Elections ‘08 & The Miscegenation of Colin Masashi Ehara

(This is written as part of the Youth Media Blog-a-thon, sponsored by Youth Outlook and WireTap.)

[Yes We Candidacy]

*Thanx for the post title G-Slavename!*

I recently realized that I’ve become addicted to cynnicism and I’m working on kickin’ that nasty habit. I have lived a life full of blessing, beauty, laughter and love; I have lived a life full of heartache, disappointment, anxiety and despair. I recently spoke with a San Francisco State U Ethnic Studies Professor who told me, “nobody goes into this line of work for the money. If we were rational we would go into sociology, history, psychology, etc. People come here (Ethnic/Asian American Studies) to process pain. This is a study in pain. People come here because it calls them and have no other choice but to answer it…”

So apparently I have experienced and wittnessed enough pain in my life and the lives of people around me to feel the need to process it; and apparently I am privileged enough to have come to a place where I have the opportunity to do so. When expressing some of the guilt that comes along with being able to access an opportunity such as this, another one of my Professors exclaimed, “do NOT look at this chance as something to feel guilty about, but as tremendous responsibility!” That made me feel a lot better, but didn’t exactly take any weight off of my shoulders either. =P

In any case, if there are two things I know too well they are the feelings of triumphant optimism as well as devastating hopelessness. The next 12 days (and beyond) promise to be filled with both. The 2008 elections represent a Tipping Point in American history. Are the American people as a whole ready to: a) get off their arses and vote, b) vote for a better candidate and say no to the fear, ignorance and hatred of the past, or c) see another 4 years of the same ole bullsh*t?

[via Jamilah]

The following post is my best attempt at voicing the ways in which the 2008 Elections look through my Japanese/Scottish/Native/Asian/Anglo/Amerikan/Richmond/El Cerrito/Working-Class/Middle-Class/Heterosexual/Hip-Hop/AsianAmericanStudies/20-something lens. Please bear with me, family. I’m still figuring it all out myself…

Yadadai-whoever-gave-barack-his-middle-name-aint-think-he-was-gonna-run-for-president…

“THE ONE”
Barack Obama vs. Neo

[Keanu "watching-me-act-is-painful" Reeves: Chinese/Hawaiian, Anglo]

Does it really surprise you that we would need a mixed person to “save the world?” I DON’T say this in a vain attempt to big up mixed people, but to make the point of the ways in which public figures can benefit from blurring racial lines in America. If a biracial, straight-A, Harvard Law President, raised by 3 white people (his mother and grandparents) is getting hit by every accusation of being a “muslim terrorist who hates America,” imagine the attacks on say a President Morgan Freeman… While people of mixed heritage are racialized differently depending on their ethnic background/s, I do NOT for a second believe that a person with ZERO Anglo/white ancestry could become the President of the United States today. That’s my opinion; I could be wrong (but I HIGHLY doubt that sh*t).

I believe that Obama’s uncanny ability to connect to white folks’ hearts around issues regarding certain family values and growing up working-class through his oratory skills is the largest reason for his great success. Let’s face it: if a large number of white people in this country don’t like you, there is only so far you can really go within the arena of electoral politics (and this is NOT to say that all white people like Barack). With all the “hope” that surrounds an Obama Presidency, I am forced to examine the ways in which people (myself included) have at times looked for him to be a messaiah, sent to save us. That sh*t needs to stop.

In “The Matrix,” Keanu Reeves character “Neo” is someone who sees the falsities in the world around him and possesses an innate ability to bend and blur the rules of that world. He is known as “The One,” prophecized to be a savior who will battle the machines who have enslaved mankind, thus liberating our bodies and minds from the mistakes of our past. Sound familiar? =T

Seeing the Matrix:
1. Barack aint Jesus, people (that doens’t mean he can’t be crucified however – PLEASE protect him Lord =T).
2. Keanu was chosen over Will “the boss of Hip-Hop generation actors since Tupac died” Smith, for the role of “Neo.” I guess an ethnic-white guy seemed more suitable to Hollywood (I’m tellin’ yall about the advantages of having that Anglo blood, blud!). =T
3. I don’t think Keanu has ever played a role in which his Asian ancestry is acknowledged, which does NOT go. =T
4. To me, this (presidential) race is less Black vs. White than it is the Past vs. the Future. =)

He can’t stop bullets with his mind, but he will give u a phatty tax cut if you make less than $250,000 a year! Don’t take the blue pill u beezys! Go down the rabbit hole w/me and vote Obama!

“FORBIDDEN LOVE”
Miscengenation vs. Proposition 8

["Yee! Where da white women at?!?!" (jk - don't be so sensitive!)]

A (not so) long time ago, it was illegal for a person of color to marry a white person.

The year my parents married, miscegenation still described a felony in over half the states in the union. In many parts of the south my father could have been strung up from a tree for merely looking at my mother the wrong way…
-Barack Obama

While “Eugenics” (the practice of breeding the “right” kind of person) was gaining huge interest among the upper eschalons of society as a way of justifying systems of domination based on racism, people were being told by the American Government, who they could and could not love. Sound familiar? =T

[The "Loving" Couple]

When a Black woman and her white husband Mr. and Mrs. LOVING (swear to f*cking God that was their real name) were arrested in Virginia in 1958 for marrying each other in the District of Columbia, they fought back. LOVING vs. VIRGINIA changed the game (remix) in terms of who could marry who, based on race.
 

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia’s argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

The Supreme Court concluded that anti-miscegenation laws were racist and had been enacted to perpetuate white supremacy:

There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.

Despite this Supreme Court ruling, such laws remained on the books, although unenforced, in several states until 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its law against mixed-race marriage.

This a f*cking scary time in Amerika (not that it hasn’t been, or wasn’t before). GLBTQ (Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgender/Queer) folks are having their civil rights attacked in California for not assimilating to heteronormativity. Proposition 8 seeks to ban Gay Marriage, writing into the constitution that marriage can “only be between a man and a woman.” I question what kind of person has the time and energy and uses their time and energy to specifically go about trying to make people’s lives harder. I realize fully, that one’s faith is very important and that a multitude of Americans follow the Bible quite literally, word for word. I also realize the arguments that people use primarily tend to begin with the Bible and the ways in which it disagrees with the “lifestyle.” *SIGH*

“You might just be a pseudo-Christian looney-bin if…”

-You are “Pro-Life” and support the death penalty.
-You think we can “bend the rules” around that whole ‘thou shall not kill,’ thing (Iraq!!!), but NEVER for two dudes wanting to be united in partnership under the law.
-You think Jesus was Anglo Saxon.
-You think I want to be in “heaven” with people like you. According to you, all the homies will be in Hell with me anyway. Yee!

In other words, if my daddy’s Asian ass coulda been arrested (or murdered) back in the day for marrying my mama, howthaf*ckisdatdifferent from what Proposition 8 is trying to tell the American people???

!!!NO ON PROP. 8!!!

[Git 'em Home(r)boy!]

“BLURRING THE LINES”
Mixed Race vs. Queer Identity
Racialization, ethnicity and identity are 3 completely different things. For instance, while Tiger Woods is ethnically Black, European, Native American and Thai, he identifies himself as “Cablinasian,” a mixture of “Caucasian, Black, American Indian and Asian,” and America racializes him as “Black.” When he did this, people primarily saw this attempt to determine his own identity as self-hatred (i.e. “Why is Caucasian first in ‘Cablinasian,’ Tiger?!?!”). I still am not sure what to do with that whole situation but I do know for sure, that your identity does not necessarily match the ways in which you are racialized.

Much of re-learning various sociological/educational theory in school these days has given me an opportunity to look at some areas of oppression that I tend to overlook at times due to my privilege as a heterosexual man. Gender & Sexuality, and in particular Queer Studies Pedagogy has amazed me in the ways in which I find a plethora of commonalities and intersections between it and Mixed Race Politics (stay with me on this one).

AN (ambiguous) EXPLANATION:
-GLBTQ folks and mixed race folks can find much of their identity in ambiguity, be it sexual or racial.
-GLBTQ folks and mixed race folks are marginalized NOT because of the box they are put into, but because of the ways in which they do NOT fit into a box.
-The ways in which sexually ambiguous people are many times unable to conform to rigid definitions of what it means to be a “man” or “woman” (gender roles), is very similar to the ways in which (ethnically ambiguous) mixed race people do not fit into the rigid definitions of what it means to be “Asian,” “Black, “White,” “Latino,” “American Indian,” etc.  
-The mere existence of GLBTQ and mixed race people, questions the very notion and purpose of the social constructions of gender and race.
-GLBTQ people might be “genderized” as something that is completely different from their sexual identity; Mixed race folks (like Tiger) might be “racialized” as something that is completely different from their racial identity.
-GLBTQ and mixed folks confuse the everloving sh*t out of everyone, including themselves, but are some of the most observant, watchful, clear-eyed/minded, thoughtful people to ever walk this earth and have existed since the inception of what we now call “America.”

“LOVE LOCKDOWN”
Amerika vs. America
I began this (HELLA LONG) entry stating that I needed to kick my addiction to cynnicism. I believe Barack Obama is the “Cynnicism Patch” (if you will). It’ll be long and painful, but it MIGHT just work. On the other hand, I also believe that McCain and Sarah Palin are an injection of cynnicism simultaneously, to the jugular and heart. While I do not believe Obama will truly change a whole helluva lot, I do know that he is the first person in my life who has made me care this much about electoral politics. I know that he is smart, that he is wise and that he believes in this country enough to make me question my cynnicism. I believe he will win. I believe we will win (this round). I believe Propositions 4, 6 & 8 will be shot down by Californians, and I believe this Holiday season will be one of the happiest since I was a child and thought an old, jolly, fat white dude from the North Pole would bring me gifts =P. Maybe, just maybe, this year it’ll be a middle-aged, slender, charismatic miscegenated brother from Hawaii/Cambridge/Chicago bringing me a lil bit of hope.

*Yes, that WAS the corniest muhf*ckin ending in the history of blogging. However, the 2nd step in kicking your cynnicism habit (after admitting you have a problem), is saying something stuey-uber-corny. Try it doggy.*

For the LAST time til Nov. 4…

!!!VOTEvoteVOTEvoteVOTEvoteVOTE!!!
COLINRESPONSE

P.S.

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P.P.S.

[Un-F*CKING-believable!!!]