Sardonic Sistah Says

I’m not a Steelers fan (I do live in the Bengal Nation) but I like Hines Ward.  Here are highlights from a recent article on him that was printed in the Daily News.

Hines Ward and mother Kim Young-hee

Now, entering Super Bowl XLIII, Ward is is a celebrity who is considered a “savior” for half-Koreans who are treated like second-class citizens. He’s become an inspiration to Koreans and a force to alter some of the country’s old-school traditional views and attitudes toward race, and much like the way he plays on the field, Ward is not going to stop until his message is heard.

 ”He was teased unmercifully by his friends,” says Andrew Ree, Ward’s longtime friend and attorney, who is Korean. “His black friends thought he looked funny because of his eyes. His Asian friends wouldn’t accept him because of his skin color and he was embarrassed by his mother because she couldn’t speak English very well. She would drop him off at school and he would spot his friends and he would duck down in his seat so they wouldn’t see him with her.”

“She looked over and had tears in her eyes,” Ree continues. “She said, ‘if you are that ashamed of me, don’t be with me anymore.’ From that point, he said he wasn’t ashamed anymore.”

While he used chopsticks and ate Korean staples such as kimchi and kalbi, Ward was discouraged by his mother from exploring his Korean side because of how they had been treated in Korea. A country that was scarred by the Japanese occupation in World War II, Korea prides itself on maintaining its culture and identity.

“What Koreans want is to keep the blood lines pure,” Ree says. “When you mix the blood in some ways in the old days they felt it was inferior. They want to keep the blood line going… it’s almost, for a lack of a better term, a royalty issue. They also feel there is a less likelihood of divorce from that standpoint.”

Ward has returned to Korea every year since his first visit and he has seen his impact.

“I have seen change,” says Ward. “They didn’t (used to) let mixed races into

Korean Children at a Steelers Game

the military and they have passed laws to allow mixed races to join the military. I am not trying to change it overnight. I am not trying to be the next Martin Luther King.”

It doesn’t hurt that Ward is now friends with Korea’s President, Lee Myung-bak. And it doesn’t hurt that the new U.S. president, who preaches “change” here, is also bi-racial.

While some are still waiting for Hollywood to tell our stories others are taking it upon themselves to find funding to tell it ourselves on the Independent circuit.

The first film you want to try to see is Medicine for Melancholy. You can view this movie from the comfort of your home on IFC in Theaters on your cable tv.  It’s about black people who aren’t gang bangin’ or dancin’ or doing slapstick comedy with black male actors playing the lead female roles in a fat suit or black people working high powered jobs but still spend 20 hours a day lamenting about love.

Are they sure these are black characters?  Director Barry Jenkins drew on his own experiences as a Miami transplant in San Francisco.

“As a person of color from the South, San Francisco was the first city that really made me feel like an other,” Mr. Jenkins said over breakfast in Brooklyn recently. Because he was in an interracial romance when he got there, he added, “I was almost buffered.”

“When that relationship was off,” he said, “it was like I was seeing the city for the first time.”

New York Times 21 January 2009

The film is not about race but how people deal with it, live it.  “Micah comes across as pro-black, and Jo’s is more of a post-race point of view,” Mr. Jenkins said. “When I started the film I was teetering between these two viewpoints. It’s like I was splitting my personality in two.”

The next movie that is a must see is not for every one.  I read the book Push by Sapphire when it first came out about 10 years ago; actually, I’ve read it several times.  (And, if Sapphire should be web searching her name and happens upon this blog I just want her to know I’ve given up on her ever coming out with another novel.   Nope, I just gave up on you.  The same for you, too, Ms. Sandra Jackson Opoku)

I don’t know if I can explain the novel to without turning people off from the story.  Two weeks ago a friend and I exchanged emails where I tried to do exactly that and I turned her off from the story.

The story is about Precious Jones an illiterate teen with two kids who has been abused by the adults in her life.  It can be compared to the Bluest Eye or the Color Purple but I really think the story (like those other two) stand on its own next to them, not conjoined to them.  And like those other two I think Push should be required reading and, from the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, required watching.

But if  this is too heavy for you don’t worry, Madea Goes to Jail should be coming out soon.  No clip for that film, though, because if you’ve seen the first one know how it goes.