Red Light Politics
Welcome to my short form Tumblr blog. My name is Flavia Tamara Dzodan, I am a business developer, writer, public speaker, ideas instigator, content creator, media facilitator and trend watcher living in Amsterdam.
This Tumblr is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix.
My long reads blog is Red Light Politics.
I also blog at Tiger Beatdown.
If you would like to know more about me, visit this page .
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Noted Elsewhere
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What did I miss?
I’ve decided that I am not even going to try to catch up on Tumblr since Friday. Nope. Not gonna do it.
So, did anything important...
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Interesting
Just got a job offer? I know the company, it has a good reputation. And awesome downtown offices.But it’s not quite my style - their...
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“The new rules, which were given the force of an executive order, are a clear improvement over a draft version. If monitored and enforced, they could...”
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Heroism in the Supermarket:
Vitamin Water wants me to believe that drinking their sugary concoction will help to make me a superhero rather than...
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…and The Onion for the win, forever.
Tl;dr: All 10 ways are “Revolutionary Terror.”
(via TheNoobYorker)
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Last night got the pleasure to met and chat with the German Tumblr team.
These women were totally awesome. Total girl crush!
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“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as...”
Tag Results
95 posts tagged xenophobia
I wrote about current affairs in Europe in view of this week’s commemoration of the end of WWII. From the post intro:
This week, Europe commemorates the end of World War II, the event that marks a breaking point in contemporary history, the event that faced us with this reminder of humanity’s capability for evil. I don’t need to re-visit the significance of this war or the importance of the event as others have done it (and continue to) much better than I ever would. Instead, I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy of this war, the Holocaust and how we have moved forward after the concerted and life long efforts of so many activists to never repeat anything remotely similar again.
While thinking about this loss of life and the ensuing continuum that leads us to today, May 1st 2012 (coincidentally or not, International Workers Day), I end up with a few snapshots, a few seemingly disconnected events that offer a landscape, a view from the margins if you will, which is, after all, the only view I am ever capable of.
Spoilers alert: we don’t seem to have learned much (or at all). As a matter of fact, Europe seems to be repeating some dangerous patterns.
“For years, German police were baffled by the nine murders of ethnic Turks and one Greek man committed by the Zwickau cell of neo-Nazi terrorists. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, they even asked the FBI for help. The profilers submitted a report clearly stating that the victims were killed because of their ethnic origin.”
And yet, it took them more than four years to actually acknowledge that indeed, this was a racist group murdering foreigners.
Really? REALLY?!
I have to apologize in advance to anyone who reads this Tumblr looking for quality content. All I got today is rage. Massive amounts of rage.
The thing with people like “European Resistance” is that they are the manifestation of something much more serious and dangerous. You can equate this person to pus on an open wound. Sure, the pus is gross and disgusting and very evident. However, it is also the symptom of a general infection, the part that is not visible and slowly spreads around the organism. While the pus does not directly affect other organs, the infection that manifests as pus in the wound erodes them, and eventually leads to massive failures. That’s the way I see this person. Sure, just like pus, their views are “evident” and in the open, but they are only the manifestation of something much more serious and unaddressed going on. While “European Resistance” posts photo after photo of Breivik, glorifying his actions, somewhere in Europe, there is a silent racist in charge of an HR organization who refuses to hire a Person of Color. “European Resistance” is the vocal, visible symptom of this widespread disease.
inessita replied to your link: “European Resistance”
They showed a video in court that Breivik had produced. He cried when he watched it. But he claims self-defense for his attacks. Self-defense. JFC.
”Self defense”. SELF DEFENSE!
And of course, then we have to contend with people like “European Resistance” who tell us they cannot empathize with the victims and hold Breivik as a “role model”. I am sincerely feeling sick right now.
Resistance to what? To change? To humanity? To decency?
This clown is publishing Breivik’s manifesto in its entirety, one chapter per day (chapter… well, if you can call that incoherent drivel “a chapter”). Today, Breivik’s trial begins in Norway and, of course, there are Europeans who “cannot empathize with the victims”, just like this asinine arse.
The funny thing? When “progressive” Europeans tell me that racism in the EU is not “as bad” as I make it to be. I suspect that it is much, much worse even.
How to physically abuse refugees, manual leaked
Remember when in October last year when I wrote extensively about the corporations that run immigrant detention camps? Back then, I mentioned the conditions that immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees in detention camps run by Serco, in Australia, were exposed to:
Naomi Leong, a shy 9-year-old, was born in the detention camp. For more than three years, at a cost of about $380,000, she and her mother were held behind its barbed wire. Psychiatrists said Naomi was growing up mute, banging her head against the walls while her mother, Virginia Leong, a Malaysian citizen accused of trying to use a false passport, sank into depression.
Turns out Serco’s training manual for the treatment of these detained persons was leaked to the press yesterday. via Serco training manual: how to “hit” and “strike” asylum seekers:
The “control and restraint” techniques included in the 2009 training course manual recommends the use of “pain” to defend, subdue and control asylum seekers through straight punches, palm heel strikes, side angle kicks, front thrust kicks and knee strikes.
“Subdue the subject using reasonable force so that he/she is no longer in the assailant category,” it explains.
“If justified, necessary force is to be used to bring the subject to cooperative subjective status whereupon they respond favourably to verbalisation.”
Under a section headed “principles in controlling Resistive Behaviour”, guards are told to cause pain, stun, distract, unbalance and use “striking technique” to cause “motor dysfunction”. […]
“They enhance your ability, to compel compliance from unco-operative subjects,” it explains. The “expected effect” is “medium to high level pain”.
I cannot write about this without exploding in a ball of rage. More at the link above, including the text of the whole manual, though I must warn for potentially triggering content.
H/T @jonanamary
How could I miss this?! Apparently, the story broke on some European media while I was abroad. From Global Voices: European Commission’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Video Blunder:
A video parodying the film Kill Bill and building on a “clash of civilizations” theme has been made by the European Commission (EC) to promote enlargement of the European Union to young adults. However, the video was pulled on March 6, 2012, after it made the rounds online and was subject to virulent accusations of racism.
From the video description:
A young Caucasian woman wearing a bright yellow outfit similar to that worn by Uma Thurman in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill stands up to each male adversary who enters the warehouse she is in. One man is clearly of Oriental [sic] origin, another seems to be either Arabic or Indian, and the last appears to be a dreadlocked kickboxer. Is this supposed to represent Europe’s opposing emerging powers? The body language of the men is aggressive until the young woman closes her eyes and multiplies herself several times, creating a circle around the fighters, who are all of a sudden docile as lambs.The clumsy symbolism of the video ends with a slogan declaring: “The more we are, the stronger we are”. Just before this statement, the circle of women viewed from above has transformed into the starred flag of the EU.
About the Miramonte “semen tasting” abuses
I’ve been reading on and off about the Miramonte School in California that Jezebel has been reporting. Today, yet a third teacher has been arrested and details emerged of a school aide writing “love letters” to a child back in 2009. Two of the three people arrested in connection to these abuses so far, have been named: Mark Berndt and Martin Springer (keep in mind those names for what’s to come later on). According to the article at Jezebel:
The mom reported the letter, but school officials said the aide was just expressing grandmotherly affection, and did nothing. Now the district and police are launching a real investigation — three years after the fact.
And then out of curiosity, I thought I would google some basic demographics data about the school. And lo and behold, this is what I found:
Miramonte Elementary School is located in unincorporated South Los Angeles within the Florence-Firestone area. We are an urban school serving a minority community that is predominantly Hispanic. The residents, for the most part, are low income.[…]
Miramonte’s kindergarten through 6th grade programs service 1,396 students, of which 98% are Hispanic and 2% African-American.
The cynic in me cannot help but make a connection between the fact that these kids, Hispanics and African American were systematically dismissed and their complains ignored while they were being abused by people that, by the sound of their names, belong and have all the protections of the dominant culture. If this doesn’t reek of institutionalized racism, I don’t know what does. However, I have yet to see Jezebel making these connections in any of the four articles they have, so far, posted on the subject.
ETA: Also, I cannot help but wonder how many of these Hispanic kids were part of undocumented families. And subsequently, wonder if the abusers didn’t know this (either intuitively or through direct knowledge) and actually thought they could sort of get away with the abuse because some of these parents would not report them or, if they reported them, they would not be taken seriously by authorities/ school staff.
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Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration PVV party has launched a new website where people can report complaints about central and eastern European immigrants in the Netherlands.
‘Do you have problems with people from central and eastern Europe? Have you lost your job to a Pole, Bulgarian, Romanian or other eastern European? We want to know,’ the website states.
”DutchNews.nl - Problems with Poles? Report them to us, says new PVV website
And then this:
PVV parliamentarian Ino van de Besselaar told the AD the aim of the site is to develop proper insight into the ‘problems caused by central and eastern Europeans in terms of crime, alcoholism, drugs use, dumping household waste and prostitution’.
If anyone had told me that there would be a significant political party, in Europe, that gave a space to the local equivalent of Daily Mail commenters and turned those comments into a political platform, I would have laughed. And yet, here we are. Imagine the worst of tabloid comments, the most bigoted Fox News viewers and the racists from Stormfront, now have a place to legitimately “complain” about Romanians, Bulgarians, etc. This is what the website the PVV is opening will look like.
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French police are using overly broad powers to conduct unwarranted and abusive identity checks on black and Arab young men and boys, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 55-page report, “The Root of Humiliation: Abusive Identity Checks in France,” says that minority youth, including children as young as 13, are subjected to frequent stops involving lengthy questioning, invasive body pat-downs, and the search of personal belongings. These arbitrary stops can take place even in the absence of any indication of wrongdoing, Human Rights Watch found. Insulting language, including racial slurs, are not uncommon, and some stops involve excessive use of force by the police.
”France: Abusive Identity Checks of Minority Youth
I’ve been literally screaming over the “normalization” of racism across the entire EU. Now Human Rights Watch has released a report that pretty much spells this out in France. I wish they’d conduct a similar research on the rest of the countries.
Heidi Klum and Seal divorce?
Excellent opportunity to bring the “anger”, “Hulk like temper” and “volcanic” moods of a Black man! Because such tropes are totally innocent and not all contextually bound to hundreds of years of racism. Bonus cookies if you illustrate your novel ideas with a photo of said Black man so that the points can be driven home with more emphasis. And extra bonus slices of pie if all of it is just based on gossip rumor and none of the people involved are on the record talking about it. After all, gossip is totally dissociated from racism, right? RIGHT?!
uncdan replied to your quote: An eight-year-old Nigerian girl has been injured…
Do you think it’s related to the economic downturn? When things are good, people are happy. When things are bad, people turn on each other and blame each other.
You know, no, I don’t think so. I used to think that it was the case (i.e. happy people when they have money vs. racist assholes when they are poor) but I no longer believe so. The argument reminds me of those who somewhat justify physical or verbal violence by drunk people. They say “it’s because they are drunk!”. No. It’s because they are assholes. There are plenty of people who get drunk and don’t go around beating up others. The alcohol exacerbates a character trait that was already there. With the current wave or racism sweeping the EU, I tend to take a similar stance: the economic downturn has only brought back to the surface what was already there. One does not go from “accepting and embracing of one’s neighbor” to “violent, racist thug” through lack of money. That’s a co-opt to avoid addressing the historical issues with race that Europe never remedied to begin with.
From the article:
A young couple have said they will not return to their Londonderry home after a gang attacked it with golf clubs in a racist attack.
Police said they are treating the attack on the home of Jonathan Taylor and his Filipino wife as a hate crime and have appealed for witnesses.
After my conversations with Sara Ahmed on Friday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the construction of Dutch womanhood and how it is presented in media. Just out of curiosity, I searched for “Dutch woman” (in Dutch because I wanted the results presented domestically, not in international media) on Google images. And these are the first 50 results. Amid a sea of happy Dutch faces, the “angry Other”.
