Louis CK pissed me off.

Louis CK isn't really that funny to begin with. Not in my opinion. Dave Chappelle and Jim Jefferies kick his ass any day, anywhere. This video, however, isn't just "not funny" but its offensive and pisses me off. He blatantly exercises white privilege in order to justify using a word that signifies hundreds of years of oppression. CK takes this word and instead of finding a way to make a funny statement out of the inherent wrongness of the word and its historical backpack, he pulls a classic white move and tries to make it funny by telling people how to trivialize the word. White people HATE giving these words up, instead they find ways to "take the power out of them".

Racism and the Sons of Anarchy series.

This review is a discussion of the relevant topics in the blog article "How Sons of Anarchy Got Racism Right," from the blog Racialicious.

By “doing racism right,” Racialicious refers to the Sons of Anarchy’s depiction of biker gangs as they operate in the real world. That is, they are a violent, trashy, criminal organization that live by their own rules and some of those rules are antiquated traditions that are still followed merely because they have been before, and no one questions these things. When Juice is told that it is his birth cettificate that matters and not his father, one is also reminded of the ‘one drop’ problematic, where race becomes what Stuart Hall refers to as a floating signifier and not a real thing even determined by your more concrete racial categorization according to your parents.

Reflection #5

The Mohammad Shafia Honour Killing

            I’m going to go ahead and say from the get go that although I profess to makin an attempt to understand that cultures differing from mine have drastically different values and I don’t believe we need to ‘save women from the veil,’ honour killing is victim blaming at its worst. Whether it is for misogynist, religious, or just plain psychotic reasons, to understand the real cause is important but I can’t justify it in any sense.

To be fair in an analysis, however, one must ask a fairly impartial question. First I will outline briefly the concept of honour killings and explain the Shafia case. Second, I will pose and discuss the question: Were Mohammad Shafia’s wife and daughters victims of what Jiwani (2010) calls “death by culture”(p. 79) or simply killed by Mr. Shafia. The reason I ask that question is whether or not the blame should be put on Islam’s more unsavoury interpretations or an extremely disturbed man. Somewhere in the middle might fit for someone like myself, as I think that it takes a deranged mind to take religion that far. On the other hand, this is more shocking in Canada than it would be in Pakistan. So maybe the cultural context does matter.

Reflection #4

Commissioner Cowboy

            The reason for the title of this reflection is because I had the odd experience of working the evening ceremonies/dinner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the Trade/Metro Centre last weekend. I am a server there, and as a result I am often involved in events that I would never normally attend. I will not divulge and confidential information that I was present for, but one thing that stuck out more than any all weekend was the fact that the head commissioner wore a ten gallon cowboy hat and cowboy attire during the ceremonies. Despite the fact that the commission appears to have had a restorative effect on the people who attended, the issue at hand- which was the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples through forced assimilation- made itself more than felt to me when I saw the commissioner take to the stage dressed the way he was.

           

What the fuck is juice?

 

Food regimes are different for different racialized groups. White people in the U.S. have a much better chance to be granted access to better food than black people. This comedy sketch is one of Dave Chappelle's many satirical commentaries on racial inequality in the U.S. I think that he is not only the funniest man to ever live, he is also way better at making commentary on race, inequality, power and many other cultural criticisms in the form of comedy than people like, say, George Carlin was. As opposed to someone like Carlin, who was funny but still very sober and serious, Chappelle will have you in stitches but leave you thinking seriously about what he says after. 

I think one of the best parts is when he mentions the Sunny D commercial and how the black kid in the commercial is more interested in the purple stuff. Once again, this is quite funny, but this is a racial knowledge, a signifier that Chapelle identifies within a split second frame of a commercial. It is one that so many people can identify with in his audience, and show it by simply laughing and applauding. This is a comment on segregation and contemporary racism are both less apparent and more pervasive, that although a white person watching the commercial might not think the only black kid, the obligatory black kid, might be interested in the "drank" not because he likes it more but because he would have grown up drinking it. This is a result of colour blindness. Chappelle does a great job of white parody, something severely lacking in popular mainstream comedy. 

On the topic of "drank," as one may observe from the link above, it is not just a symbol of racialization, segregation and food regimes in a nutritional sense. Purple drank is also a drug, a homemade mixture that is both potent and potentially dangerous if done wrong. Segregation can also be reflected in one's access to intoxicants. Although it may not be the most popular or considered legitimate subject, the term "designer drug" did not come out of nowhere. Purple drank certainly is not high purity cocaine. It is a cheap way to get high/drunk and is used by people who don't have the money to buy good drugs and booze. It originates in the United States, and it becomes a symbol not only of racism but one that attracts racism by inviting the colonial white mind to say: "Look what they use to get intoxicated, how uncivilized".

ANTIFA

If anyone is interested, here is a link to find a bit out about ANTIFA; the link is to a Myspace page for an Eastern European branch called ANTIFA Wildeast. I studied ANTIFA for my thesis last year, using Frantz Fanon's "Concerning Violence" essay from The Wretched of the Earth for my theoretical perspective. To give everyone a bit of an idea of what I found and what ANTIFA is, here is the abstract from my thesis:

Abstract

Anti-Fascist Struggle in Russia: ANTIFA and the Fanonian ethic of violent resistance.

Matthew Hargrove

April 29, 2011

            Neo-Nazis are endemic in contemporary Russia. ANTIFA (Anti-Fascist Action) is a direct action anti-racist and anti-fascist movement that resists neo-Nazi occupation of the streets and minds of Russia. Positioned as an anti-colonial resistance to a neo-colonial problem, Frantz Fanon’s theory of violence is used to interpret the opinions on and experiences with violence that members of ANTIFA express. This paper is an empathetic analysis of secondary documents, including video, on the internet; all about or done by ANTIFA.

As a movement, Russian ANTIFA uses violence strategically as a method of resistance against the Russian neo-Nazi movement, which has created physically fortified forbidden quarters in the communities of Russia’s cities. ANTIFA is a unification of different sub-groups who advocate and utilize varying degrees of violence, but all sharing a common goal. Violence as a method of resistance is pursued as a strategy of empowering collective action, used in conjunction with varied peaceful activist strategies to create a unified and effective front against a visibly more numerous, well connected and powerful enemy. Violence is utilized by ANTIFA as a last resort in a situation where constitutional methods of resistance have failed, due to non-cooperation from the state.

Reflection #3

(From Maximum Rocknroll magazine):
Shenkin Punx -CD
Lot's of things really bother me about this band/CD. They are from Tel Aviv. That's in Israel. That's a religious state doing it's best to commit genocide against the indigenous population they have displaced/ are currently doing their best to crush. I spose on can't help where one is born. But then again, one has a duty, as a human, as a citizen of the world, to rise above such fate, right? I guess it's cool when a band sings in their "native" language. Even when that "native" language is a dead language, resuscitated to facilitate a colonial/settler state? If this was a white South African band, during the apartheid years, that did/said nothing about the situation they found themselves in, we'd be suspicious/critical et al, right? You benefit from apartheid; the onus is on