As the protests for racial justice continue around the U.S. and the world, I want to share and amplify two very powerful articles by women of color. The first is written by Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, Dean in Residence at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and Dean Emeritus of the Howard University School of Education (among her many accomplishments). Recently published in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, her article is titled, “A Brief History Lesson and Open Letter to the Nation’s Schoolchildren and College Students about White Male Power” and provides a very nice historical and contemporary summary of how White Male privilege/power developed into the hegemonic system of exploitation and oppression that it is today. Here are some excerpts:

Did you learn about Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg in your history class? . . . General George Pickett (known as the Lost Cause General of the Confederate South) fought a losing battle on July 3, 1863. Pickett and his all White male brigade were fighting to maintain an apartheid south built on the brutalizing, free labor of enslaved African men, women, and children. . . .

That July afternoon for about an hour, those 12,000 Confederate soldiers ran straight toward Union cannon fire. They were soundly obliterated by 6,500 Union soldiers in a bloody battle. Historians tell us that when Pickett and his soldiers ran into that near mile-long open field, they probably knew their charge was a defeat waiting to happen. After all, Pickett’s compatriot, General Robert E. Lee, had lost his battle the day before.

For a moment, I want you to think about those 12,000 Confederate soldiers as individuals. What was each one fighting for? These rank and file were illiterate. They owned no land. They were not members of the White gentry. They were poor, uneducated, and hungry for food. Most had tattered and torn uniforms barely clinging to their skin. Many were bootless. Their weapons were insufficient. Yet, they ran across that field with the undeterred vigor of bulls all the while knowing a sure death awaited them. What was each fighting for?

Why did they run into those canons knowing that southern apartheid and a slave economy had not and would not promise land, education, or wealth for them as White men? Why? They were fighting for the supremacy of their Whiteness and the silent compact between wealthy and powerful Whites and poor Whites that affirms: The power of White maleness will prevail over all else. If I am White and male, I will forever have some measure of power over those who are not White and male.

I strongly encourage you to read Dr. Fenwick’s article in its entirety but she basically goes on to describe how, based on this foundation of “White maleness,” whenever White Male power and privilege is challenged, it lashes back and becomes even more toxic, as illustrated in many recent events that range from the “Living While Black” incidents that are visible attempts at asserting White supremacy, to more structural-level and perhaps less visible ways of trying to protect White supremacy such as disenfranchising Black voters and other voters of color, to naive and toothless attempts at “police reform,” to the continuing exclusion of Black people in positions of power and authority across our political, educational, and financial institutions, to name just a few.

The second excellent article is by journalist Cady Lang, titled “‘Karen’ and the Violence of White Womanhood, recently published in Time magazine, which examines the social phenomenon of “Karens” — middle-aged White women who are quick to engage in “shameless displays of entitlement, privilege, and racism — and their tendency to call the police when they don’t get what they want,” as Lang writes. “Karen” is probably best personified by the “Central Park Karen,” Amy Cooper, who called police to falsely accuse a Black man of physically threatening her and in the process, invoking the racist stereotype of Black men as inherently violent and criminal, in response to his request that she leash her dog. Lang goes on to elaborate:

Visuals of Karens exploiting their privilege when things don’t go their way have become Internet shorthand of late for a particular kind of racial violence white women have instigated for centuries — following a long and troubling legacy of white women in the country weaponizing their victimhood. . . . The Central Park video only highlighted the extreme violence — and potentially fatal consequences — of a white woman selfishly calling the cops out of spite and professed fear. . . .

In a larger sense, the mainstreaming of calling out the danger that white women and their tears pose has been building up to this moment. There’s the oft-cited stat that 52% of white women voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Meanwhile, the constant lies of white women like Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in service of the Trump Administration have made it abundantly clear that white women can and are often complicit in oppressive systems.

Similar to Dr. Fenwick’s article, Cady Lang goes on to describe the historical origins of this ‘Karen’ phenomenon in which White women were positioned by White men as the paragon of virtue and innocence, how they needed to be “protected,” how White women leveraged this position of privilege to maintain their “protected” status (very similar to the poor and rural soldiers in the Pickett “lost cause” charge during the Civil War and its implied promise of solidarity with White male supremacy), and how all of this has used countless times over the last few centuries to justify and rationalize systematic violence and brutality against Black men.

Fortunately, both articles also describes how this White Male (and Female) power/privilege can be dismantled. In the case of the “Karens,” Lang writes that, similar to how the internet and communication technology has been leveraged to facilitate collective activism, so too can internet memes be used to promote greater social consciousness:

[By helping Whites to] recognize a pattern of behavior that they don’t want to be a part of it, but might be complicit in and can be an easier way to have a conversation about white fragility, entitlement and privilege; it also holds them accountable for racism. . . . [T]he accounts of the real people who have experienced the racism documented in these memes and the hashtag, #LivingWhileBlack, are helping to demand accountability and are actually helping to push forward legislation, like the Oregon bill that was passed in 2019 that punishes racist 911 callers.”

Similarly, Dr, Fenwick’s article also concludes by presenting a powerful call to action that draws on the energy of today’s young generation:

You, today’s public school and college students, are the nation’s best asset in the fight to realize the nation’s egalitarian ideals and promise. Your multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalitions of  Black, White, LGBTQAI+/Same Gender Loving (SGL), Asian, Latinx, First Nation, and differently-abled people is the antidote to this deadening brand of White male power and the poisonous leadership it spawns. You are our teachers, now.

Each generation seems to be defined by a particular moment in history. For the Boomers, it was the social movements of the 1960s. For Generation X (such as me), it was the advent of the internet and communication technology that was fundamentally transformed our lives. For the young generation of today of Zoomers/Generation Z, I think both Dr. Fenwick and Cady Lang are right when they say that, armed with powerful social media tools that can be used to promote social justice, young people have the passion, energy, tools, and power necessary to lead the way forward in taking down White supremacy, or at the very least, to fracture it enough to start dismantling it. This is something that previous generations, including my own, have not been able to do.

But I hope that I and my fellow educators around the country and the world have at least given the young people of today some useful knowledge and tools to help them fight the battles ahead. I am confident that their charge forward will not end the same way as George Pickett’s.

By now, I presume that you have heard of the Occupy Wall Street protests that began about a month ago, in which a small but fast-growing group of Americans camped outside of the large financial buildings in the Wall Street area of lower Manhattan to protest, among other things, the rising social inequality in U.S. society. The protests have since spread to numerous cities around the country (and apparently around the world) and at present, seem to be growing in popularity and media coverage.

One angle to look at is how the Occupy Wall Street movement may be the Left’s version of the Tea Party movement. While I have not looked into this particular aspect in detail, at first glance I think it is very interesting and even ironic that although this Occupy Wall Street movement shares much in common — at least philosophically — with the Tea Party movement, many of the latter’s prominent supporters have chosen to criticize the Occupy Wall Street movement. To my casual eye, this only highlights the hypocrisy of the Tea Party and confirms for me that is is less concerned about social change than it is about opposing President Obama and what he represents — namely the changing demographic, racial, and cultural face of U.S. society.

But beyond that, an even more interesting aspect of the Occupy Wall Street movement for me is its intentionally decentralized nature and how its most prominent informal leaders have specifically said that they do not feel that it is necessary or useful to articulate an overarching, single goal or unifying message for the movement. Below is a video clip from CBS News that discusses the movement’s reluctance to articulate a unified, central message.

Conventional sociological theory generally states that for a social movement to survive and have a realistic chance at achieving success, it needs to move beyond a single event and become more like a formal organization in terms of having a unifying message, clear leadership and personnel coordination, and well-developed administrative functions and capabilities. In other words, the early stages of a mass movement generally involve a sense of unrest or agitation, one or perhaps a series of events, a broad articulation of grievances, and an initial mobilization of collective action, media attention, and inevitably, some form of resistance or opposition.

But unless a movement can then develop strong leadership, mobilize resources, and sustain collective action, it is at this point where most social movements die. The Civil Rights Movement is often used as a model of how collective grievances eventually turned into a successful and sustained social movement through formalization, resource mobilization, organized division of labor, and political institutionalization. In fact, one of the most widely used books in the Sociology of Social Movements is Aldon Morris’ The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement that details how it evolved from collective grievances into arguably the most significant social movement in modern human history.

As applied to the Occupy Wall Street movement, conventional thinking dictates that it is eventually going to reach the point where it will either become more formalized, or it will flame out and pass into history. In this sense, the Occupy Wall Street movement’s choice to purposely remain unstructured and informal does not give me much confidence that it will be successfully sustained.

On the other hand, something also tells me that times have changed since the 1960s and that much like the rest of U.S. society, the cultural and technological landscape has evolved rather dramatically in the last 50 years or so. Obviously, back then resources such as cell phones, digital cameras, the internet, Twitter, and Facebook did not exist. Back then, communication and dissemination of information were slower, more crude, and more prone to confusion. If anything, knowing these limitations that existed 50 or so years ago makes the success of the Civil Rights Movement even more awe-inspiring.

In fact, scholars have described these types of social movements before and have called them New Social Movements (unfortunately creativity in naming things is not always a strong suit for academics). These New Social Movements tend to have decentralized leadership and organizational structures and instead relying on networks of groups that are affiliated or support their cause. They also tend to engage in nontraditional tactics — conventional protests but also TV ads, billboards, and extensive use of information technology and the internet. Some prominent examples of New Social Movements in recent history include the environmental, animal rights, anti-globalization, and peace/anti-war movements.

Today, with the widespread advent and dispersion of technological resources such as cell phones, digital imaging, and the internet, mass communication is infinitely quicker and more direct. Sociologists have started to write about just how much modern technology has affected and changed how human beings interact with each other on a daily basis. As applied to social movements, undoubtedly technology has made it much easier, quicker, and more effective to coordinate activities and disseminate all types of information.

In that sense, the Occupy Wall Street movement may not need to become formalized and organized into a hierarchy or bureaucracy in order to survive and become successful. The difference and advantage that they have today over their predecessors of 50 years ago is technology and the multitude of ways to dissemination information and to coordinate activities.

While technology itself cannot sustain a social movement, combined with the determination of participants and the fundamental importance and significance of the core issue of rising social inequality, the Occupy Wall Street movement may just be the right movement at the right time.

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Bonus: Check out this collection of some great protest posters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Many of you have probably seen The Hangover Part 2, the sequel to the surprise hit of 2009. I recently watched the first Hangover film and mostly enjoyed it, although it was not quite as uproariously hilarious as many of my friends hyped it up to be. I have yet to see Hangover 2 and now my motivation has declined even further, after reading my friend Jeff Yang’s recent article about it in his column for the San Francisco Chronicle. Some excerpts:

“H2” made an absurd $103 million over the three-day weekend — an all-time record for a live-action comedy, despite near-universal excoriation by critics, who called it “uninspired and unoriginal,” “unclean and mostly unfunny,” and “rancid and predictable.” What few pointed out was that, in seeking to top the already over-the-top comic sensibilities of the original, the filmmakers chose the sleaziest, easiest possible solution, unleashing a relentless bastinado of abuse at the expense of Asians, a group that they presumably felt could be targeted with minimal concern about potential backlash.

If you’re an Asian who swallowed hard upon hearing that the sequel would be set in Bangkok, you’ll need to swallow harder just to keep down your gorge at what they’ve produced. The film’s depiction of Thailand transforms the “Land of Smiles” into a bizarro realm of brute violence, grim depravity and unfettered libido, populated entirely by broad racial stereotypes: Thuggish gangsters. Wizened monks. Lascivious ladyboys. Not to mention whiz-kid pre-meds, infinitely forgiving lotus-blossom brides and the Father of All Tiger Dads. . . .

As an Asian American who enjoyed the first film, I found the sequel bluntly and inexplicably offensive — with the fact that the movie opened in the waning days of May [Asian Pacific American Heritage Month] being soy sauce in the wound.

Jeff Yang could have ranted on about the various ways in which he found Hangover 2 offensive but most of his article actually focuses on what Asian Americans can actually do about this ongoing problem of Asians and Asian Americans consistently being portrayed using racist stereotypes in mainstream Hollywood films. Specifically, he offers some thoughts about the possibility of not only creating an alternative set of filmmakers who would portray Asian Americans more accurately, but also creating an alternative audience that would be able to sustain such independent efforts. But along the way, Jeff raises some important challenges that still need to be addressed:

For an indie filmmaker, you simply can’t make money with theatrical distribution. But if you’re talking a target not of theatrical distribution but direct-to-DVD, a film with a guerrilla $250,000 budget can make back its costs and return a healthy profit if it sells 20,000 units at $20 a pop. . . .

Now, there are currently more than a million Asian Americans enrolled in college — two-thirds of whom are concentrated in eight states. It would only take two percent of them collectively purchasing a book or DVD or CD to make it solidly profitable — supporting the work of a creative artist, and enabling that creator to continue doing what he or she does, with full freedom to make art that’s appealing and authentic and true to an Asian American experience.

This is the gist of something that, in our conversations, cultural critic and academic Oliver Wang has dubbed The Two Percent Project. Here’s how it might work: Get together a group of smart, influential tastemakers — journalists, critics, student leaders, bloggers. Have them select five indie Asian American creators — writers, filmmakers, musicians — from an open call that includes anyone with a brand-new, brashly different and commercially viable product.

Send these creators on a collective national barnstorming tour of the college campuses with the biggest Asian American student representation — reading, performing, speaking, and showing their work and their potential. The costs of the tour would be covered by student organization funds and corporate sponsors.

Here’s the kicker: Although attendance at these events would be free, every attendee would have to purchase one of the five products these artists are promoting on the spot, while enrolling in an online community that gives the artists long-term engagement with their consumers. The goal? Constructing an independent audience. Reinventing the Asian American brand. And creating recorded proof that Asian American artists are marketable and that a market exists to sustain them.

Jeff’s idea sounds plausible to me, especially if Asian Americans, young and old, keep railing against movies rife with racial stereotypes like Hangover 2. Jeff’s idea doesn’t even take into consideration the growing numbers of Asian American professionals who are making good money and actually have the financial means to support such independent efforts even more than college students. If there is a plan that can incorporate them into this movement, it would certainly produce positive results.

Either way, I applaud Jeff Yang, Oliver Wang, and others who are doing more than just complaining about injustices against Asian Americans — they’re proposing potential plans of action and solutions to the problem. Their specific ideas may or may not bear fruit immediately but at the least, they get the conversation started, get ideas rolling, and will hopefully lead to some innovative thinking and action to get something done.

Even if it’s a small step, at least it’s a step in the right direction.