mehreenkasana:

I’ll say three things clearly so that there is no misconstruing:

1. White privilege exists.

2. This is about the instant media positioning from “White Caucasian Male” to Indoctrined Chechen Terrorist.

3. Call me a “terrorism apologist”, and I’ll take you as seriously as I take a worm.

Race in mainstream media is an extremely complicated issue that is often reduced to stereotypes of bodies of which the majority is non-white or, for the lack of a better term, racially ambiguous i.e. ‘difficult to define’ (who decides the specifics of an ethnicity and its description in media is also a question to be asked). The inherent Otherness of an ethnicity becomes even more obvious during times of reports on conflict, violence, crackdowns, etc. This is the internet after all; The understanding of these issues from what I’ve seen has been terribly parochial. Many times during discussions on Tumblr and even otherwise, I’ve realized that most Americans - regardless of their background - view the world through a highly US-centric gaze which often erases the complexity of dynamics in issues of race, gender, sexuality, etc. The Tsarnaev brothers, prior to these ghastly events, must have surely enjoyed the benefits of passing for white on a normal day when their religion wasn’t brought into question or their initial immigrant status wasn’t being discussed. I say passing because, again, Caucasian does not mean white always. In many cases, the people of South West Asia have been categorized as Caucasian, yet upon seeing them, they’re described as Brown in media, lit, profiling. Racial dynamics become tricky to talk about especially if the person(s) is displaced; Immigrant status, “not American enough”, etc. The unofficial media response to the Tsarnaev Brothers in the case of the ridiculous tweets by mostly young white girls on how ‘hot they are though’, the gentle tone offered for the history of the young guys (how the younger brother was kind and intelligent while the older brother ‘kept to himself’), the temporariness of the empathy professed is obvious now. I am surprised that most people aren’t noticing how Islamophobic tropes have quickly replaced the sympathy-for-the-seemingly-white-guy tone. There is a very particular kind of focus on the Tsarnaev Brothers’ immigrant history and their religion which is Islam. Various news sites showed their social media accounts, photos of the older brother admitting he “did not understand Americans”, a keen concentration on Islam and more.

I’m curious about how the media rhetoric around the Tsarnaev Brothers has surfaced; how the shift of tone occurred in channels and publications about the two Chechens before anchors, journalists, commentators learned about their religion. It doesn’t take too much to realize that the Tsarnaev Brothers won’t receive the same kind of compassion that white terrorists like Richard Paplawski, James Von Brunn, John Patrick Bedell, Andrew Joseph Stack, Jared Loughner, Byron Williams, Ted Kaczynski, Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh (the list sadly goes on) have received (‘unstable’, ‘lone killer’, ‘stressed out’) and a lot of this can be explained through looking at two factors of the Tsarnaev Brothers’ lives:

1. Chechen immigrant status (only one of them recently naturalized; the other struggling to find a job and citizenship).

2. Muslim (Let the paranoid, must-protect-US-from-Islam tropes begin.)

This is where the Othering starts.

If the Tsarnaev Brothers were seen as people of mainstream American society (which is code for White), the news of Tamerlan’s death would not bring hyper-nationalist chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from mostly white men, tweets to invade Chechnya (and the Czech Republic because America has yet to teach its students a real course on geography and accurate political histories; this is 2013) would not have flooded timelines on Twitter, a constant emphasis on their Other status as immigrants trying to blend into the American life (and the American ‘dream’) would not be brought up constantly, comments like “moslem pedo fuckers”, “islamic scum”, “go back to the mid east” and more would not surface, Tamerlan’s wife’s history of converting to Islam and marrying Tamerlan would not invoke that done-to-death worry that she was ‘brainwashed’ and maybe ‘oppressed’ as well, their background as Chechens from a war-torn country would not send media ‘experts’ into a group orgy about how Islam and resistance movements against governments go hand in hand, there would not have been such a strong sense of paranoia and xenophobia in the mainstream media at this very moment, Reuters would not make it a point to mention how Tamerlan was deeply religious, newspapers would not publish sub-headings such as “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks”, insidious hints at links with Al Qaeda wouldn’t be mentioned, this obsession with Islam and symbolism would not have happened.

This is to comment on how many of us have reacted quickly to say, “Well, they’re white-passing guys so the media will let it go soon” because it isn’t letting it go, and it won’t. This focus on their religion should tell you that mainstream media and a highly militarized state apparatus that is deeply involved in an Us VS Them narrative after 9/11, does not care if the Tsarnaev Brothers looked white; the sickening focus is once again on Islam. This should tell you that the Othering of an identity (even white-passing) in the context of American media and Islam happens very quickly and leads to dangerous developments.

spider-xan:

There’s a lot of Cho Chang discussion on my dash right now and I’ve always had really mixed feelings about her?

On the one hand, I liked that there was an actually Asian character in Harry Potter who wasn’t The Token Asian and whose Asian-ness was their defining trait, and that she wasn’t exotified as the Hot Asian Chick with long silky~ Asian hair, and nor did Harry or Cedric seem to fall for her because of some Asian fetishism. I LOVED that when we’re first introduced to her, the main thing we learn about her is that she’s a Quidditch player, because how often does an Asian character, let alone a female one, get written as an athlete rather than a nerd? She was in the DA and actively rebelled against her parents who told her NOT to go against Umbridge, and she fought at the Battle of Hogwarts and survived. That’s pretty fucking awesome when Asian characters barely exist in the media, let alone having all that good stuff happen.

On the other hand, JKR definitely fucked up some things as well. And the pseudo-Asian name that doesn’t make much sense if you look at actual East Asian cultures is the least of them. The biggest to me though, is how JKR even outright said that she wrote Cho to be a character set up to make Ginny look better as Harry’s love interest, though I don’t have the quote on-hand right now. I mean, that’s fucked-up on a gender level in terms of pitting women against each other over a man and using women as plot devices, and also fucked up on an extra racial level to use a WOC as the inferior foil to a white woman and to make her look better.

But those are issues I have with JKR herself as the actual writer rather than Cho herself? IDK Cho gets so much shit from random for sexist and racist reasons that while I’m all for calling out JKR on her problematic things, I’m also not going to totally dismiss Cho herself when she already gets that a lot and there aren’t many Asians in popular Western media, let alone having any positive traits, period.

(via thewayistare)

rosaedora:

I love a:tlab, my kids love it too and when the whitewashed movie came out we talked about it. My ten year old son told me that the reason he thought that there were so few people of colour in the media was because there were not a lot of people of colour in the world. Maybe they couldn’t find Asian and south asian actors for the film because there just aren’t that many of them. This bears repeating:

My son thought that the reason there were so few people of colour in cartoons, in movies and in the media more generally, was because there are more white people in the world. 

We lived in Vancouver which demographically has more people of colour than white people. He was in daycare and school with a majority of poc, all of his friends were poc. I had talked to him about racism but not media representations because I imagined he understood. 

When we got talking about it and he realized that in fact the majority of the world isn’t white, he said, well maybe the stories of people of colour are not worth telling. Maybe that is why these stories don’t get told.

Maybe there are so few female characters because women are all more similar so there is no point in having a lot of them, whereas men are more different so you need more. Maybe it is the same with people of colour, maybe there are so few because they are all the same.

Whitewashing and the erasure of people of colour effects white people and white kids because it teaches them that the only interesting stories and the only people who matter are white. POC characters “could be anyone”, “we don’t see colour” we can imagine they are “just like us”.

Maybe, he says, in their countries they don’t include a lot of white people. So he imagines that “our” country is a white country and those people who belong here are also white. Other people are visitors here.

I didn’t teach him this.

My kid was saying really racist things. That doesn’t make him a bad person. The culture is a racist culture and he absorbs these things. Everyone lives in this racist culture and it is easy as white people to reproduce hurtful shit.

People of colour are erased all the time. This has effects. This creates a world that is made for white people and reaffirms that white people are the only ones who truly belong in “our” country. It is deeply hurtful.

If you are a white artist you don’t have to participate in this erasure. You don’t have to hurt people. If you have been hurting them, that doesn’t mean you mean it, it doesn’t mean you are some bad type of person. All it means is that this culture has affected you too and you can chose to stop now. 

If someone stepped on your toe. You would tell them, hey that hurt, regardless if it was on purpose or by accident. If they did it again, that would piss you off. If you told them and they said “what I did is not as bad as being punched in the face what are you complaining about?” You would probably be really offended. If they then got all their friends to step on your toes, again and again, and say “OMG can you believe how angry she was just because we stepped on her toes? What is wrong with her being angry for no reason. It’s not like we were punching her.” What would you do? That is what is going on here. People said hey whitewashing hurts me, and a bunch of people kept on doing it.

It is not about judging artists. It is not about naming a type of bad person called a “racist”, but about seeing how larger patterns work to hurt people of colour and distort the world view of white people. Do you, if you are a white person, want a distorted world view? Do you want to accidentally hurt others? 

A lot of white people are saying on this tag that they are suffering from reverse discrimination. Are you being erased? Do you feel you belong in your country or are you told to “go home?”

When people tell you that you have hurt them, responding with grace is a skill that will serve you for the rest of your life. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was doing something harmful. Thank you for telling me. I wont do it again.” That is all it takes. 

(via racebending)

(via savoto)

fuckyeabadasslatinas:

Rita Moreno

Emmy, Grammy, Tony, Oscar AND Academy Award winner. 

(via noautopilot)

blackfolksmakingcomics:

comicsalliance:

Outrage Deferred: On The Lack Of Black Writers In The Comic Book Industry

By Joseph Hughes, Editor-in-Chief

This is the first week of Black History Month, a four week celebration and remembrance of the significant events and people of the African diaspora. For many, myself included, it’s a month to reflect on where we’ve been, as a people and as a nation, and to contemplate exactly where it is we’re going. In terms of the comic industry, an obvious interest and passion of mine, there is one glaring and sobering fact that needs our attention: There is currently not a single black writer working on a monthly series for either of the two biggest comic book publishers in the United States, and precious few working for any of the others.

And yet, this fact has hardly been discussed recently, in the way some other diversity issues are. So what happened, exactly? Why is it that we no longer seem to care about this as much as we once did? Where has our outrage gone?

Read more.

Please read this article.

And, as always, don’t let some comments drive you mad. That’s what these trolls want you to do. Don’t give ‘em the satisfaction.

(via sunshine-empress)

guante:

Eight common phrases you’ll run into when arguing about pop culture.

All of this.

(via trungles)

thewayistare:

bana05:

lelepop94:

animejune:

Dear Warm Bodies,

Hey asshole. I was really excited to see your movie. I mean, the main actor’s adorable. The trailer looked hilarious. I love the idea of zombies in love.

I loved your trailer so much I went and read the book it was based on.

And that’s when I realized your movie is a hot…

Go cry and write a book about it you over sensitive whiner. You know who doesn’t need the role of a black actress? A black person. Maybe they’d be more proper for the part, but its not like they need the money. Complain about something that deserves to be recognized. Otherwise STFU.

*crying real tears*

lelepop, your argument makes the sense that is none, you racist loser

wow, i was wanting to see this movie too.

welp, fuck this whitewashed bullshit. (lelepop is on some wack shit too)

hannahology:

[Inspired by my Amplify associate, Karachi, and her post on Blackface, Slurs and Appropriation]

Written and compiled by Hannah Le

Yellow Face isn’t just the mere inauthenticity and a failure of aesthetics of white people dressing up, wearing make up, trying to be Asian, and/or playing the roles of Asians.  No, it’s definitely more insidious and problematic than that.  It is systematic racism and discrimination, refusing to hire Asians or forcing them to play as villains, or when they receive a major role, it is typically a stereotypical one (i.e., martial arts, ‘wise man’, ‘dragon lady’, etc).  It simulates a crude idea of what ‘Asians’ look like, all the while perpetuating terrible stereotypes, controlling what it means to be Asian whether it’s in person, on the stage, or on screen.  

Orientalism: It’s a dichotomy created by the ‘West,’ it builds a view of the ‘East’ along with many elements of this culture that becomes obscured and exotic. Making a whole group of people seen as something monolithic, creating an erasure of actual identities.  

I’m not even going to try to bother with getting too in-depth about the obvious cultural appropriation, ethnocentrism, and orientalism (not too much at least).  I’m not going to go into Yellow Face on stage, in whitewashing (too much), in Europe, nor will I take the time to go through political caricatures of Asians throughout history.  [Not that it’s less important or there’s a lack of evidence.]  These following examples and history checks should do enough for now in getting my point across.  (Please find a friend in Google if you really want to educate yourself though!  Thank you!)

So, why did Yellowface occur?  Was there a shortage of Asian people to play these Asian roles during the times this practice was most rampant (19th and 20th century)?

Meet Sessue Hayakawa (Born 1889-Death 1973), the first Asian American leading actor.  He was one of the highest paid actors of his time.  His talents were definitely recognized by Paramount Pictures and was even considered a sex icon.  But despite all of this, he still met discrimination and racism everywhere he went.  He was always forced to either play “the exotic villain” or “the exotic lover.”  He waited for his turn to be casted as a hero of color, but it never came.

This is Anna May Wong (1905-1961).  During the 1920s-1930s, Anna was given many different roles as a contracted Paramount Pictures actress, but they were always either as a “dragon lady” or a “butterfly lady.”  Despite all of that, she was still a household name and was considered a fashion icon.

She was the top contender for the leading role of O-Lan, a Chinese heroine for the movie The Good Earth (1937) by MGM, but that role was later given to Luise Rainer (definitely not Asian).  MGM went to her and tried to give her another role for a film called Lotus, but it meant that she had to be the villain again, so she turned it down and left for Europe for more opportunities and eventually went back to Paramount Pictures.

Say hello to Philip Ahn (1905-1973).  For the film, Anything Goes, Ahn was initially rejected by the director, Lewis Milestone, because—I shit you not, he said this to Philip Ahn—he thought Philip’s “English was too good for the part.”  During World War II, Philip Ahn was often forced to play roles of Japanese villains.  He even received death threats because people thought he was actually Japanese.

Other Asian actors/actresses: Barbara Jean Wong, Fely Franquelli, Benson Fong, Chester Gan, Honorable Wu, Kam Tong, Keye Luke, Layne Tom Jr., Maurice Liu, Philip Ahn, Richard Loo, Lotus Long, Rudy Robles, Suzanna Kim, Teru Shimada, Willie Fung, Victor Sen Yung, Toshia Mori and Wing Foo.  

Merle Oberon can also be added to the list, although she was part white/part Asian.  She had to lie about her origins and applied whitening make up to pass as fully white.  Other Asian actors and actresses: Jack Soo, Pat Morita, Mako, Bruce Lee, Lucy Liu, Margaret Cho, B.D. Wong, Amy Hill, Jennie Kwan, Masi Oka, James Lee, Ming Na, Daniel Dae Kim, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Charlyne Yi, Miyoshi Umeki, Shin Koyamada, John Cho, Brenda Song, and George Takei.  Click on this link to see a hundred more.  

After going through the list, ask yourself why the majority of the actors and actresses here are either in some martial arts movies or some other stereotypical crap? 

TL;DR this section: There definitely wasn’t a shortage of Asian American actors and actresses.  And there still isn’t.

Very Few Examples (of Very Many) of Yellowface in History:
 

Nil Ashter as General Yen from The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

What Nils Ashter really looked like:

Harold Huber as Ito Takimura in Little Tokyo, USA (1942)
Interestingly enough, everyone who was a “bad guy” in this was portrayed as Japanese.  Even more interesting, this was around the same time Japanese Internment Camps were happening.

What Harold Huber really looked like:

Katharine Hepburn as Jade Tan in in Dragon Seed (1944)

Katharine Hepburn just a few years after Dragon Seed:

Jennifer Jones as Dr. Han Suyin in Love is a Many Splendored-Thing (1955)

Another interesting concept found in this movie. “BEING WITH ASIAN WOMEN IS SO HOT AND EXOTIC. LET’S FETISHIZE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM.” Yup.

What Jennifer Jones actually looks like:

John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956)

John Wayne, y’all:

Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

Mickey Rooney at that time:

Joel Grey as Chiun (Kung Fu Master, everyone—on the left) in Remo Williams (1985)

What Joel Grey really looked like:

Other cases I haven’t really taken the time to cover: Charlie Chan Series (Actors who played as Charlie Chan from 1931-1981: Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, Roland Winters, Peter Ustinov) Fu Manchu, Madame Butterfly, The Teahouse of the August Moon, Shanghai Express, The Manchurian Candidate, Sayonara, Mr. Moto Series, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, Short Circuit (1986 & 1988), The Party, Gunga Din, Broken Blossoms, The Year of Living Dangerously, etc.

I mean, I guess you could say, “But those movies were decades ago!”
 

Alex Borstein as Ms. Swan. 

Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu (2007)
(Other actors who played the role of Fu Manchu starting from the 1920s up ‘til now: H. Agar Lyons, Warner Oland, Boris Karloff, Harry Brannon, Christopher Lee, and Peter Sellers)

Christopher Walken as Feng (2007)

Rob Schneider as Asian Minister in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007)

M. Night’s The Last Airbender (2010)
Well, the show was based on Asian and Inuit culture.  But just look at the casting.  The three protagonists are all light skinned while Zuko (played by Dev Patel in the movie) is dark skinned, and by default in this movie, the bad guy.  Someone please just remake this movie.  Please. 

British Actor, Jim Sturgess, (rocking bad eye prosthetics) playing as a Korean in Cloud Atlas (2012)