All posts by Harry Underwood

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About Harry Underwood

Website designer, blogger. Columbus, GA. #LGBT #p2 #wordpress

Alabama and Political Apartheid

Politics, To Export, , , , , , ,

Another thing about Alabama: they suffer from a slightly-worse case of Southern Political Apartheid than Georgia does. Alabama, like the rest of the South (save, maybe, for Florida) has one of the most racially-stratified political systems in the country. When the Dems had ran the South like Alabama during Jim Crow, they built the South to become a one-party state. When the pro-apartheid base was lost, the GOP claimed that base with a vengeance.

The goal in the South is to take everything. Electorally, we’re a very greedy, jealous, spiteful region.

America’s Constitutional Cowardice

Rants, To Export, , , , , ,

“Don’t glorify him” “Don’t show his face” “Don’t say his name”

One of the most freaking-cowardly reactions to a mass-casualty event I’ve ever seen, and us Americans are usually cowards when it comes to our slave-owning zombie overlords, the Founding Fathers(TM).

How about own the fact that he is a product of our zeitgeist? How about taking some responsibility for the mess we’ve allowed? How about recognizing that school shootings have been taking place since the early 1800s, and we refuse to change because we love our “Founding [Slave-owning] Fathers”?

“America, America, This is YOU.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_…

‪#‎Repeal2A‬ #UCCShooting #gunsense #MoveToAmend

Religious Diversity and the Commons

Politics, Uncategorized,

Just thought about this. Here in the United States, we don’t have a shared sense of the government-sponsored commons as is understood in countries where the majority of a population belong to a shared religious sect (i.e., a Catholic country). I think a few economists have tied this to why so many of us have an allergic reaction to government-promoted commons such as the Affordable Care Act.

“Not only are such commons being used by people who don’t look like us, but they are being used by people who don’t share the same ethical or religious cosmology as us.”

Religion plays a large socio-economic role in the lives of so many Americans because the government, by being nonsectarian and agnostic in a country populated by a multitude of religious allegiances, does not speak entirely in the language which so many of us are taught by our intimate such-and-such religion.

But what’s so undermining about our approach to religious diversity and its impact on the separation of religion and state is that our sense of religious diversity inherits the exclusivity of Abrahamic religions from the Middle East and Europe. “You can only be one sect of Christianity/Islam/Judaism”, according to their gatekeepers. “Nevermind those sinners in Latin America who practice Yoruba/Ife traditions and venerate the orisha while also venerating Catholic saints. They’re going to Hell for not following the exclusivity clause.”

Meanwhile, in East Asia, Buddhists can also practice folk religion, Confucianism, Daoism, all at the same time, in the same lifetime, and not think of them as contradictory but as complimentary. They have no problem with practicing more than one religion, and are still supportive of government-promoted commons.

So why do Americans have a problem with practicing more than one religion? And if we were more acknowledging of multi-religious practice, could that allow us to better support secular, government-sponsored common resources?

The Forward March of Black TV

Uncategorized, ,

Reading this history of African-Americans in television by the late J. Fred MacDonald, I think his history only goes up to around 2000. It literally ends during the latter day of dominance by cable/satellite/PPV. I would say that his fourth era of African-American television, marked by narrowcasting, niche channels, competing providers stacking channels upon channels, would be better timed as lasting from 1983 to 2007.

There’s this yawning chasm which occurs over the decades as the AfAm-featuring content on terrestrial broadcasting remains woefully static and focused on family comedies and police procedurals while subscription channels like HBO and Showtime push furthest for African-American leading casts and characters. I recall “Soul Food”, “The Wire”, “Oz” leading the way, while “Everybody Hates Chris”.

This period ends c. 2007 with the rise of social media, Internet-based video-on-demand, mobile devices, binge watching, digital subchannels, web series and Shonda Rhimes. It is also accompanied by a slow progression of terrestrial television networks toward more diverse casts, crew and target markets in more genres, as previously pushed by subscription-driven networks.

The Chicago Defender just asked if, thanks to the works of Rhimes and the series “Empire” as well as the Emmy noms for Henson, Davis, Aduba and Washington, we are in the “Golden Age” of Black TV. If anything, we are in the 5th age of Black TV representation (and of TV in general).

We are no longer satisfied by the steady diet of/participation in music, comedies, and police procedurals. We are no longer satisfied by tokens. We are no longer satisfied by reality shows, even though they glut much of the schedule among the dilapidated cable schedule.

A Racial “Crystal Gems test”

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I was reading locuas642′s Crystal Gems omnibus test for representation of women, and thought back to proposals for Racial Bechdel(-Wallace) tests.

Deggans’ rule recommends the following:

  1. At least two non-white human characters in the main cast…
  2. …in a show that’s not about race.

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s test goes like this:

  1. It has to have two POC in it,
  2. Who talk to each other,
  3. About something other than a white person.

Ars Marginal posted the following test:

  1. At least one named character of color,
  2. Whose primary trait is not their race,
  3. Who does something important besides help a White person.

I also have an interest in whether such a character has a narrative arc of their own, as well as pushing the discussion beyond just 1 or two POC characters in a cast. Some who have discussed the Mako Mori test have criticized how the test is not usually utilized in relation to Mako Mori being a POC character as well as a woman. Basically, I would like to see the conversation about POC in fiction be elevated beyond mere quantity of representation to include the quality of representation.

So here’s my draft of a Racial Crystal Gems test:

  1. A work must have at least four POC characters.
  2. It must pass Deggans’ Rule;
  3. It must pass Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Racial Bechdel-Wallace test;
  4. It must pass the Ars Marginal test;
  5. At least one POC must have a narrative arc of their own, which is not about supporting a white person (literally the racial Mako Mori test);
  6. At least one POC must be meaningful enough to the plot that removing the character would have a significant effect.
  7. Each [major POC] character must pass at least one of these tests, and each test must be passed by at least one [major POC] character; the more times you can repeat the previous step, the better.