Posted on Tue, Jan. 25, 2011
Oscars pass over people of color
By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
Los Angeles Times
It's a wonder that the security guards at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences didn't stop Mo'nique and make her show ID when she arrived to help announce the Oscar nominations early Tuesday at the organization's Beverly Hills headquarters. After all, she was the only person of color involved with the extravaganza, since the 83rd annual Oscar nominations have the dubious distinction of being an all-white affair.
Setting aside the more obscure, technical categories, when it comes to the best picture award along with the major nominations for acting, writing and directing, there are, ahem, zero people of color in the Oscar race this year.
There are so few significant African-American characters in any of the 10 films nominated for best picture that comedian Aziz Ansari did a bit about it at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday night, wondering why there couldn't have been at least one black kid checking his Facebook account in "The Social Network," adding that things were so white that in "127 Hours," when James Franco's hiker character cuts off his arm, it doesn't even turn black.
It's hard not to notice how few minorities had any visible roles in this year's most lauded films. "The Social Network" offers us a virtually lilywhite Harvard; "The Fighter" is set in a oh-so-white, blue-collar Boston neighborhood; "The King's Speech" depicts an all-white, upper-crust, 1930s-era London; "Toy Story 3," like most Pixar films, is set in a fantasy suburbia without any obvious references to minorities; while "True Grit" takes us back to the Old West, where the only black faces I can remember seeing are that of a manservant and a stable boy.
And if you're wondering about lead actor nominee Javier Bardem, he's from Spain.
The fault lies not with the academy, which has in recent years happily given out the occasional statuette to a black actor or actress lucky enough to get a big part in a serious film. Mo'Nique was on hand Tuesday morning because she won for supporting actress last year for her role in "Precious," a film made by Lee Daniels, an African-American filmmaker. Forest Whitaker won a lead actor Oscar in 2007 for "The Last King of Scotland," and Halle Berry won a lead actress Oscar in 2002 for "Monster's Ball" on the same night Denzel Washington won lead actor for "Training Day."
You can argue that some minorities have been snubbed, starting with Spike Lee, who's never been nominated for a directing award, not even for landmark films such as "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X." But the Oscars reflect what's happening in the marketplace. And the cold truth is that black talent rarely receives Oscar opportunities because it works in one of the most minority-free industries in America.
Two African-American coaches have faced off in the Super Bowl. Black coaches have won NBA championships. A black man has served on the Supreme Court, been a senator, an astronaut, a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, won a Pulitzer Prize and - oh, yes - is currently serving as president of the United States. But if you look at the people who make the decisions about what movies are made in Hollywood, you'd have to look far and wide to find any prominent African-American or Latino executives.
There are no studio chairmen or heads of production who are black or Latino. In fact, there are barely any people of color in any high-level positions at any major studio, talent agency or management firm. When I asked a couple of reporter pals to name the most powerful black executive in town, a lot of head-scratching ensued before we decided that the person with the most clout was probably James Lassiter, Will Smith's longtime business partner and production company chief.
Smith has plenty of juice in town, with every studio salivating at the chance to make his next project. But he's an anomaly and largely more interested in making commercial movies than Oscar-oriented fare (although he has twice been nominated for an acting Oscar).
Of last year's top-grossing films, only one in the top 40 was directed by anyone of color, "The Book of Eli," which starred Washington and was directed by the Hughes Brothers. Tyler Perry had two films in the Top 100 box-office grossers domestically, but like most films with African-American casts, they made virtually no money overseas, which is where Hollywood increasingly looks for its profits.
What does this have to do with the Oscars? The films that end up being Academy Award nominees are usually labors of love and rarely feature the kind of easily accessible action heroes or broadly comic characters that suit a studio's bottom-line sensibility. If you don't have a person of color in the room where the decision-making happens, fervently arguing why a film should be brought into the world, it's awfully hard for a project revolving around African-American characters to emerge with a greenlight or any substantial financial backing.
Black and Latino actors can get parts as soldiers in an action film or comic sidekicks in a comedy, but when it comes to the kind of dramatic roles that attract Oscar attention, they need a lucky break, like the one Mo'Nique got from having a black filmmaker making the casting choices. Or the one Jennifer Hudson got, with her role in "Dreamgirls" established on the stage. Or the one Morgan Freeman got, landing a Oscar nomination last year as Nelson Mandela in "Invictus," because he has a long track record of working with Clint Eastwood.
Hollywood is usually impervious to embarrassment, but perhaps this is one of those signal moments when the industry should engage in a little soul-searching about the image it projects to the outside world. At Oscar time, the spotlight is on show business, which in an increasingly multicultural country turns out to be a business that is just as white on the outside as it is on the inside.
Patrick Goldstein: patrick.goldstein@latimes.com
© 2011 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Rift in Arizona as Latino Class Is Found Illegal
NYT
y MARC LACEY
TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.
For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.
“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.
It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.
For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.
Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.
The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.
In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.
Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.
“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”
At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.
Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”
Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.
The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.
Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.
On Monday, his final day as the state’s top education official, Mr. Horne declared that Tucson’s Mexican-American program violated all four provisions. The law gives the district 60 days to comply, although Mr. Horne offered only one remedy: the dissolution of the program.
He said the district’s other ethnic-studies programs, unlike the Mexican-American program, had not received complaints and could continue.
John Huppenthal, a former state senator who took over as Arizona’s schools chief, said he supported Mr. Horne’s 11th-hour ruling. Mr. Huppenthal sat in on one of the Tucson classes taught by Mr. Acosta, and said that Benjamin Franklin was vilified as a racist and a photo of Che Guevara was hanging on the wall. Besides that, he said, Tucson’s test scores are among the lowest in the state, indicating that the district needs to focus on the fundamentals.
Officials here say those enrolled in the program do better on state tests than those of the same ethnicity who are not enrolled.
The battle means that Tucson, a struggling urban district, stands to lose nearly $15 million in an already difficult budget environment. So far, the school board has stood by the program, declaring that it considers it to be in compliance with the law.
If financing were pulled, the district would have an opportunity to appeal, and school officials were already talking about the possibility of the matter ending up in court. Meanwhile, 11 teachers, including Mr. Acosta, have filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the state restrictions.
A discrimination suit against Tucson’s schools in the 1970s prompted a settlement in which an African-American studies program was created. Later, other ethnic-studies programs were added.
To buttress his critique of the Tucson program, Mr. Horne read from texts used in various classes, which in one instance referred to white people as “gringos” and described privilege as being related to the color of a person’s skin, hair and eyes. He also cited the testimony of five teachers who described the program as giving a skewed view of history and promoting racial discord.
“On the first day of school, they are no different than students in any other classes,” said John Ward, who briefly taught a Latino history class in Tucson. “But once they get told day after day that they are being victimized, they become angry and resentful.”
Augustine F. Romero, director of student equity in the Tucson schools, said the program was intended to make students proud of who they are and not hostile toward others. “All of our forefathers have contributed to this country, not just one set of forefathers,” he said. “We respect and admire and appreciate the traditional forefathers, but there are others.”
The debate over the program’s future, Mr. Romero said, proves more than ever the need for the program. “There’s a fierce anti-Latino sentiment in this state,” he said. “These courses are about justice and equity, and what is happening is that the Legislature is trying to narrow the reality of those things.
“Who are the true Americans here — those embracing our inalienable rights or those trying to diminish them?”
y MARC LACEY
TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.
For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.
“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.
It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.
For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.
Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.
The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.
In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.
Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.
“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”
At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.
Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”
Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.
The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.
Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.
On Monday, his final day as the state’s top education official, Mr. Horne declared that Tucson’s Mexican-American program violated all four provisions. The law gives the district 60 days to comply, although Mr. Horne offered only one remedy: the dissolution of the program.
He said the district’s other ethnic-studies programs, unlike the Mexican-American program, had not received complaints and could continue.
John Huppenthal, a former state senator who took over as Arizona’s schools chief, said he supported Mr. Horne’s 11th-hour ruling. Mr. Huppenthal sat in on one of the Tucson classes taught by Mr. Acosta, and said that Benjamin Franklin was vilified as a racist and a photo of Che Guevara was hanging on the wall. Besides that, he said, Tucson’s test scores are among the lowest in the state, indicating that the district needs to focus on the fundamentals.
Officials here say those enrolled in the program do better on state tests than those of the same ethnicity who are not enrolled.
The battle means that Tucson, a struggling urban district, stands to lose nearly $15 million in an already difficult budget environment. So far, the school board has stood by the program, declaring that it considers it to be in compliance with the law.
If financing were pulled, the district would have an opportunity to appeal, and school officials were already talking about the possibility of the matter ending up in court. Meanwhile, 11 teachers, including Mr. Acosta, have filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of the state restrictions.
A discrimination suit against Tucson’s schools in the 1970s prompted a settlement in which an African-American studies program was created. Later, other ethnic-studies programs were added.
To buttress his critique of the Tucson program, Mr. Horne read from texts used in various classes, which in one instance referred to white people as “gringos” and described privilege as being related to the color of a person’s skin, hair and eyes. He also cited the testimony of five teachers who described the program as giving a skewed view of history and promoting racial discord.
“On the first day of school, they are no different than students in any other classes,” said John Ward, who briefly taught a Latino history class in Tucson. “But once they get told day after day that they are being victimized, they become angry and resentful.”
Augustine F. Romero, director of student equity in the Tucson schools, said the program was intended to make students proud of who they are and not hostile toward others. “All of our forefathers have contributed to this country, not just one set of forefathers,” he said. “We respect and admire and appreciate the traditional forefathers, but there are others.”
The debate over the program’s future, Mr. Romero said, proves more than ever the need for the program. “There’s a fierce anti-Latino sentiment in this state,” he said. “These courses are about justice and equity, and what is happening is that the Legislature is trying to narrow the reality of those things.
“Who are the true Americans here — those embracing our inalienable rights or those trying to diminish them?”
Grooming and our ignoble tradition of racialising crime
The Guardian
Dubious claims about Muslim men grooming white girls hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse
Libby Brooks
The Guardian, Friday 7 January 2011
Article history
'What has not emerged is consistent evidence that Pakistani Muslim men are disproportionately involved in these crimes.' Illustration: Jim Sillavan for the Guardian
The British National party's website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the "controlled media" has admitted this week that "Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs".
The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a "conspiracy of silence" around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.
This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as "a party political broadcast", and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.
Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.
The Times investigation is based around 56 men convicted in the Midlands and north of England since 1997, 50 from Muslim backgrounds. Granted, such prosecutions are notoriously difficult to sustain, but, nonetheless, this is a small sample used to evidence the "tidal wave" of offending referred to by unnamed police sources. Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo's, which has run projects in the areas concerned for many years, tells me that, while he is pleased to see open discussion of child sexual exploitation, he worries that "decent Pakistani men will now be looked at as potential child abusers". He insists: "This is not just about Pakistani men, and not just about Asian men. And it is happening all over the country."
While Narey acknowledges that "in the Midlands and north of England there does seem to be an over-representation of minority ethnic men in [offending] groups", he argues strongly that no useful conclusions can be drawn until the government undertakes a serious piece of research into what is a nationwide problem. (Keith Vaz, who chairs the Commons home affairs select committee called for such an inquiry today.) Narey also refutes the allegation that Muslim men are grooming white girls because of cultural assumptions about their sexual availability, as girls from minority backgrounds have been similarly abused.
Thus no official data exists on the ethnic or religious background of perpetrators of this form of child abuse, and local charities have stated publicly that they do not consider it a race issue. But it is worth noting that, when asked by the Times to collate its recent work according to ethnicity, Engage – based in Blackburn and one of the largest multi-agency organisations working on this issue – found that in the past year that 80% of offenders were white.
There is an ignoble tradition of racialising criminality in this country, in particular sexual offences, from the moral panic about West Indian pimps in the 1960s to the statistically dubious coverage of African-Caribbean gang rape in the 90s. But even those who do want further investigation into the apparent preponderance of Asian perpetrators tell me that this is not about cultural expectations regarding the sexual susceptibility of white females but rather about opportunity and vulnerability, especially of young people within the care system. It is certainly admissible to query just how beholden to "the tyranny of custom", as Wednesday's Times leader put it, are these twentysomething males who drive flash cars and ply their victims with alcohol.
Nevertheless, Muslim voices are now being lined up to attest that serial child molestation is not actually sanctioned by the Qur'an. By building an apparent consensus of voices "bravely" speaking out in the face of accusations of racism, it becomes that much harder for a figure from within the Muslim community to offer a more nuanced perspective or indeed state that these allegations are simply not true. The inevitable and distorting consequence of framing the debate around a "conspiracy of silence" is that it effectively shuts down or taints as mealy-mouthed any criticism.
The efforts of the Times to stand up this investigation are certainly considerable: selectively quoting or misquoting some groups, and inventing a category of "on-street grooming" that does not exist in law and was not recognised by any of the agencies I spoke to. It is also worth asking how responsible it is to provide ammunition to the violent racist extremists already active in these areas on such flawed evidence.
Meanwhile, the sunlight of investigative inquiry has yet to shine on our legal system which, all agencies agree, fails to cater to the needs of children who – groomed into acquiescence by practised abusers of all creeds and colours – don't present as the perfect victims our limited version of justice demands.
Dubious claims about Muslim men grooming white girls hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse
Libby Brooks
The Guardian, Friday 7 January 2011
Article history
'What has not emerged is consistent evidence that Pakistani Muslim men are disproportionately involved in these crimes.' Illustration: Jim Sillavan for the Guardian
The British National party's website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the "controlled media" has admitted this week that "Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs".
The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a "conspiracy of silence" around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.
This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as "a party political broadcast", and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.
Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.
The Times investigation is based around 56 men convicted in the Midlands and north of England since 1997, 50 from Muslim backgrounds. Granted, such prosecutions are notoriously difficult to sustain, but, nonetheless, this is a small sample used to evidence the "tidal wave" of offending referred to by unnamed police sources. Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo's, which has run projects in the areas concerned for many years, tells me that, while he is pleased to see open discussion of child sexual exploitation, he worries that "decent Pakistani men will now be looked at as potential child abusers". He insists: "This is not just about Pakistani men, and not just about Asian men. And it is happening all over the country."
While Narey acknowledges that "in the Midlands and north of England there does seem to be an over-representation of minority ethnic men in [offending] groups", he argues strongly that no useful conclusions can be drawn until the government undertakes a serious piece of research into what is a nationwide problem. (Keith Vaz, who chairs the Commons home affairs select committee called for such an inquiry today.) Narey also refutes the allegation that Muslim men are grooming white girls because of cultural assumptions about their sexual availability, as girls from minority backgrounds have been similarly abused.
Thus no official data exists on the ethnic or religious background of perpetrators of this form of child abuse, and local charities have stated publicly that they do not consider it a race issue. But it is worth noting that, when asked by the Times to collate its recent work according to ethnicity, Engage – based in Blackburn and one of the largest multi-agency organisations working on this issue – found that in the past year that 80% of offenders were white.
There is an ignoble tradition of racialising criminality in this country, in particular sexual offences, from the moral panic about West Indian pimps in the 1960s to the statistically dubious coverage of African-Caribbean gang rape in the 90s. But even those who do want further investigation into the apparent preponderance of Asian perpetrators tell me that this is not about cultural expectations regarding the sexual susceptibility of white females but rather about opportunity and vulnerability, especially of young people within the care system. It is certainly admissible to query just how beholden to "the tyranny of custom", as Wednesday's Times leader put it, are these twentysomething males who drive flash cars and ply their victims with alcohol.
Nevertheless, Muslim voices are now being lined up to attest that serial child molestation is not actually sanctioned by the Qur'an. By building an apparent consensus of voices "bravely" speaking out in the face of accusations of racism, it becomes that much harder for a figure from within the Muslim community to offer a more nuanced perspective or indeed state that these allegations are simply not true. The inevitable and distorting consequence of framing the debate around a "conspiracy of silence" is that it effectively shuts down or taints as mealy-mouthed any criticism.
The efforts of the Times to stand up this investigation are certainly considerable: selectively quoting or misquoting some groups, and inventing a category of "on-street grooming" that does not exist in law and was not recognised by any of the agencies I spoke to. It is also worth asking how responsible it is to provide ammunition to the violent racist extremists already active in these areas on such flawed evidence.
Meanwhile, the sunlight of investigative inquiry has yet to shine on our legal system which, all agencies agree, fails to cater to the needs of children who – groomed into acquiescence by practised abusers of all creeds and colours – don't present as the perfect victims our limited version of justice demands.
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
WSJ
Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?
By AMY CHUA
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
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Erin Patrice O'Brien for The Wall Street Journal
Amy Chua with her daughters, Louisa and Sophia, at their home in New Haven, Conn.
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.
I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
When it comes to parenting, the Chinese seem to produce children who display academic excellence, musical mastery and professional success - or so the stereotype goes. WSJ's Christina Tsuei speaks to two moms raised by Chinese immigrants who share what it was like growing up and how they hope to raise their children.
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All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
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Chua family
From Ms. Chua's album: 'Mean me with Lulu in hotel room... with score taped to TV!'
Journal Community
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
Chua family
Newborn Amy Chua in her mother's arms, a year after her parents arrived in the U.S.
Weigh in
Amy Chua will answer readers' questions Thursday on Review's new blog, Ideas Market.
Write to: IdeasMarket@wsj.com.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
View Full Image
Chua family
Sophia playing at Carnegie Hall in 2007.
Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.
Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.
Read More
In China, Not All Practice Tough Love
The Juggle: Are U.S. Parents Too Soft?
Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.
"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.
"You can't make me."
"Oh yes, I can."
Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?
"You just don't believe in her," I accused.
"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."
"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."
"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.
"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."
Ideas Market Blog
What's new and hot in the world of ideas, brought to you by Review.
A Prison for Parents?
Those Tough Chinese Moms
I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.
Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.
Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.
"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."
Journal CommunityDISCUSS
I am in disbelief after reading this article.
—James Post
Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.
There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.
Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.
—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.
Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?
By AMY CHUA
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
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Erin Patrice O'Brien for The Wall Street Journal
Amy Chua with her daughters, Louisa and Sophia, at their home in New Haven, Conn.
• attend a sleepover
• have a playdate
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.
I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
When it comes to parenting, the Chinese seem to produce children who display academic excellence, musical mastery and professional success - or so the stereotype goes. WSJ's Christina Tsuei speaks to two moms raised by Chinese immigrants who share what it was like growing up and how they hope to raise their children.
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All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting," and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents "were not doing their job." Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
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Chua family
From Ms. Chua's album: 'Mean me with Lulu in hotel room... with score taped to TV!'
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What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
Chua family
Newborn Amy Chua in her mother's arms, a year after her parents arrived in the U.S.
Weigh in
Amy Chua will answer readers' questions Thursday on Review's new blog, Ideas Market.
Write to: IdeasMarket@wsj.com.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A-minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid," "worthless" or "a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principal to challenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
View Full Image
Chua family
Sophia playing at Carnegie Hall in 2007.
Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it's true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
By contrast, I don't think most Westerners have the same view of children being permanently indebted to their parents. My husband, Jed, actually has the opposite view. "Children don't choose their parents," he once said to me. "They don't even choose to be born. It's parents who foist life on their kids, so it's the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don't owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids." This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.
Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.
Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.
Read More
In China, Not All Practice Tough Love
The Juggle: Are U.S. Parents Too Soft?
Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called "The Little White Donkey" by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it's also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.
Lulu couldn't do it. We worked on it nonstop for a week, drilling each of her hands separately, over and over. But whenever we tried putting the hands together, one always morphed into the other, and everything fell apart. Finally, the day before her lesson, Lulu announced in exasperation that she was giving up and stomped off.
"Get back to the piano now," I ordered.
"You can't make me."
"Oh yes, I can."
Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.
Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—and that he didn't think threatening Lulu was helpful. Also, he said, maybe Lulu really just couldn't do the technique—perhaps she didn't have the coordination yet—had I considered that possibility?
"You just don't believe in her," I accused.
"That's ridiculous," Jed said scornfully. "Of course I do."
"Sophia could play the piece when she was this age."
"But Lulu and Sophia are different people," Jed pointed out.
"Oh no, not this," I said, rolling my eyes. "Everyone is special in their special own way," I mimicked sarcastically. "Even losers are special in their own special way. Well don't worry, you don't have to lift a finger. I'm willing to put in as long as it takes, and I'm happy to be the one hated. And you can be the one they adore because you make them pancakes and take them to Yankees games."
Ideas Market Blog
What's new and hot in the world of ideas, brought to you by Review.
A Prison for Parents?
Those Tough Chinese Moms
I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn't let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.
Then, out of the blue, Lulu did it. Her hands suddenly came together—her right and left hands each doing their own imperturbable thing—just like that.
Lulu realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she played it more confidently and faster, and still the rhythm held. A moment later, she was beaming.
"Mommy, look—it's easy!" After that, she wanted to play the piece over and over and wouldn't leave the piano. That night, she came to sleep in my bed, and we snuggled and hugged, cracking each other up. When she performed "The Little White Donkey" at a recital a few weeks later, parents came up to me and said, "What a perfect piece for Lulu—it's so spunky and so her."
Journal CommunityDISCUSS
I am in disbelief after reading this article.
—James Post
Even Jed gave me credit for that one. Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.
There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids' true interests. For their part, many Chinese secretly believe that they care more about their children and are willing to sacrifice much more for them than Westerners, who seem perfectly content to let their children turn out badly. I think it's a misunderstanding on both sides. All decent parents want to do what's best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.
Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.
—Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "Day of Empire" and "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." This essay is excerpted from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua, to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2011 by Amy Chua.
Nickelodeon Gets Diversity Points, But Still Overlooks Race
by Jorge Rivas ShareThis | Print | Color Lines
Monday, January 3 2011, 1:11 PM EST Tags: casting, TV
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Nickelodeon has picked up a sitcom pilot starring young recording artist Cymphonique Miller, the daughter of hip-hop star Master P.
Nickelodeon, or Nick, is the most-watched children’s television network in the U.S; their target audiences are 2- to 11-year-olds. Cymphonique is just one of many of the young stars of color to headline shows on the network.
Nickelodeon has been at the forefront of diversity on television. From the animated Dora in “Dora the Explorer” to “iCarly” and “True Jackson, VP” which features African-American actress Lauren Keyana “Keke” Palmer as a teen vice-president of an apparel company all the shows feature positive portrayals of youth of color.
Nickelodeon, along with Sesame Street workshop which produces “Sesame Street,” has been at the forefront of diverse and responsible storytelling on television. Nickelodeon’s first original live action television series “Hey Dude” included Joe Torres as Danny Lightfoot, a Hopi Indian who was cast after auditioning in Tucson for the role. When the show premiered in 1989 there were no other representation of young American Indians. Even today, twenty-two years after “Hey Dude” premiered there are only a handful of American Indians on television.
“The Cosby Show” was the first show on prime time television to feature a positive portrayal of an African-American family, but critics have said that it didn’t reflect any serious issues facing black Americans at the time. The same could be said about Nickelodeon’s characters because race and class issues are often not addressed. And it’s possible to have a commercially viable television show that addresses race head-on. ABC’s popular show “Ugly Betty” proved that deportations, access to jobs, education and race can be a compelling part of prime time storylines.
While Nick’s shows don’t touch on any current issues Latinos, Asians and African-Americans face today, compare Nickelodeon’s casts to those on any of ABC and NBC’s primetime shows and it makes the kid network’s casting execs looks like radicals. And that’s encouraging, especially when you consider they’re targeting toddlers.
Monday, January 3 2011, 1:11 PM EST Tags: casting, TV
Share
Nickelodeon has picked up a sitcom pilot starring young recording artist Cymphonique Miller, the daughter of hip-hop star Master P.
Nickelodeon, or Nick, is the most-watched children’s television network in the U.S; their target audiences are 2- to 11-year-olds. Cymphonique is just one of many of the young stars of color to headline shows on the network.
Nickelodeon has been at the forefront of diversity on television. From the animated Dora in “Dora the Explorer” to “iCarly” and “True Jackson, VP” which features African-American actress Lauren Keyana “Keke” Palmer as a teen vice-president of an apparel company all the shows feature positive portrayals of youth of color.
Nickelodeon, along with Sesame Street workshop which produces “Sesame Street,” has been at the forefront of diverse and responsible storytelling on television. Nickelodeon’s first original live action television series “Hey Dude” included Joe Torres as Danny Lightfoot, a Hopi Indian who was cast after auditioning in Tucson for the role. When the show premiered in 1989 there were no other representation of young American Indians. Even today, twenty-two years after “Hey Dude” premiered there are only a handful of American Indians on television.
“The Cosby Show” was the first show on prime time television to feature a positive portrayal of an African-American family, but critics have said that it didn’t reflect any serious issues facing black Americans at the time. The same could be said about Nickelodeon’s characters because race and class issues are often not addressed. And it’s possible to have a commercially viable television show that addresses race head-on. ABC’s popular show “Ugly Betty” proved that deportations, access to jobs, education and race can be a compelling part of prime time storylines.
While Nick’s shows don’t touch on any current issues Latinos, Asians and African-Americans face today, compare Nickelodeon’s casts to those on any of ABC and NBC’s primetime shows and it makes the kid network’s casting execs looks like radicals. And that’s encouraging, especially when you consider they’re targeting toddlers.
Bloody Politics and Broken Borders
http://www.faraichideya.com/
Today I was on a bus making hairpin turns in Guatemala when I went on my phone and checked my Twitter feed. I read about the shooting in Arizona that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords with a bullet through the head, in critical condition, and others dead. Anyone who has been following Arizona politics knows the state has been on boil for a while. Rep. Giffords has spoken out against the immigration law SB1070. I can´t help but wonder if that was a factor in her shooting. Certainly, she faced incendiary rhetoric, like this, which implied violence against her.For a week and a half, I´ve been in Guatemala taking Spanish lessons. One day I hope to be able to conduct interviews in Spanish, since so much of the work I do concerns diversity, immigration, and economic change. Here, everyone I speak to has friends or relatives who are in the U.S. without papers. In the town where I am staying, even some of the more educated citizens end up working in the coffee plantations for 30 quetzales, or about four dollars, a day. Given that, many other people are willing to take the chance to cross into the United States for work.I had a long discussion on the bus ride with an American about immigration and enforcement. The reality is, unless we have business side enforcement, the situation will not change. And unless we learn to manage our (often misguided) anger, we will continue to see political tensions erupt into bloodshed.
Today I was on a bus making hairpin turns in Guatemala when I went on my phone and checked my Twitter feed. I read about the shooting in Arizona that left Representative Gabrielle Giffords with a bullet through the head, in critical condition, and others dead. Anyone who has been following Arizona politics knows the state has been on boil for a while. Rep. Giffords has spoken out against the immigration law SB1070. I can´t help but wonder if that was a factor in her shooting. Certainly, she faced incendiary rhetoric, like this, which implied violence against her.For a week and a half, I´ve been in Guatemala taking Spanish lessons. One day I hope to be able to conduct interviews in Spanish, since so much of the work I do concerns diversity, immigration, and economic change. Here, everyone I speak to has friends or relatives who are in the U.S. without papers. In the town where I am staying, even some of the more educated citizens end up working in the coffee plantations for 30 quetzales, or about four dollars, a day. Given that, many other people are willing to take the chance to cross into the United States for work.I had a long discussion on the bus ride with an American about immigration and enforcement. The reality is, unless we have business side enforcement, the situation will not change. And unless we learn to manage our (often misguided) anger, we will continue to see political tensions erupt into bloodshed.
Why Korean American Churches Need a Makeover
Last year, I gathered with some two hundred other Korean Americans for a church wedding. I was perhaps one of three women who arrived without a date and one of two atheists in the entire crowd. The couple to be wed was, of course, Korean American: the groom, a youth pastor I knew from college; the bride, a bubbly woman he had met at church in California. As I lined up to tender my gift and find my seat in the pews, I already felt the chill of alienation.
The wedding was a full church service, replete with prayers and praise music. When it came time for the scripture reading, a young woman rose to the dais. She called out “Ephesians 5:22,” prompting the shuffling of tissue-fine Bible paper:
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church -- for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery -- but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
(Ephesians 5:22-33, New Testament, New International Version.)
After the reading, the young Korean American pastor approached the pulpit. He opened with disarming stories about the bride and groom and offered sage advice from his own, apparently blissful, marriage. His “my wife’s always right” brand of self-deprecation, however, was the prelude to a very conservative sermon. He took the Ephesians verses at face value, emphasizing that wives must be free of blemish and subordinate themselves to their husbands, not because women are inferior, but because gender-delineated roles lead to a happy home.
As he preached, I searched the audience for signs of incredulity. To my dismay, each guest was more attentive than the next, laughing on cue, nodding, taking notes. The groom’s side of the church was filled with Yale graduates, many of them women I knew, but their eyes betrayed not a hint of surprise or skepticism at the message being espoused. These were women of high intelligence, ambition, and worldliness who had, inexplicably, subscribed to an orthodox, purportedly Biblical notion of gender relations that rendered them subservient to their male partners.
Since the wedding, I have reflected at length on how it felt to sit in that church. Although I am not a believer, it was neither the liturgy nor the scripture that got to me. Rather, it was the sense of displacement, the feeling that I could not be properly Korean American outside the confines of that place. An astounding 70 percent of the 1 million-plus ethnic Koreans in the United States identify themselves as Christian. Of this, approximately 131,000 belong to either the Southern Baptist Convention or the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), two of the most conservative evangelical denominations. Another 90,000 Korean Americans are adherents of the Catholic Church. On college campuses, Korean American students are overwhelmingly active in Protestant student organizations, including ethnically specific campus ministries, according to Rebecca Kim, a professor at Pepperdine University and the author of God’s New Whiz Kids?: Korean American Evangelicals on Campus.
Ironically, during high school and most of college, I was a committed, if not entirely credulous, Christian. And to some extent I had grown up in the church, for although my parents were and still are atheists, they took us to services in the hope that my brother and I would befriend other Korean American kids. Indeed, church for me was as much a social experience as a religious one, but it was the political culture of Korean-style Christianity that ultimately led me to reject its tenets.
Raised as a feminist with leftist leanings, I understand Jesus’ gospel to be one of liberation and justice, meaning a real commitment to equality and social engagement. Over the years, as I wound my way through a number of Korean American congregations on both coasts, it became clear that my political views were terribly out of sync with these churches’. Even in English-speaking, second-generation services, women were shunned for leadership roles, homosexuality was demonized, and social justice was limited to the occasional food drive. In the churches that boasted considerable aggregate wealth, there was no tradition of philanthropy or dialogue about societal inequalities. Second-generation churchgoers -- acculturated, upwardly mobile, and, unlike their parents, not reliant on church as a linguistic redoubt -- were nevertheless practicing their faith in an insulated, anachronistic bubble. Even now, as we move into our third generation of immigrants, church remains ascendant as Korean America’s cultural center.
The time has come for a reorientation. While I have nothing against any individual’s religious commitments, I strongly believe that Korean America needs a new locus, or new loci, of community outside the church. If we care about social justice and believe that Korean Americans as a group -- as opposed to individual Koreans participating in non-ethnic collectives, for instance -- can contribute something unique, then we must take stock of where we are and where we hope to go. Progress will mean rejecting certain of our parents’ and churches’ teachings -- passivity in women, social disengagement, acceptance of the status quo, and a disturbing insularity -- and channeling some of the traditions we have forgotten, such as Korea’s long history of activism and class struggle.
To move us forward, I first want to trace us back. Our English-speaking, second-generation congregations derive from and are often housed within first-generation churches. It seems to me that this provenance and patronage has shaped our community in some unfortunate ways.
Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, I attended Korean churches mostly populated with working-class, first-generation immigrants. These men and women spent their days in corner stores, dry cleaners, and nail salons, sometimes as the bosses but often as employees. Many of the elderly attendees lived on public assistance and in government apartments. There were also a number of women wed to US servicemen, raising issues of identity and belonging. They were congregants, in other words, who had a lot to say about gendered and raced hierarchies and the burdens of economic survival.
For these members of the American underclass, Sunday could have represented an opportunity to apply Jesus’ egalitarian teachings. Every church meeting could have been a chance to problematize hierarchies and conservative politics, none of which had ever operated in their favor. But no culture of protest, no liberation theology akin to that in African American churches, ever emerged. Church instead became a theater in which to enact compensatory social dramas. Dressed to the nines and seeking legitimating titles such as “elder” or “director,” first-generation members played the role of people who had made it in American society. The churches I saw in my adolescence were awash with business dealings and competitive capitalism: the show-and-tell of expensive purses, luxury cars, overlarge tract houses, and entrepreneurial success. In one such church, the weekly bulletin would announce the top offering-givers from the previous Sunday. That same church, in a year of Pacific Northwest flooding, refused to store the soggy belongings of displaced elderly Koreans.
Church was a place to feel self-satisfied and to distinguish oneself from the under-underclass. First-generation pastors preached on the subservience of women, encouraged their parishioners to attend anti-gay protests, and lent credence to the prosperity gospel, the idea that faith is rewarded materially. Under the aegis of bourgeois Christianity, immigrant men could pad their egos by mistreating their wives and children. Even if life wasn’t perfect in that 24-hour deli, the thinking went, it was still better than being a woman or poor or gay. I recall one pastor’s vituperative sermon against homosexual marriage. He railed against the immorality of this concept, while his son, who had come out to him a few months earlier, sat quietly in the rearmost pew. Around the same time, this church upheld the “elder” status of a repeat batterer, revoking his title only when his wife showed up with a broken arm.
These may be outlying examples, and it is easy enough to criticize our parents’ generation of churches. But my concern is that younger congregations exhibit similar features. Queens College Professor Pyong Gap Min has observed, for example, that second-generation churches are as patriarchal as their forebears, but under the banner of scriptural rather than Confucian authority. As my opening anecdote illustrates, the Korean American church continues to incubate a culture in which women accept lesser roles and authority goes unquestioned. Second-generation churches, divorced as they are from a social justice gospel, fail to challenge middle-class values focused on consumption, accumulation, and social stability.
This would be less problematic if Korean America were tangibly located outside the church. After all, every ethnic and racial group has its conservative members. But with so many Korean Americans raised and trained in the ways of the church, our community is disproportionately under the influence of these institutions and their regressive politics.
What this points to -- insofar as we care about social progress and choose to approach it in part as “Korean Americans” -- is the need to imagine ourselves in new, open-ended ways. Here our lineage may help us, for embedded in Korea’s troubled history is a long tradition of revolt and self-determination. Groups like Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance in Los Angeles and Nodutdol for Korean Community Development in New York City are organizing working-class immigrants and second-generation Korean-Americans according to this particular strain of progressivism. There are social services providers, political action groups, arts collectives, LGBTQ centers, and feminist organizations who offer other, unorthodox visions of the Korean American community. None of these are necessarily incompatible with religion; they instead signal the diaspora’s many moving parts and suggest the limits of Korean American church dogma.
Without the balancing effect of secular community networks, a church-centered Korean America will risk succumbing to the demagoguery and political opportunism of the Religious Right and the Tea Party. Glen Beck and Sarah Palin, rallying some 300,000 acolytes at the Lincoln Memorial in August, preached a dangerous conflation of ill-defined Christianity, conservative morality, and uncritical politics. I should hope we can, collectively, do better than this.
A broadened base of Korean America will hardly sound the death knell for Christian institutions. Rather, with parishioners rooted both in their churches and other Korean American organizations and community spaces, a diversified discourse will open up, one that attends to global concerns and honors its participants equally. Churches themselves could involve Korean Americans in progressive political dialogue, raise women leaders, and encourage support for class struggles. It is a necessary step in our evolution and a timely project of reform.
Adapted from “Toward a Korean-American Reformation,” originally published in Senses: The Korean American Journal, Yale College, Fall 2010.
The wedding was a full church service, replete with prayers and praise music. When it came time for the scripture reading, a young woman rose to the dais. She called out “Ephesians 5:22,” prompting the shuffling of tissue-fine Bible paper:
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church -- for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery -- but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
(Ephesians 5:22-33, New Testament, New International Version.)
After the reading, the young Korean American pastor approached the pulpit. He opened with disarming stories about the bride and groom and offered sage advice from his own, apparently blissful, marriage. His “my wife’s always right” brand of self-deprecation, however, was the prelude to a very conservative sermon. He took the Ephesians verses at face value, emphasizing that wives must be free of blemish and subordinate themselves to their husbands, not because women are inferior, but because gender-delineated roles lead to a happy home.
As he preached, I searched the audience for signs of incredulity. To my dismay, each guest was more attentive than the next, laughing on cue, nodding, taking notes. The groom’s side of the church was filled with Yale graduates, many of them women I knew, but their eyes betrayed not a hint of surprise or skepticism at the message being espoused. These were women of high intelligence, ambition, and worldliness who had, inexplicably, subscribed to an orthodox, purportedly Biblical notion of gender relations that rendered them subservient to their male partners.
Since the wedding, I have reflected at length on how it felt to sit in that church. Although I am not a believer, it was neither the liturgy nor the scripture that got to me. Rather, it was the sense of displacement, the feeling that I could not be properly Korean American outside the confines of that place. An astounding 70 percent of the 1 million-plus ethnic Koreans in the United States identify themselves as Christian. Of this, approximately 131,000 belong to either the Southern Baptist Convention or the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), two of the most conservative evangelical denominations. Another 90,000 Korean Americans are adherents of the Catholic Church. On college campuses, Korean American students are overwhelmingly active in Protestant student organizations, including ethnically specific campus ministries, according to Rebecca Kim, a professor at Pepperdine University and the author of God’s New Whiz Kids?: Korean American Evangelicals on Campus.
Ironically, during high school and most of college, I was a committed, if not entirely credulous, Christian. And to some extent I had grown up in the church, for although my parents were and still are atheists, they took us to services in the hope that my brother and I would befriend other Korean American kids. Indeed, church for me was as much a social experience as a religious one, but it was the political culture of Korean-style Christianity that ultimately led me to reject its tenets.
Raised as a feminist with leftist leanings, I understand Jesus’ gospel to be one of liberation and justice, meaning a real commitment to equality and social engagement. Over the years, as I wound my way through a number of Korean American congregations on both coasts, it became clear that my political views were terribly out of sync with these churches’. Even in English-speaking, second-generation services, women were shunned for leadership roles, homosexuality was demonized, and social justice was limited to the occasional food drive. In the churches that boasted considerable aggregate wealth, there was no tradition of philanthropy or dialogue about societal inequalities. Second-generation churchgoers -- acculturated, upwardly mobile, and, unlike their parents, not reliant on church as a linguistic redoubt -- were nevertheless practicing their faith in an insulated, anachronistic bubble. Even now, as we move into our third generation of immigrants, church remains ascendant as Korean America’s cultural center.
The time has come for a reorientation. While I have nothing against any individual’s religious commitments, I strongly believe that Korean America needs a new locus, or new loci, of community outside the church. If we care about social justice and believe that Korean Americans as a group -- as opposed to individual Koreans participating in non-ethnic collectives, for instance -- can contribute something unique, then we must take stock of where we are and where we hope to go. Progress will mean rejecting certain of our parents’ and churches’ teachings -- passivity in women, social disengagement, acceptance of the status quo, and a disturbing insularity -- and channeling some of the traditions we have forgotten, such as Korea’s long history of activism and class struggle.
To move us forward, I first want to trace us back. Our English-speaking, second-generation congregations derive from and are often housed within first-generation churches. It seems to me that this provenance and patronage has shaped our community in some unfortunate ways.
Growing up in Tacoma, Washington, I attended Korean churches mostly populated with working-class, first-generation immigrants. These men and women spent their days in corner stores, dry cleaners, and nail salons, sometimes as the bosses but often as employees. Many of the elderly attendees lived on public assistance and in government apartments. There were also a number of women wed to US servicemen, raising issues of identity and belonging. They were congregants, in other words, who had a lot to say about gendered and raced hierarchies and the burdens of economic survival.
For these members of the American underclass, Sunday could have represented an opportunity to apply Jesus’ egalitarian teachings. Every church meeting could have been a chance to problematize hierarchies and conservative politics, none of which had ever operated in their favor. But no culture of protest, no liberation theology akin to that in African American churches, ever emerged. Church instead became a theater in which to enact compensatory social dramas. Dressed to the nines and seeking legitimating titles such as “elder” or “director,” first-generation members played the role of people who had made it in American society. The churches I saw in my adolescence were awash with business dealings and competitive capitalism: the show-and-tell of expensive purses, luxury cars, overlarge tract houses, and entrepreneurial success. In one such church, the weekly bulletin would announce the top offering-givers from the previous Sunday. That same church, in a year of Pacific Northwest flooding, refused to store the soggy belongings of displaced elderly Koreans.
Church was a place to feel self-satisfied and to distinguish oneself from the under-underclass. First-generation pastors preached on the subservience of women, encouraged their parishioners to attend anti-gay protests, and lent credence to the prosperity gospel, the idea that faith is rewarded materially. Under the aegis of bourgeois Christianity, immigrant men could pad their egos by mistreating their wives and children. Even if life wasn’t perfect in that 24-hour deli, the thinking went, it was still better than being a woman or poor or gay. I recall one pastor’s vituperative sermon against homosexual marriage. He railed against the immorality of this concept, while his son, who had come out to him a few months earlier, sat quietly in the rearmost pew. Around the same time, this church upheld the “elder” status of a repeat batterer, revoking his title only when his wife showed up with a broken arm.
These may be outlying examples, and it is easy enough to criticize our parents’ generation of churches. But my concern is that younger congregations exhibit similar features. Queens College Professor Pyong Gap Min has observed, for example, that second-generation churches are as patriarchal as their forebears, but under the banner of scriptural rather than Confucian authority. As my opening anecdote illustrates, the Korean American church continues to incubate a culture in which women accept lesser roles and authority goes unquestioned. Second-generation churches, divorced as they are from a social justice gospel, fail to challenge middle-class values focused on consumption, accumulation, and social stability.
This would be less problematic if Korean America were tangibly located outside the church. After all, every ethnic and racial group has its conservative members. But with so many Korean Americans raised and trained in the ways of the church, our community is disproportionately under the influence of these institutions and their regressive politics.
What this points to -- insofar as we care about social progress and choose to approach it in part as “Korean Americans” -- is the need to imagine ourselves in new, open-ended ways. Here our lineage may help us, for embedded in Korea’s troubled history is a long tradition of revolt and self-determination. Groups like Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance in Los Angeles and Nodutdol for Korean Community Development in New York City are organizing working-class immigrants and second-generation Korean-Americans according to this particular strain of progressivism. There are social services providers, political action groups, arts collectives, LGBTQ centers, and feminist organizations who offer other, unorthodox visions of the Korean American community. None of these are necessarily incompatible with religion; they instead signal the diaspora’s many moving parts and suggest the limits of Korean American church dogma.
Without the balancing effect of secular community networks, a church-centered Korean America will risk succumbing to the demagoguery and political opportunism of the Religious Right and the Tea Party. Glen Beck and Sarah Palin, rallying some 300,000 acolytes at the Lincoln Memorial in August, preached a dangerous conflation of ill-defined Christianity, conservative morality, and uncritical politics. I should hope we can, collectively, do better than this.
A broadened base of Korean America will hardly sound the death knell for Christian institutions. Rather, with parishioners rooted both in their churches and other Korean American organizations and community spaces, a diversified discourse will open up, one that attends to global concerns and honors its participants equally. Churches themselves could involve Korean Americans in progressive political dialogue, raise women leaders, and encourage support for class struggles. It is a necessary step in our evolution and a timely project of reform.
Adapted from “Toward a Korean-American Reformation,” originally published in Senses: The Korean American Journal, Yale College, Fall 2010.
ON EMBRACING THE BURDEN OF REPRESENTATION
By Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, cross-posted from Televisual
I recently had a conversation with a black director who fretted not putting any men of color in his film project. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t find anyone to play the role. In the end he told me: “I can’t carry the whole black community on my own!”
It’s a strange thing to be a writer, creator, producer, artist and belong to some kind of “other” group. Every one of us — I think — struggles with how responsible we are to our communities. It’s something I find myself having to deal with more and more. And I’m starting to develop opinions about it.
Writing about one’s identity group is not always a “burden.” Soon I’ll be writing a column for AfterElton about gay men of color in the media, and I couldn’t be happier! I hesitated a bit when I was asked. The old questions emerged: would I pigeonholed? Would I be “that black gay guy”? But ultimately I saw more opportunity than limitations. I care about that stuff, and it’s so often not talked about. Why not?
Still, for anyone who creates media, the burden can be tiresome. The truth is there are typically few people who are X identity in a given field — film, the academy, television, web production — that the few who exist are often asked to correct structural imbalances, even if they have other interests. It’s unfair, but it is the world in which we live. These burdens aren’t limited to the traditional groups of minorities, though they have to deal with it most; it spans genre identities (sci-fi, western, horror), ideologies (nihilist, modernist), styles (independent, art-house, fringe), basically anything with a dedicated core of minority adherents and members.
When I was younger and immature I used to wonder: “why does so-and-so only write/talk/think about X identity? They’re so unimaginative!” You know who I’m talking about: the showrunner who only pitches shows about women, the journalist who only writes about sexuality, etc.
As I grew older and started to participate in these various worlds, I realized it was often the other way around. The people who are “pigeonholed” are, more often than not, forced to or called upon to hold those positions. Since there aren’t a lot of academics in, say, economics, who write about race, those scholars are asked to write the “race essay” for the edited collection, or edit an issue in a journal. If they aren’t asked by the “powers that be,” they’re urged to by friends or colleagues.
Because, like myself, they want and are happy to oblige because so few people write about their communities. As they start to, they realize how many stories go untold and theories unexplored; it starts to get interesting. I blog and write a lot about black identity, gay identity and women. (See the tag cloud to the right). Some might say I’m falling prey to stereotype. But the truth is I find there’s a lot to say about these topics that isn’t being said by the mainstream media, or even prominent blogs.
When I first started researching web series over a year ago, virtually no one was writing about black web series and gay/lesbian web series, despite dozens being released each year. That’s why I started making the lists linked to above (though I can never keep up! I try to update about once a month). I felt compelled to and was happy to do it, to give producers/directors what little exposure I could provide (it’s not much!).
I always feel for those directors, producers, writers, etc. who “stray” from their communities and do other things. Occasionally they’re branded “post-racial,” “post-gender,” “post-gay,” post-whatever. Will Smith is a classic example — he’s planning yet another project in China. Some have avoided it: Spike Lee and Gus Van Sant do a lot of non-black, non-gay films, but make sure to come back home every once in awhile. A lucky few can be both responsible to their communities and do other projects while not being branded either way. But society demands shortcuts, and in the end, most of us have to take our label and wear it with pride.
The best do both. Some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the 20th century took their less-than-popular identities and used them to create bold works about the broader culture, about society and civilization, from Toni Morrison and James Baldwin to David Wojnarowicz and Judith Butler.
We should embrace the challenge. I used to think “label” was a dirty word. Even today, read an interview with any artist or writer, no matter their race or religion, no matter how singular their interest in a particular identity, and, without fail, they will inevitably say they don’t want to be labeled. Nobody wants to! But labels are a way of communicating to the world, a way of signaling something important. Any creative or intellectual person should relish the opportunity to take something presumed to be “marginal” and make it central and important to a conversation.
Should we accept our burdens? I think maybe we should. Carrying a burden only makes you stronger.
I recently had a conversation with a black director who fretted not putting any men of color in his film project. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t find anyone to play the role. In the end he told me: “I can’t carry the whole black community on my own!”
It’s a strange thing to be a writer, creator, producer, artist and belong to some kind of “other” group. Every one of us — I think — struggles with how responsible we are to our communities. It’s something I find myself having to deal with more and more. And I’m starting to develop opinions about it.
Writing about one’s identity group is not always a “burden.” Soon I’ll be writing a column for AfterElton about gay men of color in the media, and I couldn’t be happier! I hesitated a bit when I was asked. The old questions emerged: would I pigeonholed? Would I be “that black gay guy”? But ultimately I saw more opportunity than limitations. I care about that stuff, and it’s so often not talked about. Why not?
Still, for anyone who creates media, the burden can be tiresome. The truth is there are typically few people who are X identity in a given field — film, the academy, television, web production — that the few who exist are often asked to correct structural imbalances, even if they have other interests. It’s unfair, but it is the world in which we live. These burdens aren’t limited to the traditional groups of minorities, though they have to deal with it most; it spans genre identities (sci-fi, western, horror), ideologies (nihilist, modernist), styles (independent, art-house, fringe), basically anything with a dedicated core of minority adherents and members.
When I was younger and immature I used to wonder: “why does so-and-so only write/talk/think about X identity? They’re so unimaginative!” You know who I’m talking about: the showrunner who only pitches shows about women, the journalist who only writes about sexuality, etc.
As I grew older and started to participate in these various worlds, I realized it was often the other way around. The people who are “pigeonholed” are, more often than not, forced to or called upon to hold those positions. Since there aren’t a lot of academics in, say, economics, who write about race, those scholars are asked to write the “race essay” for the edited collection, or edit an issue in a journal. If they aren’t asked by the “powers that be,” they’re urged to by friends or colleagues.
Because, like myself, they want and are happy to oblige because so few people write about their communities. As they start to, they realize how many stories go untold and theories unexplored; it starts to get interesting. I blog and write a lot about black identity, gay identity and women. (See the tag cloud to the right). Some might say I’m falling prey to stereotype. But the truth is I find there’s a lot to say about these topics that isn’t being said by the mainstream media, or even prominent blogs.
When I first started researching web series over a year ago, virtually no one was writing about black web series and gay/lesbian web series, despite dozens being released each year. That’s why I started making the lists linked to above (though I can never keep up! I try to update about once a month). I felt compelled to and was happy to do it, to give producers/directors what little exposure I could provide (it’s not much!).
I always feel for those directors, producers, writers, etc. who “stray” from their communities and do other things. Occasionally they’re branded “post-racial,” “post-gender,” “post-gay,” post-whatever. Will Smith is a classic example — he’s planning yet another project in China. Some have avoided it: Spike Lee and Gus Van Sant do a lot of non-black, non-gay films, but make sure to come back home every once in awhile. A lucky few can be both responsible to their communities and do other projects while not being branded either way. But society demands shortcuts, and in the end, most of us have to take our label and wear it with pride.
The best do both. Some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the 20th century took their less-than-popular identities and used them to create bold works about the broader culture, about society and civilization, from Toni Morrison and James Baldwin to David Wojnarowicz and Judith Butler.
We should embrace the challenge. I used to think “label” was a dirty word. Even today, read an interview with any artist or writer, no matter their race or religion, no matter how singular their interest in a particular identity, and, without fail, they will inevitably say they don’t want to be labeled. Nobody wants to! But labels are a way of communicating to the world, a way of signaling something important. Any creative or intellectual person should relish the opportunity to take something presumed to be “marginal” and make it central and important to a conversation.
Should we accept our burdens? I think maybe we should. Carrying a burden only makes you stronger.
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