Sardonic Sistah Says

What is the deal with all the shows with lots of kids?

I grew up in a large family with four older brothers and one younger sister. From my point of view there was never enough of anything; I felt like I didn’t get enough of the foods that I liked because my older brothers would always eat up the good stuff. There wasn’t enough attention because when my mother wasn’t working she was obsessed with keeping the house clean. There was never enough money because being a single mother of six kids my mother had to make a dollar stretch so while some kids were designer down I was lucky to get knock offs of designer knock offs. Basically we were poor.

When it came time to have kids I knew from the jump that I wanted one, maybe two but no more than that. I wanted to be able to raise my children with not a lot of material things but at least be able to give them my attention and love. And it’s so far so good, with one natural child and one step. My husband and I are debating on having one more child which would be odd considering there will be a big age gap between it and the other two. But for me that’s enough: a small family, not a lot of kids.

So tell me why I am obsessed with the TV show Jon and Kate plus 8?

The show is about a couple who had trouble conceiving so turned to aid of a fertility doctor. The first time the wife got pregnant she had twin girls but not content with just the two they decide to go for one more and ended up with sextuplets. I love the show. I love the kids. I make sure I watch the show every Tuesday night on TLC or catch it the next week on Discovery Health. I’ll even watch the marathons. I’m somewhat addicted to the show and I don’t even like reality shows.

J doesn’t get it. He’ll walk into the room and say, “Turn off those whining, bratty kids.” The kids are always whining or crying or screaming on the show and Kate is always having a meltdown about a spot on someone’s clothes or an orchestrated family event not going as smoothly as she planned. Jon is just Jon.

Its one of a few programs that TLC and Discovery Health shows as a permanent series. The other shows in heavy rotation have families with multiple births or just large families like the awe-inspiring Duggar family with 17 children and counting. Sometimes I watch the shows and think how environmentally stressful it is to have all those children. Although they deal a lot with hand-me downs and Kate Gosselin is a stickler for eating organic food and recycling but large families still consume a lot. There’s the water for the clothes and cooking and to cart around a large group of kids most of the families drive big vans. A couple of families use refurbished yellow school buses as their family station wagons. It’s probably safe to assume that have 8+ kids won’t make you a “green” family.

Another family that I like to watch that only has one show but airs every few months has a German wife in a second marriage. The first six children from her first marriage are half black; the second sets are white and within that she has three sets of twins. It was while watching these children, oohing and aaahing over the pudgy fingers, the rosy cheeks and young baby eyes full of wonder that I realized that except for this one all of the families were white. The majority of the families like the Duggars seem to be evangelical Christians and although they aren’t proselytizing with their air time I wonder if there is a hidden agenda among the countless smiles and hugs the families are putting out over the airwaves.

In an age where Americans think the ideal family size has 2.5 children I sit in wonder of these supersized families. They have taken God’s command to be fruitful and multiply to medieval levels. Although the children seem happy and loved on these shows I wonder what happens when the cameras are off. Do they get one on one time with their parents on a regular basis? Are they encouraged to be individuals with their own minds? What educational level have the parents achieved and what do their children aspire to, especially the girls? What if someone would want to marry a person of color or a person of a dissimilar faith? Or, worse, what would happen if one of their children came home to say they were gay?     The problem with growing up in a small community, this one being your own family, is that certain expectations are held, but what happens when they aren’t met? Ostracizing?

I envision these family trees with branches reaching fifty different ways and then those branches doing the same until there is nothing but a big tangle up above like there is below. On one installment of the Duggar family the oldest son expressed an interest in the daughter of a family friend. The daughter comes from a large family, too. A lot of the large families interact with other large families, which seems to insure that this way of life will continue into the future.

And even while watching this I can’t stop watching. I want to see how the mom plans the day for a family of 13. I don’t like housework, but it can be a spectator sport as I watch one mother mop her floor for the second time that day. Their children aren’t lazy internet addicts either. All of them, boys as well as the girls, take part in cleaning the house and watching after their siblings. That is what draws me into the shows; that is what touches me the most. Order, as well as love, rules their households and whatever else critics may say, there are two parents (and a whole bunch of deputized parents) in the home. Everyone is always shooting out the axiom, “It takes a village…” well, these families are their own villages.

I have been longing to see more minority families. The Gosselin family kind of counts as a family of color (Jon is half Korean) but it’s not the same. The Discovery Channel must had heard my inner plea because tonight the show “Then Came Six” debuts. The show is about a black family with seven children, a 12 year old single and toddler sextuplets. There’s probably going to be a lot of crying, sighing, frantic moments and meltdowns. And I will watch them all.

So while Obama is knighted into Camelot by Sir Edward Kennedy, H Clinton is trying to make clear up false assumptions that she has ever had any dealings with the slumlord she linked Obama to in a debate last week.

News reports said that the Clintons were a bit miffed to hear Kennedy was throwing his support towards Obama this morning.  Yesterday’s op-ed piece from Caroline Kennedy probably didn’t do much to soothe them also.  The Clinton’s were supposed to be a second reincarnation of Camelot.  Pics of Bill Clinton shaking the hand of JFK flashed on the news this morning.  And now this pic of the Clintons with Rezkos… from a PR standpoint it’s not a good look. 

When people see this:

It kind of reminds them of this:

And really, we don’t want to go back there again.

So I think we should now get back to politics as unusual, with the candidates telling us who they are and what they do and less about digging up political dirt on the other guy because when you sling mud you might get some blowback.

I really thought that Edwards would have a better showing in South Carolina.  I just assumed that since he was from the state and was talking about money woes before a lot of the other candidates attacked the subject in a similar way that his people would come out for their hometown/native South Carolinian.

But oh well.

I have to say that the ‘08 elections are riveting and we haven’t even narrowed it down yet.  The Democrats have a better selection than the Republicans this year, definitely.  I watched a bit of the Republican debate on Thursday night and I hung in there until they started asking one another questions.   The last thing I remember was McCain was either asking someone a question or answering someone a question –either way the man is the cure to insomnia.  I rarely fall asleep before 11pm and I woke up at 1am wondering what Romney was going to say next.  Of all the candidates I think Romney did the best although I found it a bit odd that he was ready to rumble with H. Clinton and already calling her out.  I wonder if it’s a Mormon thing?

The Democratic race is the one to watch.  Although both Republican and Democrats keep changing the front runners in each state they enter, the reasons are different.  With the Republicans it’s the same old, same old but the race between the democrats has more spark and it’s not all because of the race and gender issue.  H. Clinton is a polarizing candidate.  I am sure a lot of Republicans would love her to get the nomination because they feel they could make worms meat of her.  She doesn’t exactly exude crossover appeal and I’m sure some staunch conservatives still hold a grudge since Clinton’s administration.  But Clinton has provided inspiration to a lot of females.  Just to see a viable female speak and play the game as rough and tough as the big boys is a rush for many young women today.

And speaking of inspiration, Obama’s speeches are outside the regular beltway political speak and meatier locutions than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton can deliver.  Obama makes people stop and listen and re-dream America.  Not the current America where the mention of an alert on the news can give us a mental meltdown but the America we like to think we are; the America where everyone has a chance no matter where they are from.  Our belief in our myth as a warm and opening people is central to national psyche, even if the history books say otherwise.

So it’s interesting to watch these two iconic people go head to head.  But it’s also sad, too.  The best race would have Obama or H. Clinton on opposite sides but as things stand now we are waiting for one to knock the other out the box but hope that it isn’t done in a way that is irreparable to the Democratic party.

Edwards seemed to be hoping for the same thing after the SC debates early last week.  He’s just trying to get in where he can fit in and trying to get attention to his cause of the working poor and lower middle class for this election, which is admirable.  The major problem is that a lot of lower income people don’t always show their appreciation with the ballot because they are the least demographic to find their way to the voting booth.  So while Edwards is out stomping for a worthy cause H. Clinton and Obama are divvying up supporters and crossing lines to do it.  Heck, they even seem to be crossing party lines, too.  Last weekend Obama got a nod from Bush II spiritual advisor, yet I am still pondering what the interconnection between the Bushes and Clintons over the last few years.  Shoot, Huckabee is even getting into the act by acquiring the endorsement of some conservative black leaders.

Maybe Edwards should resort to delegate grubbing like H. Clinton has done by working her Florida campaign (like she did the Michigan campaign) although the candidates promised before that they wouldn’t go to those states since they violated the rules by moving their primaries up.

Don’t count Edwards out just yet, perhaps there’s still some attention to be had for an old school liberal.  Maybe if Edwards donned some overalls he can get President Jimmy Carter to throw his support behind him (which I don’t recall him doing for Clinton years ago).  They are both southern boys who care about the indigent which is good enough to win Nobel peace prizes but not necessarily capture a presidential nomination. 

Years later historians will denote modern life this way: Before Internet (BI) and After Internet (AI).  I have been thinking of what life was like before we got the ‘net at work.  I realized how naive we were about our problems which mostly focused on the smelly homeless and their bags of belongings.  They are still around but they are obsequious.  Those taking center stage now aren’t the drifting insane but a new group of derelicts that have taken root in the library.  They seem able bodied but they are definitely always jonesin and their drug of choice: internet.

At first I said it to a friend in jest because one would wonder how anyone could become so attached to something.  It’s like TV addiction– no one really believes there’s such a thing as a TV addict.  If TV could be that harmful then why are we letting them cut their teeth on it as soon as their wobbly heads are able to stay in place?  But looking at children’s grades in comparison to how much television they watch (and in black homes black children on average watch more television than other racial groups) then one must wonder if it is truly so.

The internet just crept up on us and suddenly it was everywhere in every facet of life.  You can’t do business without being on the net.  For a lot of companies you can’t get a job without logging on to the net.  Some high schools require their students to have a laptop (at my daughter’s school the underclassmen’s books have been replaced with laptops with the books uploaded on to them).  To get the latest news, whether it’s about the traffic on the commute to and from work or what’s going on in the world we turn to the internet and get the hour by hour (and sometimes minute by minute) updates.

So here we are on the net.  But some people have taken it to the exclusion of everything else.

Even in the cold weather they are waiting for the doors to open. Some come around about 8am even though they know we don’t open for another hour.  As the time nears they gather around closer to the door and once the church bell rings (which, for some reason, is a minute and a half fast) they push up against the door. When the guard opens the door they fall in and push through, over twenty people making a beeline for the computer room which has become the epicenter of the library.  Way before noon the place is filled to capacity and others have to go on the waiting list to wait their turn.

Some are cranky when told their time is up and they have to go on the list to get back on.  Others roam around the building and sit in the uncomfortable chairs (we used to have comfortable chairs but then they never left the spot) and stare, waiting for something or someone interesting to walk by.  It could be a man or a woman.  Sometimes they pick up magazines but a lot of them have the magazines open on their laps and just stare off into space and let the time go by.

Nearly once a week the police have to escort someone out of the computer room.  The last time that happened it was because a man recognized someone else as the guy who tried to jack him outside the library.  Fists were swung; blood spurted all over the place as one man slammed the head of the other man against the computers and against the pillar before the police could come up.  I wasn’t there to witness it.  I came in later that day and as I walked through the room I didn’t know anything like that had happened, the place was filled with people on the computers and waiting to get on

When we first got the computers 10 years ago things were the same.  The first people the computers attracted were lowlifes –mostly because we had free printing.  They didn’t need to get logged on. We didn’t know the computers would be a big draw so day in and day out we was swamped with televisions desired demographic: the American male from 18-50.  Except these guys didn’t work except for the play-work they did on the internet.  And most of it was porn.  Our computers were getting locked up with porn pics and our printers were spewing it out so much that when I came in the next morning and refreshed the cue pages of it would print out.  About a year later administration began to listen to our complaints and after some research and hearing stories of the ACLU suing libraries for filtering out certain websites.  Although porn is not protected under free speech the ACLU has been able to strong arm libraries to allow patrons to come in and view porn in public places.  Because, we really don’t know they are going to view porn and some websites are inadvertently withheld because of our filters so we have to have a certain amount of unfilterable computers. We put up screens on those computers so that only those who are directly in front can view it. That’s what has been decided in order to keep the ACLU from suing.

People refer to the unfilterable computers as the “porn” computers.  I am not allowed to watch porn at work but when someone asks to be put on the unfiltered computer I am to assume that they are doing viable research even if they may be sucking their thumb, stroking the screen or jiggling in an odd way.  In my old department, before the creation of the big computer room, our unfiltered computer was always (mysteriously) broken.

“What you mean it’s broken?” the man would ask.  It’s always a man.  A few times it has been a woman but 99.9% of the time it’s a creepy ass looking man.

I’ll shrug my shoulders and try to look as perturbed by it as they are.  They say it’s always broken and I agree.  “I think it’s a virus,” I give by way of an explanation. Or I say IT is working on it.  IT gave up on it after awhile because they replaced it with a new one but that one broke, too.  The patron will stomp off mad, in search of someplace else to view porn in a public place.

Now with the new computer room we have more computers than we ever have and they are all in one place.  There are a few computers dispersed throughout the building but most of them are in that area and there are five unfilterable computers.  People who work there don’t want to walk past that area.  They don’t want to see what those behind it could be viewing.

It’s not just the porn viewers but a large group of men who hang down at the library from when we open until we close.  Now that word has gotten out that we are “brand new” again they have flocked to us like moths to a flame.  They are mostly black with a small percent of white males thrown in.   We who work there have been talking about them more lately.  There seem more of them.  And it’s not because of the downbeat of the economy; these are men who have opted out of the workforce a long time ago, if they ever decided to go into it. 

“I’m going to tell you about these guys,” says a male coworker of mine.  He is probably more disgusted with the predicament than I am.  He points out a young man who he says is about 19 and reminisces of when he first dropped out and started hanging around.  The boy sits all day on the computer playing games, watching videos and cruising MySpace.  His mother kicked him out, my friend said and one day as he was walking past the computer he noticed the man IM a young woman and asking if he can come and live with her.  Selected homelessness is a plight of a lot of the men who hang out.  “Some of these guys are in their 40s, still living at home.  You remember Jackie?  Before she retired she said she was going to tell us what the deal is with these men.  She got loud and said, ‘I have a friend with a son just like them. When she goes to work she kicks her 40 year old son out the house at 7:30 and he’s not allowed to come back home until she gets home.  Because she knows that if he stays at home he will have his no-good friends over smoking weed or some women over to have sex.  These men ain’t about nothing and ain’t never going to be nothing.’  You could have heard a pin drop in the room and in less than 10 minutes all of them cleared out muttering they were going to find someplace else to go.”

My friend tells me stories he overhears while he is putting materials away of how the men talk among themselves waiting to go home and wondering what the mother has cooked for dinner.  One man complained about his alleged treatment by his mother, saying he was her child and she should be taking care of him. 

“You are a grown man,” my friend admonished him.  “You need to do for yourself!”

“I’m a grown ass man” is the mantra of the men who have to be told lower their voices or give up the computer for a waiting user.  They get upset, they become petulant and huff, “I’m a grown ass man.”

“They do realize a grown ass man should be out working a job so they can buy their own computer, right?” I laugh. 

“A young man walked up to me one day and asked, “You laugh at me, don’t you?  And I said, I do, I think it’s funny but not in the way you might find it.”  I understand.  My friend is black and grew up in the same hood I did.  In high school he was close friends with my sister-in-law.  This is not the strength of a people I was raised to believe in as I was growing up.  It’s sad to see a troop of men sitting around all day wasting their lives away. So you have to laugh at them or it will make you sad or make you mad and I am not allowed to go and put the job section of the newspaper in a man’s hand although I can tell them how long their wait is so they can get back on the computer to watch some more YouTube videos.

As I left work yesterday a 30-something year old man was arguing with the guards.  “I was just about to leave,” he said but they escorted him into the security office.  I shake my head and walk up to the security guard at the door.  She is an older black female and has a disgusted look on her face. 

“This stuff be making me sick,” she spat.  She was disgusted. She didn’t know exactly know what went on with the incident but suspected her two coworkers of racially profiling the man.  “He wasn’t doing nothing, he said he was about to leave.  You just don’t know how these folks are.  Just racist.”  she hissed the last part.

I talk to her for a few more minutes and leave.  I wonder what went on with the guy and wonder if it was racism or if the black female guard is an enabler. I wonder if I am unduly biased against the men who hang out all day in the building.  And I wonder if they are really addicted to the internet or if they are committing an age old sin: sloth. 

I’m not sure, but I don’t begrudge them for wanting to stay in a warm building.  I hug my coat closer as I walk against the wind to my bus top.

The two democrat front runners have bones to pick with one another.  Or at least their camps do.

Last week it was Hillary’s folks getting all up in arms when during a debate Hillary said it hurt her feelings when people didn’t find her personable.  In basic uppercrust jargon Obama gave Hillary a nod when in a gist told her she was aiight. 

Instead people got up in arms thinking it meant the opposite and that she really wasn’t likeable at all. 

Now this week people are up in arms about a comment H. Clinton said about Martin Luther King and Lydon B. Johnson.  In a debate H. Clinton said:

“Dr King’s dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”

The media has jumped on it, Obama has commented on it and because of her gaffe she’s trying to spin it that Obama is trying to make it racial.

I just want to say, is this the best y’all got?  You both are going to nitpick about semantics and blow things up until folks take sides.  If you aren’t going to blow each other up with some good stuff then let it go.  Bring it, Obama!  Take him to the hoop, Hillary!  If you aren’t then let it pass.

H. Clinton really needs to think about who she has supporting her.  The nation’s first black billionaire is taking H. Clinton’s side in this.  Bob Johnson, the man who basically brought down the black media image with three letters, BET is supporting Clinton and said he was offended by Obama’s remarks.

I don’t think Bob Johnson knows what offensive really is.  Here’s a commercial I’d love to see on his old station (once it got really stank he sold it out to Viacom).

Some hate-filled newsletters from the GOP nominee hopeful have surfaced, but Paul is denying ownership.

I don’t know who Ron Paul is. I’m not following the Republican race as closely as I am looking at the Democrats. I know only a few faces on the GOP side and those are Giuliani, Thompson and McCain. Everyone else was just names to me until now. Now I know who Ron Paul is and I will be following him more closely.

New Republic reporter James Kirchick went in search of the infamous newsletters of the Congressman. In his article titled Angry White Man, Kirchick examines 25 years of newsletter from the candidate.  Published under four different titles over the years (Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The
Ron Paul Survival Report) the newsletter has published incendiary comments over the years against blacks (“opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions,”), gays (“Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”), Barbara Jordan (“the archetypical half-educated victimologist”), and Martin Luther King (“world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours”). The darlings of the newsletter are David Duke and militia groups. Written mostly in first person with no-bylines, Paul is denying not only ownership of the articles but also claims he never knew of the substance of most of the articles although they were published under a publication that bore his banner.

I don’t know whether to give him the benefit of the doubt or just doubt. He more than likely won’t get the Republican nomination, but it’s sad to see a race that will probably go down as being the most inclusive by the way the country is responding to Obama and H. Clinton that we have a relic from the old boy’s club rearing its head.

A telephone poll taken with 1,105 African American, Asian American and Hispanics has found something major: that we don’t like each other. They probably could have saved the money and followed the newspaper headlines to the next Hispanic/Black clash but they probably wanted to do it at a safe distance.

Not only do the minorities distrust each other but they trust whites more than another minority groups.

Other findings are:

• A majority of Hispanics and a significant percentage of Asians believe in the concept that every American has an equal opportunity to succeed. By contrast, the majority of Black respondents – 66 percent – disagreed with that notion.
  
• Blacks overwhelmingly believe the criminal justice system favors the rich and powerful; most Hispanics and an even larger majority of Asians disagree.
  
• A large majority of each group believes that they should put aside their differences and work together on issues affecting their communities; they also say the country would be better if more from all three groups were in positions of authority at universities, businesses, media and government.
  
• All three groups are optimistic about the future. Strong majorities of each group believe that racial tensions will ease over the next 10 years.
  

So maybe there is hope for us yet. To read about the findings click here.

15 years ago Bill Clinton assured the common man that he understood what he was going through when he uttered the empathic words, “I feel your pain.” During this political stomp Hillary came close to choking up, but nothing evoking the words and sentiment that her husband was able to convey those many years ago. But then does she really need to? Perhaps it’s because she’s a woman that we automatically assign to Hillary a maternal instinct that we think she’ll extend to the world. This is the true zeitgeist of the 2008 election. We are looking for a healer, a feeler, someone who can take our pain, convey it to the world and help bring us all together in a way that we are fully understood and we can still look strong. We need an Oprah, but since she won’t run give us the next best thing.

Some politicians think the trick to conveying humanity is by showing emotion. But breaking down like an emo boy band isn’t necessarily what we want to see in a world leader. How can you put into words understand when you don’t really have the words because you don’t really understand? Or you are saying the words but it doesn’t really get the message across? Or you want to manipulate? You cry. My daughter used to do that when she was younger. I told her to stop it and the tears dried up quick. Game recognizes game.

But everything that they are saying to us are just words and I have to sift through what they are saying to get to what they are really trying to say. I’m not really into having a personable president, I’m not looking for someone to drink a beer with or wax politically on the differences between the Arabs in Northern African and those in Arabia; I just want a person who can do the job. The problem is America always goes for the more charismatic personality for Pres which is why we got Reagan, Clinton and Bush II (Bush I slid in on Reagan’s coat tails). If I go for the personality that resonates to me then I have to go with Dennis Kucinich, a man who admits to seeing UFO’s, carries around kitsch in his pockets and has the city of Cleveland hating him (my husband nearly popped a vein when I told him I was supporting Kucinich and J loves anything Cleveland related) can get my vote.

See why you can’t go on what personality gets to you?

I still don’t know who to vote for; a few weeks ago I listened to the Democratic debate on NPR and sad to say it kicked Hillary out of the running for me. Without the timed responses and the ability to get in cute quips for memorable sound bites she fell flat for me. The men said more of the things I wanted to hear but sadly nothing that could get played on the 6:00 news. The voices sometimes got tangled up, but what I remember the most is that Edwards and Obama both made valid points on China and immigration.

So as H. Clinton inches out Obama and outdistances Edwards as she leaves New Hampshire I wonder what this means for the democratic nomination. She has been basically running on her husbands (and hers; lets not get it twisted) reputation as president and if a lot of Americans had their way he would have had a third term. The way she’s talking you’d think that she was the second Vice President, but the really she was co-pres. People remember that before B. Clinton became a lame duck president because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal he balanced the budget. But aside from throwing a couple of bombs Iraq’s way (and Republicans accused him of wagging the dog) I can’t think of anything else that B. Clinton accomplished. I know that when he got in he tried to out gays in the military and put H. Clinton in charge of trying to get universal healthcare. The results were the military instituted a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule and Hillary became cemented as a relentless bitch because she couldn’t yield or compromise. What I really loved was how B. Clinton pushed for NAFTA (which Perot and Bush I really wanted, too) which helped to dismantle the blue collar working class and then Clinton put restrictions on Welfare (which some people are still able to manipulate the system).

So, yes, I am glad she has this record to run on. She makes a great Republican nominee.

The other two candidates are a bit more liberal. Senator Edwards is more of the old school democrat, talking about the poor and the homeless and things like jobs. Who needs jobs when we have Wal-Mart? I’m not sure why he isn’t resonating with more people. Maybe it’s because his wife has cancer. They find him compassionate but think if he was that feeling he’d be at home with her, although she wants him out on the campaign trail.

Obama completely confounds the black community. The O.A’s (original activists) who turned into politicians were never able to garner this much support among the white constituency. They wonder what does he have and whatever its then it must be inimical to the black community or white people wouldn’t want him, right? And then the black women who decide to go for H. Clinton over Obama. That one makes me laugh. Black women stick with black men through thick and thin and I don’t believe what anyone is saying about black women aren’t using race as a factor. They are using race. One they don’t believe whites will vote for Obama in mass and if they do it’s a set up to kill dude in office. I actually heard someone mention they know if he’s elected he will be killed. It’s not like the man can’t use bodyguards like most presidents have done in the past. Perhaps they think it will be a Caesar situation (et tu Julian Bond?). Whichever it is, they’d rather kill the man’s dream of becoming president than let him get killed in office.

Now that’s black love!

So South Carolina is next and I’m curious to see who wins. Hopefully Edwards can hold on for a couple more states not only to make things interesting but to make both parties pay attention to his agenda on poverty. And Obama may get his hat handed to him by the black community in the south by bringing him in a far distance second against Hillary, or maybe even a third place showing. And hopefully Hillary will be taking notes on what the others are saying, so when she gets choked up next time she can better explain what American ailments are actually causing her throat to seize up on her.

Too bad she couldn’t get that medical act passed; I bet there’s a pill for that.

On the cover of a weekly magazine a couple shyly smiles out to the world. Happy faces on a magazine cover aren’t unusual, except the racial combination is a reason to pause. A young Asian American male and an African American female cuddle up to illustrate the December 13 lead story for AsianWeek magazine.

The cover story is about a book called BlAsian Exchange, the debut novel from author Sam Cacas. A former AsianWeek writer, Cacas pens the story of a young Filipino man who is attracted to black women and African American culture.

Cacas may be in a small minority. According to the most recent statistical information, Black female/Asian male pairings make up less than 0.1% of interracial couplings.

Stereotypes and negative media portrayals of African American women and Asian men may be one of the barriers between them. In the past Asian men were mostly characterized in the movies and on television as desexualized brainiacs and black women have been caricatured as harpy Sapphires. The two groups have been put at the bottom of the interracial pyramid with black men and Asian women the most desired mates in the cross cultural dating game.

College student Jimmy Zhao admitted that TV and movie images may influence people’s perceptions of African Americans back home in China. He told the Harvard Crimson, “The only black people you’re going to see on TV are in rap videos or other negative images.”

African American women are also just as likely not to date Asian males. In a Racial Preference in Dating study that was published in spring of 2007, African American women were 65% less interested in Asian men than they were in Hispanic and white males.

Over the past 20 years relations has been strained between the black and Asian community. Nothing has equaled the violence between the two groups since the 1992 LA riots, but recent news stories of boycotts and arguments in places like Prince George have shown the underlying problems between the groups. In early 2007 Kenneth Eng published a column in AsianWeek magazine titled “Why I Hate Black People” which listed reasons why blacks were in his disfavor. Uproar ensued in both the Asian and African American which resulted in the firing of Eng and the publishers of the magazine writing an apology.

I just finished this article from Colorlines Magazine (my favorite mag, by the way) and I never realized the problems that came about when people of color changed their gender.  While a black male who transitioned to becoming a black woman was able to find power and leadership, a black woman who became a black male suddenly realizes what all that entailed.

Before transitioning, (Louis) Mitchell recalls being “cavalier and reckless” about what he did in public and about his interactions with police officers. “I didn’t think about it so much,” he says about cops. “At some point they would find out I was female” and that would diffuse the situation. Now, Mitchell finds that he doesn’t engage in small transgressions like jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. “I never know if they’re just waiting for something to happen to roll up, and I do not want find myself in custody. That would be just precarious and dangerous in so many ways.”

Pauline Park, a transgendered female, discovered what the stereotype of the exotic Asian female could do to her life: 

Recently, when she got off the No. 7 train in Queens, she realized that she was being followed by a man. She didn’t know if it was because he saw her as an Asian woman or a transgender Asian woman. She ran home and slammed the door shut. “I always wear shoes I can run in,” Park says. She concedes she knew that Asian women were exoticized, but “it’s one thing reading about something in a book and another to be running down the street.”

 For the full article please click to this link.