Jul 26, 2013

I am not Trayvon Martin - now officially a meme



The great video above came out months ago, but the meme seems to have really taken off after the ruling with this facebook post.  Now there is a whole tumblr page entitled we are not trayvon martin where people are posting pics and testimonies.  They are all over the map, but I appreciate the conversation. 

Jul 14, 2013

more powerful to recognize that we are zimmerman?

in light of the ruling, my last post seems painfully prophetic.

my friend Jorge Salazar posted the following on facebook:

"Instead of saying "I am Trayvon Martin" it would do more good for white people [and non-Black people] in solidarity with the Trayvon Martin case to recognize all the ways they (we) are Zimmerman.

As in, if you live in a "safe" suburban or gated community that is mostly white and that is considered a "good" neighborhood because it excludes people of colour [especially excluding Black people] then you benefit from the same conditions that created Zimmerman.

If you benefit from "police protection" to your property that depends on racial profiling of people of colour [especially Black people] and brutality towards them then you take part in the same systems that create Zimmerman.

If you have the racial privilege to work, move, live in mostly white spaces and have limited contact with... [Black people], particularly "low income" ...[Black people], then you live with the same social and economic policies of casual segregation that create Zimmerman.

It's good that people recognize the injustice of Trayvon Martin's death, but if that recognition is not accompanied by the work to recognize and undo the systematic economic, social, educational and employment policies that create neighborhoods where Black people are seen as threatening trespassers - and how people benefit from this racial privilege - then no true anti-racist work can occur.

Nobody wants to say "I am Zimmerman" but until we recognize how Zimmerman reflects institutionalized racism there will continue to be more Trayvons."

: El Jone
— with Melanie Matining.

Jul 10, 2013

studies show it is harder for all to feel the pain of 'black' people

That you may already know, but a new study shows that even people of color assume that 'black' folks actually feel less pain that 'white' folks. wacky

Slate recently carried this article, which reports:

Let’s do a quick experiment. You watch a needle pierce someone’s skin. Do you feel this person’s pain? Does it matter if the person’s skin is white or black?
For many people, race does matter, even if they don’t know it. They feel more empathy when they see white skin pierced than black. This is known as the racial empathy gap. To study it, researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca showed participants (all of whom were white) video clips of a needle or an eraser touching someone’s skin. They measured participants’ reactions through skin conductance tests—basically whether their hands got sweaty—which reflect activity in the pain matrix of the brain. If we see someone in pain, it triggers the same network in our brains that’s activated when we are hurt. But people do not respond to the pain of others equally. In this experiment, when viewers saw white people receiving a painful stimulus, they responded more dramatically than they did for black people.

The racial empathy gap helps explain disparities in everything from pain management to the criminal justice system. But the problem isn’t just that people disregard the pain of black people. It’s somehow even worse. The problem is that the pain isn’t even felt.

A recent study shows that people, including medical personnel, assume black people feel less pain than white people. The researchers asked participants to rate how much pain they would feel in 18 common scenarios. The participants rated experiences such as stubbing a toe or getting shampoo in their eyes on a four-point scale (where 1 is “not painful” and 4 is “extremely painful”). Then they rated how another person (a randomly assigned photo of an experimental “target”) would feel in the same situations. Sometimes the target was white, sometimes black. In each experiment, the researchers found that white participants, black participants, and nurses and nursing students assumed that blacks felt less pain than whites.

But the researchers did not believe racial prejudice was entirely to blame. After all, black participants also displayed an empathy gap toward other blacks. What could possibly be the explanation for why black people’s pain is underestimated?

It turns out assumptions about what it means to be black—in terms of social status and hardship—may be behind the bias. In additional experiments, the researchers studied participants’ assumptions about adversity and privilege. The more privilege assumed of the target, the more pain the participants perceived. Conversely, the more hardship assumed, the less pain perceived. The researchers concluded that “the present work finds that people assume that, relative to whites, blacks feel less pain because they have faced more hardship.”

This gives us some insight into how racial disparities are created—and how they are sustained. First, there is an underlying belief that there is a single black experience of the world. Because this belief assumes blacks are already hardened by racism, people believe black people are less sensitive to pain. Because they are believed to be less sensitive to pain, black people are forced to endure more pain.

Jul 3, 2013

public reading as protest

Wow, now not only yoga in Gezi, but public reading as protest?! Utterly fabulous. 

Aljazeera reports that new form of protest  has emerged in Turkey - the "Standing Man".  As they put it:

"Standing silently, and initially alone, Turkish performance artist Erdem Gunduz stood, with his hands in his pockets, facing the Ataturk Cultural Centre in Taksim Square, Istanbul, for eight hours.

With extraordinary speed, Gunduz become the latest symbol of the resistance movement. In days that followed, thousands of people would emulate his solitary act, standing silently, for minutes or hours, in places across Turkey.

The contrast with the images of tear gas clouds and water cannon could not have been greater. Faces obscured by masks and helmets were revealed to show expressions of quiet contemplation. 
Violent scenes are still occurring around Turkey, including in Istanbul once again this past weekend, but the Standing Man protests continue unabated.

The following images explore one aspect of the protest in Taksim Square, ongoing since before the communal standing took off. Public reading and informal education has been notable since the earliest days of the protest, but has since merged with the Standing Man to form "The Taksim Square Book Club".

Reading a book publicly in protest sounds like way more fun than listening to rally speeches. Lets make this tactic travel! (more fabulous photos here)