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I know we all like to laugh at Tea Partiers and radical right-wingers when they deny being racist — when they say that their racialized depictions of Obama aren’t about race, or that their arguments that mosques shouldn’t be built ever are actually about freedom. I’ve long assumed they’re just disingenuous jerks who understand that public displays of racism are bad, and so attempt to obscure their racism with shoddy covers. But I’m beginning to increasingly suspect that they really don’t understand what racism is, because the whole concept of “racism” to them is an impossibility; I suspect that they genuinely think people of color are weird and inferior and fundamentally different, and they don’t see what’s wrong with that. The sky is blue, the grass is green, black women are welfare queens. It’s just a fact of life — and so as long as you aren’t legally requiring someone use a different water fountain, you aren’t racist (and even if you are legally requiring someone to use a different water fountain, well, maybe that’s just how things are and it’s not really about race. Or something). Kind of like how saying that women aren’t as competent or logical as men isn’t sexist – it’s biology, baby.

Anyway, this little rant (audio and transcript at link) by Dr. Laura Schlessinger illustrates the point pretty well. A black woman calls up and says that her husband’s white friends make racist comments around her. She explains some of the racist comments, and Dr. Laura brushes them off as “not racist,” because Dr. Laura has a black body guard and she once asked him to play basketball on her team because “white men can’t jump,” and that wasn’t racist, just funny. Ha. Ha.

But then the woman says, “How about the N-word? The N-word’s been thrown around…” and you’d think that would be the point where Dr. Laura said, ok, that crosses a line. Because even clueless white people who make basketball jokes generally understand that they aren’t allowed to say the N-word, right?

Wrong.

Dr. Laura says:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. … I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing. Don’t hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don’t go away.

Please go away.

Do you remember the picture in National Geographic of the so-called Afghan girl?

The photograph, taken by Steve McCurry, was of Sharbat Gula; her image adorned the cover of a 1985 issue of National Geographic (The link is to National Geographic’s discussion and review of the story almost 20 years later). I was barely aware of the wider world, then, but as I look back through web discussions (weird, that the web doesn’t go back to 1985, eh?), it seems that the Western world was fascinated with her face, her possible life, her unknown story, her “exotic green eyes,”…. You get the picture. She became a symbol; McCurry won Best 100 National Geographic Pictures.

There’s so much to be said about this story, about the confluence of race, gender, and feminism, about the practices of marketing and Western media — it’s an uncomfortable and disturbing mess. Her value as a symbol was and, indeed, is still so compelling that National Geographic went back in 2002 to find her, to see what had happened to her. Among the outcomes of that visit was a second image of her face — discussion this time is about how hard her life has been. The two images are at the root of a kind of Shepard-Fairey-like tradition of making and remakings of the image — some with honourable intent and some not — all over the internet. (The link is to google image search for “Afghan girl.”)

And now, there’s a third. This latest photograph is the focus of my post today. It’s on the cover of TIME magazine. Once more, the face of a beautiful, young Afghan woman stands in for a discussion of war. This time, however, the woman is visibly disabled. As the cover makes clear, the torture that rendered Aisha disabled, is one of the consequences/risks of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the consequent return of the Taliban. I have nothing to say about this thesis; my focus is the value of disability in this picture.

Some More Provisos

look. i am not abusive to my kid. not even close. and neither is her father.

she is a happy, healthy three year old. she speaks three languages, loves to dance middle eastern style, and explains to strangers that ‘mama is from america’ but she is from bumblebee (the name of her preschool).

but, us american society, history, government is abusive to black children.

and egyptian society and government is abusive to black children. i know this cause i worked with sub saharan african refugees in cairo. i worked with ex child soldiers and teenage sex workers from sudan, refugees from eritrea and ethiopia. they are stuck here in limbo, cairo, legally segregated from the rest of egyptian society, not allowed to attend public schools, hospitals, racially profiled by the police, making 150 dollars a month is a considered a good job, living in ghettos, and struggling to either be repatriated or moved to europe, the usa, or australia.

they have been my teachers, my students, my friends.

some of them are mothers, and many of them didn’t have a real choice in the matter.

a lot of them look like me.

a lot of them don’t have the luxury of child free spaces, because many of them are children, themselves.

i know what abuse is. i grew up with it, day after day, year after year. and there are times when i would rather have my daughter with me at a bar, than with a babysitter that i barely know.

i work really hard so that my daughter knows that she is a person. because it is rare for black girls or women to be allowed to be people, a full fledged person, in this world.

There was at least one comment on my last post talking about what A’s pediatrician might have meant when she said princess skin and whether or not she intended anything negative by it. And honestly, did it matter anyway? I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time: I don’t care what the pediatrician (or anyone else, for that matter) intended when she said princess skin. I care that she said it. And it matters a whole hell of a lot.

First, some Jay Smooth.

Transcript follows.

Transcript: [The whole video is shot in black in white, with Jay Smooth facing the camera delivering the following speech. Periodically, small clips of text in yellow font appear on either side of his face to emphasize a point.] Race! The final frontier. No matter what channel you watch, what feed you aggregate, everybody everywhere is talking about race right now. And when everybody everywhere is talking about race, sooner or later you’re going to have to tell somebody that they said something that sounded racist. So you need to be ready and have a plan in place about how to approach the inevitable “That sounded racist,” conversation. I’m going to tell you how to do that.

The most important that you’ve got to do is remember the difference between the “What they did,” conversation and “What they are,” conversation. Those are two totally different conversation and you need to make sure you pick the right one. The “what they did,” conversation focuses specifically on the person’s words and actions in explaining why what they said and what they did was unacceptable. That’s also known as the “that thing you said was racist,” conversation, and that’s the conversation that you want to have. The “what they are,” conversation, on the other hand, goes a step further and uses what they did and what they said to draw conclusions about what kind of person they are. This is also known as the “I think you are a racist,” conversation. This is the conversation you don’t want to have, because that conversation takes us away from the facts of what they did into speculation about their motives and intentions. And those are things you can only guess at and can’t ever prove, and makes it too easy for them to derail your whole argument.

And that is the part that’s crucial to understand. When you say “I think he’s a racist,” that’s not a bad move because you might be wrong, it’s a bad move because you might be right. Because if that dude really is racist you want to make sure you hold him accountable and don’t let him off easy. And even though, intuitively, it seems like the hardest way to hit him is to just run up on him and say “I think your ass is racist,” when you handle it that way, you’re letting him off easy because you’re setting up a conversation that’s way too simple for him to derail and duck out of.

Just think about how this plays out every time a politician or a celebrity gets called out. It always starts out as a “what they did,” conversation, but as soon as the celebrity and their defenders get on camera, they start doing judo flips and switching it into a “what they are,” conversation. [Making a mock serious face] I have known this person for years, and I know for a fact that they are not a racist and how dare you claim to know what’s inside their soul just because they made one little joke about watermelon tap dancing and going back to Africa! And you try to explain that we don’t need to see their soul to know they shouldn’t have said all that shit about the watermelon and focus on the facts of the situation. But by then, it’s too late because the “what they are,” conversation is a rhetorical Bermuda Triangle where everything drowns in a sea of empty posturing until somebody just blames it all on hip-hop and we forget the whole thing ever happened.

Don’t let this happen to you. When somebody picks my pocket, I’m not going to be chasing him down, so I can figure out whether he feels like he’s a thief deep down in his heart. I’m going to be chasing him down so I can get my wallet back. I don’t care what he is, but I need to hold him accountable for what he did. And that’s how we need to approach these conversations about race. Treat them like they took your wallet and focus on the part that matters: holding each person accountable for the impact of their words and actions. I don’t care what you are. I care about what you did.

—–

I really like this video because it gets right to heart of what’s so problematic about characterizing something/someone as racist. One only need look at the recent Tea Party/Shirley Sherrod/Andrew Brietbart debacle to see how incredibly sensitive people are to the idea that someone might call them racist. It’s as though they have internalized the idea that being called a racist is a terrible, terrible thing. It’s a blight upon one’s soul and deeply hurtful to be called a racist, don’t you understand!? But they haven’t really internalized the idea that having something you said called racist (a) isn’t character assassination or commentary on one’s soul (b) that’s there’s anything to be sorry for. Here’s a great example: I hate Obama, but I’m not a racist even though I draw the President with overly racialized features and invoke a wide variety of racist tropes in my artwork! How dare anyone demand an apology from me!

Of course, you don’t even have to turn to such egregious examples: my story about the pediatrician works just fine, too. I am quite certain that the doctor didn’t mean anything derogatory when she said it. I’m 100% certain that she thought it was either neutral or complimentary. However, princess skin and those comics don’t exist in a vacuum. If the comment thread on my post is anything to go by, the princess narrative (and who gets to be called a princess on the basis of appearance and who doesn’t) was genuinely hurtful to people as they were growing up. Every single time it gets repeated, that narrative reinforces the privilege which underlies it. Little, seemingly inconsequential* remarks matter.

Which is why intent doesn’t count when you’re talking about the harm done and the reinforcing of privilege. It doesn’t matter if the doctor is well-meaning or not. Sure, her intentions might make a difference if I were to go to her and say “Hey, I think saying princess skin was problematic for the following reasons,” in the hopes of a constructive conversation. But it’s not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the people who are hurt by that narrative. Once again, the princesses are white (and pale), blond, and blue-eyed.

Here’s the other thing about intent: I am a white person in a society that privileges whiteness, and that gives me power. My skin makes me per se more authoritative, more visible, and more credible than if society weren’t racist. When I, intentionally, negligently, or thoughtlessly, reinforce stereotypes and racist tropes, it’s yet another drop in the deluge. Even if it’s small, it’s a genuine contribution to systemic racism and the privileging of whiteness. (So, by the way, is inevitable the “but I’m a good person and I’m sorry, can I have absolution and a cookie?”) The doctor, like me, is white. She’s also got access to that increased power. I don’t want to be trite, but with power comes responsibility. You have to be careful with saying things like that, because people really do hear it.

*And let’s be clear here: the ability to see something like that as inconsequential is another manifestation of privilege.

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I’m white, and I have a daughter. My skin is pretty light, but my daughter is extraordinarily pale. A’s got white blond hair, eyebrows that are so pale they’re all but invisible, and blue eyes. When she turned a year old, we took her for a checkup. The pediatrician made sure she was hitting all of her developmental milestones, and talked to us about making sure her vaccinations were current. She also talked about things to be aware of when we take her outside since it’s summertime, like sunscreen. T and I are both far more experienced than either of us would like with nasty sunburns, so we try to make sure that A is well-slathered when we take her out. When we told the pediatrician we tried to be vigilant about it, she nodded. “Yes, that’s an important thing when you have princess skin like she does.”

T and I stared, confused. “Princess skin?” I asked.

“Princess skin. Really, really pale skin, that blond hair. Princess features.”

“Oh.” T and I shared a look, but decided to let it go.

Afterward, I thought about all the things I wanted to say to the pediatrician. What’s wrong with just saying light skin or likely to get sunburned? Why the idea that princesses have to be white, blond, and blue-eyed? Surely there are brunette princesses, princesses with darker skin, princesses who don’t sunburn easily? Do you talk to people with a wide range of skin tones about the importance of sunscreen? Of all the ways to describe A’s features, why princess?

And then I thought about all the things I wanted to say to A, even though she’s no where near old enough to understand. In my head, the phrase white privilege definitely floated around, but so did dark mutterings about Disney and a marked inability to feature any non-white heroines. I thought about phrases like alabaster skin (e.g., Snow White), usually marked by cherry red lips. And then I tried to think of princess stories that didn’t involve white people. I remembered one of my favorite fairy tales, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, which features non-white princesses. I thought about Disney’s mixed results in dabbling in racial and ethnic diversity (Aladdin lyrics, cough, cough). I thought about The Enchanted Forest Chronicles where a the heroine is (in part) not a typical princess because she’s not blond and blue-eyed. Those are just the things I remember thinking about over a month ago. I’m sure there are dozens more. Even as I write this now, I wish I had organized my thoughts on the subject better, because I know it’s the sort of thing that will keep coming up over and over again.

A’s only thirteen months old, so I definitely have time to get some kind of coherent narrative together about what it means to be privileged by having pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. I just didn’t think it was going to start so early.

Essence magazine hires Ellianna Placas, a white woman, as their fashion director and the black internet (yes, there’s a black internet) goes nuts:

Placas, who used to work at O: The Oprah Magazine and US Weekly, will apparently make her debut in Essence’s 40th anniversary issue, on newsstands in September. Although Essence has been looking for a fashion director for quite some time, not everyone is happy with their newest acquisition.

Michaela Angela Davis, former fashion editor of Essence and former editor-in-chief of Honey Magazine, revealed on her Facebook Wall, “It’s with a heavy heart I’ve learned Essence Magazine has engaged a white Fashion Director. I love Essence and I love fashion. I hate this news and this feeling. It hurts, literally. The fashion industry has historically been so hostile to black people–especially women. The 1 seat reserved for black women once held by Susan Taylor, Ionia Dunn-Lee, Harriette Cole(+ me) is now-I can’t. It’s a dark day for me. How do you feel?”

I should say, right off the bat, I don’t read Essence. My mother never subscribed, and by the time I got to college, I was a ladymag hater for life. I’ve probably read enough of its content over the years to make up two or three issues. Enough content to know that while Essence is one of the few magazines directed at black women, it certainly doesn’t meet all of our needs. For example, it’s heternormative, and deeply invested in the black middle class. I say all of that to explain that I’m not invested in the product, even though I have friends who read it religiously, and I have friends who have worked there.

Having said that, I can understand where Davis and others are coming from. Fashion highlights the often-fraught relationship between black women and white women. Remember, it’s been one scant generation since a black woman first graced the cover of Vogue (and considering whole issues can go to press without a single black model in them, we haven’t seen much improvement). There’s also the deeply ingrained societal idealization of white femininity — something a black woman will never be able to achieve, no matter how straight her hair gets. Essence is also one of the few publications nurturing a significant number of black writers and editors — there is literally a handful of black editors at fashion mags in this country. So it’s no surprise to me that hiring a white woman to determine the course of fashion and beauty at a black publication evoked such a strong reaction.

But it’s a short-sighted and ahistorical reaction. Angela Burt-Murray, the editor-in-chief, wrote a response to the furor, saying that the magazine was “founded to empower, celebrate, and inspire black women to climb higher, go further and break down barriers. Our commitment to black women remains unchanged as we continue to stay laser-focused on those principles–no matter who works with us.” And ultimately, Essence is part of Time Inc. It has shareholders to answer to, and financial goals to meet. In order to continue working at its founding principles (whether or not it actually is, is debatable, in my opinion), the editor has to make decisions that should be easy, but aren’t, like hiring the best person for the job even if that person looks nothing like the target demographic. Besides, as Burt-Murray notes, Placas freelanced for the magazine for six months, with no readers being the wiser at the ‘infiltration.’

As an aside, I also think those who are outraged are missing something crucial about the history of what we call “black” publications, or TV shows, or even colleges. White people have always been involved, to some extent. This is unlike the other side of the coin, where whites have often historically had trouble including people of color (Vogue is one example, most network television shows are another). Girlfriends and The Game, two television shows that targeted the same demographic Essence does were produced by white Republican Kelsey Grammer. Both shows featured mostly black, heavily female casts. And speaking personally, when I was a child and my father worked at a black newspaper in Southern California, the paper’s production guy was white. While he didn’t have editorial input, his work still heavily influenced the paper. It didn’t make it less black. To go further back, whites helped found many historically black colleges–although not necessarily out of altruism–including my alma mater. And today, no one would say that Howard isn’t a black school, even if it has white professors.

I don’t think there’s anything to fear in the hiring of Placas. And, if by chance, some intangibles are lost, the readers of Essence will vote with their pocketbooks and the editorial staff will learn what is and isn’t acceptable to its readership. But I predict everyone will actually forget about this in six weeks. And I wish Placas the best at her new gig.

Well, Andrew Breitbart, smearing Shirley Sherrod in order to refute the NAACP’s resolution against “racist elements” in the Tea Party turned out to be a pretty bad idea. Yes, you cost her her job, but she’s making black people look good. It’s too bad you’re not like, a journalist, or something, and did some digging to find the full video before you declared it to be an example of reverse racism. Ms. Sherrod is actually a really worthwhile person, unlike yourself, and now the world knows it. So kudos to you for bringing our attention to a woman who was and is working to bring black people and white people together in solidarity during a time when so many are feverishly working towards the opposite.

Anyway.

I try to avoid watching Fox News. I hear about it on the real news and I see its headlines on my iGoogle page, but I can’t bring myself to waste the electricity changing the channel on my TV to “FNC”. Apparently Glenn Beck has been heralding the coming race war. I’ve always understood “the coming race war” to mean the time that racist white militias finally band together and kill off all the browns. I also thought it was a joke, and kind of funny. Beck, however, wants us to believe otherwise. He’s saying that the “New Black Panthers” are going to start a government-backed race war to kill off Big Whitey. Of course this is silly. Fox News has been complaining about the tiny group of New Black Panthers for like a decade. I don’t know who they think Obama is, but if anything is true about him, it’s that he’s not demonstrably a militant black man. I’m more militant than he is, and I’m a bougie tragic mulatto living in the suburbs. I don’t see any medallions, dreadlocks or black fists adorning the Oval Office. But we’re supposed to believe that in between getting blamed for the oil spill and fomenting socialism, he’s been training this small elite squad of brothers to take out the white menace with the U.S. Army at their disposal? I’m really just speechless.

There was a time when I wasn’t always hearing about reverse racism, race wars, etc. in the mainstream media. It kind of seemed like most reasonable people had come to the conclusion that racism was bad, we needed to work against it, and that if you were a violent, loud mouthed racist you should just stay in your cabin and keep it to yourself. We didn’t worry about them because they stayed in the woods, for the most part, and everyone thought they were “crazy” anyway. I was focused on rooting out insidious racism, the kind that you can’t easily identify, the kind that exists in progressive communities, the institutional kind that deeply affects every person of color and which still exists today but has been obscured by all this blatant racism and the fact that we now have a black man in the White House. I could be romanticizing pre-2008, but it just seems like we wouldn’t be seeing articles like “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege” during the Bush years. They knew to keep their racism under wraps back then. I’m almost laughing to myself remembering when the GOP was respectful of black people because they felt like if they tried hard enough, they could lure a few over the fence. Case in point: Michael Steele, head of the RNC. He became head of the RNC during the 2008 campaign as, I think, a way to say “hey black people, we’ve got ourselves a Negro too!”, and also as a way to criticize Obama without seeming racist. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way they planned, and the black guy still won. So what’s the point of respecting black people or other nonwhite people now? They’re all just going to vote for the Colored, right? Because all people of color are a monolith, especially those predictable darkies.

I think the “racist elements” of the Tea Party/GOP are playing their end game. Calling him any name they can think of, blaming him for everything from AIDS to increased activity on the sun, doing anything they can think of to bring him down before the end game plays out. What happens then is yet to be seen. Will it be the repudiation of the Tea Party by the majority of U.S. citizens in this coming midterm election? Will it be the end (again) of acceptable blatant, virulent racism? Will something ominous happen to Obama? I couldn’t tell you. But you can’t be a right wing ideologue with unstable, easily manipulated followers and go on and on about a “coming race war” without something happening at the end. I know what some of Beck’s followers would really like it to be, and that’s scary.

I live in California, Los Angeles to be exact. I saw this on a bumper sticker the other day:

“Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald When You Really Need Him?”

This story about an Arab man being convicted of rape for having consensual sex with a Jewish women is getting a lot of play. Basically, the man said he was Jewish when he wasn’t, the woman had sex with him believing him to be Jewish and a potential romantic partner, and when she found out he wasn’t she filed a criminal complaint for rape and indecent assault. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The court reasoned that “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated.”

“Rape by deception” or “rape by fraud” can certainly be legitimate. Take, for example, this case, where a woman consented to sex with a man who she believed to be her boyfriend but was actually her boyfriend’s brother (and the brother knew about the mistaken identity). She did not consent to sex with the boyfriend’s brother. The sexual act was consensual insofar as there was no force involved, but it was not a consensual act with that person; and the man involved knew what he was doing and intentionally had sex with someone who was clearly not consenting to have sex with him. The court in that case held that it wasn’t rape, since there was no force — a decision that I think is wrong.

In another Israeli case, a man was convicted of rape by deception for coercing women into sex by pretending to be in a position where he could help them with their social welfare benefits:

In 2008, the High Court of Justice set a precedent on rape by deception, rejecting an appeal of the rape conviction by Zvi Sleiman, who impersonated a senior official in the Housing Ministry whose wife worked in the National Insurance Institute. Sleiman told women he would get them an apartment and increased NII payments if they would sleep with him.

High Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein said a conviction of rape should be imposed any time a “person does not tell the truth regarding critical matters to a reasonable woman, and as a result of misrepresentation she has sexual relations with him.”

Adding money and social benefits into the mix, and lying about one’s ability to provide those things in exchange for sex, brings the issue to another level, since there is coercion involved. The point is, there are good reasons to have rape by fraud or rape by deception laws on the books.

But this case is different. The woman did consent to having sex with that man. Did he lie about some aspect of his identity? Yes. But being misled about someone’s ethnicity does not remove the ability to consent. I’m sure she was mad — I’d be mad if I had sex with someone who told me they were a pro-choice feminist lefty when in fact they were an anti-choice religious fundamentalist. But being lied to about things like your religion or ethnicity or belief system does not translate into being sexually assaulted. There may be justifiable feelings of violation, but a legal standard that allows one to be prosecuted for rape because they concealed or lied about some aspect of their life is very troubling.

Also, in this case? Very racist.

There are also other issues at play when it comes to rape by fraud/deception. There have been cases where people with HIV have been prosecuted for rape by fraud because they did not disclose their status to their partners; those laws, too, have been used simply to target HIV-positive people. And while I have not heard of a case where a trans person has been prosecuted for rape by fraud for having consensual sex and not disclosing their history, trans people have been civilly sued for fraud simply for publicly identifying as their gender. I wonder what this case could mean for trans people, who even after being murdered are often vilified for allegedly not adequately disclosing their entire history, and whose murderers too often get off on bullshit defenses of “panicking” when they realize they are with a trans person.

In the aftermath of this decision, there’s been some writing around the interwebs about how rape by fraud is always bullshit, and haha I’ve lied about being 5′4″ when I’m actually 5′2″, so am I a rapist? But the reality is that there are certain circumstances where rape by fraud is a legitimate claim. This, though, is not one of them, and opens the door to even greater abuses.

Tara, a young black woman, is dressed in an old, white dressing gown, and runs fearfully from a large Southern estate.

Too much happened this week to avoid spoilers above the fold, so read on, fangbangers.

A new dynamic is developing between Franklin and Tara. Franklin is emotionally fragile in a manner that is intensely threatening to Tara, and Tara is able to manipulate the terms of her captivity by playing along with Franklin’s violent attempts at romance. Then Franklin reveals that he wants Tara to be his “vampire bride.”

LAUREN: We also find out that Franklin is quite adept at texting. Which had me rolling on the floor by myself in my living room.

SALLY: You mean, you don’t find it incredibly impressive that a vampire can learn something new like texting?! It’s AWESOME! Totally high-tech, dude.

LAUREN: One thing that had me squirming in this episode was the scene where Tara fled the mansion in her white gown — just having the imagery of a black woman fleeing a Southern estate in terror in the old school dressing gown and being chased by dogs — in a show about camp vampires. Maybe someone will write a graduate thesis on racial imagery in True Blood that references this scene in a more intelligent way, but it turned my stomach. It evoked the same negative feelings that seeing Lafayette chained up in the basement of a vampire bar did last season. And in the last episode, where they categorized an “ethnic” sex worker’s ethnicity as a food flavor and killed her because they knew no one would come after her. It’s like it’s almost progressive to point these things out but the fact that they don’t do anything with them makes me wonder whether they are intentionally drawing up this imagery.

SALLY: I was wondering that as well when I saw her running out and being chased. Just like you said, it’s troubling that they set up these images but then don’t do anything with them, particularly because I don’t think that everyone who watches will actually make that connection. So it’s almost pointless to frame it in that way if it’s intentional. And if it’s not intentional, then what the hell????

LAUREN: On the other hand, it was interesting to see how the show flipped what has been a creepy and traumatic storyline between Tara and Franklin to a largely comedic one. During the last episode, you and I were both bothered by the intense violence against women, but notice that this episode, written by a woman, had a balance of comedy and drama.

SALLY: And it had Tara attempt to gain control, which is really good to see. I’ll admit, I’m still bothered by how this storyline is unfolding, but if Tara can get away sometime soon, relatively unscathed, I’ll be a much happier person.

LAUREN: And yet wouldn’t Tara make a fantastic vampire?

Lafayette and Jesus. How adorable were these scenes?

LAUREN: I will forgive Jesus his facial hair as long as he and Lafayette stay coy and playful.

SALLY: I had two thoughts when I saw these cutie patootie scenes. 1) Awwwww – they should love each other and be together forever! 2) Hmm… is he being that nice because he’s up to something? Trying to trick Lafayette?! NOOOOO!

LAUREN: I’m telling you, Lafayette and Tara need goodness in their lives. To date, they’re basically out there on their own.

SALLY: I really hope he’s legit and doesn’t have something up his sleeve. In the meantime, he’s definitely nice to look at and it’s good to have a few moments of happiness sprinkled throughout an otherwise dark show.

Speaking of which, I also loved when Terry got all cute and emotional about moving in with Arlene. It was a really sweet moment.

We get some clues to the depth of Sam’s family’s dysfunction, specifically that Joe Lee is physically abusing Sam’s younger brother, Tommy. Sam puts himself on the line, physically and financially, to defend and protect his brother. Where is this going?

LAUREN: There are two theories I’ve seen floating around about what is happening between Tommy and Joe Lee. One is that Joe Lee is sexually abusing Tommy, which would make sense based on some peripheral moments and conversation, and the other is that they are making Tommy fight as in dog fighting, which would explain Tommy’s heavy scarring. I can see both. Have you seen any theories?

SALLY: I haven’t, though both of those are very interesting. I can see it being either, but given what we know about this family, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something even worse.

But I’m still wary of Tommy, though now I’m not sure if that’s because of his father’s abuse or if he is playing some role in this or has a hidden agenda.

LAUREN: This story is moving at a snail’s pace and poor Sam is getting the back burner again. How much do you want to bet that he has to convince Tommy and his mom to turn into wolves before the end of this season?

SALLY: I don’t get why they don’t do more with this character. He’s a good actor and I’m sure they can make this storyline a bit more interesting. I keep waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

It is revealed that Eric and Russell Edgington have a centuries long conflict after Edgington killed Eric’s family — and that Eric may be more interested in pissing off Bill than hooking up with Sookie. Additionally, Eric has no problem selling out his queen to get a political edge.

LAUREN: Yeah, I thought Eric was going to be loyal to the queen, but he turned around right quick to attempt to save Pam. It’s a testament to the parent-child vampire relationship, I think. And a good thing since I so love Pam. Also, it hurts Bill that Eric edges in by telling the truth because Bill’s motivations for keeping a dossier on Sookie are still hidden. In the end Bill’s going to look like a lying douche.

SALLY: I’m glad we finally got to see how Eric’s parents’ died and how deep this werewolf hunt goes for Eric. Having him see his father’s crown in Russell’s collection was a great moment and I can’t wait to see how this ends up playing out between them.

As for Bill, I am a bit confused about why he’s denying those files are his — couldn’t he just admit that the files were his and then make up a reason why? That seems like it would have been easier. I also am confused about why he has those files in the first place and what’s Russell’s interest in them as well. I get that Sookie’s special and there’s something up with her family history, but I guess I just wished they’d throw us some more clues.

The wolf pack’s packmaster is loathe to fight against the V-soaked Edgington crew, and Sookie seems to be pushing Alcide (who actually had a shirt on for the majority of the episode) into assuming a position of leadership. Where is this going?

LAUREN: Werewolf wars! At the very least we have our Season Three villains that the characters will need to defeat: the Magister and Russell. And it looks like the werewolves and the vampires are going to have to figure out their shit and work together.

SALLY: I would be totally down to see some werewolf wars! I kind of want them to spend some time plotting their plan to make it have a really intense build-up, but I guess there’s not really time for that. In that case, I’d be perfectly fine with Alcide becoming the leader of the pack, Debbie wanting him back and him kicking her to the curb. (Cuz, really, is it just me or is she totally not right for him?)

And what was up with the way Debbie described Russell? It seemed like there was even more to him than we know at this point. Maybe his involvement goes even deeper than we realize? Though how much deeper could it get than having the werewolves do his bidding and paying them in his own blood?

Sookie and Bill reunited. Whee. Meanwhile Sookie did the face-glowing hand thing again!

SALLY: Ahhhh!

LAUREN: WTF! OMG. And Russell’s glee!

SALLY: The Sookie/Bill reunion was kinda weird, but Sookie’s new power move was awesome! Russell looked like a kid on Christmas and Sookie’s expression was also funny — a mix of bewilderment and “oh boy, not again.” I’m sure she gets tired of having random powers sometimes. I guess I would too if all I really wanted was to have great sex with hot vampires.

Fox News dropped this bombshell in the early hours of July 20 (or the late night of July 19, as it is for me). Apparently someone was able to dig up a video of a black USDA worker telling an audience of other black people about having to help a white farmer keep his land when so many black people had lost their land, and how she “didn’t give him the full force of what [she] could do”. She states that he was “trying to show [her] he was superior to [her]“. As Fox admits, this is a short clip of a much longer speech that is not available, apparently in which “she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races”. It’s not as if that makes it right for her to abuse her government position like that, however it does put some context behind the story — it’s not like it’s some kind of gathering where a bunch of black people are sharing stories of how they stuck it to the Man.

Of course this is being used as the “SEE! THE NAACP IS FULL OF RACISTS TOO!” card to counter the relatively tame NAACP’s passing of “a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party“. Although I thought that racist letter to Abraham Lincoln was what the Tea Party was using to counter that resolution. Of course her not giving her all to help a white farmer keep his land when you’re a government worker charged with doing just that is wrong, not just because she did it because he was white and acting superior, but because that’s supposed to be her JOB. Her motivations are the least of it. This reminds me of the 2008 campaign, when the Republicans busted out Reverend Wright to make Obama look like a racial separatist. You can always find some example of black people saying foolish things if you dig far enough. Unfortunately you don’t have to dig too far to find examples of Tea Party racism.

Maybe I’ve got this all wrong, though. Perhaps by highlighting this incident of individual bias against a white farmer by a black USDA worker, The Tea Partiers may be clumsily trying to start a dialogue about the years of racial discrimination against black farmers by the USDA. I’m sure they really mean to protest the delay in payment of racial bias settlements awarded to black farmers in the Pigford case. Surely that’s what’s behind this, and it’s not just a pathetic attempt at crying “reverse racism” to discredit the NAACP.

It’s going to take more than a video of one black woman telling a story about not giving 110% to help a white farmer to counter the months of viciously racist sentiments expressed by Tea Party leaders and followers. Show me some video of a black person spitting on a white Congressman. Tell me when a group of black protesters start screaming “cracker” at white Representatives. Yes, she didn’t do a great job. But that doesn’t mean the Tea Party doesn’t have a whole lot of racists in its ranks. Spend some time tending your own yard before you try shitting in ours.