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(04/17/08 2:12am)
American Idol” controversies continue, from a gay stripper to Jesus.\nI’m uneasy about “American Idol’s” recent singing-for-Christ theme nights. Two weeks ago, one contestant sang Dolly Parton’s “Travelin’ Thru” with the lyrics, “We’ve all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree, and when I’m born again you’re going to see a change in me ... Oh, sweet Jesus, if you’re out there, won’t you keep me close to you.” This one barely registered on my radar. After all, it’s country music, and Christian references are common in the genre.\nHowever, the next night of “Idol’s” featured performances made me raise an eyebrow. The Clark Brothers sang a countrified version of “This Little Light of Mine” followed by Dolly Parton’s performance of her newest single, “Jesus and Gravity.” The first song was merely annoying. I couldn’t take Dolly’s song seriously because the lyrics were too ridiculous for me to care. I shrugged off “American Idol for Christ, Part One.”\nBut last week during their fundraising event, “Idol Gives Back,” I found it much more difficult to ignore the Christian evangelism in “American Idol for Christ, Part Two.” First, Mariah Carey sang, “He said he’d never forsake you or leave you alone. Trust him ... Carry me home. Jesus!” Then for the grand finale, several Idol finalists sang a popular gospel song “Shout to the Lord.” The lyrics begin with “My Jesus, my savior, Lord there is none like you. All of my days, I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love.”\nSome Christian viewers were outraged because the performance replaced the word “Jesus” with “shepherd.” One wrote indignantly, “I realized that while ‘Idol’ may be giving back, ‘Idol’ producers also took away.” As if the word change somehow altered the meaning of the song. How many “shepherds” do you hear praised as “savior” and “lord?” Not to worry, Christian zealots – all eight finalists gave an encore performance the following night, and they put Jesus back into the lyrics.\nI do not wish to silence expression of faith, nor am I questioning the artists’ right to sing what they will. However, I am strongly questioning the judgment of “American Idol” producers.\nThe producers put the “Idol” contestants in an uncomfortable and unfair position. A non-Christian performer isn’t going to sit out for the performance and become “the ‘Idol’ who refused to sing about Jesus.” They are pressured into singing the praises of a mythical figure they might not embrace.\nThe producers also alienate viewers and institutionalize one faith over all others. When “Idol” demands that all contestants sing together for a benefit performance, then those voices no longer represent individual expression but instead become an institutionalized voice of the show – a voice that should not be evangelizing to a diverse audience of American viewers with a broad range of faith traditions.\nHopefully, “Idol” producers will keep Jesus off the stage this week. Let him watch from home and wish the gay stripper hadn’t been voted off.
(04/10/08 12:05am)
I’m a proud uncle of seven adorable nieces and nephews. Luckily, I see two of them regularly. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen four of them in more than 12 years. I’ve never met one.\nAfter I came out, my oldest sister and her husband called my sexuality a “cancer on society.” They decided that the rest of my family and I were dangerous, insidious influences that must be kept away from their five children in order to protect them against the “evil” life I lead. That’s a story for another column.\nToday, I tell a Tale of Two Nephews. The one I’ve never met and the one whose birth I had the honor of witnessing. The son of my estranged sister and the son of my close sister. A nephew taught to fear the world and a nephew taught to embrace it. One being shielded and “protected” from a loving family and one who is free to revel in the love of his grandparents and uncles.\nMy family receives sporadic reports on the boy I’ve never met and his siblings. The last letter simply stated that he was growing up to be “100 percent boy.” Based on the other updates we receive, it sounds like “100 percent boy” means he enjoys playing in the dirt and he likes baseball, football, trucks and girls.\nOn the other hand, I see my other nephew every chance I get and I receive frequent updates between visits. I recently received a batch of pictures of the boy I’ve known since the second he was born. One picture stood in stark contrast to my other nephew. In one photo he wore his sister’s pink Disney Princess shirt featuring Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The front of the shirt reads: “100% Princess.”\nMy “100 percent boy” nephew has learned that his masculinity is linked to rigid rules that constantly restrict who he’s allowed to be. These narrow boundaries will likely cause him anxiety and distress if anyone presumes he’s anything less than 100 percent “man.” Heaven forbid he develops an interest in baking or dancing, much less another boy.\nMy nephew with the “100% Princess” shirt is learning that there is not a definitively right way to be a man. His possible identities have not been severely constricted. He’s not as heavily persuaded by the illusion that being a boy means he must abide by a pre-existing set of rules and expectations, nor will he be prone to reject others because they don’t fit a narrow mold.\n“100 percent boy” conveys a limited understanding of the way our culture has constructed gender identity and expressions, and it betrays an underlying fear of how tenuous and unstable those constructions can be. “100% Princess” is a warm embrace of human freedom, love and acceptance.\nI feel sad for the nephew I’ve never met – and anyone else who holds so firmly to such confining and rigid illusions of identity.\nWe’d all do better to be 100 percent accepting and affirming, no matter how our social identities take shape.
(04/03/08 4:17am)
The mission of the International Olympic Committee is “to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace.” Unfortunately, this Olympic year, the IOC has a long way to go before it can stand proudly with a gold medal for serving humanity. With the Beijing Summer Olympics approaching, world leaders and Olympic officials remain silent on reported human rights abuses in China.\nWhat’s the matter with China? A U.S. State Department report calls China an authoritarian nation that denies its citizens basic human rights and freedoms. It tortures prisoners with electric shocks, beatings and other abuses. It severely restricts and harasses journalists and foreign aid workers. China has forcibly removed residents from their homes in order to prepare for the Olympics. China is under global scrutiny for violently squashing protests in Tibet.\nBut apparently the consensus among world powers is that human rights take a backseat to economics. China has thrown its economic weight around to dissuade governments and corporate sponsors from criticizing the Games. A public relations executive explained, “(Corporations have) already invested a lot of money and resources and they wish the Games will just proceed smoothly.”\nPresident Bush said he looks forward to attending the Games. France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner explained that, although it is “very nice to talk about human rights,” there are economic decisions that must be made “at the expense of human rights,” especially when dealing with “countries as important as China.” And Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao argues that “the Games should not be politicized.”\nHowever, it’s the mission of the Olympics to politicize sports – a mission the IOC has failed. The Fundamental Principles of the IOC call on the Olympics to “create a way of life based on ... respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” and promote “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” A primary goal of the Olympics is to “contribute to building a peaceful and better world” through sport, yet the IOC and participating nations stand nearly silent as violence and human rights abuses unfold in the Olympics host nation.\nIOC President Jacques Rogge said he doesn’t want to take action that “penalize(s) innocent athletes,” but what about the innocent citizens penalized by human rights violations? The Olympic mission demands that he take an interest in the people of China, too. Unlike Kouchner’s twisted view, there should never be decisions made at the expense of human rights. Turning a blind eye to problems in China for the sake of the temporary economic boosts grossly violates the spirit of sports and the Olympic mission.\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who urged President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies, gets it right: “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.”\nThe IOC and world leaders (particularly Bush) need to end their silence soon or risk an Olympics with nothing but tarnished gold.
(03/20/08 2:33am)
I have no doubt: Sen. Barack Obama needs to be the next president of the United States. He embodies a crucial reversal of the divisive, polarizing politics that most politicians have employed in the last few decades.\nThe current evidence of Obama’s ability to address the needs of all Americans surfaced when he delivered a major speech on race and politics in America. The speech came after a recent spate of race-related controversies that, in Obama’s words, “reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.”\nObama primarily responded to recent short excerpts from a “fiery sermon” by his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright that contained racially-charged and supposedly anti-American sentiments. But Obama refused to let this controversy set back his campaign. Instead, he beautifully turned it around into a profound moment on the inescapable and deeply-rooted impact of race in our lives.\nObama acknowledged the anger, frustrations and fears that people of color feel about the effects of more than two centuries of laws, policies and practices that established a racial hierarchy we haven’t overcome. Quoting William Faulkner, Obama said, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We have yet to fix problems of segregated, inferior education. Current generations face the effects of legalized discrimination over property ownership, loans, jobs and union memberships, which prevented black families from amassing wealth. And Obama acknowledged the often overlooked psychological costs of “shame and frustration” that come from not being able to provide for one’s family because of circumstances beyond one’s control.\nBut Obama also helps us see that America’s social and racial problems are not merely black issues. He acknowledges that many “working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.” They are “anxious about their futures” as jobs ship overseas and unemployment rises. He recognizes the feeling of resentment that, in a globally competitive market, someone else’s dreams seem to come at the expense of white Americans.\nObama knows we cannot simply wish away or condemn the anger and resentment from every racial perspective because those feelings “have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation.” Instead we must confront directly and discuss openly all the fears, anxieties and resentments that all Americans experience, problems where the complexity of race is unavoidably interwoven.\nObama’s hopeful, unifying message must not be dismissed or ignored. More than any other candidate, I’m convinced he has the perspective, knowledge and ability to pull Americans out of their “respective corners” in order to “come together and solve challenges” that affect every person in this country. A victory for Obama would decisively reject the divisive politics of political pundits and talk show hosts, culture war politicians and others who want to slice-and-dice the country into warring factions.\nNo candidate will solve every problem, but Obama will undoubtedly move us toward a “more perfect union.”
(03/06/08 1:54am)
This season on “American Idol,” the men will perform hits from the 1980s while giving nude lap dances to guys in the audience.\nWait. That’s my dream version of American Idol. But if it becomes reality it appears that one contestant already has a leg-up on his competition.\nThe Associated Press reported that American Idol contestant David Hernandez worked at Dick’s Cabaret, an Arizona strip club, for three years where he appeared fully nude and performed lap dances for the “mostly male” clientele. (Translation: it was a gay strip club.)\nAccording to the club owner, Hernandez “had the look and the type that people like, so he made pretty good money.” That’s good. In case the “Idol” producers boot him from the show, he’ll have a lucrative fall-back.\nHernandez left this personal factoid out of the “Things you’d be surprised to know about me” confessional segment during last week’s episode. Maybe he didn’t want to let America in on his little secret. Or maybe he knew the gay men in the audience wouldn’t be all that surprised. Most likely he was trying to hide a part of his identity he knew others would attack and condemn.\nLast season also featured a sex controversy when racy photos of “American Idol” screecher Antonella Barba surfaced on the Internet. Her scandal blew over and she remained in the competition. But in 2003 Frenchie Davis was disqualified from “Idol” when her pictures surfaced on an adult Web site.\nIt’s troubling that Hernandez, Barba and Davis all felt pressure to be secretive about their past ventures for fear of being discovered, punished and publicly shamed. Odds are they would have been much better off simply being upfront about their various expressions of sexuality from the start. But I won’t fault them. Other social pressures forced them into a sexual closet where they had to hide.\nThese repressive social forces are evident in the “scandal” that ensued upon discovery of Davis’s and Barba’s photos and now in the developing brouhaha over Hernandez’s gay strip club resume. (Sadly, I won’t be surprised if producers punish Hernandez and dismiss him from the show even before this column prints). Our culture has become increasingly sexualized in many ways, yet there are still strict rules and norms about supposedly acceptable expressions of sexuality. Stripping and public photos and any overt expression of homosexuality clearly violate the rules of sexual repression.\nBut there is nothing inherently shameful or wrong about expressing sexuality. It’s a natural part of humanity that we’ve all been wired to express in many wonderful (and quite honestly, fun) ways.\nI hope Hernandez survives the so-called controversy of natural expressions of human sexuality. If he does, I’d love to see him flaunt that sexuality to his advantage in an upcoming episode. My song recommendations: Madonna’s “Human Nature” or the Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons.” \nEven better: Tune in for Showtunes theme night. He could perform the show-stopping finale from “The Full Monty.”\nHe’d get my vote.
(02/28/08 3:42am)
Barack Obama’s speech-making ability garners as much attention as the candidate himself. He’s a masterful speaker who knows how to work a crowd, sell a message and evoke some fierce emotional and intellectual reactions.\nObama’s rhetoric rocketed to national glory at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His eloquent message of hope and unity in a divided Red and Blue America brought tears to my eyes. I was touched and inspired. I thought, “How soon can Barack run for president?!”\nFour years later, he’s neck-and-neck for the Democratic Presidential nomination, and I’m still captivated by his eloquence and persuasiveness in stump speeches, victory speeches and press appearances. But today, his fancy talk receives more negative than positive media attention in the thick of this presidential race.\nHis detractors want voters to believe he’s a quick-talking salesman, using words to manipulate and distract us. He’s labeled as all talk and no action. His words sound pretty, but they lead us away from real change. The Clinton campaign recently attacked Obama for running only on the strength of rhetoric and hollow promises. Sen. John McCain has vowed to keep Americans from being “deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change.”\nObama has also met charges of unoriginality and plagiarism because he has borrowed phrases from great speakers such as Martin Luther King Jr. Sen. Hillary Clinton lashed out at Obama in a recent debate: “If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words ... Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.” \nBut before Clinton speaks of originality, she needs a history lesson. Her attacks on Obama and his rhetoric are not original either. The criticism of Obama’s powerful and persuasive speech-making today traces back more than 2,500 years when thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle attacked the Sophists, teachers of rhetoric who instructed Greeks how to use language to persuade and convince in political arenas.\nThe skepticism of Obama’s rhetoric and the attacks on his language are as ill-founded today as they were in ancient Greece. Political change comes from language that first affects our hearts and minds.\nObama masterfully weaves borrowed and original ideas together in order to create new ways of thinking. His words help voters see the world from new perspectives and embrace new attitudes. His speeches invent new ways of confronting the world that lead to new ways to identify with one another and bridge differences, which in turn create new possibilities for and pathways to action. Obama’s rhetoric isn’t empty. It’s the very force that creates the attitudes, beliefs and conditions for change.\nMocking his critics with a deliberate grammatical error, Obama told a crowd in Ohio, “I make no apologies for being able to talk good.” Nor should he. His awareness of the power and possibilities of communication gives him an advantage that will hopefully land him in the White House.
(02/21/08 2:51am)
"I’m sorry” isn’t an easy thing to say, particularly when it’s decades overdue.\nThis month, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd historically and boldly apologized for a “great stain” on Australia’s “soul”: its treatment of Aboriginal people. He apologized for the “indignity and degradation,” the “pain, suffering and hurt” and “profound grief” that unjust government laws and policies inflicted on Aborigines, particularly the “Stolen Generations.” For decades the government removed indigenous children from their families, claiming it was “protecting” them, and placed them in harsh living conditions with poor education and frequent abuse.\nOnly a few nations have apologized for past atrocities and injustices. Canada apologized to its native people in 1998 for deprivation and mistreatment that led in part to unemployment, poverty and poor health conditions. South Africa apologized for apartheid in 1992 followed by years of public accountability through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.\nUnfortunately, the U.S. isn’t scrambling to follow these commendable examples.\nTo its credit, our government has offered a few apologies. It has demonstrated regret for the “grave injustice” of the “evacuation, relocation and internment” of Japanese Americans during World War II. It has recognized the “deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” And it has acknowledged the evils of the Tuskegee medical experiments, where poor black men were prevented from receiving medical treatment for syphilis without their knowledge or consent.\nThese public acknowledgments of injustice and inhumanity were important, but do you notice any glaring omissions? This country enacted laws and policies that forcibly removed native people from their land and exterminated them. The government upheld slavery and segregation for many years and passed laws that explicitly prevented black people from acquiring land, homes, education and other fundamental civil rights. Yet we refuse to utter a sincere “I’m sorry” for these glaring injustices whose effects live on today. And that’s a pity.\nA government apology is a largely symbolic gesture, yet it forces citizens to acknowledge the things we would prefer not to remember but must not forget. It makes us reflect on shameful times when we failed to uphold our ideals so that we can learn from the past, make amends and ensure we don’t repeat our mistakes. We’ll never learn anything if we turn our heads in silence.\nMost of us are several generations removed from slavery, segregation and native genocide. But we are guilty of living in a world shaped by those events, acting as if they are irrelevant today, and attempting to detach ourselves from the contemporary effects of those events. A public apology forces us to look directly at our past and confront its role in our present.\nMost of us are generally well-intentioned, compassionate people. We don’t like to acknowledge wrongdoing. We don’t want to confront our direct or indirect role in injustice. But in order to live up to its greatness, our country – all of us – must own up to those moments in which our brightness turned dark.\nI’m sorry it’s taking so long.
(02/14/08 3:30am)
Welcome to the most anticipated, dreaded, loved, feared and cherished day of the year. Call it Valentine’s Day, Singles Awareness Day, a “Hallmark Holiday” or simply Feb. 14, but everyone has an opinion about this blessed or cursed day.\nI believe our cultural ambivalence over Valentine’s Day results from our tendency to idealize relationships. We dream of perfect unions that meet all expectations and have no problems. We idealize love into an all-or-nothing affair, then we get frustrated when life doesn’t resemble the models we see in movies, music and Hallmark cards. Here’s how the cycle of love works (win a prize for naming every song and artist):\nIn new relationships, we see “a whole new world” from “a new fantastic point of view” with “no one to tell us ‘no’ or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming.” We celebrate the perfect person who became “my strength when I was weak,” “my voice when I couldn’t speak” and “my eyes when I couldn’t see,” the person who made me “everything I am, because you loved me.”\nIn moments of passion we excitedly suggest, “Let’s talk about sex” or “Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir?” Maybe we even get a little kinky: “I’m a slave 4 U.”\nIn moments of bliss, we swear, “I wanna love you forever ... 10,000 lifetimes together.” You’ll “always be my baby.” “This I promise you.”\nThen we fall short of perfection. We get “shot through the heart” and those we love are to blame – “You give love a bad name!” When love falls short of idealized standards (it always does) we quickly ask, “Will someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart?” “I loved you endlessly,” we lament, but “now it’s time to leave and make it alone ... Baby, bye, bye, bye!”\nWe remind ourselves, “I will survive!” “I’m a survivor. I’m not gonna give up. I’m not gonna stop, I’m gonna work harder.” But soon, we fall into the pits of despair, crying “All by myself! ... Don’t wanna be all by myself anymore!” So we once again wish, “Dreamlover come rescue me ... I need you so desperately.”\nI’ve been all over this cycle in my life. When I played straight in 5th grade, I made a Valentine’s bracelet for a girl who wasn’t my girlfriend. I got payback when my eighth-grade girlfriend got back together with her ex-boyfriend at the Valentine’s dance. More recently, I spent 10 years of Valentine’s Days wishing for a relationship with my now ex-boyfriend to work out. Unfortunately, dreaming of perfection distracted me from the hard work of making a relationship work.\nNow I’m lucky to be in a relationship with a man who graciously deals with my imperfections and baggage. We don’t strive for “perfection.” Instead, we work well together through bumps in life.\nThe perfect-to-tumultuous romance of love songs makes good music. But for me, embracing the imperfections of love makes this an “ideal” Valentine’s Day.
(01/31/08 4:02am)
President Bush delivered his final State of the Union Address Monday night, only to be met with the sounds of crickets chirping across the country. I got the sense that this final address was a complete non-event. With President Bush’s approval ratings hovering in the low 30s, polls suggest most Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Everyone (including Democrats and Republicans) is so swept away by the future presidential nominees that the annual State of the Union address felt like an afterthought. A senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore said, “Nothing he says is going to be important for anything that happens in the next 12 months.”\nI’d have felt interest if I thought President Bush would finally inject a dose of reality into the speech, but no such luck. It was just another demonstration of disconnect between him and the country. Nevertheless, in case you missed it, here are a few great moments of detachment from Dubya’s final report.\nHe called for Congress to reauthorize the infamous No Child Left Behind Act, of which he claimed: “Today no one can deny its results.” Of course he failed to clarify how we should define “results.” Would a result be training children how to pass standardized tests rather than think critically? Perhaps another one is cutting funding to schools that need it most – where classrooms are over crowded, resources are scarce, teachers receive poor compensation, and therefore children “fail?” Those are his results?\nPresident Bush also dedicated very little of his 53-minute speech to citizens’ growing concerns about the economy. Instead he referenced Iraq more times than ever. He chose to ignore the principal fears of his constituents and made one last ditch effort to divert attention and drum up support for unpopular, ill-conceived military aggression that in many ways has contributed to the current economic worries.\nAnd in a statement that harkened back to his once-celebrated promise to be a “uniter, not a divider,” he called for Congress and the presidential nominees to “show ,our fellow Americans, that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time.” Unfortunately, after President Bush’s abysmal demonstration of cooperation and unity in the last eight years, such admonitions appear empty. After terrorists attacked the country, Bush squandered the few months of proud, flag-waving national unity. He squandered the goodwill of nations that wanted to sympathize with our tragedy. He rejected bills that didn’t match his one-track vision. His demands for marriage amendments, abortion laws, stem-cell limitations and other socially-divisive politics continued the harmful culture wars that distract us from cooperating over the concerns that could actually strengthen our nation.\nTherefore, I offer my uplifting State of the Union address to you: We are T-minus 354 days and counting before the state of the union finally moves from troubled to hopeful.
(01/17/08 2:59am)
All the Democratic presidential candidates ever talk about is “change.” Who is the best change agent? Who will change politics? Who will bring positive change to our country? It’s enough to make me change the channel.\nOne thing seems almost certain: the Democrats will present a candidate who will significantly change the tragically limited presidential mold of “white” and “male.” Both Obama and Clinton assert the campaign isn’t about race or gender. But after 42 white men have led our country of “justice” and “equality” for almost 220 years, the candidates are foolish to deny that a long overdue breakthrough isn’t significant.\nDespite the talk of change, when it comes to issues of race and racism it seems Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama play traditional games – diversions, empty generalizations and silence.\nObama and Clinton spent a week sparring over Clinton’s supposed diss of Martin Luther King, Jr. Obama’s people claimed that Clinton downplayed Dr. King’s role in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while Clinton shot back that Obama distorted her remarks and injected unnecessary racial tension into the presidential contest. As if to insure no misunderstandings, Clinton has strongly affirmed her respect and admiration for Dr. King. “Each of us, no matter who we are or where we started from, is a beneficiary of Dr. King,” she said.\nObama has since conceded, “We share the same goals, ... we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights.” He added, “I think [the Clintons] care about the African American community ... and they want to see equal rights and equal justice in this country.”\nClinton offered her own olive branch, saying the racial tit-for-tat “does not reflect what is in our hearts” and that “when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity ... Senator Obama and I are on the same side.”\nAnd so the “racial tension” subsides with generic commitments to equality while the significant issues that continue to plague people of color in this country (not to mention women and all people living in poverty) go unmentioned. We hear about the candidates’ plans for Iraq, for education or health care (generally speaking), but not about the specific realities of racism in everyday life.\nForty-five years ago Dr. King spoke of “manacles of segregation,” “chains of discrimination,” and the “lonely island of poverty” in a “vast ocean of material prosperity.” Today, those conditions haven’t changed; they’re just harder to see. Yet, our political leaders create stirs over trivial misunderstandings rather than nooses in Jena, La., educational and health care disparities, income gaps, housing discrimination, and incarceration statistics that all alarmingly point out that the “bank of justice” Dr. King described still distributes bad checks to people in our country based on race.\nReal change would be candid truth about the continued shortcomings of our great country followed by action. Real change would be for all candidates to address the inequalities because they aren’t black issues or women’s issues, but United States issues – our issues.
(01/10/08 3:22am)
After seeing Disney’s recent live-action, animation blended fairy tale “Enchanted,” I felt anything but.\nDisney’s animated movies don’t always carry the most socially responsible messages for children, particularly for girls. From arguably racist depictions (a gang of hyenas with seemingly over-emphasized black and Hispanic accents in “The Lion King”), to sexist messages (the meek princess who won’t be truly happy until her prince arrives), to representations that reinforce unhealthy body images, Disney’s animated kingdom has plenty to criticize.\nGenerally I can temper the critique enough to enjoy the movie with a critical eye. But with “Enchanted,” I found myself more frustrated by the movie’s heterosexism than captivated by the movie’s magic. I realize our world still won’t accept a movie where Aladdin takes Prince Charming on a magic carpet ride or where Prince William and Prince Michael share true love’s kiss. I’m not holding my breath for Disney to be that progressive. Therefore, I tolerate animated love stories that don’t include gay or lesbian love interests.\nBut the premise behind this Disney film is that an evil queen (no, that doesn’t count as a gay theme) magically transports Princess Giselle from their animated kingdom to a faraway land – the real world of present day New York City. Giselle hopes for her prince to rescue her and take her back home, but she soon falls in love with a New Yorker and lives happily ever after in real life.\nCute idea. But here’s where the movie lost me. While the movie successfully captured much of the richness and diversity of 21st century Manhattan, nowhere did it even hint at the presence of a gay couple. In a movie about love in New York City in 2007, the directors couldn’t slip in a two second shot of a gay or lesbian couple? It’s as if we didn’t even exist.\nThe movie had an excellent opportunity to showcase a broad set of relationships. The movie’s big musical number “That’s How You Know” explains how you let someone know you love them. Princess Giselle sings and dances through Central Park with a chorus of couples including youthful newlyweds to octogenarians, Jewish couples, black couples, Asian couples, interracial couples. But not a single gay or lesbian couple joined the chorus of the love song as they sang and frolicked through the park. A tolerable omission in an animated, enchanted forest, but Central Park in 2007? And no queer folk in sight? Impossible.\nIf nothing else, it’s impossible to produce such a fabulous musical number without a few gays on the creative team. Surely the director could’ve slipped them into a frame. \nMomentary inclusion in a film seems like such a small hope that would have such a large impact. Unfortunately, the omission and erasure of gays and lesbians in movies about blind love renders our love invisible and keeps alive the attitude that our relationships are neither normal nor worthy of recognition.\nIf only this queen could magically transport those attitudes to another world.
(12/06/07 3:59am)
If we want to gauge current attitudes about gender and sexuality we need only to look in our junk e-mail folders.\nMy Gmail filtered 678 spam e-mails in the last 30 days, and over half promote increased penis size and improved sexual performance. Some subject lines keep the message simple: “Enlarge your penis up to four inches.” Most find fancier attention getters: “Add more male meat to your package!”\nBut the vast majority of the subject lines both reveal and construct sexist and heterosexist cultural attitudes.\nMany messages concoct a demeaning belief that women only need a big penis for ultimate happiness – from the simple and straightforward “Satisfy any woman” to the more creative forms: “All sweet flowers succumb to big rods” or “Don’t you know that girls yearn for big schlongs?” These messages degrade women as sex-crazed creatures with ravenous appetites for penises.\nThe sexist attitudes continue: “Cutest girls will go horny and wild when you pull out your new big python” and “As your dick gets larger, no woman will say ‘no.’” As if women have a mystical sixth-sense about penis size. Add a few inches and suddenly male crotches have a gravitational pull that women cannot escape? Shockingly, I’ve never witnessed this phenomenon.\nThese ads also cultivate heterosexist mindsets. Only straight relationships exist in the world of penis-size spam; the ads wipe gays and lesbians from existence. We’re left to assume that lesbians fall in line with all other penis-loving women, while gay men fade to irrelevance since penises only satisfy women. Unfortunately, the exclusion of gay men seems like a tremendous marketing oversight. A little market research with most gay men (and straight women) might suggest that 4 more inches on most guys would harm your sex life more than help it. I for one would probably turn and run away.\nThese ads damage male identity as well because they directly equate penis size to “true” manliness, masculinity, importance and self-worth. “True masculinity is impossible without a substantial volume of male meat.” “Large and in charge.” We’re left to believe that men are worthless unless they achieve imaginary, unattainable penis standards.\nThe messages breed permanent self-delusion and dissatisfaction, as they adopt belittling, mocking tones that create fears of marginal worth: “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped being a loser with a tiny penis?” Other e-mails promise unreachable immortality – “If you treat your filly as a goddess, why not become a God in her bedroom?”\nThe spam filter regularly keeps these attitudes out of my inbox. If only we could find a social filter with the same function. These messages reveal cultural attitudes that aren’t as conveniently deleted. Instead, these social attitudes circulate and get reconstructed throughout pop culture: in music, movies, sports, even everyday conversation. We’d do well to identify, resist and revise these beliefs that severely limit and restrict our full sexuality and gender expression. And our humanity.\nAs long as these (hetero)sexist mindsets spam our world, none of us will ever measure up.
(11/29/07 1:54am)
Straight guys are so gay.\nSports are stereotypically associated with straight males, even though we know plenty of sports enthusiasts and athletes who break that stereotype. It’s astounding how many people (both gay and straight) seem genuinely surprised when I “come out” as a wild college football, basketball, tennis and baseball fan – as if a gay guy couldn’t possibly enjoy competitive athletics.\nBut the supposedly “straight” world of sports is a little more flamboyant than we often admit. From “tight ends” to the “long ball” to “pitchers” and “catchers,” it’s easy to queer sports.\nIn isolation, all the penetration metaphors we apply to sports and sexual intercourse – drilling, nailing, pounding, plowing – aren’t necessarily queer. But in the context of men bumping up against each other they take on new meaning.\nA quarterback drills his tight end. On the next play, he nails his receiver down the field with a long one. The running back finds the hole and penetrates the defenders. A few plays later the quarterback is sacked, pounded from behind by a defensive back. In basketball, the point guard penetrates the lane and takes it to the hole. In baseball, the hitter drills it through the gap in left field.\nPhil Jackson, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, gets it. After a recent loss, Jackson said, “We call this a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ game because there’s so much penetration and kick-outs.” Unfortunately, he assigned a negative connotation to the penetration, and he was reprimanded by the league for his implicitly disparaging comments. Next time, a winning coach should celebrate all the man-on-man penetration his team achieved.\nPenetration metaphors aside, the butt-slapping, hand-checking, grabbing, groping and contortionist crotch-in-face dog piles on the court and the field make me raise a questioning eyebrow. It’s as if sport gives men an outlet to enjoy one another’s touch. Society is so homophobic that these poor men can only experience and take pleasure in physical closeness (even in a nonsexual way) under the guise of competitive athletics.\nThere’s also the drag queen in the middle of the field that no one wants to acknowledge: the “Cinderella” team. How perfectly gender-bending and queer. We celebrate an unexpectedly successful feel-good team through association with a stepdaughter who magically transforms into a beautiful princess and falls in love with a sexy prince. Never mind that a less romantic rags-to-riches story such as Oliver Twist might provide a better metaphor; the male sports world prefers the sequins, glitter and ball gowns of Cinderella.\nIn the end, it doesn’t matter how queer men’s sports appear. The point is that the supposedly solid line marking a boundary between two poles of sexuality is woollier than we treat it. Many straight men waste a significant amount of psychological energy guarding this socially constructed, imaginary boundary as they foolishly attempt to prove that they belong definitively on the so-called “normal” side of the wall.\nFace it, fellas, we can’t help but be a little queer. Relax and go watch men play with balls.
(11/15/07 5:00am)
LOS ANGELES -- Jerry Seinfeld turned more honey into money as his animated comedy "Bee Movie" buzzed to the top of the box office in its second weekend.\nThe DreamWorks-Paramount flick, which had debuted at No. 2 behind Universal's "American Gangster" the previous weekend, packed in family crowds to pull in $26 million, raising its total to $72.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.\n"American Gangster," starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, was a strong No. 2 with $24.3 million in sales, lifting its total to $80.7 million.\n"We don't often see a movie start out in the No. 2 position then move up to No. 1," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "It just shows how strong the word of mouth is on this movie and that families are really enjoying it."\nAdult audiences had put "American Gangster" ahead on Friday, but weekend matinee crowds lifted "Bee Movie" to the top spot. "Bee Movie" is positioned well for Thanksgiving next week, when children will be out of school.\n"This is terrific playing time for this movie," said Anne Globe, head of marketing for DreamWorks.\nTwo of Hollywood's biggest cultural icons — Santa Claus and Tom Cruise — had to settle for also-ran debuts.\nThe Warner Bros. family comedy "Fred Claus," with Vince Vaughn as the black-sheep brother of Santa (Paul Giamatti), opened at No. 3 with $19.2 million, on par with last November's $19.5 million debut of Tim Allen's holiday tale "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause."\nCruise's "Lions for Lambs," co-starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in a drama interlocking three stories in the war on terror, premiered at No. 4 with $6.7 million. The movie directed by Redford was the first release by the rejuvenated MGM banner United Artists since Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner took it over last year.\nCosting a modest $35 million to produce, "Lions for Lambs" was aimed at an older, thinking-person's audience compared to the crowds that turn out for Cruise's action movies. Just over two-thirds of the audience was 35 or older, according to MGM.\n"Older audiences don't necessarily come out the first weekend, so we're looking to get a very solid run all the way through the Thanksgiving holiday," said Clark Woods, MGM head of distribution.\nSummit Entertainment's "P2," starring Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols in a thriller about a woman trapped in a parking garage and terrorized by the attendant on Christmas Eve, opened at No. 8 with $2.2 million.\nJoel and Ethan Coen's crime tale "No Country for Old Men" got off to a great start in limited release, taking in $1.2 million in just 28 theaters for an average of $42,929 a cinema.\nBy comparison, "Fred Claus" averaged $5,336 in 3,603 theaters and "Lions for Lambs" did $3,029 in 2,215 cinemas.\n"No Country for Old Men," a Miramax release, is one of the year's most acclaimed films, starring Tommy Lee Jones as a weary Texas sheriff, Javier Bardem as a ruthless killer and Josh Brolin as a man on the run after making off with $2 million from a drug deal gone violently wrong.
(11/15/07 4:02am)
The “n-word” has experienced a turbulent year. New York City banned the word in February, and in July the NAACP held a public burial for the word complete with coffin and headstone in a Detroit cemetery. Now the word has been exiled from the nation’s second-largest city.\nLast Friday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution that symbolically banned the “n-word.” The nonbinding resolution calls on residents to stop using the slur “and to encourage all others whom they may encounter in their daily routine to cease from using the word as well.”\nIn order to ensure thorough enforcement, perhaps they should also encourage schools and libraries to burn all copies of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and encourage all teens to smash every hip-hop and rap album that includes any variant of the word. Good luck, Los Angeles.\nCity Councilman Bernard Parks proposed the measure partly because of recent situations carrying racial overtones and in order to bring attention to the anniversary of the Michael Richards incident. “We should celebrate that as an opportunity to bring attention to it,” Parks said.\nHowever, it’s counter-intuitive to abolish a word in order to call attention to a horrible encounter with it. Far from eliminating the effect of the-word-that-must-not-be-named, bans and fear of the word give it more power and control over us. Simply pretending the word does not exist will not destroy its power.\nThe Los Angeles City Council also called attention to the “trauma and violence” that the “n-word” produces. Councilmember Jan Perry said she was traumatized after hearing the “toxic” word directed at her many years ago. “It affected me so much psychologically that to this day, I remember the name and the place of the person who used that word,” Perry said. “Even 25, 30 years later, I still remember it like it happened Thursday.”\nUnfortunately, a symbolic ban won’t erase the trauma of past experiences. Nor will it abolish the word or prevent trauma from other words. Unless the Los Angeles City Council approves more resolutions, plenty of other inflammatory words are still fair game: “coon,” “spearchucker,” “tar baby,” not to mention “spic,” “gook,” “chink,” “kike” or “faggot.” We all know them, and city council resolutions won’t produce collective amnesia. For that matter, if we seriously wish to prevent painful experiences that cause psychological trauma, we ought to ban the word “stupid.” Plenty of parents and teachers hiss that destructive name at children each day and it arguably degrades and does as much psychological damage as any racial epithet could.\nI whole-heartedly agree the word “nigger” – among others – is destructive and damaging, but bans and moratoriums won’t eliminate its effect in our society. On the contrary, they might prevent educated conversations about the history and context of these words because they scare us away from serious dialogues about race and create paralyzing fear about saying the wrong thing, especially for white folks.\nLos Angeles has merely applied an ineffective “banned”-aid to a deep social wound that requires much more serious, careful treatment.
(11/15/07 4:02am)
The “n-word” has experienced a turbulent year. New York City banned the word in February, and in July the NAACP held a public burial for the word complete with coffin and headstone in a Detroit cemetery. Now the word has been exiled from the nation’s second-largest city.\nLast Friday, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a resolution that symbolically banned the “n-word.” The nonbinding resolution calls on residents to stop using the slur “and to encourage all others whom they may encounter in their daily routine to cease from using the word as well.”\nIn order to ensure thorough enforcement, perhaps they should also encourage schools and libraries to burn all copies of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and encourage all teens to smash every hip-hop and rap album that includes any variant of the word. Good luck, Los Angeles.\nCity Councilman Bernard Parks proposed the measure partly because of recent situations carrying racial overtones and in order to bring attention to the anniversary of the Michael Richards incident. “We should celebrate that as an opportunity to bring attention to it,” Parks said.\nHowever, it’s counter-intuitive to abolish a word in order to call attention to a horrible encounter with it. Far from eliminating the effect of the-word-that-must-not-be-named, bans and fear of the word give it more power and control over us. Simply pretending the word does not exist will not destroy its power.\nThe Los Angeles City Council also called attention to the “trauma and violence” that the “n-word” produces. Councilmember Jan Perry said she was traumatized after hearing the “toxic” word directed at her many years ago. “It affected me so much psychologically that to this day, I remember the name and the place of the person who used that word,” Perry said. “Even 25, 30 years later, I still remember it like it happened Thursday.”\nUnfortunately, a symbolic ban won’t erase the trauma of past experiences. Nor will it abolish the word or prevent trauma from other words. Unless the Los Angeles City Council approves more resolutions, plenty of other inflammatory words are still fair game: “coon,” “spearchucker,” “tar baby,” not to mention “spic,” “gook,” “chink,” “kike” or “faggot.” We all know them, and city council resolutions won’t produce collective amnesia. For that matter, if we seriously wish to prevent painful experiences that cause psychological trauma, we ought to ban the word “stupid.” Plenty of parents and teachers hiss that destructive name at children each day and it arguably degrades and does as much psychological damage as any racial epithet could.\nI whole-heartedly agree the word “nigger” – among others – is destructive and damaging, but bans and moratoriums won’t eliminate its effect in our society. On the contrary, they might prevent educated conversations about the history and context of these words because they scare us away from serious dialogues about race and create paralyzing fear about saying the wrong thing, especially for white folks.\nLos Angeles has merely applied an ineffective “banned”-aid to a deep social wound that requires much more serious, careful treatment.
(11/08/07 12:39am)
Each year after Halloween, controversy erupts over some poor fool’s limited judgment and social consciousness in selecting a racially-charged costume. Consider some recent unfortunate Halloween costume tricks:\nSix football players from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., sparked campus-wide controversy and discussion after putting on blackface and body paint in order to portray African tribesmen.\nAt the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four white kids donned blackface to portray the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie “Cool Runnings.”\nAt a Halloween party and government fundraiser in Washington, D.C., hosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a guest sported a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and makeup to darken his skin.\nI’m sure these folks thought they were oh-so-clever, original and harmless. That is evident in their reactions to criticism of their costumes. The typical dismissals go something like this: “We didn’t mean to offend anyone,” “It was just a costume” and “This costume isn’t racist, so don’t make such a big deal about it.”\nThe peculiar thing is that most of us would agree it’s a bad idea to dress up in a white sheet, pointy white hood and carry a noose for Halloween. It would also be ill-advised to don a Hitler-esque mustache and parade around wearing swastikas. Why? Because we know these performances will undoubtedly invoke horrible historical baggage.\nToo bad we have such an anemic understanding of the history of race. These blackface folks could’ve used a history lesson before applying their makeup.\nIn the early 1800s, slaves gathered in the evenings to sing, laugh and dance – a way to stay sane and survive in the face of oppressive conditions. Slave owners used to mimic these “plantation shows” by rubbing burnt cork on their faces and mocking their “property” in order to further ridicule and dehumanize their slaves.\nWhen slavery ended, these popular blackface minstrel shows continued, and white folks continued to use the performances to perpetuate destructive, damaging and degrading caricatures of blacks as bumbling, lazy, foolish, over-sexualized buffoons. These racist images carried into the mid-1900s through the popular radio and television show “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The caricatures also appeared in places such as the popular Merrie Melodies cartoons, thereby indoctrinating children with these dehumanizing messages.\nLike it or not, this baggage comes along with blackface. When white people decide to darken their skin and play black, they have to accept the racist ideologies linked to that performance – no matter how much they protest that they “didn’t mean to offend anyone.” The fact that so many white folks don’t know this history and seem surprised when blackface creates controversy is a sad comment on how little we know about the history of racism and its lingering presence in U.S. culture.\nWhite folks have the freedom to put on any costume they like, as long as they’re prepared to take responsibility for their ignorance and accept the reactions. But we cannot dismiss and erase history when it’s convenient for our entertainment.\nThat’s the scariest Halloween trick I can imagine.
(11/08/07 12:39am)
Each year after Halloween, controversy erupts over some poor fool’s limited judgment and social consciousness in selecting a racially-charged costume. Consider some recent unfortunate Halloween costume tricks:\nSix football players from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., sparked campus-wide controversy and discussion after putting on blackface and body paint in order to portray African tribesmen.\nAt the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, four white kids donned blackface to portray the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie “Cool Runnings.”\nAt a Halloween party and government fundraiser in Washington, D.C., hosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a guest sported a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and makeup to darken his skin.\nI’m sure these folks thought they were oh-so-clever, original and harmless. That is evident in their reactions to criticism of their costumes. The typical dismissals go something like this: “We didn’t mean to offend anyone,” “It was just a costume” and “This costume isn’t racist, so don’t make such a big deal about it.”\nThe peculiar thing is that most of us would agree it’s a bad idea to dress up in a white sheet, pointy white hood and carry a noose for Halloween. It would also be ill-advised to don a Hitler-esque mustache and parade around wearing swastikas. Why? Because we know these performances will undoubtedly invoke horrible historical baggage.\nToo bad we have such an anemic understanding of the history of race. These blackface folks could’ve used a history lesson before applying their makeup.\nIn the early 1800s, slaves gathered in the evenings to sing, laugh and dance – a way to stay sane and survive in the face of oppressive conditions. Slave owners used to mimic these “plantation shows” by rubbing burnt cork on their faces and mocking their “property” in order to further ridicule and dehumanize their slaves.\nWhen slavery ended, these popular blackface minstrel shows continued, and white folks continued to use the performances to perpetuate destructive, damaging and degrading caricatures of blacks as bumbling, lazy, foolish, over-sexualized buffoons. These racist images carried into the mid-1900s through the popular radio and television show “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” The caricatures also appeared in places such as the popular Merrie Melodies cartoons, thereby indoctrinating children with these dehumanizing messages.\nLike it or not, this baggage comes along with blackface. When white people decide to darken their skin and play black, they have to accept the racist ideologies linked to that performance – no matter how much they protest that they “didn’t mean to offend anyone.” The fact that so many white folks don’t know this history and seem surprised when blackface creates controversy is a sad comment on how little we know about the history of racism and its lingering presence in U.S. culture.\nWhite folks have the freedom to put on any costume they like, as long as they’re prepared to take responsibility for their ignorance and accept the reactions. But we cannot dismiss and erase history when it’s convenient for our entertainment.\nThat’s the scariest Halloween trick I can imagine.
(10/31/07 11:24pm)
When the largest lawyer’s organization questions the justness of the justice system, we’ve got a problem.\nOn Monday, the American Bar Association called for a nationwide freeze on executions. A three-year review of capital punishment in eight states, including Indiana, revealed serious problems in the justice system that compromise fairness and accuracy in cases involving the death penalty. The study examined 12 factors, including collection and preservation of DNA evidence, interrogation procedures, crime lab conditions, jury selection and instruction, availability and quality of defense services and racial disparities in capital punishment.\nStephon Hanlon, the chair of the ABA committee that conducted the review said, “After carefully studying the way states across the spectrum handle executions, it has become crystal clear that the process is deeply flawed.” With regards to capital punishment, he described our justice system as “rife with irregularity.”\nThe flaws and irregularities include misidentification by eyewitnesses and under-funded crime labs that don’t require accreditation. DNA evidence is occasionally mishandled or discarded. Most states in the review failed to provide written jury instructions or thorough explanation of sentencing options and guidelines. And all states in the study demonstrated significant racial disparities in capital punishment sentences while little, if anything, was being done to investigate or correct the gross disparities.\nUnfortunately, the ABA refuses to take a position on capital punishment, calling only for a freeze on executions while states review their capital punishment procedures. If the evidence of serious flaws in capital punishment isn’t enough to stop executions, then we have a serious moral crisis on our hands. We can’t simply sit back and be cool with the real possibility that a few innocent folks will be murdered by the state. That should throw up some blood-red ethical flags for all of us.\nThe state of Indiana has documented 91 executions since 1897, 19 since the death penalty was restored in Indiana in 1977. Some of those “executions” include mob lynching of blacks accused of sexual misconduct (which probably means a black man looked at a white woman the wrong way). I wonder how many other racially motivated lynchings don’t appear in the record books, even though justice was supposedly being served to innocent people.\nFor me, a moratorium doesn’t go far enough. Even with a hypothetically flawless system, the death penalty amounts to government-sanctioned slaying. It’s not justice but an animalistic impulse for revenge driven by a lynch-mob mentality. Tit-for-tat, murder-for-murder takes us further away from justice and puts us all on par with the mentality of those we seek to punish. This pure vindictiveness and ultimate revenge dehumanizes all of us.\nWe’ve cleaned up the messiness of mob-mentality justice, lynching and the public spectacle of bodies hanging from trees. Instead we have a biased justice system, supposedly “civilized” lethal injections and a secluded death row where those marked for payback are out-of-sight, out-of-mind.\nBut don’t be fooled by the new packaging – it’s the same murderous game that devalues human life. We need to stop playing.
(10/24/07 11:13pm)
Maybe racism is in white people’s genes.\nGeneticist and Nobel laureate James Watson of the famous DNA double-helix duo Watson and Francis Crick made waves worldwide, but not for his genetic genius. In an interview with London’s Sunday Times on Oct. 14, Watson explained that black people are not as intelligent as white people.\nWatson told the Times “there are many people of color who are very talented” but he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.” Perhaps attempting to sweeten his remarks, Watson said he hoped everyone was equal; unfortunately, he explained, “People who have to deal with black employees find this is not true.”\nWatson has been suspended from a longtime post as Chancellor at a prestigious research laboratory. His British book tour and appearance at the London Science Museum were cancelled because the museum believed that his comments had “gone beyond the point of acceptable debate.”\nHow many high-profile eruptions of racism does it take before we’re willing to acknowledge we have a problem? More specifically, how much racial rancor caused by white people will it take before white people realize that race and racism is our problem more than anyone else’s?\nMichael Richards and Don Imus made racist remarks and after briefly dogging them, the conversation became an indictment of the black community for using the word “nigger” and for demeaning portrayals of black women in music videos. These men’s mistakes were opportunities to take stock of white attitudes that remain hidden by the masks of polite civil society, but white people largely refused self-reflection and made it a black problem instead.\nIn Jena, La., white students hung nooses from a tree where black students sat the previous day; a white school board dismissed it as a prank. A school fight then broke out among six black students and a white student, and the white District Attorney brought second-degree murder charges against the black students and planned to try them as adults. An all-white jury took only three hours to convict the first black student. Despite obvious racial unrest and injustice, white people aren’t eager to use Jena as a case for self-reflection about how racism is white people’s problem.\nDon’t look to Watson to model this self-reflection. He was “mortified” by his comments and explained, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.” Watson acts baffled at how these words came from his mouth, as if an alien ventriloquist spoke through him. Like all white people, he has the privilege to dismiss and deny his racism.\nInstead, we’d all do better to acknowledge these racist beliefs and use these incidents to take stock of our problem. Until white people finally own and challenge the racial problems we created and keep alive, we’ll keep getting hit in the face with these ugly reminders of our complicity in this collective problem.