Independent Article: Pathetic Morrissey Makes A Racist Comment This Time The Bigot Is Attacking Chinese People.
Have the Chinese lost face over the Morrissey “subspecies” comment?
- By Sonny Leong
- Eagle Eye
- Wednesday, 6 October 2010 at 10:42 am
In an interview in the Guardian recently, Morrissey, former singer of The Smiths, describes Chinese people as a “subspecies” because of their treatment of animals. Morrissey is on record as vehemently denying allegations of racism on several occasions.
The response of the British Chinese community was deafening silence. Can you imagine the fuss if Morrissey had made such comments about Indians, Africans, or Jews? There would be uproar, marches down Parliament and demonstrations across the land. So where are the Chinese protests or demonstrations? Nowhere. Absolutely zilch! Have we lost our face over this comment?
Why do the Chinese complain so little? Where are the Chinese business and community leaders defending their values and pride? Why is no one from the community standing up to the authorities to insist that this sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable?
Anna Chen, performer, writer, and broadcaster who blogs as “Madam Miaow”, and is often the sole British Chinese commentator to protest against not only Morrissey’s statement, but also what she sees as the intensifying prejudice emerging in the liberal media, says:
There’s been a wave of anti-Chinese Yellow Peril fever whipped up coinciding with the rise of China as a superpower, surfacing in sensationalist scapegoating every time there’s a disaster. They’ve attempted to stick us with the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in rural England, the Gulf Of Mexico BP oil leak, even climate change when the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years since the industrial revolution and look set to continue doing so at four times per capita that of the Chinese.
She has been criticised by the mainstream media in her fight against racism in the media. Here is what she says of the BBC’s celebration of Fu Manchu:
“Fu Manchu in Edinburgh” gleefully revived racist stereotypes of the Chinese I’d hoped were long-buried, and could have been subtitled, Racism for Fun.
Why present a Yellow Peril figure as if he was a real person complete with lurid wallowing in the very worst racism, dehumanising the Chinese as a race, linking us with filth, and presenting us as Bin Laden-like Western-civilisation-hating sub-humans?
There was no irony. No attempt to subject these prejudices and stereotypes of a bygone era to any kind of modern interrogation. Instead, they were re-imported, intact, into the present day. I can’t imagine the BBC vilifying any other minority group like this
The author Sax Rohmer had never met a Chinese person and was writing from malice and ignorance — the “experts” on this programme only have one of those excuses.
There’s a woeful absence of Chinese voices in the media, so when the BBC fills the vacuum with degrading Sinophobic depictions such as this one, they do a grave disservice to a significant licence-paying section of the population.
Professor Greg Benton of Cardiff University also commented:
Chinese are quite numerous in British society today, but ethnic Chinese are very underrepresented in the BBC and its programmes, which is a disgrace. This was not a very funny programme, and if it was meant to be ironic, the irony didn’t work. If you’re a young Chinese isolated in an overwhelmingly white school and community, as many if not most young Chinese are, you get a lot of mockery along these lines. Why not commission more work on that? First deal with the racist stereotyping – then we can perhaps afford to be ironic about it.
The British Chinese number more than 450,000, the largest such community in Europe, and the third largest ethnic community in the UK. Yet no senior community leader has stood up to condemn such vile vitriol from an unhip musician in search of a headline.
What would it take for the Chinese community to rise up and challenge such racist statements? What would it take to make the Chinese angry enough to take to the streets to protest? Or are we, such a passive community that we will take whatever is thrown at us so that we can live ‘peacefully’ in our host country?
I say to my community and my fellow community leaders – enough is enough – if we do not stand up for ourselves no one will. We have let down our previous generations who had survived in racist environments and we will let down our younger generation and children for not having the principles and courage to stand up to such cowards.
We portray ourselves as hardworking, law-abiding and successful. We hide behind these norms for fear of misunderstanding. Peel the layers and selfishness, cynicism, exploitation oozes from the community pores.
When criticisms are made, accusations of betrayal and disloyalty are thrown at the maker. No wonder, nobody speaks up. If the community does not feel that it has a rightful place in society then that right will be taken away from them by people like Morrissey.
It has been suggested that all the Chinese care about is making money. Yes, make your money but remember there are higher values, too. You have your self esteem, principles, culture and, most importantly, pride. No amount of money is worth it if we let our pride and values slip – we will be a forgotten community.
Globe & Mail Article: Naheed Neneshi’s Victory Breaks The Colour Barrier He Is Calgary’s First South Asian Muslim Mayor!!!
Naheed Nenshi: Change Calgary believed in
JOSH WINGROVE
CALGARY— From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010 10:13PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2010 3:30PM EDT
In many ways, Naheed Nenshi’s come-from-behind win in Calgary’s mayoral race is a traditional story.
Mr. Nenshi is qualified, charismatic and well-spoken. His career path has set him up well, perhaps purposefully, for a political career. He earned key endorsements and had all the momentum going into election day.
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But, of course, his victory is unique, both for reasons the 38-year-old is inclined to discuss – such as his impressive grassroots “Purple Army” shoestring campaign – and those that he is not. He represents a changing Calgary, with its 230,000 visible-minority residents (nearly a quarter of the population), as the city’s first non-white mayor.
In a province so often dominated by its conservatives, who supported opponents Barb Higgins and Ric McIver, Mr. Nenshi was a rallying point for progressive Alberta – young and old, white and non-white, eager to debunk their city’s conservative Cowtown image.
Now it’s up to Mr. Nenshi to deliver on the significant change he promised. A tall order, but voters are eager for it.
“I saw a lot of parallels between his campaign and [Barack] Obama’s campaign. He was mobilizing youth, which McIver and Higgins were not focusing on,” said voter Ashif Murani, 44, a Calgary lawyer. “I think he’s just really got good, solid credentials. Whether that can now get conveyed into policy decision making where he gets support of the council, that remains to be seen. It’s like Obama – good ideas, but can you implement them?”
Mr. Nenshi neither mentioned often nor avoided his heritage and religion during the campaign. (As has now been over-told, Of South Asian extraction, he’s a Muslim, the first to hold the mayor’s chair in a major Canadian city). Contrary to some national perception, Alberta has a history of electing minorities and Muslim candidates. Nevertheless, questions came to Mr. Nenshi. A local paper published a column condemning the racist Nenshi hate mail it had received. A TV reporter told him Tuesday “there are some people who are concerned, perhaps, that there’s a Muslim mayor.”
But Mr. Nenshi has deftly taken it in stride. In a series of one-on-one interviews with The Globe and Mail on election day, Mr. Nenshi acknowledged his unprecedented role – tasked not only with running Calgary (and solving its significant budget crisis) but carrying the weight of a city’s hope for change both in city hall and its reputation abroad.
“It is true that I have an additional responsibility that a guy like Ric McIver doesn’t have; Ric does a great job and has done a great job – it doesn’t mean that all Scots are outstanding,” Mr. Nenshi told The Globe. “But, you know, I do a good job and it’s like brown guys are okay. Muslims can do a good job. I do a bad job, and I take people down with me. It is [a lot of pressure], but it’s just our lives.
“It would have been so easy to have an article, just a fun human-interest article in August, about what it’s like fasting through Ramadan while you’re campaigning. What it’s like at a debate not drinking water. I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that because I didn’t think it was a relevant question.”
Nevertheless, he hasn’t shied away from the issue of race in the past. He ran and lost for city council in 2004, and afterward said Calgary would have to face “very stark truths” to boost diversity on council.
For Mr. Nenshi, this campaign was strictly about issues and populist support (voter turnout was 53 per cent, an exceptional number in municipal elections). He talked about transit, accountability and open government. Mr. Nenshi also drew broad support on the political spectrum. His campaign was co-chaired by Chima Nkemdirim, vice-president of the upstart progressive Alberta Party, and Stephen Carter, former chief of staff to right-wing Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith. (Though it was Mr. Nenshi who approached him, Mr. Nkemdirim cleverly led a “draft Nenshi” online campaign that built early support).
Mr. Nenshi’s team crafted a Thanksgiving strategy meant to thrust a virtual unknown forward in a wide race to a position as the third option to Ms. Higgins and Mr. McIver. Once they did so, they’d rely on their dedicated supporters to spread the populist Nenshi word at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
To get there, Mr. Nenshi said he aimed to “hit people where they live.” For many, it meant online. He gathered thousands of Facebook fans and communicated directly with supporters and critics alike on Twitter – his “tweeps” helped him pick, for instance, his victory tie Monday night. That support was used to build a door-knocking network, and the campaign took every media interview and debate appearance it could.
Air, ground and online – a three-part strategy that earned them momentum.
“Everything fires together. This is a winning campaign,” Mr. Carter told The Globe in late September, when Mr. Nenshi was still more than 25 points behind Mr. McIver. “This is working. Will it continue to work? I don’t know.”
It did. Interest in the campaign peaked late last week when a local poll put Mr. Nenshi in a tie with Ms. Higgins and Mr. McIver. His surging candidacy was legitimized further by an endorsement from the Calgary Sun.
“He laid the basis of the campaign with social media, and was able to speak to younger voters, but that in itself wasn’t enough. There had to be real substance behind it, and that substance was really there,” said Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary. “He sounded confident and reasonable when he was in these debates, and that got out there. And then there was just a likeability factor that kicked in in the end.”
The new Calgary mayor has a sterling resume. A U of C and Harvard graduate, Mr. Nenshi has worked as a consultant for McKinsey and Company (hired at age 22) and later the United Nations. He speaks French and is a debating champion (strangely, his debating partner for two years was Ezra Levant, now a leading voice of the Canadian right). He values his humble roots.
“I think I can understand and talk to people who come from all walks of life. I’m not just a Harvard-educated egghead,” he said.
He moved back to Calgary to be closer to his family. His mother, father, sister, brother-in-law and two nieces joined him at his campaign headquarters Monday evening. Supporters also praise his integrity – Mr. Nenshi avoided fighting a dirty campaign. He has previously served as president of his university students union.
His supporters hope he’ll be a force for change, and for Alberta progressives.
“There’s a real grassroots movement in the city, and he’s the one who captured that,” said supporter Lindsay Luhnau, 29, who spent election day waving Nenshi signs at passing cars. “Maybe it’s just we’re coming of age.”
Former governor-general Adrienne Clarkson and her husband, John Ralston Saul – a mentor to Mr. Nenshi – called Tuesday to congratulate him on his historic win.
Mr. Nenshi was eager to carry that message of a diverse Calgary to the country.
“Today has also been a day about communicating with Canadians across this great country, with people around the world, to tell them the story of Calgary,” he said.
On Tuesday, with a win secured, he addressed his personal story.
“My greatest hope is that this morning … kids from across the city – northeast to southwest, every ethnicity, every income level, every neighbourhood, every single one of those kids – say, ‘what a country we live in, what a city we live in, because I can be anything.’”
LA Times Blog: Tyler Perry’s New Film For Colored Girls Will Probably Be Attacked By Racist White American Film Critics.
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Tyler Perry changes his policy on critics screenings, but he may come to regret it
Prolific writer-director-mogul Tyler Perry seems to have a hate-hate relationship with critics: they hate his films and he hates to screen them for review. He showed his first movie, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” to them and they thrashed it. Then it went on to become a popular success, giving Perry the clout to bar critics from seeing advance screenings of any of his subsequent eight films.
But with his latest feature, the artistically ambitious “For Colored Girls,” adapted from the acclaimed 1970s stage play, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,” perhaps Perry has decided to ease up a little. After all, the film — which opens Nov. 5 — has difficult subject matter (such as rape and domestic violence) and doesn’t have the easy audience hook of getting to see a grown man in drag. So getting critics on his side seems like a smart strategy.
If early reviews are any indication, however, Perry’s newfound spirit of openness may backfire on him. Writing in the Hollywood Reporter, critic Kirk Honeycutt calls the movie a “train wreck,” and after acknowledging Perry’s built-in fan base, cautions that “word-of-mouth could be toxic.”
And over at Variety, critic Peter Debruge echoes those sentiments. He has kind words for the cast, which includes Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton and Whoopi Goldberg, but when it comes to Perry and his frequent behind-the-scenes collaborators, he says, “There’s some great acting being done here … but the cameras aren’t where they need to be to capture it, and the editing isn’t properly calibrated to shape what the performers are dishing out.”
He also writes, “While Perry’s craft has slowly but surely improved with each successive film, this latest project seems to fall beyond his reach.”
— Patrick Kevin Day
Afro American Article Review: Black Actresses Shine In Tyler Perry’s Controversial Drama For Colored Girls.
Leading Actresses Look Beyond the Rainbow at Life’s Harshest Realities
First Look Inside Perry’s ‘For Colored Girls’
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For Colored Girls is a fireball of raw, organic rage bundled into 120 minutes worth of film. All at once it’s ugly, beautiful and profoundly abstract, a dizzying triad of perceptions that will either stamp For Colored Girls a box office triumph or a commercial bomb.
Critics may question whether mass audiences are ready (or willing) to ingest the onslaught of unnerving topics For Colored Girls engages. Rape, murder, abortion, mental illness, promiscuity, homosexuality, Black female identity and poverty are only a fraction of the macro social issues tackled, and comic relief comes fleetingly.
But understanding Tyler Perry’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf requires recognition of the book hailed as a revolution in Black women’s literature.
In its purest form, the original stage production is a series of 20 poems performed by seven principal characters known only by color, such as the Lady in Yellow and the Lady in Red. Here, Shange’s words are a jungle of metaphor and feminist affirmations; puns and simile; Ebonics and colorful imagery (“hips painted with orange blossoms & magnolia scented wrists.”) On page and in theatre productions, For Colored Girls has been critically acclaimed and even garnered a Tony Award.
But where the author’s vision takes place in a racially charged 1970s setting, Perry’s production is modernized with more recent phenomena such as HIV making an appearance. The lead actresses ?Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Tessa Thompson, Whoopi Goldberg, Kimberly Elise and Janet Jackson ?are given real names, with subtle hints of their color-identified forebears. Shange’s poetry, however, remains largely uninterrupted and the cast of powerful performers often deviate into minutes-long diatribes and monologues brimming with Shange’s characteristically flowery prose. Perhaps most jarring is the obvious schism that exists between Shange’s poetic phrases and Perry’s more straightforward words.
This may prove problematic for today’s moviegoers, particularly diehard Perry fans accustomed to his lighthearted releases like Why Did I Get Married? and Madea’s Family Reunion. But whether audiences truly grasp the writer’s complex analogies is almost irrelevant. The cast of celebrated actors bring a human, visceral element to the production that transcends language.
English film star Thandie Newton shines as the overtly sexual, foul-mouthed firecracker Tangie, while big screen newcomer Tessa Thompson delivers a stirring performance as her younger, troubled sister Nyla. These two characters alone face a sundry of misfortunes – Tangie’s irreverent promiscuity and emotional numbness; Nyla’s teenage pregnancy and what appears to be a thwarted college career. Legendary comedienne Whoopi Goldberg is Alice, Tangie and Nyla’s hysterically religious mother, and a hoarder. The on-screen dynamic between the three actresses is intense as they move from unadulterated rage, self-pity and ultimately, acceptance of their identity.
Equally powerful is singing sensation Janet Jackson’s portrayal of Joanna, a successful but coldhearted magazine editor, whose distant relationship with her husband proves to be life-changing. With her perfectly coiffed crop, designer pumps and patrician nose, Jackson makes the perfect snob.
However, it’s Beloved actress Kimberly Elise’s multifaceted role as Crystal, Joanna’s overworked assistant, that brings For Colored Girls to a tear-jerking pinnacle. She is the victim of domestic abuse at the hands of boyfriend Kwame (Michael Ealy), who bears a lifetime’s worth of mental and emotional scars presumably gained during the war in Iraq. Kwame also fathers the young mother’s two children and is an out-of-work alcoholic. When his rage against Crystal spills over into an unthinkable act of violence, filmgoers will be driven to tears, averted eyes and dropped jaws.
As the nine women’s lives become entwined, Anika Noni Rose (Yasmine) and Loretta Devine (Juanita) struggle to find common ground with their significant others. Kerry Washington’s character, a social worker named Kelly, is the only cast member who maintains a consistently healthy relationship with her husband, played by actor/writer Hill Harper. Juanita brings the film its rare moments of tense humor as she fights for the affection of a man who loves another woman, while Phylicia Rashad is the building manager at a decrepit Harlem tenement where most of the protagonists live. Similar to her public persona crafted during a 10-year run as Clair on “The Cosby Show,” she portrays a stoic matriarch with a quick wit and generous heart.
Whether Perry’s infamously unflappable fan base will be as generous with their praise and patronage, only time will tell.
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