Melissa Harris-Perry returned to the topic of poverty on her show Saturday morning, not only to discuss its absence from both major parties’ political conventions, but the fallout from her impassioned explanation of what it’s like to actually be poor in America.
Among the hate mail she got, Harris-Perry told her panelists, one response calling her an “idiot” was particularly irritating.
“What it said was, ‘Melissa, you’re an idiot. Actual poor people live in the Third World,’” she explained. “‘In America, they have social services.’ And I thought, no no no no no. Actual poor people live right here. That vacuum of simply talking about poverty — even beyond the question of policies — just talking about it feels to me like something that, to me, both parties needed to address.”
Part of the reason they don’t address it, said Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of The Grio.com, was conservative success over the past three decades in demonizing the poor as being lazy, which has an effect on undecided voters.
“The voters who are still available, who are white and middle-class voters, have built up a resentment over the last generation, where they feel that their ‘stuff,’ their money, is being taken from them through taxation to give to the poor,” Reid said. “So talking about the poor just stokes more resentment.”
Even as new data indicates 800,000 more Americans skipped meals every day to get by last year, writer Lola Adesioye said talking about the poor wasn’t a “sexy” issue, an omission that has major implications.
“It’s not just about shoring up what’s already there and getting more jobs,” Adesioye said. “It really is about addressing the fact that there are some serious factors on the table that, if they’re not being dealt with, you could have more and more people falling into the poverty trap.”
The discussion, aired on The Melissa Harris-Perry Show Saturday, can be seen below.
Aleida Guevara with her father and Fidel Castro in 1963. Photograph: Getty Images
She has the eyes of her father, a gaze that became an emblem for the 20th century. She also has his deep sense of social injustice, but Dr Aleida Guevara has always had to share her "papi" with the world.
While she doesn't mind the posters, the flags, the postcards, graffiti paintings and T-shirts, Dr Guevara and her family are trying to clamp down on "disrespectful" uses of her father's famous photo, taken by Alberto Korda in 1960. Not easy when it is the most reproduced image in the world.
"It's not so easy, we do not want to control the image or make money from it, but it is hard when it's exploited," Dr Guevara smiles. "Sometimes people know what he stands for, sometimes not. Mostly I think it is used well, as a symbol for resistance, against repression."
Che on a bikini was one they couldn't stop, but Che, a teetotaller, on a vodka bottle was a battle won for the family with the help of the UK Cuba Solidarity Campaign.
Next month marks the 45th anniversary of the killing of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the guerrilla who helped lead the Cuban revolution and became an icon of rebellion. This year is also the 50th anniversary of the US "blockade", the ongoing commercial, trade and travel embargo which has stifled Cuba's economy. The cold war era-style standoff still sees America spend millions beaming propaganda radio and TV stations into Cuba. Cubans remain the only immigrants the US encourages in with automatic citizenship.
An underdeveloped country offering world-class education and healthcare for all, Cuba maintains anti-dissident policies, imprisoning journalists and anti-government activists. Despite a mass prison release of dissidents in 2011, Cuban authorities, says Amnesty International, "do not tolerate any criticism of state policies outside the official mechanisms established under government control. Laws on 'public disorder', 'dangerousness' and 'aggression' are used to prosecute government opponents. No political or human rights organisations are allowed to obtain legal status."
Dr Guevara is in the UK for another anniversary, the 14th year since the Miami Five – spies entrusted with infiltrating anti-Castro terrorist groups operating from Florida – were jailed by the US. The 51-year-old Havana paedriatician will lead a vigil in London outside the US embassy on Tuesday evening. "I'm not political," she insists, "but I care about injustice."
Aleida was seven when Che was killed in a remote Bolivian hamlet by a group of Bolivian soldiers and CIA operatives. With only shadowy memories of her father, she has got to know him through his diaries and the reminiscences of others, including the man she calls "Uncle" – Fidel Castro.
"Fidel has told me many beautiful stories about my father, but I cannot ask him too much, he still gets very emotional at the thought of Che. For example, my father had terrible handwriting, so my mother was asked to transcribe his diaries. When Raúl Castro came to our house to collect the manuscript, my mother knew that Raúl and Fidel also kept diaries, so she said 'if there are accounts in the diaries that differ then you must go with Che's, because he is not here to defend himself'. Raúl got very angry and said 'No, while Fidel and I are alive, Che is alive. He is always with us.' They were crying then.
"If Che hadn't died in Bolivia, he would have died in Argentina trying to change things there," she says. "Maybe it would be a different continent today. My mother always says that if my father had lived we would all have been better human beings."
Che was a medical student in Argentina when, on a motorcycle tour around Latin America in 1952, he became incensed by the poverty he saw. He took up political theorising and then arms, joining the revolution that overthrew Cuba's vicious Batista regime.
It was then, as the middle class and wealthy fled Cuba for Miami, that a bitter chasm opened between the two nations, and it has deepened from president to president. The promise of President Obama to tackle the Cuban issue has come to nothing so far. "We had great hopes, but we are disappointed in Obama, maybe things have even got worse for us," Dr Guevara says.
Revolution, she believes, simmers on in Latin America, where the gulf between rich and poor is escalating and she blames, as Che did, creeping American-led industrialisation. "This economic crisis is even more dangerous than any before for Latin America. It's not only about oil now, the US want water too. Brazil is destroying its rainforest to mine out iron, Mexico is a dumping ground for unwanted waste. This time the land is being destroyed as well."
Critics of Che claim the photogenic young man in battle fatigues who wrote poetry overshadows the brutality of his revolution. Guevara showed no qualms about killing. "It was a revolution," says his daughter. "Of course, I would rather there was no bloodshed but that is the nature of revolution. In a true revolution you have to get what you want by force. An enemy who doesn't want to give you what you want? Maybe you have to take it. My father knew the risk he took with his own life.
"I was angry, of course, growing up without a dad, but my mother always says, love your father for who he was, a man who had to do what he did. My father died defending his ideals. Up to the last minute he was true to what he believed in. This is what I admire."
But she says she would like to have been able to argue with him. "When I was six he sent me a letter. In it he said I should be good and help my mother with household chores. I was angry because my brother's letter said 'I will take you to the moon' and my other brother's read 'We will go and fight imperialism together'. I was annoyed – I wanted to go to the moon, why couldn't I fight imperialism?"
Dr Guevara is the eldest of Che's four children with his second wife, Aleida. "We didn't have privileges growing up as Che's children. My colleagues didn't know who I was until I first talked on Cuban TV in 1996. But it's important not to keep silent, because there is injustice being wrought."
Stop what you're doing right now. Press play on the video embedded below. Watch the entire clip, and do not attempt to restrain yourself from singing and dancing. That would be futile.
"Binti" is the song that introduced Joshua and Velvet Kente to the world. The demo that accompanied Korto Momolu's models walk on the runway in the 2008 Project Runway season finale, however, bears little resemblance to the epic jam as performed by the band these days, riffing off an irresistible Fela Kuti hook with horns, percussion, and full audience participation.
Rounding up some music videos we’ve been tweeting over the past weeks, this is your Friday Music Break. Produced by the hardest working rapper in Kinshasa, Lexxus (that’s him in the video, scouting for new talent in Kinshasa’s streets), ‘Bo tia K’ is the first outtake from Bawuta Kin’s upcoming album Ba Wu. Great video too. Above. Next, smooth Kenyan rap from Muthoni The Drummer Queen in ‘Feelin’ it’:
London duo The Busy Twist recorded this music video in Accra:
‘Bravo Papa’ (now with English subtitles) makes us look forward to South African artist Jaak’s Galant album:
Aline Frazão plays an accoustic version of ‘Cacimbo’ (that’s Angola’s dry season):
After a long hiatus, South African TKZee artist Tokollo Tshabalala “Magesh” has recorded new kwaito tunes:
Gorgeous Sudanese a capella by Alsarah and her sister Nahid:
I haven’t counted the times ‘Africa’ gets mentioned in this mishmash video for Madlib’s ‘Hunting Theme’ and ‘Yafeu’ (both taken off his 3rd Medicine Show), but it’s a lot.
Maryland’s Kendall Elijah belatedly got a video out for his track ‘The Wild’ (from last year):
And finally, Donal Scannell created this music video for Sahrawi singer Aziza Brahim’s ‘The Earth Sheds Tears’ in which she remembers those who fought to liberate those parts of the Western Sahara which remain outside of Moroccan control. Aziza Brahim resides in Spain these days:
Deadline: 17 September 2012 (The Affair), 10 December 2012 (Memoir)
New Writing is a substantial section of new poetry and/or prose in the magazine, written by published and unpublished authors, selected and introduced by our New Writing Guest Editor or Competition Judge. Previous Mystery Guests and Judges include Fay Weldon, Carol Ann Duffy, Michèle Roberts, Helen Simpson, Wendy Cope, Jackie Kay, Fleur Adcock and Val McDermid. We publish two magazines a year of themed new writing, and two containing the winners of our annual poetry and short story competitions. The themes/competitions and deadlines for the upcoming issues are:
ISSUE 56: THE AFFAIR
Please send poems (up to 40 lines each) or short stories (up to 2,200 words each) on the bliss, buffetting or sheer banality of a love affair.
Deadline: 17 September 2012
ISSUE 57: MEMOIR
By popular request, a narrative nonfiction theme. Cast you rmind years back to your childhood, or just a few hours back to last night, or to any destination in between – and send us a slice of your life. Up to two submissions of up to 2,200 words each.
Deadline: 10 December 2012
NEW WRITING SUBMISSION:
If you are living in the UK, you MUST send your Themed New Writing submission by post. If you would like a response, please ensure you include your email address. You need only include an SAE if you would like an acknowledgement. For the affair, send up to four poems of 40 lines each or up to two stories of up to 2,200 wds each – for Memoir send up to two submissions of narrative nonfiction of up to 2,200 words each – by post to:
'The affair' or 'Memoir' Mslexia Publications PO Box 656 Newcastle upon Tyne NE99 1PZ.
Sorry, but we only accept email submissions for Themed New Writing from overseas writers.
PAYMENT: We pay for published submissions. The basic rates for New Writing are £25 per poem, and £15 per thousand words of prose.
For submissions: submissions@mslexia.co.uk (non-UK writers), 'The affair' or 'Memoir', Mslexia Publications, PO Box 656, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE99 1PZ (UK-based writers)
Winners of NMW Awards are showcased along with interviews, profiles and tributes to celebrated writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Pamela Uschuk, Allen Wier, William Pitt Root, Nikki Giovanni, J. D. Salinger, Julia Glass, Shel Silverstein, Khaled Hosseini, George Garrett, Ken Kesey, John Updike, Lee Smith, Lucille Clifton, William Burroughs, Shelby Foote, Paul West, Norman Mailer, Sharyn McCrumb, William Kennedy and tributes to writers for the ages, including Faulkner, Hemingway, Dickinson, Keats, Percy, Warren and many others; also prize-winning stories, poems and articles, plus humor, graphic arts and writing advice. Color cover/ 208 pages. See our FAQpage for additional information.
Thanks for your interest and, to those of you who have already applied, thanks for your patience. Feel free to apply more than once.
Two San Francisco Bay Area Chefs Share Cooking Techniques
What does “macerate strawberries” mean? It’s a technique that uses sugar to draw out the fruit’s juices and natural flavors for desserts. It makes its own sauce! Video by Dear Martini
About Harvest, LLC shares stories about food and agriculture. Subscribe to receive stories about the science, history and relevance of agricultural crops grown and harvested around the world.
This year’s political convention season, says MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, got complicated. Although she is in Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention this week, she missed going to Tampa, FL, last week for its Republican counterpart because real life got in the way. Hurricane Isaac’s path, which initially threatened the convention before tearing through New Orleans, meant the Tulane University professor and her family had to evacuate their home, which they subsequently lost.
“In a certain way, the personal drama, set against the backdrop of the convention, helps to remind us that the personal is political,” she told Raw Story Wednesday. “On the one hand, we were having our own personal issues about wind and rain and a hurricane, but the fact is, levees are political, and disasters–whether or not aid is going to come to your community–has to do with who is making those choices from a political position. And so, certainly it’s been hard, but it’s helped to crystallize why elections really do matter.”
Raw Story: Speaking of the personal being political, talk about your journey over the past four years.
Harris-Perry: When I attended the DNC in Denver, I was writing for The Root at that point, was mostly just a blogger, every once in a while showing up on MSNBC as a voice but not even a contributor. And the idea that four years later I would end up with my own show is…certainly it’s not something I was even thinking about four years ago. But more than anything, I guess, it’s been an opportunity for me to take all the things I care about as an academic and watch them occurring. What I studied, what I spent 15 years doing, is race and politics in the American context. And now we’re seeing all these issues play out on the national stage, and it’s pretty extraordinary to be able to have a voice in that as it’s happening.
Raw Story: From your position, you are well acquainted with the resonance any minute, any sentence, any moment can have in the social media space. And I want to take you back to this past Saturday. I know you apologized, but at the same time, that resonated. What you were talking about struck a chord with people. How well do you find that phenomenon translating, among your colleagues, both as a media presence and an academic?
Harris-Perry: Let me start by saying that when I apologized, my apology was not for what I said. It was not even for the passion with which I said it. But it was for yelling at a guest. I’ve been a guest on many shows, shows where I agree with the host, where I don’t agree with the host. And I do feel like, as a host, the thing that I want to be is not someone who, even if I fundamentally disagree with my guests, makes my guests feel like I’m yelling at them. To me, it makes me feel like a bully. Because I’m sitting there in the host’s chair. So my apology was for yelling at a guest. No matter how much we may have disagreed.
And no one asked me to do that apology: it was just my initial reaction. I in no way apologized for the sentiment, because I am angry. Like, not just disappointed, and not just finding that it lacks facts: I’m angry at the portrayal of poor, working-class people in this country and the idea that, somehow, poor people, working-class people, have it easier, or that they’re lazy, or that they don’t want, or that they don’t deserve help. You can’t actually have lived in a poor neighborhood, seen how hard it is to live in our neighborhoods, and managed everything from public transportation to schools to crime to finding decent groceries. That stuff is actually hard. And so I don’t, in any way, apologize for the sentiment. My worry–at least at that moment–was that the sentiment would be lost behind the yelling. I studied black women’s self-expression, and I worried that all they would see is a yelling black woman. So I just want to be clear that the sentiment is still there.
On the question of resonating: I think all of us [at MSNBC] see our roles as hosts very differently. Rachel [Maddow]…Rachel’s a teacher, in the sense that, when you’re watching Rachel’s show, she’s gonna find some little nugget of something that you never even heard about and she’s gonna bring it together and connect it into a big story. Ed [Schultz], in my experience, is an advocate. Anything that he sees as a group of people getting the short end of the stick, he’s gonna tell you how those policies affect those people.
For me, I think the kind of teacher I am, I want to be there, I want to be present, but I also want to be facilitating lots of different voices at any given time. And so, I don’t know about the resonating: I do know we all see our roles differently. And I guess I’ll say this: I don’t know where all my colleagues live. I really don’t, it’s not like we hang out in each others’ houses. I live in a poor neighborhood. I commute back and forth from ruins. We make a choice to live there. I wouldn’t live any other place. The few years I lived in a place that was not a poor neighborhood was an unhappy time for me. So for me, it’s very real.
Raw Story: This election year, more than any other before, both parties have used diversity as a selling point. It’s still early at this convention, but how do you see that playing out on each side of the campaign trail?
Harris-Perry: The big difference is, the diversity that you see on the stage at the DNC is reflected in the delegates and the voters. The Republicans, there’s just no way around it: they did a good job of putting together a diverse group of speakers. They had Latino speakers, they had women speakers, they had African-American speakers, they even had former Democrats as speakers. So they certainly had a diverse group of bodies speaking. But that diversity on stage is not reflected in their delegations, it’s not reflected in their attendees, and it’s not reflected in the voters who make choices to put those policies in action. It is still predominantly an older white male party. With the DNC, you see black and Latino and South Asian people on stage, but then you also see those same people in the delegations, and you also see those same people on the ballot or in the voting booth casting those ballots.
Raw Story: Are we building toward some sort of political flashpoint?
Harris-Perry: I think of American politics as very plodding. Even moments that, in many other countries, might cause a crisis of government or leadership. Think about 2000 and the question of who’s really President; the fact is, Al Gore didn’t stage a coup. He didn’t go get the military together and say, “I won this.” He stepped aside. Our country, from my perspective, is very slow, it’s very moderate. Part of it is why President Obama, in 2008, was talking about “the arc of history”–he can’t give the revolutionary speech. Americans don’t go for, “Tomorrow I’m gonna do this.” They’re like, “Okay, we’re gonna make a little step toward it and a little step toward it and a little step toward it.”
And I think what you see–not from all Republicans, but from many Republicans right now–is they look back over the past 50 years and it looked like dramatic change [to them], but in fact it’s been piecemeal. Tiny, tiny, tiny. Even the Republican party itself is changing. When you look at who’s gonna show up in 2016 to be their candidates, they’ll look very different than the folks now. You’re gonna have Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal. It is going to be a brown and white and female coalition of people who are running the Republican party in 2016. It’s like, “Change is here–hello!”
Raw Story: In the 24 hours between Sunday and Monday, we saw the Democrats stumble on the question of, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” And then they reversed course. Why do you think they slipped up like that?
Harris-Perry: On Sunday morning, when we talked about who the Democrats are, we talked about “the big blue tent,” and the messy big blue tent. I think one of the messaging problems the Democrats have pretty regularly is that, because there’s not just one demographic, it is hard to send home what the message is.
When you look, for example, at Democratic surrogates, some of them are Congressional Black Caucus members who are in relatively safe districts, who have a long history of being the conscience of Congress and, therefore, saying what they really believe even if it’s not the party line. But the CBC now, they need them in line, because turning out the black vote for President Obama is going to be so critical. So I think part of what happens is there are some aspects of the Democratic coalition that have typically been able to be more aggressive or kind of off-message, and that’s been fine, that’s been good, that’s been part of the messiness. But in an election this tight, you have to have one messaging machine.
And at least on Monday, I think the word “stumble” is a good way to describe it–they didn’t quite have their footing. Certainly the First Lady gave an extraordinary speech last night, but it was not a policy speech. It was an amazing rally-the-base, remind-you-why-you-love-President-Obama sort of speech, but only the First Lady can carry that message. What we’re going to hear tonight from former President Clinton–and then of course from President Obama himself–will be what the actual message for the party is gonna be.
Raw Story: Like a baton relay.
Harris-Perry: It’s like a baton marathon at this point.
In case you missed it, Victoria’s Secret recently launched a new lingerie collection. Entitled “Go East,” it’s the kind of overt racism masked behind claims of inspired fashion and exploring sexual fantasy that makes my skin crawl.
From the website: “Your ticket to an exotic adventure: a sexy mesh teddy with flirty cutouts and Eastern-inspired florals. Sexy little fantasies, there’s one for every sexy you.” The collection varies in its level of exoticism. The “Sexy Little Geisha” is a perversion of its reference, featuring a sultry white model donned in lingerie, chopsticks in her hair, fan in her hand. Other items in the collection include red sleepwear and nightgowns with cherry blossoms. I might have glossed over some of these pieces entirely–except the catalog descriptions had me reeling. “Indulge in touches of Eastern delight.” Translation: “Buying these clothes can help you experience the Exotic East and all the sexual fantasies that come along with it, without all the messy racial politics!”
When someone creates a collection like this, making inauthentic references to “Eastern culture” (whatever that means) with hints of red or a fan accessory or floral designs, it reinforces a narrative that says that all Asian cultures–and their women–are exotic, far away but easy to access. It’s a narrative that says the culture can be completely stripped of its realness in order to fulfill our fantasies of a safe and non-threatening, mysterious East.
But when a company takes it one step further by developing a story about how the clothes can offer a sort of escape using explicit sexualized and exploitive language, it takes the whole thing to another level. It’s a troubling attempt to sidestep authentic representation and humanization of a culture and opt instead for racialized fetishizing against Asian women.
There’s a long-standing trend to represent Asian women as hypersexualized objects of fantasy, so it’s telling that none of the models wearing the “Go East” collection appear to be Asian. Perhaps this is a way for the company to distance itself from accusations of racism, given the backlash of previous campaigns such as “Wild Thing,” a fashion show segment in which black models wore “tribal” body paint and African-themed wraps. In the case of “Go East,” Victoria’s Secret is avoiding a stereotype by removing Asian women from the picture while still capitalizing on it. The lack of Asian women here simply exposes the deep-rooted nature of the Orientalist narrative, one that trades real humanness for access to culture. Besides, it can only feel sexy and exotic if it’s on an “American” body–without the feeling of accessing something foreign or forbidden, there can be no fantasy.
I’m not trying to deny that people have their own unique sexual desires and sources of pleasure. But like all things, sex and sexuality don’t live in a bubble. They intersect with our historical and cultural contexts. Donning a “sexy Geisha” outfit to get the ball rolling in the bedroom remains offensive because it confirms a paradigm in which Asian people and their culture can be modified and sexualized and appropriated for the benefit of the West. This particular kind of racism has existed for a long time, and we’re far from moving beyond it.
Nina Jacinto is a blogger and the Development Manager at Forward Together. She loves the internet, bargain shopping, and a really good cup of tea.
