Susan X Jane

Build Media Mind Muscles

Learning to think about media, or media literacy, is both fun and functional. Sure we live in a media saturated world, straight mainlining image and messages 24.7–but do you think about it? Do you ask yourself why are there 1000 channels and nothing on? Why is the news so bad at the news? What is the payoff to tastemakers to work so hard to manufacture our tastes? Thinking critically about the content we see and the conveyer belt that shoves images our way can help us make meaning out of the mush.

Media messages shape the way that we think about ourselves, our planet, and each other. The unreal world created by movies, TV and new media can define for us what is real, what is happening, who deserves the very best, and who deserves what they get. Big issues, like the definition and redefinition of race class and gender

the state of the planet and our responsibility in it

and even the line of right and wrong

are framed for us but the media that surrounds us.

You can combat the consequences of believing everything you see and hear by thinking about the media that surrounds you. Start to notice what media tells you about who’s who and ask if that lines up with the real wold we inhabit. Notice the way that music, images and words are combined to create stories–that may or may not be true. Watch the way one story can stand in for a whole group of people. Be aware of how media sells you some dangers while helping others hide in plain sight. Start small, but just think.

Here are a couple of sites that are finding interesting ways to get us to think about the media that we see every day and encourages us to explore that most critical of questions: why?

If we live in a country with nearly 40% people of color, why are the movies like another country? If you think they aren’t, try out Every Single Word. Actor and playwright Dylan Marron has edited down Hollywood films to only the words spoken by a person of color. You can check out some of of your favorite movies and–spoiler alert–it won’t take you long. Here my favorite, Noah. As you see the movie cut to include only utterances of people of color, I remind you this story is set in Turkey.

In the middle of summer nothing is more pleasurable than a dip in the deep blue. Just in time, the discovery channel gives us a one week dose of shark fear in Shark week programming. These shark horror stories along with sensational news reports of shark attacks highlighted in the news makes it seem like Jaws is hiding behind every wave.

But what if we thought of sharks as beautiful and majestic and mostly uninterested in eating people–which they are. VW gives you a chance to remix the shark-track and wha-la a kinder friendlier shark is just a few string instruments away.

Keep looking for ways small and big to think about the messages you see. Media literacy is a practice, and like knitting or running, the more you think about media, the more you’ll build your critical thinking, and free yourself from unnecessary shark nightmares!

Flying Underground

The confederate flag is slated to come down over the capitol of South Carolina–long overdue and worth the celebration. Public opinion was enflamed to this political movement by the terrorist attack at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, resulting in the death of 9 people. While the flag is coming down, the racist ideology that it represents won’t go in a museum, just underground.

In our 24/7 media saturated world, an event like the Charleston massacre takes over the airwaves, igniting public debate and sometimes–like with the flag–can result in a groundswell of movement that results in real change. Sometimes, like in the weeks after the Newtown massacre, the public pressure to create political change isn’t enough to overcome obstructionist policies and plays.

When we are done celebrating this latest victory, remember that the flag is gone from the capitol, but Dylann Roof has yet to be convicted of the terror attack, and the racist hate groups that radicalized him operate unabated. Just 2 days ago the prosecutor in Roof’s case reminded us he is innocent until proven guilty. I get that this is how the justice system goes, but it is a real reminder that in the furor over the flag little has been done to increase the accountability for domestic terrorists. This is not over.

Symbols play an important role in society, especially because we are an image based culture. Simply put–optics matter. At their heart, though, symbols are the visual representation of some object or idea. Here is a graphic called a semantic triangle that illustrates this:

In South Carolina, we can pull down the flag, but that has not actually destroyed the ideology of white supremacy that the flag represents. In the weeks since the debate over the flag began, there was a sharp spike in sales of confederate flags, and despite Nascar’s best effort to eradicate the flag at it’s latest race, their flag exchange program was a bust.

Dozens of articles and hours of information have painted a clear historical line from the white supremacist ideology in the civil war, through segregation, past burning crosses and leading into the still-active and quite deadly white supremacist groups that operate in America today. The flags innocent appearance in Lynard Skynard t-shirts and Dukes of Hazards episodes are not separate from the more nefarious incarnation of the flag–same flag, same southern pride. The politicians that resurrected the flag during segregation explicitly intentionally tied the symbol to southern pride in it’s tradition of segregation and slavery so that a million –sometime unwitting–voices would keep their message alive.

The wave of public pressure on this issue has come to wipe the flag off the pole.The flag is down, the referent is gone, but the ideology persists and there is not groundswell to address the real perpetrators. The internet hate machine, the very real domestic terrorist groups who have killed more Americans than ISIS, The kings of hate who cozy up to republicans. The flag is gone, but hate survives.

So celebrate this small victory in the summer sun, but don’t forget that there still lurks terror beneath. We’ve going to need more sustained public engagement. We’re going to have to admit that the most deadly terror attacks to Americans are perpetrated not by ISIS, but by US militia groups. We’re going to need a bigger boat.

What’s for Dinner? Racism Again?!

Fool me one time, shame on you…

Fool me twice….

Yup, that’s right, everybody’s favorite down home racist has done it again. despite being kicked off the food network for using the n-word, and having a heaping serving of her past unsavory racist comments exposed, this woman has learned nothing.

Deen posted this picture from the set of a new show she is shooting with the hashtag Transformation Tuesday–just in case you didn’t notice the brownface her son is wearing. this just a few years after loosing everything when her racist comments were exposed by a former employee.

What’s more, she tweeted out this photo from a set–meaning she is taping a show with her son in brownface. The first time, shame on her, but this time, viewers have supported Deen’s comeback, and that’s on you, Deen fans.

At what point to we acknowledge that she is willfully, knowingly doing this? Oh, I see we’ve passed that point. Paula, you are a racist.

No Coffee for You

Judy Mozes is the wife of Interior Minister Shalom and a TV personality in her own right. She is not a comedian. Stay in your lane, Judy

Obligatory ‘You’re Fired’ Themed Headline

It looks like NBC isn’t going to wait until primary season to dump the Trump. The network announced to day that it would be cutting all ties with the billionaire bombast, including Trumps once-bold-now-old reality show The Apprentice.

The Donald wasted no time before taking to the airwaves and blaming the break on political correctness. Trump released a statement today on Instagram which said in part “NBC is weak and like everybody else is trying to be politically correct…” showing that he is powerfully incorrect in his understanding of the current state of America.

Trump called Mexican immigrants rapists and murders. That’s not edgy commentary; he is stating this as fact, going so far as to double down in his statement this afternoon. The fact that NBC is cutting ties with Trump before the GOP which has some heavy lifting to do with Latino voters if they are to have any kind of shot in 2016.

Political correctness is a term so loaded as to lose any real meaning. Most often it is swung like a bat at women and people of color who asked to be spoken to with dignity and respect. The always implied idea is that those who want said respect are overreacting, need to get over it, are whining and bitching and basically ruining everyone else’s fun.

But we all pay–in one way or another–for the media messages we consume. We pay cable bills and cell providers, click ads and pay with our time or attention. Sometimes we pay with a vote for the messages we want to hear. Why would any group of people want to be insulted by choice and on their own dime? Why should any group allow themselves to be unfairly characterized just to bolster someones dogmatic campaign? You, Trump can say what you like, and the people have the right to tell you to go screw.

Latinos make up 17% of the American population. Other oft-dissed groups: women make up 50% of the population, African Americans at 12% , Asians at 7%–that all adds up to a lot of people. People want to see themselves reflected and represented in a way that is respectful. That’s not to say people can’t disagree, but slandering 55 million people isn’t respect.

As America grows into a country lush with diversity, our entertainment, political and social dialogue should reflect. Media celebrities complaining about political correctness are behind the curve. Plenty of smart edgy controversial people talk about identity, but the days of being able to be outright offensive without people calling you on your shit are over. This isn’t Mad Men, Trump, and you are no Don Draper. Connecting rape and murder to an entire race of people isn’t politically incorrect, its just incorrect.

Flags of the Fathers, Sins of the Sons

Saturday morning, activist Bree Newsome climbed a flagpole outside the South Carolina capitol building and took down the confederate flag capping a week of hot debate and fast movement towards removing the symbol of southern aggression from official state buildings. Sadly, the flag is flying over the capital yet again, reminding us that symbols are only as powerful–or weak–as the acceptance of the ideologies they represent. Removing the flags that celebrate America’s racist past will not eradicate the racist ideology that radicalized Dylan roof any more than removing a label from a can will vaporize what is inside.

Even as the President eulogizes the most recent victims of racism, the war rages on– arson, death and defense of the killer continue unchecked–and unexamined in the mainstream media. Instead, the flag has taken center stage in the discussion of the Charleston Massacre. A quick google trends search shows that the focus is squarely on the flag, not the victims, nor the ideology that sparked the killing.

You’ll recall the flag furor kicked up when killer Dylan Roof displayed one on his website. But while mainstream news has focused on the flag, the actual hate groups that pushed their racist filth on the internet, and whom Roof points to in his own radicalization continue to operate. The presidential candidates who have taken money from Council of Conservative Citizens and other racist hate groups get an easy pass for their support of the flag’s removal without addressing their own past ties to hate activists. There was no critical questioning of candidates ties to these group son the Sunday talk circuit, but plenty of flag not-waving.

Assuring us that there’s more than one hateful racist willing to perpetrate violence, six predominately black churches have burned in a string of arson stretching from Macon to Tallahassee. Ongoing investigations will identify perpetrators where they can, but the echo of the 1960’s replete with racially motivated murders and overt attacks on the black community via the black church sound in ears still ringing with this week’s gun shots. Mainstream media has all but ignored this string of violence in favor of the simply packaged story of the flag which looks to be moving toward a happy ending–audiences love a happy ending!

Two children lost their lives in the course of a police chase in Detroit–a chase that had been called off by commanders concerned about the danger to the public just moments before the deaths. Gunshots, rough rides and speeding vehicles all resulting in dead black bodies still happen daily, leaving the black community decimated emotionally, socially and politically. The flags that flies over Ferguson, baltimore and Detroit are all American, and the struggle for justice continues in all those cities.

Lets also not forget that Dylan Roof is not an old racist–he is a young racist, a millennial–from that generation that is supposed to mark the end of racism. The flag may be a worn out symbol, one long past its prime. Bu the perpetrator is merely 21–a man born in the heyday of hip Hop, and only 13 when Obama was elected–so squarely a member of new school racism, a racism proving just as deadly as old school. Racism won’t just die with the rise of the millennials–education is still key in stopping the spread of racism to yet another American generation.

The flag needs to come down. Removing this symbol from state grounds is important, yes, and long overdue. But more important than the flag is the ideology that the flag represents–that was what radicalized terrorist Dylann Roof and emboldened others to burn down churches or commit one of hundreds of thousands of hate crimes that happen each year.

Attacking the overt labels of racism is important. But we’re going to have to open our can of ~~worms~~ racism and deal with it if we are ever to reach a place free from racism and its violent devotees. Celebrate the small victories in this week filled with funerals, but stay conscious, stay activated and never settle for taking down the flags of the fathers without addressing the sins of their sons.

No Cape Needed

These days we can use a black superhero. Just in the knick of time–superheroes’ favorite time to arrive–climbing into the clouds to rescue us from the symbols of racist oppression comes Super-Bree!

Bree Newsome, filmmaker and activist did what people have been talking about doing all week. She climbed the pole behind the South Carolina State house and took the Confederate flag down. In a statement Newsome and other concerned citizens said:

Deciding to do what the SC Legislature has thus far neglected to do, the group took down the symbol of white supremacy that inspired the massacre, continued to fly at full mast in defiance of South Carolina’s grief, and flew in defiance of everyone working to actualize a more equitable Carolinian future.

Now that’s how you work a pole!

Why We Must Call The Charleston Shooting Terror

The story that we tell is the life that we live. Each word is a critical building block in what we come to regard as truth, a truth so massive and all encompassing that we have a hard time imaging the giants hands that build these cities of words. But we build them. We tell the story of America every day in a million voices, some soft, passed from mouth to ear while others squawk at us for hours across the airwaves. The loudest voice tell us what we believe, what we saw. The tell us what to know–with or without the facts. So it matters if we call the Charleston Church massacre terrorism–or not. Here’s why we should.

What we know is that on the evening of June 17th in one of the most historically significant black churches in Charleston, South Carolina, a room full of people came together in peaceful worship and prayer, welcoming into their midst without a second thought one who would, moments later, shoot nine people in cold blood. What we know is that the killer intentionally and with great malice and forethought chose to kill those people because they were black. What we know is he has made this clear with a manifesto of deep racial hate fed by the crop of white supremacy that is marked by segregation, feeds “bad” cops and grows inequality in all of our systems. Fact: this is an act motivated and expressing hate of black people, intended to inflict fear and terror.

Have no doubt that what happened in Charleston is an act of terrorism. According to who? How about the US department of defense:

The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

Or perhaps you prefer the FBI’s definition:

Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Still don’t believe me? Well neither did the FBI–they have yet to declare the attack terror, though the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into what they term a terror attack. It’s not just these agencies that disagree. In fact, there is ample debate in the mainstream media about what to call this act–hate crime? terrorism? Rising above the debate and cries of mourning–is the steady drumbeat of apologists: he was a quite boy. he was a good boy. this is a lone wolf. Don’t make this about race. Define racist. Define hate. Define humanity–and then we’ll decide if he violated yours.

Now it the time to push for crimes against black bodies rooted in racist ideology to be called terrorism. Far from purely academic, calling the Charleston shooting terrorism recognizes that this attack is one of a larger battle–one we are loathe to admit exists–against the ideology of white supremacy. A war on terror requires us to root out the very ideology at play–in this case the white supremacy that has been fueling violence across our country since its birth. Calling it terrorism requires us to use time, and money and human capital to cut off the legs of supremacist groups to stop them from spreading a net of propaganda to lure in the hateful and the violent.

Calling it terror means we won’t stop at prosecuting Roof, but we’ll also go after the organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens who helped radicalize him. We will be able to use the considerable resources of the FBI and the department of Homeland security to go after white supremacist radicalized hate as stridently as we go after radicalized islamic hate groups.

Calling it terrorism would keep presidential candidates from taking money from hate groups to assure political support free from the eyes of their constituency. This war on terror could cut off funding streams that fuel hate groups and their supporters. I’m looking at you Rick, Ted and Rand…and Mitt, in case you return.

Hate group campaign donation recipient Rick Santorum sitting next to activist DeRay McKesson. No,Rick, this does not absolve you.

Calling it terror will make clear to all Americans that a black man shot by a white man over ideology will receive the same justice as a white man killed by a muslim over ideology. Calling the Charleston massacre terror won’t politicize it–it will depoliticize our one-note approach to terror so we can finally begin to attack it. Assuming that all terror is committed by radicalized muslim extremists ignores that most victims of ideologically motivated hate crimes are victims of racial hate. And Blacks are more likely to be the victims of a hate crime than any other racial group.

Calling it terror requires us to remove the ideological roots of the hate–like recent calls for removing the rebel battle flag flying by law over the South Carolina state capital and removing it from official government items like the Texas license plate. Before we celebrate these most recent victories, the SCOTUS decision was 5-4 and the flag will only come down after 9 (more) deaths and (another round of) protest. We’ll have to be vigilant about being honest with the remains of racism that still permeate the symbolic life of America.

Roof’s manifesto–available on the internet in case any investigators had been tracking him–reveals a deep complex narrative of hatred for blacks, not one created by Roof alone, but one that is the heart of white supremacist ideology for hundreds of years. Have no doubt these statements are weaving the same old story that has sanctioned violence against blacks in this country since the days of the lash–a continuous story that says blacks are not human, that violence is required by those policing whiteness to keep black bodies in check. Refusing to call the attack terror and searching for mitigating factors to excuse the killer’s evil intent are salt in an already painful open wound. This resistance to recognizing and acknowledging this incident as terror is an indicator of white supremacy’s chilling effect on racial dialogue.

The fight against terrorism is a multibillion dollar effort in the United States and around the world waged with American tax dollars. But terror lives among us, too. If you believe black lives matter, if you want to live in a world where we can all truly be human, then it’s time to strap on your helmet and turn our resources and our minds to the terror at home. To acknowledge the violence perpetrated against a select group of humans doesn’t take away from our humanity–it ensures it. It ensures that we see where inequality exists so we can cut out the disease and begin to heal.

But Can Your Dads Do This?

In honor of Father’s Day I thought I’d share this endearing little ad from Nikon’s I Am Generation Image campaign starring two Dads, Kodale and Kaleb Lewis, whose story went viral when they posted a picture of them braiding their daughters’ hair. This short lets us spend a little time with this super cute–and very photogenic family.

Happy Father’s Day out there to all the dads–cute or not!

Pass To Power: The Truth About “Trans-Racial”

The news cycle giveth–and it taketh away. After days of international hubbub over ~~fake black~~ “trans-racial” Rachel Dolezal claiming that blackness is something one can choose to be, we see the powerful and very real consequences that still lie at the heart of race in America. In Charleston, South Carolina, 9 people were shot by a lone gunman as they attended a prayer circle. Officials and investigators are labeling it a hate crime. No one of those eight lost souls had the chance to stop a bullet and say they identified as white. None of those people had the right to self identify their way out of the hate.

It’s not a weave or a rap or a twerk that makes a person black. Race operates on multiple levels at the same time. We each experience race at the individual level: your own racial identity and your way of thinking and understanding race ; at the interpersonal level: in the interactions and relationships we have with others; at the institutional level: the schools, organizations, and churches we belong to; and at the ideological level: where the ideas that undergird these systems lives. While Dolezal has gotten us to talk about race at the individual level, what the crazy-talk about trans-racial ignores is the very real way that race operates on those other levels.

Before we get into the trans-racial take down, a word about words. Transracial is already a word used to describe an adoption process when members of one race adopt a bona fide member of another race, who remain that other race their whole life. Lots of TRAs are heated about their term being used incorrectly on this rare occasion when it is used in the mainstream media at all. There are tens of thousands of transracial adoptees in the US, many of us proving Dolezal wrong–you can have a white mother of a black adopted child. I know: I have one!

Why call Dolezal’s ask for a pass transracial? She’s trying to skate on the cool response that Caitlyn Jenner got just a couple weeks ago. Cue the meme! (BTW, note that they didn’t have to change Caitlyn’s cover to match Rachel’s face!)

It’s not just an image trade. A very real and complex conversation has popped up to answer the question if transgender is a thing, and race and gender are both constructs, then isn’t transracial a thing? My answer is an emphatic no, with a not now coda.

Race is not biologically assigned, true. Since it’s socially constructed, we could socially reconstruct or deconstruct it. Of course. Race hasn’t always been this way, so it can be something completely different at some point in the future. Yup. And if race is made up by people we can all change our mind and then we can be whatever race we want and tomorrow we’ll be post racial hooray! No, stop right there.

Even though race is socially constructed, it’s not constructed primarily at the individual level (remember those levels). An individual cannot make the decision alone to change the categories–otherwise the census form would be really really long. Like we said in part 1, even if we all wake up tomorrow trans-racial, race as a construct would need to be dismantled in our systems and institutions. We can’t agree on much politically–do you really think a referendum recatagorizing all Americans–including Mexican Americans, I’m looking at you Donald Trump–would stand a chance of passing? Not a Dolezal’s chance in hell.

But is someone feels–I mean really feels–like they are black, then why not? Hmm, notice there is no one saying that black people also have the right to change it up. In fact, blacks that were caught passing weren’t given a pass–they lost school and work opportunities , social status and in some cases suffered violence. If whites can become black and blacks cannot become white, then trans-racial is just the penultimate expression of white privilege–the privilege to choose black, and be rewarded.

Besides, how white do you have to go to be considered white? Lightened skin, straightened hair and white cultural moves might get you paid, but it doesn’t make you white. The costume of whiteness is all around us–and is a multibillion dollar industry. From 28 inch silky to skin whitening candy (for real) there are any number of products to kick you down Von Luschen’s chromatic scale, but none will give you entrance to whiteness.

The borders between black and white in this country are still strictly enforced. There benefits of whiteness are protected in big and small ways from the ballot box, to massive cultural hegemony in media. The consequences of blackness are enforced with a heavy hand: uneven sentencing laws, banking practices like redlining, not to mention the raw brutality of police killings of black men and women.

And now Charleston. People shot dead because they are black. Not because of a head of fake dreads or a particular shade. The killer didn’t check their black cards before unloading his weapon. He just shot them. Because they are black. And no amount of self-identification will bring them back. They do not have a choice. They didn’t have Dolezal’s choice.

To say that race is a choice indicates that people can choose. And if you are suffering, and you choose not to help yourself, well, then your problems become your fault. Like slaves that didn’t run away. Like blacks that were in the ‘wrong place’. Like Selma marchers. If race is a choice, then your oppression becomes your own doing. Entertaining that race–and all the consequences that come with it are a choice is offensive given the blood, sweat and tear-gas tears that have soaked our cities this year alone. Race is an actively enforced construct at this time in America, so the mutability of race at the individual level is trumped by strict enforcement in our political, economic and cultural spheres.

As long as blacks still suffer injustice and cruelty at the hands of white supremacy, transracial will remain an offense to people who care about the struggle to move past systems of oppression. Someday, will we all be able to trade race like we change hair? Maybe one day, in a lovely dream of a world. But the struggle is too real in the streets right now to entertain that.The theoretical conversation about what transracial could mean ignores the lived realities of race. So no to trans-race. Maybe not ‘no’ forever-f-or evea evea?–but definitely no for now.