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Arundhati Roy faces arrest over Kashmir remark

Booker prize-winner says claim about territory not being an integral part of India was a call for justice in the disputed region

• Gethin Chamberlain in Panaji
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010 17.28 BST
• Article history

Arundhati Roy could face a fine or imprisonment if convicted of sedition. Photograph: Jean-Christian Bourcart/Getty Images

 

The Booker prize-winning novelist and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy is facing the threat of arrest after claiming that the disputed territory of Kashmir was not an integral part of India.

India's home ministry is reported to have told police in Delhi that a case of sedition may be registered against Roy and the Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani for remarks they made at the weekend.

Under section 124A of the Indian penal code, those convicted of sedition face punishment ranging from a fine to life imprisonment.

Roy, who won the Booker in 1997 for The God of Small Things, is a controversial figure in India for her championing of politically sensitive causes. She has divided opinion by speaking out in support of the Naxalite insurgency and for casting doubt on Pakistan's involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

The 48-year-old author refused to backtrack. In an email interview with the Guardian, she said: "That the government is considering charging me with sedition me has to do with its panic about many voices, even in India, being raised against what is happening in Kashmir. This is a new development, and one that must be worrisome for the government."

More than 100 people are estimated to have died in violence in the Kashmir valley since June amid continuing protests against Indian rule in a territory where many of the Muslim majority favour independence or a transfer of control to Pakistan. Hundreds of young protesters have been imprisoned in a string of clashes with security forces.

"Threatening me with legal action is meant to frighten the civil rights groups and young journalists into keeping quiet. But I think it will have the opposite effect. I think the government is mature enough to understand that it's too late to put the lid on now," Roy said.

Earlier the author, who is currently in Srinagar, Kashmir, said in a statement: "I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice.

"I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state."

After describing her meetings with people caught up in the Kashmir violence, she said: "Some have accused me of giving 'hate speeches', of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their fingernails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one.

"Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor roam free."

India's justice minister, Moodbidri Veerappa Moily, described Roy's remarks as "most unfortunate". He said: "Yes, there is freedom of speech … it can't violate the patriotic sentiments of the people."

Moily sidestepped questions about the sedition charges, saying he had yet to see the file on the matter.

Others were less restrained. One person posted a comment on the Indian Express newspaper website calling for the novelist to be charged with treason and executed.

Roy said she was not aware of the calls for her death, but said the comments were part of a "reasonably healthy debate in the Indian press".

"The rightwing Hindu stormtroopers are furious and say some pretty extreme things," she told the Guardian.

Roy made her original remarks on Sunday in a seminar – entitled Whither Kashmir? Freedom or Enslavement, during which she accused India of becoming a colonial power. Geelani also spoke at the seminar.

Last week police in Indian-administered Kashmir arrested the separatist leader Masrat Alam for allegedly organising anti-India protests. A curfew was also imposed.

Corey D. B. Walker. A Noble Fight: African American Freemasonry and the Struggle for Democracy in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. xii + 288 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-03365-0.

Reviewed by Chernoh Sesay
Published on H-Law (September, 2010)
Commissioned by Christopher R. Waldrep

The Freemasonry of the Race

A Noble Fight, by Corey D. B. Walker, responds to the neglected study of Freemasonry and to scholarship that has interpreted it as a misguided strategy for attaining American citizenship or worse, as an exceptionally conservative force in African American politics and social life. Furthermore, this volume builds on and pushes forward the recent and excellent work of such scholars as Joanna Brooks; Steven Bullock; Stephen Kantrowitz; Cecil Revauger; Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos, and Marshall Ganz; Martin Summers; Mark Tabbert; Maurice O. Wallace; and Craig Wilder.[1] A Noble Fight opens with a vignette from James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) that reveals the unnamed narrator admitting that it was the “‘freemasonry of the race’” who exposed him to, in Walker’s words, “a degree of racial knowledge of which he was totally unaware” (p. 2). Walker argues that “the freemasonry of the race” constitutes a perspective particularly suited to deflecting and countering the sources and effects of racial prejudice within the democratic context of the United States (p. 3). In addition, Walker argues that democracy arises not only from sources of liberation and justice, but also from extreme proscription and racial violence. Hence, the acceptance and rejection of various parts of American democracy by African Americans leads Walker to search for new answers to the vexing question of how “African Americans rationalize American democracy?” (p. 9).

By framing his study of African American Freemasonry within debates about democratic theory and association, Walker successfully illustrates the significance of black Freemasonry, and he makes original contributions toward “establishing some preliminary considerations for rethinking the connections between the cognitive processes and cultural practices of voluntary associations and articulations of democracy in America” (p. 4). Legal scholars should pay close attention to how Walker’s discursive understanding of democracy relates to the contestation and complexity within American democracy and the multiplicity and irreducibility of African American experience.

An introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue organize the book. Chapter 1 contains little that is directly about African American Freemasonry. However, this section situates later chapters that discuss how black Masonic activism and ideology reveal democracy as an inherently contested category. Walker accounts for bureaucratic definitions of democracy that entail the “‘rule of law, promotion of civil and political liberties, and free and fair election of lawmakers.’” However, he is more interested in democracy understood as a “set of cultural habits, critical sensibilities, and ideological positions that animate and register particular ideas and understandings of the United States and what it means to be an ‘American’” (p. 228n5).[2]

In an impressive review of secondary literature, Walker explains that current configurations of the relationships between democracy and association, whether arising from literate intellectual communities, public activism, or associational activity, define democracy as an inherently valuable phenomenon and suggest that it is declining because of a decrease in various kinds of associative behavior. Walker contests both arguments by exposing “the underside of the democratic experiment,” and by showing how black Masonic activism demonstrates the vitality of American democracy (p. 7). Using the tools of literary theory and American studies, Walker traces the idea of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Martin Luther King Jr., and he highlights how democratic ideas have inspired liberal activism while also arising from social, economic, and political exclusion.

In the second chapter, rather than pin the beginnings of black Freemasonry to 1775, in Revolutionary era Boston, Walker employs the idea of “‘zones of cultural contact’” to map the encounters between the African diaspora and the expansion of Freemasonry (p. 13).[3] Moreover, he argues that these junctures underlay the “supranational” outlook and politics of early African American Freemasonry (p. 74). Walker rightly contends that the significance of black Freemasonry reached well beyond the confines of local and private fraternal groups; it shaped and was shaped by the African diaspora. 

Chapter 3 starts from the slave revolt conspiracy, Gabriel’s Rebellion, that occurred in the summer of 1800 near Richmond, Virginia, and it ends with the close of the Civil War. Walker traces how the fear of slave uprisings continually forced violent and proscriptive reactions from whites who worried about the psychological and physical results of a reversed racial order. This argument is not new; however, Walker’s novel contribution illustrates how the secrecy and connectivity of black Freemasonry helped organize covert and subversive networks of slave communication.

This section also explores the imagining of a black nation. For whites, the idea of a black nation represented not just the acceptance of black citizenship, but also a nightmare of black political control. In contrast, blacks increasingly relied on the concept for inspiration and community formation. Walker threads this debate through a discussion of Gabriel’s Rebellion; Martin Delany’s Blake, or the Huts of America (1859-62); and the decision of a black Virginian Lodge to name itself Jefferson Lodge, after Thomas Jefferson. Walker discovers black Freemasonry at work in Gabriel’s Rebellion. He examines how Delany’s Masonic beliefs infused his literary work, and he sees the name Jefferson Lodge as a significant appropriation of a symbolic American founder. Together, these examples indicate how Masonic ideas both absorbed and contested racial boundaries. 

Chapters 4 and 5 retain Walker’s insistence on a discursive approach; however, he narrows his focus to a close examination of the literate and public activities of black Freemasons in postemancipation Virginia. By understanding African American Freemasonry as representative of a larger field, “the freemasonry of the race,” these last two chapters clear new analytic space for understanding black masculinity and respectability as complex and complicated, but nonetheless animating mechanisms of public and discursive activism.

Black Freemasonry expressed the gendered conventions of Freemasonry and larger society, ideas that excluded women from lodge membership and reflected paternal and patriarchal assumptions about female political roles. Walker notes this conflict, while explaining that it reflected a partial response to a history of constant sexual threat and violence. African American Freemasons expressed their masculinity, in part, through the supervision and guarding of black female bodies. Placing the body at the center of Masonic notions about self-representation and self-respect, Walker explains that black Freemasonry sought to redeem the female and male black body by expressing them as “controlled, principled, moral, and upright,” a view that contrasted with white depictions of the black body, “a specter ... uncontrolled and uncontrollable” (p. 142).

Walker describes respectability to function less in terms of socioeconomic differentiation and more in terms of psychological redemption. He examines respectability as a key emotional alloy. Walker also argues against an “economically deterministic model” of class that overlooks the social and educational heterogeneity of lodge members (p. 205). Moreover, he shows how a narrow materialist approach obscures the symbolic nature of status. Walker admits that Masonry created difference among African Americans; however, he examines Masonic parades, funerals, and cornerstone laying ceremonies to reveal how public Masonic rituals also provided a broad sense of community.

Walker successfully opens up the mind of black Freemasonry and locates its symbolic importance within the politics of broader black and white societies. However, Walker could have more closely investigated the role of Freemasonry in the appearance of material and political divisions. For example, using new and fascinating sources Walker narrates a tension between Fairfax Taylor and his son, James T. S. Taylor, who were both prominent social and political activists in postbellum Virginia. The elder Taylor was a black Freemason, and, in the 1860s, helped organize Delevan Baptist Church, the first separate black religious group in Charlottesville, Virginia. However, the father opposed the nomination of his son to be a state constitutional convention delegate and voted for a white candidate. Moreover, James never became a Freemason. Walker sees differences of personality behind the generational conflict, and he suggests that for Fairfax, the black lodge may have represented “‘a replacement for emotional ties to [his] own children’” (p. 151).[4] This episode raises important questions about whether the tensions between father and son reflected, to any degree, thorny issues among a broader group of African Americans. Following this inquiry would have led to a clearer understanding of Freemasonry relative to varied and competing interests. In addition, pursuing this question would have only deepened an analysis to which Walker is committed; he demonstrates that the formation of black identity and community are always “contingent,” and even fraught (p. 4).

The question of context arises in another way. Walker does explore the “changing conception and meaning of the nation as articulated through the institutionalization of African American Freemasonry in the postemancipation context” (p. 91). He also does show African American Freemasonry to be “a malleable and responsive associational form that permits the articulation and development of new dimensions in conceptions of the nation” (p. 91). Approaching African American Freemasonry simultaneously as an analytical tool and an object of historical inquiry reveals new dimensions of the dialectical relationship between American democracy and African American Masonry. Yet this investigative strategy demands clarity about how, for example, the historical forces of abolition, nationalism, migration, and community formation affected change and continuity in the connections between Freemasonry and democracy.

Walker recognizes that black Freemasons, in the late eighteenth-century North, derived their claims for “national citizenship” through “an appeal to non-nation-specific ideals” arising partly from the Masonic concept of universal brotherhood (p. 80). This insightful interpretation raises a series of important questions. Did the attraction of black Masons to supranationalist ideas wax or wane from the American Revolution through the Civil War, and how did these ideological transformations function? Increasing numbers of black leaders, many of them Freemasons, demanded that blacks be recognized as full citizens given the expansion of radical abolition, the rise of the American Colonization Society, and the entrenchment of southern slavery. Furthermore, after the United States formally ended slavery, and as African American Masonry expanded and became more bureaucratized, what became of supranationalist ideas in black Masonic political thought? Explicitly addressing these issues would have enriched the analysis. However, these are quibbles that mark the success of this book in pushing forward the study of African American Freemasonry and fraternalism.

A Noble Fight is an ambitious, imaginative, and interdisciplinary book that demonstrates the historical, cultural, and theoretical significance of black Freemasonry. Moreover, it also adeptly addresses debates within critical race studies and democratic theory. Walker contributes original conceptual frames and empirical evidence to a small but slowly growing body of work about African American fraternalism. Although his volume is not definitive, it introduces promising questions about black Masonry that force a rethinking of certain interpretations within the field of African American studies. For example, scholars need to continue to flesh out the origins, parameters, and fluctuations of respectability and further explore black identity formation as an always developing process. Walker carefully investigates how Freemasonry evolved from and shaped the fissures between being defined as black and expressing blackness. In addition, his examination of black Freemasonry introduces novel ways of understanding how the relationships between association and democracy arose from roots nourished simultaneously by the promise of equality and the peril of prejudice. Future scholars exploring questions of masculinity, respectability, and democracy in North America and the African diaspora must consider Walker’s insights about “the freemasonry of the race.”

Notes

[1]. Joanna Brooks, American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Stephen Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Stephen Kantrowitz, “‘Intended for the Better Government of Man’: The Political History of African American Freemasonry in the Era of Emancipation,” Journal of American History 96, no. 4 (March 2010): 1001-1026; Cecil Revauger, Noirs et Franc-Maçons (Paris: Edimaf, 2003); Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos, and Marshall Ganz, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Mark Tabbert, American Freemasons: Three Centuries of Building American Communities (New York: New York University Press, 2005); Maurice O. Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775-1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); and Craig Wilder, In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

[2]. Walker quotes from Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 5.

[3]. Walker borrows the idea of “zones of cultural contact” from Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai’i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 29.

[4]. Walker quotes from Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 123.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Chernoh Sesay. Review of Walker, Corey D. B., A Noble Fight: African American Freemasonry and the Struggle for Democracy in America. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. September, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30746

The Root Interview: Playwright Roy Williams on Race in the U.K.

One of Britain's most accomplished playwrights talks about the black British experience and why he's not afraid to use his plays as a platform to talk about race.

• By: Belinda Otas | Posted: October 23, 2010 at 12:12 AM

 

Why should people be afraid to write about racism? I think it's an important subject. It defines this crazy world that we live in. It should be written about, and it should be written about more. I really believe that it should be pulled apart for all its complexities and different shades of colors. It is down to the writer to find them and put them out there in the most original way they can. We are black. Like it or not, you have to deal with it.

TR: You were born and raised in the U.K., and have experienced the different cycles that the black British community has been through. Are you in a position where you feel you have the authority and right to explore and expose the black British community for all that it is, good or bad?

RW: Yes, I suppose I do, but I don't go into it thinking I'm the spokesman for the black British community. I'm black, and most writers write from their experiences. Hence, it stands to reason that that's where my plays come from. My experience is black, and that is obviously going to inform my work. But I'm not a card-carrying person saying, "Yes, I speak for the black British community." No, I speak for me, and I tell the truth as I see it and as I view the world. I'm not saying this is the definitive. 

TR: Sucker Punch, your most recent play, explores the black British experience in the '80s. Why did you want to go back and explore that era?

RW: It's about what that decade meant to me and what it was like to be growing up, young and black. A lot of the decisions that were made during that period are things we are still living with today. We are still counting the cost of that era, and now that we have a new government, I'm fearful that we are going back to those times.

It was almost impossible to be young, working class and have dreams. I feel like this government is going to take that away from them and push them back down again, and that worries me. I was one of those out of work in the '80s and signing on [getting government benefits] for about a year after leaving school. It was the same for me and a lot of my friends, and I remember those days vividly. I have always wanted to go back and write a response to that, how the establishment, the powers that be, made people like us feel.

TR: The term "black theater" has often been criticized as being a label that alienates and marginalizes the work of black British playwrights. However, you argue that there is no problem using the term and that it is needed. For those who don't understand why the label exists, why shouldn't theater practitioners from the black British community shy away from using it?

RW: Because it makes us stand out. It tells and lets the masses know that, "OK, You see that group over there, on that corner? That is black theater. Go over there and have a look at them, because they are doing good work." If we didn't have that, we would get swamped, suffocated and blinded, and we would be ignored.

I [will] be the first to cheer when there comes a time when we don't need that phrase anymore. But I think we need it, especially now, with all the cuts in theater and the arts. I'm quite cynical, and if subsidized theater takes a heavy hit -- and it probably will -- then more theaters are going to be heavily reliant on the commercial sponsors. And it's going to mean, more than ever, that theater is going to be treated like a business.

I worry that black theater will take a hit. Some people may disagree, but that is what I think. The only reason I'm here is because of subsidized theater. My work does not go to the West End or the commercial theaters, and I'm not complaining about that. I have a great career, and I'm very, very proud. But I worry that with the cuts, if we don't have a group of people saying, "We are black theater" -- not in an extreme sense -- we will be at the end of the queue, and we will stay there. We need that, just to say, "Hey, we are over here, and we are doing good work. Come and see us -- we are doing hot, good work. Come and check us out."

Belinda Otas is a freelance journalist based in London. Follow her on Twitter.

Chad Ochocinco, Black Mexicans & Afro-Latino Identity

In August of ’09, Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals took to Twitter to ask for help in setting up his Xbox 360 gamer tag–the Black Mexican. And recently, the Ocho to the Cinco, while flirting with a half Puerto-Rican woman on his dating show The Ultimate Catch, told her that he was Mexican. So, is he?

Ochocinco–the former Chad Johnson, who had his name legally changed to Ochocinco during Hispanic Heritage Month in 2008 because he wanted to see his number written in words (just not English ones, I guess)–came under fire after the first episode of the show for only choosing two black contestants (he admits he has a preference), and is now coming under some suspicion for his “Mexican” comments.

Many of you might be scratching your heads right now like, “Huh? GTFOH with that Chad!!”

But actually, it is quite possible for Chad to be Mexican, and as I watched that clip, I immediately thought about two things:

One, how rare it is to even hear the words “black” and “Mexican” together in a sentence unless that sentence contains news of racial violence between the groups, and two, the fact that Mexico also imported slaves—before America.

According to figures from Afro Mexico, the country was importing Africans as early as 1519, and they didn’t just import a few. Mexico imported so many Africans to work in silver mines, sugar plantations and cattle ranches that by 1553, “the black population soared to over 20,000”.

By 1570, Africans in Mexico outnumbered Spaniards by 3 to 1.

 

Afro-Mexican women. Photo by Bobby Vaughn

 

After 1570, the proportion of Africans to Spaniards fell slightly. Though their numbers in Mexico were at an all time high of 35,089 in 1646, in that year, Africans outnumbered Spaniards by 2.5 to 1, down from the previous 3 to 1.

By 1742, black Mexicans had dwindled to a population of 15,980, though they still outnumbered the Spanish.

68 years later in 1810, the number of Afro-Mexicans shrunk to around 10% of Mexico’s population.

 

Afro-Mexican young man. Photo by Bobby Vaughn

 

In total, from the 1500s to the 1800s, Mexico imported up to a half-million enslaved Africans.

After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, the country abolished slavery and black Mexicans–who had their basic food, clothing and shelter needs met by slave-masters for over three hundred years–woke up one day kicked off plantations with nothing to call their own, and few willing to hire them.

Immediately, the percentage of their population to that of whites and other Mexican ethnic groups began a downward shift.

Today their numbers, which also include some black Seminoles, are around 1 million, making them about 1% of Mexico’s 111 million person population.

 

Black Seminoles

 

What is happening to Mexico’s blacks? And why are their numbers getting smaller when compared to other Mexican ethnic groups?

Black life in Mexico is a one of facing harsh stereotypes, with little to no opportunity for advancement through hard work or education as African-Americans had after the end of US slavery. Scorned by the government, Afro-Mexicans aren’t even counted among Mexico’s official citizens–as if they don’t even exist. According to writer Alexis Okeowo:

Afro-Mexicans are among the poorest in the nation. Many are shunted to remote shantytowns, well out of reach of basic public services, such as schools and hospitals.

Activists for Afro-Mexicans face an uphill battle for government recognition and economic development.

They have long petitioned to be counted in Mexico’s national census, alongside the country’s 56 other official ethnic groups, but to little avail…

In response to activist pressure, Mexico’s government released a study at the end of 2008 that confirmed that Afro-Mexicans suffer from institutional racism. Employers are less likely to employ blacks, and some schools prohibit access based on skin colour. But little has been done to change this. Afro-Mexicans lack a powerful spokesperson, so they continue to go unnoticed by the country’s leadership.

Because of discrimination, some Afro-Mexicans whose color and features allow them to hide their black heritage and claim instead a mix of indigenous Indian and Spanish blood, do-–a survivalist breach of their culture’s blurry color lines made easier by lack of knowledge about black Mexicans—even by many Mexicans.

And for some, marrying into the larger, lighter population is one of the only means of  uplift.

 

Black Mexican women

 

What’s happening to Afro-Mexicans is a travesty, and it’s important to know their story because Afro-Mexicans are our people. Their  stop was before ours, but we were all on the same ships.

 

Elder Afro-Mexican woman with boy. Photo by Bobby Vaughn

 

The less open we are to exploring all of our cultures as a global black people, our disparate populations around the world will continue to fall under majority, usually white, or light, tyranny, and disappear in quiet genocides fueled by ignorance of their existence.

Growing up, I would sometimes hear people self-identify as “black Indian”, “black Italian”, “black Spanish”, etc., and inevitably, someone in our circle would question their choice to be ethnically defined as something “other than just black”, as if being black and other was somehow a slap to black people as a whole.

 

Afro-Mexican youth dancing. Photo by Bobby Vaughn

 

As an Afro-Filipina woman, I too have faced this questioning of my identity choices from African-Americans.

It’s an issue that cuts to the core of multi-cultural black people on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Blacks who may be two, three or more ethnicities are often pushed by friends, families and communities to simply identify as one–usually “black”–regardless of the ties we may have to another culture, and regardless–at least in the US–if you only have a small amount of African-American ancestry.

Why this resistance to people claiming all of who they are?

 

black Mexican man

 

Perhaps the media has something to do with it. After all, if the only images people usually see of Latinos, Indians, Asians, etc., are all on the lighter, if not white end of the spectrum, those images become associated with what people from these groups should look like.

For example: Have you ever seen a Mexican on TV darker than George Lopez? And as far as “media Mexicans” go, he’s considered dark.

 

black Mexican woman

 

Lack of inclusion from lighter Hispanics coupled with confusion from black Americans places Afro-Latinos in an unusual place, and probably has a lot to do with the skeptical rumblings surrounding Chad Ochocinco’s “Mexican” moments. As Miriam Muley writes:

As an Afro Latina, Puerto Rican to be exact, I have always struggled to find my place in the world of Latinos and in the world of African Americans. Neither group has ever fully embraced my Afro-Boricua roots and desire to move freely from the world of salsa, mofongo and pasteles to the world of jazz, collard greens and sweet potato pie.

Hispanics are always shocked when I speak Spanish without an obvious accent (“Where did you learn to speak Spanish so well?”) and are puzzled to learn both of my parents were born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. (“So one of your parents must be Black?”).

African Americans cannot fathom the idea of a Black Hispanic. There is no awareness of the fact that 95 percent of all slaves who came to the Western Hemisphere during the Middle Passage were enslaved in Latin America, the Caribbean and Mexico. Only 5 percent were sent to the United States, and this was 100 years after the slave trade to Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries began.

While the “Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries” Miriam writes about are often depicted in travel brochures as sunny, multi-cultural paradises, a complex rubric entrenched during slavery placing whites or lights at the top and blacks at the bottom in social status and standards of beauty remains.

Many Afro-Hispanic people grew up rarely seeing positive portrayals of people who look like them.

Latino television is like a modern version of the highly segregated viewing experience our grandparents knew, filled with mostly white central characters and a background of black actors playing servants or buffoons.

And to see a celebration of dark Latina beauty was, and still is, even rarer.

Even Latina, a magazine “dedicated to Latinas” which has been in business since 1996, only recently featured a dark-skinned black Latina on their cover for the first time–in December 2009!

While the cover is a wonderful moment for Afro-Latinas, the question remains: What took so long?

Latina Magazine’s first black cover model

 

Without a doubt, issues of beauty equality and social inclusion from their larger culture are still pivotal issues among black Latinos.

 

Sadly, some Afro-Latinos whose genetic dice didn’t land on the side of them looking like their oppressors, succumb to self-esteem issues engendered by their society and alter their looks to, by using potentially toxic creams to lighten their skin. Like Sammy Sosa.

 

Sammy Sosa's new skin. His hair is different too.

 

Today, through generations of activism, many Afro-Latin people have come to the fore in restoring a sense of pride among black Latinos by educating themselves and others on the tremendous contributions of Africans and their descendants to Latin culture.

And a similar movement is brewing among Afro-Mexicans.

Every year since 1996, dozens of towns along the 200-mile long coastal region known as Costa Chica (one of two regions in Mexico with significant black population, the other being the state of Veracruz) have come together to celebrate “Encounter of Black Mexico,” featuring regional dance, music and round-table discussions about black life.

 

Costa Chica, in the red square

 

In 1999, the Museo De Las Culturas Afro-mestizas or Museum of Afro-mestizo Culture, dedicated to the history of the Costa Chica, opened in its de facto capital, Cuajinicuilapa. The museum educates local people and tourists about the arrival of African slaves in the 1500s, and displays African clothes, food and musical instruments with explanations on how these objects were incorporated into Mexican life.

Afro-Latin and Afro-Hispanic cultures offer fascinating looks into the history of the majority of Middle Passage survivors–a history important for blacks on both sides of the border.

While it’s common knowledge that many enslaved blacks escaped north via the underground railroad, what’s less known is that quite a few also escaped south, with Mexicans providing food and safe-houses for many on their way to freedom.

 

Afro-Mexican children. Photo by Bobby Vaughn

 

To further explore the diversity of Afro-Mexicans, researcher and photographer Bobby Vaughn has a beautiful gallery of Afro-Mexican people on his website, which offers invaluable information on black Mexicans.

African-Americans have dealt with, and continue to deal with many of the same issues as Afro-Latinos/Afro-Hispanics, and the similarities between the different groups are abundantly obvious.

Are you a black Latino or Hispanic whose been questioned about your identity choices?

Have you ever been told that you “don’t look” Latino of Hispanic by members of your own culture?

What do you find most frustrating about the lack of understanding surrounding Afro-Latinos?

What do you love about being Afro-Latina or Afro-Hispanic?

Other comments? Let’s hear ‘em! I’d love to hear from you.

*And for the record, the jury is still out on whether Chad Ochocinco is Mexican, unless someone probes the issue with him further. But I’m guessing because he’s already planning his next numeric name change to Hachi Go, in all likelihood, he probably isn’t.

________________________

Heavy Mentalist is written by freelance multi-media hip hop, pop culture, race and social justice journalist Cherryl Aldave. The name Heavy Mentalist is a take on the classic Killah Priest album, Heavy Mental. 

Cherryl has written for Wax Poetics, the Source,Scratch, Elemental, Rime, Insomniac, FEDS,HipHopDX, PopandPolitics, Allhiphop.com, Yes! Weekly and more. 

Her words also appear in the books Wax Poetics Anthology Volume 1,Bandana Republic, How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office and The Quotable Rebel.

 

 

BP dispersants 'causing sickness'

Investigation by Al Jazeera online correspondent finds toxic illnesses linked to BP oil dispersants along Gulf coast.

By Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 27 Oct 2010 18:00 GMT

Denise Rednour of Long Beach, Mississippi, has been sick with chemical poisoning since July [Erika Blumenfeld]

 

Two-year-old Gavin Tillman of Pass Christian, Mississippi, has been diagnosed with severe upper respiratory, sinus, and viral infections. His temperature has reached more than 39 degrees since September 15, yet his sicknesses continue to worsen.

His parents, some doctors, and environmental consultants believe the child's ailments are linked to exposure to chemicals spilt by BP during its Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Gavin's father, mother, and cousin, Shayleigh, are also facing serious health problems. Their symptoms are being experienced by many others living along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Widely banned toxic dispersants

Injected with at least 4.9 million barrels of oil during the BP oil disaster of last summer, the Gulf has suffered the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants, which according to chemist Bob Naman, create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. And dispersed, weathered oil continues to flow ashore daily.

Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.

According to Naman, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

Fisherman across the four states most heavily affected by the oil disaster - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have reported seeing BP spray dispersants from aircraft and boats offshore.

"The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf," Naman added.

"I’m scared of what I'm finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren’t good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA's danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe."

Commercial fisherman Donny Matsler also lives in Alabama.

"I was with my friend Albert, and we were both slammed with exposure," Matsler explained of his experience on August 5, referring to toxic chemicals he inhaled that he believes are associated with BP's dispersants. "We both saw the clumps of white bubbles on the surface that we know come from the dispersed oil."

Gruesome symptoms

"I started to vomit brown, and my pee was brown also," Matsler, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Dauphin Island, said. "I kept that up all day. Then I had a night of sweating and non-stop diarrhea unlike anything I’ve ever experienced."

He was also suffering from skin rashes, nausea, and a sore throat.

At roughly the same time Matsler was exposed, local television station WKRG News 5 took a water sample from his area to test for dispersants. The sample literally exploded when it was mixed with an organic solvent separating the oil from the water.

Naman, the chemist who analyzed the sample, said: "We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit."

"I'm still feeling terrible," Matsler told Al Jazeera recently. "I'm about to go to the doctor again right now. I'm short of breath, the diarrhea has been real bad, I still have discoloration in my urine, and the day before yesterday, I was coughing up white foam with brown spots in it."

As for Matsler's physical reaction to his exposure, Hugh Kaufman, an EPA whistleblower and analyst, has reported this of the effects of the toxic dispersants:

"We have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do..."

By the middle of last summer, the Alabama Department of Public Health said that 56 people in Mobile and Baldwin counties had sought treatment for what they believed were oil disaster-related illnesses.

A dispersed oil tar ball in Orange Beach, Alabama [Erika Blumenfeld]

"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol," Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist, and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera.
 
"Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber," she continued, "Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement."

"Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known," Dr. Ott added.

"In 'Generations at Risk', medical doctor Ted Schettler and others warn that solvents can rapidly enter the human body. They evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2- butoxyethanol (in Corexit) is a human health hazard substance; it is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders."

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage.

Even the federal government has taken precautions for its employees. US military officials decided to reroute training flights in the Gulf region in order to avoid oil and dispersant tainted-areas.

Growing number of cases

And Al Jazeera is finding a growing number of illnesses across the Gulf Coast.

Denise Rednour of Long Beach, Mississippi, has been taking walks on Long Beach nearly every day since the disaster began on April 20, and she is dealing with constant health issues.

"I've had health problems since the middle of July," she said. "At the end of August, I came home from walking on the beach and for four days had bloody, mucus-filled diarrhea, dry heaves, and blood running out of my ear."

Karen Hopkins, in Grand Isle, Louisiana, has been sick since the middle of May. "I started feeling exhausted, disoriented, dizzy, nauseous, and my chest was burning and I can’t breath well at times," she said.

Dean Blanchard, who runs a seafood distribution business in Grand Isle, is Hopkins' boss. He too is experiencing similar symptoms.

"They [BP] are using us like lab rats," he explained, "I'm thinking of moving to Costa Rica. When I leave here I feel better. When I come back I feel bad again. Feeling tired, coughing, sore throat, burning eyes, headaches, just like everyone around here feels."

Lorrie Williams of Ocean Springs says her son's asthma has "gotten exponentially worse since BP released all their oil and dispersants into the Gulf."

"A plane flew over our house recently and sprayed what I believe are dispersants. A fine mist covered everything, and it smelled like pool chemicals. Noah is waking up unable to breath, and my husband has head and chest congestion and burning eyes," Williams said.

Like others, when Lorrie's family left the area for a vacation, they immediately felt better. But upon coming home, their symptoms returned.

Wilma Subra, a chemist in New Iberia, Louisiana, recently tested the blood of eight BP cleanup workers and residents in Alabama and Florida. "Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP Crude Oil," Subra said,

"The blood of all three females and five males had chemicals that are found in the BP Crude Oil. The acute impacts of these chemicals include nose and throat irritation, coughing, wheezing, lung irritation, dizziness, light-headedness, nausea and vomiting."

Indications of exposure

Subra explained that there has been long enough exposure so as to create chronic impacts, that include "liver damage, kidney damage, and damage to the nervous system. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure."

Testing by Subra has also revealed PAHs present "in coastal soil sediment, wetlands, and in crab, oyster and mussel tissues."

Trisha Springstead, is a registered nurse of 36 years who lives and works in Brooksville, Florida.

"What I'm seeing are toxified people who have been chemically poisoned," she said, "They have sore throats, respiratory problems, neurological problems, lesions, sores, and ulcers. These people have been poisoned and they are dying. Drugs aren’t going to help these people. They need to be detoxed."

Chemist Bob Naman described the brownish, rubbery tar balls that are a product of BP's dispersed oil that continue to wash up on beaches across the Gulf:

"Those are the ones kids are picking up and playing with and breathing the fumes that come off them when you crush them in your hand. These will affect anyone who comes into contact with it. You could have an open wound and this goes straight in. Women have a lot more open mucus membranes and they are getting sicker than men. They are bleeding from their vagina and anus. Small kids are bleeding from their ears. This stuff is busting red blood cells."

Dr Ott said: "People are already dying from this… I’m dealing with three autopsy’s right now. I don’t think we’ll have to wait years to see the effects like we did in Alaska, people are dropping dead now. I know two people who are down to 4.75 per cent of their lung capacity, their heart has enlarged to make up for that, and their esophagus is disintegrating, and one of them is a 16-year-old boy who went swimming in the Gulf."

Key Black British History Moments in Video

Reshma Madhi

Images can sometimes be more powerful than words. The videos listed below all illustrate key moments in Black British history, moments that you may have witnessed, such as Linford Christie’s win at the 1992 Olympic Games or moments that have shaped Caribbean culture, such as Claudia Jones leadership.

West Indies Calling (13:55)
A group of West Indians describes the Caribbean support during World War Two, including RAF officer Learie Constantine.

Windrush (9:33)
A short documentary chronicling the largest immigration of West Indians to Britain after WWII, in particular the ‘Empire Windrush’ which was the ship transporting the first major group of migrants.

The 1981 Brixton Riots (4:21)
Hear eyewitnesses from the day recount their experiences of the riots – infamously known as ‘Bloody Saturday’ – in this 20th anniversary documentary.

Linford Christie at the 1992 Olympics (3:33)
Linford Christie won 100m gold medal at 1992 Olympics and became the first male athlete to retain the title – witness the world record breaking event here.

Claudia Jones (10:05)
Claudia Jones founded Britain’s first weekly black newspaper and also helped launch the Notting Hill Carnival in 1959. Feminist, activist, journalist and community leader, gain more insight into her vision for equal opportunities and civil rights:

J. Lorand Matory on African-Inspired Religions

Duke University Professor J. Lorand Matory discusses Voodoo and other African-inspired faiths in a live "Office Hours" webcast interview. Learn more at http://aaas.duke.edu

The New York Public Library

Call For Proposals: The State of African American and African Diaspora Studies: Methodology, Pedagogy, and Research

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Langston Hughes Auditorium (Map and directions)
First Floor

Partially accessible to wheelchairs

 

Thursday, January 6, 2011 - 9:00 AM EST

How to register: First come, first served - Please fill out registration Form.

 

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean at the City University of New York extend a call for papers for their regular conference on the state of scholarship in African American and African Diaspora Studies. Entitled, The State of African American and African Diaspora Studies:  Methodology, Pedagogy, and Research, the conference will take place on January 6-8, 2011 at the Schomburg Center, located at 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, located at 365 Fifth Avenue.

The conference is designed to bring together scholars, students, and the general pubic to assess the current state of African American and African Diaspora Studies as an intellectual field of inquiry.  It will provide an opportunity for scholars to examine ways in which the study and teaching of the Black experience have evolved since the 1960s.

Proposals are invited from scholars in all disciplines.  Scholars may wish to address particular problems through their own disciplinary optic.  We welcome papers that are historical in nature, philosophical, literary, and so on. The principal criterion is that such papers have some bearing on the Black experience and condition. Papers that are interdisciplinary in nature are encouraged.

The conference organizers will also welcome papers that focus on pedagogical issues. We invite proposals on innovative teaching methods, course syllabi, textbooks, archival collections, and other source materials. Papers that raise new and creative research questions and propose new research methodologies will be given serious consideration.

Proposals should be submitted electronically and must include your name, title of the paper, panel, or roundtable, and an abstract of 150 words.  They should also include the institutional affiliation of each presenter, phone numbers, and email addresses.  Submit proposals by November 1, 2010 to:

Aisha H.L. al-Adawiya
State of African American and African Diaspora Studies
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York NY 10037-1801
E-mail: aaladawiya@nypl.org

Registration $20, Students: Free

Hotel Information:
Hotel Pennsylvania
401 Seventh Avenue
New York NY 10001-2062
Toll Free Reservation: 800-223-8585
Conference Rates:  Single - $120.00; Double - $140.00

Individuals must call the Hotel Pennsylvania during business hours to reserve their room under the group name SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE.  Make reservations by December 6th 2010.

Travel Information:
American Airlines
Group Name: SCHOMBURG CENTER
Authorization Number: A9411AD

Attachments & Options

Flyer: 

REGISTRATION_FORM_-_State_of_African_American_Studies.doc

James Hearst Poetry Prize

 

Entry Guidelines for the 2011 James Hearst Poetry Prize

• First Prize $1000
• Second $100
• Third $50
  

  

All winners and finalists will be published in the Spring 2011 issue. 

Deadline: October 31, 2010 (must be postmarked by) 

Entry fee: $18
Entries from outside the US: $25

All entry fees include a one-year subscription. Make your check or money order out to North American Review. If you are outside the US, please make sure the entry fee is in US currency and routed through a US bank.

Rules: Two copies of up to five previously unpublished poems. No names on manuscripts. please. Your poems will be assigned log numbers so they can be "read blind." Include required cover sheet (to open a PDF you will need Adobe Reader, available for free download). Simultaneous submission to other journals or competitions is not allowed. Poems will not be returned, so please do not send an SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). 

To receive acknowledgement of receipt, please include a self-addressed, stamped postcard. If you wish to receive the list of winners, please include a business-size SASE. If you would prefer to receive acknowledgement of receipt and the list of winners by e-mail, please let us know on the cover sheet. Winners will also be announced in the writers' trade magazines and on this website. 

Tips: We have noticed that long poems rarely do well -- too much can go wrong in a large space. Poems that have reached the finalist stage in our competition in the past are typically one to two pages (often much shorter). Winning poems always balance interesting subject matter and consummate poetic craft. We value both free verse and formal poems in rhyme and meter -- both open and closed forms.

Send entries to:

James Hearst Poetry Prize
North American Review (WS)
University of Northern Iowa
1222 W. 27th Street
Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0516
USA 

Reminder: Please include the required cover sheet. Thank you.

Questions? hearstprize@uni.edu • 319 273-6455 • FAX 319-273-4326