Looking back at last years list, I realized that, to my surprise, people don’t actually listen to me because there are way too many things that need to go from last years list that still exist. Oh you know, things like: slacktivism, discussions in American politics that operate under the assumption of the neutral man’s burden, and those large hipster black framed glasses without prescription lenses (its insulting to glasses-wearers, really).

I should preface this years list by saying that it is obviously not meant to be comprehensive and that the list is not numbered in any particular order. The points are also of varying importance and I dont mean to suggest that hipster glasses are equally as annoying as hundreds of years of the white man being treated as the standard person of our society, in case that wasnt clear. With that said…

Things That Need to Go in 2011

1. When something is valuable, white men get to take it. Or, as Stephen Colbert puts it The Great White Wail

2. The coverage and reactions to Wikileaks, which essentially amount to “if you cant kill the message, kill the messenger” Whether it was Columbia threatening students that they will not get a government job if they talk about wikileaks on facebook or the media’s (lack of) coverage, everyone seemed to be up the governments ass this year

3. Prison economies helping to drive Arizona’s Immigration Law

4. The Bed Intruder Meme…It was uncomfortable and grotesque and in the influx of all these youtube videos parodying/using the original footage, i think people forgot what this story was originally about…an attempted rape. I appreciate the way Dodson took control of the meme (and made enough money off the BET performance [!!] to buy his family a new home) but the fact that someone saw the originial story and thought to themselves that this would make a great song/youtube video still deeply disturbs me. And Antoine Dodson halloween costumes definately need to go.

5. Islamophobia/People trying to start a national conversation about whether or not a mosque should be built!! America = land of religious tolerance tolerance of ignorance

6. On a similar note: Xenophobia/People trying to change the 14th amendment!! (you know, the one that says if you were born in the U.S., then youre a citizen)

7. Oil Spills… from the largest natural man made enviornmental disaster in the U.S. to the contining dammages oil companies are causing all around the world, 2010 was not a good year for the enviornnment

8. bedbugs

9. people pretending the recession is over

10. Liking your own comment/status on facebook

11. Making everything Sarah Palin does/says/tweets national news (yeah, i’m calling you out CNN)

12. “Sometimes I Forget you’re black“

13. Needing to remind people what the rules for the N-word are…

14. The serious lack of investigative journalism (with the exception of the awesomeness that is Al Jazeera, and the usually on point analysis of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert)

15. People changing history books as they see fit, and the crazy way in which a couple of conservatives on a Texas education board will effect history books throughout the country…

16. A year of catastrophe’s in Haiti, from the earthquake to the way aid for the earthquake was distributed to the cholera outbreak and contested election results

17. Congress failing at doing things and needing to be reminded by comedians of what they should actually be doing

18. Jeggings

19. Tea party craziness

20. George Bush explaining in his memoirs that his one regret of his presidency was that Kanye West didnt like him, calling the moment when Kanye said Bush didnt care about black people one of “the most disgusting moments of my presidency”

Things that can stay
1. Willow Smith’s Whip My Hair, Sesame Street’s I Love My Hair, and the inevitable remix

2. Wikileaks stirring shit up

3. Making words out of pop culture. For example, I actually lovee that Justin Beiber fans call themselves beliebers

4. Health care passed…it wasn’t really what we wanted, and there’s already a lot of pushback but it was a victory, right…? Dont Ask Dont Tell was repealed, yay for having rights we should’ve already had…

5. Appreciating being alone

6. The proliferation of awesome Young Adult literature

7. Nicki Minaj‘s verse in Monster

8. The signs people made at the rally to restore sanity/fear and I guess the call for the need for actual conversations about politics instead of yelling and calling people hitler can stay too

9. lists about lists

10. a possible cure for AIDS?!

Again, these lists are not comprehensive. I really could keep going but 20 and 10 are good list-y places to stop. Feel free to add your own and contest mine in the comments.

So as the new year commences, I toast to friends and allies, to those who fight with me and laugh with me at the absurdities of our world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsSWVH-FP6M&feature=related

watch the rest here

The episode delivered biting criticism of Obama, but also satirized the media coverage of Obama, the coverage of Jeremaih Wright, some of Obama’s supporters, some of Obama’s protestors (“Buck Ofama” reads one poster), and the campaign in general.

Some highlights from the episode:

• Reporter: Now that it looks like Obama is going to win, as a black african american negro, are you merely excited or are you extremely excited that evertything is going to change forever?

Huey: Eh.

Reporter (narrating): I felt my sphincter clinch and my scrotum contract in shock at his response

• The character thugnificent, who I am sure is inspired by DMX, seeing as he is basically quoted as saying the exact same thing about Obama. Also, the whole attention to rappers and politics reminds me of an incident with a certain rapper (*cough cough T-Pain cough cough)

• Thugnificient: I started looking into his political position and his policies and views and whatnot…he was talking about change and some shit, hopin for some shit, and i thought yeah, i mean all a n***** asking for is some hope. You can sit on your ass all day and hope. If you too lazy to hope, yous a lazy muthafucker, thats all I know
• The interview questions asking the characters why they are voting for Obama.

Robert Freeman: Well, I also support Obama because he’s against corporate bailouts”

Reporter: That is also not true

• Dick Riding Obama
• Reporter (narrating):  Here is the danger of too much hope. Skeptics are treated like blasphemers and indifference becomes equal to hate

I’d love to hear your opinions on the episode and the material it covered. What are your thoughts?

Tagged: Celebrities Say the Darndest Things, The Boondocks ]]> http://thatneedstogo.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/in-case-you-missed-it-the-boondocks-is-back-and-going-in-on-obeezy/feed/ 2 hnigatu http://thatneedstogo.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/shopping-while-black-sleeping-while-black-and-vandalism-2020-what-would-you-do-social-experiments/ http://thatneedstogo.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/shopping-while-black-sleeping-while-black-and-vandalism-2020-what-would-you-do-social-experiments/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 00:35:14 +0000 Heben Nigatu http://thatneedstogo.wordpress.com/?p=837 ]]> Ok so 20/20 is kind of annoying…but interesting stuff nonetheless:

Spoiler and my thoughts on the video after the jump…

The video depicts a US SWAT-like group of authority figures who are ruthlessly rounding up red-heads and sending them to remote camps where they are shot to death. Some of the most powerful images in the video include the shooting of a young child point blank in the head and the final scene in which a detainee is blown up – in slow motion.

Who exactly the red-heads are supposed to represent is unclear. The perpetrators however are not.  M.I.A. makes it perfectly clear that the perpetrators of violence are those with the guns and batons, spraying gun fire into a crowd of panicked and fleeing people, the ones harassing people as they share the intimate moments of their lives, the ones with the american flag stiched on to their sleeves.

If a message can be gleaned from this video, it lies in this shear visibility of such deadly violence . The victims could be anyone but the violence is consistent. The scene in which the detainees are shipped to the camp in a large truck reminded me of scenes from any movie about the holocaust. The sandy setting and the spraying of gun fire reminded me of imagery of the military violence in Iraq. The scene in which the detainees knealed down into the sand and had their hands on their heads reminded me of images of border patrol confrontations with immigrants. The red-heads, a group diverse in make-up but identifiable by this observable characterisitc, are blank slates for any group of oppressed or persecuted people, for any group who has declared ‘we shall have our day’. The red-heads in this video serve as any ‘other’ group that has been persecuted by the U.S.  The unflinching and consistent use of violence by these officers/soldiers/american authority figures makes a strong statement about the dehumanizing and disgusting nature of American violence, and provides a powerful reminder of the violence that underpins the American empire.

The Washington Post took on the video and had this to say:

Chris Richards: For an artist who has built her entire career by challenging our pop sensibilities, the hyper-graphic blood-and-guts approach seems both crass and far, far beneath her. Pains me to say it, but I think the song is whack, too.

Allison Stewart: I don’t doubt M.I.A.’s genuine sympathy for genocide victims, and I don’t discount the video’s powerful imagery. Good art certainly provokes, but there’s something about the whole exercise that seems insincere to me. It’s as if she’s saying: Look at all the terrible things you Americans do — and did I mention I have an album coming out?I’m sure she figured there was nothing wrong with pointing out the evils of genocide and selling some records at the same time, and maybe if her touch had been lighter, there wouldn’t have been. But the combination of self-righteousness and self-promotion sets my teeth on edge.

Sarah Godfrey: I can understand some of the fuss being made over the “Born Free” video, but this is what M.I.A. does (and what director Romain Gavras does). She’s all about shocking and provoking, and the video definitely succeeds on those fronts. I’m not quite cynical enough to think that M.I.A is just trying to create controversy to generate buzz for a new album — I really do think she’s trying to deliver a message here. And using graphic sex and violence to make some sort of a statement — heavy-handed and muddled though it may be — is definitely preferable to making a graphic music video that doesn’t make a statement at all.

Although I appreciate the powerful statement about American violence the M.I.A. seems to be making, I am still rather ambivalent to the whole video. I agree with Richards’ analysis that, “For an artist who has built her entire career by challenging our pop sensibilities, the hyper-graphic blood-and-guts approach seems both crass and far, far beneath her”. I also agree with Stewart’s analysis , “Look at all the terrible things you Americans do — and did I mention I have an album coming out?”. Godfrey also has a point when she explains that although it is a bit “heavy-handded and muddled” it is a video that certainly makes a statement.

The use of violence in this video engages in the same pop-culture sensationalism that has lead to our desensitization to such violent images in the first place, but at the same time, it engages with these violent images in a way that grabs our attention, in a way that says Hey you’re normally desensitized to these violent images but I am extra violent so you have to pay attention to me. Could she have made as effective a video about violence without using violence? Does seeing such grotesquely violent images only raise our desensitization and ability to be outraged at violent images? I am not sure I have the answers to these questions but it seems to me what the video is succesful at is forcing you to have a conversation about it. It’s a bit of self-righteousness and self-promotion, a bit of statement making and a bit of pop culturing (yeah, i just used it as a verb), a bit of art and a bit of politics, a bit of history and a bit of present, but most of all it is just a lot of violence.

What’re your thoughts on the video?

Australian Man Deemed Not Guilty Of Rape Due To “Consent” Implied By Skinny Jeans (Jezebel)

• Due to the fact that skinny jeans are apparently impossible to remove by just one person…the jury decided that the woman couldn’t have possibly have been raped, as skinny jeans aren’t the type of thing that can be taken off by force.

‘Oklahoma, what have you done?’ (CNN)

• The state of Oklahoma just decided, and by an appallingly high margin I might add, that a doctor is protected from being sued if he or she chooses not to tell a woman that the baby she is carrying has a birth defect.

Donald Trump Defends Arizona’s Immigration Law(CNN VIDEO/ Huff Post)

• KING: But do you favor stopping people on the street?

• TRUMP: What are you going to do? I mean, are you going to stop people to see if they’re supposed to be there? And personally as a citizen I wouldn’t mind, I really wouldn’t mind.

State Senator Looks At Topless Pics During Abortion Debate (Jezebel VIDEO)

• Just as Senator Dan Gelber, a Democrat, was saying, “I’m against this bill, because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida,” Sunshine State News service’s cameras caught Sen. Bennett looking at a photo of topless girls, and then watching a video of a dog shaking itself dry.

Fox’s Brian Kilmeade Questions Bomber’s Race (Daily Show VIDEO)

• “I was surprised that…right away they say he’s a 40ish year old white guy. To tell you the truth, im looking at that video…if they’re looking at the same video we’re looking at…I don’t know if theyre just placating to the public…that doesn’t look like a white guy”

Hate Group Lawyer Drafted Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law (Southern Poverty Law Center)

• Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was written by a lawyer at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. The law, a recipe for racial profiling, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.

BET Co-Founder Sheila Johnson Hates BET As Much As You Do (Fresh Xpres)

• Don’t even get me started,” says the 60-year-old Johnson. “I don’t watch it. I suggest to my kids [a twentysomething daughter and a college-age son] that they don’t watch it… I’m ashamed of it, if you want to know the truth.”…“I just really wish—and not just BET but a lot of television programming—that they would stop lowering the bar so far just so they can get eyeballs to the screen,” she says.

Ben Roethlisberger Is Not Tiger Woods, And Other Role-Model Matters (NPR)

• But if what this particular accuser and her friends say is true — honestly, even if most of what everybody seems to agree is true is true — then this isn’t about whether anybody “behaved.” You wouldn’t look at this guy and say, “Oh, behave.” It’s not about setting an example.

Racist Political Ad from Arkansas Targets South Asians (Reappropriate – w/VIDEO)

• fearmongerers who talk about outsourcing in a negative tone draw upon an “Us vs. Them” mentality that falls directly along racial lines. They evoke images of White Americans who are jobless while people of colour find jobs: it’s the same kind of mentality I see here in Arizona when it comes to claims that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from legal citizens.

Also, in case you missed it, Kobe Bryant is a model (LATimes Mag photo shoot)

No, I’m not talking about drugs, alcohol, or sex– I’m talking debate and discussion about Arizona’s controversial immigration law.

It’s extremely easy to label this new law as racist (partly because Arizona race relations between whites and hispanics is probably as tense as ever), but at the same time we need to consider all perspectives before forming solid judgments. So after watching some videos of John Stewart, Seth Meyers, and other comedians putting their two cent-punchlines into the illegal immigration uproar in Arizona I decided to watch some Fox News.

WARNING: This video may be painful for some of you… but there is a purpose behind watching this.

For those of you without the time or patience to watch that entire video, essentially Hannity accuses all the liberal activists (and even Obama himself) of having not actually read the Arizona bill. (What pissed me off the most here was that he actually expects us to believe that he read the entire 16-page bill full of legal jargon… please.) Hannity and his gal-pal Palin assert that the law explicity prohibits racial profiling by making it only lawful for police to check for citizenship papers if and only if the “alien” was committing a crime to begin with.

All sounds great on paper right? In theory, only the illegal immigrants committing crimes will be handed over to Border Police!

Except that, “lawful contact made by a law enforcement official” (to quote Arizona Senate Bill 1070, which, like Hannity, I did not read in its entirety but only the important initial clauses) includes misdemeanors: speeding on the highway, j-walking, loitering, you name it!

So on paper, the bill only affects a specific population of criminals in Arizona, but in practice, the bill affects many more. Courage Campaign reported the story of a hispanic California truck driver driving through Arizona who was pulled over (ostensibly for speeding) and arrested for not having his birth certificate. Arrested for speeding? That seems a little extreme. And it makes one wonder– would the highway patrolman have asked the truck driver for his birth certificate had he been white? Since it is up to the officer’s “reasonable suspicion” to ask for documentation, I would think not.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like racial profiling to me.

Of course, each officer is going through training in order to determine what DOES and what DOES NOT constitute “reasonable suspicion”, but

Imagine all the misdemeanors the average person commits a day that warrant “legal contact” from a police officer. Is this law really removing criminal illegal immigrants or simply weeding out an unwanted population?

The measure was signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to combat “Arizona’s porous borders” but does this bill do that? I would say it combats a symptom and not a cause, and not even very well at that. And of course, with the stricter legislation in Arizona, what effect will that have on illegal immigrant populations in neighboring states? Is this pushing the cause of Arizona into other places?

Okay, I’m done with my rambling. What are your guys’ two cents?

Arizona’s supporters of the state’s draconian new immigration law insist that it has nothing to do with race and isn’t meant to discriminate against certain ethnic communities. Their claims are undermined, however, by what else the state government is trying to do to target recent immigrants.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Arizona Department of Education “recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English”:

State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators. [...]

“This is just one more indication of the incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in the state,” said Bruce Merrill, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who conducts public-opinion research.

But many schools in the state still have a significant number of teachers who are native Spanish speakers. At one school, state auditors complained that teachers pronounced “words such as violet as ‘biolet,’ think as ‘tink’ and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.” The principal at that school acknowledged that teachers “should speak grammatically correct English” but said they shouldn’t be punished for having an accent.

Teachers that aren’t up to par “may take classes or other steps to improve their English,” and if they still aren’t fluent enough for the state, they will be fired or reassigned.

Adding insult to injury, the Arizona legislature passed a bill yesterday outlawing ethnic studies programs:

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

The measure is directed at the Tuscon Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department, which school officials say provides only “historical information” — not “ethnic chauvanism” as the state school superintendent has alleged. One state lawmaker tried to show how ridiculous the legislation is by proposing that schools be barred from teaching about 9/11 because it would result in hatred toward Arab-Americans; the measure failed.

MORE INFO:

Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency (Wall Street Journal)

Arizona Legislature Passes Bill Banning Ethnic Studies Programs (FOX News)

Arizona legislature bans ethnic-studies programs (Yahoo)

Arizona Ethnic Studies Classes Banned, Teachers With Accents Can No Longer Teach English (Huff Post)

Read the Ethnic Studies Ban Bill For Yourself (AZ leg)