Excellent Week on Blog Central!

Could Obama be the first Asian American President?

Yes, someone has actually made this argument. The article has been written by Jeff Yang and appeared a while ago in the San Francisco Chronicle. Here's the link:

Could Obama be the first Asian American president?

To be honest I am not entirely surprised or taken aback with this argument. I have found a similar tendency in South Asian American blogs to "reclaim" Obama as "one of us" based on his immigrant experience and "funny name."

The New Face of America?

Words of Power, and the Power of Words

Hey, did you guys hear the new Kanye song?

Although I missed the MTV VMA's where Kanya debuted that song, I have been paying a bit of attention to the other great cultural barometer of our time, the UB Spectrum. Apparently there's been a bit of controversy over an opinion piece that appeared in the September 15th edition.

The piece was written by "Senior Sports Editor" Steven Marth and dealt with the N-word. The article is online and I would suggest reading it if you haven't, because the rest of this post might not make as much sense.

Before I get into the article and its implications, I should also note that if you haven't been following the Spectrum lately (and I wasn't until yesterday, luckily I found back copies strewn about the Grad lounge) there has been a pretty serious backlash directed at Mr. Marsh. The Black Student Union, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Alliance and the College Democrats have since published a response calling for his dismissal. A separate letter from the editor suggested that Marsh has been shouted at on campus and personally threatened.

A quick reading of the article begs several questions. First, why is the sports guy getting into an extremely touchy racial subject? UB Football is 2-2! We beat the spread against Missouri!

The second question I have is with his argument that a double-standard exists because the N-Word is "free speech" where derogatory terms for homosexuals or different ethnic groups are hate crimes. I'm no legal scholar (barely any kind of scholar for that matter) but I think he's wrong here. I don't believe using a derogatory term is itself a crime, and if it is, I certainly don't think it should be.

Thirdly, he argues that groups such as the Black Student Union and BET are, by their natures, propogating racism. I think he's looking at these entities the wrong way. Groups like the BSU exist not to emphasize differences but to help ensure that those differences are rendered as non-existent as possible. And as far as BET encouraging racism, I really think that's just a sophomoric argument that doesn't befit a Senior anything. Does that mean the Food Network progates obesity? Or the Do-It-Yourself Network progates splinters? Networks are allowed to cater to audiences.

So other than me thinking the Senior Sports Editor of the Spectrum is wrong and probably shouldn't have even published his opinion on the matter (and yes I recognize the irony of publishing my own opinion regarding it), what does this have to do with our class? I think its a pretty strong reminder of the power of words, and where that power comes from. Perhaps even more pressing for the historian, it reminds us that words are subject to different interpretations.

When Kanye uses the N-Word we all hear it differently, not unlike how you could read the source about Francis in The Many-Headed Hyrda differently. Context is crucial, of course, but ultimately our own cultural and itellectual experiences inform how we process a certain word. One could (and has) defined culture as the medium that gives meaning to what we experience. I think understanding the power of words is absolutely critical to any historian, but especially one studying race. What connotations did "blackymoor" have when that document was written? Was it as powerful as the N-Word is today?

So with apologies for the length of my ramble, and a sincere plea to Senior Sports Editor Steven Marth to not sue me for libel, I'll draw this to a close, and do encourage and await your comments.

Racial Views, White Voters

Palin's announcement as the GOP's vie-presidential nominee probably already has many Democrats losing sleep. Well, here's more cause to worry. A recent poll conducted by AP and Stanford University claims that negative racial views may steer a significant amount of the White Democratic vote away from Obama. The poll points out that "nearly 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents."

Full details can be found here: Yahoo/AP Poll (Full poll results are available as a PDF on the right of the page). Here's a brief summary:

To be honest, I am not sure if there is a correlation between what White people think of Blacks in general, and whether that is going to negatively affect Obama. The reason I am hesitant to take this leap is because Obama has very carefully constructed an image of himself that resists identification with any of the negative adjectives used in the poll above. For example, not many informed White voters would agree that Obama, once a professor at Univ. of Chicago, is "lazy," un-intelligent at school, "violent" or not "smart at everyday things." Many, however, would probably call him "determined," "smart," and "hard working." It's also hard to call Obama "complaining," since he has been tooting the horn of the American Dream since day 1.

Comments? Rebuttals?

Race Propagation

Last week we briefly discussed race propagation.  During this discussion, it was noted that miscegenation precluded the propagation of whiteness.  Related to this discussion is an article I read on CNN.com titled "Minorities Expected to be the Majority in 2050."  This article should be of interest to you all.  Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/13/census.minorities/index.html?section=cnn_latest

The Golden Girls

Ok-so don't laugh, but this morning as I was watching Golden Girls (it is one of my guilty pleasures), there was an interesting scene I wanted to share with you all. The Golden Girls-Dorothy, Rose, Blanch, and Sophia-were interviewing people for a housekeeper position. After several interviews of unqualified candidates, the girls had lost all hope. And then-Margerite showed up to interview for the job. The girls were impressed with her charming personality and friendly disposition. They were sitting down in the living room (on the very uncomfortable-looking wicker furniture!), getting to know the interviewee. Blanch (the morally corrupt golden girl) asked Margerite to tell them a little something about herself. Margerite responded by saying she was hard working and friendly. The girls probed her to tell them something more about herself. Finally, Margerite decided to tell them her issue: she was black. Now obviously the golden girls could see this since they held a face-to-face interview. She followed her proclamation of her race by saying that if her being black was a problem with the girls, then she was white. While the audience laughed and clapped in the background-I couldn't help but be taken aback by this scene. First of all, Margerite shows up at the house clad in a headwrap (resembling that of Aunt Jemima), traditional African clothing, and a Jamaican accent. She shows up for a housekeeper position, and immediately brings up her race in the interview. The racial stereotypes embedded in this scene were almost too many to count. Part of me is questioning whether the writers were adding racial stereotypes in a more indirect fashion so as not to openly offend people, or bring up the touchy subject of race. Any thoughts?

Race at the Conventions

I occasionally follow this South Asian American blog on the net called Sepiamutiny. They had a very interesting post recently about the racial composition of delegates at both parties' national conventions.

According to the post:

While 44% of all delegates at the DNC were minorities, this was true for only 7% of RNC delegates. In fact, this was one of the whitest RNC conventions in decades, pretty much since Black Americans effectively regained the franchise:

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago [Link]

I find this, sincerely, to be very shocking. The full post can be read here: Left vs. White. (I always find the comments at the bottom extremely interesting).

Any thoughts about this? I think the Republicans' stance on immigration is a huge reason why so many minorities are turned off by the party. I really wish that McCain had the guts to stand behind his comprehensive immigration reform bill, but I guess he's too busy pandering to the conservative right. Can anyone think of any other reasons why minorities seem turned off by the Republicans? Plus, do you think opposition to immigration has anything to do with race?

Call for Manuscripts

With the encouragement of quality research presentations and possible manuscript submissions on the table, I believe this is ideal time to spread the word of another possible publication: I am currently collecting poems for an anthology of two contrasting lifestyles in America -- the simplicity of isolated rural communities; and the complexity of fast-paced multicultural urban communities. My goal is to collect enough poems to equally represent both cornerstones of American life and living. Ethnicity and race play a subtle but quite interpretive role -- the concentration of various races in any given city, and the lack of multiple races in most rural environments. Both deserve equal representation, but need not follow the "one person one vote" concept praised by Guinier. Any interests? Any questions? If so, let me know, and I'll give you the details. With a little bit of alliteration in mind, the title of the anthology will be "Concrete and Crops."

The Doll Test: Then and Now

Several of the articles that we read for this week make reference to the famous "doll test" conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark.  The researchers found that a vast majority of the students expressed clear preferences for white dolls over black ones. The black dolls bore the  weight of several negative associations in the minds of the children, while the white dolls were associated with cleanliness, kindness, and beauty.   The results of that test were used, in part, to prove the damage done to African Americans by decades of racial segregation.  Nearly fifty years later, a high-school student replicated the 'doll test' to quite interesting results.  See the video , called 'A Girl Like Me' and tell me what you think.

A Great Curiosity

I don't know if any of you guys have ever seen this, but it came up in History 537 last week and I thought this might be an appropriate place to pass it on. It's known as the "Moss broadside" and was discovered in the commonplace book of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, the most prominent medical doctor of the Revolutionary period, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Hopefully you can read it. If not I think I have the hard copy we looked at last week.

Just in case you want some extra reading (and who doesn't?), you can find an article on the broadside from a Yale historian here at common-place.net.

Forum on Race

Is anyone interested in organizing the end of semester forum? If so, may I help? I'd like to be involved.

About Good Conversation and Race

Is anyone else skeptical about 'talking race'?

I just finished the Nebeker essay. At one point she promotes the need for more "constructive dialogue" concerning race and racism (pgs. 34-35). I couldn't agree more with her, but, to be quite honest, my experience with race talks is of the "combative as drunken brawlers on a Saturday night" type -- the kind that, according to Nebeker, Guinier, and Cose, dooms interracial communication. Not only have I been egged on by some drunken brawler instigating an argument; I've been one. And, rarely do I leave the talk feeling that I've experienced a "dialogue for change."

Experience tells me that talking race is REALLY touchy. But, still, I'm hopeful. Interested. Ready for the food for thought that Katie mentioned in her post. This seminar, I know, will be very different from the multicultural affairs fora in my undergraduate experience, where sparks flew. Then again, Nebeker noticed "insensitive, uninformed, [and] malicious" comments in her graduate courses...

I hope no one feels like me.