pass the caviar, boiee

Have you ever heard of Jack and Jill of America?

it's an organization for kids with rich, well connected african american mothers. you cannot apply unless you are recommended by a current parent. here's an excerpt from the organization's home page:

"Today, Jack and Jill of America, Inc. has a membership base of over 9,500 families and it is the oldest and largest African American family organization in the United States. Jack and Jill of America, Inc. is committed to ensuring that all children have the same opportunities in life."

Now here's an excerpt from a documentary i saw today, People Like Us, which criticized Jack and Jill of America. The scene is in an african american hair salon:

BLONDE WOMAN: Here we fought to be invited into the golf clubs, the country club.
Then we start our own club, and still, we have to be invited. That’s where the rage comes
from.

WOMAN: Was there not an air of superiority with that?

SECOND WOMAN: That came along with it, yes.

WOMAN: And that’s the part I didn’t like.

SECOND WOMAN: If you don’t have an MD after your name, guess what? You’re kid is not going to get in there.

OFF-SCREEN: Or you’re a single parent.

SECOND WOMAN: Or you’re a single parent. I talked to a someone who was in Jack and Jill, I said, “send me an application.” Did I get one? So, and it’s teaching them the wrong values, so, it’s teaching the children to be like the oppressor, you know. If you’re like them then maybe they’ll accept you. But it’s never going to happen.


Upper class exclusivity in black america. is it wrong to want your kid to go to a place with pedigree? is there going to be a black version of the WASP (white anglo saxon protestant)? I don't know who they think they're fooling, but Jack and Jill doesn't want equal opportunity for all black people, just the ones that already have money. I don't know, maybe i'm being cynical...

popping, locking, and throwing down

mkay so.

i've been thinking a lot about old hollywood, and black representation of hollywood, specifically because of the ending of Bamboozled and the content of Public Enemy's nineties-licious music video.

so i would like to post this link, because i am not sure if it is racist:


i mean, i know they are all in the service industry, their costumes tell us that much. and the style of dance is a little uncouth, or vulgar. but damn. its just so impressive! when old hollywood made Hellazoopin', were they saying "hey, black people have talent! they're not just waiters!" Or was this frenzied choreographed dance a glorified spectacle, like watching animals at the zoo?

at the end of the film, when the dancers catch white people looking on and applauding, they scram, sending the message, "we're not doing this for you!" that's a directing choice that can be read a couple of ways.

well, i'm impressed. i don't come out of watching that video thinking poorly of the black community. then again, i'm not predisposed to racism. and "black people are good dancers" is a predominant racial stereotype. perhaps i would agree with ice cube and prefer to see a black female actress as a lawyer in old hollywood.

pound what?

i wanted to talk about a tweet for a second.

and to illustrate my point, and simultaneously learn about blogging, i augumented my diversity blog with a real live feed of my own PERSONAL twitter. scandalous.

if you look to the right, you will see my friends tweet about how he went to high five a black person, and was reciprocated with a fist bump. this is described as a "white guy" moment.


i find this description interesting, because the high five was so popular in african american culture. it still is, but more sophisticated hand greetings exist, such as "daps". wiki further expounds on the african american communities involvement with the gesture:

In addition to the standard high five, several types of "five" exist, and this factor adds variety to the experience, which tends to maximize the satisfaction of participants. The "low five" had already been known, during the 1940s, in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) as "giving skin" or "slapping skin".

do white people have their own hand greetings, or do they just borrow gang symbols and other forms of nonverbal communication once it becomes stale?


multiple offender


girl in middle can't do it

taking advantage of sweet sweet free wireless

still in sunny california.

every sign has a spainish translation under it.

but the barns and noble i'm sitting at only has one shelf devoted to "libros en espanol"

do the spainish speaking people go elsewhere for their books?

i'm actually suprised i found this place. there aren't a lot of bookstores around here. then again, i'm used to cambridge, working in harvard square and everything. i've never had a shortage. maybe i'm apalled at the lack of bookstores because i'm an english major (and comm, of course!)

nobody else around me seems to notice they are in a bookstore. i got a comic book guy in front of me, an old lady reading ustoday on my right, some teenybopper girl killing time with fashion magazines, another old woman reading this trashy victorian number, a dude texting, and two alleged smarties with a logical reasoning book and a million wiki tabs open, respectively.

maybe it's because i'm in the vast expanse of desert and industrial parks that is redlands, CA (apparently it's a city, i refuse to believe!) Maybe everyone has a kindle or buys books online. but i think the book buying culture in america is going way down, which also means less options for cultural and spainish publications.

am i wrong? is everyone a bookworm, but only in secret?

were you an idiot when you were 14?

okay so here's an embarrassing story for the record books:



so i'm out in california for a wedding. I'm with one of my friends from childhood who also flew out for the occasion, and we're sitting and talking at a hookah lounge. Out of the blue he says, "Hey shayna, do you remember at the mall when we were like 14, and you said 'i hope you don't get offended if i say the word nigger, i use it a lot' and i was like 'we're all people here'"



i honestly didn't remember, but i don't doubt i said that. David was one of my first black friends, and when i was a young kid, saying nigger, as an add on to the end of a sentence (ex: i just beat you in air hockey, niggaaa) was ironic or funny or cool, i don't know. and i wanted to safeguard myself from letting the "n" word slip around david. he handled the situation rather open mindedly for a young kid.

i feel pretty bad about the situation now. or i feel like i was an idiot. i would never say the word nigger out loud these days. it's a word with so much hatred behind it, and there's no reason for me to say it. i don't think words should be banned, but its not for me anymore. i get uncomfortable even typing the words.

i think the n word debate - whether it should not be used among black people, whether it should be forgotten, whatever - is a little overplayed. honestly, language changes, and words meanings change all the time. this one is bound to play out, and we've come a long way from using the n word in tobacco, toy banks, and children's songs



oh my...



but hey guys, there are so many other creative swears that don't carry that much hatred. like turd nugget. or fuck face. let's just use those.

update on california complexities

after reading my most recent post, my boyfriend also pointed out that they provided the migrant workers with water jugs and donuts. no lie, this is better treatment than the continental breakfast at our "best value" hotel. maybe i will reconsider my itinerary for the day, whats a few hours of drywalling if it means i get to mow down on some boston creams?

california complexities

i'm in california right now, and on top of all the things i've never done before - go to jack in the box, pick flowers for my hair, watch all the amazing rust free classic cars go by - there is a sight here i have never seen. outside the Home Depot, on any given morning, there will be upwards of 50 illegal immigrants looking for work. and whats more, someone, possibly home depot, has provided them two large white canopies to stand under, to protect them from the sun. I think this is a nice gesture, but i can't imagine how it must feel to sit under that tent, like cattle, looking for mamnual labor so that they may presumably support their families. I tried to put myself in those shoes, and i could imagine thinking less of myself. maybe this psychological conditioning prohibits these workers from feeling like they have the right or the intelligence or ambition to become american citizens. maybe they don't want to be american citizens. I've never been one to want to deny illegal immigrants from having work in america, but with job cuts and the recession, is it appropriate to abolish these constructs outside the home depot? is that racist, or is it racist to give these people jobs that white people have to much pride to do? what would happen if american citizens stood under these tents?

i ain't sayin he's a golddigger..

whelp, kanye has done it again!

instead of talking about the actual event, i wanna mention the online explosion of everyones reactions that followed.

here is a link to an article containing examples of the interrupting Kayne meme

does Kayne deserve all the bashing? probably. is shitting on him over the internet racist? probably not. I think that Kayne's behavior transcends race, in that nobody is looking at the color of your skin when you're that big of an asshole. But for people with racist tendencies, is Kayne's public acts of disrespect fuel for the fire? Should Kayne, in the interest of promoting black people in the public sphere in a positive light, stop pulling asshole publicity stunts like this? does this issue have anything to do with race? i have more questions than answers on this one, honestly.

come on ben stiller, you're better than this

so, a few months ago, don't ask me why, i found myself in the randolph theater, cringing over the worst movie i've seen in a while.

night at the museum: battle at the smithsonian.

giving us a little taste of BLUE STEEL










what bothered me was the stereotypes promoted in the movie. The Pharoh, who was the evil villain, was very effeminate. he talked with a lisp, commented on peoples outfits, and was ridiculed for wearing a skirt by the civil war soldiers. the other villains, like ivan the terrible and napoleon, were not american. Al capone was an evil character in the movie, and could also be seen as foreign because he belongs to the microculture of italian american gangsters.



and one part killed me. a bunch of black pilots go up to amelia earheart and say, "you know? we were the first of our kind too. we just want to say thanks"

after all that pro america gay bashing, they had the balls to throw in one line about how great america is because of how far women and black americans have come? give me a break!

and it all seemed like an advertisement for the Smithsonian. great institution though it is, this movie should not have been made.

it's okay to be racist

have you ever been on stuff white people like ?

well, you should, it's funny.
I think making fun of white people has been a safe arena for a while now. white people have been perpetrators of racism for a while, and to be honest, white culture seems devoid of, well..culture. The unifying factors aren't that strong, and often center around materialism, and competing/fitting in with the Jones's, so to speak.

and now, they've published a book, and it's one of the best sellers in the humor section of the harvard co-op bookstore.

is making fun of white people racist, or good humored fun? will it always be too soon to make a stuffblackpeoplelike.com?

reverse racism?

a while ago, i stumbled upon this picture:





I thought it was funny, because in many ways, colleges push racial diversity on their campus. There have been some photoshop disasters on college brochures, like this one from Wisconsin:




But you don't need photoshop to push diversity. in a lot of ways that above quote reminded me of BSC, who is always pushing the idea that the campus is a diverse place, specifically with their rotating images on the welcome page. Last year was pretty bad, in terms of accurately representing the campus population. Maybe i'm not too concerned with accuracy, but every time i went on bridgew.edu, i felt like they were trying way too hard. Like someone went to the photographer and said, "okay, we only want pictures of black students, or if one white guy is hanging out with a bunch of black guys at the bears den, that's okay too. make sure they're all smiling and reading books". This semester hasn't been as bad as it was last year (I have a whole new beef with the pictures. who takes a picture of an LED welcome back sign and says "that's a great picture of our welcome back sign, we should put it on the website!"), But i still feel like the website was pushing an agenda that can be resolved in a more tangible way. Clubs promoting social/racial justice, classes like this one, the carribean events going on around campus, and the college experience of everyone from different towns/backgrounds coming together to take classes seem like a good way to abolish racism.

does anyone else feel like colleges promoting diversity with their images is a little forced/racist?


and heres an added bonus, an article from the onion on the subject