Welcome to Cleveland, Home of the.......

This webpage shows the Cleveland Indians masocot, and then 16 other illustrations that use the same face but wearing different things. Every illustration portrays a different stereotype that a race could be labled as. The aurthor's main point is that the if it wasn't the Cleveland Indians, then could could probably be one of these other illustrations. We have been so used to Chief Wahoo and became so a customed to the way he looks, that we haven't even thought of what a different races stereotype would look like with the same face. The author is trying to show his audience that it is very easy to just through a hat on the face or color it black, and then the whole image and stereotype would change. It shows that stereotypes are just made up by what other people think that race wears or looks like. It also shows how racial the Cleveland Indians mascot really is because that isn't what every Indian looks like at all. So if it was the Cleveland Gansta's then it would have a stereotypical black man with chains on and a ball cap, because that is the stereotype of them.

There is a stereotypical illustration of Indains, Japanese, French, Negroes, Latinos, Irsih, Italians, Africans, Germans, Polish, Jews, Chinese, Skinheads, Spanish, Gansta's, White Folks, Catholics. They are all very racial and stereotypical; for example the white folks have a hood on hinting that he is part of the KKK. The Polish person has a dunce cap on, and the Africans have a tribal bone through there nose. The Germans have a Nazi symbol around the neck and a Hitler mustache. Every head though has the same smile, nose, and almost the same eyes. The Japanese and Chinese faces have smaller eyes, hinting the stereotype that they havee slanted eyes. The Gansta's are the only one that it doens't show there eyes, it is just solid black.

What would the Middle East face look like now since 9/11 as occurred?

Do you think any of these illustrations depict the race wrong(not just the fact that they are all stereotypes and awful depictions)?

I feel that the middle east person would have a turbon on his head and some sort of beard on his face. I always see illustrations that depict people from that region that way. I also think some of these racial stereotypes are wrong. The Germans one kinda gets to me because it represents someone like Adolf Hitler, but when he was doing his big thing around WWII. HIs big thing was to have the average german be blonde with blues eyes, but this illutration is ironic because it is the exact opposite of what he wanted. I just think that these illustrations are atleast the old stereotypes of the races that they are portraying, becasue i don't see people of that heritage or region like that at all. I did like how the author portrayed them all on the same face though because it really shows how similar people really are. I thought this was an interesting subject and liked discussing it in class.

Somerville Ch. 1 "Queering the Color Line"

This chapter goes into detail about how people in the early 18th century and beyond started to racialize sex. It shows the simularities of how race became what it is today and how being homosexual is following the same progression. The authors main purpose for this chapter is to show how old scientist tried to show how people where inferior or disabled if they liked the same sex. The author tells his readers that "My focus here is on how these writers and thinkers conceptualized sexuality through a reliance on, and deployment of, racial ideologies, that is, the cultural assumptions and systems of representation about race through which individuals understood their relationships within the world" (17). So he just tells his readers that he is using all of the believed methods that were once thought true, to show how people then thought of homosexuals.
The chapter begins with Siobhan explaining some of the early thoughts of sexuality and the people that created them. Havelock Ellis played a vital role studying sex and hinted that the studyn of race is closely related to the study of sex. It was thought that problems in a persons sexuality created the thoughts of homosexuals and were shaped be race as well. Sexology in the US began in the 1880's and then, homosexuality, was considered very abnormal. People like Ellis wrought many book on the study of sexuality and how it was natural, which made many people question there sex. Homosexuals began to be called a discrete group of people, thus just like black people did. But it was medicine that would decide what would be done with these people and not government or anything else. In the Nineteenth Century race was decribe was based on "geography, religion, class, or color" (21). There were two basic ways to understand how race became to be, Monogeny and polygeny. But it was polygeny that thought "blacks were permanently inferior to whites and that racial mixture would have dangerous. . .consequences" (22-23). So the body then became the main focus on determining the difference in race and sexuality. "scientific assertions about racial differences were often articulated through gender"(25). Early scientist tried to make points that the female black woman had a bigger buttocks than a white women (26). That a normal person would be considered a white person. This goes the same for people being homosexual, they were not considered normal and they had physical differences that proved it. It was said that they would be a threat to white people and purity (30). Many people think Homosexual is a bad word to call people. It was said that they were a third sex and hald breeds of what other people were. Then the thought that they were pervesed came along. It was connected that black men were perversed to white women. That lesbians were perversed to have feelings for other women being of the same race or being even worse if it was a different race.

Do you see the simularities of Race and Sex, and do you think they are both very important?

Do you think that race is connected to sex and sex is connected to race, inadvertinatly?

I thought this was an interesting chapter to read. I personally found it to be dry and boring though at the same time. I felt that it was very deep and almost hard to understand in some points but the ones i could see, i thought they were interesting. I do think that race and sexuality are very important in today's society. I feel that being homosexual is a choice in many ways but that is a whole different and long subject. I also can see that race and sex are related but i don't think that they are closely related enough to affect one when the other is affected. I find it a good subject for this class and can't wait to really understand it better after our discussion.

A Challenge to Democracy

This video was about how the United States made every Japanese family and every family that even looked Japanese evaculated out of their homes. The video shows how the UNited States moved them out there and how they did in their new homes. It is an older film and shows more of the happy side of the relocation centers than what was really happening.

They were taken mostly from the west coast and put into "relocation centers" across the mid-United States. The government called them a deslocated people, so the word prisoner wasn't used. Even though that is what they were. Each relocation center carried anywhere from 7,000-18,000 people. Inside the camps, people were split into blocks, around 300 people lived in them. The whole place was bounded by barb wired fence and guarded by army officals. The Japanese people were provided very little in their new homes, and many of the people had to leave all their belongings behind. They ate at in large places called mess halls, where it costed them money. Most of the camps were located in the desert so japanese people had to irrigate the land to grow food. It was said that they grew vegitables where it was thought to be unproductive. They built that civiliation from the ground up, building roads, sewage, farms, and many other things. Many Japanese people had to draw from their saving to live decently in the camps. The relocation centers were used to train many young men and women to do variuos professional jobs. They even had voting and a governmental system. They did say living was tough there and it was said that the main goal was to get them all back out into the UNted States and to their homes.

Did you think we trained the Japanese people in the camps on purpose, so we had people to replace the one we lost in the war?

Do you think we placed the Japanese people back over the United States on purpose in certain places, like we were worried?

I think this video is very biased. It shows all the positive things the Japanese people did in their relocation center. Which equal containment camps in my mind and many other peoples. I couldn't get how they showed so many people doing things and making them out to be positive. They farm, built roads, and sewage because if they didn't, it'd be like living in the olden age. The government provided so very little hat it is shocking. I agree with both my questions and think we did this all because there was a background meaning behind it all. I think it was a very sad thing we did to and can compare almost to slavery.

Takaki Ch.10

Takaki's chapeter ten is mainly discussing how the Japanese came back into the free world and out of isolation. They came to Hawaii which then led to the United States for the same reasons most immagrants do, to start a new life: "But they, too, were pushed here by external influences"(246). Since taxes were so high for Japanese farmers, they had to sell there land and most moved easterly in search of money and prosperity.
Many Japanese farmers had to sell there land because they couldn't afford taxes anymore, so they moved easterly (246-247). "In one year a worker could save about eight hundred yen- an amount equal to the income of a governor in Japan," and that is why so many people wanted to make there way over to Hawaii (247). In most peoples mainds in Japan "Money grew on trees in America" (247). The United States wanted more women imigrants because it would keep the male ones in line, and both the States and Japan didn't want what happened to China happen to they as well. The term "picture bride" was said now becasue marriage in Japan was based on families, so they sent pictures of the bride and groom before they met overseas (248). Japanese women had more rights then chinese women. Family is everything in Japan, it was said to have three children "one to sell, one to follow, one in reserve" (249-250). The one to sell was a girl and she would be soon wed and in another family, the one to follow was the oldest male and he got married first, and the one in reserve was if something happened to the first son (250). People working in the canefields were soon discriminated against when Hawaii became a state. There supplies and most everyting else were lowered. Since many men left for the UNited States for more jobs the women were stuck back in Hawaii in the fields and were whipped if didn't work hard enough. There whole people were exploited to work on fields and they stereotyped they greatly. "Blood Unions " were formed to strike and stop work in the fields of Hawaii, but Filipinos were just imported to Hawaii and it then broke the strike. Then soon they went on strike too (2858-259). Other forieng people were then imported like Koreans as strikebreakers. But for everyone, the conditions were horrible for both living and working. "Over the years, a plantation dialect devoloped called pidgin English" (264). It was a mix of all the languages of imigrants. In the United States the Japanese were the racial minority by only having 2 percent of the population. They worked on railroads byt many became farmers. The only land that they could farm was desert because they were dicriminated against. So many Japanese people had to turn the desert into a prosperous farm land. And everything went somewhat fine for both the Japanese people excluding some hardships and Americans, untill the day of december 7, 1941.

Do you think the Japanese people could have done anything different in their oppresion?

How would you feel if you were a Japanese person and one of the first to be over in the UNited States? Do you think you'd be able to live like they did?

I personally liked this chapter of Takaki. I always like to read his work and find it very interesting and hard to put down. I find some of the other readings we do boring and repitious and i never seem to feel that way about Takaki. I couldn't imagine how it was to be a Janpanese man in this time of hardship and dirscrimination. I think i would have probably worked on the rail road because i don't think i would have gotten into the farming business. I feel bad for all the discrimination and sorry that i couldn't do anything for them, but happy that they are prospering in the United States now like they set out ot do in the first place.

Dwight McBride: Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch

The aurthor's thesis in this article is pretty clear. McBride tell his readers why he strongly dislikes the compnay Abercrombie and Fitch, because it is build upon racist views and beliefs; "[. . .] A&F's legacy of an unabshed consumer celebration of whiteness, and of an elitet class of whiteness at that, in the face of a nation whose past present are riddled with racist ideas, politics, and ideology, is not entirely new" (64). Dwight McBride gives detail in his article on how A&F's started, and how it turned into the company it is today, that targets young white males and guy males.
McBride first tells his readers that "in the mid-1980s [. . .] succeful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products" (59). We then find out how he came about to notice A&F in certain guy bars and places wherever he went. It was A&F target market that he notcied was guy white men and how he never saw advertising with people of color in them. He starts explaination with the history of Abercrombie and Fitch. There first store open in 1892 by David T. Abercrombie and it was originally a outdoors store to supply the outdoors men. Ezra Fitch later became a partner and the store turned into Abercrombie & Fitch (62-63). After Fitch ran Abercrombie out and made the store into a huge outdoor supply store where some very famous named shopped at such as, Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, and Winston Churchill. McBride then points how even back then the store was for white people; "It is not surprising that the cothier we know today developed from a company with early roots in exploration, adventure, and cultural tourism catered to the white upper classes" (64). They then filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and wasn't started back up untill 1988. But it wasn't untill 1992 when Abercrombie hired Micheal Jefferies and Bruce Weber when the company became popular. They started advertising to "glamorize the hedonistic collegiate lifestyle" (65). McBride then tell's his readers "the danger of [Abercrombie's] marketing scheme is that it depends upon the racist thinking of its consumer population in order to thrive" (66). McBride goes on to point out more racist things about A&F like few minority workers, models, and store policy guidelines. People have filed major complaints about A&F and even some white employees feel uncomfortable working there.

Do you feel like Abercrombie and Fitch is the only store that does this?

Have you ever bought anything because it was a brand name product, even though it was more expensive? why did you feel you needed that one instead of the other?

I personally didn't like this article very much at all. I can undrstand where Dwight McBride is coming from and i agree with most of his points. I agree that Abercrombie and Fitch goes after young white males and guy people as a target market. They have some boarderline policies that could be considered racist and controversial too. But i don't feel like they should be sued over those views. And i'm not backing up A&F because i wear there clothing or becasue i like their clothes. I back them up because i'm a business person and i give them credit for finding a niche in todays market and are making a lot of money off of it. They are using the United States free-market system to their advantage. They aren't the only company that does this either, McBride mentions Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic, but what about brands like FUBU, Sean Jean, and Rockawear. Those company are based for the African American people and McBride never even talked about any companies like that. They have their niche towards African Americans but it isn't uncommon to see a white person wearing those clothes; just like it isn't uncommon to see a minority wearing A&F. I give A&F for finding a niche and keeping it up over the past year since they came back in 1988. I just think McBride isn't happy to see a company make money off of his aparent sexuality and him not liking the clothes.

Frank Wu "Yellow"

I believe what Frank Wu is tryin to tell his readers is best portrayed in one of his opening sentences; "The lives of people of color are materially different that the lives of whites, but in the abiding American spirit we all prefer to beleive that our individualism is most important" (415). He is trying to say that people in the United States live different lives even though they tell themselves that they don't.
Wu explains to his readers that he is an Asain American, but is treated very poorly; "I am who other portray me to be rather than how I percieve myself to be" (415). He believes and I agree that "the inalbity to define one's self is the greatest loss of liberty possible" (415). He also tells his readers that people "cannot overcome the stereotype of group identity" (415). He points out in America, when whites are mistreated poorly by other whites, they shake it off. But when a minority is mistreated they bring it upoin them being of that race, because they have no clue if it is really because that or not (416). Wu has had several cases were he is judge by the color of his skin being yellow, and he thinks it is in many cases, hard to fit in in America. He tell his readers that "race is moe than black and white, literally and figurativly" (416). He is trying to prove the act that Asians don't really have a part. He goes on to tell that American means white minority and that withour the rest of the non-white minorites, the equasion is imcomplete (417).
When you see an Asian on the street, do you see an immigrant/tourist or do you automatically see an American?
Do you think that Asain's are mistreated more or less than African Americans in todays socitity?
I personally didn't like some of the things frank Wu was talking about. I felt it more of a paper giving off steem that was build up, more than the fact that Asian Americans are mistreated. I can see where he is coming from though, saying that race isn't just and can't be just black and white. But i also don't like or just didn't understand it properly how he degrated what an American is. We have always called ourselves a melting pot of cultures and races, so that includes Asians. He is saying that American doesn't include everyone. I can see and feel how he felt about the newspaper article but that just doesn't mean we think or them intirearly a different people. I think of Americans as a person who is a citizen of the United States and that is what he should know that most people do too, and not just the thought that they are in the middle of a black and white affair.

Kindred

Kindred was personally a very good book to read. It really did a good job at potrying the thoughts and feelings an African-American women of present day would do back in the days of slavery. Dana was an African-American in her late twenties to early thirties that worked for an agency that employed her to do odd jobs for people. He worked there and wrought books in her free time trying to get them published and make a great profit. She had a husband (Kevin) that work the same agency job just for extra cash really, becuase the book he made sold. Dana realizes that when she gets dizzy and passes out, she wakes up in the 1800's and a boy by the name of Rufus Weylin needs her help. Dana realizes that Rufus is an ancestor even though white, and must save his life everytime she is transported back to his era of time.
There are many situations and events that occured in this book that are related to the things we have read in class. Dana learned very quickly about the Jim Crow laws that every black person must follow. They weren't directly called the Jim Crow laws in the book, but that is the name i learned them by. She learned that she had to either call a white man "sir" or "master" when talking to them directly. And the fact that you could get beaten at anytime when talking to a white person; if they thought you were talking back to the harshly or unproperly. Dana began to fear all white people and knew they were all dangerous, even little Rufus becasue he grew up to be almost as worse as his farther. Dana stood her ground though when comfronted by a white person, that too was a Jim Crow law. Just like we read in class, Dana found out how easy it is for a black person to be sold away from there families and be beaten. Another Jim Crow law was to stay inside at night when you are black because you look suspicuos otherwise. Dana knew that already but really had to boey it in the South. Free blacks could easily turn into slaves when whites tore up there papers and sold them back into slavery. It was the fact the slaves had no freedoms and couldn't even look at some white people without getting beat up or hanged in some cases. Dana also learned that black people weren't allowed to read books or know how to write, they were considered dangerous and whites didn't like it when blacks were smarter than they were.
This book also is related to the short time we talked about in class about nuses. Alice, a relative of Dana's, hung herself after she found her whole family was sold away. It just proves the fact that when people think of hangins and nuses, they also think of African Americans. It is a sad thing to think about actually because we related a group of people to a public display of horror.
But all in all, the book was very good and was very much worth the time it took to read it. It didn't even take that long because it was pretty easy to read. I love the whole thing and i'm so glad that we had to read it for this class. I have enjoyed most all of the readings but this one was the one that had my attention the most.