Not gonna apologize for watching The Bachelorette.

Kasey and Eric visited!  And you know that they are good friends because we were able to be very real with one another about wanting to make dinner at home and watch the whole season of The Bachelorette.

That's true love. ( I mean, between me and them, not between them.  They wouldn't even let me throw them a surprise wedding.)

Mostly we just laughed so much because of things like the guy saying, "I see the world through the eyes of a child.  I have the heart of the warrior... And a gypsy's soul."  And talked about how much they say "connection."  And giggled about how we could replace connection with erection: Always with the, "My connection with Kaitlyn is so strong right now."

Okay, but.

So at the end of the third episode, which is really the second week they've been there, they're all at the pre-rose-ceremony cocktail party.  (Don't I feel ridiculous for that pre-rose-ceremony thing.  Whatever.  I'll watch shitty + patriarchal and racist TV.  I'm of this world, you know.)

Kupah, one of the three Black guys left after the first week, says to one of the other Black guys left that he hasn't really had any conversations with Kaitlyn, while it seems like other guys have had multiple.   He says, "I don't know what she sees in me," while he makes his eyes big like, "You know what I mean?" and gestures to his face.  It's like, "Checking in, is she into you?  Maybe she's not into Black guys..."

It cuts right to an interview with him where he says, "I don't want to be here any longer than I have to be if, IF, if I'm the minority guy that fills the quota."  He says he want to know if there's a "connection," soon, and if not, he needs to go home.

Makes sense to me.  Except the part about wanting to be there to participate in this horrible, bizarre process.

So when he gets a chance, he straight up asks her.  "Do we have a connection[/erection]?" As soon as he says it, her eyes widen, then narrow, and her mouth gets small.  "Do you think you've even put yourself out there?" Rhetorical question.  She's pissed.  She complains that she felt like he didn't even notice her on their group date that day.

Um, it's a fucking group date.  You're the only woman, and you're with a group of ostensibly straight dudes.  And you're on The Bachelorette.  And you're thinking that it's possible for any of them not to have noticed you?  Dumdum.

She's like, "You were so into boxing" (which is the date she took them on).  He's like, not really, but we were being trained by Leila Ali.  I mean, that's kinda cool.  The Leila Ali thing seemed lost on Kaitlyn.

She says she didn't know that he wasn't into boxing, and she swears that she would have never made him do that if she thought it would make him uncomfortable.

I call bullshit on that since all of the dates involve the guys making idiots of themselves, mostly by reappropriating various cultural practices from People of Color (e.g. a rap battle, Mariachi singing, sumo wrestling.)  -- That way, the jokes gets to be both on the guys who are inevitably shitty at what they're being asked to do and on People of Color for their weird ways.  Hilarious!

He says that this is the most fulfilling interaction with her, and he seems genuinely relieved to know that she's noticing him.  She's pissed, though. Arms crossed, leans back, crosses legs, and sits motionless.  Lips pouted out.  

He's trying to smooth over the situation, and he really seems like he thinks they've worked out that yes, she dates Black guys.  He says, "There are things that are unfortunate. There are some things that I have to think about.  I don't want to be here because I look good on the roster of men that you still keep around."  

Her jaw clenches. No blinking.

He's leaning forward, talking with his hands in a way that makes him look extremely eager to chalk this all up as a misunderstanding. Finally, he's like, "Why am I here?"

Shrug, eye-roll, shakes head, while she sputters something defensive about how I did like you.  And there's "nothing more to it." (She shoulda said, "I don't even see color!")

He's frustratingly forgiving: "No, I appreciate that.  I just, I didn't come here to waste anybody's time.  I mean, I totally didn't."  He tells her that when I saw her last season, he thought she was "a real person, like 100." (Hello, Black Language.)  

She interrupts, maybe not understanding that he's in the middle of complimenting her. "You thought?  Or you still think?"  She tells him that he "came out of the gates questioning" her.  Honestly, she tells him, "I felt a connection until right now."  She shifts head on her shoulders in a "na-na-na-na-poo-poo" way as she avoids eye contact with him until "right now." "I didn't know you questioned me so much." Calm, cold.  Stark contrast with his animated movements.  He's been working the facial expression: showing sincerity, surprise, vulnerability, concentration.  He's listening.  

He tells her he thinks it would be dope ( <-- a="" about="" alled="" and="" asks="" bl="" can="" do.="" e="" ended="" fist-bump="" he="" him="" href="http://democracychronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/obama-fist-bump.jpg" if="" it.="" more="" nbsp="" needs="" or="" pound="" she="" target="_blank" tells="" they="" think="" time="" to="" together.="" up="">by mainstream media

, traditionally in BL it's giving daps.)

He leaves her alone to think about it.  She vents to the camera, "Kupah has some questions, and he kinda questioned me, and it set me off."  Why does she think that she is above being asked questions?  He's not accusing her of anything, just asking if she likes him maybe a little.  But because he's asking it in the context of knowing that the show gets heat for not casting enough People of Color, it's perceived as an attack.  Classic example of White fragility.  (Of course, she's not necessarily conscious of this context, or of how it's informing his frustration or her response; doesn't make it less true.)

Cut to an interview with one of the other guys, a White guy.  He's explaining it to us: "When Kupah speaks, he sometimes doesn't filter." (Classic denigration of a BL speaker.)

Cut to Kupah processing the conversation.  He's telling the other guys how it went down: "She wasn't looking at me, like, she was looking down, which sucks, man.  I flew, like, 3,000 miles."  As he's talking, we get to see that she's overhearing.  When he gets to the part about her not looking at him, she gets up with purpose and strides over to him.  "You don't have a quiet voice, I'll tell you that." (White person dismaying that Black people are so loud? Check.) She walks up, arms swinging, grinning, "Can I talk to you for a second?"  Kupah and all the other guys are like, "Wah?"

Kaitlyn: "I can tell you're upset, so I wanna..." 

Kupah: "I'm not upset," 

Kaitlyn: "You're clearly upset."

She pulls him into a private room and tells him that he's gotta go home.  In a bold move, he takes a breath, looks at her, and says, "I don't want to go."  

Ka: "It's week one, and we're already in this position. Like, this is bad."  

Ku: "I don't think it's bad."  

Ka: "No I'm telling you it's bad."

Ku:  "I mean, I hear you, but I don't think it's bad.  I think that people need to figure things out.  I'd rather have this conversation with you now than have it in two months."

Now this is interesting.  As a woman who has a hard time holding boundaries with men, I admire her.  She's like, "Nah, I'm in charge of me."  But not really.  Because he's trying, it seems, to work out whether or not she's up for an interracial relationship, something worth talking about, and she doesn't get it.  She's definitely not comfortable with a Black man doing anything but flattering her.

Eventually, he acquiesces, and we get back to Kaitlyn's interview: "This is the first week, and it's the time to be positive, and get to know each other, and see the good, and the fact that Kupah just kept questioning me, and arguing with me... So I had to send him home."  

Kept questioning?  Kept arguing?  He asked if you had a "connection" or not.  And then he tried to explain why it mattered to him to know that, and you flipped your shit.  White folks have such a hard time listening to people of color express their experiences with racism.  She feels attacked, but objectively, she hasn't been. (I think the ol' "foot on my neck" metaphor is helpful here.  White supremacy keeps a foot on the neck of People of Color, and when People of Color are like, "Ouch," White supremacy is like, "Stop attacking me!")

Whenever somebody gets sent home, they interview them out in the driveway, and they say things like, "Dang it!" and "Best of luck!" So cut to Kupah in the driveway getting interviewed, and he's pissed.  "You already know I'm not a part of this thing, man.  I'm not about this thing.  This is bullshit."  He's shaking his head.  He's clearly talking directly to the crew, "I think that your process works for some people, like Jared and Cupcake, you know what I'm saying? But not me. So come on, man!"  That "You know what I'm saying?" Jared and Cupcake.  Two White-ass White guys.  This show is inherently racist, and he's looking for affirmation that he's not crazy for noting that a Black guy is not going to "win" the Bachelorette.  No such affirmation comes.  He "uggghhh"s loudly.

Cut back to Kaitlyn being interviewed.  She's turned around, though, biting her nails and looking out the windows, going, "Ohmygod! Ohmygod!"  Hands up in front of her face like she's scared, peeking out, eyes wide.

Kupah: "Just ask me the questions, and let me go home.  Please, please give me that.  Just ask me the questions, and let me go home."  His hands are out in supplication. "What? I'm upset that I didn't get a rose.  I'm upset she sent me home."  His eyes are rolling, and he's letting this all out like, "ohmygod what do I have to sayyyyyyyyyy to get you to leave me aloneeeeee!?"

Kaitlyn: Flashes a look of terror/rage at the crew, and says, "If he touches..." as she gets up and runs out to the driveway.

This shit is so hard to watch.  At this point, Kasey, Eric, and I are sitting at the kitchen table, stunned.  "A thesis could be written about this episode," Eric says.  

Kupah's intensely engaged with someone from the crew:  "I lose immediately.  Immediately, I lose.  I lose."  I want to know what he said before that, because I don't think he's talking about losing on this fucked up game show.  Not when he's in the middle of filming a situation that he has to know can and will be edited and framed for a White supremacist audience that fears for the safety of a pretty, innocent White woman involved with a scary, violent, hypersexual Black man (He kept on talking about how hot she is...).

The episode ends there, not as they usually do with a rose ceremony, thereby further heightening the drama of the moment.

The next episode opens with his loud "ugggghhh" from the last one.  Primitive dude, huh? (WTF.)

Kupah's pleas for the crew to get what they need from him and let him go are interspersed with various White guys calmly assessing the situation:

Ku: "I'm upset right now. You should know that."

WG: "Kupah's been having a hard time with the process." 

Ku: "Are you kidding me?"

WG:  "Kupah just needs to walk away."

Ku: "Just ask me the questions and let me go."

WG:  "Kupah just needs to let it go."

Ku: "I go home in three days.  Now I'm the Black dude who's a sucker."

It's so fucked up.  So hard to watch.  And the gaze of the show is urging us to conclude, like the rest of the cast, that Kupah is just so out of control wink wink angry Black man wink wink.  

Kaitlyn comes out into the driveway (presumably just after her, "If he touches..." Now what in the fuck indication has he given that he's going to hurt someone? Scary Black man.) She's walking gingerly, holding up the edge of her glimmering evening gown. 

Under his breath, he says, "Oh my god.  What the fuck."

Kaitlyn storms up: "I'm sorry, but I can hear you screaming from inside, and I just want to know what's going on."  

He's got one hand in his pocket, the other holding his drink. His head is down, and his ear is up so he can listen to her without looking at her.  

Ku: Takes a breath.  "Just give me a second.  I didn't know you were coming."

Ka: "Well ,I was in there doing an interview, and I could hear you yelling."

Ku: "Yeah, I was yelling.  I'm sorry about that."  

Ka: "No, don't put on a different act. What was that about?"

Ku: "It's not a different act."

Ka: "This is not right.  Don't get in other people's faces. I don't know what's going on, but I heard you yelling."

Now she's talking with her hands.  He's motionless.  I'm like, "Oh my gosh how the fuck is he being so fucking tactful right now."

Ka: "Just accept this because now you're creating this, this uncomfortable situation.  And nothing is going to change right now. Nothing."  Real condescending-like.  As if it seems to her that this Black man doesn't know that he's supposed to take his nationally-televised humiliation (not for being sent home, but for being made into a caricature) the way she wants him to. 

He's swaying a bit, looking away, like this can't last forever.  Then he stops moving, locks eyes with her, and goes, "I won't yell anymore.  I promise."

Then he smiles like this.  (It's a two-part smile.)

She sighs an "Okay," and walks away.  Immediately he whips his head to the left like this:

That's the best part.

The camera's on him, and he goes, "We're gonna whisper now! Whiiisper! Whisssper!"  Clearly, he's flipped to like, Ohhmygod this shit is ridiculous."  He says some other mostly intelligible, sexist shit, then he gets into the back of a minivan with his drink still in hand.

Cut to final interview with Kaitlyn on the subject.  She was angry, and then even more angry, she said.  And now she's sad.  And this morning she was happy because she has such a good group of guys.  But "when people walk out of here insulting me or questioning my intentions," that really kills her. (He never insulted her or questioned her intentions.  He did ask if she felt a connection with him.  Real stupid Bachelorette-y question, but neither an insult nor a dig at her intentions.)  

She's crying: "Sometimes you learn a lot about a person in thirty seconds.  That's the scary part about this, you know, like, that just came out of nowhere."

"Scary," that's the clincher for me.  That was "scary."  She had reason to be afraid.  Because a Black man made mention of the fact that it's possible that he was chosen for the cast in order to appease the critics who have been pointing out for years the lack of People of Color on the show.

--- 

THIS IS WHAT ANTI-BLACK RACISM LOOKS LIKE TODAY.  Soooo much of the time.  Nobody says the n-word.  Nobody even says, "race."

But there's not a whole lot different, ideologically-speaking, from the way that Kupah's story was told to the way that Emmett Till's story was told among White folks in Mississippi fifty years ago.  Black man is dangerous.  Black man wants to have sex with White woman.  White woman is scared.  Black man must be put in his place.  I certainly don't take lightly the differences in the ways that this ideology played out in practice in Kupah's case versus Emmett Till's case.  I'm just saying that we're not living in a fucking post-racial society.

---

Okay, I've just been wanting to tell someone about that.  I can't believe how much time I spent writing this.

I'm only watching Star Trek from now on.

the axe-murderer

One of the pastors held a creative writing group at church this morning that was so cool.  Pitched, he told us, as something akin to a drop-in yoga class -- an hour of exercising (maybe exorcising).  Writing as a practice.

You've got Marvin to thank for this vomiting of posts this evening (and by "you," I mean, you, Mom, my only reader).  I've been noting things I've wanted to write about over the last couple of weeks, but I have not been making time for my practice.

In the group, I got to writing about Conor.  Marvin asked us to think about sensory details, to include colors, smells, and tastes.  Nothing like that struck me at the time, but as I laid (lie?) down for a nap this afternoon, it suddenly occurred to me to try to write what's below.

---

It had to have been a summer day because I remember light streaming in, and I remember feeling like I richly deserved this Nachos Bell Grande I was about to eat, having survived another day of unending boredom at her office.  I used to make so many things -- stories, crafts, games, role-playing games -- out of that office paper they had with the tear off edges with the little holes.  I'd sit on the floor behind her desk bopping my head to the music of the dot matrix printer.  Florescent lighting.

So it had to be summer, because I remember that the natural lighting was such a relief. I could not wait to squeeze a few packets of that Mild Border Sauce onto those nachos.

Mom went up to order and sent me, Neil, and Conor to sit and wait at the table.  I'm remembering now that there was always the unspoken expectation to try to keep Conor relatively quiet.

I held his hands down, gently, with great disgust at their drooly-sliminess, resigned to tolerating it until I could wash my hands.  Let him rub all his cold, wet fingers all up and down my wrists and forearms as I tried to keep him from slamming his hand down on the formica table.

There wasn't anything special about the shouting he did in Taco Bell that day.  I mean, it was loud.  Puberty had started to deepen his voice.  So so loud.  Make you wince a little loud.  And, (presumably) pissed about the (as I said, gentle) restraining I was doing, he'd finish his few seconds of screaming by slamming himself backward in his shoulder and forcefully pulling his hand back up into his mouth for a little gnawing (and to recoat it with that good stuff).

Put that on repeat, cycled through every thirty seconds or so.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

Mom came over with the tray, and we all shared our amusement that he was doing the axe-murderer, as we called it (as we still call it).  A soft taco and some Coke exorcised him of that demon for the time being.

I remember noticing that other people were looking, and I remember genuinely not giving much of a shit.  

KIDS THESE DAYS

I typically find it unbearably boring when people talk about texting and how it's going to ruin civilization because now we say "ur" instead of "your" or "you're." Borinnnnnngggggg.

I remember once making a fool of myself in class laughing so hard when no one else was laughing: The class was called the History of the English Language, and the professor said to us one day, dead-pan, that soon our language would consist of only emoticons.  It's, like, kinda funny, but for some reason that joke really worked for me right then.

---

Check these two text exchanges between me and J:

And later that week:

I seriously love language. (And J.)

And I am stoked about this emoji thing.  "Or whatever"?  What!? So cool.  Look how it's "officially" translated.  Language, as Dr. Dyson says, is a public bus; it doesn't work if you try to have your own.  So how did "or whatever" get around?  Who knows that it's "or whatever," and who doesn't?  What other things does this emoji mean? And do other emojis mean?  How do those meanings vary across race, class, age, gender, sexuality?

Want to do research project.

filing

I came across Anita, a documentary about Anita Hill's 1991 testimony to Clarence Thomas' sexual harassment of her.  I was only five then, so I don't have any memory of it, but I'd heard it alluded to.  I'm glad I watched it.

There's such an air of, "Ohmygod why are you making a big deal of nothing," to the footage.  Actually, beyond that, it's like: "You are fucking up our shit by bringing this up! We are White men trying to do right by bringing in a Black guy! Why won't you shut up?!"  Putting her testimony on trial? What? 

(Although watching Senator Hatch come after her was not unlike watching White folks in the media and in local governments attack the characters of the Black men and boys that their police have murdered.  For example.)

There's a scene in the documentary where she shows all the file cabinets in her basement, filled with correspondence she has received over the years.  She randomly pulls one and reads it aloud, a letter of sincere support.  Earlier though, she shares that she has one file cabinet full of insults and threats she's received.

My former principal shared her file with me once.  I only read some of its contents; an anonymous letter shaming her for not shh-ing Black families cheering for their children at graduation stands out in my memory.

I have a digital folder full of screenshots from this whole incident.

---

There's something about filing.  About collecting.  Does cool-headedly putting mean messages aside help to restore a sense of dignity?  Like, in my case, I'm like, "...Hm... Alright, ya fucking asshole.  Noted.  I'll just keep that. shit. right. here."

---

My Facebook feed, perhaps coincidentally/perhaps because August is approaching, has had a lot of stuff about teachers and depression on it lately.  Once I noted the trend, I bookmarked this one and this one.  I take issue with several of the things these dudes have to say, but I'm feeling the need to start filing teacher depression stories somewhere.

whole car is a speaker phone

One of my favorite things is the bluetooth connection from my phone to my car radio.  

Chinese English

I’m not gonna keep working at the bridal shop when it’s not fun anymore.  I pray that it remains fun until it’s time for the next thing – paid prison work? Full-time seminary?  Some other strange thing that I get it in my head to do?

Lately, the best part of working there is getting to know better the head of the alterations department, a woman from Hong Kong who knows A WHOLE LOT about design, construction, tailoring, and running a business.  She’s super bossy, which is lucky for me, since I love bossy women. 

Also lucky for me is that she's bilingual, so my monolingual ass gets to enjoy some of her jokes.  I really love (in what I hope is not just an exoticising way, but which I’m really having to check) the chance to get more familiar with the grammar of Chinese English – particularly the phonology and syntax.  I really wish I knew more about Cantonese so that I could recognize the ways that Cantonese grammatical structures are mapping onto her dialect of English.

A Google search brought me here, and Amy Tan writes about her mother’s English in “Mother Tongue,” and for a class on race and rhetoric I audited last year, we read this, but otherwise I couldn’t find much.  Curious.  I’d heard that Black Language was the most studied dialect of English, but I didn’t know it was like that.

Makes me think about this. "What would America be like if we loved Black people as much as we love Black culture?" Yeah.  --- But it's really different when it comes to Asian cultural practices.  There were certainly kids of all races who were into anime, but none of those kids were “popular.” Whatever that means – but you know and I know that it means something.  That's all I can think of.  Or maybe my unknowing participation in an anti-Asian ideology blinded me to Asian cultural practices my students were taking up.

We have a tradition of making Asian people the butt of jokes in our movies.  Here’s the classic example, but it’s not like we’re done with that shit. And maaaaaan were there anti-Asian racist jokes rampant on the campus of UIUC where the number of Chinese students has dramatically increased over the past decade.

Why isn’t there more written about Chinese English(es)?  (Or are my Googling skills lacking? Maybe it's called something else?) I’m more curious now about how anti-Asian racism, including linguistic discrimination, works.  It’s not as if White America’s addiction to reappropriating Black culture in any way protects Black people from racist violence of the physical, emotional, and cognitive persuasions. (Probably has something to do with the simultaneous shaming of Black Language and cultural practices – e.g. “aks a question”)

So perceived demonstration of Black cultural practices earns somebody social power (but not enough social power to avoid being murdered by the police), while the perceived demonstration of Asian cultural practices is laughably uncool (but affords some privilege of safety)?  I’m thinking “out loud” here.  And I’m stuck.