REPOST: Lost In ‘Space’: A Look At Citibank’s Racebending New Ad Campaign


By Guest Contributor Jonathan Vogeler

This summer, Citibank began running an advertising campaign that features three young men embarking on a project, financed by the bank, to photograph Earth from space, using a weather balloon and off-the-shelf equipment. The advertisement taps several currents of our national mythology – independence, ingenuity, discovery, and superiority in space (which is itself an extension of our glorification of colonial conquest).

This is not an entirely fictional story. Two years ago, Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, two Asian-American MIT students, made international headlines when they used inexpensive, readily available materials to photograph near-space orbit on a $150 budget. They describe their project here, and received national media coverage.

There is a remarkable visual similarity between the Citibank ad storyboard and the real-life project documented by Lee and Yeh on their blog. But there are a few key differences.

As you can see in the commercial above, the most obvious discrepancy is that Lee and Yeh have been replaced by two young white men and a third who appears to be African-American. Within this group there is also a clear racial dynamic: the white men initiate and execute the project, while their friend drives the vehicle and points appreciatively at their success.

America has a long history of mis-attributing credit to white men. But the specific erasure of Asian-American men is indicative of deep cultural paranoia toward the challenge that Asian-American success poses to white hegemony. If the ad were to feature the real-life heroes of this story, many white Americans may read it, not as a feat of American ingenuity, but a dangerous manifestation of their loss of power. This fear is evidenced both internationally, in apprehension toward the rising economies of Asia, and domestically, as resentment of Asian-American students at elite universities. The narrative of enterprising white men achieving success (with an assist from a person of color) is less threatening, because it reinforces the identity that white American men like to imagine for themselves.

A second, less-apparent difference between the commercial and the real story is the source of funding. Citibank positions itself in the commercial as a benevolent patron of small-scale innovation. You may have the idea, the ad says, but the big banks make it feasible. Therefore, white people have an interest in allying themselves with big banks, in the same way that Citibank is tacitly allying itself with the cultural demands of whiteness.

One of the most inspiring aspects of this story, however, is that Lee and Yeh were able to compete with NASA on a budget of only $150. They did not need a bank loan; their seed money was a $200 donation. As they describe it, the specific barrier that they faced was a lack of access to resources. They simply could not afford the expensive equipment that would be needed for near-space photography (and presumably no bank would have lended them the money). Their accomplishment was not only an expansion of scientific knowledge, but the pioneering of a technique that allowed them and others who imitate them to overcome the financial obstacles that restrict scientific access.

The story of ordinary people achieving their goals by tapping small donations and economizing is just as threatening to banks as Asian space-flight is to many white Americans. So this inspiring all-American tale of hard work and ingenuity is rewritten as an alliance between white hegemony and the banking system. Sadly, this the only version of the story that most Americans will ever hear.

Excerpt: The Stranger On White Privilege In Seattle



White people in Seattle are more likely to own rather than rent. White people are more likely to have health insurance and a job. White people are more likely to live longer. White people are less likely to be homeless. White people are less likely to hit the poverty level. White people are less likely to be in jail. White kids are nine times less likely than African Americans to be suspended from elementary school (in high school, it’s four times higher; in middle school, it’s five times, according to the district’s data). Nonwhite high-school graduation rates in Seattle are significantly below white graduation rates—even if you’re Asian, regardless of income level.

And then there’s the white Seattle police officer beating “the Mexican piss” out of a guy. The white Seattle police officer punching a 17-year-old African American girl in the face. The Seattle Police Guild newspaper editorial that called race-and-social-justice training classes “the enemy,” “socialist,” and anti-American.

Not that racial experience is monolithic. It’s not black and white. But it’s real. And across all measurable strata, white people in Seattle have it better.

Yet nobody is racist.

The 2010 US Census data led to reports of Seattle being the fifth whitest city in the country—reinforcing the perception of this place as a white place. But if you look at the actual numbers, 66 percent of people in Seattle identify as white, which means that one in three people are not white. That’s not a white city. It only seems like a white city when you’re in, say, Ballard or Wallingford or Fremont. If you walk the street expecting every third person you see not to be white, well, then you’ll see how weird it is to be in Ballard or Wallingford or Fremont, where almost everyone is white. If you walk the street in Rainier Valley, the opposite is true.

“In Seattle, there’s really a small amount that you have to do to be labeled a hero of diversity,” says Eddie Moore Jr., the Bush School’s outgoing director of diversity, who describes Seattle as “a segregated pattern of existence.”

He adds, “It’s just that there’s really no real challenge to how the structure in Seattle continues to assist whiteness and white male dominance in particular. When you say ‘white supremacy’ or ‘white privilege’ in Seattle, people still think you’re talking about the Klan. There’s really no skills being developed to shift the conversation. How can we be acknowledged to be so progressive, yet be identified to be so white? I wish that’s the question more Seattleites were asking themselves.”
- From “Deeply Embarrassed White People Talk Awkwardly About Race,” by Jen Graves

WHO'S NEXT: Who Will Be Troy Davis?


By Guest Contributor Michael P. Jeffries

Just two weeks ago, the live audience at the Republican presidential candidate debate cheered in gleeful support of the death penalty. At the time, sensible Americans, secure in their own polite disapproval, bookmarked the incident as another harrowing YouTube amusement, and returned to normalcy the next day. The climate has changed, and there will be no such return to normalcy after Troy Davis’s death. We cannot make up for the blood spilled while the death penalty languished as mere speck on our political radar, but we can and will work to eradicate it.

Desperate for redemption in this dark hour, we have to believe that history will reveal the Davis execution as the spark that eventually incinerated the death penalty in the United States. I worry, though, that the worthy goal of eradicating capital punishment, even if achieved, will distort and erase the tormenting racial subtext of this incident. The very possibility of even characterizing the racial meaning baked into this case as “subtext,” speaks to the suppression of the truth about racism in the United States.

It is a testament to the depth of human empathy and faith that violence did not erupt between the largely black group of protestors and law enforcement, given the number of police officers who have attacked and murdered black people without being punished. The government has repeatedly confirmed that the lives of Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and countless others are not as valuable as that of fellow innocent, Mark McPhail. If there is any reason to be prideful or thankful after Thursday, it is that that Americans burning with anger and despair embodied the civility their government was so woefully unable to reflect. Law enforcement officers at the scene should be commended for their professionalism as well.

Race also inflects the “I am Troy Davis” and “too much doubt” mantras that emerged over the past week. On one hand, the phrases are a simple display of solidarity, invoked by people of all backgrounds who view the execution as a personal affront and miscarriage of justice. For many who claim them, the words do not reflect absolute conviction that Davis is completely innocent, only that he did not deserve to die in this manner. No murder weapon was ever found. No DNA evidence exists. Police misconduct made a mockery of the suspect identification process. Seven of the nine witnesses recanted their testimonies. None of this was enough to spare Davis’s life, let alone reopen the case.

On the other hand, for black and brown people, the phrase, “I am Troy Davis” takes on a different significance. It shouts the truth that nobody is safe from a punishment system that cannot tell one working class or impoverished black or Latino person from the next. As Marc Mauer reports, “1 of every 3 African American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can 1 of every 6 Latino males, compared to 1 in 17 White males.” The stereotypes of the inner-city “thug” and the “illegal alien” pervade popular discourse on crime and race relations. Every subject who meets the race/class criteria is presumed guilty, by definition, of cultural pathology and criminality.

The punishment complex simply formalizes the social and cultural guilt poor blacks and Latinos are already marked with, using the ‘criminal’ stain to draw the eye away from centuries of institutional racism, exploitation, and discrimination. “I am Troy Davis” is nothing if not an expression of deep fear and justified paranoia. Imprisonment is warranted for those who pose a danger to society. But too often, all it takes for a black or brown person without privilege to be locked up without recourse is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if his execution does not come gradually, through the ills of denied civil rights, underemployment, shoddy health care, and decrepit schooling and social services, the punishment complex will intervene to hasten his social and biological death.

The coming days are for reflection, self-evaluation, and action. The pace of the journey away from capital punishment can and must be quickened. But as we stumble away from our current lot, with our eyes on a horizon free of the death penalty, we must be careful not to ignore the ground on which we walk. It is filthy, littered with racial injustice and exploitation, and the dust and grime we kick up sticks to us as we try to move on. Let us leave this place behind, and leave it clean.

Image courtesy of Friends of Justice

Building Solidarity and Dealing with Racism


By Guest Contributor Mike Miller, cross-posted from Classism Exposed

In 1971, when I was “lead organizer” for what became the All Peoples’ Coalition (APC), I learned a different approach to dealing with some racism I encountered among working-class whites.

APC was a federation of some thirty organizations (churches, block clubs, the neighborhood shopping strip’s merchant association, tenant associations, and other groups in Visitacion Valley, a small neighborhood of about 20,000 people in the Southeast corner of San Francisco.

“Vis Valley” included a number of sub-neighborhoods, including Little Hollywood, Geneva Towers, Geneva Terrace and Sunnydale Housing Project (where I grew up).

Its people ranged from low-to-moderate, and a few middle, income. It was ethnically and racially quite diverse. In San Francisco poverty and race politics, it was largely ignored. While racially “integrated,” there was also substantial racial tension in the neighborhood, particularly between the working class and lower middle-class “white ethnics” (Irish, Italian and Maltese) and the African-Americans.

In my “organizing plan” for building what became APC, I had Sunnydale groups I was hoping to recruit to membership, and the Visitacion Valley Improvement Association (VVIA) largely made up of white ethnic homeowners.

VVIA wanted to talk with the Sunset Scavenger Company, one of San Francisco’s two garbage companies. The company refused to meet.

A major obstacle to Visitation Valley Improvement Association (VVIA) joining the newly forming community organization was its President, Joe Brajkovich. It was from him that I learned what VVIA wanted from Sunset Scavenger Company: a dollar a year lease use of a small lot it owned so that it could be used as a “postage stamp” park in Little Hollywood, and a better way to cover its trucks so that debris wouldn’t fly from them as they passed through Little Hollywood on the way to the City Dump. In the days before “packers,” garbage was piled in an empty bin on the back of the garbage truck that went from house to house picking up its load. When the truck was filled, a big canvass was spread over the top of the load and tied down on the sides of the truck; things would fly out from underneath the canvass littering the truck’s route. Every truck that went anyplace in San Francisco passed through Little Hollywood on its way to the dump.

Joe Brajkovich, President of VVIA, was the 1972 George Wallace-for-President Campaign Coordinator for San Francisco. Wallace was the racist former Governor of Alabama who spewed a mix of populism and racism. His success with white working- and lower-middle-class voters sent a chill down the back of mainline Democratic Party activists; he was a warning of what became the “Reagan Democrats” phenomenon in 1980. Whenever I talked with Brakovich about becoming part of the organizing committee that created APC, he unleashed vitriol about Sunnydale Housing Project, Geneva Towers, blacks, welfare recipients, and how they were all subsidized by working people like himself and his neighbors who had made it in America by pulling up their own bootstraps. When we met, he would rant and rave about “them” getting everything.

I just listened. I listened to what pained and angered him, and what he hoped to accomplish for his members. He was pained by the fact that the neighborhood was going downhill (which, in fact, it was if you looked at things like housing deterioration, city services, and other “standard” indicators); that the Sunset Scavengers ignored his requests to meet; etc. He wanted to deliver for his people.

He was angry that he couldn’t get “city hall” (or the scavenger company) to meet with VVIA and deal with it on these issues. He was most angered by the fact that the neighborhood had a “broker,” a man named Henry Schindel who owned lots of property in Vis Valley, who set himself up between “downtown” and the neighborhood and dispatched favors here and there to keep himself in that “broker” position.

I kept bringing our conversations back to this point: Brajkovich wasn’t getting respect for VVIA and he didn’t have the power to do anything about it. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. But I did have an idea how he might get what he wanted: by joining with “those people” he didn’t want to join with. Whenever he gave me his litany about “them,” I asked him whether what he was doing now was working. I did that for about three months. Meanwhile, a number of groups in the neighborhood were in the process of becoming part of the organizing committee that was putting together the founding convention of what came to be All Peoples Coalition (APC). If he wanted his issues to be part of the convention’s resolutions, his people to be among the officers, and a voice in the adoption of a constitution and by-laws for the organization, then he would have to join.

Here’s the picture I painted: As a member organization of All People’s Coalition (APC), VVIA would be able to bring its issues to the federation. With support from Black and white residents who lived throughout Visitacion Valley, VVIA would be able to negotiate with Sunset Scavenger on both littering and the empty lot. Brajkovich finally recommended to the VVIA membership that it join APC. And he didn’t propose a constitutional amendment excluding Sunnydale and the Geneva Towers.

In fact, with APC support, an agreement was reached with the Sunset Scavengers on both littering and the postage stamp park. Ron Morton, President of APC, was part of the negotiating committee. He was an African-American locksmith whose shop was on Leland Street, Visitacion Valley’s neighborhood commercial strip. Other African-Americans who lived in the Federally subsidized Geneva Towers participated in some of the direct action events that pressured the Scavengers to finally meet; so did some people from Sunnydale.

In the brief period preceding the following story, APC had undertaken campaigns for improved neighborhood traffic controls, recreation facilities, job opportunities and public housing. In the Mayor’s revenue sharing hearings, APC demonstrated itself to be the “voice of the neighborhood.”

About a year later, the tenants in Geneva Towers, with APC organizing staff assistance, developed the Geneva Towers Tenants Association (GTTA) and joined APC. By that time probably 80% or more African-American in its make-up, the 500+ units high-rise Towers stood out in more ways than one in a neighborhood that was primarily single-family homes and duplexes. (Years later, the Department of Housing and Urban Development paid to literally blow the high-rise Towers up and replace them with townhouse subsidized units.) GTTA wanted the Towers management company to meet with it and negotiate a series of improvements and services in their two buildings. After showing up for a first meeting, the management refused to further discuss things with its tenants. Direct action by the tenant association followed .

Eddie Wafford, a retired Teamster Business Agent living in Visitacion Valley, showed up on a Saturday morning to ride a rented bus to the Towers owner’s home in nearby fancy Marin County. Eddie shared the anti-Black prejudices of his fellow Irishmen in the neighborhood. But he was a member of the Visitacion Valley Improvement Association (VVIA), attended APC’s founding convention and participated in some of the action that led to the agreement with Sunset Scavenger Company.

By that time I’d gotten to know him pretty well. Given what I knew about his feelings toward blacks, I was a bit surprised to see him, and said so when I first saw him that morning. On the way home from the picketing, he and I had this conversation:

Mike (M): I was a little surprised to see you here today, Eddie.
Eddie (E): Why’s that, Mike?
M: Well, you know, you told me a while back you didn’t have much use for Black people, particularly those living in the Towers.
E: Aw, that was before I got to know them and they showed up for me and Little Hollywood. This is the least I could do.
M: So how do you feel about the Towers people now?
E: There’s some real nice people here, Mike.
M: Whose interests do you think were served by the way you used to think about the Black people here?
E: What do you mean?
M: You think about it, and we’ll talk a little more later.

When we talked about it later, Eddie understood that “downtown,” the Sunset Scavengers and Henry Schindel, the old-style neighborhood political “broker,” were the people who benefited from his prejudices against his black neighbors.

I’d learned this approach to dealing with race from an old union organizer, who told a similar story about how he’d bring Appalachian whites into the United Mine Workers Union-which organized on an integrated basis.

The racist President of VVIA may have never changed his mind about “them” or “those people.” But some of “his people” did, Eddie Wafford included. Equally important, they concluded their interests were better met in relationship with people they hadn’t wanted to work or associate with in the past. I wouldn’t have gotten to talk with the VVIA people if I had “led with race”–telling Joe Brajkovich that he and his members were wrong about their racism, were “privileged whites” or whatever. The door would quickly have been shut or the phone hung up when I called.

My conclusions:

  1. Draw the “boundary lines” (industrial union, multi-racial/ethnic turf or multi-racial/ethnic organization which chapters join) so that people come into relationships with “The Other.”
  2. Look for circumstances of cognitive dissonance–when people’s experiences don’t fit the stereotypes they came to the experience with.
  3. Use self-interest issues-either of the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” or bigger ones of the none of us can handle it alone variety-to create opportunities for new relationships that cut across historic lines of division.
  4. Place those self-interest issues in a larger framework of justice, fairness and democracy values.
  5. Those circumstances, interests, values and relationships create teachable moments-opportunities when an organizer or educator really can get people to change their minds.

My observation is that, contrary to what most sociologists and “leading with race” organizers say, working class peoples’ prejudices can quickly disappear or at least be put on “the back burner” when the circumstances are right and the conversation provides a new way to frame reality.

Quotable: President Obama at the Congressional Black Caucus


Throughout our history, change has often come slowly. Progress often takes time. We take a step forward, sometimes we take two steps back. Sometimes we get two steps forward and one step back. But it’s never a straight line.  It’s never easy. And I never promised easy.  Easy has never been promised to us. But we’ve had faith. We have had faith. We’ve had that good kind of crazy that says, you can’t stop marching. 

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop. Even when somebody fires you for speaking out, you can’t stop. Even when it looks like there’s no way, you find a way — you can’t stop. Through the mud and the muck and the driving rain, we don’t stop. Because we know the rightness of our cause — widening the circle of opportunity, standing up for everybody’s opportunities, increasing each other’s prosperity. We know our cause is just. It’s a righteous cause.

So in the face of troopers and teargas, folks stood unafraid. Led somebody like John Lewis to wake up after getting beaten within an inch of his life on Sunday — he wakes up on Monday: We’re going to go march. 

Dr. King once said: “Before we reach the majestic shores of the Promised Land, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead. We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resistance.  But with patient and firm determination we will press on.” 

So I don’t know about you, CBC, but the future rewards those who press on. With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs.  (Applause.)  I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children.  (Applause.)  I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.  (Applause.)

I expect all of you to march with me and press on.  (Applause.)  Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.
- Image and transcript courtesy of BET