"The leaves are changing colors,"

"but the TV stars are staying white. And male."

How does he do it all?!

"The mummies are from Egypt, which is in Africa. Which makes them African American. But they will be played by white Canadians."


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Celebrating books by certain successful people

I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. Hooray for books! I got to meet Lela Lee of Angry Little Girls fame, and I had her sign my copy of her new book. Hooray for me!

At the panels I went to, most of the audience was older and white. Unfortunately, most of the panelists were, too. Except for the Jada Pinkett Smith/Sistah Souljah stage, and the Writing between Races panel (which was the best! Click these words to learn about the five fabulous panelists), almost all of the people on the panels I attended were white. Most of them were male, more of them were affluent or comfortable, most of them were over 40. All of them were over 30. At least two of the panels had only white male speakers.

No, I did no select the panels I attended based on their abundance of old, rich white men. I chose topics that interested me, like authors who also write for TV, and novelists for young adults. Seeing the panelists magnified an pernicious problem of publishing: the vicious circle of who is allowed to speak in our society. To speak on a panel at the festival, you must have published a successful book. The people who have books published are usually white and mostly male, especially in nonfiction, even if the topics of their books are not other white people. Which leaves a bunch of people, like me, discouraged and dissatisfied, about the types of stories that being told, or more precisely, the types of stories that are not being told.

Outside of the panels, the crowd of thousands milling about the booths and stages was more diverse. Thought at the Patton Oswalt stage, the audience was more diverse in age and possibly in economic background than it was in color. Mostly different sizes and shades of white people. But I did stand next to one of the other two black ladies in the audience. Progress!

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"Guys, guys."

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Stop at 0:38 to view a portrait of Stephen Colbert's writing staff. What an illuminating picture of hypocrisy.

It has become hard to take Stephen's rants on discrimination seriously when almost all of his writers are white and male and under 40. And only the tallest guy gets to talk.

There was that one nice white lady and the mature looking white gentleman in the front. But the rest of the staff looks like a conglomeration of stand-ins for a Seth Rogen movie. Or a Michael Cera movie. Or a Jonah Hill movie. Which are pretty much all the same movie.

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Whenever I hear the words "Thomas Jefferson",

this is what comes to my mind, too:

Thomas Jefferson: The Face of a Rapist, by Renee, Feministe. Emphases mine.

Americans look at Thomas Jefferson and see the one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, a statesman, a former president and one of the founding fathers,’ however; when I look at him, I see the face of a rapist. When Jefferson first met Sally Hemings, his slave through inheritance, she would have been no more than 15 or 16 years old. It is rumoured that when she returned from France with him, that she was already pregnant with his child.

[ . . . ]

No matter how many times Black women have angrily contested the use of the term love affair between Hemings and Jefferson, it continues to be the most common descriptor by those who believe the DNA evidence. This assumes that Hemings actually had the power to deny Jefferson sexual access, or that Jefferson had a right to Sally’s body for the purposes of sexual gratification. Both suppositions are erroneous. Due to the patriarchal nature of gender relations, many men believe that they exist with the right to access women’s bodies and that is specifically grounded in the power imbalance between the genders. If we can acknowledge in a modern context that a power imbalance exists between men and women, how much more likely is it that this same imbalance existed between Jefferson and Hemings?

Some may look back at Jefferson and simply claim that he was a man of his time and that he should not be judged outside of historical context, however; in my mind a rapist is a rapist. What he did at the time may not have been considered a violation due to current race and gender relations, however; today we can correctly name his actions. Sally did not have the power to consent to his advances even if she was so inclined; this simple fact must be affirmed not only to honour the memory of Hemings but to change the social understanding that Black women’s bodies are unrapeable. We are not naturally licentious whores who exist to fulfill the sexual fantasies of depraved racist men. We are women that must be accorded the right to control over our bodies without punishment for any decisions we make in that regard.

And yet, Mr. Jefferson has a memorial in my nation's capital. (So does his fellow slave-owner and noted tax-evader George Washington.) This is despite the fact that Meredith Simons at the controversial site Double XX does not think we in the United States live in a rape culture, mainly because she doesn't seem to know anyone who has been raped.

I have never owned anyone, assaulted anyone, or started a war with Great Britain. Yet where is my national monument?

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Liked it?

I went to see 500 Days of Summer today, and I took notes during my experience. Here is a transcript:

I would like to see Whip It with Ellen Page and Eve!

Kristin Wiig is in two movies.

What American woman is average at 121 pounds?

It's convenient that Summer is so attractive to every man who sees her.

So Summer doesn't like you. And?

Does Summer have any aspirations? Tom doesn't care

This movie is written by men and for men who obsess over women without caring about what they want. It is all about them.

The men disparage women who deign not to be into them, unattainable women like Jordan Catalano.

I like the dance sequence! Bird!

Too much twee.

I've already seen these scenes in the commercials.

Tom wants to conquer new territory as Summer breaks down her walls.

Who needs labels, Tom? People in functional relationships, that's who.

Precocious kid.

French song and movie.

It's hard to write in the dark.

More hating on women and their clothes.

As if people have or use house phones.

Tom and Summer dress like they got their wardrobe out of Looking Indie for Dummies.

Self-consciously, self-referentially indie. And French.

Who does Tom think he is with those 1960s suits and those skinny ties? James Coburn in Charade?

I like the split screen.

With the bags full of Twinkies and orange juice, how can Tom process all that sugar?

Pickles!

What if that guy hadn't seen Summer reading Dorian Gray? Then another guy would have come along. Duh. This is the man-mesmerizing Summer we're talking about.

Autumn? Oy vey.

As the title of this post suggests, I liked the movie, yet I had fundamental problems with the writing, and thus with the characters. In particular, the character of Summer. I understand that the character of Tom was actually in love with love and with the idea of Summer, instead of being in love with the actual woman Summer. However, I never figured out who Summer was, and I don't think the writers bothered to figure out who she was either. Her existence in the movie was wholly defined by her past, present and future relationships. Besides the fact that she had three relationships before she connected with Tom, and one relationship after that, all I know about Summer is the following:

• She is of "average height" (5 feet, 5 inches) and "average weight" (121 pounds)
• She is from Michigan
• She likes The Smiths and Ringo Starr
• She bewitches every heterosexual male she passes and subsequently generates an economic stimulus wherever she goes (yeah, I don't know)
• She has never been in love

The entire movie, which had a white male director, and two white male writers, seemed to be based on the premise of obsessing over unattainable women. Women who, if they don't return unwanted advances by men inside or outside of the workplace, are bitches. For example, before Tom and Summer get together, Tom hears from his friend McKenzie that one of their male coworkers was hitting on Summer in the copy room. Summer declined the offer, so McKenzie calls her a bitch. As if Summer existed solely to satisfy the fantasies of her male coworkers, regardless of what she wants. Conveniently, we never discover what or who Summer wants, because the writers don't bother to tell or show us.

An equally poignant moment occurs during the opening frame, which was a black screen with the following statement in white letters:

Author's Note: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Especially you Jenny Beckman.

Bitch.

The movie was created by (white American heterosexual) men, for (white American heterosexual) men about (white American heterosexual) men and their misogynistic delusions about (white American) women. This is despite the fact that the movie has been marketed to pretty much everyone in the United States, and--based on my observations in the theater I was sitting in--whose audience will probably skew female. :|

After examining the evidence, I didn't like 500 Days of Summer as much as I wish I had. But the acting was all good!

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Two affluent men talking about abortion

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"Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee talk about issues where they will never be the protagonist."

Readers, this is where the real change happens.

Also, at 2:28, you'll see that Mike Huckabee is worried that his children will send him to Shady Pines. If I were Mike Huckabee, I'd be worried, too.

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So, it's not just me?

Dating 101: Dealing With the Race Factor, by Arnold Chao, Yahoo! Personals.

Internet love is not colorblind, UC Irvine study. Emphases mine.

[UC Irvine sociologists] Cynthia Feliciano and Belinda Robnett collected data from Yahoo personals between September 2004 and May 2005, randomly selecting profiles of people ages 18-50 in the Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Atlanta metropolitan regions. While white men were more open to dating outside their race than white women, both had specific racial preferences. White men preferred Asian and Latino dating partners to African Americans; white women were more likely to exclude Asian men.

According to Feliciano, negative portrayals of African American women and Asian men in popular culture could contribute to these preferences.

"Stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity shape dating choices and continue to be perpetuated in the mass media," says Feliciano, sociology and Chicano/Latino studies assistant professor. "The hyper-feminine image of Asian American women contrasts greatly with that of Asian men, who are often portrayed as asexual."

In comparison, the image of the strong African American woman is at odds with idealized notions of submissive and frail women. This may explain why African American women faced high levels of rejection among men, researchers say.

"Cultural portrayals of African American women in the media continue to stress traits seen as negative, such as bossiness," Feliciano says.

[...]

Researchers' analysis of minorities' racial preferences showed that Asians, African Americans and Latinos are more likely to include whites as possible dates than whites are to include them. This suggests that whites, as the dominant group in the U.S., remain in the privileged position of being able to facilitate or hinder the full incorporation of minorities.

Or maybe I'm a crooked pot without a crooked cover due to my "bossiness." I'm sure that's it.

Also, way to be timely, Yahoo! and UC Irvine. I re-reported this phenomenon two years ago, and Racialicious still reports on interracial relationships regularly. Their Craigslist personals article from two years ago is still my favorite. I also enjoyed the open thread on dating that followed a year and a half later.

Furthermore, the survey should have examined same-sex relationships as well. Way to be heteronormative, sociologists.

Ooh! I liked this post, too, by the Frog Princess. I have been saying the same thing for years, yet it is so hard for my friends to comprehend my outlook and my situation. As the Frog Princess says about the open thread on Racialicious, "The article and the comments really validated what I’d been feeling my whole life but that I’m not allowed to say in public because it makes some people uncomfortable."

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"Exactly! A reverse racist!"

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"We call it that because it's the opposite of the way you're supposed to be a racist."

Also, no matter what The Today Show (at 4:12) or the Telegraph suggest, Judge Sotomayor's parents did not "immigrate" to New York from Puerto Rico. They moved to New York from Puerto Rico. Like when the Clampetts "loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is." Or when George and Weezy were "moving on up/To the east side/To a deluxe apartment in the sky." They didn't change countries; they were Americans finding a new, potentially better, place to live.

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Musings from a black woman: I can weigh in on this!

Write What You Know: Limiting or Authentic?, by Neesha Meminger, Racialicious. Emphases mine. It is a long post, but keep reading. You can do it!

The other day, I came across a blog post by Editorial Anonymous, “The CSK is Dead (Long Live the CSK).” The Coretta Scott King Award was established in 1969 and is given to outstanding African-American authors and illustrators of children’s books.

Editorial Anonymous writes,

"If the CSK were in charge, male writers wouldn't be able to comment on what it's like to be a woman. The CSK is saying that you cannot understand what it is to be black in America unless you are black.

"Giving an award for creating art about the experience of race is a wonderful thing. But giving an award for creating art and being a particular race?

"That’s racism in action."

So this set me a-pondering. Is it cool for white people to write from the perspective of people of color? How about, as Editorial Anonymous mentions in the quote above, for men to write from the perspective of women?

[. . .]

[prize-winning white woman author Laurie Halse Anderson] also goes on to write, “Slavery affects all Americans today, regardless of ethnic background, or how long our families have lived here. Slavery is the elephant in our country’s living room. It won’t go away until we acknowledge, understand, and deal with it.”

This is absolutely true. Racism (and slavery) affects every single one of us, no matter what our background. White people should be taking it up as an issue – just as men should be taking up the issue of sexism and misogyny –and talking about it, examining it, exploring, and looking for more equitable and just paradigms. And writing a novel like Chains may be this one white woman’s way of doing that.

So . . . what’s the issue? Is there an issue?

There is the view among some writers that one’s creativity or artistic vision should not be limited or “fenced in,” and restricting writers to write only what they know does exactly that. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard some variation of, “Who wants to read about a liberal white woman from New Jersey/Iowa/Seattle?” [I would!]

However, in an interview on ustrek.org, Sherman Alexie, author of Ten Little Indians and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, as well as the writer/director for Smoke Signals, jokingly suggested a “10-year moratorium for white writers so that Indians can tell their own stories instead of having white people tell them. ‘The fact is, when white authors step away from their typewriters, they’re still white. When I get up from the typewriter, I’m still an Indian.’ He wants those authors to question their privileged positions.”

[. . .]

Next time you go to a bookstore, check the shelves and see how many books there, are in any given genre on any given subject, written by people of color. My guess is that very few genres, if any, will have an accurate representation of global demographics in the titles. And that is because there are so few writers of color getting picked up and supported by publishers in any kind of substantial way (a là Twilight, Harry Potter, The Princess Diaries, etc. And, of course, these examples hold true for film as they were all adaptations of novels).

As a South Asian author writing YA, I know from experience that many editors are hesitant to pick up more than one novel with an Indian-American protagonist written by an Indian-American author – even if the two novels are different genres and about entirely different subjects – because both novels still fall under the Multicultural category. This often creates the “everyone elbowing for the one seat on the bus” phenomenon among the marginalized authors who have to fight for that one lone multicultural spot. But I digress…

Yet, as we all know from visiting our local bookstores, or taking an online stroll through Amazon, there is an abundance of books/films by white writers writing on every subject, in every genre – with more than one writer often covering the same topic for varying perspectives. A publishing house can have several white fantasy authors and historical romance authors, even a few writing about spiritual journeys and all of those books are seen as different books. None of my white author friends have ever had their agents come back to them with, “No, this editor declined because she already has a European title about identity issues.”

I, on the other hand, have heard that exact same phrase, substituting “European” with “Asian.” . . .

I thought about this recently as I was looking at some of my associates who insist upon socializing with and befriending others based on color and gender. I'm not kidding. It is that bad. When you look at them, you feel embarrassed for them. It is hard to believe that they are 30-year-olds living in California, instead of high school seniors going to a segregated Georgia prom.

As I try to explain to people with whom I have enlightening discussions, there is a difference between white men writing about nonwhite and/or nonmale people, and those people writing about themselves. For instance, I know infinitely more about white men than they could ever know about me or any other black woman. I have personally encountered thousands of white men in my short lifetime. That does not include the countless number of white men I have been forced to read about, listen to or watch as part of my "educational" process. In the United States, white men are in your face all the time. Unless you live on a reservation with no mainstream media access, you cannot escape them. I could tell you gross generalizations of what they like, what they don't like, how they grew up, what they think of themselves, the lies they have been told and which they subsequently believe, and who they dream of becoming and why. I could adopt a pseudonym, write Memoirs of Joe Six-Pack, and it would sell millions. (Don't steal my idea! Or, if you do, please blog about it and let me know.)

However, that does not work in the reverse. Some white men have never met any black women, or any nonwhite people at all. Others can count all the colorful friends they have ever had on one hand. They could also count the important black women they have heard of on two hands. An example:

1. Rosa Parks
2. Harriet Tubman
3. Michelle Obama
4. Oprah
5. The overly-mentioned Halle Berry
6. Weezy Jefferson
7. Whoopi Goldberg
8. Tyra Banks
9. um . . .

There aren't even any black women in either of the Night at the Museum movies, as if black women never existed in history, or at least in museums. There are two women (barely) featured in the second one, including Amy Adams, who primarily function as Ben Stiller's younger, better-looking love interest. Or "Amelia Earhart." Whichever.

Based on my above analysis, writing what you know may be limiting, but it can be more authentic. It is revolting that so many books, TV shows and movies that include (white) female characters are written by (white) men. It comes through in the voices of those characters, like when those middle-aged men were writing about those self-involved twentysomethings. It is dishonest, less than believable and disappointing. If more nonwhite and nonmale people were allowed to actively participate in the infrastructure of corporate media, then sure, write whatever you want. But that is not the case, and I do not appreciate having my alleged story told by white men who all share the same one black friend. That is, if my story gets told at all.

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Two related articles

Ladies! Meet Available Striking Writers, from today's Defamer via Craigslist.

With a male-to-female ratio nearly as favorable as that of the average nuclear submarine crew, there is perhaps no better place for single women to prowl for companionship than their local WGA picket line . . .

And from the May 9, 2007, issue of Defamer: Hollywood Diversity Shocker: White Guys Still Doing All The Writing, which I grouched about earlier this year.

I knew there was something weird and strangely familiar about all of these strike videos. Okay, so there were three (two and a half?) black men featured in the video above. But they weren't writers. And none of the people speaking from the podium were female. Also, when Dennis Haysbert was on the screen, I kept wondering when he would tell us about Allstate's stand.

Ms. hooks, if you're reading,

I think you're awesome, too! I found the video below via I crush on bell hooks, by Jessica on Feministing.



Some day I'll read one of your books. For now, I'll enjoy you on my computer. There are more bell hooks videos on YouTube, but I haven't watched them yet.

I also also found this post in the comments: Why can’t bell hooks think more about the feelings of white men? on Our Descent into Madness. I immediately started yelling at my screen. Nice!