#than to individuals of middle eastern or asian descent (identity)

[rickktish]

I’ve got a couple of hot takes and there’s nuance to them but I don’t have a whole lot of brain power so I might leave it as-is and elaborate only if asked:

-The kind of people who engage in fandom and specifically those who write fanfiction tend to belong to the same categories of people/sets of identities which are likely to fall victim to the “white people have no culture” lie and therefore like to spice up their writing by diversifying the cast in ways they view as meaningful or reflective of those characters’ personal arcs/histories, which unfortunately means leaning on a lot of stereotypes and accidentally perpetuating, consciously or unconsciously, those stereotypes. (Is anyone else bothered by the prevalence of latino Jason “drug crime lord” Todd headcanons? I don’t speak up about it often but it frequently feels legitimately uncomfy to me. Also while it’s fun to mess around with various flavors of Asian Tim “the smart Robin” Drake, there are some very uncomfortable discussions which ought to be had about why he gets headcanoned as east Asian specifically— usually Korean from what I’ve seen but also frequently Chinese and Japanese— when the fanon interpretation of his character can basically be boiled down to “good with computers, terrible/abusive/neglectful bio parents with unreasonably high standards/expectations, child genius.” Like maybe critically examine your tropes before applying them wholesale is what i’m saying)

-readheads are an unrecognized minority and have historically been and are still in some places presently subjected to the same kinds of stereotyping, discrimination, and fetishization that recognized racial minorities face. The only difference is that discrimination against poc has frequently been legally mandated throughout western history whereas that against redheads has been largely (though not exclusively) cultural. Think for a minute about how many redheaded characters have been replaced by black actors in live action adaptations in recent years and understand that redheads have been on-screen shorthand for “acceptable token diversity” for longer than probably any of us care to think about and they are losing that status as black characters begin to take that place in widespread visual media. Race swapping the Gordons specifically, while pulled off extremely well by a beautifully talented actor in The Batman 2022, is actively participating in the erasure of redheaded characters, especially ones whose roles are more complex than “femme fatale” or “the spitfire,” (or both), from screen

I'm not necessarily against race-swapping hcs and whatnot, but I do think the Bat-Family fandom has a tendency to ignore the actual POC members of the Bat-Family in favor for their hcs, lmfao.

Like I've seen Asian Tim and Babs hcs and I'm like... you do know Cass and Damian are literally right there, you don't have to do that. 😭

[jworthingtonreview]

Celebrating Diversity: Understanding Different Hair Growth Patterns Across Ethnicities

Hair is a unique aspect of human diversity that can tell us a lot about our ethnic origins. The way our hair grows, how it’s cared for, and the styles we can achieve are all influenced by our cultural and genetic backgrounds. In the modern beauty and healthcare industry, it’s crucial to appreciate and cater to this rich variety. This article is both a celebration of ethnic hair diversity and a guide to understanding the various growth patterns.

The Science of Different Hair Types

Human hair comes in a diverse array of types, including straight, wavy, curly, and kinky. These varieties are determined by the shape of the hair follicle. Typically, straight hair grows from perfectly round follicles, wavy hair from an oval shape, and kinky or curly hair from a more elliptical follicle. The follicle structure not only affects hair type but also hair resilience and vitality.

Straight Hair

Straight hair is often characterized by its smooth texture and the way it reflects light. While it tends to be oily, straight hair can be more prone to breakage due to its follicle shape. Asian and European hair types often feature straight growth patterns.

Curly and Kinky Hair

Curly and kinky hair grow in a more twisted, coiled manner, due to the naturally elliptical shape of the hair follicles. This hair type can often endure more dryness but is also more resilient to damage and can hold styles well. It is commonly found in people of African descent.

Wavy Hair

Wavy hair sits between the straight and curly types, with follicle shapes allowing for gentle waves that add body and texture to the hair. This type is often found in individuals from Middle Eastern and Mediterranean backgrounds.

The Cultural Significance of Hair

Hair has deep cultural significance and symbolism across various ethnic groups. It is not just about genetic traits, it's a part of identity, expression, and heritage. For example, within the African diaspora, natural hair, often in the form of Afros, braids, or dreadlocks, symbolizes a strong connection to African roots and resistance to European beauty standards. In contrast, within Asian cultures, long, straight hair has been traditionally associated with beauty, femininity, and grace.

Ethnically-Targeted Hair Care

Acknowledging hair diversity is pivotal in hair care products and routines. For instance, shampoo and conditioner formulations are being crafted to suit specific needs ranging from moisture balance in coiled hair to enhancing and defining curls. There’s also a surge in ethnic-specific salons and experts that provide not just services, but also education on ethnic hair care.

Understanding and celebrating the diversity of hair growth patterns across ethnicities is more than just a touchy-feely, politically correct endeavor—it's a crucial aspect of good healthcare and customer satisfaction in the beauty industry. Tailoring products and treatments to the unique needs of different hair types can foster greater inclusivity and improve results. By learning about the multitude of hair types and textures, we not only enrich our ability to care for ourselves and others but also broaden our appreciation of the rich tapestry that is human diversity.

[dweemeister]

Hell to Eternity (1960)

The march of time changes how history is written, how art is consumed and interpreted. Latino involvement on behalf of the United States in the Second World War has been largely underreported, in part because they were tabulated as white. They served in all branches of the armed forces and wherever the Americans fought – on American soil, Asia and the Pacific, Northern Africa, Italy, Western Europe. Closer to home, the United States carried out a policy that was and always shall be a moral disgrace. In a time of war hysteria and popular racist sentiment, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942 ordered the relocation and internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans – more than two-thirds of whom were American citizens by birth or naturalization. These two chapters of American history converge with the story of Pfc. Guy Gabaldon. Gabaldon, who was of Mexican descent, was raised by a Japanese-American (unofficial) foster family in Los Angeles.

When the dramatization of Gabaldon’s early life and experiences at the Battle of Saipan (American victory at Saipan – in the Marianas – precipitated into the Invasion of the Philippines and brought the U.S. closer to the Japanese mainland) was made into a movie, Gabaldon’s Mexican heritage was completely whitewashed. And though his Japanese-American family is given some attention in the opening half-hour, the film does not take much of a stand against government actions, content only to call out individual acts of bigotry. Through my young, Asian-American eyes, Phil Karlson’s Hell to Eternity is a frustrating watch – erasing entirely Gabaldon’s Mexican background in favor of describing him as an, “all-American boy”, and a spotty handling of his Japanese-American upbringing (Gabaldon served as a consultant on Hell to Eternity). The film’s intentions are noble, but these frustrations and unfocused filmmaking prevent undermine Hell to Eternity throughout.

It is 1938 in East Los Angeles. Physical education teacher Kaz Une (George Shibata) separates Guy (Richard Eyer at twelve-year-old Guy; Jeffrey Hunter as an adult) from bullies taunting our young protagonist for having, “Jap friends.” Kaz, who is Japanese-American himself and older brother of Guy’s best friend George (George Matsui as a child; George Takei as an adult), soon learns Guy’s mother has been taken to the hospital and that his father has passed on. Kaz takes Guy home to the Une household (in real life, their surname was Nakano); after Guy’s mother dies, the Unes unofficially adopt Guy. Mr. Une (Bob Okazaki) is unfortunately not seen much in the film, but Mrs. Une (Tsuru Aoki) will exemplify unconditional love. The film will fast forward to the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the internment of the Une family. Guy is drafted, but fails due to a perforated eardrum. But after learning George and Kaz are fighting with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (upon its creation, the 442nd was a regiment comprised almost entirely of Japanese-Americans that fought in the European theater), Guy enlists in the Marines. He goes through boot camp at Camp Pendleton in northern San Diego County in the film’s middle third, with the final third depicting his service at the Battle of Saipan.

Silent film leading man Sessue Hayakawa (1915′s The Cheat, 1957′s The Bridge on the River Kwai) also appears as a general of the Imperial Japanese Army. As the general, his last words to his surrendering soldiers (like all the Japanese spoken in the film, there are no subtitles) recount the folk story of Momotarô – which tells of strength through kindness.

Jeffrey Hunter, in his build, is a much different person than Guy Gabaldon. Hunter is 6′2″, with broad shoulders like the rest of the actors playing Marines in this film; Gabaldon was 5′4″. Hell to Eternity, released by Allied Artists (this film’s North American rights are currently under Warner Bros. via the Turner Entertainment library), was made at a time when top billing to a non-white actor was almost unheard of. There was no major Latino actor during the height of the Hollywood Studio System, and the last Latino superstar in Hollywood was silent film actor Ramón Navarro (still alive in 1960, was largely inactive in cinema, and made his final film earlier that year). Allied Artists had a lengthy history of financial troubles, so their films usually had more modest budgets than something from Paramount or 20th Century Fox. Jeffrey Hunter, with his matinee idol looks but inconsistent filmography (no disrespect intended), is not as compelling a box-office draw as some of his fellow youthful contemporaries. Why not cast a Latino actor? Even if the film’s screenplay – penned by Walter Roeber Schmidt (his only other credit is 1980′s Monstroid) – glosses over Gabaldon’s conflicts of self-identity, a hypothetical Latino actor would be more able to invoke such an identity conflict in his performance.

Compounding this whitewashing is the screenplay’s uninspired commentary about how the United States treated Japanese-Americans on the day of the Pearl Harbor attacks and afterwards. Playground epithets in the introductory minutes transform into suspicious stares and racialized intimidation in a scene where Guy is taking Ester (Miiko Taka) to a drive-in diner. This confrontation is depicted in a way that makes it too much like ‘60s episodic television – there is no connection between the racial hatred directed at Ester in this scene with the internment orders that all too abruptly follow this scene. Guy is given a few moments to exclaim how horrible FDR’s executive action is, but the filmmakers are too uncomfortable in opening uncomfortable, but necessary, political dialogue. Instead, Hell to Eternity makes the Une family’s internment look like an inconvenient, but government-funded relocation rather than a heinous abuse of executive power, a denial of American constitutional rights. Guy’s brief visit to Manzanar in Eastern California is sanitized – emotionally, factually, and physically. The Schmidt screenplay and Karlson’s direction appear willing to make dissenting statements, but only within certain bounds so as not to lose the cooperation of American military in their assistance in the film’s second half. Hell to Eternity should be credited, however, for positively portraying – if somewhat stereotypical with broken English - a loving Japanese-American family.

This lack of care about Guy’s identity and, most prominently, his Japanese-American upbringing, in these American-set scenes negatively affects all the scenes set on Saipan. The Issei (first-generation Japanese-Americans) and Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) disappear by the film’s halfway point, making enemy soldiers the only Japanese characters seen in the closing half. Guy – who proceeds to use his skills in Japanese to convince civilians and soldiers to surrender (the filmmakers are taking historical liberties here, as Gabaldon was not fluent in Japanese) – captures hundreds. On Saipan, little separates Guy’s bloodlust for those who have killed his fellow friends and Marines and quarter for those who look like his family. For the former, Hell to Eternity has a scene where Guy mutilates a Japanese soldier who has, likewise, hacked a Marine into (presumably) pieces. Mutilation is a war crime. but Hell to Eternity suggests – through the editing – that Guy’s actions are justified. Mutilation is a healthy, legal expression of rage, the film says through these images, as long as the all-American boy does it. Only when he remembers the Une family does Guy snap out of this mutilating mindset – his subsequent acts of mercy seemingly absolving him of his ruthless destruction of Japanese corpses and an excessive number of bullets fired at enemy soldiers.

With assistance from the American military to provide the right equipment and to choreograph troop movements as well as the involvement of several hundred veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army serving as extras, Hell to Eternity’s battle sequences are impressive to watch. Shot on Okinawa, the film alternates from beachheads, dense tropical rainforests, the occasional clearing, and charred and cratered hellscapes. But all this technical mastery is undermined by how Karlson portrays the film version of Guy Gabaldon during the Battle of Saipan. Though the film ends decrying the horrible waste of life and his conduct to the Japanese soldiers he has killed, Hell to Eternity seems too celebratory (or, in the best-case scenario, apathetic) and too forgiving of what horrible things this version of Guy has inflicted. But thankfully, the final resolutions in Hell to Eternity are nonviolent.

Despite the erasure of Gabaldon’s Mexican background, Gabaldon enjoyed Jeffrey Hunter’s performance in Hell to Eternity – indeed, Hunter, along with Aoki, gives one of the better performances in this film. The Pied Piper of Saipan captured ten times more enemy prisoners than Sgt. Alvin C. York in World War I but, unlike York, Gabaldon was never awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After Gabaldon’s death in August 2006, Latino activists mounted a campaign to have the United States upgrade Gabaldon’s Navy Congress to the Medal of Honor – to little avail as of the publication of this write-up.

At the time of Hell to Eternity’s release, this was one of the most nuanced treatments of Imperial Japanese soldiers and of Japanese-Americans. Its takes on ethnic and racial identity were almost nonexistent in early 1960s Hollywood. Today, the execution of this message leaves much to be desired. It is no war film classic. Yet Hell to Eternity’s attempts to have Gabaldon’s struggles with his identity as the avenue in which to resolve situations peacefully make it unique among other war films released during that time.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[globalworship]

Litany of Lament to Stop Asian-American Hate

Opening Litany God of all people and the whole of creation, make us into who you have created us to be. Make us your hands, your feet, your eyes, your lips, your body in the world. Spirit of Peace, reconcile us, connect us to yourself, to each other. You are the source of our healing and hope, for if one is hurt, all of us are hurt. Clothe us, your body in the world, with your love, mercy and grace. Amen. Communal Confession Asian siblings are hurting. How do we, the church, hear their painful cry, and act together in solidarity? We pray … Lord, have mercy. Are Asians invisible? They are branded as the model minority — therefore, not expected to speak up. They cry for justice. Can anyone hear them? We pray … Lord, have mercy. Asians are feared as a community. Asians have complex cultures and languages, so they are generally omitted. How can we, the church, offer our curiosity and respect when we encounter a multitude of gifts in diversity and uniqueness? We pray …

Lord, have mercy. Asian children are called many names, most recently “coronavirus,” or yelled at to “go home.” When we, the church, ask, “Who is our neighbor?,” how can we truly mean it in welcoming words and actions? We pray … Lord, have mercy. Asians are used by the mainstream dominant culture to shame and put a wedge against other communities of color. Claiming our calling that all are created in God’s image, how can we stand in solidarity with those hurting? We pray ...

Lord have mercy.

God’s forgiveness is greater than any hurt and pain of the body. For Asian theologies, forgiveness is an invitation to examine and reexamine what constitutes our identity, not only our individual identity but, most especially, our communal identity. May God’s forgiveness invite us all to face who we are truly as members of the body of Christ. May this rich promise embrace us all, taking away the pain of our battered body.

Amen.

(The above resources are by the Rev. Teresita Valeriano on behalf of the Association of Asians and Pacific Islanders-ELCA.)

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Embodied Blessing and Healing The leader may guide the assembly in this embodied blessing by first demonstrating the actions with a verbal explanation, then inviting the assembly to repeat the actions in silence. At a protest against anti-Asian racism, Black and Asian ministers shared stories of embodied hurt and a form of an embodied movement as non-verbal gestures of healing and blessing. In solidarity with our Asian American and Pacific Islander siblings in Christ, I invite you to join me in this embodied blessing and healing. First I will demonstrate with a brief meaning; then you will follow me; then we will move together in silence. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Place hands on heart. I see myself – acknowledge my own feelings – my own body. Bow. Acknowledging sacredness, resilience, humanity, strength in myself. Bow. Look around. I see you. Cup hands to ears. I hear you. Fold arms across chest. Mourning, feeling collective sadness, grief, lament, anger. Bow. Acknowledging sacredness, resilience, humanity, strength in others. Open hands, palm up, with a breath. Receiving blessings from God and from one another. Touch with one hand and extend the other hand to another person. Heart-to-heart compassion. Let us now begin this embodied blessing and healing together in silence. Let us begin by taking a deep breath. The blessing is repeated in action without spoken words. Amen. (Embodied Blessing created by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity for an anti-Asian violence protest in Oakland, Calif. on February 13-14, 2021. Asian and black leaders and the entire community gathered embodied this blessing for healing.)

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Lamenting Racism This lament and prayer may be used in preparation for the work of faithful listening in discussions around racism and racial reconciliation, and at other appropriate times. The naming of communities, situations, and experiences may be adapted for the context or occasion. People of color may opt for silence during parts of this lament to contemplate the community’s words. A leader introduces a gathering lament in these or similar words. The sin of racism hurts communities of color, fractures human relationships, and denies God’s good creation. Lament is a way for us to recognize the harm caused by racism. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:35-39). God’s grace in Christ frees us for the difficult work of recognizing and lamenting racism. We are all part of one body in Christ, called to act with equity, fairness, and justice. God’s savinglove creates grace-filled spaces within us and within our relationships. God’s saving love calls and leads us toward rooting out the racism that continues to infect the body. A leader invites those gathered into lament and prayer in these or similar words. Within the whole human family, people of color have experienced both interpersonal aggression and structural oppression instead of abundant life. We recognize and lament the harm racism has caused to African Descent communities; American Indian and Alaska Native communities; Indigenous Peoples within Canada; Arab and Middle Eastern communities; Asian and Pacific Islander communities; and Latinx communities. We cry out to you, hear our lament, O God. We have assigned the notion of race to human beings created in God’s own divine image. We have judged God’s beautiful diversity by our flawed and artificial standards. We cry out to you, hear our lament, O God. We have used language and images in ways that equate black and dark with dirt and sin, and that fail to welcome the treasures of darkness in God’s good creation. We cry out to you, hear our lament, O God. We have accepted practices in our churches and in our society that privilege whiteness overdiversity and equity. We have been complicit in how racism continues to exclude and harm people of color. We cry out to you, hear our lament, O God. When one part of the body of Christ hurts, the whole body hurts. As we listen to people who are harmed by racism, we call to you, open our hearts, O God.

As we reflect on our daily interactions with people and communities of color, we call to you, open our hearts, O God. As we reconsider what we have been taught about race and racism, we call to you, open our hearts, O God. As we contemplate what we have done and what we have left undone, we call to you, open our hearts, O God. As we labor to create a loving and safe community for our siblings of color, we call to you, open our hearts, O God. Holy and merciful God, as your people we recommit ourselves to loving one another as you haveloved us. Prepare us for this time of listening and discovery. We pray in the name of the one who has made us one, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (All Creation Sings, pp. 62-63)

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All of this content is excerpted from a prayer service at https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Worship_Resources_for_Day_of_Lament_Against_Anti-Asian_Racism.pdf

Go further for more prayers and song suggestions.

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