#antimiscegenation

[randomnameless]

The Cannibalistic Laguz bandits in Radiant Dawn, Pain and Agony, might not be the best representation of the Laguz race either.

One of the of Path of Radiance supports, I think the Jill/Lethe one, mentions escaped Laguz slaves escaping to the Daein mountains and descending into uncivilized savagery. Pain and Agony's group makes their hideout in the Daein mountains and additionally talk in a crude manner, implying they were one of the laguz that went insane in the wild. PS: Pain and Agony are literally named the english words DEATH and HELL in the Japanese version.

Mmh...

I always thought that support between Lethe and Jill was sort of hard retconned by both Tormod and his pals in FE9 (they escaped slavery and yet aren't savages!) and, in FE10, Hatari : Laguz were stranded across the desert after the Great Flood, and they managed to build a Kingdom without eating Beorcs or Brandeds!

Pain'n'Agony becoming "insane" because they were left in the wild is imo problematic in itself, especially since Feral Ones exists and aren't treated as afterthoughts (rip Baldo'n'Waldi :'( ) - what is the message here, Laguz "left in the wild" can go "cray-cray" and "savage"... but at the same time, the majority of the ones we see as "savage" and "cray-cray" are the ones drugged against their will to become mindless beasts!

Anyways, the point still stands, bar a line in a support that is retconned by events we see in games and in lore and the weird Laguz bandits (death'n'hell that's metal af lol) Tellius' racism always involve Laguz being hurt by Beorcs.

Lethe might huff and puff about Beorcs, who keeps the other race in a cage as a prize? Who enslaves them? Who turns them in mindless weapons? Who straight out beat up an "other" when they see them ?

As I said in the tags, OP is really really really not my cup of tea, but its depiction of racism is much more well thought than whatever Tellius tried to do.

[businesstiramisu]

That's actually an old spelling of Hawaii!

The reason why there's a bunch of toponyms related to Hawaii in Eastern Oregon/Southern Idaho/Northeastern Nevada is that some Native Hawaiian trappers got lost in the area in the early 19th century and this was apparently noteworthy enough to be memorialized in a river name, county name, and a handful of little towns

(Dickshooter is apparently also named after a specific guy.)

the quaint English village of Cumbucket, located six miles east of Little Spermington, not far from Cockworthy castle. 

[sokkastyles]

The thing I hate the most about "the Promise" having Aang promote antimiscegenation is that when Katara points out that that would mean they would have to be apart, she doesn't even talk about her own feelings on the subject. She acts like this is a sacrifice she is willing to make if Aang declares it wrong for people of other nations to be together.

Like, what happened to the Katara who was enamored with the forbidden love story of Oma and Shu? What happened to the Katara who cared about justice, not just for herself but for others? Why does Katara seem to have no opinions about her relationship with Aang one way or the other? Why does Aang get to make all of the decisions in the relationship, not only about when it starts but when it ends, while Katara is just a passive observer? Why does Katara want to be with someone who she thinks might break up with her because she's from another nation? The fact that she even thinks Aang might consider this (and would let him do it) is not a great sign.

[russenoire]

broken promises, pt 2

never thought i'd see aang the air nomad used in service of a segregationist argument. especially after having traveled the world, met and fallen in love with a member of the water tribe in the TV series.

the air nomads' temples and the earth kingdom's walls didn't protect them from genocidal fire nation hubris, and that separation wasn't responsible for their prior harmony. and aang is never shown to believe this until this comic series (and then it's never brought up again).

if he'd learned 'racial/ethnic purity' from the monks who raised him, his attraction to katara would have been... so much more complicated. it might have reeked of guilt, and the scent of 'forbidden fruit'; of idealization and devaluation and 'but you're different/one of the good ones'. aang was already wrestling with the extinction of his people and heritage. but not, i note, with whether his feelings for katara the water tribe girl put his air nomad cultural ties at risk.

aang can be self-centered and inconsiderate on occasion in-canon, but he's 12. in the promise katara points out that they couldn't be together if international harmony required antimiscegenation: only then does he relent. why would yang make 13- or 14-year-old aang this ignorant given the breadth of his cultural knowledge? this is practically an OOC hate crime.

[sokkastyles]

It's actually not that much of a tweak to rewrite Aang's swerve into antimiscegenation as a reaction to zutara. Katara and Zuko actually are very close in their ideologies in that comic. It's not much of a stretch to imagine them becoming closer through those events and Aang's actions being a reaction to that. The comic already gives us Aang trying to misguidededly "save" Katara from Zuko while Katara doesn't actually feel threatened by Zuko at all, ends up defending him, and has to calm Aang down.

i hate how they handled the topic of mixed families in the comics but i think that as a character motivation, it would've made more sense zuko and katara were together (or actually, anyone and katara, let's be real) and aang was being a petty little brat about it rather than looking like an idiot that he was in canon

like yeah he'd be an asshole, but at least it'd make SENSE. like idk about y'all, but if i was dating someone outside of my race, i would NOT be pushing for this shit. i'm not one of my country's supreme court justices, after all (bad case of rules for thee and not for me)

i still think aang going right to banning mixed marriages was stupid as fuck and i wish they never wrote that plotline, but pandora's box has been opened and you can't close it. this is what we get. aang pushing for a ban on mixed marriages is canon in the comics, and short of pretending the comics don't exist, i get to be salty and pissed off about it

and i think that's why it's important to divorce the different aangs from each other. aang as he was from the animated show is a different character in the comics, very different from legend of korra, and fanon aang can be whatever you make of him. if you want to steer into his best traits, good for you! but some of us like steering into his worst traits, don't yell at us about it. yell at the canon material for being present and giving us that fuel lmfao

[asianmasculinityarchive]

David L. Eng writes in Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America

"The experiences of Asian American men are not easily homogenized. At times, they are seen as analogous( eg. As racialized, exploitable, noncitizen labor), but in other historical moments they are configured singular (e.g., Japanese internment during WWII)"

Parikh in her review of Eng's book states that by associating Asian men as effeminate, the U.S, i.e., the dominant culture is able to strip away power from them.

"The history of the legal definitions of citizenship, naturalization, exclusion, national antimiscegenation laws, and the legislative bans on the entry of Asian wives have collectively contributed to a female gendering, along with the racialization of the Asian American male” (Park, 2013). U.S. immigration laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was one the earliest policies implemented to maintain white "racial purity" and reduce work scarcity for "Americans" despite Chinese making up only 0.002 percent of the U.S's population.

Eng also states that the “feminization of the Asian American male in the United States cultural imaginary typically results in his figuration as feminized, emasculated, or homosexualized”.

Park, Michael. "Asian American Masculinity Eclipsed: A Legal and Historical Perspective of Emasculation Through U.S. Immigration Practices." The Modern American 8, no. 1 (2013): 5-17.

#asianmasculinityarchive #asianmasculinity #racila castration #emasculation #DavidLEng

[foybringsjoy]

In Richard Perry Loving, et al., Appelants v. Commonwealth of Virginia Anti-Miscegenation Laws were struck down on June 12, 1967. These photos are from The Brief of Amici Curiae of the Loving v VA appeal filed by William Mauritania, Donald W. Kramer, and MacVoy, Evans, & Lewis before the Loving Victory, in October 1966 on behalf of the #JapaneseAmericanCitizensLeague #antimiscegenation #japaneseamericanhistory (at Supreme Court of the United States) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBXU0UWg8DA/?igshid=bwsnb2e877di

[quotespile]

On the one hand you, for obvious reasons, have not been and can never be fully assimilated into mainstream, i.e., White America — And on the other hand neither do you feel fully justified in claiming solidarity with other historically and currently oppressed groups. That while your community’s experience in the United States has included racism on the personal and the institutional levels, including but not limited to: immigration quotas, actual federal legislation expressly excluding people who look like you from entering the country. Legislation that was in effect for almost a century. Antimiscegenation laws. Discriminatory housing policies. Alien land laws and restrictive covenants. Violation of civil liberties including internment. That despite all of that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin — of slavery — that it will never add up to something equivalent... Your oppression is second-class.

Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

[tlaquetzqui]

Actually the argument against gay marriage is that it’s not a marriage at all, while the argument against interracial marriage was that it is one, with the hated Other.

Also antimiscegenation laws are, like the rest of eugenics, progressive. They were opposed by the same people most likely to also oppose gay marriage, like the Catholic Church (a religion with so many mestizo members can hardly disapprove race mixing). The only churches particularly supporting antimiscegenation laws were the progressive ones that would now be ordaining women and performing gay weddings.

Also marriage is older than any law, it’s older than our species. Homo erectus was monogamous and probably self-aware (though nowhere near as smart as us or even Neanderthals, who were also monogamous—and they boiled sap to make glue, which is not something an animal can do).

Marriage is the legal union of individuals. The basic elements of a marriage are: (1) the parties' legal ability to marry each other, (2) mutual consent of the parties, and (3) a marriage contract as required by law.

That marriage is not a right was not first used to deny the legality of same sex marriages, but to deny the legality of interracial marriages.

They same people who say two men can not marry are the same people who 60 years ago said a black man and a white woman can not marry.

Interracial marriage has been legal throughout the United States since the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia that held that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional via the 14th Amendment.

And none of that makes marriage a right. Legal permissibility is not how rights are defined.

[bibhabmishra]

THE 10 BEST MOVIES

1. Moonlight

ES A romantic tale, a mother-and-child story, a tale about being shut off from the world until you understand it is extremely unlikely forward except if you go along with it. Barry Jenkins' Moonlight connects on numerous levels, but on the other hand it's a work of shocking delicacy, an image that scopes you up like a wave and drops you, tenderly, in a spot you never expected to be. Three great entertainers play a solitary character, Chiron, at different stages throughout his life—from his childhood in Miami to his adulthood as a road toughened street pharmacist—yet the image flaunts an off-the-diagrams number of wonderful supporting exhibitions as well, from any semblance of André Holland, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe. Each little, wrapping subtlety includes right now.

2. Paterson

Adam Driver gives a wondrous exhibition as a transport driver exploring the avenues of Paterson, N.J. He additionally happens to be named Paterson, and in the extra bits of his day, he composes verse. Executive Jim Jarmusch has composed an adoration letter to our stirred up, stunning American urban areas, and he shows how the things we do in our extra opportunity can arrive to characterize what our identity is.

3. Loving

Servitude was nullified in the U.S. in 1865, however as of late as 1967 it was as yet illicit in certain states for interracial couples to wed. Jeff Nichols' film recounts to the narrative of Richard and Mildred Loving (played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), a white man and a lady of shading who battled the antimiscegenation laws in their home state, Virginia, and won. Nichols' flawlessly controlled methodology causes the Lovings' story to feel quick and essential. It's likewise an update that change regularly occurs in the edges.

4. Elle

Paul Verhoeven can't let it be—which is one explanation, regardless of whether you love him or loathe him, to focus. Isabelle Huppert, in the entirety of her harvest time magnificence, stars as a privileged Parisian who's assaulted and assaulted in her home and lives to tell the story. The image is a minefield of complex sexual governmental issues, and Verhoeven and his star creep to the edge of the limits of good taste (and possibly past) in their investigation of the wild mysteriousness of ladies' sexual want. This is one of the boldest, most testing films of the year—and, when you wouldn't dare hoping anymore, of the most interesting.

5. Loving

Adjusted from Shusaku Endo's epic, Martin Scorsese's Silence is a grave, beautiful motion picture about the idea of confidence and the significance of God. That is a great deal to handle, however on the off chance that anybody can deal with it, Scorsese can. Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver give finely created, exceptional exhibitions as seventeenth century Portuguese Jesuits who travel to Japan to spread Christianity. Their story, as Scorsese tells it, is reflective and melancholic, an intricately lit up supplication book of ruthless excellence.

6. Manchester by the Sea

Casey Affleck stars as a disenchanted, lamenting maverick who out of nowhere ends up endowed with the consideration of his high school nephew. That is the "what occurs" of Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, however the film's tough, unobtrusive enchantment lies in the "how"— the way Lonergan and his entertainers catch the manner in which individuals talk, and what they care about, in a way so itemized, it's practically Dickensian. Like the entirety of Lonergan's motion pictures, this one permits you to live with characters until they feel like individuals you know. In some cases they're individuals you don't care for without question. In any case, by one way or another, before the end, they're your kin.

7. Tower

Keith Maitland's true to life record of the Aug. 1, 1966, University of Texas shootings, in which 16 individuals were executed by a shooter roosted in a clock tower, is not normal for some other narrative at any point made. Maitland consolidates documented film, observer declaration and liveliness to striking and alarming impact. However, the image is significant for another explanation: What does it intend to have a more odd hazard their life to spare yours? Tower brings that feeling home.

8. La La Land

A few days, this world simply doesn't appear to be sufficiently large or liberal enough for a cutting edge melodic. Yet, with La Land, Damien Chazelle has cut space for one, and the world is better for it. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling play singing, moving sweethearts with all of Los Angeles as their dream play area. Nothing turns out precisely as they plan, yet that is the clashing appeal of this glowing, kind picture. It's a film in affection with a city and with adoration itself.

9. Everybody Wants Some!!

Richard Linklater has called this happy curve of a film—an in depth of the misfortunes of a gathering of school baseball players in the days going before the fall semester, around 1980—a "profound continuation" to his 1993 Dazed and Confused. It's that and that's only the tip of the iceberg, a friendly and light parody that catches the quintessence of a wide range of young wants, both those that are effectively recognizable and the all the more hurting, unnameable kind.

10. The Shallows

In Jaume Collet-Serra's shrewd, tense lady versus.- nature spine chiller, pro surfer Blake Lively outsmarts an extraordinary and horrendous animal of the profound. Some of the time the best motion picture joys have nothing to do with grants lure. To ruin one of Jean-Luc Godard's preferred adages: All you requirement for a motion picture is a young lady and a shark.

[sokkastyles]

Hello!

I’ve heard somewhere an anti saying that “Zuko is a colonialist” (i think part of it was to dismiss Zutara). That statement’s not true in ATLA of course, but then i came across an anti-bryke criticizing the pro imperialist/colonialist ideals in the comics.

I’ve only read the comics once, skimmed it actually, so i don’t remember much. Is this claim true? Is Zuko a colonialist, or favor colonialism, in the comics?

Did the comic indicate any forward measures to zuko’s promise of “era of peace and love”? Or does he, and the fire nation by extension, regress ideologically after atla?

Most of the criticism comes from "The Promise," where Zuko initially supports withdrawal of the Fire Nation from the Earth Kingdom colonies, but then after visiting one of the colonies he realizes that there are families there that are both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, and it is impossible to have everyone Fire Nation (or who considers themselves part of the Fire Nation) to be completely removed from parts of the Earth Kingdom that have been under Fire Nation rule for over a hundred years. His position is not about continuing colonialism but protecting the people already living there. It would have been an interesting conflict if it had been explored well, but the purpose of it is to create a manufactured conflict between Aang and Zuko, to get Aang to consider killing Zuko in case he "goes bad." Which is an overly simplistic way of dealing with that conflict. Aang also takes a stupid position in that comic which verges on antimiscegenation when he argues that the nations should always be seperate - forgetting entirely that mixed families exist including his own relationship with Katara.

It's kind of funny when people try to use this comic to be anti zutara, too, because 1) Katara was the only one who defended Zuko and understood the position he was in trying to protect his people, and 2) both Zuko and Katara separately idolize the mixed Fire Nation / Earth Kingdom family as the example of what they want their family to be. So if anything this comic showed that zutara are fundamentally more compatible than Katara and Aang.

[mswyrr]

“Like to go full circle into antimiscegenation rhetoric in defense of fake people...like this person literally said "you don't ship this thing so you and people like you shouldn't exist." Sit with how ridiculous that is for a second. How mind blowingly cruel and stupid”

[isaacsapphire]

Alright, taking it from the top.

The phrases "back to Europe" and "back to Africa" are inseparable from the concept of "land back" in the mind of @tragicallyphosphorescent , so anyone asking about why they don't hear "back to Europe" more in the US, and wondering if it's a thing in South Africa must be misunderstanding Land Back. Alright. You do know that "back to Africa" was a movement among American-Americans a while back, right?

I'll add a link here to the previous Tumblr post that refered to Land Back and made it seem relivent to taxes.

I'm old enough to remember the Bosnian Genocide/War/"UN" deployment and that the main takeaway for most folks was that the competing ethnic claims of the Balkans are a hornets nest that it's pointless for the First World nations to stick their dicks in, because it's a tangled mess that's not going to be untangled in our lifetimes.

You yourself freely said that some ethnicities are somewhat recent somewhat intentional constructions, and I've already clarified that I don't think all ethnicities are recent constructions.

I said exactly nothing about Arminians before you showed up, and honestly before you started self-identifying as an "Indigenous Armenian" I had no idea that anyone considered Armenians to belong to the Indigenous category. Where I live, Armenians are generally considered merely a group of White people who claim Oppressed status on account of the whole genocide thing, similar to Jews, and like them get very little traction with Social Justice advocates using that argument, to the degree where I have unfortunately witnessesed discussions among American Social Justice Activists questioning whether it was ontologically possible for the Armenian genocide to have occurred, given that they considered the Armenians White and the Turks Muslim PoC! That's the framework you are, from my experience, speaking from within by endorsing Left anarchist racial thought, so it seems a surprising position for an Armenian to take from a USAian perspective. But America is not the world, and getting a broad international perspective was the point of this.

Okay, so your definition of "Indigenous" explicitly is not exclusive to "coloniser" so that's one possible definition eliminated. And apparently being local is insufficient to not be a colonizer, which you have already established means that immigrants from the Global South have a moral right to move to your country. Really, really not clear what you are using as your definition for Indigenous.

Yeah, I'm aware that a lot of borders don't match the territory of ethnic groups. This is frequently considered a cause of racial tension and international conflict and so bad in retrospect, which then leads to ethnostates as a proposed solution, usually while someone is engaging in some ethnic cleansing or invasion. It's not usually respond to with a proposal to end all borders, because that's going to impinge on your ability to maintain control of "your" land if your land is in any way an appealing or desirable place.

I am very turned around with your definitions of colonizer and indigenous. Modern Egyptians are colonized colonizers, but Ancient Egyptians were Indigenous despite being colonizers.

Really enjoying you trying to say we shouldn't talk about Native Americans and that you don't know what Land Back means in North American while you continue to tell me what Land Back means to all indigenous people, from your perspective as an anarchist.

Yeeeeah, so I googled the site you pulled that quote from, and I don't think you read all of it, or really any of it. Not really sure why you would quote the part about what Land Back means to the Indigenous to a presumed non-Indigenous person as the "meaning" of Land Back where there was a section on what it meant for non First Nations folks. Also, no reason you'd know this as a European, but the underlying legal situation is significantly different for Native Americans/First Nations in Canada vs the United States, and different tribes within the United States have substantially different legal and financial situations.

It is absolutely my business if someone wants to change the system of government and economics where I live.

Wait, are you seriously trying to tell me there aren't immigrants in Europe? That there aren't pro immigration politicians in Europe? That's a pretty significant statement, and huge if true. I would appreciate supporting info and some explanations of the reasons why I keep seeing news stories about immigrants and pro immigration politicians in Europe if they don't real.

I think you are vagueing about an ask and response I got, as that's the only place Blood Quantum has been mentioned, so I'll add a link to here. I'll let @soulvomit take it up with you if they feel so inclined, but I'd caution you against making assumptions about who you are talking with, and caution you about making statements about who's really Native American right after you said it wasn't your place to do so.

And immediately after saying that you aren't Native American and shouldn't speak on Blood Quantum, you go off on a tear about Mexicans and how there's still definitely a clear, obvious line between indigenous and non indigenous people, but there's a "hierarchy".

You're making an incorrect assumption and getting spun up over it. My statement of "I have seen some Indigenous people calling for genocide" is NOT the same thing as "Land Back is genocide". I get that you are REALLY defensive about whatever you think Land Back is and REALLY want this discussion to be about Land Back, but I would have thought you would have noticed I said I thought it was a tax thing that had appeal to part of me.

I use tags as an indexing system, generally tag based on topics, and the post is about indigenous people and the concept of indigenousness.

I am asking you to share the definitions you are using, because my experience of discussing topics related to race with Leftist anarchists is that they often use personal or obscure academic definitions of common words, which makes communication difficult.

You've already been explicit in your antizionism and views on the interactions between Palestinians and Jews, so this shouldn't be news to you that having been the victims of attempted genocide does not automatically make an ethnicity sensitive to the interests of other ethnicities.

Anyone, regardless of their race or intent, who is pushing an ideology that ancestry is inescapably linked to the right of residence, is playing with fire that has a history of flaring into genocide. If someone is being incautious or, even worse, using violent rhetoric in concert with that ideology, they are, at best, not caring about genocide, because they are, intentionally or unintentionally, advancing a proto genocide ideology.

I've been using #whither [blank] as an index tag for a while when discussing the boundaries and definitions of various races/ethnicities, starting with, iirc #whither Whiteness, which remains the one I've used the most I think.

Note: this was supposed to be a reblog of this post, but Tumblr does strange things when someone blocks you after you started a draft response.

All the arguments about who has indigenous status where seem... Odd and subtly disingenuous, especially considering that they're ALWAYS paired with pro immigration rhetoric (from the Global South, which includes China, to the Global North, which includes Israel, don't look too close at what caste/class most Indian immigrants to the US are back home...).

Exactly how many competing "indigenous" Peoples that have different levels of tenure on the land, and may be of only mixed indigenous heritage, are you supposed to pack in to a bit of land? Is any of this even going to give lip service to allowing for the fact that different ethnicities are at different relative population levels than however many years ago?

Exactly which year are we trying to freeze frame human migration to and ascribe ethnostate status to every existing country or demand new ethnostates? What the heck are we going to do with the absolute euromutt mess of almost every White American? I'm sure some folks would be perfectly happy with sawing people apart to send 1.6% of them one place and some larger chunks to France and Norway or whatever, but they may be less enthusiastic when they realize that is going to affect basically everyone, including most "indigenous" people.

Why have I NEVER seen anyone suggest a "back to Europe" for North American Whites? Or even Afrikaners? (Maybe that's a thing in South Africa?) Why is "Back to Africa" for American Blacks NEVER framed with relation to clearing out for Native Americans, or did I miss that?

Like, people and Peoples have moved around a lot, historically, not always of their own free will, and imperial powers playing musical chairs with their conquered Peoples and land is a pretty standard move, historically, and into much more recent times.

Like, this whole thing seems to require a look back to the disintegration of the Turkish and Austria-hungarian empire and the whole "woo we're a People and want our own Country! See, I just invented some National Music and Mythology!" Era and see to what degree anyone seriously beleived that then, and how much was just a stocking horse for whatever their favorite system of government was.

IDK exactly what I'm getting at here, mostly that there's a whole fuckton of unexamined questions here and I hope some of you will have some things to say.

[linception]

Act VI: The Case of the Missing Asian

A door opens. Commotion in the gallery. Lawyers shuffle papers. The judge enters the courtroom. Stares you down.

Green and Turner in the first row, just behind you, ready to testify for the prosecution. The judge smiles at them.

Bailiff

All rise. Case No. 47311, People vs. Wu.   (then) The Case of the Missing Asian.

_____

Prosecution

Now then, Detective, how is it relevant, your observation of Mr. Wu’s character?

Turner

He’s internalized a sense of inferiority. To White people, obviously. But also to Black people. Does he realize that?

He thinks he can’t participate in this race dialogue, because Asians haven’t been persecuted as much as Black people.

Don’t you need to take some responsibility for yourself? For the categories you put us in? Black and White? I mean, come on? Do you think you’re the only one who’s trapped?

_____

Green takes the stand. The prosecutor makes eyes at her.

Green

What are you looking for? Do you think you’re the only group to be invisible?

How about: Older women Older people in general People that are overweight People that don’t conform to conventional Western beauty standard Black women Women in general in the workplace

Are you sure you’re not looking for something that you feel entitled to? Isn’t that a kind of narcissism? (then) Are you sure you’re not asking to be treated like a White man?

Older Brother

He’s asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black?    (dramatic pause) We’ve been here two hundred years. The first Chinese came in 1815. Germans and Dutch and Irish and Italians who came at the turn of the twentieth century. They’re Americans.    (points at himself) Why doesn’t this face register as American? Is it because we make the story too complicated? Because we haven’t figured out how yet. Whether it’s a tragedy or a comedy or something in between. If we haven’t cracked the code of what it’s like to be inside this face, then how can we explain it to anyone else?

Prosecution

Objection. Who cares?

Older Brother

This is the Case of the Missing Asian, right?

Judge

Yes. What’s your point?

Older Brother

If I was the Asian who disappeared, and now I’m back and standing here and obviously okay...

Prosecution

There was another guy who disappeared.

Older Brother

Who?

Judge

(points at you)

You.

You

I’m on trial for my own disappearance?

Older Brother

Welcome to Black and White.

Judge

Defense will call its first witness.

Older Brother

You ready for this?

You 

I am. Also, do I really have a choice?

Older Brother walks across the room.

Older Brother

Mr. Wu, is it true that you have an internalized sense of inferiority?

You

What?

Older Brother

That because on the one hand you, for obvious reason, have not been and can never be fully assimilated into mainstream, i.e., White America–

You

What are you saying?

Older Brother

And on the other hand neither do you feel justified in claiming solidarity with other historically and currently oppressed groups. That while your community’s experience in the United States has included racism on the personal and the institutional levels, including but not limited to: immigration quotes, actual federal legislation expressly excluding people who look like you from entering the country. Legislation that was in effect for almost a century. Antimiscegenation laws. Discriminatory housing policies. Alien land laws and restrictive covenants. Violation of civil liberties including internment. That despite all of that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin-of slavery– that it will never add up to something equivalent. That the wrongs committed against your ancestors are incommensurate in magnitude with those committed against Black people in America. And whether or not that quantification, whether accurate or not, because of all of this you feel on some level that you maybe can’t even quite verbalize out of shame or embarrassment, that the validity and volume of your complaints must be calibrated appropriately, must be in proportion to the aggregate suffering of your people.    (then) Your oppression is second-class.

You

Which side are you on?

Judge

It’s a fair question, counselor.

Older Brother

Someone who can’t be viewed through either lens. Whose case cannot be properly considered by this court, where the rules and assumptions are based on particular dialectic. Someone whose story will never fit into Black and White.    (then) The error in your reasoning is built right into the premise– using the Black experience as the model for the Asian immigrant is necessarily going to lead to this. It’s based on an analogy, on a comparison, on something quantitative. But the experience of Asians in America isn’t just a scaled-back or dialed-down version of the Black experience. Instead of co-opting someone else’s experience of consciousness, he must define his own.    (then) I would draw the court’s attention to the case of People v. Hall.

Older Brother

The legitimacy of categorizing “Asiatic” in such a way as to justify lumping them into the clause “Blacks and Indians” (in order to deny them the right to testify against Whites) is based on the subjective state of mind of a single man (Christopher Columbus) at a particular historical moment hundreds of years ago, who happened at that moment to be spectacularly and egregiously mistaken about where on the globe he had drifted into; thus a navigational misunderstand of the world itself becomes the justification for a legally binding category.

Judge

Basically, a mistake.

Older Brother

Exactly. To put it another way, because in 1492 Columbus had no clue where he was, Chinese should have the same rights as Blacks, which is to say, no rights. Forget that this is likely a fiction–even taking the argument seriously on its face, the effect of this is that we have codified with the force of law a category: Blacks and Asiatics, separating them (because obviously, creating a new category of non-White), a secondary effect is that it also codifies Asiatics as outside the Black category.

Inferior, and yet not the same way Blacks were considered inferior.

Older Brother continues.

Somehow, in two hundred years, every wave, every new boatload of Asians, still as fresh, as alien to this land as the first.   (then) This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.

Older Brother pauses.

They zoned us, kept us roped off from everyone else. Trapped us inside. Cut us off from our families, our history. So we made it our own place. Chinatown. A place for preservation and self-preservation. Give them what they feel is right, is safe. Make it fit their ideas of what is out there. Don’t threaten them. Chinatown and indeed being Chinese is and always has been, from the very beginning, a construction, a performance of features, gestures, culture and exoticism. An invention, a reinvention, a stylization. Figuring out the show, finding our place in it, which was the background, as scenery, as nonspeaking players. Figuring out what you’re allowed to say. Above all, trying to never, ever offend. To watch the mainstream, find out what kind of fiction they are telling themselves, find a bit part in it. Be appealing and acceptable, be what they want to see.    (then) My client was part of this system. Both victim and suspect, he killed countless Asian men. still as fresh, as alien to this land as the first.  (gasp from the gallery) Killed them and then, six weeks later, became them again, as if nothing had happened, as if he had no memory or remorse. He allowed it to happen, allowed himself to become Generic, so that no one could even tell what was happening. He is guilty, Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Guilty of wanting to be part of something that never wanted him.    (beat) The defense rests.

- Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

[rgr-pop]

Neda Maghbouleh, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, has explored the racial targeting of Iranian-owned homes in Beverly Hills in her book, The Limits of Whiteness (Stanford University Press, 2017). Maghbouleh charts how these “Persian palaces” were mocked as “ugly” or a “freakshow,” with stronger statements such as “the architect should be hung by his testicles and dragged through the streets and stoned just like they do in the Middle East or wherever he’s from!!!”  But what elicited such strong language for a home? Their “impure” combinations of architectural motifs and overall style. As Maghbouleh describes, these homes incorporated Greek classical-style columns next to Italian-inspired gates. The white, non-Iranian residents of Beverly Hills clamored for some design oversight, and the city produced a design catalog that defined the appropriate architecture for the wealthy community, outlining requirements for consistent design elements and the rejection of “mixtures,” which Maghbouleh notes as “a discourse of racial antimiscegenation.”

Beeta Baghoolizadeh, “White Fantasies, Colorful Interiors,” h/t @madmoths

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ayannam0ore]

Chapter 5: Race and Racism Fieldwork

Miscegenation:

This is a photo of the first interrational couple in America to successfully fight against antimiscegenation laws in what we know now as the Loving v. Virginia case. Richard and Mildred Loving were a young couple who got married in Washington D.C.. Shortly thereafter, they returned to their home in Caroline County, Virgina. After there arrival, they were arrested and charged with violating the states antimiscegenation law which banned all interracial marriages. Eventually, their case reached to the Supreme Court and the states law was unanimously declared unconstitutional and offically banned. I believe this photo and its historical connection greatly tie to the concept of race with it being the only reason as to why they were not allowed to be together.

White Supremacy:

This is a photo taken in 1920 of a Ku Klux Klan rally. The Ku Klux Klan were established in 1866 and use the power of violence and terror to enforce their white supremacist ideology. This photograph has a strong connection to the concept of race in terms of white supremacy (the beliefs that whites are biologically different and superior to all other races).

Jim Crow:

The Jim Crow laws were sets of state and local laws from 1877 to the mid 1960s in Southern United States. These legistations were created for the sole purpose of legally segragating whites from black people. Black people were completely treated as second class citizens and were only permitted to travel and utilized colored areas or items.

Instituional Racism:

The graph above shows and explains the ways of institutional racism. Institutional racism is defined as patterns by which racial inequality is structed. As shown in the cycle, institutional racism lies in housing, criminal justice system, health system, education, and banking. It corrrelates to the concept of race as it is the motivator behind instituional racism. It was born from the ideology that black people were so inferior, therefore, could not be within the same institutional treatment of whites.

Colonialism:

This is an 1805 editoral cartoon created by English artist James Gillray entitled "Plum Pudding in Danger". It's an illustration depicting national leaders trying to colonize as much of the world as they can believing they are superior and deserving of more. They believe as though other countries are not as civilized (due to their racial status) as themselves so they must take it over and push their own ideologies/beliefs in order to make the other nations "better".

Individual Racism:

This is a screen grab from a YouTube video entitled "Racism in the Elevator". It stands discuss the individual racism in places as minimual as elevators. In the screen grab, we very clearly see the white women express her individual racial bias. By gripping tightly onto her purse, she's expressing the concern that the man who enetered the elevator with (who is of darker complexion) would be entitled to steal it from her.

Sources Sited:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfjLfyXYlA

-https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/white-supremacy-alt-right-wing-tips/

-https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow

-https://www.teenvogue.com/story/miscegenation-laws-in-the-united-states-explained

-https://equineteurope.org/the-other-pandemic-systemic-racism-and-its-consequences/

-https://theboar.org/2018/01/anti-colonialism/