[girltrouble]

i guess it all depends on context.

ricer. hmmmph!

yeah, here in the pacific rim-- riced out means it's got asian cool.

that said i am curious what boc think of some of the new 'racial commedians' like lisa lampenelli, sara silverman, carlos mencia, or even chris rock and going back a bit amy sedaris' strangers with candy, which dealt a lot with race and stereotypes...

[auralpoison]

See, now, being from middle America where young testosterone filled men fight over which is better, a Chevy or Ford pickup, "rice" is used as an insult. "Man, Jim Bob is drivin' him a motherfucking ricer. Damn Jap jobs." The same applies to good old, all American Harleys & import street bikes. Y'know, "buy Amurican."

I'd be interested in that book, too.

I can't remember who posted it, but I think it was one of our Texas Busties that talked about a guy in her dance class that made her feel really uncomfortable with his advances until she asked the teacher to speak with him. He had a "Japanese chicks are cool," sticker or some such on his bag & leered at her all the time.

I wigged on a friend of a friend for saying something like that. She was talking about how she just didn't think she could have sex with a black man. She thought it might be gross or something. She says this in front of TWO biracial women that were quite a bit smarter than her. I was like, "So I am the product of a union of grossness?"

[girltrouble]

*shudders from faerie's tale*

yeah, there is a huge difference between respectful admiration and making a group a personal fetish.

i've had a few gfs talk about the contrast in our skin colors and how beautiful it was when we were lying together. that's cool. i had a girlfriend who had the most beautiful goldenbrown skin, and i loved that about her. but that wasn't why i wanted to date her. yeah, i thought she was fawksy as fuck, but it was more that she was super smart, and stronger, funnier and more ambitious than me. but when you reduce someone as a racial/ethnic sex object, it's just gross, and i could never get why people couldn't see the difference.

that said, at the risk of making myself look like an ass, i wonder (faerie) what you would say about my constant crushes on cholas. i grew up around them and to me i just really love the asthetic. that style of makeup, and toughness is just very beautiful to me. i wouldn't date a chola if i didn't think she was the shit, but is it the same thing?

one thing that has always interested me is subcultures and subcultural slang. a few days ago a co-worker of mine (she's asian) gave me a ride home, someone pulled in front of her, and by reflex she said "what is this nigger doing?" now, i didn't mind cos i usually give 'brown kids' a kind of pass. she asked me later if she offended me (i'm black), and i said no. what bugged me was how weird it sounded coming out of her mouth. some people say it like they are comfortable with the word and other people-- well it just sounds like the are trying to be 'cool'. this sounded kind of like that. race is a weird beast here in seattle. it's very progressive like where i grew up, but like where i grew up, just below that progressiveness is a distrust of anyone not white. anyways, i know this girl has black asian latino friends, and we always joke about asian culture (i am obsessed with korean films+japanese subcultures, and she always introduces me to asian slang words. like last week i heard the phrase "riced out". she said, yeah, i think my car got jacked cos it was all riced out." meaning it looked like an tuner-- a suped up import that asians drive.

i call anyone who is not white a 'brown kid' which makes her laugh. for me it's a phrase of solidarity. to me it means that you have some experience of living in america as some sort of other. a shared experience if you are latino asian indian or black. i got the phrase from a girlfriend who was german and puerto rican. her best friend was black and korean, and they would talk about each other's cultures in racial terms. my gf would talk about how she had a puerto rican 'flat ass' and her best friend would say she had korean 'moon face'. i suppose i have 'tranny feet'. but there were also slang phrases. if there was an asian who was particularly assy, they would retort "whatever, asia minor!"
but then they were into odd slang. like a person who was annoying or boring was "potatoes all-rotten." but between them and their friends-- brown kids --race was something that was a fact and to be talked about playfully....


anarch, i am really interested in the book you were talking about. what's interesting is finding out that totally segregated states (like oklahoma at one point) were the center of black uplift and black self sufficency..... until oil was found and white people took back the land that years before was 'unusable'. sometimes i think segregation at one point was the best thing for black people-- when it wasn't under an apartheid system....

[faerietails]

One time I had to do group work for a (college) English class. We had two jackasses in our group, although one had the decency to know when to keep his mouth shut. I should've known the other one would turn out to be a total ass when he kept going on about how he "would totally do our teacher."

After our big presentation, the whole group decided to go out for drinks after class (there were about 8 of us). Dickhead went into this huge story about how he went down to south tx (where I'm originally from) and hit up a strip club with all his friends. This "beautiful white stripper" was all over him and he was totally into her, but after a while they got to talking and he found out that she was actually Mexican. (Let me just add that I am Mexican-American, and I'm brown, so there's no hiding that fact). So then he spun off into this whole spiel about how he would never "do her" because even though she was "fucking hot" and "looked 100% white," he would "never be caught dead fucking a Mexican" because it his white cock was too good to be tainted by that, or some shit along those lines. He said all this with a smile as he sat directly in front of me.

I didn't say anything (and neither did anyone else--including another Latino--in the group) because I was in total shock, then the moment passed as he went on to some other story. But looking back, I should have kicked his beautiful, untainted little white cock really, really hard. It was certainly within my little Mexican foot's reach since I was sitting across from him.

Ugh. What the hell is wrong with people?

[bustygirl]

A guy I dated once told me he only dates white girls because black girls don't suck dick.

We didn't date for long. He was kind of an idiot in many other ways.

I had a korean friend who was a lesbian (heh-she used to call herself a les-'Rean. She was hilarious.) and she used to get the 'yellow fever' stare from guys all the time. When they'd ask her if she was into white guys, she usually told them no, that she preferred black women. Of course, some of them thought that meant she wanted to let them watch. Pffft. Ordinary guys are so stupid.

[anarch]

auralpoison: He didn't understand why it was creepy at all.

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry says "I love Chinese women!" & spends the rest of the episode insisting that that's not racist because he's saying something nice. No clue that it's still pigeonholing.

girltrouble: because they figure no one else would want me

god. asshats.

Going back several posts to the topic of being "not black enough", I've recently read a book, American Apartheid , that blew my mind. Most of it's about historical & ongoing residential segregation that kept & keeps a majority of African-Americans from being able to move into areas with low crime, good schools, grocery stores with fresh food, non-predatory banks etc (& everything else you need to accumulate wealth that you can pass on to your kids & their kids, to ensure they get the best opportunities possible). (Girltrouble I think you posted something about predatory & discriminatory mortgage lending practices somewhere, but I can't remember where. Anyway, it ties in with this book)

But there's a bit where they talk about some of the ways that American "Black" culture became identified as Opposite to values that supposedly belonged mostly to middle-class Whites. You guys might find it interesting.

[auralpoison]

Anarch, I have a friend that's one of those guys. He is obsessed with all things Asian, but particularly Japanese women. We were hanging out one night & he declared that he was going to have a t shirt made that said, "I want a Japanese girlfriend." I assured that with that approach he wasn't going to get one because the women of most cultures don't tend to like to be fetishized. He didn't understand why it was creepy at all.

There are fewer things that turn me off more than a guy asking me about dating out of my own race. They don't usually start off in a friendly way, they go staright for the, "So, do you date white guys (etc.)?" Um, the ones that don't ask if I date white guys right off the bat.

[girltrouble]

i think i do the same thing lily. although my circomstances are a bit different. i have never fit into anyone's stereotype of being black, male/female or even transgender. but that's where i find my pride. don't get me wrong, i love black culture-- i love hip hop, i love queer culture too. but it's not me. i don't snap my fingers, and draw out the word 'girlfriend'. i know drag queens who do that. and that is fine. but i never felt comfortable doing it, because it's not me. so there are parts of me that don't fit that stereotype. but the parts that do fit that stereotypical , well, they do fit, because i am being me. it should come as no more a suprize that there parts of me that have no stereotypical union with transgendered, or black people-- and parts that do. very few people fit entirely in those 'straightjackets,' so i just concentrate on being me. i guess what i'm saying is do you.

yeah, i get annoyed when guys think that because i am trans that i want to suck their dicks for no other reason than because the drag queen they met last weekend did. or they saw a few porn movies about how constantly horny trannys are-- or, and this one kills me-- because they figure no one else would want me. but i also think if you act like you are different people treat you differently. it's a projection thing. it's like when you see someone who is pissed off. they project that and you pick up on it. same thing. or atleast that's my theory. i have friends who have crazy stories, but they don't happen to me that often. but that might just be because i look like i'd beat them with my skateboard if they crossed me...

[anarch]

lilyblue, could you send me the Shimizu article (or just the citation for it - I could probably get it from one of the libraries), please?

how do y'all cope with the racial stereotypes placed on women of color with regards to sexuality?

I usually get inarticulately pissed off. Then I rant about it to friends. I've had lots of older guys, complete strangers, coming up to me and calling me "Suzy Wong" (a la the 1950s film whose main character is a Hong Kong prostitute) - not so much these days (hopefully they're dying off now). Other times I've said something the teeniest bit innuendo-ish, not trying to flirt but just having fun playing with words, and the guy looks me up and down and I can see visions of Asian female stereotypes dancing around inside his head. Ick. I've never figured out what I could say to these guys to puncture their attempts to plaster their stereotypes onto me. (Something more articulate than "Fuck off," I mean.)

I've found it fascinating to read about the history (centuries old, some of them) of these stereotypes, about Asian, African-American, Latina, First Nations/ Aboriginal/ Native women, etc etc, all variations on the "whore" part of the virgin/whore binary. We've come a long way but oh so much work to do still.

[lilyblue]

lex, thanks for that link. it's something i recognized while reading martha stewart weddings. there were only two ads with black women and one actually had one in a wedding dress...too bad they featured her from the back.

greenbean, i think this goes back to your original question. i am starting to think that if we let the magazines know that if they were to feature more people of color (and not just the ones that look closest to white), we would be willing to buy their magazines. then again, do i really want to contribute to more consumerism in general?

----

how do y'all cope with the racial stereotypes placed on women of color with regards to sexuality? for me, i tend to keep my true sexual self hidden because I don't want to appear to be a stereotypical black woman. you know, always willing and wild sexually. except that's partly who i am. i have a strong drive and yet i feel like i have to hide it because the culture at large can't handle black women who own their own bodies. it also can't handle the idea of a black woman who is also tender hearted and shy who also likes sex. it's like i have to be the damned virgin or the whore.

now this can apply for all women, yet the mass media seems to put out the image of women of color as especially wanton in their desires instead of making it absolutely natural. i've been thinking of this especially since reading a paper by Celine Shimizu regarding Asian women in porn (it's fascinating really, if you want to read it, i can send it to you.). i'm not totally comfortable with porn/men's media, and even to a lesser level, women's media for this reason.

not seeing anyone like me reflected make me feel odd. like, am i really black because i don't act this way? or am i more white-identified because i do?

[greenbean]

yay stargazer. My white side and my mexican side are sooooo different. On my mexican side the whole extended family lives in the same county, and family parties are like, monthly if not more frequent. The handful of kids that ventured to move out (like myself, about an 8 hour drive away) are always treated like they dont care about family enough.

On my dads side, the family only gets together once a year, and kids are encouraged to go to college far far away, you know, be independent. In that family I felt like I was thought of as wussy for not leaving the state!

[stargazer]

i've been meaning to read this thread and post in here.

there a great book by bell hooks that address being black and being a feminist, "talking back, talking black." it is difficult to be a latina and feminist. the ideals are complete opposites. not that i'm one to play by the rules. BUT, it is a struggle to be my ambitious, driven self AND still feel that I am being responsible for my family. I know most women struggle with this issue, but put in the context of Mexican culture...it is pretty hard.

[greenbean]

Thanks for the link Lex!
I too get crap from my latino side for being into indie rock. pisses me off. Besides, there is a growing number of people of color who are in the indie scene, like TV on the radio, CSS, bloc party, all girl summer fun band, pretty girls make graves....of course, those band members are prolly called"too white" by their family too.

The thing about the Harajuka girls, I have mixed feelings. It is performance, so I'm hesitant to treat it as a political issue, but I understand why some asians can feel exploited by it.

AP, I make better mexican food than my "more brown" cousins do, and I agree it just doesnt seem to be enough does it?(!)

[lex]

I can somewhat empathize with the not black enough dilemma, since I'm mixed (asian and european). I'm never given full credit as either of my ethnicities, but then again it can also be used to my advantage because it gives me an excuse to not like all the food, or know the language well, etc. Nobody has explicitly told me I was too white, but I realize that I do display a lot of so-called 'white' behaviour (ie. listening to indie rock). But then again, it's not like there are any rules as to what someone of my background is supposed to act like, so I guess it gives me a bit more freedom.

faerietails, thanks for the suggestion. I will have to check it out.

greenbean, there was a study done on bridal magazines that found that black women were never featured on the cover, and even in the ads they were mostly only shown as bridesmaids.
http://www.racialicious.com/2006/12/14/bri...nt-get-married/

oh, and check out the rest of the blog, it's fantastic.

so, given that Gwen Stefani is on the cover of the current Bust issue, what does everyone think about her use of the Harajuku girls? I was glad that the interview at least addressed it, but her response of "Margaret Cho didn't do her research! I glorify the culture blah blah blah" really really irks me. I don't doubt that she had no intentions of being racist, and probably is too naive to see why people are making such a fuss about it, but that still doesn't stop me from feeling like the whole thing is just wrong every time I see them. Now she even has them wearing blonde wigs to look like her! How darling!!!

[auralpoison]

It's weird. I know I'm a freak. I've always been a freak. I'm okay with it. But the way that certain members of my family/the black community reject me always freaks me out. On one hand I'm uber accepted because "lighter is better" & on the other I'm just not black enough. I'm very aware of my heritage on both sides & have done extensive work on our history, but it never seems enough. I can go through family photos & tell the story of each person, I know all of my Gran's recipes, etc, etc, etc, but it's never enough.

[bustygirl]

Fuck thyself, troll.

[aviatrix]

sigh. all of the mag talk reminds me of 'honey' which started out so amazing, and then went pop before it folded. sniff.

[anna k]

Their video for "Bones" features the model/actress Devon Aoki, who is Japanese and white.

That video is great, it's very sad and beautiful and I like the cinematography.

I've read Latina, and it gets annoying when they throw in random Spanish words/phrases in an English-language piece. Like "You might say this is muy caliente!" It's as if someone wrote in English then edited it by adding occasional Spanish words, otherwise it could run in an "gringa" magazine.

[greenbean]

Has anyone seen that new Killers video? this one? I was so happy to see them use such a beautiful indio/chicana as their video girl. Of course, racism is not dead, and the comments on youtube degenerate into name-calling. Don't read it youre thin-skinned.

[lilyblue]

as a sidenote, you know what used to annoy the hell out of me with magazine content? i used to read seventeen, etc., and the makeup tips for "dark" skin featured the whitest-looking "dark" girls ever! grr.

faerietails, i'll get to the rest of your post, but I was wondering what you think of Latina magazine? I wanna like it, but it still seems to suffer from the same issue of having only light skinned latinas on the cover.