zuky:

life:

Forty-five years after American troops murdered men, women and children in a village in Vietnam, LIFE.com bears witness to the horror by republishing the story of My Lai as it ran in LIFE 20 months later

(Ronald L. Haeberle — Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The My Lai Massacre is an iconic 20th century event which reflects the USA’s attitude toward Asia and Asian people. On March 16, 1968, roughly 500 unarmed civilians in the Vietnamese village of Son My — mostly women, children, babies, and the elderly — were massacred by US troops. Many of the women were raped and some were gang-raped before being mutilated and dumped in ditches. Three US soldiers attempted to halt the massacre and were denounced in US Congress as traitors.

In my opinion, part of the contempt we see toward Asians from some US Americans (including from some other people of color who are supposedly anti-racist) is a manifestation of this political history, which also includes: (1) the invasion and colonization of the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa; (2) the internment of Japanese Americans; (3) dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; (4) the invasion and partition of Korea and the establishment of a permanent military base; (5) the destruction of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

historicity-reblogs:historicity-was-already-taken:gnimaerd:

This weekend I was schmoozing at an event when some guy asked me what kind of history I study. I said “I’m currently researching the role of gender in Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich,” and he replied “oh you just threw gender in there for fun, huh?” and shot me what he clearly thought to be a charming smile.

The reality is that most of our understandings of history revolve around what men were doing. But by paying attention to the other half of humanity our understanding of history can be radically altered.

For example, with Jewish emigration out of the Third Reich it is just kind of assumed that it was a decision made by a man, and the rest of his family just followed him out of danger. But that is completely inaccurate. Women, constrained to the private social sphere to varying extents, were the first to notice the rise in social anti-Semitism in the beginning of Hitler’s rule. They were the ones to notice their friends pulling away and their social networks coming apart. They were the first to sense the danger.

German Jewish men tended to work in industries which were historically heavily Jewish, thus keeping them from directly experiencing this “social death.” These women would warn their husbands and urge them to begin the emigration process, and often their husbands would overlook or undervalue their concerns (“you’re just being hysterical” etc). After the Nuremberg Laws were passed, and after even more so after Kristallnacht, it fell to women to free their husbands from concentration camps, to run businesses, and to wade through the emigration process.

The fact that the Nazis initially focused their efforts on Jewish men meant that it fell to Jewish women to take charge of the family and plan their escape. In one case, a woman had her husband freed from a camp (to do so, she had to present emigration papers which were not easy to procure), and casually informed him that she had arranged their transport to Shanghai. Her husband—so traumatized from the camp—made no argument. Just by looking at what women were doing, our understanding of this era of Jewish history is changed.

I have read an article arguing that the Renaissance only existed for men, and that women did not undergo this cultural change. The writings of female loyalists in the American Revolutionary period add much needed nuance to our understanding of this period. The character of Jewish liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century is a direct result of the education and socialization of Jewish women. I can give you more examples, but I think you get the point.

So, you wanna understand history? Then you gotta remember the ladies (and not just the privileged ones).

ask historicity-was-already-taken a question

Yup - and our understanding of the holocaust itself is hugely effected by gender. Why? because the VAST majority of holocaust survivors were men. Women were several times more likely to die in the camps than men were, because they were not considered as useful for slave labour so were much less likely to be kept alive. Thus most of our direct, eye-witness accounts of what the holocaust actually WAS come from a very specific demographic: Jewish men aged 16-40, the demographic the Nazis were most likely to use in their labour camps instead of gassing. The vast majority of those outside of this demographic became what Primo Levi, a survivor, dubbed ‘the drowned’ - people whose experiences are rendered totally inaccessible because they died in numbers so vast that we don’t even have individually marked graves for them.

Those women who did survive were also less likely to be listened to, less likely to have access to a method by which to record and broadcast their experiences, since those who studied the holocaust in its immediate aftermath were also almost all male academics operating under particular biases. 

(via monkeyknifefright)

Flawless discourse.

(Source: yencid)

fuckyeahfeminists:

There’s been a lot of chatter about the movie Django and how it touches upon slavery and the resistance to it..Lots of debates have sparked off talking about what’s accurate, what’s fantasy etc etc.. I say use this excitement around Django and the hype machine that director Quentin Tarantino has around him to turn folks onto other projects they may have overlooked, forgotten about or not seen at all..It doesn’t have to be an either or thing.. See ‘m all.. Contrast, compare and build..

- Hip Hop and Politics

Check out the list at: http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/4-movies-you-should-see-know-about-before-you-see-django-that-deal-w-rebellion/

invisiblelad:

cannelledusoleil:

auauk:

Japanese-American Internment (the result of Executive Order 9066.)

Never forget.

Perpetual reblogging. As if on cue, a very good example of institutional discrimination. 

collective-history:

Empress Nam Phương (14 December 1914 – 16 December 1963), born Marie-Thérèse Nguyễn Hữu Thị Lan, later Imperial Princess Nam Phương, was the first and primary wife of Bảo Đại, the last emperor of Vietnam, from 1934 until her death. She also was the first and only empress consort (hoàng hậu) of the Nguyễn Dynasty.

moniquill:

Deconstructing the Myths of “The First Thanksgiving”

by Judy Dow (Abenaki) and Beverly Slapin
Revised 06/12/06

What is it about the story of “The First Thanksgiving” that makes it essential to be taught in virtually every grade from preschool through high school? What is it…

mypubliclands:

November is Native American Heritage Month. And this photo comes from Table Rocks in the Rogue River Valley where people are estimated to have lived for at least 15,000 years.

The Takelma Indians (pronounced “Dagelma”) lived along the middle and upper Rogue River, including the Table Rocks area.

To learn more about those who lived here thousands of years ago, check out more of their story online at: http://on.doi.gov/YKxRfN

deafmuslimpunx:

thewhitemankilledthetruth:

As soon as Bridges got into the school, white parents went in and brought their own children out; all teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. They hired Barbara Henry, from Boston,Massachusetts, to teach Bridges, and for over a year Mrs. Henry taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.” That first day, Bridges and her adult companions spent the entire day in the principal’s office; the chaos of the school prevented their moving to the classroom until the second day. Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her;^[7]because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, only allowed Ruby to eat food that she brought from home. Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” At her mother’s suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.^[8]

Child psychiatrist Robert Coles volunteered to provide counseling to Bridges during her first year at Frantz. He met with her weekly in the Bridges home, later writing a children’s book,The Story of Ruby Bridges, to acquaint other children with Bridges’ story.

The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job, and her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land. She has noted that many others in the community both black and white showed support in a variety of ways. Some white families continued to send their children to Frantz despite the protests, a neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat, watched the house as protectors, and walked behind the federal marshals’ car on the trips to school.^[5][9]

Honestly, never once when I was in school did anyone ever talk about what happened to Ruby after that first day, how horrible her experience was and how horrible people were too her. 

I hope all of them suffered greatly at their deaths. 

They threatened a little girl. A LITTLE GIRL. They threatened to POISON her.

(Source: youngbadmangone)

auntada:

As a young slave girl, Susie King Taylor secretly learned to read and write. Her skills proved invaluable to the Union Army as they began to form regiments of African American soldiers. Hired by the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers as a laundress in 1862, her primary roles were to nurse to wounded soldiers and to teach those who could not read or write. Taylor served for more than three years, working alongside her husband, Edward King, a sergeant in the regiment.

Photo: Susie King Taylor, 1902, courtesy East Carolina University

mizmlee:

spookyprincesskitten:

deafmuslimpunx:

Very interesting… there’s one part in the article which claims that many Asian Latino immigrants in USA identify as “Asian” and not as “Latino” on census surveys. What about East-Indian Latinos? Do they identify as “Asian/Pacific Islander” or “East Indian”? Sometimes, I’ve seen on surveys and census papers that seperate “East Indian” from “Asian/Pacific Islander.”

Via Wikipedia:

Asian Latin Americans are Latin Americans of East Asian, Southeast Asian or South Asian descent. Asian Latin Americans have a centuries-long history in the region, starting with Filipinos in the 16th century. The heyday of Asian immigration occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries, however. There are currently more than four million Asian Latin Americans, nearly 1% of Latin America’s population. Chinese and Japanese are the group’s largest ancestries; other major ones include Filipinos, Koreans, and Indians. Brazilis home to the largest population of Asian Latin Americans, at some 2.1 million.^[1][5] The highest ratio of any country in the region is 5%,^[6] in Peru. There has been notable emigration from these communities in recent decades, so that there are now hundreds of thousands of people of Asian Latin American origin in both Japan and the United States.

and

The first Asian Latin Americans were Filipinos who made their way to Latin America (particularly Mexico) in the 16th century, as sailors, crews, prisoners, slaves, adventurers and soldiers during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. For two and a half centuries (between 1565 and 1815) many Filipinos sailed on the Manila-Acapulco Galleons, assisting in the Spanish Empire’s monopoly in trade. Some of these sailors never returned to the Philippines, and many of their descendants can be found in small communities around Baja California, Sonora, Mexico City, and others.

In the 19th century, thousands of Indian labourers of Tamil descent from the Indian French colonial settlements of Madras, Pondichéry, Chandernagor and Karikal were brought to French Guiana, Guadeloupe & Martinique to work in plantations.

Most Chinese-Latin Americans descended from the Coolie slave trade, and most are found in the Caribbean, especially in Cuba and Peru. They are also closely related to Afro-Asian people in Latin America.

Most Asians, however, arrived in the 19th and 20th century as contract workers or economic migrants. Today, the overwhelming majority of Asian Latin Americans are of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent. Japanese migration mostly came to a halt after World War II (with the exception of Japanese settlement in the Dominican Republic), while Korean migration mostly came to an end by the 1980s (though it still continues in Guatemala) and Chinese migration remains ongoing in a number of countries.

Settlement of war refugees has been extremely minor: a few dozen ex-North Korean soldiers went to Argentina and Chile after the Korean War,^[7][8] and some Hmong went to French Guiana after the Vietnam War.^[9]

check out the statistics for Indians in Latin America (PDF).

Asian Latinos are like the coolest thing ‘cause no one knows they exist!! But there are so many Asian folks in South American countries and in America!

One of my Mexican friends who lived in Mexico for a time told me she was pretty close friends with a Chinese girl born and raised in Mexico, fluent in Spanish and identified with the Mexican culture. Apparently, there are huge communities of Asians in central and South America. :D