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Andrea Plaid
Brooklyn, NY
Andrea (AJ) Plaid serves double duty at Change.org as well as writing as Racialicious’ Sexual Correspondent, where she mainly explores the crucial nexus of race and sex in popular culture. Her perspectives on race, gender, and sex have been featured in Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Bitch. Her work has been republished at Penthouse, Wiretap Magazine, and RaceWire. She also owns her own safer-sex kit company, Freak Kits.
Recent Activity
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Andrea commented on the article |@Cecelia LaPointe--My thoughts exactly! What's utterly jacked up about the situation is that, no thanks to racism and sexism, we as women of color and Native women, even have to constantly live under such battle-ready conditions and over atttributes that we really can't help but an entire society is built to act a fool about. As jacked up as it is, therein also rests the activism.
@Sarah D--Going along with what I said to Cecilia, I'd love to live in a world where my race is considered a healthy part of my personhood, not a pathology to my personhood. The reality is, racism is embedded in this country--and the world--practically from the start and continues to be a socio-economic influencer in people's lives, favorably and unfavorably. A fascinating documentary about the structural rise of this is The End of Poverty?, narrated by Martin Sheen. It's on Hulu.com now.
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Andrea commented on the article |I'd love to explain what you said, with some caveats:
1) the Manicheist philosophy--and by extension, the idea of warring dualities--is older than what we know as "European history": the idea started in 3rd century CE Persia (what we now call Iran) and spread as far west as the Roman Empire and as far east as China. I'm guessing that the idea stuck in Christianity by the time Constantine decided to make it the state religion of said Roman Empire in 4th century CE. By the time the Europeans used Christianity to justify their global-expansionist efforts, the idea was well-developed.
2) My friend is quite well-versed on binaries and the divide/conquer tactics and their effects. The question posed is how did the US racial binary form in the first place. It's true that Europeans brought it over--but that's too simple of an answer. I think it's also good to trace the history of the idea that assisted in doing what they did. As a former professor told me as to why she studied the history of religion, "Tell me what you believe, and I'll tell you what you'll do." Her idea (obviously) has some faults, but it's also useful, especially in conversations like this.
Thanks for your response, juan!
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Andrea commented on the article |
Deborah White--in a word, yep.
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Andrea commented on the article |Scoop Coop--you answered your own question as to why it seems that more people are concerned about SB1070 than the oil spill: its moral reprehensibility. But I think to say that people should be concerned about morally reprehensible x issue over morally reprehensible y issue really doesn't get people to see why they should agitate for your issue, especially if x issue involves, say, the tearing apart of their families. In their minds, the Gulf can wait; their partners/children/parents can't.
Does that make sense?
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Andrea commented on the article |
Hi R Conley--thanks for your response. The "legal minds" that I'm talking about are the lawyers who shaped and are moving forward with this lawsuit, including the ACLU, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the Asian American Justice Center, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, the National Immigration Law Center...all of whom are named in the lawsuit that I linked to in the post.
And yes, as I said, even Obama--he said in the link I posted in the piece that he thought Arizona's laws were misguided and irresponsible.
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Andrea commented on the article |I can't think of a better person to welcome me to the Change.org crew than you, Tami! And you *know* I wasn't trying to be provocative, just observant.;-)
What disappoints me is that Jones, Carter, Shiva, Olivera, et. al. have effectively and substantively changed the public discourse about environmentalism--centralizing and intersecting the struggles of people of color with class, corporatism, etc., to come up with a more holistic and practical view for everyone...and once again, people of color are shoved off to the "environmental racism/justice" corner, as if taking about racism is solely "our" job. Sigh...
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