monday was a great day in that struggle.

May Day and Save Darfur from what?

Follow ups on a couple posts:

If you won't be in the streets tomorrow for May Day, there are a few things you can still do. 

• Those who can't get out of school are being urged to protest silently in class.


• If you're in an office all day, join the virtual sit-in put on by the Electronic Disturbance Theater and the borderlands Hacklab.


• For news, keep an eye on your local Indymedia and pirate or community radio stations.

On the shenanigans in DC and elsewhere today relating the crisis in Darfur, Yoshie over at Critical Montages has been doing an excellent job following that story and examining the intricacies of it.  She has several great posts up, including one on how today's rally helped to not bring peace to Darfur.  Check it out.