• Worst Movie Of The Decade – Ta-Nehisi Coates "With that said, I don't think there's a single human being in Crash. Instead you have arguments and propaganda violently bumping into each other, impressed with their own quirkiness. ("Hey look, I'm a black carjacker who resents being stereotyped.") But more than a bad film, Crash, which won an Oscar (!), is the apotheosis of a kind of unthinking, incurious, nihilistic, multiculturalism. To be blunt, nothing tempers my extremism more than watching a fellow liberal exhort the virtues of Crash."
• BBC News – Australia predicts drop in Indian students "Australia's Tourism Forecasting Committee (TFC) has said the students are choosing to stay away due to a series of attacks in mid-2009. Australian police blamed the attacks on opportunistic criminals, but some Indian students see them as racist. The drop in the number of Indian students is expected to cost Australia almost $70m (£44m)." (tags: racism students)
• Feminomics: Race, Gender, and Poverty in Economic Recovery » New Deal 2.0 "Another reason to pay attention to women’s needs in this recession? In a word: poverty. The poverty rate for black women is 26.2%, and it’s 25.5% for Latina women — more than 4 times higher than the white male poverty rate. And it is not surprising that children are the collateral damage when we fail address the unemployment and poor pay that is behind these numbers. Even in a recession, it is shocking that 30.6% of Latino children, 33.9% of Black children, 15.8% of white children, and 13.3% of Asian children live in poverty." (tags: race class gender economics economy)

I’m very, very angry. Last year when the opposition threatened to bringing down the Tories with a coalition — which is completely legal and constitutional in Canada — Harper could still remotely, barely able to justify to ask GG for a prorogue. But this year… it’s absolutely unjustifiable… it really is an abuse of power. It’s clear that he is proroguing to avoid scrutiny on the Afghan detainee issues. And it’s clear that he wants to keep his rep clean before the world during the Olympics. But the media — to my dismay — aren’t beating up harsh enough criticism. The public will definitely be not informed enough to know what our country is going thru. The timing is tricky too… announcing such a “boring” news on the eve of New Year’s Eve? It’s obvious what is going thru in PMO’s mind.

So what do we have now?

First of all, the cabinet has always been a one-man (or two-men, including Jason Kenney) playground since Harper took office. Even heavyweight ministers such as Stockwell Day looks small in front of a few young staff of the PMO (as we witnessed during the China trip). The media has been castrated by the PMO after 4 years of heavy-handed treatment by the PMO. Some media have been tamed so much that they’ve become the Tory mouthpiece. And now, the parliament cannot act out its function too. Harper is ruling without checks from the public, the media, and the parliament and its elected MPs.

Do Canadians know the country is slipping into a no-check, no accountability dictatorship?

Parliament suspended until March 3

CP – The federal Conservatives have suspended Parliament until after the Winter Olympics, a move that gives Prime Minister Stephen Harper a tighter grip on the country’s political agenda.

The Tories said Wednesday they need to make a clean break and reboot Parliament now that the economy is no longer in crisis. They’re even considering making prorogation an annual event, so they can start each year anew with a throne speech that serves as an overview of what they plan to do in the coming year.

But the opposition says the shut-down is just a ploy to avoid questions about the handling of Afghan detainees and climate change.

“The specific reason here is that Stephen Harper doesn’t feel like coming back to town and answering questions about his government,” NDP Leader Jack Layton said in an interview.

“Even though Canadians elected a majority of MPs to hold him to account, he prefers to stay away.”

Instead of resuming work as scheduled on Jan. 25, Parliament will start afresh on March 3 with a speech from the throne, followed by a new budget the next day, said Dimitri Soudas, spokesman for Harper.

The prime minister did not make the announcement in person, nor did he meet face-to-face with the Governor General to ask for a formal prorogation. Rather, Harper made that request over the telephone, Soudas said.

“Now is the time to also engage with constituents, stakeholders and businesses in order to listen to Canadians, identify priorities and to set the next stage of our agenda,” Soudas said in justifying the suspension.

“Minority governments have a different horizon than majority governments, and also those change quickly. So this is time to recalibrate, consult and deliver the next stage of our plan.”

The suspension of parliamentary activity means Conservative cabinet ministers won’t face daily questions from their political opponents.

It also means all committees will be disbanded, scuttling the hearings into the controversial handling of Afghan detainees, for example.

It means the Conservatives will have time to fill five Senate vacancies with their own allies, robbing the Liberals of a majority in the upper house.

And it means the Conservatives will have more control over the timing of an election call, by making votes on the budget and the throne speech a confidence issue.

But Soudas said private members’ bills in the works – including a Conservative backbencher’s bill to kill the long-gun registry – would survive the suspension of Parliament. Government bills will also be re-introduced, although in their original form and not with the amendments proposed in the previous session.

While the opposition will no doubt try to make hay out of the suspension, new polling suggests the public will shrug it off.

Almost half of Canadians in the survey – conducted before Wednesday’s announcement – said they don’t care whether the government prorogues Parliament until after the Olympics. Another 15 per cent said they would actually be happy about it.

“Right now, it doesn’t carry nearly the same risk it carried a year ago. There’s a high level of indifference,” said pollster Doug Anderson.

The Canadian Press-Harris Decima survey of just over 1,000 people, taken Dec. 17-20, asked Canadians how they felt about prorogation now compared with a year ago.

At least one constitutional analyst called Harper’s inclination to prorogue an “abuse” of power.

“What’s going on here is, it’s a way of avoiding Parliament – the only institution elected by all Canadians,” said political scientist Nelson Wiseman from the University of Toronto.

Harper has orchestrated three prorogations since he took office, subverting the democratic process, Wiseman said.

“It’s alarming for parliamentary democracy,” he said in a phone interview.

In 2008, Harper used prorogation at the height of the global financial crisis, to avoid handing over power to a coalition of opposition parties. Public opinion is split over whether it was the right or wrong thing to do.

The opposition parties argue that the shutting down of Parliament for several extra weeks has nothing to do with the economy, as the Tories claim. Rather, they say the Tories are running away from their problems and are trying to sidestep accountability.

The governing Conservatives are clearly feeling heat from hearings into whether Canada knowingly sent Afghan detainees into situations where they would be tortured, the Liberals say.

“They’re trying to smother the issue. They’re trying to deprive it of oxygen. But it will not go away,” said Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale.

Layton points out that the government needs to report to the United Nations on its climate change intentions by the end of January, under the new deal negotiated in Copenhagen earlier this month.

With no House of Commons in session, he said, Harper can’t be held accountable for his stand.

Tags: conservative, democracy, Stephen Harper

by Latoya Peterson

Alright people, we are officially on vacation, starting now. Comment moderation will be spotty until January 4th, when we resume regular schedule. Until then, a couple things to mull over.

Nisha over at Politicoholic mentioned the Twitter based campaign to remember Gaza on December 27th.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the 22-day Israeli military raid on Gaza. Gaza, one of the two Palestinian territories currently under Israeli occupation.

I know Gaza is not a topic of polite cocktail party or happy hour conversation for most people. Most people probably aren’t quite aware of where Gaza is (here is a map for that), especially since it’s a tiny territory that’s only about 139 square miles on the coast of the Mediterranean.

So it is probably not widely known that one year ago, Israeli military forces killed 1,400 Palestinians, of which over 900 were civilians and over 300 were children. And considerable damage was done to Gazan roads, houses, and infrastructure — most of which has still not been repaired. [...]

Buoyed by the success of the Iran election activists, who tweeted their observations about the controversial Iranian election and subsequent protests using the hashtag #iranelection, and capured the world’s attention — now Palestinian activists are hoping to start a movement of their own using Twitter as their primary tool of communication.

Their hashtag is #gaza, and today, December 27, from 3 pm – 7 pm GMT, they are encouraging everyone they know to tweet using the hashtag #gaza in the hopes of making Gaza the #1 trending topic on Twitter — which is no easy feat, given the millions of people using Twitter everyday.

But that didn’t quite happen. Last night, Global Voices posted a report by Anton Issa, explaining how the campaign did not go as planned:

Twitter has been accused of attempting to silence tributes to Gaza one-year after an Israeli onslaught devastated the Palestinian enclave.

Pro-Palestinian and human rights activists used the influential Twitter portal to mark the one-year anniversary of the Gaza War, and express support for the besieged territory.

Tweets using the hashtag #Gaza flooded in on December 27th, peaking at number 3 on Twitter’s top ten Trending Topics list.

However, complaints emerged of users being briefly blocked from tweeting #Gaza, with the trend being forced downwards and off the Trending Topics.

Bloggers all over the world speculated about why this happened. According to Issa, some thought that it was Twitter editors suppressing the topic, others thought that pro-Zionist activists were reporting the tweets as spam, others thought it was due to Twitter’s algorithms balancing the discussions differently. However, it does shed some light on the issues with using New Media to organize – I’ll expand on this a little more in the New Year.

Some other reading.

Erica Gonazles points us to this opinion piece in the NY Daily News that argues that MTV isn’t to blame for Jersey Shore – it’s the self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes:

[O]n Monday, the Borough of Seaside Heights felt compelled to announce that it “did not solicit, promote or participate in the filming” of the trash-tastic reality show.

It’s the latest bit of silly handwringing in the name of Italian-American pride. But we Italians shouldn’t be mad at MTV over “Jersey Shore.” We should be grateful for the network for performing a public service. [...]

Somebody needs to explain to me how it’s MTV’s fault that the subjects of its reality show behave like stereotypical idiots. In fact, “Jersey Shore” is proof that some stereotypes, while not representative, are in some cases real.

That’s an important lesson in a politically correct world.

No one scripted Pauly D’s now-famous line, “I was born and raised a guido. It’s just a lifestyle. It’s being Italian, it’s representing, family, friends, tanning, gel, everything.”

Who could write such poetry?

And the rest of the cast seems genuinely to share his world-view. Anyone who’s been to certain parts of the New York metropolitan area knows it probably wasn’t too hard to find these kids.

This isn’t “The Sopranos,” where a screenwriter and a director sat down and decided they wanted to portray Italian-Americans as marauding morons who pray to the holy trinity of spaghetti, strippers and silencers.

In fact, by focusing all their ire on MTV, the show’s detractors are actually insulting their Italian-American brethren – by suggesting that they’re having fun pretending to be stereotypes. Let’s get this straight: Snooki can barely work a landline phone, and Pauly D thinks you light charcoal in a gas grill, but producers have persuaded them to “act” like boobs?

We Italian-Americans ought to be thanking the network for shining a spotlight on a small but real subset of the culture. One that we should recoil from – and raise our kids to be nothing like.

We’ve heard variations of this argument before: if people stopped acting like stereotypes, we wouldn’t be subject to them. If only that were the case…

Finally, Time magazine published the findings of a study that measured how racial bias is upheld through images on television:

In a series of intricately designed experiments, psychologists at Tufts University demonstrate that subtle racial biases are often expressed by characters on popular television shows, and that viewers not only pick up these attitudes but allow them to shape their own outlooks on race. The most insidious part of this cultural traffic, the researchers found, is that the transmission of race bias appears to occur subconsciously, unbeknownst to the viewer. [...]

The psychologists wondered how such biases could persist in a society in which racism is socially unacceptable and indeed publicly denounced.

So the group decided to examine the medium of television, which connects the vast majority of Americans, and through which many people predominantly receive their social and cultural cues. The study looked at 11 popular prime-time TV shows, such as Heroes, Scrubs, House, CSI: Miami and Grey’s Anatomy, whose casts include both white and black recurring characters of equal status.

In the first of a series of four studies, researchers showed participants TV clips in which a white character and black character interact — but the segments were stripped of sound and the black character was digitally deleted. The idea was to ensure that neither race nor dialogue would color viewers’ analysis. The exercise was repeated with the white character deleted. Researchers then asked the viewers, white college students, to evaluate in each circumstance, whether the unseen character appeared to be treated positively or negatively by the seen character, and how well liked he or she appeared to be. In the end, across the majority of TV shows, viewers consistently said that the white characters had received more positive treatment and were better liked than their black counterparts.

What fascinated Weisbuch was that the viewers’ judgment of the characters was based purely on nonverbal cues, from facial expressions to body language. In fact, when participants were given transcripts of the verbal content of the clips, they saw no difference in the way black or white target characters were treated by speaking characters. These expressions may have been scripted into the show by writers, or by productions editors or the director, but nevertheless, researchers say they demonstrate unfavorably biased attitudes toward black characters. [...]

The findings suggest that despite the progress that has been made in addressing racism in the America, we may still be perpetuating prejudice in subtle ways — and, if Weisbuch’s findings are validated, in ways that we may not even realize. “Human beings are thinking, cognizant, conscious beings who can be strategic and intentional,” says John Dovidio, a professor of psychology at Yale University who wrote an editorial accompanying Weisbuch’s study, published Thursday in Science. “But we are also kind of emotional and we do a lot of things without full conscious awareness. What this research suggests is that although our minds are in the right places, and we may truly believe we are not prejudiced, our hearts aren’t quite there yet.”

Catch you in 2010.

(Image credit: BlackIris.com)

• After 9/11 About 25 Percent Of Arab Adults In Detroit Reported Abuse – Medical News Today "One quarter of Detroit-area Arab Americans reported personal or familial abuse because of race, ethnicity or religion since 9/11, leading to higher odds of adverse health effects, according to a new University of Michigan study." (tags: arab arabamerican discrimination ethnicity race)
• Why Are There So Many Single Black Females? – ABC News Sigh. This is the cash cow that keeps squirting rancid milk. "You've heard of a man's man. Marchand is the quintessential man's woman: She appears to have it all. And, yet, she's still single. She has plenty of company. Forty-two percent of U.S. black women have never been married, double the number of white women who've never tied the knot." (tags: dating race relationships black africanamerican SteveHarvey)
• What storytelling risks could Avatar have taken? Boing Boing "In Dune, off-worlder Paul Atreides is forced to kill to gain acceptance with the locals when his own kind finally forces him into the wilds. In Avatar, however, Jake only has to show up on a fancy ride. Instead of becoming a nonentity after their earlier aikido warmup, Na'vi chief-to-be Tsu-tey could have drawn a line in the moss: I represent the caution and tradition of my people, and you'll have to beat me down to change and lead us. If Jake has to defeat, even kill an ally who hates him, it tarnishes his character–but Pandora is red in tooth and claw, after all, and it is what he's fighting for." (tags: Avatar film filmmaking movies hollywood)

by Latoya Peterson

On Christmas, reader Mel sent us a little present. He wrote in about a flash based indie video game covered by the Escapist. The title? Ching Chong Beautiful.

I click over the link, expecting to see a take down. After all, the Escapist does publish a lot of progressive gaming commentary, and our blog bud Pat over at Token Minorities has been known to bless them with a piece or two. So imagine my shock when I checked the endorsement:

That’s kind of the principle behind Newgrounds’ latest well-promoted title, the kind-of-offensive-but-actually-really-funny Ching Chong Beautiful, developed by The Swain. Your brother is kidnapped by Mr. Beautiful, whose obstacle course is A.) known to be deadly and unbeatable and B.) the most popular TV show in Japan. In order to save your brother, you must get a thoroughbred horse, and the only way to do that is – you guessed it – enter Ching Chong Beautiful.

I clicked over and prepared to play.

The game starts throwing stereotypes in the blender from the intro page:

A Game of Great Endurance Challenge!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/520768

The game features the new High Scores system and Newgrounds medals! So go grab some green tea, get drunk on sake, and maybe poach some whales if there’s time…the Bang Wong Fishhead Corporation challenges you to defeat Mr.Beautiful’s ancient obstacle course: Ching Chong Beautiful!

And it goes from there.

Now, before some gamers wander over here from other sites complaining about our general lack of humor and understanding, let me make something crystal clear: I get all the fucking jokes. I know what MXC is, I used to watch it on Spike. I know what Takeshi’s Castle is, I’ve watched it online. I know what this is:

The green can next to the television labeled “Sweat” is a play on the sports drink Pocari Sweat, which normally comes in a blue and white can or bottle. (And yes, I’ve tried that too.)

I’m aware that CCB is, in part, mocking the nature of these kinds of game shows that specialize in sadistic environments and public humiliation. But it’s still racist.

Much of the “humor” is visual. The game is set in Japan and includes lots of stereotypical images like these:

And for extra “oh, we’re so cool and un-PC” points, they named their levels things like “Crater Stadium” and “Spicy Tuna Bowl.”


The caption under Crater Stadium says: “A radioactive crater formed from big nuclear bomb! I couldn’t think of a more fitting location for my second course. You will die!”

The only thing missing was the orientalist riff.

So I play through the game. Sadly, the game play was actually fun. The initial concept (being trapped in a Japanese game show) was interesting and the game itself was just the right combination of frustrating and addictive. However, that was brought to a quick stop after a wall jump ended badly, and my little character Ching nearly cracked his head open on a block. Normally, when this happens, he yells out things like “this is bullshit!” or “aww, man!” (The announcer occasionally yells out “Too bad Chinatown!” after you fall.) But after that particular time, Ching screams: “You’re out of your zipperheads!”

What the fuck?

Predictably, the comments to the game are a cesspool – but I was interested to take a peek at the conversation over on the Escapist. And lo and behold, a couple lone voices of reason tried to call attention to how fucked up this all is:

SaintWaldo writes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_chong

Are you really this insensitive?

Just to clarify, this is equivalent to naming your Southern themed Flash game “N***er Lovely”.

Making me even more angry, this story was the FIRST thing I read on Christmas morning. Thanks, Escapist, for filling my holiday with racism.

The response? “Cool down, man.”

SaintWaldo keeps fighting:

HK_01:

Cool down, man.

No. I won’t “cool down”, mainly because I’M not the uncool one.

It’s a racial slur, it offends me, and I’m going to say so. Calmly. I’m also offended that you seem to read any disagreement as “not cool”. I’m rational and presenting coherent arguments that this is a racist title and should not be on the front page of an international magazine on a major holiday. What isn’t cool is being told to not voice your objections to racism. So, concern taken for what it is, but, please, don’t tell me how I should be expressing my genuine disagreement with promoting this title. I don’t tell you anything of the sort.

Other readers chime in as well:

spiral helix:

Thank you Waldo. Big props to you for standing up and pointing out how racist the title of this game is. It is offensive and your reaction is definitely justified. I’m pretty disappointed that Escapist would be so desperate for material over holiday period that they would even stoop to promoting a game with such a title. I usually come to escapist just to watch zero punctuation but the completely inappropriate title of the article made click on it. Thank you escapist for reminding me why i never read the articles here.

BonsaiK:

As someone who is part-Chinese I do find this game as not a very prudent choice for The Escapist to highlight. I’d definitely stop short of saying “I’m offended” (racial epithets make up easily over half of my CD collection after all) but I wonder if it’s the best choice especially given how many young people visit this site. “Ching-Chong” is a reference to Chinese people, but the game is parodying a type of TV show that is Japanese and actually has nothing to do with China. I guess to the American who made this game, that’s not an important distinction for him, because in his eyes Asians are obviously all the same. I interpret this as being very racist, even if he didn’t have any actual racist intent in making the game. It’s a shame that he had to taint his game with a stupid and unfunny name like this because I actually don’t mind the gameplay concept and some of the other humour in the game is reasonably clever.

I realise that The Escapist and a lot of gamers in general are obsessed with Japanese culture (although I can’t work out why, it seems very random to me) so I guess something that both references Japenese culture and is a computer game was irresistible to them as it helps them to magnify this (artificial) link. The fact that the article writer was willing to gloss over a little bit of inconvenient racism, because the article subject matter was just that tempting, makes the Escapist look amateurish. I think that The Escapist can find better things to write articles about than what some racist kid did on Newgrounds.

At this point, the author of the post steps in – and completely sidesteps the racism, merely noting that the game is popular and that is why it was recommended. Fail.

And the usual excuses are trotted out. Other gamers say things like “it’s not that offensive” or ching chong isn’t a slur, it’s a “percieved [sic] view of the sound of the language,” and “As for the racism, I think we should give a pass to any words that have not been used seriously in over fourty years.”

One person helpfully adds: “Having said all that, it’s entirely your right to be offended if you’re oriental, however if not, I think it might be an overreaction.”

Sigh.

So aside from the usual amount of racism, CCB strikes me as a wonderful example of reinforcing stereotypes when you are trying to mock them. This actually happens fairly often in media. The last time I tackled it in the gaming sphere was when I talked about Chris Mottes, CEO of Deadline Games, and his defense of racism in his title Chili Con Carnage:

Employing Mexican-American voice actors? Great job! Promoting underground Mexican bands? Even better. I was so impressed by Mottes’ initiative, I was completely blindsided by his next statement.

However, in reviews, forums, and blogs following the releases of both games, some people slammed Deadline for being bigoted towards Mexicans. While we did employ stereotypes we considered lighthearted and humorous, our intent was most certainly not to cast Mexican individuals in a derogatory light…But despite our best efforts, critics still slammed us for being racists.

…

Why, Chris, why? Why would you throw away all your hard work for a couple cheap, race based humor shots?

The reality is that no stereotype can be considered light-hearted and humorous. A stereotype is defined as “an often oversimplified or biased mental picture held to characterize the typical individual of a group.” Stereotypes are negative. Even “positive” stereotypes are ultimately detrimental to the groups that struggle to find a sense of self within the narrow parameters of society’s vision.

I’ll touch on this more in next month’s Cerise, but I have to say I was blown away. The tone of Mottes’ piece is unmistakably clear – this is how game designers think. This is how they justify their characters. It is as if the thought never crossed their minds that maybe, just maybe, the industry is sending a very powerful message out to minorities by saying that we do not exist outside of our stereotypical roles. If there were five or ten games with a multi-faceted, modern latino protagonist, maybe slipping in a few “light-hearted” stereotypes in one third person shooter would not be such a huge deal. It is still ill-advised, but you would have enough positive images on the market to balance out the negative images broadcast into the homes of every person who purchased this one game.

However, there is no balance. Stereotype after stereotype abound in the virtually crafted console world, with very few characters of color to provide an alternate perspective. Mottes argues that “most games with racist characters do not reflect the mindset of their developers.” I would argue that they do. It reflects the developer’s mindset in dealing with the world and in dealing with minorities. If the developer was not holding on to this mindset that minorities can be categorized with one or two main characteristics, we would have multi-faceted characters of color to play.

You lose the element of humor when you begin to reinforce the same dynamics you claim to poke fun at. A game lampooning television shows like Takeshi’s Castle? Fair enough. A game that relies on heavily stereotyped images, throws in random associations to bits and pieces of Japanese culture, and openly uses racial slurs? Not funny, not innovative, just racist.

What’s worse is that the game (and subsequent reaction) reinforces stereotypes on two levels. The first, what we described above, is the continuing animus toward Asians and Asian Americans, which result in people dismissing the voices and experiences of those impacted by this type of racism. The second is the reinforcement of the wacky Japan narrative, without which MXC would not have been possible. Interestingly, this othering, which masquerades as “understanding” other cultures, actually allows many people to lay their prejudices, xenophobia, and racism out on the table. As Lisa Katayama writes at Boing Boing:

The simple fact that I’m Japanese quickly became one of my greatest advantages as an aspiring writer. I started paying attention to my motherland as a repository of story ideas. I looked at things differently when I went back home, honed my story-finding skills, and launched my own blog, TokyoMango. I got major Japan-related assignments from magazines, consulting gigs from print and radio outlets, and a book deal. It was really strange for me, because all I thought I was doing was telling people about the place I came from. One thing was clear: Weird Japan sells. It’s an almost guaranteed success for book publishers and major traffic bait for blogs.

But writing about my own country’s quirks has its downside. I strive to tell each story objectively without condescension or sensationalism, but every time I write an article about, say, the engineer who has a body pillow girlfriend or the grad student who married a Nintendo DS character, I get hundreds of racially-charged comments from readers, long ranting responses from defenders of Japanese culture, and dozens of emails from people at big media outlets who want to find out more about these “strange” phenomena.

Why do so many love to gawk at this mysterious, foreign “other” that is Japanese culture? There are plenty of strange things going on in the US too, but when it happens in Japan, it’s suddenly incomprehensible, despicable, awesome, and crazy. This fascination doesn’t just end with angry commenters, either. Over the last couple of decades, it has spawned a huge industry of magazines, blogs, and products themed around Japanese culture marketed to Westerners by Westerners who are also obsessed with Japanese culture.

Lisa Katayama writes wonderful, interesting things – but she also began to feel the sting of racism continued to share small things from Japan. What started out as fun became bastardized into something ugly and awful. And games like CCB help to perpetuate the worst of both worlds: anti-Asian racism and wacky Japan stereotypes.

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

I admit that, despite its train wreck-like qualities (which Racialicious Special Correspondent Arturo so dutifully detailed in his post ”Jersey Shore’: Believe the Hype“), I really enjoy watching MTV’s newest reality show Jersey Shore. In its attempt to portray the summer activities of a group of guidos and guidettes, the male and female versions of a subculture that sprang from groups of Italian-American youth only to spread like wildfire to a variety of other ethnicities, primarily in the northeastern region of the United States, MTV has created reality tv gold for people like me. In a voyeuristic way, I have always liked peering inside the television versions, albeit edited, of others’ lives. Jersey Shore is no different on the surface, really, though this show is a bit of an exception in another way. Unlike its glossy counterparts, The Real World, My Super Sweet Sixteen, and The Hills, Jersey Shore takes on an explicit case of ethnicity as its main focus. Sure, there are typical displays of salacious summer behavior: hot tub hook-ups, drunkenness, and a lot of semi-nudity. Where Jersey Shore differs, however, is in its cultural significance.

When I say “cultural significance,” I am not implying that archives of Jersey Shore episodes will make it into the annals of American life to be uncovered centuries from now. But what I mean here is that the show and those who participate in the guido/guidette subculture who also identify as Italian-American are making the choice to articulate their take on their ethnic identity through behaviors, styles of dress, and other aesthetic expressions despite Italian-Americans having been long-accepted as whites. In an odd way, this privilege of whiteness that was gained by the Jersey Shore cast’s ancestors by way of legal battles and hardcore assimilation in the past is exactly what gives them the privilege to then assert fabricated markers of their ethnicity in the present.

As Gregory Rodriguez of the LA Times notes in his piece “The Dark Side of White,” which expounds on the upcoming census categories and the most recent struggle surrounding whiteness for Arab Americans, being considered “white” always takes a hard fight and comes with a cost:

Claiming whiteness has always been a Faustian bargain. Ditching the ancestry question on the decennial census makes the nature of the exchange all the more clear. In our culturally, geographically, economically mobile society, the embrace of ethnicity — real or imagined — has long served as a source of protection and rootedness. As the concept of ethnicity vanishes into whiteness, society’s alienation abounds.

Claiming ethnicity and claiming whiteness, though polar opposites, both pose a threat to one’s identity. For those white ethnics (hyphenated European-Americans, i.e. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, German-Americans) who arrived during the 1800s during the heyday of phrenology, eugenics, and some serious talks on race and its validity and significance, becoming white was the key to success. Without whiteness, access to resources and social acceptance were basically rendered null and void. Despite the color of one’s skin, the social state for white ethnics was more or less reduced to that of recently emancipated blacks. The comparison is not direct, of course, particularly in consideration of the very fact that some white ethnics could and did pass as Anglo-Saxon or Nordic whites, and those who did not were at least a tiny bit closer on the racial continuum than say blacks or Asians (who, at various times in history, were completely banned from entry into the U.S.) in the phenotypic sense. Yet the other side of assimilation, of course, is the ugly act of erasing ethnic identity. Language, food, styles of dress, and lifestyles of these white ethnic immigrant groups were often demonized, leaving many to conceal and/or destroy cultural ties with their country of origin altogether.

Now in a time when multiculturalism is an accepted concept, many groups have worked to reclaim the links that were lost, particularly because of their increasing cultural currency. In a strange way, the cast of the Jersey Shore is doing just that. They are using their white privilege to assert a hybrid identity that was created over time in the United States as means of connecting in some way to a lost past. Few white ethnics speak the language of the Old Country and, despite their hyphenated identities, often know little about the respective contemporary societies. Yet in the creation of this fictional culture, they are working to take ownership of what was lost over time. Unfortunately for groups who lack the white privilege that allows the movement between whiteness and chosen ethnicity, there is little room for such a decision.

I think of African-Americans and other members of previous diasporas (i.e. Indians who moved to work within the “coolie” system/indentured servitude in the Caribbean) in particular in this case. There is oftentimes a complete disconnect from not only culture, but literal geographic roots. I have no idea what specific nation(s) my ancestors are from, nor do I know the language they spoke, their names, the food they ate, or any of their other traditions as most records of them were destroyed. My roots are American, and I take that “ethnicity,” if you will, with me when I travel. Even within the United States, I can claim being from the South as a cultural tie as my speech patterns, expressions, foods, and even lifestyle differ from those of my peers who were raised in other parts of the country. The negative side is that this is about as far as I can go in terms of claiming an ethnic heritage. Yes, I am black, but in many ways, black cultural traditions that have sprung up in the United States are either ridiculed, deemed insignificant in terms of their value in society, or closely tied to, say, being Southern or simply being American.

The other interesting aspect of Jersey Shore in terms of its impact is that while it portrays white ethnics in what can seemingly be read as a negative way, much to the chagrin of many Italian-Americans and New Jersey residents, its lasting effect on the white population is minimal. If this show were about, say, Chinese-Americans, the results would most likely be different in terms of cementing stereotypes of Asian Americans as a whole. Many of the shows that feature non-white ethnic/racial groups often contribute to the solidification of stereotypes, whereas this show may be discounted as a throwaway take on a small niche group of Northeastern Italian-American kids and yield limited negative results. Whites can watch the show and “otherize” the people portrayed because they are “Guidos” and not like other whites. Non-whites can watch the show and “otherize” the cast members for the exact same reason. In the cast claiming its subculture and, in turn, imaginary ethnic identity (imaginary in the sense that they seem to lack any real understanding of both old and contemporary Italian elements of culture), they differentiate themselves from other whites despite their being able to shed the markers of fake tans, gel, and extensions in order to simply be perceived as “white” whenever they wish, no questions asked.

Yet with the continued struggle for resources, many of which are now being accessed by nonwhites with the aid of legislated benefit programs such as affirmative action, resentment runs as a heavy theme in conversations around race. I wonder if this show, though it’s still in its inception, is a sign of some greater trend to claim or event create an ethnicity for the sake of purposeful othering and thus re-entering the resource grab by way of being non-white. There have already been examples of genetic testing being used by people who have been perceived as and personally accepted that they are white for their entire lives in order to manipulate the school system, so there is a great possibility that in the coming decades, otherness by way of location, class, and particularly race and ethnicity may be viewed as a means of participating in a competition that has yet to abandon whites to begin with despite the growing popular belief that non-whites gain privilege by way of their respective ethnicities.

Wow! That’s the first after-effects of Harper’s maiden visit to China!

Canada OKs major PetroChina oil sands investment

(AFP) — Canada’s Industry Minister Tony Clement said he had approved a 1.7 billion dollar acquisition by PetroChina of two Athabasca Oil Sands Corporation projects in northeastern Alberta province.

The deal gives PetroChina International 60 percent control of the Athabasca’s MacKay and Dover oil sands deposits.

“I am satisfied that the investment is likely to be of net benefit to Canada,” Clement said in a statement.

The minister said the Chinese company made a commitment to contribute more than 250 million dollars to cover its share of developing the oil sand projects over the next three years, as well as boosting employment and managing a regional office in the area for a period of five years.

The oil sand deposits of MacKay and Dover are projected to yield five million barrels of oil, according to Athabasca.

The October 31 PetroChina-Athabasca agreement is one of the top oil sand deals reached in Canada since it slumped into economic recession in late 2008.

At an estimated 175 billion barrels, the oil sands in western Canada are the second largest oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia, but they were long neglected, except by local companies, because of high extraction costs.

Since 2000, skyrocketing crude oil prices and improved extraction methods have made exploitation more economical, and have lured several multinational oil companies to mine the sands, but foreign investments remained cyclical.

To date, the United States remains the largest consumer of bitumen from the oil sands.

And copper too:

Corriente, Vancouver copper miner, accepts $679M takeover offer by Tongling, China Railway

(CP) — The friendly takeover of Corriente Resources Inc. (TSX:CTQ) by a Chinese consortium sent shares of the Canadian copper miner up more than 13 per cent in Tuesday trading on the TSX.

Corriente stock rose $1.01 to close at $8.56, a gain of 13.4 per cent in heavy trading of more than 12.6 million shares on Canada’s main stock market.

Corriente announced Monday afternoon it has agreed to a $679-million takeover by RCC-Tongguan, a venture jointly owned by China-based Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Holdings Co. Ltd. and China Railway Construction Corp. Ltd.

Under the agreement, Tongling and China Railway will pay $8.60 in cash for each share of Corriente, a company which develops copper, gold, silver and molybdenum mines. The company’s main assets are mining rights in southeastern Ecuador’s Corriente copper belt.

The transaction continues the flood of deals made by China’s state-owned mining and oil companies, flush with cash from the Asian country’s economic boom. They are acquiring companies around the world to help supply the rapidly growing Chinese economy with primary metals, oil and gas and other resources.

Earlier this year, China Investment Corp. invested $1.7 billion for a 20 per cent stake of Vancouver-based zinc, copper and coal miner Teck Resources (TSX:TCK.B), Canada’s largest publicly traded mining company.

More recently, Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. announced a joint-venture agreement with PetroChina that would see the Chinese company acquire a 60 per cent interest in two oilsands properties in northern Alberta for $1.9 billion.

Chinese companies also own stakes or have financed other metals and energy projects in Canada.

The Corriente transaction and other deals involving Chinese companies could be reviewed by the Canadian government if they fall within guidelines under the Investment Canada Act.

That law requires a review any time a Canadian company with assets of more than $312 million is acquired. The legislation was amended last spring to include a national security test as well.

In the case of Corriente, the transaction will help the company finance develop of its South American metals projects.

‘We are pleased to have reached an agreement with CRCC-Tongguan, who is committed to bringing their vision of responsible mining development to Ecuador,” said Corriente chief executive Ken Shannon.

‘The Mirador and Panantza-San Carlos copper projects will require large scale capital investment by CRCC-Tongguan to unlock the infrastructure development, social benefits and jobs that will flow to the people of Ecuador.”

The offer, which values Corriente at about $679 million on a fully diluted basis, represents a 27 per cent premium to Corriente’s average trading price for the 30 trading days through Dec. 24.

The offer will be open for for at least 35 days and is subject to a number of conditions, including the acquisition of at least two thirds of the company’s shares.

All officers and directors of Corriente, who collectively hold 12 per cent of the company’s shares, have entered into lock-up agreements with the Chinese companies to sell their stakes. And if the friendly deal is derailed, Corriente has agreed to pay a termination fee of $20 million under certain circumstances.

Tongling is a huge state-owned mining conglomerate involved in copper mining and processing, smelting and refining.

China Railway Construction is one of China’s biggest companies and raised $5.4 billion in a March 2008 initial public offering in Hong Kong. The construction company is one of the biggest in the world, operating in some 60 countries and regions.

CRCC-Tongguan, incorporated in China on Dec. 10, is jointly owned by China Railway and Tongling to jointly develop their global mining businesses.

Tags: Canada-China

Tags: oddity, Video

• The Dark Side of White — latimes.com Over the decades, new immigrants to these shores were obliged to fit themselves into this black/white racial scheme. Not surprisingly, most chose to identify themselves with the group that had full rights. In books such as "How the Irish Became White," scholars have traced the path that immigrant subgroups took to become considered part of the "white" race. It's a poignant and peculiarly American journey. The protection and status of whiteness was not without costs. Most distinct subgroups gradually lost their distinctiveness. Their members traded specific ethnic labels — Italian, Swedish, French — for the generic racial label of "white." They exchanged identities that told us something about their unique histories for an elastic racial category that mostly tells us what they are not. (tags: via:robschmidt white identity arabamerican)
• Adoptive Families' Quests to Trace Chinese Roots Often Meet Dead Ends | latimes.com Such encounters are rare for the thousands of American families who have adopted Chinese children. But increasingly these families are making the return journey to China, not merely as tourists climbing the Great Wall and steeping their daughters (and they are almost all girls) in Chinese culture, but as detectives trying to unravel the most elusive mystery of all: Who is my child?
  Who are her biological parents, and where are they from? Is she Han Chinese or a member of one of the many ethnic minorities? Does she have a biological sibling? And, most important, how did she come to be abandoned and referred for adoption? (tags: via:robschmidt chinese asian asianamerican transracialadoption)

By Guest Contributor Jenn, originally published at Reappropriate

I saw this short post on Time’s Detroit Blog today: Still Getting It Wrong on Affirmative Action. In it, blogger Darrell Dawsey comments about the recent news that civil rights groups in Michigan have brought an appeals case challenging the constitutionality of a rcent ballot measure banning the practice of affirmative action in Michigan state schools.

Dawsey doesn’t get into the constitutionality of affirmative action in his post; rather, he complains about the persistent perception of affirmative action as merely a “race thing”. Dawsey writes:

Yes, I think affirmative action is a palatable, if mild, remedy to the ongoing discrimination that women and people of color face in Michigan and around the country. But this take isn’t about cheering the court’s decision to hear the challenge to race preferences or even affirmative action itself, for that matter. Rather, it’s about the implications of the persistent, narrow belief that affirmative action is just a set of “racial preferences” — when the truth is that the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women.

No, I’m not saying that  blacks, Latinos, Arab-Americans and Asian-Americans haven’t also benefited. (The University of Michigan, for instance, has 11 percent fewer minorities than in 2006, in part because affirmative action was outlawed.) But it’s the idea that these minorities, not white women, are disproportionately helped by affirmative action that inflames much of the opposition that we saw here three years ago.

I agree with Dawsey: affirmative action suffers a public relations problem. Affirmative action is frequently discussed in terms of race — both by proponents and opponents of the practice. Yet, the reality of affirmative action is far more nuanced: affirmative action not only is intended to benefit members of all underrepresented ethnic groups (Native Americans, and underrepresented Asians to name a few), but it also benefits applicants who come from other underrepresented backgrounds including class, gender, and faith.

The problem is the word “minority”, which in our society has become a codeword for “Black”. This is not only unfair, it is inaccurate: critics of “minority”-targeted initiatives present narrow-minded arguments that fail to accurately represent the full spectrum of people encompassed by the word “minority”. It paints reasonable and useful policies with a tinge of racial favoritism. And above all, it reinforces the notion of Blacks and Latinos as the bottom rung of our social hierarchy, rather than one of many underprivileged yet deserving minority groups.

That being said, I’m not sure that Dawsey gets it right with the point of his post. Dawsey argues that opponents of affirmative action, in colouring (pardon the pun) the debate as a “race thing”, are motivated by racial hatred in their opposition.

Many who voted against affirmative action had it in their heads that black people and other minorities were somehow getting something they didn’t “deserve” or were receiving “something for nothing.” Sure, some will howl that I’m wrong — that affirmative action opponents were driven solely by noble desires for “fairness” and “equality” — but I’m not. I’ve lived in Detroit much of my life. And I know well that even though many of us here consider it uncomfortable or impolite to discuss race when talking about why metro Detroit is what it is — and that includes its standing as one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the U.S. –  intense racial hatred remains alive and well.

While racism is clearly alive and well in today’s America, I’m not sure what use there is in characterizing the majority of affirmative action’s detractors as seething racists. Clearly, there is a perception that underrepresented minorities are being accepted despite the appearance that they are ”less qualified”, but I simply don’t believe that all or even most of affirmative action’s critics are primarily fueled by this misconception.

Affirmative action is a tough issue: neither side has a clear, moral (let alone legal) stance to advocate. Even proponents of affirmative action admit it is an imperfect (dare I say “band-aid”?) solution to a tough societal problem. To over-simplify the other side as racists does nothing to improve the quality of the debate on affirmative action, and turns the whole thing into finger-pointing and name-calling.

by Latoya Peterson

Bitch Magazine published an interesting piece called “Oh Yoko!: 20 Ways of Looking at an Art-World Icon.” There are 20 different takes on Yoko Ono’s body of work and perception in the media, many of which revolve around art and gender. Others dealt with race, self-perception, and darkness. Here are my favorites:

4. Offered Sacrifice
Back in the ’60s, I was peripherally involved in a Fluxus concert evening at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York where Yoko did several pieces, [including] “Cut Piece.” People began lining up to cut little pieces of her skirt or sleeves or strands of hair as souvenirs, or artworks, if you prefer. Everybody was very respectful, [and] Yoko remained impassive, without any change of expression.

The atmosphere changed to dark and unpleasant when several young men who were obviously not members of the art community started taking off large parts of her skirt and sweater, disclosing her bra, and getting back on line after each of their cuts. They couldn’t stop laughing. I recall Carolee Schneemann going up to one of them and slapping him in the face, which didn’t faze him one bit. He was after Yoko—the offered sacrifice.

At the point where one of the grinning guys went towards her bra strap with the scissors, Yoko made a slight gesture towards the wings, and the curtain immediately closed on her before her breast could be revealed. The piece was over. Obviously, when you let the audience into the artwork, you can’t always predict the result.
—eleanor antin, performance artist, filmmaker, and installation artist

7. Self-Aware
Yoko often mentioned in interviews that she felt that an Asian woman was seen as a dragon lady or an obedient slave—nothing in between the extremes. There were countless racist remarks in the press, especially after the breakup of the Beatles, but she has overcome it over many years. She has made a great contribution in changing the world’s view of Asian women in general. She has consistently projected an image of a self-aware, confident, creative, and strong-willed woman.
—midori yoshimoto, associate professor of art history, New Jersey City University, and author of Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York

15. Brilliant/Alone
Yoko has suffered more than most people understand. Her father was often absent; she was 12 when she fled to the mountains of Japan with part of her family, escaping the bombings in Tokyo but learning about Hiroshima and Nagasaki; she attended college in the United States in the 1950s when the Japanese were vilified; her passionate art was ridiculed as too “expressionistic”; her daughter was kidnapped by her second husband; she was ostracized by the public as the “dragon lady” for putatively breaking up the Beatles; she struggled with Lennon on drugs; she and Lennon were threatened by the CIA with his deportation; she witnessed his murder, and so on.

The result: Yoko feels alone and sometimes trusts others to “handle” her and her art for better or worse. Nonetheless, Yoko inspires me. She is a brilliant, poetic, tough role model who is forthright with herself and brings that honesty to
her art.
—kristine stiles, professor of art and art history, Duke University

20. Me
Yoko in hot pants, at antiwar rallies: classic proof of her bona fide iconoclast ways, mixing sex(iness) and politics—no hippie-feminist-activist Earth shoes, please!

Before I got her brilliance, I used to resent her, even though it wasn’t her fault that I got called “Yoko” in the late ’60s. Just when I was trying hard to pass as an all-American girl, this racial slur was outing me as an Asian before I was ready, before I became yellow and proud. It also maddened me to be mistaken for Japanese—not that racists care about these distinctions, especially when there’s historical bad blood between Koreans and Japanese.

You can call me Yoko now.
—yong soon min, artist and associate professor of studio art, University of California, Irvine

Over at the Fashion Bomb, Claire posits that this may be the year of the newest model dream team:  Arlenis, Chanel, Sessilee, and Jourdan.

Marie writes in to point out one positive aspect of Avatar – the female leads are Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver, all from groups traditionally underrepresented in Hollywood.

Indeed, Avatar is one of the most minority filled films we’ve seen in a while – but everyone is covered in blue body paint. Hmm.

Speaking of Avatar, I knew I wasn’t the only one drawing the obvious connection to another another film:

Carleandria sent in this video, which is a parody of both MTV’s Jersey Shore and Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty,” featuring Alyssa Milano. But watching the video, it begins to set off alarm bells.

Alyssa Milano’s Evolution: Jersey Shore from Alyssa Milano

They darken her skin, instead of giving her an orangey tan glow, give her a bouffant hair do – and enlarge her boobs and ass.

Phil W writes into alert us to a developing scandal. Leon Orr, the soon to be lineman for the Florida Gators, had some pictures surface of him holding a gun and money.

Orr has apologized, and emphatically denied gang affiliation, saying:

“There are two pictures being rotated around the Internet, and I want to address that whole situation about them being gang-related,” Orr said. “They’re not at all. They were done so long ago. I’m far from that. The pictures may look like that. But it was never meant to be perceived in that way. They were taken a long time ago before I knew I would be put in the spotlight.”

In one photo, Orr, a 6-foot-5, 315-pound DT and one of the country’s most heralded football recruits, is holding what he called a plastic pellet gun and some money. He said that was taken while he was in middle school.

“It was just me and a bunch of friends,” Orr said. “It was never meant to be taken out of context and of me being in a gang.”

In a second image, Orr’s face is covered by a black flag. That, he said, were merely done to promote his rap group, then known as Collect Money Cartel (the group is now called Merk Boys, named after the street he grew up on, Mercury Avenue).

“I know it looks bad, but at the same time it’s just a rap group,” Orr said. “But that picture has nothing to do with anything. We started that group a long time ago. We were just a bunch of young, crazy kids. It was never about violence.”

Phil wonders:

Basically, people are coming down on this athlete because of a photo with him holding a gun and flashing some dollar bills. By all accounts, it’s quite an old photo, taken when he just some knucklehead teenager with an aspiring rap career. I thought the dichotomy was interesting— between coming down on this young man (now a college athlete) while giving a pass to what most likely are dozens if not hundreds of white football players out there who probably have pictures of themselves with assault and hunting rifles, etc.

By Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

Racialicious would also like to say congratulasians to our buddies at Disgrasian!

Yes, I’m aware that Olivia Munn is on the cover of Maxim. Looking good too. But whatever. Forget that. The real hottest ladies on the internet are currently rocking the cover of Hyphen. My pals Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen, the brainy and beautiful bloggers behind Disgrasian, are the cover gals of Hyphen’s “Trailblazing” issue.

I love it. Lots of good stuff inside too, including interesting features on Asian Americans serving in the Obama White House, to Asian Americans gaining visibility in the wine industry. Get your copy on newsstands, or better yet, subscribe to the magazine here at the discounted rate of $16 for 4 issues ($2 off).

By Guest Contributor AJ Christian, originally published at Televisual

The vast majority of original, independent web series never make it to season two. Producing season one takes so much time and money, when the millions of viewers never materialize, creators can’t bring themselves to invest more precious time and money. (At this point, I’d almost prefer most market themselves as “miniseries until proven otherwise”!)

Drama Queenz, a show about three black gay men trying to make it in New York’s theatre world, and its creator Dane Joseph then deserve a huge pat on the back. It’s a Herculean effort.

Remarkably, Joseph edited and marketed the first season while in graduate school at Columbia University, then shot season two, which comes out today. Now that, as they say in theatre, is gumption!

What’s more, the second season promises lots of hijinks, along with guest appearances  from some of my favorite YouTube personalities!

Drama Queenz is a campy — and sincere — look at trying to make it in New York. To satisfy its fans, it offers just enough man-meat and sexcapades to keep people interested, while satirizing the  humiliation and drama its characters must endure in order to realize their dreams.

“I’m an independent person, maybe to a fault,” Joseph told me about creating the show. Drama Queenz arises from his experiences in theatre, but he says, “it’s definitely exaggerated.”

For the second season, he’s upped the ante, bringing in some stars familiar to black gay men who spend way too much time online.

Marcus Bellamy in “Drama Queenz” Britney Houston graces the series with her divine presence

From the season two trailer, I spotted dancer/performer Marcus Bellamy, who rose to Internet notoriety through black-gay idol B. Scott, runs both his own and a collab YouTube channel, and whom I interviewed for my research on black vloggers. I also noticed the fabulous Britney Houston, music video parodist extraordinaire, YouTube star, and mainstay performer in the New York bar scene who has been producing her own music and videos! My interview with Houston has inspired two papers, one on queer vloggers, another on music video remakes. Small world!

Back to Drama Queenz. Despite the obvious comparison to Logo’s Noah’s Arc, Joseph distances himself from the dominant black-gay-brand.

“In all honesty, I wasn’t ever trying to copy them,” he told me. Drama Queenz is “a very different show about three males who happen to be black and homosexual.”

The show exemplifies a whole slew of trends underway right now. One is how those shut out by traditional media and arts institutions have used the web to gain wider distribution and increase their clout (my previous posts about web shows by women of color, Kindred and Chick, further prove this). I know a number of indie theatre producers and aspiring actors in New York — most black and gay — who are striving to make it, and some are creating their own work.

Drama Queenz is also an excellent example of niche marketing. While the show doesn’t have the millions of followers top webisode series enjoy, it nonetheless has a loyal following of several thousand viewers, judging by its traffic numbers on YouTube (the show is also on MySpace and Facebook, so its audience is likely larger). The show is no doubt filling the void left by Noah’s Arc, a show itself rumored to have a third season or movie in the works after the relative success of its feature film.

Like many producers, Joseph is funding Drama Queenz out-of-pocket — “literally,” he told me. “It’s difficult to find a good business plan…Most people don’t want to pay for their Internet content.”

Still, within those constraints, he has produced lengthy episodes, giving people enough story to hang on to. To be sure, the show lacks some of the punch and sophistication of traditional television, but for 1/millionth the budget, these flaws could easily be forgiven.

Like the majority of black producers I’ve interviewed over the past months, Joseph is also responding to a perceived lack of black narratives on television.

“There is a serious lack of African American faces on TV right now,” he said. “On network TV there is nothing.”

Surely, Joseph is doing his part to change that. It’s an ambitious kind of advocacy.

Check out Drama Queenz today on YouTube and later this month on RowdyOrbit. Visit its homepage for more information.

By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee

As I rush off and dash to jet-set again for yet another destination and another area of Turtle Island – I’m reminded this time around that the place I’m going to requires me to stop, pause, and really think about what it is I’m about to do.

This year I’ve decided to join my Dakota/Lakota/Sicangu/Crow family on a journey they call the “Big Foot” or what it is now known as the “Future Generations Youth” ride. The story goes that 25 years ago, this ride started with the Lakota Youth of Pine Ridge (Red Cloud Agency) to retrace the steps of their ancestors from Standing Rock to Wounded Knee. This 7+ day non-stop horseback ride commemorates the December 1890 events with Chief Big Foot’s band, where more than 250 men, women and children were shot by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in the Wounded Knee massacre, including Sitting Bull.

I wrote about this ride last year, along with the Dakota 38, when I learned about them here: http://www.shamelessmag.com/blog/2008/12/riding-to-remember/ At the time I honestly thought it would have been at least a few years before I might eventually do one of these rides myself. It was one of those “yeah, I hope I’ll do it ONE day” type of things, but last month things changed for me and I knew I had to do it.

I’m riding because to be honest – my frustrations with differing opinions on what actualizing Aboriginal youth leadership really means have been maxed out on many different fronts and far too many occasions as of late where people saying they support youth is one thing, but actually DOING something where youth ARE actually in power and being leaders and taking up our rightful space is quite another (and in most instances not happening at all despite the nice and fine talk about it at conference after conference – or if it is happening it was short-lived since apparently people didn’t seem to be “used to” youth having “that much power”. It’s really just bullshit).

Knowing that so many of the youth on this ride live through countless hardships, chose not to celebrate Christmas, and decided themselves to give back their time, energy, and spirit to their community in this most honorable way by riding on the trails of the ancestors during the so-called “holiday” season fills my heart and soul with incredible hope for what are next generations are capable of doing. I’m so completely excited to learn from all these youth I will meet.

I’m also riding because I need to do my best to go somewhere where I’ll be forced to feel ultimately guilty for checking the Blackberry and doing work on the computer (or at least go to a place where I’ll have limited access so tough shit for me).

Most importantly of all these though – I’m riding to support some of my family living in South Dakota. They have continuously welcomed me with open arms into their home and life, and I have received so many teachings from watching their devotion to building up our communities again from some very tough places, and adopting children and increasing their family unit daily, on top of it. These people are Richard Milda, Tawa Witko, all their wonderful and beautiful children, and I especially mean Maria Milda. Maria’s strength and tenacity to persevere through all kinds of difficult situations these past few years and come out of it stronger and wiser is a huge inspiration for me. It basically shows that she has done somewhat of a “Big Foot” ride herself in her 15 years of life so far – and I want to ride to honor THAT.

We’re breaking down borders and we’re coming together for our future generations. I might not be from South Dakota myself, but the border is up here (I’m pointing to my head) and what we need to remember is the innate strength of our unity as peoples across Turtle Island being down here (I’m pointing to my heart) and what we are prepared to DO about it. I’m hoping to find out more of what that’s all about during this ride.

So I’d like to say I’ll blog or write and keep you all updated on what’s happening out there – but I’m not sure if I’m going to do that – both because of access and because I’m not sure how my body and spirit are going to fare with this to decide if that’s the right thing to do.

Be sure to check out the Facebook Fan page Big Foot Memorial Riders/Si Tanka Riders for all the latest updates they will be posting.

Be well. And take care of each other.

This is a very important debate. Really want to hear from the readers on this. BTW, should Kenney change his title to “minister responsible for pluralism”? Any alarm here?

In short:

So … what’s the difference?

Multiculturalism:

The term is strictly for immigrants – it does not include Canada’s English or French founding cultures or aboriginal people, government documents suggest. Jason Kenney, the federal minister in charge of multiculturalism, says the word also conjures up images of “song, sari and samosas.”

Pluralism:

In a “pluralistic” society, different cultures work together, supporters say – there is no “them,” only “us.” Kenney says he started using the term because he was “looking for a terminology that went beyond parallel cultural silos … that don’t communicate between one another.”

Kudos to the Star on the story.

OTTAWA–Jason Kenney is the federal minister in charge of Canada’s multiculturalism. But for the last couple of years, he’s been wondering whether “pluralism” might be a better word to describe this country’s cultural diversity.

And so have government officials, according to documents obtained by the Star.

“What if the picture we have of ourselves shifted Canada as a multicultural society to Canada as a pluralistic society?” is the question posed in a series of slides prepared for a September 2008 discussion within government.

“Would the discourse change? Would it change the way we design policy and programs? Would the notion of Canadian identity change?”

In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Canada, where blue is the new red, and much attention is paid to symbols and logos, word choice is significant. And with Kenney’s recent rollout of a new citizenship study guide, it is also obvious that the Conservative government has been doing some serious thinking about how to update and describe the Canadian national identity.

Multiculturalism, according to Kenney and the departmental documents, may have had the result of keeping various cultures separate in Canada, while “pluralism” is focused on getting different cultures to work together.

“I started using the term a little bit, firstly because I was looking for a terminology that went beyond parallel cultural silos,” Kenney says. “I think that’s one understanding of multiculturalism – that we set up a bunch of cultural silos that don’t communicate between one another. My emphasis has been on a more integrated multiculturalism, building bridges between communities and ensuring full equality of opportunity for new Canadians in mainstream society.”

Nearly 30 years since multiculturalism was enshrined in the Constitution and two decades since the Multiculturalism Act was passed in Parliament, legislating cultural awareness and understanding, Kenney believes that the word has become stuck in some old ways of thinking.

It’s not a word, for instance, that can be used to describe English or French founding cultures, or aboriginal culture – it’s strictly for immigrants, it seems.

Moreover, says Kenney, when people think of multiculturalism in Canada these days, they tend to conjure up images of “food, folklore and festivals” or his other favourite alliteration, “song, sari and samosas.”

“Multiculturalism says to a lot of people `kiosks at folk fests,’” Kenney says.

“We need a term that has a deeper meaning; that talks about the deeply different world views or belief systems that people have, and I thought pluralism perhaps speaks more to that.”

The words are used interchangeably in the new citizenship study guide unveiled in November.

Under a heading about Canada’s multicultural reality, the guide states: “Canadians celebrate the gift of one another’s presence and work hard to respect pluralism and live in harmony.”

In the departmental documents, officials state that “multiculturalism was not designed to include our national minorities, i.e. Quebec and aboriginal peoples” and that “official languages, aboriginal and multicultural policies are not perceived as fully inclusive.”

Describing Canada as a pluralistic society, however, might solve those problems and others, the documents suggest.

On one slide, titled “What is pluralism, really?” the following definitions are supplied:

It addresses the sum of diversity – there is no “them” in successful pluralism, only “us.”

It could be the natural next step in a mature multicultural society – groups can learn to balance their interests.

It is a way of addressing difference, not just diversity.

It is a way of understanding that the challenges are common.

Kenney hastens to say no one is thinking about taking the word multiculturalism out of the Constitution or renaming any departments or legislation within government. That would just be too complicated, he says. But the immigration minister is trying to talk up the notion of pluralism when he goes out to deliver speeches and make appearances at the many multicultural events he attends as part of his duties.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is skeptical about Kenney’s approach, saying this is a minister whose whole mission seems to revolve around using multiculturalism to boost the electoral prospects of Conservatives.

“The key thing is the political manipulation of ethnicity for political gain. And all of us, all politicians have to take our responsibilities,” Ignatieff said in a recent interview.

“We condescend to people when we think the only thing they’re interested in is being spoken to as an ethnic group. They want to be spoken to as citizens and they want to participate, and they want to be included and they want to be talked to as Canadians.”

Kenney denies that partisanship is behind all this attention on multiculturalism, which has been, rightly or wrongly, more associated with Liberal governments and politics.

This multiculturalism/pluralism debate isn’t about the Liberal legacy, Kenney insists.

“Part of my effort to recover our history of diversity is to remind people that in fact the term `multiculturalism’ was introduced into Canadian political discourse by Conservatives. And it was really John Diefenbaker’s government in the 1950s and 1960s that started this whole movement in politics,” Kenney says.

Tags: Jason Kenney, multiculturalism, pluralism

A little belated… but thought it’s an important document that should be published here; all released by the PMO.

CANADA-CHINA JOINT STATEMENT
December 3, 2009
Beijing, China

1. At the invitation of Premier Wen Jiabao, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an official visit to China from December 2 – 6, 2009, visiting Beijing, Shanghai and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

2. Prime Minister Harper had a meeting with President Hu Jintao, held talks with Premier Wen Jiabao, and will meet with Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo. Both sides had an in-depth, candid and productive exchange of views on China-Canada relations and major international and regional issues of mutual interest, finding consensus in many areas. During the visit, a series of agreements was signed to further bilateral cooperation in the fields of climate change, mineral resources, culture and agricultural education, details of which are in the Annex attached.

3. Both sides gave a positive assessment of the development of Canada-China relations in the 39 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations, and acknowledged that China and Canada are both influential countries in the Asia-Pacific region, sharing extensive common interests and broad prospects for cooperation. Friendly ties have long existed between China and Canada, symbolized by such figures as Doctor Norman Bethune and the fact that there are now 1.3 million Chinese-Canadians in Canada. To develop a long-term and stable relationship of cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit is in the fundamental interest of the two countries and two peoples. The two sides agreed to work together to further promote China-Canada cooperation in all bilateral areas and international affairs, as bilateral relations enter a significant new era.

4. The two sides agreed on the importance of frequent exchanges, including at leaders’ level, to promote development of the China-Canada relationship. Both sides agreed to enhance the role of the Strategic Working Group, a bilateral mechanism established in 2005 to facilitate regular, high-level bilateral exchange between officials. Deputy Minister-level officials from both sides will meet early in 2010 to discuss the nature of this enhancement and likely subjects of focus, including trade and investment, energy and environment, health and governance. Both sides further agreed to make full use of the more than 40 bilateral consultation mechanisms already in existence, reinforcing dialogue and communication in all fields.

5. Both sides are committed to a steady and positive forward momentum in the overall bilateral relationship, reaffirming the fundamental principle of respecting each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, core interests and major concerns. Neither side supports any attempts by any force to undermine the above-mentioned principle. The Chinese side emphasized that the question of Taiwan concerns China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Canadian side reiterated its consistent and long-standing One China policy, established at the founding of diplomatic relations, and underlined its support for the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations, including through efforts by both sides to increase dialogue and interactions in economic, political and other fields.

6. Both sides recognized that each country and its people have the right to choose their own path, and that all countries should respect each other’s choice of development model. Both sides acknowledged that differing histories and national conditions can create some distinct points of view on issues such as human rights. The two sides agreed to increased dialogue and exchanges on human rights, on the basis of equality and mutual respect, to promote and protect human rights consistent with international human rights instruments.

7. The two sides were in agreement that strong economic and trade complementarity exists between Canada and China. Practical cooperation should be enhanced to promote increased trade and investment between the countries. The two sides reiterated their commitment to maintaining an open investment and trade policy, opposing protectionism in all its manifestations, reducing barriers to investment, and encouraging cooperation between enterprises of the two countries. Canada welcomes investment from China. China welcomes investment from Canada. Both sides undertake to expedite negotiations of a China-Canada Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, to benefit both countries by providing a predictable and stable legal framework to increase investor confidence. Both sides agreed on the need to encourage further growth of bilateral trade from its current levels, increasing trade in goods and services in all sectors, including energy and resources, infrastructure, telecommunication and transportation, advanced technology, tourism, agriculture and financial services. Both sides agreed to strengthen the bilateral science and technology relationship. Canada and China also agreed to enhance cooperation on clean energy. Prime Minister Harper announced a second round of funding for the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

8. Leaders agreed that fostering educational, cultural, business and people-to-people links and promoting mutual understanding between the two peoples will enrich the long-term development of China-Canada relations. Both sides agreed to use the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations as the opportunity to increase interaction between all sectors of society. China and Canada welcome two new channels to increase people-to-people interaction, through the opening of a new Chinese Consulate General in Montreal, and China’s announcement during the visit of Approved Destination Status for Canada, further promoting the increased flow of tourists, students and business people between the two countries.

9. China and Canada have enjoyed increasing judicial and law-enforcement cooperation in recent years, including through the establishment in 2008 of regular bilateral Law Enforcement and Judicial Cooperation Consultations, and through police-to-police cooperation. The two sides reaffirmed their intention to strengthen cooperation on combating transnational crime and repatriating fugitives in accordance with their respective laws. They further agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation on Combating Crime at an early date and to enter talks toward the conclusion of an agreement on the sharing of the proceeds of crime. The two sides expressed their intention to maintain communication on these and other related topics for future consideration, with a view to further expanding cooperation in this field.

10. The two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on the current global economic and financial situation, and share the assessment that the world economy has shown positive signs of stabilization and recovery, but that this recovery is fragile. The two sides agreed to strengthen dialogue and coordination on macroeconomic and financial policies, steadily reinforce the role of the G20 in global economic governance and support the G20 framework for strong, sustainable, balanced growth. As well, they agreed to continue financial regulatory reform where required, resist protectionism and contribute to the reform of the international financial system. The Chinese side welcomed Canada’s role in 2010 as host of the G20 Summit in June. Both sides expressed readiness to work with other parties to bring about positive outcomes at the Summit. Both sides agreed on the need to work cooperatively and with other partners towards a successful Doha Round at the WTO.

11. The Canadian side welcomed China’s contribution to regional peace and security through its stewardship of the Six Party Talks process, and expressed the hope that this vehicle to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula would soon be revived. Both sides noted their active roles in Afghanistan, and expressed their desire to see peace, stability and development in Afghanistan, and their intention to continue work towards this end. Both sides agreed that Canada and China have important shared interests in promoting peace and security, as well as sustainable development, regionally and globally. Leaders agreed that coordination and cooperation in fora including the UN, APEC and other multilateral bodies should be enhanced in furtherance of these goals, including in the areas of nuclear security, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, food security, global health threats, climate change, and other major international and regional issues.

12. The two sides discussed current pressing global health concerns, and the need for increased multilateral and bilateral cooperation in combating newly emerging and re-emerging diseases such as pandemic H1N1 influenza. Both sides also agreed to continue collaborative work on key health issues of importance to both countries, such as reform of the health care system, food safety and public health. Focused and practical cooperation in the field of health should continue to expand.

13. The two sides acknowledged that climate change is a common challenge confronting humanity and that international cooperation is key to meeting this challenge. All parties should build on the progress already achieved and work together toward an agreed outcome at the Copenhagen Conference consistent with the principles established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, particularly the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and the Bali Roadmap. Both sides also agreed to enhance their policy dialogue and bilateral cooperation on climate change and on clean energy technologies as a complement to the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol.

14. Looking to the year ahead, both sides welcomed what will be visible manifestations of a deep-rooted, vibrant and growing Canada-China relationship. The Chinese side noted that the Olympic torch has passed to Canada, and welcomed the approaching Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, to which China will send a large team of athletes. The Canadian side expressed its support for Shanghai World Expo 2010. Starting in May 2010, the Canada Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 will provide large numbers of Chinese citizens the opportunity to visit and enjoy numerous Canadian arts, cultural and other public events, commemorating 40 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and continuing to build mutual understanding and friendship between Canada and China.

Chinese version (released by the Canadian embassy in Beijing)

加中聯合聲明 
（二００九年十二月三日）

一、應溫家寶總理邀請，加拿大總理斯蒂芬·哈珀於二００九年十二月二日至六日對中國進行正式訪問，先後訪問北京、上海和香港特別行政區。

二、胡錦濤主席、溫家寶總理分別與哈珀總理會見、會談，全國人大常委會吳邦國委員長將會見哈珀總理。雙方就中加關係及共同關心的重大國際和地區問題深入、坦誠、富有成果地交換了意見，達成許多共識。訪問期間，雙方簽署了一系列旨在促進氣候變化、礦產資源、文化和農業教育等領域雙邊合作的協議（詳見附件）。

三、雙方對中加建交三十九年來雙邊關係的發展給予積極評價，認為中加同為亞太地區有重要影響的國家，擁有廣泛共同利益和廣闊合作前景。以諾爾曼·白求恩大夫等人物以及加拿大擁有一百三十萬華裔公民的事實為象征的中加友好關係源遠流長。在相互尊重和平等互利基礎上發展長期穩定的合作關係，符合中加兩國和兩國人民的根本利益。在中加關係進入新時期之際，雙方同意共同努力，進一步促進在雙邊和國際事務各領域中的合作。

四、雙方一致認為，包括領導人在內的經常性交往對推動中加關係發展十分重要。雙方同意加強戰略工作組這一於二００五年建立的旨在促進定期、高級別交流的雙邊機制的作用。雙方副部長級官員將於二０一０年盡早舉行該工作組會議，討論促進該機制及包括貿易與投資、能源和環境、衛生以及治理在內的可能的重點議題。雙方還同意充分發揮業已建立的四十多個雙邊磋商機制的作用，加強各領域對話與溝通。

五、雙方致力於保持中加關係穩定積極向前發展的勢頭，重申尊重彼此主權和領土完整、核心利益和重大關切這一根本原則，任何一方均不支持任何勢力破壞以上原則的任何行動。中方強調，臺灣問題事關中國主權和領土完整。加方重申建交時確立的長期一貫的一個中國政策，強調支持臺灣海峽兩岸關係和平發展，包括兩岸加強經濟、政治及其他領域對話與互動的努力。

六、雙方承認各國及各國人民有權選擇自己的道路，各國應該尊重彼此對發展模式的選擇。雙方承認不同的歷史和國情會使彼此在人權等問題上產生一些不同看法。雙方同意在平等和相互尊重的基礎上就人權問題加強對話與交流，按照國際人權文書促進和保護人權。

七、雙方一致認為，中國和加拿大經貿互補性很強。雙方應加強務實合作，擴大兩國貿易與投資。雙方重申保持開放的投資與貿易政策，反對任何形式的保護主義，減少投資壁壘並鼓勵兩國企業合作。加拿大歡迎中國赴加投資。中國歡迎加拿大來華投資。雙方承諾加快《中加投資保護協定》談判，為增強投資者信心提供可預測及穩定的法律框架，以造福中加兩國。雙方同意有必要在現有水平上促進雙邊貿易進一步增加，擴大在能源資源、基礎設施、電訊交通、先進技術、旅遊、農業、金融服務等各領域的貨物和服務貿易。雙方同意加強雙邊科技關係。中加雙方還同意加強清潔能源合作。哈珀總理宣布為亞太清潔發展和氣候夥伴關係提供第二批資助。

八、兩國領導人一致認為，促進教育、文化、商業及人民之間聯繫、增進兩國人民相互了解將有利於中加關係的長遠發展。雙方同意以建交四十周年為契機，擴大兩國各界交往。中加雙方歡迎旨在增進兩國人民交往的兩個新的渠道，即中國在蒙特利爾設立總領事館，以及中方在訪問期間宣布加拿大為中國公民出境旅遊目的地，以進一步促進中加之間遊客、學生及商務人士的往來。

九、近年來，中加通過二００八年建立的雙邊司法執法合作定期磋商機制以及警務合作等渠道，不斷擴大雙邊司法執法合作。雙方重申願根據各自國家法律在打擊跨國犯罪和遣返逃犯方面加強合作。雙方還同意早日簽署《打擊犯罪合作諒解備忘錄》，並同意就簽署分享犯罪所得協定進行談判。雙方表示願就上述及其他雙方將在今後考慮的相關問題保持溝通，以進一步擴大在該領域的合作。

十、雙方就當前世界經濟金融形勢深入交換了看法，認為世界經濟出現企穩回升的積極跡象，但這一復蘇仍舊脆弱。雙方同意加強宏觀經濟金融政策對話與協調，不斷增強二十國集團在全球經濟治理中的作用，支持二十國集團強勁、可持續和平衡增長框架。雙方還同意繼續進行必要的金融管理改革，抵制保護主義，為國際金融體系改革作出貢獻。中方歡迎加拿大二０一０年六月主辦二十國集團峰會。雙方表示願與其他各方一道努力，推動峰會取得積極成果。雙方同意有必要與其他夥伴共同推動世界貿易組織多哈回合談判取得成功。

十一、加方歡迎中國通過主持六方會談進程對地區和平與安全做出的貢獻，並希望這一旨在實現朝鮮半島無核化的機制能夠很快得以恢復。雙方註意到彼此在阿富汗問題上發揮的積極作用，希望看到阿富汗實現和平、穩定和發展，並願為此繼續作出努力。雙方一致認為，中加在促進地區和世界和平、安全及可持續發展方面擁有重要的共同利益。為推動實現上述目標，兩國領導人同意加強在聯合國、亞太經合組織和其他多邊機構及在核安全、核不擴散和裁軍、糧食安全、全球衛生威脅、氣候變化及其他重大國際和地區問題上的協調和合作。

十二、雙方討論了當前迫切的全球衛生問題以及加強多、雙邊合作應對甲型Ｈ１Ｎ１流感等快速擴散的新發及再發疾病問題。雙方還同意繼續就醫療改革、食品安全和公共衛生等兩國重要的衛生問題進行合作。雙方應繼續重點加強在衛生領域的務實合作。

十三、雙方認為氣候變化問題是人類面臨的共同挑戰，國際合作應對這一挑戰至關重要。各方應在已取得的進展基礎上，共同推動哥本哈根大會達成符合《聯合國氣候變化框架公約》確立的原則，特別是共同但有區別的責任原則以及各自能力和「巴厘路線圖」的協商一致的結果。雙方也同意在氣候變化問題上和清潔能源技術領域加強政策對話與雙邊合作，作為對《聯合國氣候變化框架公約》及其《京都議定書》的補充。

十四、展望新的一年，雙方歡迎一個基礎深厚、充滿活力並不斷發展的中加關係。中方註意到奧運會火炬已經傳遞給加拿大，歡迎即將到來的二０一０年溫哥華冬季奧運會。中方將派出大規模體育代表團參加溫哥華冬季奧運會。加方重申支持上海二０一０年世博會。自二０一０年五月起，加拿大展館將為大量的中國公民參觀欣賞眾多的加拿大藝術、文化及其他公共活動提供機會，同時也借此紀念兩國建交四十周年，繼續增進中加相互理解和友誼。

附件
一、《中華人民共和國國家發展和改革委員會與加拿大環境部、加拿大外交和國際貿易部和加拿大自然資源部關於氣候變化合作的諒解備忘錄》
二、《中華人民共和國國家發展和改革委員會與加拿大自然資源部關於建立礦產資源合作對話機制的諒解備忘錄》
三、《中華人民共和國政府和加拿大政府文化協定２０１０－２０１２年度合作計劃》
四、《中華人民共和國教育部和加拿大農業與農業食品部關於科學技術合作與人才培養的諒解備忘錄》

中國批准加拿大為旅遊目的地國家

中國北京 – 加拿大總理斯蒂芬•哈珀今天宣布，中國政府已批准加拿大成為旅遊目的地國家，這一批准使中國公民更容易訪問加拿大。加拿大總理在北京與中國總理溫家寶會晤後宣布這一消息。 
 
「旅遊目的地國家的批准，標誌著加中關係史上的重要時刻，不僅表明雙邊共同致力於加強外交和商業上的合作，也表明民間的交往加深。」哈珀總理說，「當加拿大準備迎接全世界的客人來溫哥華參加2010年冬季奧運會和殘奧會之時，這一新的旅遊目的地國地位的確立，將幫助更多中國友人發現加拿大是世界上投資、創新、工作以及競爭的最好的環境之一。」
 
旅遊目的地國家的批准，允許中國旅行社宣傳和組織旅行團到旅遊目的地國旅遊。這意味著安排旅遊團去該國旅遊變得更容易。因此，這將鼓勵更多的中國人前往加拿大旅遊，從而對加拿大經濟產生積極的影響。
 
2008年，訪問加拿大的中國公民人數比2007年增加了5.3%，總共達到159000人次。中國遊客在加拿大的平均逗留時間最長（28個晚上），消費比其他任何國家的遊客多（1648.51加元）。根據加拿大會議局的一項調查，預計到2015年，旅遊目的地國家將增加多達50%的中國至加拿大出遊率。

加拿大總理斯蒂芬•哈珀歡迎與中國簽署關於氣候變化和文化交流新協定

協定凸顯了兩國共同利益的深度和範圍

中國北京 – 加拿大總理斯蒂芬•哈珀今天宣布， 加拿大已與中國簽署了兩項協定，這將促進雙方在氣候變化和文化領域的更大合作。 加拿大總理和中國國務院總理溫家寶在北京人民大會堂見證了這兩項協定的簽署。

「這兩項協定凸顯了我們與中國共同利益的深度和範圍。」加拿大總理說，「從共同發展清潔能源技術以及我們的藝術和文化遺產交流來說，這兩項協定反映了加拿大致力於加強和擴大我們同中國的關係，並為更廣泛的合作奠定基礎。」

根據氣候變化諒解備忘錄，加拿大和中國將在長期的全球努力中合作，通過減緩和適應以應對氣候變化。這將加強加中兩國在節能和能源效率、可再生能源、碳捕獲和儲存、甲烷回收和利用以及可持續土地管理方面的合作。

《文化合作諒解備忘錄》將促進在表演和視覺藝術、藝術節及展覽領域的共同計劃和交流以及促進在文化遺產領域共享最佳做法。該諒解備忘錄概述了與中國的兩年文化合作計劃，這將為加拿大的文化產業創造商機，並且有助於在中國展示加拿大文化。 
 
總理還宣布，加拿大與中國現有的礦產資源以及農業領域科研合作和人才培養諒解備忘錄已續簽。此外，加中雙邊海運協定新議定書也已執行。

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PRIME MINISTER MEETS WITH PRESIDENT HU JINTAO

PRESIDENT HU JINTAO: (Speaking Mandarin)

INTERPRETER: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it’s a great pleasure to see you again in Beijing just 20 days after our last meeting. First of all, let me welcome you on your official visit to Canada.

PRESIDENT HU JINTAO: (Speaking Mandarin)

INTERPRETER: This is your first visit to China as the Prime Minister of Canada, and that’s why this visit has great significance.

PRESIDENT HU JINTAO: (Speaking Mandarin)

INTERPRETER: I’m sure your visit will help both sides to deepen mutual understanding and expand practical cooperation, and take the friendly and a cooperative relationship between our two countries to a new level.

PRESIDENT HU JINTAO: (Speaking Mandarin)

INTERPRETER: Now I would like to invite you, Mr. Prime Minister, to speak.

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER: Merci beaucoup Monsieur le Président Hu. C’est un désir, c’est mon désir de visiter la Chine depuis mon enfance, et c’est un grand honneur d’être ici aujourd’hui.

First of all, President Hu, thank you. I’ve been wanting to visit China since I was a small boy, and it’s a great honour to be here with you today.

INTERPRETER: (Speaking Mandarin)

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER: We have a good and frank relationship. We have diplomatic relations which are now approaching their 40th year. We’ve accomplished much together, expanding trade and cooperation, and I’m sure that this visit will help further those objectives.

INTERPRETER: (Speaking Mandarin)

PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER: We’ve had many opportunities to meet at international fora, where I’ve always appreciated your candour and cooperative disposition, and I’m sure that this visit will help further those relations in the future, and I appreciate your hospitality, the hospitality of the Chinese people.

INTERPRETER: (Speaking Mandarin)

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PM MEETS HIS EXCELLENCY WEN JIABAO

HIS EXCELLENCY WEN JIABAO: [Translated] Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcome to paying an official visit to China. This is your first trip to China and this is the first meeting between the Chinese Premier and the Canadian Prime Minister in almost five years. Five years is too long a time for China Canada relations and that is why there are comments in the media that your visit is one that should have taken place earlier.

I remember quoting a Chinese proverb when I gave a speech during my visit to Canada in 2003. The proverb reads, “Common visions and common ideals can bring people together in spite of the thousands of miles that sets them apart.” I expressed the hope that China and Canada will set an example of long term and friendly cooperation between countries different in social systems and level of development.

Mr Prime Minister, your visit this time has a great mission and a special significance. I am willing to have an in depth exchange of views with you on China Canada relations and major issues of common interest to deepen our mutual understanding and trust and take forward exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in various areas. We hope that through your visit the China Canada relationship will turn a new page.

RIGHT HONOURABLE STEPHEN HARPER: Thank you very much Premier Wen. First of all it’s a delight to be here for the first time and a real honour and pleasure to visit your country. I, as I said earlier, I saw the Great Wall this morning, which is something that I think probably everybody should see before they finish passing through this life and I look forward to seeing many more of the treasures of your country and meeting with the great Chinese people.

We have had diplomatic relations between our two countries for almost forty years which has witnessed tremendous growth in not just trade and investment but interaction of our peoples. I agree with you Premier that five years is a long time. It’s also been almost five years since we’ve had yourself or President Hu in our country, and so I hope as we approach this important milestone in our relationship, the forty year anniversary, that yourself or President Hu will also have the opportunity in the not too distant future to visit Canada.

Tags: Canada-China, diplomacy

by Latoya Peterson

I’ve received some tips that serve to update some of the stories we have discussed on site.

In the matter of South Philadelphia High, Angry Asian Man has reported that the students have ended the boycott after a conversation with officials:

Tuesday’s meeting lasted more than two hours. Here’s the public statement put forth by the students of South Philly High School boycott:

Through our trials and struggles, we pushed the school to hear us. We have made change by standing together. We are proud of what we have done. If something happens again after all this, we know that we have strong wills and we will stand together again.

We have came back to stand with more students. We want to start a dialogue with other student organizations. We will continue to work with the community organizations. The struggle will go on until all the demands are met; we won’t give up. We ask everyone to continue to pay attention to what’s going on at SPHS. We hope that school can change their attitude for the benefits of all students. We thank our supporters. Without the support of everyone we could not go this far. We are excited for the future. We now believe in hope and change, like president Obama.

We want a safe school for everyone; we want everyone to have a good education. This is not the end, but just the beginning of the fight for better futures and better educations for all races of students.

~ Students of the South Philly High boycott ~

So it’s back to school. While the district has made a lot of assurances that it’s be taking steps to put a stop to the violence, I imagine this isn’t much comfort to the students who were on the receiving end of the attacks on December 3, or the students who have endured antagonism and apathy for years — often from the teachers and administrators. More here: Asian students ’suspend’ boycott of South Philadelphia High.

However, in the comments to our original post, Asian Metal Chick dropped a link showing this isn’t just a problem at SPHS – it’s the whole district:

“If Chinese students don’t go to school, it’s a big problem—they don’t learn,” says Xu Lin, a Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation staffer who mentors Asian teens. “But it’s a bigger problem if they go to school and get beat up.”

Lin, 24, understands the situation. He and three immigrant friends were jumped by 15 kids outside Furness High School in 2001. Two of his friends were hospitalized as a result. It was Lin’s first day of school in America.

Similar stories vibrate throughout the city. 
[...]

A few weeks later, Jeremayah Daniel, then a 14-year old freshman at Fels, was jumped by three students who bashed him on the back of his head. They continued punching him in the face, breaking his nose and causing a concussion.

“I don’t even know them or why they did it,” says Daniel, whose Christian family fled religious intolerance in Pakistan. 
[...]

One Chinese immigrant student began experiencing prejudice in 2002 when he entered the third grade at Society Hill’s McCall Elementary School.

“Kids get in your face and say racial stuff, throw stuff at you, push you in the halls,” says the 15-year-old student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Sometimes I can’t take it and I fight back. Then I get in trouble.”

He’s been suspended numerous times for fighting.

“Every year, I’m at the limit,” he says. “Like, one more fight and I’ll get kicked out.”

Despite the McCall student population being around 55 percent Asian, the abuses were steady—from white students as well as black, says the student who will begin high school next week.

“Some of my friends quit school and get jobs,” he says. “Sometimes younger than me.”

Another Asian McCall alum adds, “I have friends who see no future in school so they fight back, and keep changing schools.”

These kids are falling through the cracks, and the eye of the media will be off them soon. Philly readers, please keep us updated.

Reader Carrie sent in this update to Nadra’s piece on Amanda Knox, noting “no doubt if this had been Ms. Knox the media would be all over it, but as it is the poor man barely gets a blip on the CNN radar.” Rudy Guede, the third person indited on murder charges, had his sentence reduced on appeal:

One of the men convicted of killing British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in 2007 has had his sentence reduced on appeal, a lawyer in the case said Tuesday.

Rudy Guede was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison, but the appeal court cut the term to 16 years, said Francesco Maresca, a lawyer for the Kercher family.

The reduction was based on technical calculations prescribed by the Italian penal code, he said.

Kercher’s American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox’s sometime-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, also were convicted of the killing, in a separate trial that concluded earlier this month.

Guede, a native of the Ivory Coast, was convicted of murder and attempted sexual assault in October 2008.

Prosecutors contend that all three killed Kercher, 21, while Knox and Sollecito’s lawyers say Guede acted alone.

Knox — Kercher’s roommate at the time of the killing — was sentenced to 26 years, while Sollecito got 25. Both will appeal, attorneys said.

• Conservatives Debate: Is 'Teabagger' Their 'N-Word'? | TPMDC "When I was growing up, in Ann Arbor, Mich., there was a little debate: Should school officials try to prevent black students from using the N-word? I don't believe the issue was ever settled. And this brings up the question of whether "teabagger" could be kind of a conservative N-word: to be used in the family, but radioactive outside the family. " (tags: via:elton politics racialslurs)
• Scholarly Investments – NYTimes.com "Mr. Petry, 38, and Mr. Greenblatt, 52, may spend their days poring over spreadsheets and overseeing trades, but their obsession — one shared with many other hedge funders — is creating charter schools, the tax-funded, independently run schools that they see as an entrepreneurial answer to the nation’s education woes. Charters have attracted benefactors from many fields. But it is impossible to ignore that in New York, hedge funds are at the movement’s epicenter." (tags: via:carleandria charterschools school education)
• ISS – School segregation in the U.S. continues to rise "The report finds that the U.S. continues to move backward toward increasing minority segregation in highly unequal schools; the job situation remains especially bleak for American blacks, and Latinos have a college completion rate that is shockingly low. At the same time, very little is being done to address large scale challenges such as continuing discrimination in the housing and home finance markets, among other differences across racial lines." (tags: via:naomi segregation school college education)
• ‘Racist, religiously insensitive and demeaning’: LSE athletes’ Christmas party | London Student "The Athletics Union (AU) of the London School of Economics (LSE) has condemned an incident in which some members of the society dressed up as Guantanamo Bay inmates and drunkenly yelled ‘Oh Allah’ outside the college bar.
  The Athletics Union (AU) of the London School of Economics (LSE) has condemned an incident in which some members of the society dressed up as Guantanamo Bay inmates and drunkenly yelled ‘Oh Allah’ outside the college bar. At least a dozen students attending the December 4th ‘Carol’, the annual fancy-dress Christmas party for all sports teams, chose to wear costumes deemed “racist, religiously insensitive and demeaning”. " (tags: via:summer racism costumes)
• 3 Police Officers among 5 People Indicted in Race-related Beating | CNN.com Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted on charges related to the beating death of a Latino man in rural Pennsylvania in July 2008, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

  Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crimes, obstruction of justice and conspiracy in what authorities are calling a racially motivated attack.

  (tags: via:carleandria racism police hatecrime latino news)
• Sharon Jones: 'No Chimneys In The Projects' | NPR Jones' mother restores her faith with the tale of a chimney that appears after the child falls asleep, and along the way, Mom takes her place as the song's true hero. Jones soon turns her rueful declaration into a sort of celebration: "There ain't no chimneys — ho, ho, ho, ho, no, no, no — in the projects!" Because, ultimately, Santa Claus and chimneys are irrelevant when compared to another Christmas benefactor. "Mama," Jones sings, "you are the one." (tags: via:cruelsecretary images music blackwomen class)
• There Are No Poor White People | Ta-Nehisi Coates Here's Lindsey Graham, again, equating poor people with black people, or some such. A charitable interpretation says that Graham, in his discussion of Medicaid, is citing his state's black population because we tend to be disproportionately poor. But this would be like discussing Medicare by citing your state's sweater-knitting population because they tend to be disproportionately old. (tags: via:anita race racism class poverty)
• Even on Mute, TV Can Perpetuate Racial Bias | Not Exactly Rocket Science When scenes are muted, body language and facial expressions are enough to convey more negative attitudes towards black characters compared to white ones. This bias is so subtle that we're largely unable to consciously identify it, yet so powerful that it can sway our own predispositions. In some ways, racial bias acts as a contagion and television as one of its vectors. (tags: via:restructure images race racism television)
• Cover Me – The Militant and the Taste | Blogging in Black Anywhooo, the militant in me fought with my taste. The militant wanted black faces on covers of all future King-Bey titles. Militant argued that Dee doesn’t write for whites and isn’t trying to gain their acceptance anyway, so make them look at our black faces. Taste was like, hold up. Dee writes the story that is in her, not to a targeted audience and she doesn’t like populated covers.  (tags: via:thatgirl books images blacks)
• Holiday in the Hood | Sociological Images So, what do you think:  Is this Gap ad featuring Black people dancing and singing about the “hood” using stereotypes to appeal to black people?  Or white people?  In the latter case, would you consider this a form of objectification?   (tags: via:jasmine advertising race images black white)
• Study by Harry Levine Shows More Blacks Are Arrested for Marijuana | NYTimes.com But the SoHo bouncers and the Chelsea graphic artist don’t have much to worry about, at least from the police: they are white. Even though surveys show they are part of the demographic group that makes the heaviest use of pot, white people in New York are the least likely to be arrested for it.
  Last year, black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession and no more serious crime. Latinos were four times more likely.

By Guest Contributor Jenn, originally posted at Reappropriate

(Hat-tip: Gawker)

So, let’s say you’ve got to buy Christmas presents for a friend of yours, but you just don’t know what to get her. A gift certificate from the local steakhouse? The latest 50 Cent CD? A gag gift from Toys ‘R Us? A new crockpot?

But what a minute! Your friend is Latina! Surely, that’s a hook to get her the perfect Christmas present! But, gosh, you just don’t know anything about Latina heritage. Well, New York Times has the perfect gift suggestions for you: how about a children’s book on Sonia Sotomayor? How about Iman’s book of beauty tips for women of colour? And, of course, there’s always a “Wise Latina” t-shirt! (Because apparently the hot thing for Latinas this year are Sotomayor-related products.)

And what if you’re buying me a present? Well, clearly, because I’m Asian American, I simply must have a copy of “Asian Faces“, a book that tells Asian women how we’re applying our eye makeup wrong, and how to do it right.

The New York Times isn’t exactly known for its racial sensitivity, but what moron green-lit this racist stereotype-perpetuating gift suggestion feature?

The assumption made here is that people of colour somehow need “race-related” presents, because our race is the be-all and end-all of our identities (and Christmas gift wishes). Not only that, but NYT readeres are encouraged to typecast their friends of colour to find “race appropriate” gifts — so, the friend is no longer just a friend, she’s “the Asian friend” or “the Latina friend” or “the Black friend”, and gifts should be bought reflecting your brand-spanking new racial categorization. Meanwhile, your White friends don’t need to be Otherized, since obviously they don’t have racial identities to contend with, so you can get them meaningful and non-offensive presents!

(Which makes me wonder what you do if you have mixed race friends? Do they just get multiple racist gifts? Or do you just pick the gift most in-keeping with the race you think they look the most like?)

And even if we, just for a second, accept the racist notion that we should be buying gifts based on our friends’ races and ethnicities, why would we buy these stereotype-inspired gifts? How racist is it to suggest that African-American women should receive haircare products specifically geared towards “problem hair” or Carribean cruises featuring a gospel choir (because Black women hate their hair but love some gospel music), while Indian women want nothing more than multi-coloured head-scarves (or coffee-table books celebrating multi-coloured head scarves)? Oh, and, what about the nail polish with benefits going to the people of Haiti — because both your friend and Haitians are people of colour, so somehow there’s a logical Christmas gift-giving connection?

And don’t even get me started on the “Baby Jamz” gift idea: because Black women love hip hop and have lots of babies, so clearly they need a gift that blends the two, right?

Then again, maybe the NYT is on to something. Perhaps this year, I will also give my friends race-inspired presents. In fact, right now, I’m on my way to go buy my Asian friends kimonos, bonsai trees, and pearl-inlaid chopsticks. My Latino friends? Clearly a set of antique maracas and a matching sombrero are the way to go. My Indian friend shall receive a henna kit, a book on yoga, and some bags of incense, and (since I’m an equal opportunity bigot) all of my White friends are getting gift boxes of cheese and coolers full of cheap beer, all the better to tailgate with. And electroman? Well, since he’s Black, he’s in for a special treat: the complete Tyler Perry DVD library collection, including full seasons of “Meet the Browns” and “House of Payne”. Oh, and while I’m at it, all my gay friends will receive adult sex toys, and all my friends over the age of forty will receive tennis balls and denture adhesive.

Sound like a great Christmas? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.