Somewhere Between

I recently watched a documentary called Somewhere Between about four girls from China who were adopted by families in the U.S. The director and her husband adopted a girl from China and she wanted to examine how her daughter’s development of identity would be different from her own. Through four different stories the director hopes viewers will “come to understand more fully the meaning of family and the ever prevalent cultural disconnect between stereotyping and race.”

There were a few scenes that stuck out to me more than the others. The first that struck a chord, was a scene in which one of the adoptive mothers was in a beauty salon with her two Chinese-adopted daughters, and the woman in the chair next to them told the girls, “Congratulations for getting to come to America.”

The idea that they had escaped and were getting a better life because they were adopted seemed like a perfectly rational reaction to hearing that they had been adopted from China. The woman went on to ask if the youngest daughter was happy that she was in America.

Another was the struggle the girls all had to define themselves by the use of the terms Chinese and American. As one of the girls said, “I am a child stuck between two countries.” She said she couldn’t call herself Chinese American, but neither did she feel comfortable saying she was simply Chinese or American.

The idea that they were white on the inside and Chinese on the outside was expressed by multiple Chinese adoptees. Their avowed identity is constantly being questioned by others who ascribe an Asian American identity on them.

Martin and Nakayama (2012) looked at identity management in their chapter on why people should study IIC. Identity management to them is “the way individuals make sense of their multiple images concerning the sense of self in different social contexts.” Each of the girls questioned whether or not to go to China to meet their birth parents and those who did seemed to feel differently about their identities as a result.

One of the questions raised in the beginning of the film is whether or not international adoptions are a good or bad thing, and to add to that, whether they should be done at all. How do you feel about international adoptions and do you have a personal connection with someone who has been adopted from another country? How do they deal with issues associated with their multiple identities?

Here is the link to the film’s website. The trailer provides a glimpse of what the film is all about.

http://www.somewherebetweenmovie.com/

If anyone is interested in seeing the film in its entirety, it is available at the DU library.

Is the World of Fashion Opening Up?

This week the article on Disability, Embodiment and Ableism discussed tyrannies of perfection and the idea that impairment or disability is equated with biological inferiority, as well as the non-disabled gaze and how it invalidates impaired bodies. Truth and perfection are only recognized in normality.

In few other realms is perfection personified like in the world of fashion. While there are different ideas of perfection when it comes to beauty, the runway has tended to include a certain type of woman: tall, slender, and able-bodied.

New York Fashion Week tried to change that this year when it included its first disabled model on the runway. Dr. Danielle Sheypuk, a psychologist, was Ms. Wheelchair New York 2012 and made her fashion show debut in the Carrie Hammer show.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2558672/Its-time-start-including-people-disabilities-New-York-Fashion-Week-puts-wheelchair-bound-model-runway.html

Hammer told the Huffington Post that she “made the decision to cast role models not runway models.”

Do you think this comment adds to or takes away from casting her in the show?

Sheypuk is not the only disabled model who has made her debut in the world of fashion recently. Diesel cast Jillian Mercado, a style blogger who uses a wheelchair, in one of its latest campaigns with a message of “We are connected.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/jillian-mercado-diesel-blog_n_4643574.html?utm_hp_ref=style&ir=Style

Will this campaign help people stray away from politics of difference and encourage people to recognize the equal value of different ways of being? 

10 Things You Should Never Say to a Disabled Person

I came across an article this morning that is very salient in light of this past week’s discussions on disability.  Like Deanna L. Fassett, I too take for granted my ability in allowing every daily action to happen without simple awareness of the fact I can do it passing through my mind. She goes on to advise readers that in order to better understand intercultural encounters, one should be more aware and more understanding of what life is like for someone different. Once you can empathize, then one should “feel outraged at how people with disabilities get treated (Fassett, 2010).”  We can only feel outraged once we are aware. As able bodies, we often do the wrong thing in interactions with those who are physically or mentally different than ourselves. The reading, Disability, embodiment and ableism: stories of resistance, addresses this with the section on the non-disabled gaze. It states, “pity shapes intercorporeal emotions in abled-disabled encounters (E. Loja et al., 2012).” Within this same section, the authors address the “consequences of unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions (E. Loja et al., 2012).” When reading this article, 10 Things You Should Never Say to a Disabled Person, is it the unconscious assumption of well-meaning people that cause these instances to occur? It is ignorance? Or is it malice? Why is it that abled bodies point out disabilities or feel pity for those who are disabled?

If It Happened There...

Last week, we read an article by Elfriede Fursich about global journalists and their representation of the “Other.” Fursich analyzes media texts from travel programs to argue that journalists need to adopt new techniques to better represent the complexity of the “Other.” However, the article takes a broad stroke in its applicability to foreign relations journalism. With an eye on this, I couldn’t help but think of an article I read during the American government shutdown in late September. The article, which became the first in the news outlets “If It Happened There” series, somewhat satirically reported on the event using the tone the American media frequently uses to describe events in other countries. I’ve included the link to the article here. The series has also covered the State of the Union, the Super Bowl and the Duck Dynasty controversy, among others.

Despite being quite hilarious, these articles also give me pause as a regular consumer of foreign affairs news stories. Though the articles deliver hyperbole in parts, they read much like some journalists describe situations elsewhere. In an attempt to provide appealing detail, the American global journalist many times represents the “Other” in an unreasonable manner contingent with subjectivity and from a distance. I believe the Slate series compels a sense of self-reflective analysis needed in American journalism.

What is your reaction to this series? What does this say about the impact of highly broadcast American media on the representation of the “Other?”

-Michael 

Are the Olympics worth it?

With the onset of the Olympic games, there have been plenty of areas of controversy.  Whether its security, Russia’s anti-gay stance, or their general preparedness for such a large global event, plenty of banter dominates the media.  However, another interesting viewpoint is if the Olympics are still needed and do they actually promote the international cooperation that they originally sought to attain?  The security argument immediately comes to mind.  Global events such as the Olympics are breading ground for terrorist threats, a perfect target for terrorist groups who hope to disrupt international peace.  Is the threat worth the games?  Also, the games were intended to bring revenue to host cities and boost local economies, but the added cost due to intense security measures and the expectation to hold the most elaborate of events, certainly negates the argument that cities see much benefit economically.  And one might also wonder if the Olympics are just a way to promote Western domination.  Time slots that cater to American time zones, a medal count that is predominately western countries, and a media that criticizes the host city.  Bill Plashke writes in the Los Angeles Times, "The strong-armed dream of Russian President Vladimir Putin has thus far succeeded not in embellishing the Olympic motto, but altering it, from 'swifter, higher, stronger' to, 'unfinished, unsettling and uninviting.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-26092729).  So are the Olympics just another form of universalism, which “works as a mechanism of exclusion that perpetuates the existing hierarchy of discourse and power structure” (Yin, 285)? 

Underground Cities and Buried History: Denying a Town's Past

The Wild West was a chaotic and ruthless place. Gold diggers, gun slingers, cowboys, trappers, homesteaders and immigrants; these were the rugged pioneers that have been locked in memory and history as the settlers of the American West.

I grew up in Prescott, Arizona. It was the first town established and served as the capitol of the new Territory from 1864 till it moved to the tiny ranch district of Phoenix 40 years later. Prescott still boasts it's old Saloon strip, aptly named 'Whiskey Row' as well as all the old historical buildings, hotels and shops. It's an Olde West tourist trap for for sure.

Looking back at the settling of the town, the pioneers and miners weren't the only ones to establish roots. Prescott for a long time held one of the largest Chinese communities in the Frontier. As a child I found this fact fascinating as we learned at our local museum that tunnels had been built under the streets to allow them to go to work as servants and attendants in the shops around town. Before the street expansions in the late 90's, you could still see cuts of purple glass set into the sidewalk for light to shine into the tunnels. (We even had our old hitching posts for horses still mounted in the sidewalk up until this time).

some members of the Chinese community in Prescott

The tunnels were a unique part of our town history that everyone knew about. Besides being used by immigrants, the tunnels were used as opium dens and speak-easies. Politicians coming to the capitol were said to have avoided the crowds by venturing through the tunnels as a secret route. Some tales regale the tunnels as a way for townspeople to hide during Indian attacks. Every kid in Prescott wanted to climb down there and venture around for themselves.

Then in the early 2000's, the city council and mayor began publicly denying that there were any tunnels at all. Even the local museum started making similar bold statements. We all scoffed, but it made us wonder... why? Was it a way to try and cover up our questionable racist history with the prominent Chinese community that all but vanished in a few decades? Were there safety issues involved that the city was worried it might have a major reconstruction effort on its hands? Some even claimed that they were hiding something - like the legend of the Republican gold gathered during the gold rush and hidden under the court house.

Whatever the reason, our discussions in class reminded me of this large Chinese community that used to live north of the tracks, who toiled in dark tunnels because it was not safe for them to be seen in public. Going to the graveyards today, you still find old gravestones with Chinese lettering, no other marker or indicator to tell who these people were. But they were a big part of the settling of the town. I'm not sure why they ended up leaving, though it's not hard to imagine what some of the reasons might have been. It's a shame that with the coverup of these tunnels that a part of their narrative and history is beginning to be forgotten. Perhaps its a bit of white privilege to not see what effect this could and does have on the legacy of this lost community, or perhaps it's white guilt that wishes to bury it away.  Or, perhaps, its just old fashioned ignorance that's keeping the town officials from seeing what the deeper ramifications are.

check out pictures here:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/prescott/1982993-prescott-underground-tunnels.html

more information related to the denial:

http://www.sharlot.org/library-archives/days-past/the-final-words-on-the-myths-of-the-tunnels/

History, Power, and Dr. Seuss

               In class we have discussed the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941. Each time we’ve talked about the internment of Japanese Americans I'm reminded that one of those camps was located in Topaz, UT a few hours outside of Salt Lake City where I’ve camped numerous times and always saw it as the most remote, desolate place on earth. The best place to escape civilization, or to remove someone from it as the government did to the Japanese Americans. What is of course not a surprise is that growing up I heard nothing of the camp in school, in what was an attempt to white wash history by the powers that be. 

As a child growing up in Utah I was also a big fan of Dr. Seuss, or Theodor Seuss Geisel, and read repeatedly ‘The Cat in the Hat’, ‘Horton Hears a Who’, etc. What I didn’t know until some years later is that Dr. Seuss was originally a political cartoonist with less than childlike views about Japanese Americans.

Here is one of many images by Seuss depicting his sentiment about Japanese Americans. 

Political cartoons are a powerful method to promote political agendas, and as we read about Arab women post 9/11, when the Japanese challenged U.S. culture in the Pearl Harbor attacks it must have created a salient nationalist American agenda. Japanese-Americans where then local threats to this identity, hence the response. This, of course, doesn’t justify such atrocities, but shows how universal human reactions can be to a threatened communal identity. What’s even eerier to think about is that while the Nazis where marching the Jews into their camps we were marching Japanese American’s into ours. Popular history has indeed told a different story.

                It should be noted that Seuss eventually apologized for his cartoon treatment of the Japanese and Africans (another frequently marginalized group depicted by Seuss).