Author Nevins defends human rights for immigrants

Watch this video on Democracy now:
Joseph Nevins on “Dying to Live: A Story of US Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid”

Street Comments

The ladies love street harassment!

Sound like a funny title, right? Well it's a blog entry on Broadsheet written by Judy Berman which tries to take a critical look at catcalls. apparently some women like them and feel like they must not be attractive if no men yell out to them from therir cars or on the sides of sidewalks.
Well, it makes sense that us women can enjoy these stupid comments, seeing that our identities as women is fundamentally tied to being beautiful and on being look at. I'll be honest- of course a comment like that has occasionally made me feel a little better about my appearance (II've been socialized well after all).

Although the author is quick to point out that there are different kinds of catcalls. A calm hey Sweetie may be welcome, but there are some hostile and dangerous situations where a comment can turn into a threat. I, for instance, just yesterday was walking in my neighborhood yesterday alone as it was getting a little dark, when a two men who had been looking me up and down said te van a robar (someone's going to kidnap you). The implication being that a young woman should not be alone on the streets or she is inviting violence. And a couple of weeks ago as I was walking home from the train, a man stopped his car and invited me into it and got mad when I politley told him I was not interested, accusing me of racism (because he's african-american and I'm not, I guess). Couldn't he figure out that it was just a creepy proposition that I wanted nothing to do with?

The truth is that the streets can be a dangerous place for women, which means that we have to be careful about our coming as goings, which is an issue that has bothered me for years. I have one of 2 options- either succumb to the latent and overt sexism and just stay at home so I'll never be scared, or try to live my life as the free person that I want to be, knowing that it is a dangerous thing to do. It's just another contradiction that modern-day women have to face and there are no easy answers.

Well, it something that I have to think about increasingly, seeing that these kind of situations only get more pronounced in the spring and summer when everyone is out.

Herbivore's Dilemma

Ha! Really quickly before I go out of town, I wanted to post about this article I read on Slate.com called Meatless Like Me: I may be a vegetarian, but I still love the smell of bacon by Taylor Clark.
I loved that Clark talks about the vegetarian experiences; how people:

• expect you to be self-righteous against them for eating meat. It's ok, we can sit next to you while you're eating meat and not be grossed out, make holier-than-thou comments or try to convert you (just don't try to conver us either!)
• express concern over you being unhealthy or malnourished, while they are eating cheetos and coke for breakfast of course.

Bottom line, we vegetarians are just like you omnivores, except we don't eat meat.

Wright is right

Ok, I didn't want to do thism but I’m jumping into this whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama discussion.

The mainstream press has been rashly accusing Wright of being unpatriotic and insisting that Obama renounce him. The sad thing is that Obama took the bait and has thus officially sold out.
He has turned his back on his past in order to move forward in his political career. I am disappointed in him (and I didn’t even expect that much from him in the first place!) but of course, it’s the press that deserves most of the blame. They are trying to white-wash Obama because even as white-friendly as his persona already is, he’s still too Black for them. He must be made to completely divorce himself from his Black roots, and he must do it in a public way, as if he were washing his sins away in front of ‘America’.

The really good article I’ve seen on this whole controversy is The Wright Question on theroot.com. In it, Jimi Izrael defends Wright’s freedom of speech. More importantly, the right of historically oppressed communities to speak their truth is upheld. Here’s a small excerpt from that article:

… where can we go to speak our mind without having to answer to The Man? There is this very colonial motif of having to filter black free voices through a
sieve of white ignorance and paranoia. What you say—and what other black people in your vicinity say!—has to be state-sanctioned and approved by people who have no idea what you are talking about, and you'd be a fool to explain it to them.
"Negro Tour-Guide" is an under-paid position with lots of work, but no benefits.

Exactly my thoughts. As the above article says, we need a place where “[aren’t] any white folks around needing an interpretation or demanding an explanation”. In fact, I think they have some explaining to do to us.

Of course, the best part of the article is being introduced to the term “Negro Tour-Guide”. I know I’ve been there before, having to explain to Whites the history, culture, cuisine, or anything else that intrigues them about my ethnicity. Anybody else been there and have any exmaples to share? Or any thoughts on the Wright/Obama controversy?

What do you think of Wright's thoughts?
Was Obama right in speaking out against him?
What is more problematic here- the ignorant White media or Obama's bowing down to them?
Have you ever felt yourself an [insert-ethnicity-here]Tour -Guide?

Another good blog from root.com here.