The "long, hot summer" of 1967 (1)

In 1967 alone, there were 167 uprisings in US-American cities, the largest ones in Newark (New Jersey) and Detroit. The uprising - or rebellion as it was called by local residents - in Newark took place from 12th to 17th of July with at least 26 people being killed (via).

On 12th of July 1967, John Smith, a black taxi driver, was stopped and beat by two police officers. Activists were organising a picket line to the City Hall when the rumour spread that Smith was dead. The anger increased, people did not want to listen to their leaders preaching non-violence. "Someone threw a firebomb. The Newark riots had begun." (via), the streets "exploded in violence" (via). State troopers and the army stepped in but the atmosphere of fear only grew (via).

A commission was created to study the reasons that led to the riot, the major causes mentioned were discrimination, police brutality, unemployment, inadequate housing (also discriminatory real estate practices, housing projects) and education. 

The population hit 450,000 in 1948, then ebbed as whites, who could get mortgages, moved to the suburbs. Twenty thousand manufacturing jobs disappeared between 1950 and 1967. (via)

Black political power was practically absent, particularly in the schools. School board members were all white despite the very fact that blacks and Latinos represented the majority of the student population. The state of educational crisis was pointed out, third graders were reading at two grade levels, the dropout rate was rather high. A shortage of teachers and dilapidated buildings were further problems. Schools were chronically underfunded. By the mid-1960s public schools did "not have the physical space to educate every Newark student". As a result, the black community was policitally marginalised despite being the majority of the population. Things started changing in the 1970s when Newark had a black mayor, a majority-black school board, a city council with black members, more resources for schools, and when courts ruled that New Jersey's funding system was unconstitutional because it failed to provide students from poorer districts, i.e., black students, an efficent education . But the problems are still there. Newark, today, is one of the United States' poorest cities with one third of residents living below the poverty line (via).

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photographs via and via and via 

The -ism Series (37): Mammy-ism

Abstract: AfricanAmerican women can experience some feelings of self-hatred to the extent that they evaluate and then devalue their physical characteristics (facial features, skin color, hair texture, personal behaviors) referencing beauty standards set by European Americans who imbue White supremacy. These same Black women may find themselves acting out certain behaviors in historically defined and ascribed roles dictated by individual and institutionalized racism, roles that help to maintain the dependency and oppression of Black women. One such role ascribed to a Black woman is that mammy.



This article addresses the concept of mammy and the maintaining of the mammy cultural image. The diagnosis of Mammy-ism is discussed as an example of one way that AfricanAmerican women historically assume the role and acquiesce to this socially determined inferior status, demonstrate attitudes of self-alienation, and display mental confision. As a result, African social reality and survival thrust are displaced with European social reality and survival thrust. African women who display the above characteristics suffer from the mental disorder of Mammy-ism. The Azibo nosology categorizes Mammy-ism as a subcategory of Psychological Misorientation (genetic Blackness minus psychological Blackness). (Abdullah, 1998)

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- Abdullah, S. S. (1998). Mammy-ism: A Diagnosis of Psychological Misorientation for Women of African Descent. Journal of Black Psychology, 24(2), 196-210.
- photograph via 

Natural Scarification

"My position has always been that the way people age and the signs that we show of aging is nature's way of tattooing. It's natural scarification, and the life you lead gives you the symbols and the emblems of your life, the road map you followed." 

Frances McDormand

photograph via

Nobody's perfect

"I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.'" 

Mazie Hirono



photograph (c) Mazie Hirono via

Equality...

"Equality is not in regarding different things similarly; equality is in regarding different things differently." 

Tom Robbins

photograph via

Racist Racism: Complicating Whiteness Through the Privilege & Discrimination of Westerners in Japan

Abstract: With no anti-discrimination legislation, strong Confucian-inspired in-group mentality, and a belief in their mono-ethnicity, Japan is marred by a culture of widespread discrimination. Although it has ratified the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and guarantees equality in its Constitution, all those who differ from the closely-circumscribed norm are excluded culturally, and legally. Whites’ position in this milieu is complicated because of the West’s unique historical relationship with Japan, and due to the perception of white global dominance.



Although admired and arguably privileged over other outsiders, Caucasians are nevertheless mocked and discriminated against - openly, frequently, and with impunity. The concept of racism, as funneled through critical race theory’s (“CRT”) reliance on homogeneous white privilege, lacks dialectic space to address their experiences of discrimination. Yet both CRT analytical tools and desire for praxis, and Confucian respect for human dignity have much to offer in expanding discrimination discourse, exposing the concept of racism as Western-centric, supporting equality, and giving voice to victims who do not fit the victim norm. In the process, this enlarged theoretical and analytical space can help alleviate Japan’s labor shortage, prompting multi-faceted reforms, and achieving true Confucian harmony and democracy. 



I propose to create new discourse, situated within expanded CRT and whiteness studies, while providing analytical coverage to a group of Caucasians rarely mentioned in popular or scholarly literature. Definitions of “the other” and “white privilege” need to move away from monolithic notions of race and power, which are white-centric and racist themselves. (Myslinska, 2014)

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- Myslinska, D. (2014). Racist Racism: Complicating Whiteness Through the Privilege & Discrimination of Westerners in Japan. 83 UMKC Law Review 1, link
- photographs by Issei Suda (Japan in 1970s) via and via

Women's Workplace Equality Index

The World Bank's report from 2018 presents data on 170 gender inequalities in legal treatment in 189 countries. In a second step, the World Bank scored countries on a list of fifty legal gender inequalities, the Council on Foreign Relations added an additional six for reasons of completeness and calculated a ranking of countries (scores 0 to 100) (via)

Five highest scores:
Australia (94.9), Canada (94.5), New Zealand (93.6), Spain (92.9), Mexico (92.8)

Five lowest scores:
Yemen (24.2), Syria (27.7), Qatar (29.8), Sudan (30.3), Iran (31.2)

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photograph (women attending the Women in Politics Conference, Canberra, 1975) via

Quoting Simon Wiesenthal

"Tolerance and human rights require each other."

Simon Wiesenthal

photograph via

My great-grand-aunt Hattie McDaniel

I was at home contemplating the story about HBO Max temporarily pulling “Gone With The Wind” from its schedule, a 1939 film that included my great-grand-aunt, actress Hattie McDaniel. Suddenly, my disgust was elevated because it reminded me of the treatment she received from Hollywood and society. Her story was among the countless horrors from slavery to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. We are talking about the destruction of millions of Black people, their families and their communities, and this is still happening in the current year of 2020.



In my own family, McDaniel, who won an Oscar for her performance in “Gone With The Wind,” was one of the many prime examples of this systemic mainstay of horror. Her parents, Henry and Susan McDaniel, were born into slavery. Henry, a Civil War veteran, was denied his military pension for decades after sustaining permanent injuries during battle. He continued to work tough labor jobs even in his diminished capacity. Susan also was motivated by her older, performing siblings (Otis, Sam and Etta) and longed to be on the road with them entertaining the masses. A young, impressionable Hattie inherited their work ethic and that drive catapulted her to success.

After her Oscar win, Hattie was still forced to play a maid or servant by Hollywood in film after film. Her goal was to survive as well as entertain, but she desired equal treatment just like everyone else in the world. She served her country as the chairman of the Hollywood Victory Committee (Negro Division) during World War II to entertain the troops and help sell war bonds.

Yet when she sought out better roles in Hollywood, they were not available to her. Her wish to be buried at the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery alongside her peers was rejected because of her skin color.

She and other Black cast members were not allowed to attend the premiere of “Gone With The Wind” in Atlanta in 1939. When she bought a home in the West Adams district in Los Angeles in the 1940s, her White neighbors formed a “restrictive covenant” against her and other minorities to remove them from their homes because they were Black. America has always looked at us as subhuman.

Beyond my family, the trans-Atlantic slave trade — which included slave-trading participants from Portugal, Italy, Denmark, France, Spain, England, the Netherlands and North America — sold Black bodies like cattle by the millions, and millions more were killed in the process. (...)

The Civil War (over 600,000 dead White bodies) was a war over who (and who did not) have the rights of ownership of Black people. The countless rapes of Black women. There were scores of White Christians (children included) buying food and drink as they were entertained by the hanging of Black men and women in trees. You have probably seen the photos, which can only be described as sheer horror. And there they were on display with broken necks, bodies limp and lifeless, battered, set on fire, and covered in blood from the gaping bullet holes from the target practice. And today, we are still witnessing similar executions such as the ones George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others have experienced.

I have spoken with the staff and/or leaders of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the Rocky Mountain Public Media/PBS, Turner/HBO Max and others. Organizations are donating money to the NAACP, but that is not the answer. One solution is to make sure every city in this country regardless of ethnicity has the proper infrastructure and economic inclusion. The process will be uncomfortable (as it should be) for those who harbor a hatred and guilt they cannot reconcile.

This nation’s tragedy is that our very existence in America is the evidence of a crime and the most constant theme of Black existence in America.
Kevin John Goff

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photograph via

Because you are beautiful and I never want to forget you.

Donna Gottschalk is a US-American photographer, according to an exhibition curator, "the most famous lesbian photographer". In the 1960s, she attended the High School of Art and Design where, for the first time, she met other lesbians. That way she got to know iconic bars in New York where they had a space of their own. She became involved with the Gay Liberation Front and took part at protests, designed posters and papers, documented radical lesbian life, their struggle to be seen and represented (via). She also rent a spare room to young lesbians offering them a safe place to live (via).

Many of her subjects lived "on the margins of the margins": poor, transgender, homeless, sex workers, addicts, survivors of abuse (via). And many of them died young. Years later, she decided to release their photographs because she did not want "these courageous lives to be lost. They were brave and defiant warriors who insisted on being, whatever the consequences" (via). She also posed for other photographers at a time it was dangerous to come out (via).

I got my first camera at 17 and discovered all of these noble, marginalised people who were entering my life. I forced myself to become brave and ask to take their pictures, Sometimes they asked me why and my answer always was: “Because you are beautiful and I never want to forget you.” Donna Gottschalk

Gottschalk was inspired by Diana Arbus, Irving Penn and August Sander who were all drawn by the marginalised. Her intimate portraits were a means to give these marginalised people she loved "a beauty in humanity they were otherweise denied" (via).

The people that I was taking pictures of were not people that, ordinarily, people thought to photograph. They were my personal friends and family. Donna Gottschalk

"I had a portent that most of the people that I was taking pictures of wouldn't live, wouldn't make it. They were poor. There were no safety nets, At the time, in the 1970s, (my work) wasn't happy-happy stuff. It wasn't what people wanted, I think, or needed. The lesbian community needed to see (that) we're not all miserable; you can thrive." Donna Gottschalk

"I'm very happy, very much so, because many of the people who are photographed in that show... these are people who just disappear. And I am so happy that they're going to be in a museum for the rest of the time that the museum exists." Donna Gottschalk

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photographs by Donna Gottschalk via