Showing posts with label Flight from White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flight from White. Show all posts

May 12, 2013

The Greg Packer of Gay Marriage

The national news media appears to be turning into a giant conspiracy to feed me material. Yesterday, in "Flight from White -- American Indian Version," I noted the New York Times' breathless article about an academic who has made a career for himself as an American Indian despite being a redheaded white guy. Tonight, in the Washington Post:
The Post's caption: 
"Heather Purser (right) and her girlfriend, Rebecca Platter, are shown near their home in Olympia, Washington, on May 7, 2103. Purser, a member of the Suquamish Tribe, got her tribal council to to vote in favor of gay marriage."

Okay, which of these two white women, the brunette or the blonde, is the American Indian? My first guess was the brunette, but it turns out to be the blonde.

By the way, Washington Post, is Princess Fauxcohontas's t-shirt racist? 

The blonde's t-shirt appears to be racially stereotyping the residents of Motown (83% black) as prone to gun violence. Are blondes really allowed to do that in the Washington Post? Or is it okay because this blonde's not white?

That raises the metaphysical question: Can a blonde lesbian who claims to be an American Indian be racist against blacks? I look forward to the Washington Post's black magazine The Root debating this burning topic for several months.

Update: Okay, I've finally read the first three paragraphs in the article:
For Heather Purser, the first pang came more than a decade ago as she gathered clams on Puget Sound’s Chico Beach, watching her cousin’s new husband assist with the digging. She figured she’d never have a legal spouse to help with the backbreaking work. 
Then Purser, a member of Washington state’s Suquamish Tribe who says she knew she was gay at age 7, decided to act: She led a personal lobbying campaign that ended with her tribal council voting in 2011 to approve gay marriage. 
“I realized that I do have the power to change my situation,” said Purser, 30, a commercial seafood diver from Olympia, Wash.

Hmmhmmmhmm ... So far we have a lesbian "commercial seafood diver" who is into clams and racially insensitive t-shirts and is a blonde American Indian and has gotten the Suquamish Tribe to approve gay marriage?

Is this whole story a prank?  It sounds like it was made up by the kind of 8th grader who finds everything the teacher says hilariously dirty.

Well, if it is a prank it's more like a long running performance art project. Googling "Heather Purser" brings up a considerable number of you-go-girl profiles of her. Here's an article about her in Indian Country:
Ms. Purser in her clamdiver suit
Diver Heather Purser Pioneers Same-Sex Marriage for Suquamish
Kevin Taylor
January 18, 2012 
Earlier last month in Seattle, as all the threads for a planned Human Rights Day banquet were being woven together, Heather Purser, Suquamish, who was to be among the honored guests, was shuffling through mud and ooze. 
Under 50 feet of water. Down on the cold bottom of Puget Sound. Wrestling with giant clams.

Indeed.

Purser in New York Times, 2011
The Washington Post story is hardly Purser's first tribute in the national media Here's an ever-so-serious New York Times story from 2011 about Ms. Purser, back when she had strawberry blonde hair.

And here's her profile on NPR's All Things Considered.

Plus, there are a whole bunch of other news stories about her over the years in lesser venues.

For instance,  in Yes! Magazine:
Same-Sex Marriage Brings Healing to Me—and My Tribe 
Heather Purser set out to win gay marriage rights within the Suquamish Tribe and found herself on a personal journey toward self-acceptance.

Considering her omnipresence in the media, maybe Heather Purser is the Greg Packer of Gay Marriage?

In case you are wondering who Greg Packer is, here's Ann Coulter's 2003 column exposing the highway maintenance worker who has been quoted countless times in the MSM as the Voice of the Man on the Street. Here, for example, is a photo of Greg first in line for an iPhone at the Times Square Apple Store, ready with a media-friendly quote.

P.P.S. And what about Rebecca Platter, the non-Indian brunet in the Washington Post's romantic backlit photo above? Well, perhaps she used to be a blonde too, at least she was in this picture of a Rebecca Platter on Red Room: Where the Writers Are. That Rebecca Platter's bio says:
I am a writer who has a strong voice and a clever way with words. I make poetry with strong visual metaphors and an unexplainable emotional pull. Although I have not officially been published I know I will be at some point when the time is right. I feel strongly that the current generation needs to re-connect with their deeper thoughts as opposed to surface "shares" that have become too common. Red Room is a place where I can be surrounded by people who inspire me to continue on my journey.

According to Rebecca Platter's bio at The Seattle Lesbian:
Rebecca Platter graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in Comparative History of Ideas and a minor in Russian Literature. After studying abroad in Iceland and graduating on the Dean’s List, she backpacked throughout Europe then later moved to Costa Rica volunteering to tutor locals in English. Passionate about LGBTQ rights, Rebecca is excited to serve as a contributing writer for The Seattle Lesbian while working to transition her love of writing into a career. Rebecca is obsessed with painting multiple headed naked women, traveling anywhere she can, writing about life and wearing red lipstick whenever possible. She is currently writing a set of personal comedic memoirs. Read more.
"Multiple headed naked women"

So, this is all a Portlandia sketch come to life. (Indeed, one story says Rebecca is a barista.) We have two Northwest publicity hounds who have successfully exploited the media's gay marriage obsession. And over the course of several years of media coverage, none of these crack newshounds noticed anything amusing about the story.

By the way, even though Purser grabbed national attention for getting the Suquamish Nation to approve gay marriage in the spring of 2011, the pair still aren't married, or even engaged. The Washington Post article by Rob Hotakainen ends:
Purser is optimistic that the Supreme Court will make gay marriage the law of the land, leaving religion out of the deliberations. 
She’s still unmarried, but is living with 28-year-old Rebecca Platter, her partner of three years. 
“We’re not engaged, but I do plan on getting married — and she’s definitely the one,” Purser said. 

I'll leave you with Rebecca Platter's entire Twitter account:

Tweets

  1. Eating strawberries waiting for my face mask to dry.
  2. So cold outside! I need to clean my room. How does it get this messy?
  3. This is kinda confusing- I am trying to get part of the circle now-- you are the only person I know on here

Stop snickering! Haven't you been informed often enough that gay marriage is the most serious issue in the history of the world?

May 11, 2013

The Flight from White -- American Indian version

High school picture of
Chief Party Hearty Dude of the
Cherokee Tribe of Ulster
Here's the inspirational story of a redhead who has made an academic career for himself out of being 1/16th Native American by genes and 0/16th Native American by upbringing. From the New York Times:
Overcoming Addiction, Professor Tackles Perils American Indians Face 
By ALAN SCHWARZ 
LAWRENCE, Kan. — The visitor to Haskell Indian Nations University detailed his roaring 20s: drug addict, garbage collector, suicidal burnout once told by a doctor that he was mentally retarded. It was a curious way to inspire a group of young American Indian students long surrounded by these types of problems. Until he got to the good part. 
“I never shared this with anyone until I got my Ph.D.,” he said. 
His American name is David A. Patterson, his Cherokee name Adelv unegv Waya, or Silver Wolf. He is a tenure-track assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. His groundbreaking research on the pitfalls facing Native Americans is both informed and inspired by his own story of deliverance. 
“Mentally retarded? I wish I could find that doctor now,” Dr. Patterson said, the students transfixed. 
Dr. Patterson, 49, has devoted what he considers his second life to studying the quicksand that just about swallowed him, and that continues to imperil American Indians more than any other ethnic group. About 18 percent of American Indian or Alaska Native adults need substance-abuse treatment, almost twice the national average, according to figures from the federal government. Deaths from alcoholism, diabetes, homicide and suicide are two to six times as high among Native Americans as they are among other groups, according to various studies. 
Student and Dr. Patterson
During Dr. Patterson’s childhood in Louisville, Ky., any interest he might have had in his Cherokee roots was discouraged by his abusive father and squelched by teasing schoolmates. By 9, he had moved from beer to highballs, and at 18 he was a quaalude-favoring high school dropout. Detached and directionless, he pointed a loaded rifle at his head one afternoon in his basement before someone knocked at the door. 
It was his mother’s brother, Bill Allen. He treated David’s disconnection with some long-repressed family history. Mr. Allen recounted how his grandmother, David’s great-grandmother, was half-Cherokee, making David 1/16th Cherokee.

1/16th Cherokee!
He told him where she came from, the traditions David never enjoyed. This expanding family lineage, which to that point had essentially stopped with his Irish father, gave David a new sense of belonging. ... 
Dr. Patterson used this newfound past to conceive a future. ... Growing his hair into a Cherokee ponytail and with fresh tattoos of a wolf and three tepees, he enrolled at Spalding University and earned a degree in social work.  
He got his master’s degree and his doctorate from the University of Louisville, also in social work. He was hired by the University of Buffalo as an assistant professor studying solutions for Native American substance abuse and high dropout rates — longtime problems caused in part, Dr. Patterson’s research suggests, by the same cultural disconnection that he had felt. 

As you know, no redhead in the history of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, England, or Wales has ever battled alcoholism.

Actually, the reddish-haired peoples have a variety of traditions of semi-successful social movements to overcome alcoholism, going back to Hogarth's 1750s paintings of Gin Alley v. Beer Lane, the Irish Catholic temperance movement of the mid 1800s, Bill Wilson and Bob Smith's Alcoholics Anonymous, up through Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson's punk band Minor Threat, which launched the Straight Edge movement.

There have been similar movements among American Indians, going back to Tecumseh's brother The Prophet's demand that Indians give up firewater. But, the general lack of success among American Indians at battling demon rum is of course what makes it so much more profitable these days to be a professional American Indian helping more real American Indians to get in touch with their traditions, even though their traditions are largely ones of failure in dealing with the evolutionarily novel chemical.

In the long run, biochemical advances are the most likely way to deal with the fact that Native Americans haven't had as along to evolve to deal with the effects of alcohol, the way, say, Mediterranean peoples have. But there doesn't seem much interesting in studying that approach these days, since we all know race doesn't exist.
The Brown School, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the nation’s top schools of social work, lured him away last year.
Squinting like Clint playing a halfbreed       
“He brings to the table new strategies, new ways and new perspectives to think about,” said Pete Coser, the program manager for the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies, a division of the Brown School. “His story and experiences will be able to bring, at least, a light to those that are experiencing it now. Things that plague Indian country. How do we get over the mental monster that keeps us in that box?” ...
Dr. Patterson’s research focuses on intervention strategies for substance abusers in underserved populations, particularly American Indians. He has just finished teaching a graduate-level class on drug and alcohol abuse. 
As the first American Indian professor at the Brown School, Dr. Patterson has helped connect Indian students on campus, of whom there about 20, with their varying heritages. (Students belong to the Choctaw, Navajo and Seneca nations and a half-dozen others across the United States.) He invites them to his home to sit around a drum and teach one another Native songs. 
One evening, eight students gathered in a downpour with Dr. Patterson outside the Brown building for a traditional spiritual cleansing ceremony. A student lighted some blades of sweet grass and gently waved the smoke on each student with an eagle feather. The smoke rose into the dripping trees as a student led the prayer: “We ask our creator to help us stay on track,” he said, “and take this education, this training, kinship, all of this back home.” 
Lindsay Belone, a Navajo from Twin Lakes, N.M., is working on her master’s degree with Dr. Patterson. “He’s brought to the classroom a lot of American Indian spirituality and social justice issues — honoring mother earth and our ancestors,” she said. “He’s definitely a leader in Indian country who I can look up to. If you want to be a professor, that can happen.” 
Dr. Patterson will return to Buffalo this summer to participate in ceremonies among the Six Nations of the Iroquois and speak with students about Indian challenges. He also plans to visit other American Indian communities across the nation to share his story, much as he did last fall at Haskell, the only accredited university devoted to serving various Indian tribes. 
Haskell’s history makes it as much shrine as school: a century ago, young Indians whose tribes’ land had been seized by the United States were sent there to become Christians, cut their hair and shed their traditional customs and tongues. Students who did not comply could be beaten or chained to walls in what is now Kiva Hall. Many died there from such abuse. 

The Stolen Generations -- which is totally different from the oncoming Borrowed Generations of government-provided infant care and preschool and after school programs and that public boarding school in D.C. for poor kids.
Today, about 1,000 students use some of the same buildings to become one of the rare members of their tribes to earn a college degree. More inspiration came from Dr. Patterson, most poignantly when he explained why he took the name Silver Wolf. Wolves “take care of each other,” he said. “Their survival depends on it.” 
Terry Redlightning, a Haskell junior from the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, recalled how only 17 of his 100 classmates at Flandreau Indian School graduated with him.

Apparently, the UnStolen Generation educational method isn't working, either.
He described a “feeling of hopelessness” pervading his community back home and said Indians there live on whatever comes to them. “Whether that’s a government handout or a minimum-wage-paying job — or you commit suicide,” he said. 
“Those are your options — at least that’s what the thinking is,” Mr. Redlightning said. “Especially when you’re a kid, you see it. You’re constantly going to funerals. Death by drugs or alcohol. Car wrecks. Suicide. You don’t have any high expectations.” 
After his lectures last fall, Dr. Patterson walked around campus to visit relics of Haskell’s sad past — the powwow grounds, Kiva Hall and some sacred wetlands. Then he went to the most solemn area of all. It was a cemetery filled with dozens of small, weathered gravestones for children who, four and five generations ago, did not survive their days at Haskell. 
Dr. Patterson teared up when he saw the stones from a distance. “These are the children of the Holocaust for us,” he said. 
He dried his cheeks with a tissue and kept walking toward the cemetery. He looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk perched on a lamppost, leading him still.

This is not, of course, to diminish the tragic problems of genuine American Indians. But it does point out one source of the constant demand to import foreigners whose children and grandchildren are above average in likelihood to need expensive social services. Jason Richwine is being excoriated for suggesting that the American-born children of, say, foreign stoop laborers are, statistically, likely to be greater tax-consumers than taxpayers.

But, to a lot of people out there, that quite obvious prediction sounds less like a bug than a feature. More immigration of Latin American laborers will create more social work jobs for people like them. And, if they can gin up some tenuous claim to being Hispanic themselves, they can be not only social workers, but role models and leaders of their vibrant people, celebrated in the NYT, like Dr. Patterson is celebrated for being 1/16th American Indian.

March 27, 2013

The Flight from White: Buzz Bissinger Edition

Bestselling 58-year-old sportswriter Buzz Bissinger, whose 1990 book Friday Night Lights was based on in-depth locker room interviews of half-dressed teenage high school football players, announces in GQ that he has spent $587,000 over the last three years on clothes for himself, both men's and women's, such as thigh-high leather boots with six-inch stiletto heels.
Before I started shopping with [his personal stylist] at Gucci, I could count on one finger the number of compliments I got from strangers on what I was wearing. Now I get dozens, 99 percent of them from women and gays and African-Americans who appreciate go-for-it style. No wonder male heterosexual whites are aimed toward obsolescence, boring the rest of us to death.