I created an account at readers.livingsocial.com. We’re going to lovingly share a user name and account.

User: bbqbooks@gmail.com

Password: bbqbookclub

You can go on, add books to the book list, review books or just see what others have recommended. Disfrutense!

Earlier this year, I went to a panel discussion entitled, “Perceptions of Queer Identity in the Muslim World” where I came across two very interesting men. The first speaker was Michael Luongo, who is the author of the bestseller book, “Gay Travels in the Muslim World” that describes his experiences as an American traveler in numerous Islamic countries, but draws particular emphasis in Afghanistan. Some of the stories are emotional and deeply meaningful, while others demonstrate a more humorous appeal. More importantly, they all present a rare perspective on Middle Eastern travel, along with the not-so-prominent gay community. Luongo’s preface (which he read aloud) details specific examples of “Islamophobia” taught during the course of his upbringing in New Jersey; which mainly consisted of a liberal suburban public school system. However, it was not until later when his personal traveling experiences led Luongo to realize for himself, that his “Orientalist” perspective was completely incorrect and unjust.

Furthermore, the issue of homosexuality in the Middle East has recently been exaggerated with Ahmedinejad’s comment(s) during his visit to Columbia University last Fall. According to the transcript, he stated:

PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.(Laughter.) We don’t have that in our country. (Booing.) In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it. (Laughter.)

Perhaps, there was a lack of an accurate translation or maybe Ahmadinejad’s perception towards homosexuality is simply this arrogant. Regardless, it must be reassured that homosexuality does exist, everywhere.

The second speaker validates my argument, because Ahmad Malick found out about “homosexuality” when he was only twelve years old. He grew up in Pakistan and had heard about the queer community through a distant relative that lived in London. He can remember growing up and not actually having a word for his sexual orientation, because it was disrespected and unacceptable. Then, he said, “ something started telling me that something wasn’t wrong with me—but where I lived”. He also mentioned that the world he grew up in was “less globalized”, with no outside media influences to reinforce his uniqueness.

Despite the various forms of disapproval and marginalization, queer perceptions have changed, just not as quickly as we would like. Malick continued to say that, “there is no real acceptance of the homosexual community—it is more individual…and if you are going to face violent homophobia, it will most likely be your family. Where the outside people may dislike you, but wont take coercive action”. Clearly, my curiosity eventually led me to ask him if he had already “come out of the closet” to his family. He smirked, and said, “yes, they are indifferent about the entire thing, but they just want me to be content”.

With this topic in mind, and if it’s accessible, check out A Jihad for Love. The film gives many interesting/diverse stories of the ongoing struggle for passion and love in this world full of dichotomies.

A JIHAD FOR LOVE

Opens Wednesday, May 21!, IFC Center
Showtimes for Wed May 21 - Tue May 27:
11:20am, 1:15pm, 3:10, 5:05, 7:00, 9:30pm

Filmmakers in person at 7:00 and 9:30 tonight!

“Revealing and moving… a gifted filmmaker.” - Wall Street Journal

A groundbreaking look at gay and lesbian Muslims, A JIHAD FOR LOVE uncovers a hidden face of the world’s fastest-growing religion. Shot over five years in 12 countries and produced by Trembling before G-d’s Sandi Simcha Dubowski, this moving documentary explores reconciling faith with sexuality in societies where “debauchery” can be punished by imprisonment and even death. Embodying the literal meaning of jihad as “inner struggle,” the film’s subjects reveal the hopes of a community fighting for its place in the heart of Islam.

Click here to visit the film’s official website.

NR, USA/UK/France/Germany/Australia, 2008, 81 minutes.
In English, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Turkish and French with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MAY 31ST, 9:30 AM to 3PM

(This coincides with the previous post)
Join students, teachers and community organizers for a dialogue and workshop on challenging heteronormative assumptions and combating homophobia and transphobia in NYC schools.

NYU Barney Building, 34 Stuyvesant St.
(Between 2nd & 3rd Ave. and 9th & 10th Sts.
L to 3rd Ave, 6 to Astor Pl, R/W to 8th St)

*Lunch and a lite breakfast will be provided.*

For more info or to RSVP write nyqueer@nycore.org

FRIDAY, JUNE 6TH

6:30 pm

EXHIBIT OPENING RECEPTION

Lesbians of Color Art Exhibit

If elementary, middle and high school students were given literature by mostly people of color, women, queer people, etc. and a few token white men, would they be missing out on their education? Would they be unprepared for the future?

What do you think?

What is a better question to ask?

Earlier this month, the New York Times released and article highlighting the ongoing health care disparities within the migrant farmworker population. Clearly, health care coverage and access is a larger discourse in national politics, but one might just as easily overlook the physical health of the laborers working in our agricultural fields.

The people need help because they are in the United States illegally and because they are poor. Few have health insurance, but the backbreaking nature of their work, along with the toxicity of American poverty, insure that many are ailing.

They may visit a clinic or hospital if they are severely ill. But for many undocumented immigrants, much of their health care is provided by a parallel system of spiritual healers, home remedies and self-medication.

Data from National Agricultural Worker Survey further illustrates the ongoing health disparities and explains that 70% of farmworkers do not have health insurance. As a result, there is a reliance on non-conventional and traditional remedies. Ultimately these medical alternatives are not sufficient on their own. The NYT article focuses on this issue, tracking the work of a spiritual healer (curandera).

Women make up 19% of the farmworker community, and face very particular challenges to their health caused by the labor. They are frequently impacted by occupational health hazards (i.e. overt sun exposure, pesticides and other toxic substances) that directly impact their reproductive health. Which, ultimately lead to a list full of unfortunate outcomes:

For similar articles and the reason(s) for this depiction, click here.

Traditional remedies cannot be the only option for immigrants in the United States. While Western medicine could increase its culturally competency by incorporating these non-conventional methods and perspectives, all people in the United States deserve the right to the same standard of health care. Just when you thought that U.S. health care access and insurance affordabilty was bad… Please do not undermine the linguistic, cultural, AND economic barriers that our “undocumented” community face regularly.

Fortunately, organizations like Farmworker Justice and Migrant Clinicians Network frequently acknowledge the severity of this dilemma. Spread the word and spread awareness.

For more on the reproductive health of migrant farmworkers, check out this fact sheet.

*This blog contribution has been a byproduct of the NLIRH .

Source: posted on Facebook as a note by Jaison Gardner (originally from www.ajc.com)

We have a lot of work to do in terms of addressing the issues of hetronormativity, white supremacy, patriarchy, racism, environmental racism, domestic abuse, police brutality, capitalism, mental colonization, imperialism.. you know all these things that oppress us and we continue to rebel against..

That doesn’t mean that we don’t perpetuate some of these oppresive tendencies within some of our behaviors, comments, thoughts or even ideologies. So, Brown Black and Queer has created a slice of webspace in which we can openly discuss/argue some points where we may disagree and hopefully extinguish issues that potentially could impede upon our united forward movement.

In the Backyard BBQ tab (at the top of the webpage), we invite you to question things you may notice in rallies, conferences, marches, speeches or just in life that may seem problematic within our black brown & queer community.. just like you would at a family backyard barbeque.

We’s family, let’s talk..!

The first topic we’ll be discussing is cigarette smoking and its role in revolution..

Old ads for the Bronx Lesbian and Gay Health Resource Center

There’s a lot of whiteness running around the blogosphere right now that’s being commented on. Here’s my input on “Stuff White People Like” and “Dear White Feminists, quit goddamn fucking up.”

WordPress.com so nicely shows me the top blogs they host even when I didn’t ask them to. Guess what’s been at the top? Stuff White People Like Now I must admit that I didn’t quite know what to think at first. This blog is straight-forward. The blogger, Clander, writes posts about common interests of white people, like New Balance Shoes, Having Gay Friends, Bottles of Water, Standing at Concerts, Vegan/Vegetarianism and Non-Profit Organizations, among many others (right now there are 96 on the list). I think that many people are talking about this blog because it seems that these ring so true for so many people. Fans seems to be white people who agree and identify with these things, but also people of color who attribute these things, maybe critically, to white people.

Here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if you like SWPL or not; it is a very interesting way of analyzing whiteness. I had a class last semester with Lisa Duggan at NYU (Intersections: Race, Gender and Sexuality in U.S. History) where were talked about Brandon Teena (aka Teena Brandon by those who don’t accept his gender self-expression). We had talked about the murders of Brandon, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine, and how sexuality, sex and gender played a role in all this. Professor Duggan asked the class, “Where do you see race here?” Everyone pointed out that one of the people that were killed in the incident was a black man (DeVine) who was visiting the house where Brandon had been living. “Where else?” The class was essentially speechless. We couldn’t find any other instance of race being played out or made an issue or even existing as a mere description of a person. Finally, she explained to us that race was all over, that race was more than “blackness,” but “whiteness” just as much. We had neglected to mark the unmarked, and so whiteness was invisible, normalized to us. Think: you never have to come out as straight, only gay/queer/bi/trans/Other.

Anna Barsan posted Pondersome on this blog about the list made by the Christian Examiners on controversial classes. One that makes the list: “Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism” is Mount Holyoke College’s attempt to analyze race. The class seeks to spark thought on: “What is whiteness?” “How is it related to racism?” “What are the legal frameworks of whiteness?” “How is whiteness enacted in everyday practice?” And how does whiteness impact the “lives of whites and people of color?” This class actually causes huss and fuss, because it’s focusing on this other “side” that usually goes under the radar.

To go back to Stuff White People Like, if the site were Stuff Black People Like there would be a whole different buzz about it.. actually there probably wouldn’t be a buzz, because it’d be seen as separate from the “mainstream” blogosphere (sound like BET?) and definitely not equal, or it would be completely produced by white people as a commodification and appropriation of “blackness,” whatever that means.

——

Now, somebody’s going to get angry about this, but I need to say it. Recently, there has been a whole lot of drama in the blogosphere about Seal Press, women of color bloggers, safety, white Feminism and racism. (Links are at the bottom if you want to know more. It’s really interesting and there are many people blogging about it.) I want to make just one point. A new blogger came out recently and started a site called “Dear White Feminists, Quit Goddamn Fucking Up.” She, herself, is a self-proclaimed white feminist, and as this she had written an open letter to white feminists who are racist. I actually really appreciate the post, and it needed to happen. What I did notice is that I must have been one of the very first people to come across her blog. I believe it was even the first day she put the site up. I commented on it first, thanking her for the letter, but I hesitated in saying what I really wanted to say. Why is it that her blog came up as the top listing under a WordPress search for feminism?  Many people had been blogging about feminism and used feminism in their tags, but also addressed issues of race (among others) and their sites get less hits, or only hits within the same group of bloggers. What I’m trying to point out is that white feminism IS Feminism, and women of color are written out time and again, even if the way that people click on links. Why read a blog about sexism AND racism, when you’re only trying to solve problems for women. Racism is that whole OTHER issue (You know that capital-”O” Othering we always talk about in these circles? Well race is the Other when we’re talking about sex/gender, the “them” to our “us” and instead of of analyzing the intersectionality of it all, we choose and divide them.)

Just the fact that feminism automatically means white feminism, and if feminism is to mention race, it’s suddenly black feminism, or women of color feminism, or third world feminism, meaning it’s a whole new game of feminism that’s not quite Feminism, because it’s outside the scope of mainstream feminism. But this is a problem. Aren’t we capable women (and people)? Can’t we expand naturally our limited ideas? We should never settle for “beyond the scope.” It’s difficult to keep asking for more and more, but it’s difficult to live oppressed too.

So no, it’s not straight up racist to choose one blog that’s at the top of the Google list, but it is important to be conscious of how these systems are not unbiased and do favor those sites that match people’s own internalized, normalized ideas of relevancy and authoritativeness. Whiteness is not clear or transparent. It, too, is based in certain ideologies that exclude and we must analyze how it functions.

Other points of interest, maybe for future posts: democratization (or not) of the internet, digital divide, and internet accessibility.

Links: Dear White Feminists, Angry Black Woman, brownfemipower.com (there’s nothing there) 

My roommate and I had a quick conversation. She asked me how my work was coming along and I explained to her that my priorities are messing me up. Basically, “my school priorities are not my life priorities, and right now I choose life,” said. “I choose life!” she repeated mockingly and melodramatically. Her response, “Well, my life is school for the next week” until graduation, is an example of how race and social responsibility are tied together. As a white upper class woman, she can afford for her priorities and her only focus to be school. On the other hand, as a woman of color and, yes, middle class, I feel the obligation to my community ALWAYS and while I’d love to have the time to only focus on my schoolwork (studying for my Conversations of the West class on the literary and philosophy canon, aka old white men who we still acknowledge for ALL our modern, civilized thoughts and ideologies, neglecting and bad-mouthing any people of color, especially from the “Third World”/”Global South”) and make straight A’s (so hopefully Affirmative Action will consider me with the always equally qualified white student), I can’t. I must also work towards getting my voice out there for my liberation and for those like me, which in this instance is this very blog. I choose to write this post right now, instead of doing my reading assignment, except that later I will have to do that reading assignment. The social responsibility I feel weighs down on me in a way that does not burden her. So racialization becomes quick sand for me and a firm ground for her; the more I want to move, the more difficult it becomes for me to get out alive.