We’re All the Same Except that We’re Not: A Primer on Multiculturalism

“We are extremely skeptical about ‘multicultural’ education in settings with few or no blacks,” Charles Moskos and John Butler wrote in 1996. “Indeed, without a substantial black presence, such education can detract from blacks’ opportunity by becoming a vehicle for other ‘oppressed’ groups – women, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and so on.”[1]  For the two sociologists, blacks endured the longest and most pernicious forms of discrimination, both de jure and de facto, which immigrant groups largely avoided. Moskos and Butler even blamed the rise of multiculturalism for undermining affirmative action programs for African Americans, arguing that once …

Finding the Bones in Immigrant America

In her new chapbook, Finding the Bones, poet Aimee Suzara writes about a Filipino migrant family, their place in the Philippines and the U.S., as well as the relationship between the “sending” and “receiving” country. The scope is simultaneously expansive (geographically and historically) and intimate as she asks the reader to constantly move between countries, to grasp the present by understanding the past. Divided into three sections, Finding the Bones digs through the materials of an unnamed narrator’s personal and family story, while discovering ancient layers of sedimented life, creatures that bear some eerie semblance to us. Suzara’s poetic excavations complicate the …

Domestic Art: Nannies, Immigrants, and Labor

While most artists find their voice in the studio, Ramiro Gomez Jr. found his in the space between two very disparate and disconnected worlds. In 2009, he left the California Institute of the Arts and moved in with a wealthy family in West Hollywood to work as a live-in nanny and care for two infants. Although nervous about his huge new responsibilities, he was also grateful and relieved to finally have some stability and a chance to rethink his artistic path. With one baby strapped to this chest and another baby slung on his hip, Ramiro found his way to the park, the un-official gathering and organizing space for maids and nannies. At first the other domestic workers didn’t know what to …

A Better Life

This story doesn’t need much to build up the anticipation and tension. No full speed trains with ticking bombs, no fight against erupting volcanoes or invading other-wordly creatures. The daily realities of the lives of undocumented immigrants and their families suffice for a harrowing experience. Life as they know it contains the most frightening elements of all. The possibility of being indefinitely torn away from the people that love and protect you. A Better Life is a story that follows the daily struggle of Carlos Galindo (Academy Award nominee Demián Bichir) an undocumented immigrant living and working as a gardener in Los Angeles, to provide for his teenage son Luis (José …

L.A. Confidential: California History and the 2012 Whitsett Seminar

If you've ever been to Los Angeles, you know beneath the sprawl lay one of the nation's most fascinating cities.  From Echo Park to Boyle Heights to Silver Lake to Malibu, Los Angeles collects vistas, peoples, highways, and film noir like few others. Beyond LA, California provides scholars with ample subjects from which to explore history both locally and nationally.  The network of public universities in Los Angeles and the state's other cities only furthers this process. The annual Whitsett Grad Student Seminar enables future academics to present their California research to professors and  graduate students working in similar fields. Cal State Northridge's Whitsett Professor of …

Nueva York: Politics, Art, and the Transnational Big Apple

In Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, disaffected American star Bill Murray sleepwalks through his stay in Tokyo.  Not speaking a lick of Japanese and cynically overwhelmed by the massive high rises and technology of modern day Tokyo, Murray’s character embarks on a series of small journeys punctuated by his inability to fully grasp events as they unfold before him.  Instead, through Murray’s eyes, one experiences the city as brightly lit, whiskey induced, metropolis full of quirky Japanese and self absorbed Americans. While many critics applauded Coppola’s efforts, others saw the movie as simply another well intentioned but nonetheless painful exercise in Western …

Intimate Citizenship: The Influence of Marriage, Sexuality, and Transience on National Membership

In Spike Lee’s 2006 crime drama, Inside Man, a mysterious group of robbers with an apparent political agenda hijack a downtown NYC bank holding dozens of employees and customers hostage. Though the movie focuses primarily on the travails of embattled NYPD police detective Keith Frazer (Denzel Washington), Lee delivers a movie that encapsulates the stunning diversity of New York.  Even minor characters with small moments provide useful insights into the various racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts and tensions that embody twenty first century urban life. In particular, Lee’s treatment of Sikh American cab driver, Vikram Walia (Waris Ahluwalia) illuminates the ambivalent place of South …

Gizmo: The Model Minority

Gremlins is not often thought of as a Christmas movie, even though it takes place in a snowy small town that could double as the set of It's a Wonderful Life, and the entire plot revolves around the unintended consequences of holiday gift-giving. It is funny to think back and remember that unscrupulous advertisers led the public to believe that Gremlins was a family picture about cute, fuzzy creatures. After parents marched out of theaters with children traumatized by the blood-spattered, if cartoonish horror-film aspects of the film, the ensuing controversy led to the creation of the first-ever PG-13 rating. (The old system skipped directly from PG to R.) In Gremlins, then, we not only …

American Arab Kitsch: From Ahab to Abed and Back Again

When I was a kid, I thought Pinkard & Bowden were pretty funny. The comedy duo’s parodies of famous country songs were often promoted on TV for just $19.95 plus shipping and handling, and I got a kick out of them. “Blue hairs driving in my lane.” “Won’t you help me make it through the yard?” I never heard their song “Arab, Alabama” back then, and I wonder what I would have thought of it when I was 9 or 10. I might have thought it was funny just because they were referring to Middle Eastern stuff (the PLO!), and I was generally interested in anything that had to do with my Arab heritage. After six long years of grad school, though, I can’t not see some of the bizarre …

Goats, Swords, & Fried Oreos: The Old 321 Flea Market as a Landscape of Globalization

The Old 321 Flea Market in Dallas, NC is now known as the I-85/321 Flea Market, even though it is even farther from Interstate 85 than it is from Highway 321.  The name change is most likely designed to lure the bargain hunters who seek out flea markets to come to the small town of Dallas by suggesting that the market is right off the interstate, when it is actually situated in a semi-rural stretch of town on the way to the even tinier hamlet of High Shoals. But the name change also reflects the greater connection of Dallas and Gaston County in general to the broader world, as symbolized by the interstate that connects the area's mill villages to a more cosmopolitan circuit of commerce …