Tara McPherson the author of, “I’ll Take My Stand in Dixie-Net” has discovered a different form of racism. Upon the search of her name Tara she came across a few web-sites that advocate Southern separatism, nationalism, and sometimes via secession. McPherson is trying to enlighten us on the details about these websites that the untrained eye might miss such as: covert and overt racism.
“Certainly race is one of the nodal points around which public discourse on the South has turned throughout the twentieth century, but in the post-Civil Rights era representations of race and racism proceeded via different logics….” McPherson pg. 119. McPherson explains the different logics in more detail. She discusses overt racism as sketching the contours of whiteness in contrast to blackness as a racial difference. She also goes on to explain the other form of racism; the kind of racism that is unspoken of but can be derived from the pictures and the contents of these websites such as: www.dixienet.org, or www.conferderate.net as covert racism. These websites are designed and updated weekly by mainly White men between the ages of 18-50. The main purpose is to show the “reconstruction” that the South is undergoing. These men talk about maintaining their past and Southern ways, but something interesting they show is the “anti-Klan logo”. These men aren’t being racist in an overt way but in a cover way. The pages of the website also express dismay the perceptions that protecting Southern heritage means one must be racist.
These pages display one must be racist, but they also display “anti-Klan logos”? This is a complete contradiction in itself. Or is it? This is where Tara comes into play explaining to the reader the use of the covert racism. She goes on to explain it beautifully saying,
“If overt racial representation brings together black and white in order to privilege whiteness, and covert strategies repress difference to the same end, what seems necessary is an overt representation or racial difference without privileging either term. We cannot understand or learn from the South’s racial history by representing it any more than we can champion the identity-shifting potential of cyberspace without studying its racial contours.”
I have read this article with some new found knowledge but not much surprise. U can never fathom all the strange occurrences going on all over the world especially on the internet, but u can expect anything and everything is happening. People are still living the past even today and they are trying to speak out and get themselves heard in every way possible. The new form is through cyberspace as McPherson points out. I think it is kind of funny the things people try to do to get noticed without trying to bring in racial tension; this article is a prime example of what I’m talking about.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
El Norte
Takaki’s chapter 12 El Norte is basically the Mexican version of chapter 10. Chapter 10 showed how Japanese men and woman came to Hawaii and the United States in hopes for a new and improved life. In chapter 12 Takaki enlightens us on the hardships and struggles of the Chicano people.
2.) The significance of this chapter can be summed up in one quote of Takaki. He says, “To the Jewish exiles, America was the Promised Land, and to the immigrants from Mexico, it was El Norte. A land across the river, this country became the stuff of boundless dreams for Mexican migrants.”
1.) Mexicans came to this land on foot, but once the Mexican Railroad was built they came in car loads to the states. Much of this was not by choice, most Mexicans wanted to go to America to wait for their civil war to end and others went because of the poverty and horror of war aka an economic depression. Many relatives that were in the States and came back to Mexico told their families of the money, shoes, and good clothes they could possibly obtain. For some Mexicans this was a sense of motive to find work in the States.
3.) “Like Caliban, they were isolated by the borders of racial segregation.” Many Mexicans were thought to know their place. They were not aloud in public buildings and could not eat amongst the Anglo Americans. In one instance they were told to go eat with the colored people and this was a major demeaning remark to their race. Social construction also came into affect when their kids tried to advance beyond their so-called required education level.
4.) The Mexicans tried many tactics to resist this discrimination. They held a Mexican Revolution. They also tried moving eastward to other jobs were they could find better accommodations. They also held strikes in 1933 and the women set up picket lines. The last but not most affective resistance was the Barrio. A small town set up by the many Mexicans already in the U.S.A. to get away from the American torture and still maintain their homeland culturist views.
5.) Race- “Clearly, race was being used as a weapon by the American Federation of Labor: Mexicans not only constituted “cheap labor” but were regarded as incapable of becoming fully American.” Takaki pg. 331
Ethnicity- “The religion of the Chicanos was a uniquely Mexican version of Catholicism, a blending of a faith brought from the Old World and beliefs that had been in the New World for thousands of years before Columbus.” Takaki pg 335
I believe that the Mexicans endured nearly the same of amount of discrimination as the Japanese people. There was on advantage to being Mexican though, the fact that their homeland bordered the United States and they could easily go back to their birth homes. At one time there were actually too many Mexican workers in the United States and they were encouraged to take the Railroad back to their homes in Mexico with a little persuasion and punishment if they didn’t.
2.) The significance of this chapter can be summed up in one quote of Takaki. He says, “To the Jewish exiles, America was the Promised Land, and to the immigrants from Mexico, it was El Norte. A land across the river, this country became the stuff of boundless dreams for Mexican migrants.”
1.) Mexicans came to this land on foot, but once the Mexican Railroad was built they came in car loads to the states. Much of this was not by choice, most Mexicans wanted to go to America to wait for their civil war to end and others went because of the poverty and horror of war aka an economic depression. Many relatives that were in the States and came back to Mexico told their families of the money, shoes, and good clothes they could possibly obtain. For some Mexicans this was a sense of motive to find work in the States.
3.) “Like Caliban, they were isolated by the borders of racial segregation.” Many Mexicans were thought to know their place. They were not aloud in public buildings and could not eat amongst the Anglo Americans. In one instance they were told to go eat with the colored people and this was a major demeaning remark to their race. Social construction also came into affect when their kids tried to advance beyond their so-called required education level.
4.) The Mexicans tried many tactics to resist this discrimination. They held a Mexican Revolution. They also tried moving eastward to other jobs were they could find better accommodations. They also held strikes in 1933 and the women set up picket lines. The last but not most affective resistance was the Barrio. A small town set up by the many Mexicans already in the U.S.A. to get away from the American torture and still maintain their homeland culturist views.
5.) Race- “Clearly, race was being used as a weapon by the American Federation of Labor: Mexicans not only constituted “cheap labor” but were regarded as incapable of becoming fully American.” Takaki pg. 331
Ethnicity- “The religion of the Chicanos was a uniquely Mexican version of Catholicism, a blending of a faith brought from the Old World and beliefs that had been in the New World for thousands of years before Columbus.” Takaki pg 335
I believe that the Mexicans endured nearly the same of amount of discrimination as the Japanese people. There was on advantage to being Mexican though, the fact that their homeland bordered the United States and they could easily go back to their birth homes. At one time there were actually too many Mexican workers in the United States and they were encouraged to take the Railroad back to their homes in Mexico with a little persuasion and punishment if they didn’t.
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