Writer Will Wilkinson deconstructs the notion of a cohesive American identity and American-ness that is consistently used by conservatives to brow beat and divide for socio-political gain:

…Americans certainly aren’t “a people” in the sense that the Japanese, the Kurds, or the Jews are a people. There is no American ethnicity; the U.S. is a resolutely multicultural (and multilingual) country. The usual idea is that American identity is creedal, or organized around a distinctively American set of ideas and values.

[…]

Take the belief in individual freedom. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as freedom from all non-defensive physical force and fraud. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as implying roughly equal voice in the democratic process, which straightforwardly requires the redistribution of resources and state regulation of spending on political speech. Some Americans have understood individual freedom as a condition of robust autonomy or self-governance that requires universal government-financed education and a minimum of material resources necessary to ensure that individuals are able actually to exercise their liberty and are not caged-in by necessity. And none of these are the conception of individual liberty that prevailed among the Founders. Anyway, there was heated disagreement among the Founders, too. Some them took the ideal of individual freedom to be consistent with chattel slavery while others correctly found human bondage obviously at odds with liberty. Some defended a robust conception of freedom of conscience while others wished to ban the practice of certain religions for freedom’s sake. And so on.

Not only do appeals to the values of the Founders fail to settle anything, many such appeals are simply ignorant of what this or that Founder actually believed.

[…]

[I]ts [sic] misguided to appeal to the American creed as the basis of the American identity of the American people. There are multiple conceptions of American creed equally consistent with American history. That’s why movements to glorify, elevate, and honor a particular conception of American identity based on a particular conception of the American creed necessarily marginalize equally or more historically plausible conceptions and therefore tend to suggest that citizens who favor those conceptions are less or even un-American. It seems pretty clear to me that this is exactly how the conservative politics of American identity works.

…I guess I don’t think it’s entirely preposterous for Americans to see themselves as a people. But any conception of the American creed sufficiently general to encompass most widespread American conceptions of individual freedom, equality, tolerance and so on is going to be so general that it will do very little to distinguish American identity from, say, Canadian identity. And that’s clearly not what Glenn Beck or the staff of National Review have in mind when they talk about American values, promote a conception of American identity, or encourage Americans to see themselves as a people…

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals. Birther and Muslim Obama memes crudely reify the logical upshot of the right’s fixation on its favored version of American identity. Most conservatives don’t need to believe that Obama is literally an un-American non-Christian. They’re just content to nod along with Glenn Beck when he implies, or outright asserts, that a guy who adheres to a mundane version of liberal politics slightly to the right of the typical “This American Life” fan is hell-bent on destroying the special Americaness of America.

(source)

Homo State by Cary Leibowitz, 1989

These sports pennants by American artist Cary Leibowitz, also known as Candyass, exemplify an element of his work that has been described perfectly as “queer political sloganeering becomes camp faggotry.”

[via:androphilia]

US citizen Emily Henochowicz was shot directly in the face with a tear gas canister as she non-violently demonstrated against the Flotilla massacre

American activist loses eye after being shot in face with tear gas canister

31 May 2010: An American solidarity activist was shot in the face with a tear gas canister during a demonstration in Qalandiya, today. Emily Henochowicz is currently in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem undergoing surgery to remove her left eye, following the demonstration that was held in protest to Israel’s murder of at least 10 civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters this morning.

21-year old Emily Henochowicz was hit in the face with a tear gas projectile fired directly at her by an Israeli soldier during the demonstration at Qalandiya checkpoint today. Israeli occupation forces fired volleys of tear gas at unarmed Palestinian and international protesters, causing mass panic amongst the demonstrators and those queuing at the largest checkpoint separating the West Bank and Israel.

“They clearly saw us,” said Sören Johanssen, a Swedish ISM volunteer standing with Henochowicz. “They clearly saw that we were internationals and it really looked as though they were trying to hit us. They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face.”

Henochowicz is an art student at the prestigious Cooper Union, located in East Village, Manhattan.

The demonstration was one of many that took place across the West Bank today in outrage over the Israeli military’s attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla and blatant violation of international law. Demonstrations also took place in inside Israel, Gaza and Jerusalem, with clashes occurring in East Jerusalem and Palestinian shopkeepers in the occupied Old City closing their businesses for the day in protest.

Henochowicz lost her left eye after being shot directly in the face with a tear gas canister

Tear gas canisters are commonly used against demonstrators in the occupied West Bank. In May 2009, the Israeli State Attorney’s Office ordered Israeli Police to review its guidelines for dispersing demonstrators, following the death of a demonstrator, Bassem Abu Rahmah from Bil’in village, caused by a high velocity tear-gas projectile. Tear-gas canisters are meant to be used as a means of crowd dispersal, to be shot indirectly at demonstrators and from a distance. However, Israeli forces frequently shoot canisters directly at protesters and are not bound by a particular distance from which they can shoot.

Israeli occupation forces boarded the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships on the Freedom Flotilla at 5 a.m. this morning, opening fire on the hundreds of unarmed civilians aboard. No-one aboard the ships were carrying weapons of any kind, including for defense against a feared Israeli attack in international waters. At least 9 aid workers aboard the ship have been confirmed dead, with dozens more injured. The assault took place 70 miles off the Gaza coast in international waters, after the flotilla was surrounded by three Israeli warships. The Freedom Flotilla, carrying 700 human rights activists from over 40 countries and 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid, was headed for the besieged and impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli blockade on Gaza, combined with the illegal buffer zone, has put a stranglehold on the territory. 42% of Gazans are unemployed, and food insecurity hovers around 60% according to figures from the Palestine Centre for Human Rights.

[via:peoplesmovement:palsolidarity.org]

We can hardly wait for the World Cup Finals to begin ourselves, but the hold us over, Vanity Fair and photographer Annie Leibovitz have done the world a great favor by shooting and making the above behind the scenes video of some of the football/soccer’s biggest stars, including Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o, Brazil’s Kaká, Germany’s Michael Ballack, and American Landon Donovan, who will be featured in the magazine’s June issue. [source]

Photography by Annie Leibovitz

[Thanks Candace B. for the share!]

by Daniel WK Lee

More than just SB1070 appears to be making Arizona much more “Am-aryan.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the states Department of Education is “imposing arbitrary fluency standards” on teachers, and those whose spoken English is deemed to be “heavily accented or ungrammatical” are to be “removed from classes for students still learning English.” Indeed, teachers who speak grammatically incorrectly don’t quite have the linguistic authority to teach English; however, as one school principal in Arizona noted, “they should not be punished for having an accent.” With that logic, we should replace all English teachers in the South who inflict their regional accents onto helpless children who could learn standard American, Yankee pronunciation.

Moreover, HB2281, a new bill passed yesterday in the state legislature, makes “illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity ‘instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.’ It also would ban classes that ‘promote resentment toward a race or class of people.’”

ThinkProgress reports:

One state lawmaker tried to show how ridiculous the legislation is by proposing that schools be barred from teaching about 9/11 because it would result in hatred toward Arab-Americans; the measure failed.

Arizona is in a panic. Anti-immigration sentiment has bolstered the fiction of a homogeneous American identity which it is now being imposed upon its residents (Hey teabaggers, how that’s that for a state overreaching its powers?). The conservative forces behind all of this new legislation and rules want to stamp out differences because by imposing an identity that they shape and control, they maintain cultural, political and social hegemony over the “hyphenated Americans”—as Texas state representative Debbie Riddle calls them/us. As I had written in my open letter to Representative Riddle, “A lot is at stake with an American identity, and it changes and negotiates citizenry in varying degrees alongside matters of race, sexuality, white supremacy, xenophobia, political power, and many more narratives too long to list.”

Another such narratives is a work of fiction: this one that goes, “Mexicans crossing the US border are stealing US jobs.” I am pretty sure this narrative has a strong valence in Arizona, but I’m also thinking the jobs these undocumented workers are doing are dangerous, thankless, brutally laborious ones that one would be hard pressed to find a legal citizen so quickly and willing to take such jobs or doing.

So what really is this supposed crisis these undocumented people are escalating? Governor Brewer howls, but about what exactly? In fact, she, state senator Russell Pearce, and others like them are really looking for the right scapegoats to deflect from the years of poor economic and labor policy and lackluster regulation that has systemically contributed to the state’s current standing. This kind of racialized scapegoating is Hitlerian, easily substituting the brown masses for the Jewish ones.

And like Hitler, the state is clinging to the idea of a pure identity—this one American—which must expel the alien element from its borders and society. This is a dangerous path, and President Obama is right to denounce it. Likewise, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg succinctly described the actions of Arizona as a “national suicide.” Let’s just hope that no one has to die for Arizona to realize how wrong it is. 

Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball

Talking on introducing a Arizona-like bill. Ppl srsly. Stop this nonsense. Everyone here is a son or daughter of an immigrant.

(via iwasjustsayin)

Dear State Rep. Riddle,

Only a white woman who hasn’t understood, read, or witnessed the death of American assimilationism by the salient critiques of multiculturalism has made on a singular, monolithic, “American” identity over the decades. Only a white person with no comprehension of the social and cultural violence and self-contempt that assimilation has leveled onto “hyphenated Americans” subjects, could be “sick” of it as a matter of public policy. Ms. Riddle, you don’t seem to understand that their is s power dynamic over who gets to be either an American or not—one that privileges you and your pale ilk. It is *not* simply a declaration to oneself that “I’m an American” as though we live in social and political vacuum. What really defines an American anyway? In the rhetorical sense that you just proposed, it isn’t simply a question of legal citizenship. It is much more nuanced an negotiated. How do you know that an “illegal immigrant” isn’t as American as the next?

Wen Ho Lee. Was he American enough for America? Not hardly, though he certainly wasn’t an “illegal.” Just because I have naturalization papers doesn’t make me an American either. One, because I don’t choose to identify as such (though my citizenship papers may say differently despite the fact that I don’t have all same rights you have because I’m a queer) and 2, such American-ness has temporal limits to those in power - just like Michelle Kwan, who in losing to Sasha Cohen so many years ago in the Winter Olympics, a newspaper wrote a headline for the news that read something along the lines of, “An American beats Kwan,” as though Kwan wasn’t an American herself.

So you see, State Rep. Riddle, the narratives of identity aren’t as simple as you think they are, or as simple as you have experienced them. You fail to acknowledge the privileges of your race, class, sexual identity, etc. that makes you so confident and audacious as to expect the same simplified understanding of “being an American” that you have.

This isn’t a matter of “political correctness.” I know you wish it were because then the trouble is just a matter of nomenclature. But it isn’t. A lot is at stake with an American identity, and it changes and negotiates citizenry in varying degrees alongside matters of race, sexuality, white supremacy, xenophobia, political power, and many more narratives too long to list.

It’s a wonder why you are so tired when being an American probably wasn’t even that hard for you.

-Daniel WK Lee, founder/editor of daniel extra