Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Barr, 2018. (ABC/Robert Trachtenberg)

Roseanne Barr (1952- ), US comedian and conspiracy theorist, is best known as the star of “Roseanne” (1988-97), a US television comedy on ABC about a White working-class family. The show made a comeback two months ago, March 2018, quickly becoming one of the most watched television shows in the nation – only to be suddenly cancelled yesterday on May 29th.

Barr destroyed her show in just 53 characters on Twitter:

“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”

This was so racist that even Sean Hannity of Fox News found it “appalling”.

“VJ” is Valerie Jarrett, a long-time adviser to President Obama and an object of right-wing conspiracy theories. Jarrett is also a Black woman.

Blacks as apes: Barr said it was a “joke”. Ha ha. It plays on and pushes the profoundly racist idea that Black people are like apes, less than fully human. It is an idea Western science spent the 1800s trying to prove, and, in the 2010s, it makes police violence against Black people more acceptable. “Black Lives Matter” should go without saying – but in the US it does not.

Wanda Sykes, head writer on the show, is also a Black woman. She tweeted:

“I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC”

Channing Dungey, president of ABC Entertainment which airs “Roseanne”, is also a Black woman. She said:

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel the show”

And just like, in less than 12 hours, the show was gone. Poof! Viacom and Hulu pulled their reruns. Even Barr’s agent dropped her.

Excuses: Some blamed her unstable mental state. Others blamed the “tone” set for the country by President Trump. Barr herself blamed Ambien, a sleeping pill. Sanofi, the maker of Ambien, stated:

“While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”

Roseanne, 1989.

The “Roseanne” show of the 1990s was one of the few shows that was by and for White working-class people. That was because Barr had gained creative control from people who did not know that lunchmeat was square. Most television in the US is made by and for those who can afford new cars, making it about another world that most people only know from – television. Even “The Cosby Show” had that strange level of unreality to it.

Roseanne, 2018.  (ABC/Robert Trachtenberg)

The reboot was the same as the old boot, it seemed, only this time Barr’s character had a Black grandchild, Muslim neighbours, and, like Barr’s real life, a sister who voted against Trump, setting them at odds.

The reboot was seen as a show for Trump’s America. President Trump himself said the show “was about us.”

But then when Roseanne Barr, a real-life Trump supporter, acted like a real-life Trump supporter, ABC was shocked, simply shocked.

In 2013 Barr tweeted about Susan Rice, a Black woman who was the US ambassador to the United Nations:

“susan rice is a man with big swinging ape balls.”

That, presumably, was “consistent” with ABC’s values.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (June 4th): President Trump, condemning Samantha Bee for calling his daughter the c-word while not condemning Roseanne’s racist remark, accuses the media of a double standard. Bee has apologized – something Trump has never done for his serial vulgar misogyny. Despite that, he wants Samantha Bee fired. 

See also:

• Black people as monkeys
  • Cuvier
• racist jokes
• killer cops
• Why do Whites hate, demonize, fear and look down on Blacks?
• ABC
• The Cosby Show
• Donald Trump
• conspiracy theory

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Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), an Indian writer, was a giant of Bengali literature. In 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He wrote poetry, plays, stories, novels, essays, travelogues, memoirs, and an opera. He changed how people wrote in Bengali. He wrote over 2,000 songs, giving rise to Rabindra Sangeet, a style of music which lasts down to this day. He even invented festivals.

“Gitanjali” (1910) is the book he is best known for in the West. It contains 103 of his poems translated by him from Bengali and reworked in English. Yeats:

“I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in the railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me.”

The poems sometimes seem like songs or like prayers or like scripture. Most seem to be addressed to the Hindu god Brahman, but could apply almost as well to the Christian god.

Nobel Prize: He won not in Bengali but in English translation. No mean feat: in the past 50 years only five have won writing in a non-European language – and, like Tagore, only after they had been translated into English.

Growing up: Tagore was born into a family of wealth and education, the sort that owned marble mansions in Calcutta. He studied at University College London, long enough to know British ways, not long enough to get a degree.

Tagore and Kadambari.

His soulmate: By age 20 he had met his soulmate, Kadambari – his sister-in-law! They would sit together on a hot afternoon reading the latest literary reviews from Calcutta, Kadambari fanning him. But then his father married him to an uneducated ten-year-old girl.

The cage: He grew to hate not just arranged marriages but the sexism and caste system of Indian society, a cage where you “die inch by inch”. In “The Wife’s Letter” (1914), the heroine says:

“My mother feared for this cleverness of mine, for a woman it was an impediment. … But what was I to do? God had carelessly given me much more intelligence than I needed to be a wife in your household.”

But he was contradictory, just like the characters in his books: he married off three of his daughters, indifferent to their wishes, when they were barely in their teens.

Colonized mind? He saw himself as the perfect mix of Hindu, Muslim and Western culture – what some saw as a colonized mind that was too pro-Western. He became a Booker T. Washington sort, saying stuff like this by 1909:

“The British Government is not the cause of our subjection; it is merely a symptom of a deeper subjection on our part.”

Knighthood: Yet in 1919 he gave up his knighthood after the British killed 400 in the holy city of Amritsar.

He was not a fan of Gandhi either. Nationalism could become its own cage:

“It was only necessary to cling to an unquestioning obedience, to some mantra, some unreasoned creed.”

The day the world did not implode: when Einstein and Tagore met.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: mainly “Gitanjali” (1910) by Tagore; “Incarnations” (2016) by Sunil Khilnani.

See also:

• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018
• India
  • Hinduism
  • caste system
  • Ambedkar – also opposed the caste system and Gandhi
• Bengali
  • Madhurima Sen: Tomar Khola Hawa – a Rabindra Sangeet song written by Tagore
• Einstein
• Booker T. Washington

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Madhurima Sen: Tomar Khola Hawa

Remarks:

This Bengali song was written in 1914 by Rabindranath Tagore, a year after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote over 2,000 songs. One became the national anthem of India. Another became the national anthem of Bangladesh. Many of the rest became a style of music called Rabindra Sangeet that lasts down to this day.

I chose this video because it is the cover of “Tomar Khola Hawa” that has the most views on YouTube. It came out 2015 and has 4.4 million views at last count. In second place is the cover by Somlata & the Aces, which has 3.5 million views. That one is done in what seems to be more of a rock music style, guitar solo and all – or what the YouTube description calls “a fusion of traditional melodies backed up by modern instruments.”

See also:

• songs, the 2010s
• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018
• Bengali
• Tagore

Lyrics:

the original Bengali (in Roman letters):

Tomar khola haawa lagiye pale tukro kore kachi
Ami dubte raji achi ami dubte raji achi
Sakal amar galo miche, bikel je jai tari piche go
Rekho na ar, bedho na ar kuler kachakachi
Majhir lagi achi jagi sakol ratribbela,
Dhaugulo je amai niye kare kebol khela
Jharke ami karbo mite, darbo na tar bhrukutite
Dau cheye dau, ogo ami tuphan pele bachi

an English translation:

Touch my sail with your fresh gush of wind, break my anchor –
I do not even regret if I sink.
Morning has slipped away in vain; the evening seems to follow,
Please do not restrict me near the shore.
I keep myself awake through the night looking for the boatman,
The waves toying with me every now and then.
I wish to make friends with the storm, never be terrorised with,
Leave me alone, O dear, I am comforted if I catch wind.

Source: Geetabitan.com.

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Dear White People

“Dear White People” (2014) is a US film about White racism. It follows four Black students at the fictional Winchester University, a predominately White institution (PWI) where rich White people send their children. It has since become a television series on Netflix. This post is only about the film.

The film now seems dated – even though it is only three and a half years old. It came out in October 2014, just in time for Halloween. But as it showed in cinemas, protesters were marching in Ferguson, already making the film seem out-of-date and quaint. The rise of Trump in 2016 and the Neo-Nazi violence of the Charlottesville riot in 2017 have made it seem quainter still. It now seems so 2013.

It starts with Samantha White, one of the main characters, calling out White racism on the university radio station. Even that now seems dated: in the Trump Era, White racism no longer wears sheep’s clothing – it calls itself out.

Even so, you can see the Trump Era racism already starting to show through. The Halloween party at the end, despite the costumes, becomes an unmasking, showing White people as they truly are. There is a reason they want to say the N-word. That racism has always been there, of course, since at least the 1700s, covered over in politically correct noises in the late 1900s. But with the Trump Era, Whites are hiding it less and less.

The four main characters each deal with “being a black face in a white place” differently:

• Samantha – woke: protests, calls out racism.
• Lionel – invisible: avoids trouble or notice, does not pick sides.
• Troy – twice as good: tries to integrate and beat Whites at their own game.
• Coco – coon: plays to White stereotypes to gain their favour.

Except for Samantha, they are trying to get in good with White people. And, over the course of the film they see what a fool’s errand that is. Whatever few favours they gain, they are still seen as nothing but a “nigger”.

The good:

• A film about racism where Black characters get most of the lines. It can be done!
• Unlike most films, it does not coon – and even makes fun of that by way of Coco.
• It shows how Black people do not all think alike.

The bad:

• The trailer was better.
• Seems like it would work better as a script than a film. Some of its best lines go by too quick and are not underscored by the film. Probably needs to be watched more than once.
• The main White character is cartoonish (but, to be fair, he is a study in nuance compared to the racist trolls on the Internet).
• It does seem like it would work better as a television series than a film.

It bills itself as a satire. It did not seem like a satire to me.

Overall, not as as good as a Spike Lee film, but it is still worth watching. Especially since Spike Lee seems to be semi-retired.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Dear White People: the trailer
• coon
• Ferguson
• The N-word
• Halloween
  • Halloween at Yale
• The Trump Era – the post I wrote on Day One
  • Charlottesville riot
• being Black at a PWI (non-fictional):
  • 1957: Elizabeth Eckford
  • 1957: Dorothy Counts
  • 1972: Lorene Cary: Black Ice
  • 1979: Obama at Occidental College
  • 1997: Why all the Black kids sit together
  • 2015: The Mizzou Campus Protests
  • 2015: Halloween at Yale

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The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro

The Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro (c. -2500) is a small bronze figurine that is over 4,000 years old, found in the lost city of Mohenjo-Daro. It is the most famous piece of art from the Indus (aka Harappan) civilization (-2600 to -1600).

She is not that big: 10.5 cm tall (4.1 inches) – you could hold her in the palm of your hand. We do not know if she is a dancer – she just seems that way when you compare her to all the stiff-looking statues of the time.

She is made of bronze, a mix of copper and tin. Back then bronze was commonly used in India and Mesopotamia (Iraq) but not Egypt. In India bronze was used to make jars, pots, bowls, dishes, pans, knives, chisels, axes, bangles, rings, beads, and pins. But it was not a common material for statues.

She was made using the lost wax method. She was made first of wax. The wax was then used to make a clay cast. The wax was melted away and then bronze was poured into the cast. When the metal cooled the cast was broken.

The owner was not rich: It was found in a small house. There were much bigger houses in Mohenjo-Daro.

She is naked wearing only a necklace, 25 bangles on her left arm and four on her right. It was common in Harappan art to show genitals. What was not common was not giving her large breasts or wide hips.

Who was she? Some scholars say she was a real person, even if her arms and legs are too long. One scholar says she was Parvati, a goddess of love, even though her figure is more that of a girl than a woman.

Was she African? Like the Olmec heads of Mexico, she looks suspiciously African. Trade between India and Africa was not common back then, but an African woman from this period was found buried in the Indus Valley at Chanhu-Dara.

The Dancing Girl is culturally South Asian: she wears her hair and bangles in a style that is found in South Asia still to this day.

People in India looked Blacker back then. The statue was made nearly 1,000 years before India was taken over by the light-skinned Indo-Aryans from the north. Herodotus, some 2,000 years after the statue was made, said Indians looked Ethiopian (except for their hair). He never travelled to India but knew about the Indian soldiers in the Persian army.

Pakistan: Every now and then there is a call for India to “return” the Dancing Girl to Pakistan. Mohenjo-Daro is in Pakistan, but the statue itself is in India, at the National Museum in New Delhi. When the statue was discovered in 1926, Mohenjo-Daro was part of British India. In 1947 Pakistan broke away from India.

Under UNESCO rules Pakistan could possibly claim that the British stole it as an illegitimate colonial government. But the Pakistani government is itself is a spin-off of that same colonial government – giving it no more right to the statue than the British had.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: mainly Google Images (2018); ThoughtCo (2017); Huffington Post (2017); Outlook India (2016).

See also:

• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018
• India
  • Indus civilization
• Herodotus on Black people
• Olmec heads
• The last 6,000 years

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M.I.A. & Santigold: Get It Up

Remarks:

This song came out in 2008 and never charted, but it is genius: powwow + rap. Wow. They sound better together than apart. Just listen to the sampled “Hood Nigga” (2007) by Gorilla Zoe on its own. Diplo and Radioclit were the music producers on this one.

There is a Malawian version used for AIDS awareness.

See also:

• songs, the 2000s
• Santigold: L.E.S. Artistes
• Other Diplo songs that have appeared here:
  • Maluca: El Tigeraso
  • Major Lazer ft Vybz Kartel: Pon de Floor
• A Tribe Called Red ft Northern Voice: Sisters – powwow + dubstep

Lyrics:

May I see your driver’s license please?

May I see your driver’s license please?
What’s that in your cassette deck?

All the hoes jockin’, beat steady knockin’
Middle of the stage, got the whole club rockin’
Maybe you can hate but ya bitch steady watchin’
Bet she can’t do it on a dick she poppin’
We bottle poppin’, you cock blockin’
Told ya girl you rap, but ya cd floppin’
You say you gettin’ money man, we ain’t seen nothin’
Ya girl is persistent, she ain’t stoppin’

Man, she say she want a
I keep the perp by the pound
The trunk stay bumpin’
Y’all know we run the town

And I keep a bad bitch around
Thick bitch, long hair, yellow, white, red, brown
(Hood nigga)
Got my chevy sittin’ on 24’s
Flats look like flapjacks
Pancakes? You ain’t know

I’m a play the game how it go
They can take me out the hood
But I’m a keep it hood folk

And I don’t need a scale for the work
I can eyeball perp, I am not you jerk
Hatin’ on me will make your situation worse
You don’t wanna take a ride in that long black hearse
All eyes on me, shawty I’m a bomb first
I’m the truth and they say the truth hurts
Hustle mean hard work, hard work
If you scared, go to church
Man, this rap shit is easy
Every beat I get, I murk

‘Cause I’m a
I keep the perp by the pound
The trunk stay bumpin’
Y’all know we run the town

And I keep a bad bitch around
Thick bitch, long hair, yellow, white, red, brown
Got my chevy sittin’ on 24’s
Flats look like flapjacks
Pancakes? You ain’t know

I’m a play the game how it go
They can take me out the hood
But I’m a keep it hood folk

Day and night
Realize I won’t be easy
Got no light
A job, a wife that’s easy
Always standing in the door
Always the same reason you’re stuck
No guts, no guts

What will you get it up for?
What will you get it up for?
Harder, you’re still stuck in the mire

What will make you want it more?
What will make you want it more?
Harder, get more bang for your dollar

Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up

Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up
Get it up, you can get it up

Sometimes I think I harden
When I feel I get fucked up
Yeah, other times I think I harden
When I feel I get spat out

Yeah, I don’t really know what you’re thinking
But I already know what you are
And this is what makes us harden
In this concrete life we got

I break ’em in like shoes and my new jeans
I throw it in like a spanner in your work pen
I watch you want more, curious to dirty things
And make it swing from being slick to new things

I break ’em in like shoes and my new jeans
I throw it in like a spanner in your work pen
I watch you want more, curious to dirty things
And make it swing from being slick to new things

Get it up

Radioclit
Rewind
Diplo

Source: letras.mus.br.

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race

What do these people have in common?

Believe it or not, I have never done a post on race:

Race (1774- ) divides humans into some three to seven breeds based on physical features like hair, eyes, nose, and, especially, skin colour.

For example:

Blacks in the US, circa 1998.

In 1985 in the US the main races were:

• Whites – those who look like they are of pure European blood;
• Blacks – those who look part African;
• Asians – those who look like they are from East Asia or South Asia;
• Indians – those who come from the Americas (Amerindians).

Coloureds in South Africa.

In 1985 in South Africa the races were:

• Whites – of more or less pure European blood;
• Blacks – of more or less pure African blood;
• Coloured – mixed race;
• Indians – those who came from South Asia.

Indians in South Africa.

Racism is the belief that some races are better than others. Not because of their power or money or religion or some other accident of history, but because of inborn qualities. Stuff like skin colour is seen as being more than skin deep. It is seen as a sign of inner qualities like intelligence, moral character, even human worth. Blacks, for example, are not just dark-skinned, but are seen as being naturally more violent, less intelligent, and less hard-working than Whites. They were just born that way. Racists believe that such differences is what leads to inequality.

Anti-racism is the belief that inequality is mainly caused by racist people and racist policies, not by any apparent racial differences (which are themselves often largely created by racist policies).

Scientific racism is racism supported by science. It was all the rage in the late 1800s and early 1900s, from Darwin to Hitler.

Map of blood type B.

Stuff to keep in mind:

• Race is not a fact of nature. Or so says science since the 1970s. There are no White genes or Black genes – just genes that flow throughout the human species largely independent of race, like genes for blood type (pictured above). Even genes for skin colour are more determined by latitude than by race. And they have no known effect on completely unrelated stuff like intelligence.
• Race is a social construct. It was made up by Europeans to excuse their own crimes, like slavery, genocide and colonialism. English-speaking Whites did not call themselves Whites till the 1600s. And their stereotypes about Black people arose after they had enslaved them on a large scale. People in the US would have become Tan long ago if racism did not keep apart Blacks and Whites.
• Racial prejudice is not part of human nature. It is learned. The Us and Them feeling seems to be part of human nature, and racism takes advantage of that. But racism itself was rare before 1400. It was unknown to the Ancient Greeks, for example.
• Race is not the same thing as ethnicity. Ethnic groups, like Arabs, Jews and Latinos, share a common culture, not a common set of physical features. Most Jews, for example, do not have a “Jewish nose”, nor is it a requirement to be counted as Jewish. But note that in English “ethnicity” and “ethnic” are often used as a nice way of saying “race” and “racial”.

Time magazine, April 10th 1972. Where the top image comes from.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (May 24th): This post originally had this picture of “Blacks in the US”, showing Beyonce and Rihanna, which was causing some to miss my point:

See also:

• Us and Them
• The word “race”
• Race is a social construct
  • The term “Asian”
• Race is not a fact of nature
• The Jewish nose
• Racism before 1400
• Racism 101

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Us and Them

Us and Them (by -400,000,000) is where we divide the world into those who are like us – the Us, the in-group – and those who are not like us – the Them, the out-group. It seems to go back at least hundreds of millions of years, back to when we were fish. Upon it is built racism, religious bigotry, genocide and all the rest.

It is universal, it is deep, it is instant. It is as automatic as breathing. Which is why in the United States a White police officer can gun down a Black person and yet honestly say it had nothing to do with race. Because it took place too quick for his conscious mind to take part.

Implicit bias: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures, among other things, how much you favour Whites over Blacks (or the other way round). It measures reaction times that are too quick to be fully conscious. That implicit bias is the very thing those “split-second decisions” that get people killed are based on. And as the tests show, racism can be part of it.

Prejudice: the Us and Them thing is further screwed up by prejudiced thinking:

• Us: We are better than we are (collective self-esteem), our shortcomings are due to circumstances (attribution error), we got to help each other out (in-group favouritism, the main cause of discrimination, not any sort of out-group hatred).
• Them: They are all alike (out-group homogenization), they fit stereotypes as proved by selective sampling (confirmation bias), they are worse than they are (out-group derogation), their shortcomings are because they are (ew/gasp) one of Them (attribution error).

Prejudice can grow worse if the in-group feels threatened.

That is the bad news.

The good news is that, unlike fish, humans have amazing powers of learning. The line between Us and Them is learned. That is why it is different in different parts of the world: Jew and Arab in Palestine, Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, Muslim and Buddhist in Burma, etc. That it is learned and not inborn is why you can be prejudiced against your own, as with internalized racism.

Race: In the United States the line between Black and White goes back hundreds of years. But it only goes back hundreds of years: it is not part of human nature. It may feel “natural” and seem to function that way, but that is because it has hooked into the fish brain, so to speak. That is what gives these lines their terrible power, sometimes leading even to genocide.

The lines between Us and Them are completely made up. They are hammered into our heads by our leaders, political, national, religious, and social, to increase their own power. We can see that going on right before our eyes with President Trump. When these made-up lines become part of the culture they get passed down by parent and teacher, becoming part of “the way things are”.

The Charlottesville riot: “Make America Great Again”

– Abagond, 2018.

Source: partly based on “What Divides Us” in National Geographic (April 2018); Google Images.

See also:

• The blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise – a perfect example of all of this
• prejudice
  • confirmation bias
  • stereotype
  • IAT
  • internalized racism
• the eight stages of genocide – Us and Them is stage one
• Donald Trump
  • Charlottesville riot
• human evolution: the last 4 billion years
• Racism before 1400
• The racial future of the United States

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net neutrality

(Illustration: The Verge)

Net neutrality (2002-2018?) is the idea that the companies which run the Internet – companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast – should not play favourites but should treat all websites equally. They should not be able to block, slow down, or charge you extra for a website like Netflix, YouTube or Twitter.

Before net neutrality, police brutality was never a nationwide issue in the US, even when it led to riots that got nationwide attention, like Detroit in 1967 or Los Angeles in 1992. Because Whites controlled the media.

Without net neutrality the Internet in the US will likely go the way of the rest of the media: controlled by a handful of big companies which determine in effect what you see and hear. The Internet was the one ray of democratic sunshine in a plutocratic world.

For and against net neutrality:

• For: Internet content providers (Google, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress, me, etc), all Democrats in the US Senate, 86% of US voters, the ACLU, Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet), Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web).
• Against: Internet service providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Comcast, etc), and all but one US Republican senator – even though 82% of Republican voters favour net neutrality!

The main argument against net neutrality is that Internet service providers will make less money and therefore put less money into what people think of as the pipes and tubes of the Internet. But that is not what Internet service providers tell their investors!

The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, is the part of US government in charge of setting and enforcing the rules for the Internet in the public interest. Under both Republican and Democratic leadership it had favoured net neutrality policies. Until, that is, President Trump came to power. He put Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC. Pai is a former lawyer of Verizon, one of the very companies that stands to make a fortune if net neutrality is overturned.

In December 2017, the FCC overturned the net neutrality rules from 2015. Pai says that anyone who does not like how Verizon and other companies run the Internet can take it up with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a government agency which has little understanding of the Internet and little power to do much about it.

There are court challenges to the FCC ruling. And there is also:

Congress: At any time Congress can always make new rules to govern the Internet. The last time they did that was in 1996, when the Internet was little understood. There is a net neutrality bill now in Congress. It is likely to fail – even though 86% of voters favour net neutrality. You can thank in part gerrymandering and Citizens United for that, which help to make the US a functional plutocracy. But that is another story.

On June 11th 2018 the FCC’s decision to end net neutrality will take effect.

Net neutrality’s best hope will be for Democrats to take over Congress in the midterm elections in November 2018. That will depend on who shows up to vote.

– Abagond, 2018.

Update (May 16th, 22:45 GMT): The Congressional Review Act (CRA), which would overturn the FCC decision to end net neutrality, passed the Senate 52-47 in a surprise victory. It is unlikely to pass the heavily gerrymandered House. See how the senators voted at CNET.

See also:

• battleforthenet.com – help save net neutrality
• Internet
• Ajit Pai
• Tim Berners-Lee
  • the Web
• Detroit Riot of 1967
• propaganda model
• Black Spring
• gerrymandering
• Citizens United

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Mohe Rang Do Laal (मोहे रंग दो लाल, Colour Me Red)

Remarks:

This song comes from “Bajirao Mastani” (2015), one of the top grossing Bollywood films worldwide three years ago. The film tells the love story of Bajirao and Mastani, who lived in the Maratha Empire in India in the early 1700s.

Both the music and the dance in the video are in a style classical to North India. It won awards for both the singing and the dancing. Actress Deepika Padukone dances while lip-synching the singing of Shreya Ghoshal. The Twista parts are done by Pandit Birju Maharaj.

See also:

• songs, the 2010s
• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018

Lyrics (Hindi with English translation):

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo nahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal

color me red,
O son of Nand, (Krishna)
don’t tease me, just color me red,
color me red..

dekhoon dekhoon tujhko main ho ke nihaal
dekhoon dekhoon tujhko main ho ke nihaal
chhoo lo kora mora kaanch sa tan
nain bhar kya rahe nihaar

I see you, enraptured,
touch my glass-like, untouched body,
why do you just keep looking at it..

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo naahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal..

maroDi kalaai mori
haan kalaai mori
haan kalaai maroDi.. kalaai mori
chooDi chaTkai, itraayi
to chori se garwa lagaai
hari ye chunariya
jo jhaTke se chheeni..

he twisted my wrist,
turned it,
twisted and turned my wrist..
bangles were broken, and when I lugged,
he hugged this green scarf (of mine)
and snatched it with a jerk..

main to rangi hari hari ke rang
laaj se gulaabi gaal

I was colored green in the color of Krishna,
with my cheeks turned pink with shyness..

mohe rang do laal
nand ke laal laal
chheDo naahi bas rang do laal
mohe rang do laal..

Source: BollyMeaning.com, Wikipedia.

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Robert Kennedy at Creighton University

St John’s at Creighton University.

At noon on Monday May 13th 1968, Robert Kennedy gave a speech at Creighton, a Jesuit university in Omaha, Nebraska. He was running for US president and the Nebraska Democratic Party primary was the next day.

The quadrangle: It was hot and sunny. He took off his jacket, standing in shirtsleeves. About 4,000 students showed up, lying on the grass of the quadrangle and sitting on windowsills. The students were largely White and middle-class.

The draft: At that time the Vietnam War was at its height, but men who went to university could put off getting drafted into the war by getting a student deferment. (Donald Trump was doing just that at the time – while John McCain was by then a prisoner of war, his plane having been shot down seven months before.)

Robert Kennedy said he would replace student deferments with a lottery. The students booed him.

He asked for a show of hands who believed in student deferments. Most students raised their hands.

Kennedy:

“How can you possibly say …. Look around you. How many Black faces do you see here? How many American Indians? How many Mexican Americans? The fact is, if you look at any regiment or division of paratroopers in Vietnam, 45% of them are Black. How can you accept that?”

More boos.

“What I don’t understand is that you don’t even debate these things among yourselves. You’re the most exclusive minority in the world. Are you going to sit on your duffs and do nothing? Or just carry signs and protest?”

Someone stood up and asked:

“But isn’t the army one way of getting people out of the ghettos … and solving the ghetto problem?”

Huh? Kennedy could not believe what he was hearing. Kennedy, who was himself Catholic, said:

“Here, at a Catholic university, how can you say that we can deal with the problems of the poor by sending them to Vietnam?

“There is a great moral force in the United States about the wrongs of the Federal Government and all the mistakes [President] Lyndon Johnson has made, and how Congress has failed to pass legislation dealing with civil rights. And yet, when it comes down to yourselves and your own individual lives, then you say students should be draft-deferred.”

This was not an abstract issue for him. His oldest brother, Joseph, died fighting for the country in the Second World War. His older brother, John, died while serving as president. He thought the Vietnam War was immoral, but love of country meant equality of sacrifice.

Kennedy at 24th and Erskine.

His next stop was a rally in front of his campaign headquarters at 24th and Erskine in the heart of Omaha’s Near North Side, a Black ghetto. As his motorcade drove into the ghetto it began to rain, but he kept the car top down so people could see him and touch him. When they turned the corner he saw a thousand people waiting in the downpour. He shouted, “These are my people!”

A month later he was dead.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: mainly “The Last Campaign” (2008) by Thurston Clarke.

See also:

• Robert Kennedy
  • May 24th 1963: meets James Baldwin
  • June 8th 1968:  his funeral train
• The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr – just the month before
• John McCain
• Donald Trump
  • How to be a true patriot
• Vietnam War

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Ambedkar

Dr B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was the Dalit (untouchable) who helped write the constitution of India. He is a hero to Dalits and Sudras, who live at the bottom of the Indian caste system.

He has no US counterpart: no Black man or Native helped to write the US constitution – it was White men all the way.

Reservations (affirmative action) was something he wrote into the constitution. It requires the government to reserve places in government employment and at universities for “backward” groups like the Dalits. It was only meant to last ten years (till 1960), but everyone wanted to be “backward”, so it became a way to win elections: count more people as “backward” and promise more places.

“Dalits” was a term he pushed. It means “broken men” in his native Marathi. He thought it was better than calling oneself “untouchable”.

Growing up Dalit, he was not allowed to drink from certain wells, eat with his schoolmates or learn Sanskrit. But with the help of British policy and an Indian prince, he became one of the best educated men in all of India.

Columbia University: He studied in the US from 1913 to 1927, becoming the first Dalit ever to get a PhD (in economics). At Columbia he learned to see history as the march of progress, of the power of equal rights to bring that progress, and of democracy to deliver those rights. From the example of Booker T. Washington he learned the value of compromise to secure what his people needed most to be free: education.

Caste: He did his doctoral thesis at Columbia on the Indian caste system. He did not see caste as a necessary division of labour. Nor did he see it as something that lighter-skinned Indo-Aryans forced on the conquered, darker-skinned Dravidians. It was worse than that. It came from people wanting to be like the Brahmans, the religious elite who kept themselves apart from everyone else. Copying the Brahmans wound up creating castes that kept themselves apart from each other. It left the Brahmans on top and society too divided to overthrow them or the caste system itself.

Gandhi: not a fan. He sometimes opposed him. Upper-caste Gandhi thought he could represent the Dalits. Ambedkar thought otherwise.

Writing the constitution: As a Dalit who was also one of the top legal minds in India, he was needed to write a constitution that could hold India together – especially after the Partition when Muslims formed what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh, leaving as many as 2 million people dead.

Legacy: In the 62 years since his death, castes have weakened overall and India has held together, as a liberal democracy no less. That is partly thanks to him.

Warning: He warned that without fraternity – treating everyone with dignity (not a feature of the caste system) – that liberty and equality “will be no deeper than coats of paint.”

In his last years he converted to Buddhism, which has no castes.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018
• India
  • caste system
  • Dalits
• Booker T. Washington
  • Du Bois on Booker T.

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Indian caste system

Caste: punishment (or reward) for your past lives. (Reuters/Amit Dave)

The caste system of India (by -1000) grew out of Hinduism and divides society from high to low into four main castes. On paper it has been done away with, but in practice it still shapes how people act and think, even if it is not as strong as it used to be.

According to Hinduism the god Brahma created people from his body:

1. Brahmans came from his mouth. They became the priests.
2. Kshatriyas came from his arms. They became the rulers and soldiers.
3. Vaisyas came from his thighs. They became the merchants and farmers.
4. Sudras came from his feet. They became servants, labourers and craftsmen.

Each of these castes in turn is divided into hundreds if not thousands of subcastes determined by occupation, region, family, etc.

Dalits, aka the Scheduled Caste, aka the Untouchables (not a nice word for them), are so low they do not even count as a proper caste. They clean human waste, kill animals, etc. The dirty work. Literally. See the picture above.

Lifelong: Caste is something you are born into and is for life. You are supposed to marry only within your caste. You are supposed to respect those of a higher caste (and can made to regret it if you do not). You do not have to respect those from a lower caste.

Perfect social immobility: Unlike class, you cannot move up or down the caste system – except through reincarnation. The caste you were born into was determined by how good or bad you were in your past lives. Thanks to the law of karma the whole thing is perfectly just, at least according to Hinduism.

Skin colour: The Sanskrit word for caste is varna, and one of its meanings is colour. But while the upper castes tend to be lighter skinned, you cannot tell a person’s caste simply from their skin colour.

Class: The higher your caste the more likely you will be well off: it will be easier to get a good education, to know the right people, etc. But that is an effect not a cause. You cannot tell a person’s caste from their wealth or education. Even a Dalit can be a professor, for example, though it is way less likely than for, say, a Brahman.

Religion: Millions have converted to other religions, like Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, to escape the caste system. But caste is so much a part of Indian society that it still affects them.

Foreigners: In general lighter-skinned foreigners are treated with more respect than darker-skinned ones. White people are respected as if they were an upper caste.

Caste is being weakened by capitalism, democracy, and big-city life. But even those who do not seem to care much about caste will suddenly care when it comes to stuff like who to marry or who to hire. The government and universities try to set aside places for Dalits, for example, but they still face plenty of discrimination in the private sector. And crimes against them go largely unpunished.

– Abagond, 2018.

Sources: Mainly “Culture Smart India” (2010) by Becky Stephen.

See also:

• Welcome to Asian American History Month 2018
• India
• Hinduism
• Isabel Wilkerson: Caste – in India, Nazi Germany and the US

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Childish Gambino: This Is America

“This Is America” (2018) is a song and music video by Childish Gambino, the nom de rap of US actor Donald Glover, he of “Atlanta” (2016- ). The video has gone viral, getting 33 million views on YouTube in the first 48 hours. It is now past 60 million.

Spoilers: If you have not seen it yet, I do not want to ruin it for you. Try this link (might not work in all countries or after five years or so):

Warning: graphic gun violence:

The video features a Charleston-style church massacre, schoolchildren who are up on the latest dance moves, a Ferguson-style uprising, a burning police car, even the White Horse of the Apocalypse (which is a sign of the end of the world in the Bible). It is a world where guns are valued more than people. This is America.

My interpretation: Gambino did not provide a cheat sheet. He left it open to interpretation. Here is mine:

The video goes like this:

1. La-la-la-la singing and dancing.
2. Randomly insert a shooting or some other act of terror.
3. The singing stops, the music changes, becomes darker, and Gambino says “This is America”.
4. After a minute or so the shooting has been forgotten. Go back to step one and repeat.

That is America! Suddenly, “out of the blue”, there is some senseless, hideous shooting and it is like everything stops – but then two weeks later the shooting is all but forgotten, only for the whole thing to repeat weeks or months later. On and on. It is strange to see it in a music video – because music in the US largely functions as a distraction.

The image that most sticks in my mind is Gambino singing and dancing
with the schoolchildren while all hell is breaking loose (pictured at top), and he says:

I’m on Gucci
I’m so pretty (yeah, yeah)

Even though he knows:

Police be trippin’ now.

Music, dance, religion, fashion and drugs all appear in the video as an escape from a world gone mad, as a way of not going mad yourself. And yet they help keep that mad world in place.

Stereotypes: The strange dance Gambino does at the beginning is taken from the minstrel show character Jim Crow. Gambino plays both Happy Darky and Black Brute, stereotypes driven by White paternalism (darkies) and White guilt (brutes). When shown together in a video, they seem strange and contradictory – because they are. But the fear of the Black Brute helps drive the need for Happy Darkies.

Happy Darkies are not enough: Gambino’s singing and dancing comes to an end as he is chased through the dark by White people, all of his grinning replaced by a look of terror on his face.

You just a black man in this world
You just a barcode, ayy
You just a black man in this world
Drivin’ expensive foreigns, ayy
You just a big dawg, yeah
I kenneled him in the backyard
No, probably ain’t life to a dog
For a big dog

This is America.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• songs, the 2010s
  • Beyonce: Formation
  • Lion Babe ft Childish Gambino: Jump Hi
• stereotype
  • minstrel show
  • Black Brute (White guilt)
  • darkies (White paternalism)
• Charleston Massacre
• Ferguson
• Further context:
  • Coates on Kanye
  • James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time
  • John Trudell

Lyrics:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, go, go away

We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Money just for you
I know you wanna party
Party just for me
Girl, you got me dancin’
Dance and shake the frame

We just wanna party
Party just for you
We just want the money
Money just for you
I know you wanna party
Party just for me
Girl, you got me dancin’
Dance and shake the frame

This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up
This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up

This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look at how I’m livin’ now
Police be trippin’ now
Yeah, this is America
Guns in my area (word, my area)
I got the strap
I gotta carry ’em

Yeah, yeah, I’ma go into this
Yeah, yeah, this is guerilla, woo
Yeah, yeah, I’ma go get the bag
Yeah, yeah, or I’ma get the pad
Yeah, yeah, I’m so cold like, yeah (yeah)
I’m so dope like, yeah
We gon’ blow like, yeah (straight up, uh)

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
You go tell somebody
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (get your money)
Get your money, black man (get your money)
Get your money, black man (get your, black man)
Get your money, black man (get your, black man)
Black man

This is America (woo!)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up (woo, woo, don’t catch you slippin’, now)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up (slime!)
This is America (yeah, yeah)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up

Look how I’m geekin’ out
I’m so fitted (I’m so fitted)
I’m on Gucci
I’m so pretty (yeah, yeah)
I’m gon’ get it (ayy, I’m gon’ get it)
Watch me move
This a celly
That’s a tool
On my Kodak (woo, Black)
Ooh, know that (yeah, know that, hold on)
Get it? (Get it? Get it?)
Ooh, work it (21)
Hunnid bands, hunnid bands, hunnid bands (hunnid bands)
Contraband, contraband, contraband (contraband)
I got the plug on Oaxaca
They gonna find you like blocka

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
(America, I just checked my following list and)
You go tell somebody
(You mothafuckas owe me)
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Black man

One, two, three, get down
Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody
You go tell somebody
Grandma told me
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Get your money, black man (black man)
Black man

You just a black man in this world
You just a barcode, ayy
You just a black man in this world
Drivin’ expensive foreigns, ayy
You just a big dawg, yeah
I kenneled him in the backyard
No, probably ain’t life to a dog
For a big dog

Source: letras.mus.br.

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Coates on Kanye

Snoop Dogg’s All-White Kanye.

In “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye” (2018) Ta-Nehisi Coates, a Black writer who has been compared to James Baldwin, weighed in on the Kanye West controversy.

For those living under a rock – or living more than ten years from now – Kanye West has lately been saying stuff like slavery was a “choice”, that President Trump is his “brother”, that they share the same “dragon energy”. He has taken to wearing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hat and repeating Fox News talking points.

But why take Kanye West seriously? He is just an entertainer. He is not even up on the news: he just found out about Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban. It has been in the news for over a year.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is part of the Black thinking class, who is paid (by White people) for having really deep thoughts, says that what Kanye West says matters profoundly.

The drum: Coates quotes Zora Neale Hurston (kind of a requirement) about when Blacks were brought from Africa as slaves:

“They tore away his clothes so that Cuffy might bring nothing away, but Cuffy seized his drum and hid it in his skin under the skull bones. … So he laughed with cunning and said, ‘I, who am borne away, to become an orphan, carry my parents with me. For rhythm is she not my mother, and Drama is her man?’ So he groaned aloud in the ships and hid his drum and laughed.”

Coates:

“There is no separating the laughter from the groans, the drum from the slave ships, the tearing away of clothes, the being borne away, from the cunning need to hide all that made you human. And this is why the gift of black music, of black art, is unlike any other in America, because it is not simply a matter of singular talent, or even of tradition, or lineage, but of something more grand and monstrous.”

Michael Jackson and Kanye West were not just the best entertainers of their time – they were bearers of the drum that helped keep Black people human in a dehumanizing land.

Responsibility: So when Michael Jackson made his face whiter and whiter and when Kanye West wears Trump’s hat, it affects more than just their fans. It affects all Black people, like it or not, destroying them bit by bit on the inside. Far worse than what any White entertainer could do to White people as a whole.

Freedom: Kanye West claims the right to be a “free thinker”.

Coates:

“he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom – a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next; … a Confederate freedom, the freedom of John C. Calhoun, not the freedom of Harriet Tubman, which calls you to risk your own …”

Kanye West has chosen “collaboration” not resistance. Thus his “freedom”.

You can read Coates’ whole piece at The Atlantic.

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Kanye West
• Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Cornel West on Coates – Cornel West (no relation) last year argued that Coates himself has been co-opted by the Trump Era.
• Michael Jackson
• James Baldwin
• Donald Trump
• Fox News
• America Was Never Great
• internalized racism

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