Black Looks

“The peoples of Europe are welcoming and tolerant: it’s in their nature and in their culture. But they don’t want their way of life, their mode of thinking and their social relations distorted.”

French President NICOLAS SARKOZY, defending Switzerland’s ban on building minarets
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That’s what president Nicolas Sarkozy said. I say: But the European will distort the way of life of others, won’t they? The mode of thinking of others, and the social relations of others. And that’s perfectly alright.

Who wants their shit distorted, anyway? Was the African happy when the European launched the colonisation campaign and cut Africa up?

Why is the European scared when Moslems build a prayer house? How many churches did the European erect outside his borders? Do you remember anyone complaining about the spires being too high, too dominating, too distorting. Or was that because even then, the European Christian had the firepower to extinguish any complaints?

The immigrant goes where life is easier and more accessible, when his own mode of existence has been compromised. The coloniser went to other places not because his mode of existence was in jeopardy, nor because life was easier there, but because he wanted to conquer and to exploit and to subdue. Full stop. And he did.

In their article “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’” (2008),   Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem critique white gay discourses in Germany and Britain that trade in Islamophobic constructions of a gay-friendly, sexually liberated ‘West’ and a homophobic, sexually oppressive ‘Islam’ as the West’s Other. They argue that these constructions are validated in the politics of the ‘war on terror’ and the erosion of migrant citizenship, and that racism is “the vehicle that transports white gays and feminists into the mainstream” (p. 72). Their work extends a tradition of antiracist feminisms that analyse the complicities of feminist and sexual politics in colonialism, war, and other forms of state violence. Writing collaboratively as trans of color, queer Muslim, and migrant feminist scholars and organizers, Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem call for a different kind of sexual politics.

This critique and call are now being suppressed. On September 7 the publisher, Raw Nerve Books, issued a public apology to Peter Tatchell, a white gay leader in Britain, and his organization OutRage, who are criticized in “Gay Imperialism.” Raw Nerve furthermore declared the collection in which the article appeared “out of print.” The collection Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake, has been censored. On the publisher’s website, where one could formerly order the book, one is now asked to read the publisher’s statement of “apology and correction” instead.

The “apology and correction” are a show of force. In an authoritative voice, the statement denounces that the article contains “untruths,” and it proclaims Tatchell “not Islamophobic” and not racist. It quotes brief phrases from “Gay Imperialism” and intersperses them with averments that it is “not” so, or that Tatchell has “never” done this.

“Mr Tatchell has never ‘employed tactics of intimidation and aggressive divide and rule’, nor has he ‘attempted to discredit those who resist his patronage.’ He does not ’sling mud onto Muslim communities’.”

Some of the phrases of “Gay Imperialism” quoted in the “correction” use obviously metaphoric language (“sling mud”). Their simple negation – without examination of the context from which their meaning derives – is a farce.

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On the 21st August 2008 around 8.30pm Sean Rigg, a 40 year old Black man from Brixton, died in the custody of Brixton Police Station. Sean is one of a long line of Black males who have died whilst in police custody yet not one single member of the police has ever been made accountable for any of these deaths. These deaths followed restraining, handcuffing, stomping and placing pressure on the persons back or front and other forms of police brutality. Some of the men, like Sean Rigg were taken into custody under the Mental Health Act.

Sean’s family explain what happened.

How about the representation of Blackness in children s toys not the 50s, 60s, 70s but in 2009. These two dolls, one black one were white were found on sale in Costco – the images speak for themselves.

I’m black and a lil monkey

I’m white and a pretty panda

The report states that the dolls and their captions come in Black, Hispanic and White. Apart from the question why associate children with animals of any kind in the first place, the dolls are a reminder that you cannot sweep the insidious politics of race and gender under the election of a Black President.

Invisible Universe: a history of blackness in speculative fiction, is a work in progress documentary exploring the representation of blackness in horror and science fiction literature and film, and the response by “Black creators” in creating “their own universe”.

So many millions of words have been written about Michael Jackson [MJ] over the past 10 days most of which I confess I have avoided. However I feel compelled to respond to a recent post by Blackman Vision [BMV] “Michael Jackson did not want to be white”. The post is draws on a chapter “Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson” by Kobena Mercer in “Welcome to the Jungle” and on the politics of pigmentocracy.

Mercer explores the idea that Michael Jackson changed his skin colour not to be white, but to be a light-skinned Black man. Jackson’s whole remodelling of his hair, face and skin was to make him more lovable and marketable to a wider audience. Did Jackson believe it was easier to sell himself more successfully as ethnically androgynous than ethnically unambiguous to a global pop audience? The pop charts are not usually dominated by dark skinned Black men.

BMV goes on to say that those who believe that MJ was trying to be white are missing the point and fail to understand the politics of pigmentrocracy within the African Diaspora whereby the desire is not to be white but to be light. She also comments on MJ’s move towards an androgynous gender which raises it’s own particular challenges in the largely “plastic hypermasculinity” which exists in the “African American / Caribbean family. Whilst I believe both these points to be true, my response is to the former for which I feel there is the need for a deeper reading.

What are the signs of Blackness? Is skin colour sufficient or do we as Bell Hooks writes in “Reel to Reel” need to look beyond the body to political and [cultural] consciousness? Quoting filmmaker Isaac Julien she writes

“Blackness as a sign is never enough. What does the Black subject do, how does it act, how does it think politically…… being Black isnt really good enough for me. I want to know what your cultural politics are”

Although, here Julien is speaking about “radical representations of black subjectivities” in film, I am comfortable in using this to examine the meaning of MJ’s transformation from black to light. If we take political and cultural consciousness as one of the ’signs of Blackness” where then does this leave MJ’s slow physical transformation. A transformation which because it was always juxtaposed against his dance moves and music which is wholly rooted in Black American musical tradition, speaks to the complexity of race and representation. How does political consciousness work side by side when feeding into pigementocracy and the desire to be light skinned and delete one’s Black features?

BMV’s makes the point that MJ’s father, Joe Jackson, told him he was ugly with a big nose and that he was also teased by his brothers. This abuse together with the physical punishment he experienced must have had an affect on MJ. Absolutely, I am sure it did. But how many Black kids at home and in the playground have not had similar experiences of growing up with parental and peer jokes and slurs about their skin tone and features, having to deal with internalised racism in a wash of whiteness? If we are truthful the abuse is everywhere – too “black” or too “light”. We all have the choice of feeding into these racism’s or refusing. MJ in particular, as a ’star’ of immense talent and success, was in a far better position to overcome the politics of colour than most others. I don’t accept that in remaining his original self would have impacted on his success.

By the time “Off The Wall” was released in 1979 he was already heading for the pinnacle of stardom. Are we saying that musically the album, Thriller (released 1983) was not sufficient enough to raise him above his peers past and present and that he had to remodel himself to make him “more lovable and marketable to a wider audience”? We also need to see MJ’s transformation in the historical context of Black American musicians and actors who underwent various “whitening” processes such as Nat King Cole whose straightened hair and use of make up and photography to lighten his skin and thereby make him more acceptable to a white audience. James Brown and Miles Davis are other musical icons who changed their appearance by straightening their hair but their blackness was never under question. How could it be? The difference with MJ is he is of a much later generation plus his transformation was a far far more radical one with drastic changes to his hair, face and pigment. There is some element of repression and self-abuse in the actions MJ chose which caused him, so we are told, to rely on pain killers and anesthetics.

MJ made a personal choice and I am not prepared to make judgment or cast any slur on the choices he made as to the degree of his Blackness. I believe them to be entirely personal – we define ourselves, how we perceive our bodies and our heritage. In “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” Stuart Hall argues that there are two kinds of cultural identity – identity of being which is part of a belonging to a shared, identity….

“…. collective ‘one true self’, hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed ’selves’, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common.

The second type of identity is the identity of becoming, an identity of the future. Whilst recognising our similarities as in identity of being, the identity of becoming relates to the

critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute ‘what we really are’; or rather – since history has intervened – ‘what we have become’.

The point of Hall’s argument is that it is only from the “second position” of identity as an expression of discontinuity that we can begin to understand “the traumatic character of ‘the colonial experience. In this instance, the transformation of MJ from being black/ black to becoming black / light but always remaining a Black man – a fusion of the ‘being” and the ‘becoming’.

Abahlali baseMjondolo to Mourn UnFreedom Day on 27 April 2009

Today is Freedom Day in South Africa. However for many in SA the notion of freedom is as illusive as ever as under the new apartheid where the poor are disenfranchised and excluded through the Kwa Zula-Natal Slums Act. Below shackdweller movement of KZN Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western Cape – Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, explain their position. Soon Durban is to become a “world class city” at the expense of eliminating the poor who remain slaves to the rich not just the white rich of racial apartheid but the new black rich of class apartheid.

Walala Wasala, Wavuka Usuhlala ema-Thini

Monday 27 April will mark the 15th anniversary of the first democratic elections in South Africa. Once again the poor will be herded into stadiums so that the politicians can tell the people to celebrate their freedom. Once again Abahlali baseMjondolo will be decelebrating. We will be holding our fourth annual UnFreedom Day.
On the Sunday before unFreedom Day we will launch the beautiful new crèche that has been built in the Motala Heights settlement.The Motala Diggers have already been running a large community garden for sometime and the community have now decided to take the initiative and to build and run their own crèche.

We are never given a platform to say what is inside our hearts. Therefore we have provided the platform for ourselves so that we can speak for ourselves and speak freely. It is up to us to tell the truth about our suffering and our struggles. continue reading UnFreedom Day

Please take the time to view this exceptional film “A Place in the City – produced by the Shackdweller movement of Durban”

A couple of days ago I watched a film “Mistaken ID – an 11 minute short written and directed by Parmjit Singh. The film is about aggression and violence. Innocence is no protection. The plot is simple but compelling.

Two mixed groups of Asian and Black youths are hanging out after hours at the Stratford shopping mall in East London. One group had stolen a mobile phone and approach the second group trying to force them to buy it. They refuse, testosterone flows, threats are made and one of the good guys pretends he has a gun and there is a situation. We wait knowing this is going to end badly with someone shot or stabbed. The situation is diffused with the thieves backing down and leaving the mall.

The police are outside in their car (2 white one Black in the back) bored listening to a football match. They hear the call on the mobile phone theft and reluctantly leave for the shopping mall. They approach the three good guys assuming they are the thieves. There is confusion from the youths who cannot understand what they have done. The police are aggressive and threatening. The youths try to assert their rights but get handcuffed and repeatedly beaten Rodney King style. First the brother of one youth arrives and also gets arrested then his girlfriend arrives and is pushed away. One youth falls and cracks his head on a stone pillar and is left for dead. We watch and wait for the ambulance and the film ends.
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"This isn't racism," says the cartoonist

(CNN) — President Obama earned kudos from the media when he said he screwed up in nominating Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services despite his problem with paying taxes.

Too bad the leadership of the New York Post didn’t follow the lead of the president in admitting that an editorial cartoon they ran today by Sean Delonas was offensive, careless and racist.

If you haven’t seen the editorial in question, it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that the subtle message was clear: comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee.

In the cartoon, a cop is holding a smoking gun and, with another officer, looking at a bullet-riddled body of a chimpanzee. The caption reads: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

In a statement to The Associated Press, Col Allan, the Post’s editor-in-chief, said the cartoon was an obvious reference to the story of a chimp in Connecticut that viciously attacked a woman and was killed by police.

“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist,” he said, referencing a news release the civil rights activist sent out blasting the paper and demanding an apology.

Delonas, the cartoonist, said to CNN, “It’s absolutely friggin ridiculous. Do you really think I’m saying Obama should be shot? I didn’t see that in the cartoon. The chimpanzee was a major story in the Post. Every paper in New York, except The New York Times, covered the chimpanzee story. It’s just ridiculous. It’s about the economic stimulus bill. If you’re going to make that about anybody, it would be [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, which it’s not.”

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