Roundup — Lines of Oppression

The 38th Carnival of Feminists is up at Team Rainbow. And it's a colorful one indeed, featuring such brilliant blogmigas as Sylvia, Brownfemipower, Blackamazon, Petit Poussin...women of courageous conviction who have my respect, admiration, and support. In the face of what I consider to be dishonest attacks and dismissals — not just this past week but every week, on an ongoing basis — they have not only kept on fighting; they have kept on teaching. Teaching us all.

Meanwhile over at reappropriate, Jenn ponders the disturbingly high suicide rate among young Asian American women:

Asian American women aged 15 to 24 have — for a combination of very complex and poorly understood reasons — the highest rate of suicide amongst women of any race in that age group, and is the second leading cause of death for women of that age.

Experts have struggled to understand why this might be the case. The most popular hypothesis is that the Model Minority Myth is to blame. I think this idea is too simple: it’s not simply that Asian American women face a cultural pressure to succeed. After all, Asian American men, too, are victims of the Model Minority Myth. I believe the pressure to succeed is coupled with sexism within Asian/Asian American traditions that state that Asian American girls are less valued than boys, that Asian American girls should not only succeed professionally but must maintain a strictly defined moral behaviour including sexual innocence and an unassuming nature, and that Asian American girls must achieve not only professionally but also take time to be a dutiful daughter to their elderly parents. [...]

Of course, there is a fear that discussing these issues can lead to a dangerous comparison of Asian and American cultures that would suggest that Asian culture is more sexist, and therefore somehow “worse” than American culture. That is not the argument that this post is trying to make; rather, what I am trying to articulate is that Asian American women suffer from higher suicide rates because the mental health community has not caught up with the demands of a multicultural society. Depression and thoughts of suicide are prevalent amongst women of all races, but psychological treatment is largely founded upon Western ideals. The high rates of depression amongst Asian American women are a consequence of poor outreach to the APIA community, to combat stigmas of mental disease, and of poor resources specifically addressing concerns unique to Asian American women.

Cynical Anti-Orientalist brings our attention to the largest APIA LGBT survey to date:

The executive summary of the survey titled "Living in the margins: A national survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Asian and Pacific Islander Americans" is provided in Chinese, Hindi, Korean and Vietnamese.  Please check it out!

Here are things pulled out of a press release on the report via an email I got from QAPA:

Living in the Margins is based on analysis of survey data from 863 respondents who live in a total of 38 states and the District of Columbia in a pattern that closely reflects the distribution of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. This online survey was conducted from June through September 2006 in English, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. It included a variety of questions focusing on basic demographic information, experiences of discrimination and/or harassment, policy priorities and political behavior. [...]

"As the Asian and Pacific Islander community grows in size and clout, we cannot leave behind Asians and Pacific Islanders who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. We are a part of both the API and LGBT communities and we raise our voices for inclusion in national debates around comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, punitive bans on marriage and hate violence that tears our community apart. We are silent at our own peril," said Doreena Wong, co-chair of API Equality--Los Angeles.

"Asian and Pacific Islander LGBT community members report pervasive harassment in the form of homophobia in the API community and racism in the LGBT community. They are concerned with comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform, how they are portrayed in the media, and protecting their families and themselves from violence and harassment," said Alain Dang, a Task Force policy analyst and the study's lead author. "These findings add to the growing body of evidence that support the need for not only legislative intervention, but community introspection."

Over at Love Songs (Are for Losers), lovelesscynic throws down a challenge:

if people hate immigrants so fucking much, why don't they just boycott them, just like everything else we protest.

Stop eating food that immigrants harvested, grew, or cooked, stop going to places where immigrants work, stop buying things that immigrants made.

Oh, right, you can't. They're everywhere. Almost like an integral part of our society...or something...

LA IndyMedia brings us the following statement (via Fire Witch):

The Alliance Philippines (AJLPP) and the Coalition in Defense of Immigrant Rights (CDIR) vehemently oppose the US Senate proposals that will turn 12 million immigrants into “guest workers” and scrap the family reunification laws that should unite and not separate families. [...]

The CDIR opposes the proposal not only because it is racist, exploitative and inhuman but also fosters anti-immigrant bias and separates families and individuals and fleece profits from exploited worker immigrants.

The proposed agreement provides the following:

1. Would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of households would have to return to their home countries first.

2. They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.

3. A new crop of low-skilled guest workers would have to return home after stints of two years. They could renew their visas twice, but would be required to leave for a year in between each time.

4. If they wanted to stay in the U.S. permanently, they would have to apply under the point system for a limited pool of green cards.

5. Family connections alone would no longer be enough to qualify for a green card — except for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens. Strict new limits would apply to U.S. citizens seeking to bring foreign-born parents into the country.

At ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!, XP connects the racist ordinance in Farmers Branch, Texas, to the long US history of "sundown towns":

In nearly every category that measures social well-being, the conditions of racially oppressed people have worsened. In the communities of the African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and other nationally and racially oppressed peoples the situation is at crisis levels. Adding another blow, the xenophobic resident of Farmers Branch, TX has approved by a 68% – 32% vote an ordinance that would fine landlords and property managers $500.00 for renting to the undocumented. However, what occurred in Farmers Branch is not unusual - it is one of America’s best guarded secrets. Towns such as Farmers Branch are often called “sundown towns” - where communities systematically exclude people of color - mainly African Americans - from living in it.

A practice that began in the South in 1864 and later adopted by thousands of towns across the US in the late 1890s and continuing until 1968, where whites across the US conducted a series of racial expulsions, driving thousands of blacks from their homes to make communities lily-white. Some towns went as far as putting signs outside the city limits that normally said “N----r, Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on You in __,” according to James Loewen in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. But sometimes, the signs were never came out expressing their hatred and tried to be a bit clever in their messages such as, “If You Can Read … You’d Better Run … If You Can’t Read … You’d Better Run Anyway.” The signs are gone now but they are a part of America’s racist past, signs that could be found along the highway outside the city limits or county line. Just because the signs are gone, does not mean these practices do not exist today. [...]

In California, Mexican Americans as well as Asian Americans, Indians, and blacks were prohibited from white schools. Although, Loewen’s book chronicled the history of thousands of all-white “sundown” towns and suburbs across the West and North, a reader might get the impression that these towns only kept out African Americans, however, this is not true these towns also kept out Asian Americans and Mexican Americans. Loewen wrote:

Other towns passed ordinances barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property; still others established such policies by informal means, harassing and even killing those who violated the rule. Some sundown towns similarly kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, or other groups.

In Texas in the 1930s and 1940s, as in much of the Southwest and California, most Mexican-American children attended, separate schools; by 1930, 90% of South Texas schools were segregated. In agricultural areas, many Mexican-Americans lived in “company towns” likeTaft Ranch and the King Ranch with all separate institutions. In northern and southern Colorado, companies created “company towns” where the “Others” could be hidden from view. Those who lived in these towns included poor working class whites, African Americans, and Latinos, along with immigrants from Asia and central and Eastern Europe.

On yet another front of the anti-racist struggle, Sylvia relays a story from a high school in Jena, Louisiana:

Shawn Williams has directed my attention to a recent article by Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune about Jena, Louisiana. In this story, we see the refusal to grapple with the severity of racial animus, symbolic representations of that animus, and the legacy of mutual mistrust and hatred left today from failing to grapple with the unreleased tension. Entangled in these sentiments is miscarriage of justice, patterns of retaliatory violence and intimidation, and a pervasive sense of futility that amidst so much action and emotion, nothing substantial was felt or expressed except the stinging pain of old and gangrenous wounds.

Here is Shawn retelling of Witt’s rundown of the events:

In his May 18, 2007 story, Mr. Witt tells of an incident that happened at the local high school in Jena where black students decided they wanted to sit under a tree whose shade had been reserved for white students only for years. When campus officials gave their blessing to the students request to sit under the tree, a series of events began that have apparently launched the town into a downward spiral.

According to Mr. Witt’s article the following events have occurred since the initial action by the black students last September:

*  The next day three nooses were hanging from the tree

* Once three white students were identified as having hung the nooses on the tree, the school superintendent suspended them for only three days. (The principal had suggested expulsion). The superintendent felt the nooses represented a “youthful stunt.”

*  Fights broke out at the high school between black and white students.

*  Unknown arsonists set fire to the central wing of the school (November)

*  A white youth beat up a black student who showed up at an all-white party

*  another young white man pulled a shotgun on three black students at a convenience store

* A group of black students at the high school allegedly jumped a white student on his way out of the gym, knocked him unconscious and kicked him after he hit the floor (December)

* LaSalle Parish district attorney, Reed Walters, opted to charge six black students with attempted second-degree murder and other offenses (for their involvement in the above incident)

NOTE: The white youth who beat the black student at the party was charged only with simple battery, while the white man who pulled the shotgun at the convenience store wasn’t chRarged with any crime at all.

In the midst of these incidences, Witt reports that the mayor offered this opinion of Jena’s order and direction:

“Jena is a place that’s moving in the right direction,” said Mayor Murphy McMillan. “Race is not a major local issue. It’s not a factor in the local people’s lives.”

[...] I highly recommend checking out this detailed rundown at Listen To Me For A Minute to get your bearings about what’s taken place, and I also encourage you to stop yourself before distancing away from Jena and painting it as a special place with special problems. Our actions affect others’ realities. It is highly likely that if the school officials took decisive action after the nooses were placed on the tree, the resulting incidences would not have occurred. Perhaps I should say: we need to pay attention to those small matters and discuss them seriously before they escalate.

For helping specifically with this matter, I think it’s important to contact someone close to the action first to figure out what people on the netroots and private citizens can do to help ensure justice will be served adequately.

Joe Cook, Executive Director
ACLU - Louisiana
P.O. Box 56157
New Orleans, LA  70156
(504) 522-0617
(866) 522-0617
admin@laaclu.org

This next tidbit from Gawker comes from one of the most exulted campuses of higher learning in the country (via Carmen at Racialicious):

This weekend, on the bucolic Quad at Harvard University—typically, the site of a casual game of Ultimate, or perhaps an afternoon reading of some Shakespearean sonnets before English class—an unusual and, to some, frightening scene was played out. There were people throwing things! And running! And jumping! And most scary of all, every single one of them was black. So the Harvard students watching from their dormitory windows, growing increasingly agitated at the sights below, did what any normal, white Harvard student would do when they saw a large, seemingly unruly group of black people: They called the cops!

Except, well, oops—turns out it was just the Harvard Black Men’s Forum and Association of Black Harvard Women:

As members of the groups played games of dodgeball and capture-the-flag in the Quad as part of the annual “BMF-ABHW Challenge,” Cabot House residents fired off a string of impassioned e-mails questioning students’ presence on the public lawn—and whether they were students at all. Eventually, the Harvard University Police Department was called about the commotion, and officers asked the students to “keep the noise down,” according to police spokesman Steven G. Catalano.

Finally, Sassywho provides a nice roundup on various forms of white, male, and heterosexual privilege. Check it out and give it some thought. Because the hard work of anti-oppression goes far deeper than external organizing; it must delve into the darkest corners of our own psyches.

Comments

[Yolanda Carrington]

Thanks for this roundup, Kai.

[Vincent]

Great roundup! Considering the substance of the post, it is clear to me that there are some ugly and unsettling things society has to deal with immediately:

- The multicultural ignorance impacting education, health care, mental health, law enforcement, governance is so severe that lives are being lost and ruined everyday. Our institutional responses are getting worse.

- There is racist, mysognistic, and xenophobic repression that percolates just below the surface of a false sense of civility.
The roundup points out both subtle and gross inflection points.

- Our country is engaged in a social race, gender, and immigrant war that is dangerously close to shifting to an all out violent war.

It seems the only way to deal with the realities above is to "pull back the veil" on issues of race, gender, and immigration. Unfortunately, I believe this means that things will get "hotter" before the get "better". The hope is in the dialogue (blogs like Zuky). While I wish we could trust human beings' inheritant compassion and love for each other to save the day, more likely is the level of interdependence required to survive in this world socially, civically, and economically will move society in a more cooperative and respectful direction.

peace,

v