Also, here was my Halloween costume.

I'm a Hipster! I was appropriating the culture of people who appropriate other cultures. Oh, the irony... Wait, does this make me a real hipster by virtue? Mind is being blown right now. 

Alright, bed and actual work tomorrow!

Dogs.

To be honest, I was never a dog person before. However, after having spent so much time with Kaia and Skipper, I am in love. I want to roll around in dogs forever! I am also procrastinating so... whatever. Look at all the pictures of the dogs in my life! (I've lucked out because I get to be a dog aunt and it's the best because I don't think I'd be a great dog mom just yet).

Such handsome boys. I wish them and their owners were here right now. All a bunch of cuties.

Racist Costumes

So, it's Halloween, and I've been bombarded with images of racist costumes. Luckily, because I've been around grad students (who study critical race theory and hopefully get it), as well as anarchists, I haven't really seen any overtly racist costumes. I'm not saying that these folks are not outside of having racial prejudices, acts, or behaviours (because none of us are beyond that), it's just less likely that blatant stereotyping would happen within these communities (racism within these communities is much more covert than that). Anyway, more to the point, these costumes exist and are for sale all over the internet. If I went downtown, I'd probably see more than my fair share of these costumes. Not to mention, my friend once told me that at a summer camp at the University, the camp leaders decided to dress up as stereotypical Mexicans and 'Indians.' Really, these things are common practice and deemed acceptable, especially around Halloween when people can brush off these racist acts as "having fun," or "dressing up because everybody knows that it's not real..."

Why is dressing up as an "Indian" or a "Mexican" or a "geisha"racist? It's all the in the fun of Halloween, right?

Wrong.

In many ways, I find racist costumes to be worse than culturally appropriative acts. You're not just taking one thing (for example, a war bonnet) from another culture, you're trying to mimic an entire group's racial identity when you 'dress up' as them. These costumes are often borrowed from pre-set stereotypes about what another culture "looks like," how they dress, and how they act. What people fail to understand is that these stereotypes are not benign. They have real, material affects on people lives and their ability to move throughout the world. They both reinforce and are embedded in relationships and histories of power. The production of the stereotype is accompanied by the idea that we "know" the individuals that we're stereotyping and that we can classify them into groups that, in our observations, have common traits. Yet, this is done with little to no interaction with these individuals at a horizontal level. It is done through assumptions and prejudices about certain groups of people. It is done to produce identifiable traits of "Otherness," where, in many cases, "otherness" translates into "less than" and subordinate to ourselves. It's not just a matter of 'knowing' who they are (which, often robs people of their personhood because who they are becomes constructed as a single, monolithic image of the "Native" person, for example), but it allows people to define themselves (as being 'progressive' individuals with freedom of identity and choice), whereas folks who are stereotyped are pigeonholded into a static cariarcture (sp?) of the Western (and mostly white) imagination. In other words, not only does it reiterate the idea that white folks can be individuals (because nobody dresses up as 'normal' white folks), but that there's a common costume that you can wear to lump entire groups of people into their race.  Even further, dressing up as someone proves that you have an assumption about who they are and because your costume will most likely be recognized by other folks (through the various racial signifiers of otherness), you're reinforcing the potency of those stereotypes by repeating a common sign of that racialized individual. Even though the image is often constructed, through its repetition, the image, or the stereotype, often displaces the individual and they become nothing but the stereotype.

The production of the stereotype often has dire consequences. Black face and stereotypes about black people, for example, legitimized the institution of slavery. When black people were stereotyped as "animalistic," "simple," and "sexually loose," slavery became legitimized because black folks were not seen as people. Black women were raped by their white slave owners because they were stereotyped as being "sexually loose," and women, like Sartje Baartman were fetishized and put on display because it was believed that her "large bottom" reiterated the 'fact' that again, black women were sexually (and therefore morally loose and inhuman). Today, the stereotyping of women of colour as being sexually loose (and therefore, sexually available to white men), has created a culture in which women of colour are more often the targets of sexual assault and violence by white men. Because these stereotypes promote the belief that women of colour aren't 'real women' and are therefore not subject to the same standards of femininity as white women (this has dated back to 19thC conceptions of 'womanhood'), it has been deemed more acceptable to sexually exploit and abuse women of colour. Especially with the racial dynamic and the belief that white men are superior, wealthier, and less violent than men of colour (because, men of colour are apparently, the 'backwards patriarchs'), it is believed that women of colour desire to be sexually submissive to white men. They are thankful to have the kindness of white men, and are willing to do anything (i.e. fuck them) to be saved. This is where institutions like the sex tourist industry, racialized fetish porn, and the existence of the comfort women have been legitimized through ideology. I also shouldn't fail to mention that there is a disproportionate level of abuse that native women experience by white men (though, it is often more acceptable to talk about how Native men abuse native women). And lastly, the rape and conquering of women's bodies have consistently accompanied colonization (as both metaphor and display of the colonizer's power) - see Ann McClintock's Imperial Leather.

So, when you put on a racist costume (especially sexy 'ethnic' costumes like the sexy Asian girl costume), you're speaking back to histories of colonization and exploitation and you're reinforcing the ideologies that legitimize violent institutions that abuse and sexually exploit women of colour (though, racist costumes speak to a history of colonizing and othering people of colour in general). Whatever your intentions, by sexualizing a different ethnic group, you are saying that it's okay to fetishize certain groups of people and you're reaffirming that they are, in fact sexualized and consumable beings. You may think it's fun, funny, or even ironic, but you probably haven't experienced the effects of these stereotypes.

 I have.

I have been approached by men who've claimed that they have "yellow fever." I've heard jokes about Asian women saying things like, "me love you long time." I've had to second guess if a person really liked me, or if I was being exoticizied based on my race. I've felt scared not only because I was a woman, but because I am a woman of colour, that I would experience violence because of my race. I've felt trapped in an identity based on my race. And, to be honest, I'm probably a lot more privileged than other women in terms of having to suffer the effects of your actions and your reaffirmation of stereotypes.

If it doesn't hurt you, it's because you have privilege. You have no right to do things that hurt other people just because they don't hurt you. So please, reconsider before putting on a "Sexy Asian girl" costume, or a "Sexy Indian." It's not just offensive, it's dangerous.

This is not okay.

We played a round of "Songversations." Rowan had to write a song about Manarchists.

"Cozy"

Making food, baking things, playing folky music...taking pictures of them.

This pretty much sums up the week...

Alice St.

Managed to capture a smiling Adam.

Jeffrey Kisserear

Walking down Alice st.

buildings get destroyed.

Adam can destroy buildings with his mind.

Adam and Jeffrey look at decorative kale.

Watching ducks

Byron

Jeffrey and Rowan playing music and being cute.

Jeffrey

The Adam CATlock

Jeffrey, Bill, and Adam walking up Neeve.

Sushi lunch.

Coolest kids.

A side effect of watching The Room.

Adventures of an APOC distro.

Last week, I tabled at the London Anarchist Bookfair with my friend, Shabina. We named our distro, "Spit Vicious: An APOC distro," and sat beside our friends from Elm City infoshop (Adam is also an APOC). Anyway, we experienced somewhat typical reactions of white anarchists to an APOC distro and some unbelievable, almost surreal responses. The first thing that was interesting to me was seeing all the dreaded/ folks with mohawks pick up the cultural appropriation and hairstyles zine. Shabina, Adam, and I watched as curious white folks with dreads picked up the zine and leafed through it. Most appeared somewhat intrigued initially, then, as they read through it, they developed an uncomfortable/slightly guilty expression, put the zine down and slowly backed away. We had maybe one really honest and self critical reaction to it. A woman with dreads approached us and admitted that she "probably needed to read this," because she had drunkenly got dreads and it didn't have political significance to her. Another said that she should probably read it, but that she had put so much time and effort into it and didn't want to shave her head. However, the most hilarious (but in the most horrible way) thing happened when a white punk picked up a zine on white anti-racism. He approached us and asked us how much the zines cost. We told him that they were pay what you can. Then he said, "I know it's ghetto, but I only have $0.98 in pennies... It's my crack change." I couldn't believe it and burst out laughing. He said this to three POC, at an APOC table, while buying a white anti-racist zine... The irony couldn't have been more palpable. I don't even think he noticed that we were just like "wtf. wtf." and didn't know if we should have been laughing or crying.

There was also a zine being distro-ed at the AW@L that I found inexcusably offensive on "segregationism," which basically used terms like "homosexism" and said that women's, trans, queer, and POC spaces were being reverse sexist or whatever, and had to confront a woman at the table and ask her if she had read it, and if she had not, why she was distro-ing it (because it pretty much undermined a lot of the other literature that they were distro-ing).

On a positive note, however, I'm becoming more aware of my tumblr famedom. The person who was tabling for Molotov Rag (I think his name was Karol) recognized me and told me that he followed me on tumblr. He then came to my table and bought a bunch of literature, which was cool.

Overall, despite somewhat typical shitty white privileged behaviours (though I had some really positive and good responses from some white people), I had a great experience distro-ing for the first time. Shabina and I are thinking of lots of projects (including nice APOC zines) and having a launch party. Let's hope this things pull through cause, I don't know, Shabina is cool and I feel a certain sense of comfort being able to do POC projects. More on POC stuff and APOC stuff because I had some good conversations with Adam this week. I feel like I have too many things to talk about however, and should do real school work now.

I cried over a boy again...

but not because he's a big d-bag this time, but because I like him and it's even scarier this way...

Bah.

I'm seventeen again.

Oh Hi, My Name is Cera. Where are you from?

Kind of speaking back to one of my previous posts, I get really awkward when I meet folks of colour (and more specifically, East Asian women). There's this instant need to locate some sort of affinity with this person (because for me, it's so special to see someone who looks like me). I want to know what their ethnic background is, where they're from, and if we'd be able to share some points of commonality. But then again, there's this hesitation to do those things because I know that even though there's a different dynamic at play, (i.e. I'm looking for affinity or sameness), some folks choose not to identify as a person of colour. They'd rather not be defined by their race (and though, I don't necessarily agree or like this position) it's not really my place to make them acknowledge that they're part of an oppressed group. Even if people are looking to find affinity with you, you're still being defined by your race. So, I get kind of awkward when I'm trying to befriend folks of colour (and do my best not to make any assumptions about them) and constantly try to negotiate how to build a friendship with them, or at least find a point in which we can talk about our culture. But mostly, I feel like I end up creeping people out with my awkward silences...  Like this morning, I met an East Asian woman at a vegan bake sale. We talked a lot about veganism, but I wanted to know how she felt being vegan with an East Asian family. So I kept alluding to how difficult it was with my family and my grandmother finally conceding to buying me tofu, and she talked about hers, but she never mentioned that there were cultural obstacles to not eating meat... (Which, I find difficult about going home to a Chinese family). So, I just kind of awkwardly lingered and tried to be reflective of the situation. We were talking about veganism. Why can't we identify as vegans? Why was I trying to force her to turn it into a cultural issue? Am I reproducing some form of ethnic tokenism? Things to think about.

Can People of Colour be Racist?

I'm posting this quote because I get super frustrated when folks derail many of my arguments about racism and claim that "people of colour can be racist too," without even listening to what I was really saying. I.e. "I'm not going to listen to stuff about white privilege etc., because everyone is different and we're all horizontally racist... and reverse racism...blah blah blah."

Here's a great quote from Beverly Daniel Tatum's, "Defining Racism: 'Can We Talk?'"

"Of course, people of any racial group can hold hateful attitudes and behave in racially discriminatory and bigoted ways. We can all cite examples of horrible hate crimes which have been perpetuated by people of color as well as Whites. Hateful behavior is hateful behavior no matter who does it. But when I am asked, “Can people of color be racist?” I reply, “The answer depends on your definition of racism.” If one defines racism as racial prejudice, the answer is yes. However, if one defines racism as a system of advantage based on race, the answer is no. People of color are not racist because they do not systemically benefit from racism. And equally important, there is no systematic cultural and institutional support or sanction for racial bigotry of people of color. In my view, reserving the term racist only for behaviors committed by Whites in the context of a White-dominated society is a way of acknowledging an ever-present power differential afforded Whites by the culture and institutions that make up the system of advantage and continue to reinforce notions of White superiority."

Tired of this.

Exhausted. I can't seem to be able to fall asleep anymore (even though I've been waking up at around 7 am in the last couple of days). Over-anxious about my MRP and feeling unable to bring myself to do the work that I need to get done (because I feel overwhelmed and distracted). Sigh. All I do is go through the points and potential arguments in my head (which perhaps, semi counts as work) and thinking about the other articles or books that I need to read (and then feel even more overwhelmed). It's kind of debilitating and I often end up just putting everything off for an extra day... and then another. I know that I somehow need to work through my anxiety over it, but how is the problem. It makes me sad because I feel like I'm not cut out for this anymore, but I know if I could just focus,  I could write great things.

On another side of things, I feel like I'm going through another emotionally draining process in which I have to confront a colleague's racist behaviour. Basically, what happened was that a student approached me and told me that her friend wanted to switch into my seminar because the TA, among other things, would single out women of colour to speak about issues pertaining to race in the course. She felt super uncomfortable watching this behaviour but didn't feel like she had the right to file a complaint because she was a witness to this happening (and is a white woman). I ended up sending an e-mail to the prof, but, because I heard from another student that this student said something, and because she didn't feel comfortable addressing the situation but used another excuse to leave the seminar, the complaint wasn't taken as seriously as perhaps needed. So, I ended up talking to the student and having the situation contextualized a bit more and realized that it was the same woman who once told people to "jump like Jamaicans" in a seminar presentation, and, as we were talking about racialized stereotypes in Disney one time, said, "yeah, in the movie, Up, there's like this kid who I think is Oriental... What do you think, Cera?" In some ways, I felt super awkward about coming to the prof again because it puts me in an extremely vulnerable position to go to a white male boss (though, I know he tries really hard and is super easy to talk to), and put myself in a position where I could potentially be invalidated and brushed off as oversensitive (which, has happened several times over the course of my years being a student so allowing myself to break the silence is still a huge thing for me despite my critical race and anti-oppression training and huge leaps and bounds that I've made to start speaking up). But, knowing that I've been in that place and knowing that if I were one of those first year POC students, I wouldn't speak up either, I felt compelled to go talk to him about it. And despite what people may think, I really appreciate when white students (who have privilege) take note and speak out against oppression (even when it doesn't affect them). It shouldn't always be the POC students brining these things up (especially when they've been constantly invalidated), so I'm glad she noticed it and spoke to someone about it. So, I explained this all to the Prof and he was very sympathetic and concerned, but the problem is dealing with it in an effective way. That means that I ended up volunteering to meet with him and the student to brainstorm solutions with him (which, takes extra time and an emotional toll on me).

When things like this get emotionally taxing, and when I notice the strain that it puts on Profs of colour (who often end up being the ones to deal with racism, or comfort students of colour), I get frustrated knowing that I wouldn't have to be constantly dealing with this if I were white.

Two days into my new blog...

And I already sound super angsty.
Goddamnit.
Angst-bot.

Home?

Spent most of the day printing zines for the Anarchist Bookfair in London while my dad's side of the family came up to do some apple picking. It was cute, my Aunt bought me a soybean chicken and also made a rice noodle dish with fake beef. I'm going to eat the soybean chicken for dinner while the rest of my family eats meaty things like turkey.

Kind of alluded to my mother that I may identify as an anarchist (though I'm still not sure if I even fully identify as an anarchist). I told her that I was printing off zines to bring them to a "radical" bookfair, but then added "well, actually it's an anarchist bookfair..." And she kind of made a face and said, "I'm anti-anarchists. I don't like all the violent things that they do." Then I tried to explain to her that insurrectionary anarchism isn't the only form of anarchism and that smashing windows never hurt anyone whereas the extreme right bombs abortion clinics, kills doctors, and starts  wars (but the media likes to sensationalize the radical left). And then I mumbled something about all governments being corrupt and de-centralized power, and, I don't know if she got it...

I guess over the past few days I've been thinking about how little my family actually knows me (and partly, I admit, is because I'm afraid they would reject me if they knew who I really was). I mean, yesterday, when I told my cousins that I'd be in London, I was extremely terrified of telling them that it was an "anarchist bookfair" because they think that I'm wing-nutty enough. Also, my mother confronted me and told me that my sister implied that I engaged in a "bad lifestyle" (doing drugs and engaging in promiscuous activities), which, is a grosse exaggeration. For my age, I'm a pretty tame person, but I guess, even  with the slightest of transgressions, I kind of get weird about and hide. I don't know...

I guess I'm just sad that I feel like I can't fully be myself around my family and wonder if I'm not giving them enough credit.  I don't know. Families are weird.

Currently listening to Yellow Rage. My blog name was taken from a line in this spoken word piece. I wish I could post a copy of "I'm A Woman, Not a Flava," but unfortunately, the copies on Youtube are not very good. I suppose I'm constantly searching for other people who can articulate some of the things that I feel or have felt as an Asian North American woman. You consistently occupy this weird, liminal space in which you are split between two places, two identities, but never feel whole or that you belong. I suppose this all sounds cliche (because, the living on the hyphen is a re-occuring them for diasporic folks of colour), but I don't know, I guess there's always been this part of me that has been inconsolably lonely and wonder if my life would have been different if I grew up in a more multicultural city where other folks of colour live. I suppose the multicultural metropolis has its fair share of own fair share of problems. But, even if folks were still as racist, I'd at least have other folks that I wouldn't have to explain everything to... Looks of sympathy and expressions of not knowing exactly what to say would be looks of empathy and understanding. I guess I just find myself listening to things like Yellow Rage and being like, "hell yeah, THIS, THIS is how I feel," and end up feeling both simultaneously validated and less alone, but at the same time extremely upset that I've spent my life being outside of these communities and  feeling isolated within communities where I'm the one person of colour that people interact with on a regular basis... And I'm not saying that I don't love and appreciate the white friends that I have and that they don't have my back or try their hardest to provide support and solidarity... it's just that some things cannot be articulated. At least, I haven't found best way to articulate these things to them (a la Yellow Rage).

Every time I see a person of colour (and especially an East Asian woman), I immediately want to know them. I want to know where they're from, their ethnicity, if they speak the same languages that were lost between my own generations. I wonder if I'm pulling the same exoticizing bullshit by being so fascinated with them, but then I realize that it's something else... It's not that I want to know them (in that weird colonizing way) and pigeonhold them into a category of "Other" (like white people do when they want to know "where you're from), it's that I'm looking for sameness. And then I feel shy and nine times out of ten, I'll look away.

Wordpress Fail

So, I tried creating a wordpress but, I never updated it. Here's to a second chance with blogspot? Mainly, I wanted to create a blog that contained all of my own original content and also provide a space to construct a more personal narrative. Expect the same ferocity as my tumblr but,  also don't be surprised if the level of silliness and personal angst increases.