Not the F-word

Dear Wanda Sykes,

Please be my valentine. Or one of my politics profs. Either will do.

Last week, Safiah Chowdhury, Ben Hartley and Chris Rudnicki won the AMS executive election, beating out Mitch Piper, Kasmet Niyongabo and Davina Finn with more than 50 per cent of the vote.

Now, for the most part, I stay out of politics (I find it’s more effective to sway them from the market.) I generally don’t speak publicly against people unless I find out they’re unpatriotic. But this victory has me confused, disappointed and, well, blue. Even the poster of Stephen Harper hanging in my room is frowning more than usual.

I can’t keep the silence anymore. I’m sorry, Safiah. I think you’re nice and I’m not a racist, but … here are five reasons I think you may be a tyrant, in descending order.

5. You get angry a lot. I’m threatened by you. What if we’re chatting in the cafeteria, you get angry and attack me with a butter knife?

4. You’re too emotional. You’re not really human, so you shouldn’t really be allowed to show a full range of human emotion.

3. You’re irrational. Some of your campaign ideas were really creative and had the potential to work. That doesn’t make sense to me; therefore, you don’t make sense to me and you’re irrational.

2. You’re stupid. It’s genetics, babe. I don’t blame you.

1. You’re a religious and ethnic minority and a woman. How dare you be born that way.

When do women of colour get to be angry, the blog Uppity Brown Woman asks. Truth is, never. Charmaine Williams and other theorists have argued that women of colour are consistently framed as being too emotional and/or unintelligent.

One of the comments on the Journal’s live blog about the presidential debate caught my attention. (For those who are joining this discussion from outside the AMS or Queen’s, please check the Journal’s coverage on Team CHR’s and Team PNF’s election race for background.) An anonymous commenter known only as “SVF” wrote, “I’m also watching the live stream, and Safiah [Chowdhury] is essentially yelling, Davina has no voice, and Mitch [Piper] is very eloquent.”

As someone who attended the debate, I can guarantee Chowdhury wasn’t yelling. And although I agree that Piper was eloquent, it’s interesting to note the contrast between him and Chowdhury. Both displayed the same passion, conviction and confidence, but while this image worked in Piper’s favour, Chowdhury was called out for it.

That’s because women of colour aren’t supposed to show emotion. They’re supposed to be doormats, as Rebecca West famously said, because anything else would rattle white patriarchy. If women of colour are shown to have emotion, it’s perceived in a negative light as out of control and irrational. Often, the emotion that’s portrayed is anger. Anger, of course, is a threat. Anger is heard and being heard means exercising power. Anger implies dissatisfaction and demands change. Anger is too dangerous a weapon for women of colour to wield.

What’s women’s relationship to knowledge? Well, emotion provides two paradoxical explanations of women’s behaviour: on one hand, women’s emotion has the potential to mobilize and force change but, on the other, it’s too wild to be rational or intelligent. Both are portrayed negatively.

When Chowdhury spoke about the now-infamous solar panels, one of her team’s platform points, live blog followers were quick to rip her argument apart. But most of the comments didn’t critique the feasibility of the panels or the science behind them. Instead, commenters questioned her character and personality—whether she was making facts up, whether she knew how to think and whether she could articulate ideas properly. The implication was that there was no way Chowdhury could be intelligent or have sound ideas.

Here’s a disclaimer: I use “sound” instead of “good” because I haven’t decided if I’m pro-solar panels yet. If solar panels require sunlight to be effective, I don’t see how they could work on campus. When I think of Queen’s, I generally see gloom and rain.

Research conducted by Queen’s engineering professor Joshua Pearce and his team confirm that Chowdhury’s team’s facts were accurate, and Team PNF admitted solar panels was probably Team CHR’s strongest platform point. Why was Chowdhury attacked then? Simply because she’s a woman of colour.

Throughout the 10-day campaign period, anonymous comments on the Journal’s coverage online called her divisive because she dared to have ideas, something we typically hope to see in political leaders. Blog posts criticized her religious identity on the grounds that—actually, there were no legitimate grounds. Having a religious, family-values image is generally seen as good for an election; Lord knows many a politician has tried that type of branding. It seems campaign strategies don’t apply if you’re a woman of colour, though.

Something’s rotten on this campus.

I’m not interested in arguing about whether there’s a double standard. I’ve called it out, and now the question is: what are we going to do about it?

This piece was published in the Journal yesterday.

hai girl after we get like wasted let’s slather brown body paint on each other seductively.

I don’t know if anyone will remember Russian ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin’s impressive performance in the European Championships 2010 this past weekend.

The pair edged out Italian team Faiella-Scali for first place, but world attention has been drawn to the Russians’ even edgier costumes—skin-darkening bodysuits, red loincloths and body paint for their short program called “Aboriginal Dance.”

Domnina and Shabalin said they did a web search and were inspired by indigenous peoples of Australia.

In response, Aboriginal leaders have said the pair ignored the cultural significance and importance of the colour red and particular body markings.

Further, Al-Jazeera has reported the music they used seems to be from New Zealand, not Australia.

My general rule is that if you’re going to appropriate a group’s cultural and spiritual symbols and make a mockery of them, the least you can do is get the culture right.

The final nail in the coffin, however, is Domnina’s interview with skating website Golden Skate. When asked about the music, she attributed the choice to her dog, saying, “When we switched on the music … my dog started to race around the room like crazy and we understood that maybe this music is what we need.”

The ice dancers’ disrespect and ignorance is disappointing. They fail to acknowledge that their careless mimicry of so-called Aboriginal culture has profited them in the forms of a gold medal and international recognition.

But I won’t belabour the point because public response has largely praised the ice dancers’ skills while condemning their offensive costumes and poor choice of music.

What I find more interesting are the few people who have justified the skaters’ routine by calling for a separation of sports from politics. That’s difficult, given that Domnina and Shabalin plan to perform their routine at the Olympics in Vancouver next month.

The Olympics, of course, are always loaded with controversy: who gets to host the Games, what type of environmental and infrastructure damage host cities need to prepare for and which athletes are (or aren’t) called out for attempting to cheat the system.

In the Canadian context, it’s already been brought up that the Russian ice dancers’ short program will run counterproductive to our aim to show how far Aboriginal peoples have come in Canada.

I find it troubling that Canada would presume to have any type of moral victory over Russia on this matter. It’s difficult to say Aboriginal peoples have “come far” when land with unsettled claims on it has been appropriated for use in the Olympics.

Vancouver 2010’s Aboriginal-inspired mascots—a tokenizing term at best—make veiled references to Canada’s colonial history that downplay its significance. We see 400 years of colonization, forced assimilation, expulsion and cultural genocide neatly condensed into a character profile on the Games’ official website: Sumi, a green cartoon inspired by West Coast First Nations, “works hard to protect the land, water and creatures of his homeland.”

Cute.

In a way, I’m glad the Olympics are here. If the experience of Beijing 2008 and the Vancouver police force’s actions are any indication, we should be in for a series of protests about routinely ignored indigenous peoples’ concerns and other issues.

I would argue that instead of treating them like bad publicity for Canada, we should take advantage of the added media scrutiny and global pressure the Games bring to genuinely examine where our weaknesses are and where there’s room for change.

This isn’t an opportunity for Russia bashing.

We should reconsider our own actions before pointing fingers at Domnina and Shabalin because, truth is, we’re on thin ice too.

All the blog posts in the world wouldn’t be able to properly deconstruct the problems with the false notion of “reverse racism” white people pull out when they get tired of being held responsible for colonialism.

But we’ll save that discussion for another day.

It’s exam season and I want us to have something a tad lighter to focus on, like ESPN’s latest Outside the Lines episode on white men as a minority in the NBA.

In a dramatic voiceover, we’re told that middle America’s biggest nightmare has come true: black men have taken over the NBA. From out of nowhere, our OTL hosts pull out stats that 71.8 per cent of NBAers are African-Americans, 18.3 per cent are international players and only 9.9 per cent are white Americans. For shame.

The episode takes us on a journey with wannabe-baller Kyle McAlarney, who bemoans the discrimination he’s faced because of his (white) skin. He tells us that he wants to make the NBA a more inclusive place for “guys like [him.]” He forgets to tell us he was invited to the Los Angeles Clippers’ summer league and promptly booted to the D-League for improvement. He forgets to add that many players, including black and Asian ones, have been dealt the same fate.

You know what? Last I checked, white men are still the commissioners, coaches, general managers, commentators, referees and the majority of courtside seat holders in the NBA and in most other professional sports.

Don’t even get me started on hockey.

The Journal started Google ads on our website a few days ago and the ones running on the page with the editorial I plugged last time (“Marginalized by media,” Nov. 20) hook viewers up with single Asian ladies “seeking Western men for love and marriage.”

Not to mention the ads running at the top of this page and to the right, to the right.

Thoughts?

I would form some but I’m too busy gagging.

My signed editorial ran in print today and is also available here.

Just wanted to provide links to the blogs and videos I referenced in it …

Blogs:
Angry Asian Man
Disgrasian
8Asians

Cartoonist Bill Connolly moves his Youtube tutorials away from inanimate objects (willow trees, sunflowers) to … well, I guess his pouty-lipped caricatures of Asian women are no better.

Those lips are so full I can’t eat dinner.

Biggest boo-boos?
1. His repeated use of the word “beautiful”. If that’s not hypersexualization, I don’t know what is.

2. “A lot of people have asked that question …”

3. The woman’s eyes and lips are bigger than her hand.

4. I don’t even know why I made this list. Everything is a boo-boo.

How are you ever going to keep a man with your muddy skin?

Seriously.

I had to haul these out of the vault after reading about companies that are starting to market skin-lightening creams to men.

Her pinkish-white skin magically wins her man back!

To be fair to Pond’s, the company does appear to believe in equal treatment of racialized groups … Watch as it repeats the commercial, this time giving Southeast and East Asian actors screen time.

Of course she has to run to Paris for a happy ending.

Even though these commercials ran in Asian countries, it would be a misrepresentation to say the obsession with skin-lightening techniques only exists “over there.” Have we forgotten Beyoncé’s Vanity Fair and L’Oreal fiascos?

The good

Ontario’s Ministry of Education is introducing five new courses in the social sciences and humanities beginning in September 2011: gender studies, world cultures, human dynamics and two versions of equity studies.

The bad

Reading through the draft curricula, the material seems to veer between anti-oppressive and status-quo discourse. All of it is well meaning, of course, but I’m not envious of the teacher who has to dig through all of the junk to get to the gold.

In an interesting Jekyll-and-Hyde move, the gender studies curriculum that prompts students with gems like, “Do you think that the portrayal of violence in the media reinforces a sense of ‘hypermasculinity’ as the norm of behaviour for males?” also reverts to stereotype-reinforcing questions like, “Why might females spread malicious gossip more than males?” Here’s one for you: why might a curriculum choose to use sensational language (“malicious”) and gendered stereotypes when it’s ostensibly trying to break them down critically?

“World Cultures” fares no better, beginning with its poor choice of name. bell hooks and Islamophobe-turned-IR specialist Samuel Huntington will, apparently, both be studied in the course—as a twisted joke? One hopes.

I’m sure teachers will be told they have to maintain a safe, respectful environment in the classroom, but history and personal experience tell me safety is often conflated with maintaining the status quo. If someone decides to talk about how “reverse racism” is as damaging as racism, will the opinion be legitimized in the same way as an opinion that speaks the opposite? I can see this type of conversation quickly becoming very unsafe for racialized people in the class.

The ugly

In spite of my criticisms—four years of attending this institution will make a cynic of anyone—this is a surprisingly progressive step the Ministry’s taking.

Some of the students at Queen’s are living proof we need these courses to be taught in Ontario high schools. If we can hit ’em up early, maybe I won’t have to sit in a 400-level political studies seminar and hear a white man tell me blackface isn’t offensive to black people. True story.

In an alternate reality, these courses are mandatory. (BBC News)

Costume Craze has all the accessories you need to complete that “Adult Asian Oriental Princess,” “Shanghai Warrior Boy” or “Kimono Kutie” look.

That’s hawt. (Costume Craze)

P.S. Thanks for relegating my attire to the “History and World Culture Costumes” section … as though I become an artefact every time I put on batik. Am I supposed to thank the British for colonizing me into modernity?