I do not get this routine from the Philadelphia Mummers parade. It seems to involve some people dressed as Native Americans and some as East Indians, a call center, a tepee and some commentary about outsourcing. It could, perhaps, be taken as a comedic statement. It could be taken as an appropriation cultures and a way to teach the kids involved stereotypes. Then again, comedy relies a lot on stereotypes.
My daughter came home from preschool with dots of blue paint on her forehead from an art project. As I looked at the dots, I thought of a diverse range of possible responses (beyond the obvious washing off of the paint):
I went with the last one, probably because we are getting ready to teach The Ramayana.
Vishnu in the human form of Rama in the Ramayana
Chantel Dubois
I watched Madagascar 3 with my daughter this week and as is my tendency, kept my eyes open for things to analyze. What struck me was the sufferings of the antagonist, Chantel DuBois, the animal control deputy chasing the animals across various continents. Not only is she presented as assuming the posture of a dog (thus being a female dog) as she sniffs the ground to track the animals, but she also is the only prominent single female character. Every other female character is (often literally) cuddly, fuzzy and paired with a male companion. The single, professional woman in a position of authority suffers much humiliation and violent treatment winding up crated up and shipped off to Madagascar. I doubt that this message is what the filmmakers intended; they likely were aiming for a modern Inspector Clouseau figure, but still the figure is troubling. On another level, I wonder why this figure bothers me where a male figure suffering a similar fate would not. I believe it is because of the history of violence against women, and the bias against strong, single women in realm the political and economic realm.
I know I over analyze film–that’s why my family does not let me go along on outings to the local cinema and I only offer commentary after the DVD makes it home– but I cannot help it. I will, however, stop before I author a screed on the presentation of Africa and the concept of “Afro-” culture in the film.”
In the last two days I have read two pieces that provide radically different views of government programs and their use by those in poverty. On the one hand there was a piece on Slate by Neil deMause which looked at the way Georgia has managed its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program so that few families enroll relative to the number of poor in the state. This piece clearly paints the state administrators as mean spirited and depriving potential clients of needed services. On the other hand Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times writes about families in Jackson, Kentucky pulling their children out of reading programs so they can continue to qualify as intellectually disabled and thus garner the family additional payments. This strategy does not need much analysis to be seen as a horrible way to exploit a program at the cost of children’s future.
Taking these two pieces together make me understand how hard it is to simplify and generalize about the issues involved here. Where I teach, at an independent school with a yearly tuition of $25,000 or so, the students in my class usually have no firsthand experience of being in poverty although they may have observed poverty as part of service learning opportunities. I often hear comments about the lives of the poor being easy because of government provided food, housing, and other benefits. I also hear complaints about the poor lacking the work ethic (undermined by government programs) to move up in society. The challenge comes in when I want to ask students to question those assumptions, but I do not want to error on the other side by painting a picture where all those in poverty are striving nobly against a hostile economic system. The challenge is to teach nuance–always a grand difficulty.
Soup Kitchen Line (Getty Images picture from Slate)
Taking the work out of altering photos by hand to add stereotypical racist features, there is now a Make Me Asian App.
According the promotional material:
“Have you ever wondered to present himself as a person of another nationality? You can imagine, for example, Chinese or Japanese? No? Then immediately take your phone and download it amazing Android-application called «Make me Asian».
This is just a fun app lets you indulge you and your friends! You can for a few seconds to make himself a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or any other Asians!”
Here is an example of what it does:
I would just say that this seems like a bad idea put together by someone with too much time on their hands and just enough tech savvy to be dangerous, but I am afraid that somewhere in the world there are some impressionable youth using this app to modify photos, laughing uproariously and not at all understanding the actual import of their actions.
(Also available from the same brain trust the Make Me Indian App.)
I have been teaching a unit on the atrocities in King Leopold’s Belgian Congo and my mind is full of stories of amputated hands, forced servitude, rubber quotas, taxation, whippings, and mass depopulation. So it was rather jarring to hear behind me this morning on our phonograph a happy voice sing, “So bongo, bongo, bongo, he don’t wanna leave the Congo.” It turns out that my daughter was listening to an old “Songs from the Jungle Book” record and the song was “Civilization” by Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman.
Curious as to what kind of indoctrination was involved here (and whether that record needed to mysteriously disappear), I looked up the lyrics. The song purports to present an indigenous Congolese perspective on civilization in which the speaker looks at the flaws of modern life and states that he would rather remain in the jungle with “my spears.”
On the one hand, it is not as bad as say Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” in that it is not singing an ode to the forced civilization of the indigenous peoples; instead, it is a critique of civilization at its flaws including in the end a reference to the atomic bomb. It also makes fun of the media images of Africa presented on the “newsreel.” On the other hand, it presents a picture of Africans as happy, innocent jungle dwellers while creating a false dichotomy between urban and suburban European/American life and unsophisticated jungle life. Meanwhile, on a larger, more problematic level, it is a song by non-African white people singing on behalf of Africans.
Given these facts I think the album will not be disappearing, but it will be properly deconstructed say ten years from now after an assigned reading of King Leopold’s Ghost.
Here is a clip of the song.
Here are the full lyrics.
Civilization Lyrics
by Bob Hilliard & Carl Sigman
Each morning, a missionary advertises neon sign
He tells the native population that civilization is fine
And three educated savages holler from a bamboo tree
That civilization is a thing for me to see
So bongo, bongo, bongo, I don’t wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, I’m so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go
Don’t want no bright lights, false teeth, doorbells, landlords, I make it clear
That no matter how they coax him, I’ll stay right here
I looked through a magazine the missionary’s wife concealed (Magazine? What happens?)
I see how people who are civilized bung you with automobile (You know you can get hurt that
way Daniel?)
At the movies they have got to pay many coconuts to see (What do they see, Darling?)
Uncivilized pictures that the newsreel takes of me
So bongo, bongo, bongo, he don’t wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, he’s so happy in the jungle, he refuse to go
Don’t want no penthouse, bathtub, streetcars, taxis, noise in my ear
So, no matter how they coax him, I’ll stay right here
They hurry like savages to get aboard an iron train
And though it’s smokey and it’s crowded, they’re too civilized to complain
When they’ve got two weeks vacation, they hurry to vacation ground (What do they do, Darling?)
They swim and they fish, but that’s what I do all year round
So bongo, bongo, bongo, I don’t wanna leave the Congo, oh no no no no no
Bingo, bangle, bungle, I’m so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go
Don’t want no jailhouse, shotgun, fish-hooks, golf clubs, I got my spears
So, no matter how they coax him, I’ll stay right here
They have things like the atom bomb, so I think I’ll stay where I “ahm”
Civilization, I’ll stay right here!
Staying home with my daughter today since school is cancelled, I watched her do her own dance steps to The Fresh Beat Band. I got to see her combine moves from ballet and tap and jazz class, hip hop breakdancing spins learned at preschool, gymnastics moves improvised using my knees as uneven bars, and choreography from the Fresh Beat Band Show–the song being played “Twist and Shout.”
Not only was it fun to watch, but to stretch things a bit it was great metaphor for the mixing of different cultures and traditions into one uniquely American expression. It was just like a Whitman poem but presented by an energetic preschooler.
The Fresh Beat Band–Kiddie pop but good for inspiring hybrid dancing
I live in the world of children’s Halloween costumes witch for the most part are fun and innocuous, so I had forgotten about all the possible bad, offensive, stereotypical costumes that adults have on occasion donned. That is until various blogs I follow started putting up preventative educational posts on costumes to avoid and how to gently inform the individual in blackface, or wearing a poncho and riding donkey, or sporting a sexy Indian princess costume that such cultural misappropriation is not right.
The best summary I have seen is a slideshow on The Root which goes over all sorts of arguments made in favor of insensitive costumes and refutes them.
The best immediate visual response to these costumes comes from a campaign by STARS (Students Teaching about Racism in Society) at Ohio University.
While up on politics and the diversity related implications of my daughter’s actions (what does it mean that she wants plain not colored Goldfish Crackers), I am oblivious to much pop culture. Thus I just heard about the Mindy Project (being one of the few people on earth who has never watched an episode of The Office). Now I actually have a show I actually have to check it out. My interest was piqued by this Totally Biased Web Exclusive with Hari Kondabolu: Mindy Kaling’s New Show. It’s great commentary but not really commentary on the show, more commentary on the increased number of Indians in the media. His take on Apu is particularly funny, bitter, and insightful.
Janelle Harris on Clutch writes a humorous, thoughtful piece on the African American names she encountered while substitute teaching.
Here is the crux of what she encountered:
“Taking attendance seemed like it would be the easiest part of my day. But I glanced at the list to discover that 65 percent of the names on it were a cryptic montage of dashes, accents marks and arbitrarily inserted capital letters. There was a La’ Niaheesa. There was a Devaughntay. There was a Quaymar. There was a Knakeya and a Khaneeka. There were consonant clusters that would tangle a linguist up and combinations that looked like they should be pronounced one way, but in actuality sounded completely different.”
In summary she reaches this conclusion:
“There are so many things I love about our people, not the least of which is our innovativeness. We’ll turn something mundane and dry into something fun and interesting, whether it’s food or music or, apparently, distinctive names for our offspring. But is there such a thing as too over the top when a child’s first name looks like a foreign language vocabulary word and they were, in fact, born to English-speaking parents? How creative is too creative in the pantheon of African-American nomenclature?”
I do not want to weigh in on the extent of creativity a group of people should or should not display, but what does interest me is her statement in the middle of the article.
“There are names that are distinctly Jewish and distinctly Latino and distinctly Asian but just like almost everything else, it’s a different standard for us.”
I think this observation is likely true, those who are hiring or otherwise choosing between candidates may accept and select applicants whose names are clearly Asian or Latino. I wonder what the reasons are. There is likely a constellation of issues involving race, class, and nationality involved.
The start of a names list, but these names do have very clear linguistic meanings unlike many Harris encountered
