Abagond

A guest post by commenter Mira:

John Christopher Depp II (1963-), or just Johnny Depp, is an American actor and musician, best known for his collaboration with director Tim Burton and for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. On this blog he was voted the third most gorgeous man in the world.

Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, but grew up in Miramar, Florida, near Miami. When he was 15, his parents divorced, and a year later he dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. He played guitar in several bands, but acting became his major occupation after he landed a role in the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984).

Depp said in interviews that he is of Irish, German and Cherokee descent. But it is unclear how much Cherokee blood he actually has: some sources claim he has Cherokee ancestry on both sides of his family (but mostly from his mother’s), while others say it is only assumed. He also seems to have some African ancestry. On the other hand, in terms of both his image and the types of roles he gets he is seen as simply white.

He is known for his portrayals of eccentric characters, such as Edward Scissorhands, Ichabod Crane and Sweeney Todd. He got initial praise for his acting in the early 1990s, and soon established a long association with director Tim Burton. He seemed to enjoy playing dark, offbeat characters, which matched Burton’s style perfectly. But Depp’s true commercial success came in 2003, when he starred in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”, as the now-iconic Captain Jack Sparrow.

The success of “The Pirates of the Caribbean” series made Depp one of the most popular actors in the world. He appeared on several most attractive men lists: he was People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” in 2009, and he was also on many most popular actors lists in the early 2000s. On the other hand, he was still praised for his acting: he won several major awards and was nominated for three Oscars.

Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis

He was married once, to makeup artist Lori Anne Allison, and engaged four times, to  Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey, Winona Ryder and Kate Moss. But the love of his life is French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, whom he met while filming “The Ninth Gate” (1999). They have two children, Lily-Rose, born in 1999, and Jack John, born in 2002.

He says Vanessa and their children made him a better man:

I pretty much fell in love with Vanessa the moment I set eyes on her. As a person, I was pretty much a lost cause at that time in my life. She turned all that around for me with her incredible tenderness and understanding.

Anything I’ve done up till 27 May, 1999 was kind of an illusion, existing without living. My daughter, the birth of my daughter, gave me life.

When he is not filming he lives in France with Vanessa and their children.

See also:

• The ten most gorgeous men in the world
• Alice in Wonderland (2010) – he played the Mad Hatter
• Creoles – some say he is part Creole
  

Remarks:

I love this song, but then I am a sucker for horns. Dick Dale recorded it in 1962 but it is now probably best known in America as the song that opens Quentin Tarantino’s film “Pulp Fiction” (1994). But even in 1962 Dick Dale was covering a yet older Lebanese song that his uncle played, which in turn came from a Greek song of 1927!  You can hear the song still in Greece, the Middle East and at Jewish weddings. There are even Ladino (Jewish Spanish) lyrics for it. The Beach Boys did a lame version of it.

See also:

• The original Greek song
• Dick Dale performing it in 1963
• As sang by Connie Francis in 1965 – American
• As sang by Glykeria, a Greek singer from the 1980s
• Giota Nega – another Greek version

The following is based mainly on William Cane’s “Write Like the Masters” (2009) and R. Andrew Wilson, PhD’s “Write Like Hemingway” (2009):

Ernest Hemingway took the newspaper prose style he learned at the Kansas City Star and turned it into high art. He wrote some of the best American novels of the 1900s and yet did it with a writing style built on short, simple words and short, simple sentences. He is why books from the 1800s seem overwritten.

On Hemingway’s first day at the Star the editor gave him the “Star Copy Style”: 110 commandments of writing. It starts out like this:

Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.

Here is Rule #21:

Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.

He took the commandment thing seriously.

Later as a young writer in Paris, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound taught him what they knew as poets about rhythm,  about less is more, about making words count and making them stronger. His prose rose above the everyday.

Here are some of the rules that Hemingway seems to follow in his writing:

1. The point of writing is to be clear and easy to understand, not to show people how much education you have.
2. Prefer short, everyday words. Faulkner said you did not need a dictionary to read Hemingway – as if it was a bad thing!
3. Prefer strong nouns and verbs, avoid adjectives and adverbs. “Is” does  not count as a strong verb.
4. Prefer short, simple sentences of the subject-verb-object kind. Short means ten words or less. Use long sentences to speed up the action, show flowing movement or to give a short sentence that follows a stronger effect.
5. Avoid commas and more advanced punctuation. It is a sign your sentences are becoming too long and twisted.
6. Use “and” to make your sentences simpler: not “When it rained, he went inside,” but just: “It rained and he went inside.”
7. Stick to the facts. Keep your opinions to yourself.
8. Prefer dialogue, avoid long descriptions. A few well-chosen facts are enough for a description – your readers will fill in the rest:
9. Iceberg Theory: just like 91% of an iceberg is underwater, the art of writing is knowing what your readers will fill in.
10. Know your subject inside out: Hemingway not only went to see bull fights but he read all he could about them too.
11. Write what you know but less than you know. Readers can tell when you are saying less than you know and that makes your writing seem deeper and ring truer.
12. Read, read, read: half of writing is reading other authors. Hemingway read Sherwood Anderson, Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and others. Oh, and Faulkner too.

Hemingway got up every morning at seven and wrote till noon. He produced about 400 to 500 words a day, but he spent three-fourths of his time strengthening sentences and cutting, cutting, cutting. Sometimes he cut as much as two-thirds of his words – but what remained was a jewel.

See also:

• Stephen King: On Becoming a Good Writer
• How to write like Orwell
• How to write like the Reader’s Digest
• prose:
  • American academic prose
  • American magazine writing
  • classic prose style
• style guide: rules for writing
  • My rules for writing
• Other Hemingway stuff:
  • Reading A Moveable Feast
  • Hemingway: A Farewell To Arms

A guest post by commenter Natasha:

Takeshi Kaneshiro (1973-), also known as Jin Cheng Wu and Gum Sing Mo, is a Taiwanese actor, singer, and model.

He was born in Taipei, Taiwan, the last of three sons of a businessman of mixed Japanese and Taiwanese descent and a homemaker of Taiwanese descent. His surname means “Gold City” in both Chinese and Japanese.

Growing up in Taipei, he attended Gaoxong Preparatory School, where he was teased for his multicultural heritage. He transferred to the Taipei American School, during which he began doing television commercials.

At 15 he was recruited as a pop singer and eventually landed a contract with EMI Music Group. In 1992 he left school and came out with his first album, “Heartbreaking Night”, sung in Mandarin Chinese. He writes many of his own songs.

Singing led to acting: he has appeared in over 40 films. In the West he is best known for starring in “House of the Flying Daggers” (2004), an action-romance that grossed $92 million worldwide.

In 2010 he won a Green Planet Film Award for Best International Actor of the Decade (Asia).

Would he ever come to Hollywood? He says:

… if the story’s good or the character’s interesting enough to make you want to collaborate on it, then I think I would take the opportunity. But I don’t think Asian people get very good roles in Hollywood. I’m not really aiming at moving into that area.

He is also a model and spokesperson. Early on he modelled for Prada, soon after  becoming a spokesmodel for Sony Ericsson, Hyundai, Toyota, and Mitsubishi.  He is the official spokesmodel of the Cap com video game Onimusha: Warlords. A character in the game is based on him: Samanosuke Akechi.

He was the face of Armani Underwear in the fall/winter 2008 and spring/summer 2010 campaigns, joining the likes of soccer players David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo.  He is the first Asian model to appear in an Armani campaign. Giorgio Armani said his inborn attractiveness and his charm, both on screen and off, made him the perfect choice for the campaign.

Armani is not the only one to praise his striking good looks. Time magazine hailed him the Asian film industry’s Johnny Depp – a remarkably handsome, quirky and versatile actor capable of capturing the hearts of audiences no matter his role.

At 5 foot 11 (1.79 m) with deep-set, dark brown eyes, thick, dark hair and finely chiseled bone structure, he is undeniably very attractive. On this blog he was voted the second most gorgeous East Asian man in the world.

Despite all his accolades, Kaneshiro is modest and stays out of the spotlight when not working.

He is a homebody who enjoys reading about philosophy and Buddhism. He is fluent in Mandarin, Japanese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and English.

He says work keeps him too busy for dating, but he will be upfront with a woman if he is interested in her.

He currently lives in Japan.

See also:

• The ten most gorgeous East Asian men in the world

The oldest piece of my own writing on this blog is from a letter I wrote my sister where I talk about Elaine Pagels’s “The Gnostic Gospels”. Here I rewrite it to see how much my writing has changed (maybe I should do this once a year):

Then: Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels

Now:

I am reading “The Gnostic Gospels” by Elaine Pagels, a professor at Princeton. We think there are only four gospels – but that is because once the Church got the backing of the Empire in the late 300s, it burned the other gospels, the ones it did not approve of, like those of the Gnostics. As it turns out, it did not burn them all: some were hidden in a jar in a cave in Egypt. There they sat for 1600 years until they were discovered in 1945.

The Gnostic gospels have a much different view of Christianity:

• God is male and female.
• God is in each person.
• In the Garden of Eden the snake was telling the truth while “God” was not God at all but some lesser being lying about being God.
• Life is not a battle against sin but against the lies of this world.
• Jesus did not rise from the dead.
• Jesus favoured Mary Magdalene over Peter.

It was more like Buddhism than what we are used to. In fact, it was in the time of Jesus that regular trade with India was opening up.

The Church won not because it had the Truth but because its beliefs led to martyrdom and a chain of command (popes, bishops, priest) that kept it from being destroyed by hundreds of years of persecution and heresy.

The Gnostics had none of that: their Jesus did not suffer on the cross – in fact he laughed! – so they had no martyrs. Each believer discovers the Truth inside himself and so to be saved there is no need for priests or bishops – which left the Gnostics without strong leadership or a single set of clear teachings to keep them together.

In the 100s the Church and the Gnostics had about the same number of followers. But  the Church, being better led and more fanatical, got the upper hand and by the 300s was able to wipe out the remaining Gnostics and burn their gospels.

So there has been a sort of Darwinian natural selection of religious truth. In the end the only Christianity that could make it through the first 400 years was one that believed:

1. Jesus was human and suffered on the cross – thus martyrs.
2. Jesus rose physically from the dead – thus a church of middlemen (priests) offering the the Body and Blood of Christ as the only way to heaven.
3. There is only one true God – thus only one true Church.

Get rid of any one of these beliefs and the Church would have fallen apart or would have been wiped out – just like the Gnostics.

See also:

• Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Gospels – the original post
• Gnosticism
• Nag Hammadi Library – the books in that jar
  

Will Demps (1979- ), “Pretty Will”, is an American football player and model. He played defence for the Baltimore Ravens (2002-2005), New York Giants (2006) and Houston Texans (2007-2008). Before that he played for San Diego State. He is the older brother of Marcus Demps of the Detroit Lions.  He was LeToya Luckett’s love interest in her music video “Torn” (2006).

He is Blasian: his father is black, his mother, Korean. An air force brat, he lived on Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, California as a boy and during high school near Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles.

Growing up many people did not know what to make of him since he was part black and part Korean. He worked that to his advantage to make himself stand out.

As a boy he followed the San Francisco 49ers. He was a fan of Ronnie Lott.

After high school and again after university no one picked him to play for their football team despite his talent. But he did not let that stop him: he went to San Diego State and got on the team anyway. Likewise after San Diego he was later able to join the Ravens.

He was one of San Diego State’s best players: he made the All-Mountain West Conference first-team twice. Once when San Diego played against Wyoming he intercepted the ball and ran 73 yards to score a touchdown.

Actress Tichina Arnold, one of his fans, knows him. She says he is very down-to-earth. He certainly presents himself as a humble, Christian man who trusts in God – not just when times are uncertain, as they often have been, but even when success brought its own challenges.

Will Demps and LeToya Luckett

When he was a football player making over $2 million a year women threw themselves at him:

I’ve had my share of fun with these types. I’ve flown beautiful women with agendas to big games . . . I’ve wined and dined them at the fanciest restaurants knowing I could’ve shared my bed with three at a time. They hang in packs like vultures . . . posed with breasts spilling out of their shirts . . . In the end, I know these women can never fulfill a need beyond my libido.

He called them Breezies: they are so fine even the wind around them stops. But they are all utter gold-diggers, none of them wife material. They are hoping to have a baby by him so they can receive fat child support payments for years to come. In his early days he went for them but later he avoided them:

In my heart, I know God wants better for me. After years in the league, I realized that my behavior and mind-set were just as flawed as the groupies’ I encountered. In our search for happiness and security, we wound up playing each other.

He is still looking for Mrs Will Demps:

Every woman that you meet, treat her like a queen because she might just turn out to be your wife.

Will Demps as a little boy

See also:

• Essence: Eye Candy of the Week: Will Demps
• The ten most gorgeous men in the world – #5
• The ten most gorgeous East Asian men in the world – #4
• Black men, Asian women
  

The main points to keep in mind when apologizing while white for an act of racism:

1. If you say “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” it counts as an apology no matter what follows. So “I’m sorry, but…” and “I’m sorry if…” are perfectly fine apologies.
2. Apologize for offending the other person, but blame him for being offended: he misunderstood you, he is “oversensitive”, etc.
3. Racism is about what you intend inside your head, not about what you do to others.
4. Black people cannot read your mind, so they have no way of knowing what you intended. That means that unless you openly admit to racism they will have no idea whether you are racist!
5. Never admit that you did anything racist! Say it was just a big misunderstanding or some kind of mistake. Or any excuse you can think of in three seconds. That way:
   • You will still seem like a good person!
   • You will not have to change.

Our case study: Rupert Murdoch. He rarely apologizes in public but after tens of thousands of emails and a week of street protests against that chimp cartoon that appeared in the New York Post, he apologized at last on February 24th 2009. Here it is in full with the key words highlighted:

As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me.

Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.

Over the past couple of days, I have spoken to a number of people and I now better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused. At the same time, I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you – without a doubt – that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation. It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.

In a true apology you man up and take the full blame, even if it is not completely your fault. You say you are sorry and mean it and then take steps to make it right somehow.

Murdoch starts out well – he mans up in the first paragraph – but by the third he shifts the blame onto blacks. He does not admit to racism – that was in the imaginations of black people, due to their “sensitivities” apparently. Nor does he promise any serious actions to make it right, like firing the cartoonist or the managing editor or hiring black editors. So the only thing this has in common with an apology is the word “apologize”. It is an apology in appearance only.

See also:

• stuff white people do: offer white apologetics (instead of just apologizing) – guest post by Willow
• What Tami Said: When white allies fail – Part One – has a bit on apologizing
• The chimp cartoon
• The tone argument
• white women’s tears
• Are most white people benevolently clueless?

The following is based mainly on an essay by Paul Graham, a hacker who can write:

Here are the seven levels at which you can disagree with an argument, listed here from worst to best:

Level 0: Name-calling

Call the author of the argument names:

u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!

You can dress it up:

The author is a self-important dilettante.

But even if true it proves nothing about whether the argument is true or false.

Level 1: Ad hominem

Question the author’s motive, character, authority, education, etc.

For example, if a senator argues for a pay raise you might say:

Of course he would say that. He’s a senator.

But that fails to point out what is wrong with the senator’s argument. Arguments stand or fall on their own merits, not on who makes them.

That applies even to arguments made by authorities and experts. Good ideas often come from outsiders. If the argument is wrong there will be a mistake in it somewhere – no matter who made it.

Level 2: The tone argument

Make it not about what the author said but how he said it: too angry, too arrogant, etc. Again, this does not point out why the argument is wrong. Even an arrogantly stated argument can be right.

Level 3: Contradiction

State the opposing case but without any facts to back it up. Sometimes this will be enough, but in most cases it is not that simple.

Level 4: Counterargument

State the opposing case but this time back it up with facts and reasons. This can work, but because it does not tear apart the author’s argument directly it often winds up being aimed at something slightly different and becomes, in effect, a straw man argument. This leads to people talking past each other.

Level 5: Refutation

Quote part of the author’s argument and say why it is wrong. The trouble here is it might be something the main argument does not depend on. A fact might be wrong, for example, but it might make little difference to the main argument. It is like shooting someone in the arm instead of the heart.

Level 6: Refuting the Central Point

Directly quote something the main argument stands or falls on and show why it is wrong. Go after the facts and reasons that the main argument depends on.

Arguably there is another level, level 2.5: derailment.

What all this means:

• When reading throw out lower level disagreements: name-calling, ad hominems and tone (and derailment too). They prove absolutely nothing. For the higher level arguments ask yourself if they destroy the main argument or any of the facts and reasons it depends on.
• When writing you shoot to kill: go straight to level 6 – the rest is so much ankle-biting.

Note that good writers and speakers can sound right just by the force of their words, especially if you trust them and they speak with passion. You get carried away by their rhetoric. But in the end all that matters is the truth and that depends on facts and reasons, nothing else.

See also:

• Paul Graham: How to Disagree
• How to argue like a white racist
  • The tone argument
  • Derailing for Dummies
• rhetoric
• ad copy
• classic prose style

Remarks:

I do not care much for her other songs but this one I can play over and over again. Much better here than how she sings it in concert, though no doubt her fans would disagree. In 1991 this song went to #27 on the American rock charts, #51 in Britain.

Lyrics:

Excuse me but can I be you for a while
My dog won’t bite if you sit real still
I got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yellin’ at me again
Yeah I can hear that
Been saved again by the garbage truck
I got something to say you know
But nothing comes
Yes I know what you think of me
You never shut-up
Yeah I can hear that

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it’s been here
Silent All These Years

So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts
Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon
How’s that thought for you
My scream got lost in a paper cup
You think there’s a heaven
Where some screams have gone
I got 25 bucks and a cracker
Do you think it’s enough
To get us there

Cause what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it’s been here
Silent All These…

Years go by
Will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by
If I’m stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds
Raining in head
Years go by
Will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we’re too easy Easy Easy

Well I love the way we communicate
Your eyes focus on my funny lip shape
Let’s hear what you think of me now
But baby don’t look up
The sky is falling
Your mother shows up in a nasty dress
It’s your turn now to stand where I stand
Everybody lookin’ at you here
Take hold of my hand
Yeah I can hear them

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
I hear my voice
I hear my voice

And it’s been here
Silent All These Years
I’ve been here
Silent All These Years

The tone argument is where you object to someone else’s argument based on its tone: it is too angry, too hateful, not calm enough, not nice enough, etc. It is a logical fallacy because none of those things has anything to do with whether the truth was spoken. It is used to derail and silence.

The privileged use it against the marginalized. This post looks at one case of that: white racists in America using it against blacks when talking about racism.

Examples:

• “I am offended.”
• “We would listen to you if you said it more nicely.”
• “You are so full of hate.”
• Blacks are angry, uppity, whining, etc.

Some things to keep in mind if they use it on you:

The whites who use it have no interest whatsoever in what you have to say – no matter what your tone. The tone thing is just to shut you up and dismiss you as an unreasonable person. What you said made them feel uncomfortable and tone is an excuse not to deal with it seriously.

No matter how nicely and calmly and reasonably you make your points some will still say you are whining or angry or full of hate. In their heads whites are so wonderful that to say anything bad about them can only come from hatred – no matter how many facts back you up. So a bad tone can get read into your words whether it is there or not.

If it were as simple as having the right tone then racism would have died out ages ago.

So screw tone. No reasonable person is going to fault you for being angry about racism. Those who do, those who expect you to be not only sweet and calm but to value their feelings over your own are closed-minded jerks. You might want to give them a piece of your mind, but do not fool yourself into thinking you can reason with them: they have already placed themselves beyond reason.

I used to think that whites were brainwashed and just did not know any better. They certainly act as if they are clueless innocents, most of them. But the tone argument shows that many are not.

When a clueless innocent hurts you and you tell him, he wants to know what went wrong so he can stop it and make it right. He apologizes and means it. Because he never meant to hurt you in the first place.

But a person who uses the tone argument does the opposite: he refuses to face up to the wrong he has done or do anything about it, much less apologize. Instead he turns it on you, making it not about what you said but how you said it.

Those are the actions of someone who knows he did wrong – or does not care whether he did wrong – and refuses to do anything about it. Those are the actions of a cold-hearted bastard, not a clueless innocent.

See also:

• How to argue like a white racist
  • Derailing for Dummies
  • The feelings of white people
    • white women’s tears
• Are most white people benevolently clueless?
• How to talk to white people

Uncle Jack the Good Darky (1927) is a statue of an old, bent over black man by American sculptor Hans Schuler. The words under the statue said:

Erected by the city of Natchitoches in grateful recognition of the arduous and faithful services of the good darkies of Louisiana.

It was the brainchild of Jackson L. “Uncle Jack” Bryan, cotton grower and banker. Time magazine said he:

had been lulled to sleep in his babyhood by Negro spirituals, and had played with little slave boys on his father’s old plantation, so he recently felt the urge to do something big for the Negro.

Meanwhile the only hospital in town would not admit Negroes, not even the spiritual-singing kind.

The New York Times:

Many white people in the parish have been nursed or served by the old-time “uncles” and “aunties,” and a warm regard remains on each side.

The  Natchitoches Rotary Club said the statue:

express[es] the general Southern sentiment toward the faithful old slaves who took care of their masters’ wives and children and homes while the masters were away fighting to hold them in slavery.

National Geographic had several pictures of it and said:

A visit to Natchitoches was not complete without a visit to the statue.

One black man, P. Colfax Rameau of Birmingham, said:

Do not think it will be an insult to the modern, Christian negro. He will only say deep in his heart, “I wish there were more white men in the South of the cloth of the Honorable J. L. Bryan, and mob violence would soon be history for unborn white and black boys and girls to read.”

But not all blacks remember it quite that way. Pearl Payne, who was nine when the statue went up, remembered that blacks:

didn’t appreciate it. They took it for nothing good. There was controversy. It had a negative effect on our people.

Ed Ward, a black businessman who grew up in Natchitoches in the 1950s, said:

I recall ire and dismay in the black community. It brought forth negative feelings because it promoted a subservient and menial view of the race.

Ebony magazine called it “a symbol of degradation” and wanted it torn down.

Apparently the Klan did not like it either: the statue was twice covered in white paint and once had a cross burning.

In 1968 the mayor received a bomb threat. So in the dead of night he sent city workers to tear it down. Bryan’s daughter, Joy Bryan Ducournau, got wind of it and ran out to stop them, throwing a fit. They moved the statue, all six tons of it, to the airport to store it.

Ducournau reportedly received many requests for it, one even from the Smithsonian Institution. In the end she gave it to the Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge, where it stands to this day greeting visitors.

In 1974 they covered over the words about darkies to say only this:

Donated to the Rural Life Museum by Mrs. Jo Bryan Ducournau.

See also:

• darkies
• Ota Benga
• drapetomania
• golliwog
• Tuskegee Experiment

The following only covers black women in America. It is mainly based on “Hair Story” (2001) by Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps:

In the 1920s there was a debate among blacks whether women should straighten their hair. Marcus Garvey, for example, was against it. But straight hair won in the end, so much so that most who were parents in the 1960s had known little else. Even men straightened their hair. It was upon this stage that the Afro burst forth.

The Afro, puffed out nappy hair, comes not from West Africa, where most blacks in America are from, but from South Africa. There it was called the Bush. In the late 1950s it arrived in Greenwich Village, a bohemian part of New York. Nina Simone was one of the first to wear it.

It first appeared in mainstream American culture in 1960 when Miriam Makeba wore one in the pages of Look magazine and again two years later when Cicely Tyson appeared on television with one. Some blacks told Tyson she was making black women look bad.

Later, by about 1966, leaders of the Black Power movement started appearing on the news. They wore Afros. Wearing an Afro now had a meaning: it showed support for Black Power, it showed you were proud to be black – not Negro or coloured, but black. Black was not a bad imitation of white, black was great and good all on its own – the whole “Black is beautiful” thing.

It caught on among university students, both male and female. Their parents did not think it was so beautiful. They had grown up on straightened hair, so to many of them it looked ugly and terrible. And some, of course, did not approve of Black Power.

Whites at first were unsettled by it: not just because of the Black Power thing but also because of its black pride message, which many whites read as, “I’m black, deal with it.”  That was new: whites were used to blacks trying to be like them.

The Afro still had a meaning possibly as late as 1969, but by then it was all over: that was when the Jackson 5 started wearing it. When an act that safe and mainstream wears it you know it has sunk from political statement to fashion statement.

By 1971 it seemed like everyone was wearing it – at least if you go by the old “Soul Train” videos on YouTube. What that meant:

• The Afro had become mere fashion – and fashions never last. By 1977 the Afro was clearly on its way out.
• The only way to set yourself apart was to have a bigger Afro.
• Even blacks with “good hair” were wearing Afros.

The last two could only be achieved through chemicals – so not only had the Afro lost its political message but for many it was no longer even natural!

Afros ruled during this period, but many still straightened their hair. Cornrows also made a comeback.

See also:

• black women’s hair: a brief history: 1400-1900
• black women’s hair: a brief history: 1900-1965
• “Black is Beautiful”
• good hair

Asian double eyelid surgery (1896), also called Asian blepharoplasty, eyelid surgery or just “the surgery”, adds a fold or crease to the upper eyelid. Most whites and blacks are born with this fold but only about half of East Asians are. By adding the fold it makes the eyes look bigger, rounder and more like the eyes of a white person.

It started in Japan in 1896, hit Korea in the 1950s and is now common in China too. You can also get it done in America.

It is one of the most common kinds of plastic surgery among East Asian and Asian American women. Most actresses and singers in East Asia have it done. Even Jackie Chan had it done:

Here is a before and after picture of Ayumi Hamasaki, one of the best-selling singers in Japan:

Both Chan and Hamasaki look whiter though they are still unmistakably East Asian. Notice that Hamasaki has made herself look whiter in other ways too.

There are different ways to do the surgery, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The most common is the incision method: the doctor makes a cut in the eyelid, removes some of the skin, fat and muscle and then sews it back together with very fine threads to create the fold. It takes about a half hour for each eye. Four or five days later he takes out the threads. Your eyelids look terrible at first but in a few weeks they have mostly recovered.

In South Korea it costs about $1200; in America it is more like $3000.

You can also do it yourself with tape or glue. They sell kits for that. But the effect does not last.

Just like with other sorts of plastic surgery, women do it to make themselves better looking.

But “better looking” according to who? Is it a case of internalized racism, of hating how your own race looks and trying look more like whites?

Large eyes as a sign of female beauty is hardly a Western or white thing. It might even be a human universal. In any case, the surgery is way more common in East Asia – not in America where white ideas of beauty and internalized racism are way stronger.

On the other hand, the spread of eyelid surgery seems to go hand in hand with Westernization. East Asians, after all, are subjected to white ideas of beauty through the world fashion industry – which is based in Europe and therefore pushes a white beauty. And in fact East Asian ideas of female beauty do seem to have been noticeably whitened.

But then why is it less common among Asian Americans? Probably for the same reason why blacks at mixed-race high schools are more opposed to “acting white” than they are at black high schools: because the presence of whites makes internalized racism seem like more of a serious threat.

Thanks to commenter leigh204 for her help with this post.

See also:

• internalized racism
• acting white
• ganguro
• Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white?

I write about racism in America because it affects my life and the lives of those I care about. Because it has shaped how I experience and see the world and myself, so by understanding racism I understand myself and the world better. It has little to do with trying to make whites look bad or making some kind of appeal to them.

My mother brought me up to be colour-blind. She meant well but she was a kumbayah anti-racist. That sent me into a strange land without a map. And so I have had to learn the hard way what was on that map, piece by piece.

Some say, “You see racism in everything. You see what you expect.” Wrong: I was so unprepared I have been surprised over and over again at how deeply white racism ran.

At first I was surprised when they called me names. Then I was surprised at how different the black and white parts of New York were. Then I was surprised at the police, who were not merely bad but evil to the bone. Then I went across the country and was surprised at how the Sioux Indians were even worse off, at how they had many of the very same issues as blacks – even though they lived hundreds of miles away and came from a completely different history.

And on and on.

Then I started this blog and I was surprised yet again. Not that whites are racist – I already knew that – but how deep and twisted their racism ran. It was not merely a matter of them not knowing any better, of living in nice, lily-white suburbs and believing everything they saw on television. No, it was way worse than that – even among Otherwise Intelligent White People. And so I was surprised yet again.

Dr Beverly Tatum says there is a five-stage cycle to growing up black in America:

1. pre-encounter – you know you are black (by age five) but it is no big deal.
2. encounter - you experience racism in an unmistakable way, repeatedly.
3. immersion/emersion – you learn everything you can about being black because it helps you to understand your experience.
4. internalization - what you learned becomes part of your identity, who you are, which helps to undo the internalized racism you have unknowingly learned. You become less angry, more hopeful.
5. internalization-commitment – now you can move beyond race.

Most blacks reach the last stage at about age 25 to 30 and then go back to the first stage to go round again at a higher level of understanding.

So for me New York provided the first encounter stage, this blog (and some other events in my life) the second. In the earlier posts on this blog you can see me still in my second pre-encounter stage, in utter innocence of what was about to hit.

So now I am in the immersion stage for the second time in my life and consumed once again with the subject.

See also:

• growing up black
• Race in New York
• What this blog has taught me about white people
• colour-blind child rearing

Douala, Cameroon

The following is a guest post by commenter Femi:

First of all don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not bashing anybody who is genuinely interested in Africa’s past and present. Just a daily dose of realism.

Africa is huge and diverse. The reality is that there are politically and culturally distinct countries. Looking only at West and Central African countries, already between African French and English speakers I could always vibe subtle tensions. The rather disciplined and perhaps more repressive approach of Anglophones sometimes stands in contrast to the more laissez-faire but confrontational mentality of Francophones. The difference is quite perceptible in certain details, not to mention all the differences within one region across different tribes.

The sad truth is that a lot of people from the self-declared “African diaspora” don’t even bother reading contemporary African media but instead limit themselves to literary romanticism, over-idolised stories about a battered continent and second-hand information from their local media – if any is available at all. On the other hand, when some people do read contemporary articles from born-and-bred African journalists, they are either shocked or immediately come up with a “white-led” conspiracy theory of shills who are sent out to discredit their homeland.

Africa as a whole continent has been belittled and exoticised by the West and North for centuries. It won’t do anybody a favour, least of all to Africans themselves, trying to neutralise the white half-truths and lies by black half-truths from the West.

Unfortunately there is also a bit of hypocrisy sometimes from some of the alleged “brothers and sisters” outside of Africa. I’ve been talking to a lot of people of colour about Africa. There were always three or more of the following points I could see or they would state themselves.

• They wouldn’t eat many of the traditional dishes.
• They make fun of the music and the accents when you turn your back, though they pretend to like it in front of you.
• They make fun of certain behaviours that seem odd to them.
• They wouldn’t make any effort to communicate with locals who don’t speak English, let alone learn a tribal language.
• They would frown upon some of the local traditions and possibly even get upset.
• They think Africans make unnatural efforts to be “smart asses”.
• They would go mental in dealing with the patchy infrastructure where electricity and communication outages are potentially a daily annoyance.
• They would get bored over the conversations after a while. Politics is a common topic. There aren’t many discussions about “white people this, black people that”, only when there are riots with black youths involved somewhere in the West. Or when Obama was elected president.
• They cringe over the thought of ever living in Africa. “Visiting is all right but staying – hell no!”

Experiencing the previous points first-hand will make the majority of Western born and raised people of colour lose at least some of the romanticism and eventually choose to be very, errm, Western.

See also:

• Examples of African English-language news online:
  • http://cameroonnews.com/
  • http://www.abujainquireronline.com/
• stereotypes about Africa
• Black Brazil in the black gringo gaze