The Meat-Market Society

08 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race

Tags

Access Hollywood, American Narcissism, Billy Bush, Black Women, Dehumanization, Donald Trump, Facebook, Meat Market, Meat-Market Mentality, Misogyny, Racism, Reading Terminal Market, Washington Post

Slaughtered pigs in a slaughterhouse line, accessed October 8, 2016. (dezeen.com via Pinterest).

About a year ago, I figured out someone in my Facebook timeline was a bit of a misogynist. He had been posting pics of Black women as if it was his and his followers’ jobs to rate, or rather, berate women based on how “respectable” they looked while out in public. The comments he elicited were so stereotypical and nasty that I will not quote them here. But I can quote part of my own response. “Why do we get to choose? Are we at a grocery store shopping for ass or something?”

It was as if it never dawned on anyone responding that this was far more than objectifying women. (The truth is, we all objectify, regardless of gender, as any form of attraction comes with this as part of the equation. It’s a question of the degree to which we do so). This was a case of putting “good” versus “bad” women on display. It was as if I had gone to Whole Foods, or, more aptly, Reading Terminal Market in Philly. But instead of butchers and mongers and other vendors with stalls selling cuts of boneless/skinless chicken thighs, prime rib, duck breasts, pork tenderloin, and fresh caught salmon, they were selling big butts, round asses, wide hips, perky breasts, and sanded feet. The post was straight up misogyny, and I all but dropped the person as a result of it.

Cuts of beef, lamb, and pork (plus ground beef), Martin’s Quality Meats & Sausages, Reading Terminal Market, Philadelphia, PA, March 2013. (http://hobbiesonabudget).

But it did make me think. The folks who responded acted as if they really were shopping for groceries, as if you could buy a woman at a store for say, $4.99 a pound, or find a sale where “prime rib” goes for $10.89 instead of $12.99 per pound. The key to this frame on misogyny, then, is literally how little the men in question valued women, and more specifically, Black women, physically and otherwise. After all, with an average weight of 140 pounds, $700 or $1550 is a clear-cut and sickening example of cheapening a person, with slavery auction overtones included. At the very least, if these alleged men were truly interested in any kind of relationship or a long-term commitment, a minimum of three additional zeros should be added to this misogynist numbers, no?

Of course this isn’t the point, that no price tag should be put on the value of a human life, and on women specifically. It’s fairly obvious, though, that many, if not most, men and women think, speak, and act on this mindset. Donald Trump has been an example of this for decades. That it took the release of unused footage from an Access Hollywood clip from 2005 to confirm Trump’s meat-market views on White women is both sad and unsurprising. Sad because it’s as if many Americans haven’t paid attention to Trump’s ridiculousness since announcing his candidacy 17 months ago. Unsurprising because the tape reveals what those of us who have been paying attention over the past months — and in my case, years — already knew.

Donald Trump posing with Kim Kardashian at Celebrity Apprentice event, New York, 2010. (Mathew Imaging/WireImage via http://eonline.com).

Sure, Trump apologized via video on Facebook late last night. But he won’t stop being a misogynist, or seeing people as meat. Heck, the Central Park 5 are still guilty and still deserving of the death penalty in his mind, and the jogger whom had been raped in 1989 is still only a “broken woman” and a “victim.” As far as Trump is concerned, his America consists of 320 million stalls of meat that he “can do anything” with at any time and expect to get away with it.

But if you think that this mindset has merely trickled down from the likes of people like Trump, you would be mistaken. American culture is so rife with a meat-market mentality, that I can smell the lean cuts of animal protein from miles away.

A Children’s Crusade

02 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

"Children's Crusade" (1984), 100th Anniversary, Aggression, Colonialism, Culture of Imperialism, Dehumanization, Ethnic Cleansing, Ethnocentrism, First World War, Genocide, Imperialism, Nationalism, Parallels, Religious Nationalism, Settler Colonialism, Sting, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, War, Western Culture, World History, World Powers, World War I

Living among the dead, Flanders, Belgium, most likely during Second Battle of Ypres, April 21-May 25, 1915. (http://www.flandersfieldsmusic.com/).

World War I reached its 100th anniversary on Monday. One hundred years ago this week, European imperialism, nationalism, and Social Darwinism/scientific racism all led to what was once known as the Great War. It was a war that would leave ten million soldiers, sailors and airmen dead, another seven million civilians dead from military action, malnutrition and disease, and another 23 million wounded in action on both sides.

A British Mark V tank coming out of a trench, France, circa 1917. (Imperial War Museum via http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/10/05/).

That war, a mostly European war of the great world powers, was itself based in the idea that Western culture and technologies would make this a quick and winnable war of dominance, for Germany, Britain, France and possibly Russia. The first war planes, the first tanks, the first submersibles, along with mustard and chlorine gas, nests of machine guns and trench warfare. It’s amazing how small-minded these so-called great powers were a full century ago, and so remarkable that we’ve grown beyond this thinking today!

Actually, not so fast! Our world seems to have learned little from the lessons of the First World War, repeating practices that leave the globe perpetually on the brink of chaos and potentially in peril of annihilation. We’ve seen this with the Second World War, with the Cold War and its myriad proxy wars in the Global South, with post-Cold War aggression in the Balkans, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and with US preemptive aggressions in the Muslim world. Ethnocentrism and ethnic cleansing in the name of a religion (or a lack thereof, in a couple of cases) or nationalism has been a part of modern war since World War I.

Poppies in field between Kelling and Weybourne, North Norfolk, England, UK, June 2002. (John Beniston via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

Imperialism and colonialism and resistance to both in the name of freedom, or too frequently, another form of ethnocentrism and religious nationalism. Name a given nation, and you have some strain of Western imperialism and colonization, resistance and ethnocentrism and nationalism (religious, anti-religious or otherwise) running through their recent history. India, Pakistan, the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Perón’s Argentina, Pinochet’s Chile, the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia, South Africa and apartheid, Israel and Zionism and settler colonialism, Japan and its military occupation of China, just to name a few. The First World War unleashed these forces this week one hundred years ago, a Pandora’s box that we will need to destroy, for it’s obviously too late to close it.

One of Sting’s songs from his first solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, is titled “Children’s Crusade” (1984). It’s the story of Britain’s blind march into the First World War, the wasting of a generation of youth in the name of the empire, juxtaposed with the UK’s heroin and drug epidemic of the early 1980s.

Young men and soldiers, Nineteen Fourteen
Marching through countries they’d never seen
Virgins with rifles, a game of charades
All for a Children’s Crusade

Pawns in the game are not victims of chance
Strewn on the fields of Belgium and France
Poppies for young men, death’s bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed

Though not his best work, Sting’s “Children’s Crusade” has made me think more than once about the brutality of humanity and this inherent need to dominate other human beings, as well as the lands and resources for which vulnerable people have been cleansed and displaced. He should update it for 2014 this way:

Midnight in Gaza, Twenty Fourteen
Bombed and shelled hospitals, pawns in the game
Ashes and sackcloth, death’s bitter trade
All of those young lives betrayed

And all for a century-old crusade of nationalistic paranoia, imperialistic abuse, and dehumanizing ethnocentric warfare.

City Place Mall: Why You Don’t Shop Where There’s A “Hood Policy”

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Pop Culture, race

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Breathing While Black, City Place Mall, Criminalization, Dehumanization, George Zimmerman, Hood Policy, Hoodies, Institutional Racism, Lisa Petrie, Malls, Petri Dish, Petrie Ross Ventures, Racial Stereotypes, Racism, Silver Spring Maryland, Trayvon Martin, White Fears, White Supremacy, Whiteness

City Place Mall, main entrance, Silver Spring, MD, June 10, 2012. (Farragutful via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC 3.0.

Last Thursday afternoon (February 27), a security guard at City Place Mall in Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland confronted me and my 10-year-old son about wearing a hood over our heads, having just come inside from below-freezing and windy weather. The security guard explained that the policy at City Place Mall is to forbid patrons from wearing hoods, hats, scarves, sunglasses and other clothing that would make us more difficult to identify. When I asked for a written indication of this policy, the security guard told us that the one sign for your 400,000-square-foot mall was downstairs in the lower lobby, which does patrons like me little good in informing us of their racism and stupidity.

Keep in mind, I’m a 44-year-old man with a 10-year-old kid, who’s only intent was to go to an indoor ATM machine to withdraw my money from my bank account so that we wouldn’t freeze. We weren’t shopping at Marshall’s or another store in the mall. What were we going to do, buy two packs of Skittles at the dump of a snack store at City Place instead of just one? Buy two bottles of Lipton Ice Tea (Arizona Ice Tea makes our teeth hurt)?

Me with hood get-up I wore last week with son in tow (numbers added), March 4, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

If this is how they treat all patrons, this policy would merely be a stupid one. I suspect, though, that they don’t stop women in veils or burqas, Sikhs with turbans or every person wearing sunglasses. No, Black and Brown male patrons — especially ones that look young and healthy — are their targets for such an idiotic policy.

I emailed Lisa Petrie about this incident and wanted clarifications about this policy. Petrie is a co-owner of Petrie Ross Ventures, LLC, the Annapolis-based group that manages (read owns here) City Place Mall. In addition, I asked her to answer the following questions:

1. Is this in fact the policy of City Place Mall, to force patrons to remove hoods and other clothing upon entering the mall?

2. If this is in fact your policy, then why isn’t it posted conspicuously at the entrances to the mall for all patrons to see and read?

3. Is this policy one that security guards are supposed to apply, and if so, are they doing so in an equitable manner?

Petrie didn’t answer any of my questions. Instead, she emailed me this response:

It is our policy in all of our properties to ask our patrons to remove their hats, hoods, etc. only as a safety precaution for all that visit our malls. I am unsure as to the procedures as I am not part of the operations team however I will ask that if you have any questions that you follow up with the property manager on site, Mr. Gary Brewer.

Bottom half of a Petri dish, the only thing I’ll buy from City Place Mall in the future, October 20, 2005. (Miaow Miaow via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC 2.0.

This is a ridiculous statement, unless by “safety precaution,” Petrie means that there are George Zimmermans in all their malls waiting to shoot anyone with a hood over their heads if their skin has a significant melanin content. I did, after Petrie sent me his contact information, send Brewer the same information about the incident, as well as my questions. Mr. Brewer has refused to respond.

If this is how City Place Mall and Petrie Ross expects to treat its patrons, though, I think that whatever plans you have for this mall should come with the disclaimer that not all patrons are welcome, especially Black and Brown males. You can name your dilapidated mall Ellsworth or even Crap. I already don’t shop there. I can always withdraw money from another ATM.

Over 3 Billion Blacks Killed

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Movies, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Tags

Black Lives, Dehumanization, Gangsta Rap, George Zimmerman, Hunger Games, Independence Day, Individual Racism, Institutional Racism, Jordan Davis, Michael Dunn, Nikita (2010-13), Popular Culture, Racial Stereotypes, Racism, Sardonic, Terminator, The Day After Tomorrow (2004), The Purge (2013), The War of The Worlds (2005), Trayvon Martin, Violence

McDonald’s signage, Austin, MN, May 20, 2006. (Jonathunder via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC and GFDL.

Do you remember those McDonald’s signs back in the ’70 and ’80s, before the corporation went global (from 6,000 to 30,000 franchises since ’92), where they said, “Over 100 Million Served” hamburgers or “10 Billion Served?” If the signage is there at all these days, it usually says “Billions and Billions Served.” That’s about as cheap as Black life is in the US as well, though maybe a bit more expensive in Western countries in general (they do use the Euro, after all!).

I’ve been thinking about the low value of Black lives for years, even in the middle of grad school at Pitt. But I must admit, it’s been on my mind more and more since George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin nearly two years ago. Now, with the hung jury over the murder of Jordan Davis, with so many who find it easy to render Black and Brown lives cheaper than dog meat in the middle of the Roman Coliseum 2,000 years ago, it seems that there’s no such thing as a dead stereotype.

Jordan Davis’ Facebook picture, February 17, 2014. (via Huffington Post).

It’s so infused in popular culture, as life and art intertwine in a macabre dance on Black and Brown bodies. Blacks especially (and for the most part, Latinos) don’t feel pain the same way as Whites. We lack the emotional and psychological control of Whites. We’re irrational and prone to criminal behavior. We’re lazy and don’t mind living in abject poverty. We love illegal drugs, but love malt liquor and hard alcohol even more. We’ll eat anything deep-fried, and don’t mind dying before middle age just so that we can save the Social Security dollars for elderly White folk.

With that as the backdrop, it’s no wonder much of the movies, music, TV and Internet depictions of us ultimately ends in our gratuitous, ubiquitous and anonymous deaths. Yes, even in 2014! I’ve recently binge-watched the now defunct CW series Nikita (2010-14) with Maggie Q as the lead. I counted at least thirty Black actors on the series over its seventy-four episodes. Only two survived the series, and one (character played by Lyndie Greenwood) wasn’t even in the last two episodes because the actress was doing double-duty on FOX’s Sleepy Hollow!

But if anyone were to take some of the largest grossing films and franchises of all time, it would become obvious how cheap folks in the US and elsewhere think Black and Brown lives really are. Between Independence Day (1996) and The Terminator series of films (1984-2009) alone, you would have to assume that almost all of the forty million Blacks living in the US died in these fictional realities, not to mention the 1.2 billion folks of at least partial African descent living in other Western nations, Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil and the rest of Latin America. That this has occurred more than once in these films alone puts us at 2.48 billion Blacks killed.

Then, between lesser known/lesser quality films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Deep Impact (1998), The War of the Worlds (2005) and Hunger Games (2012-present), it would seem that in every global calamity, most Blacks draw the short straw. These movies (and, prior to these movies, books) put us easily over three billion Blacks and Browns killed. And that’s without accounting for standard action films, cops-and-criminals shows, and other cinematographic renderings of the Black and Brown as disposable human beings. Unless you’re Don Cheadle, Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman (sometimes) or Halle Berry, if you’re Black or Brown, your job in popular culture is to die a violent death.

Of course, those upset with my sardonic take will say, “Well what about gansta rap? What about Ice-T, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and so many other rappers who present Black lives as cheaper than bottled water?” Three things: 1. you really need to update yourself on today’s rap, between Lil Jon, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne, before commenting; 2. the “gansta rappers” of the ’90s were mostly rapping about a lived experience, not some fantasy life; and 3. they figured out that they could and can make money off of Black deaths in lyrical rhymes, just like folks in the movie, TV and real worlds.

Venison meat for braising, February 19, 2014. (http://www.simplyscratch.com).

This will make the likes of George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn, and substantial numbers in the NYPD and LAPD happy. Actually, what would really make them happy would be a version of the movie The Purge (2013). But instead of crime and murder being legal for one day a year, they would have to get a “coon hunting” license to kill themselves a Black or Brown person one day a year. That way, they could keep our numbers low, just like hunters do with deer every fall.