As the #MontereyPark shooter was a 72-year-old man, an observation about how some Asian American elders consume media lately: Unlike the past, when they mostly read Asian-language newspapers/watched TV news, many now get their info from YouTube. (1/6) They watch video after video from their suggestions. As with all media bubbles, this produces an echo chamber, offering ideology disguised as news. This is exacerbated by language & cultural differences that already keep them from engaging a wider range of sources. (2/6)

It's been a rough semester. Thank goodness for my students, who created some utterly amazing final projects for our Islam in/and America class. I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to share a few because they are remarkable & deserve to be celebrated. So here goes: (A THREAD) (1) "Public Worship-Salah" by Noor Almatary.
Noor is an artist who created 3 digital paintings w/ poems that "function as a visual representation of what Salah means to Muslim Ams, & the diff places/situations we are in relation to prayer."

Malcolm X, on his return from Mecca:

"Is white America really sorry for her crimes against the black people? Does white America have the capacity to repent--and to atone? Does the capacity to repent, to atone, exist in a majority, in 1/2, in even 1/3 of American white society?" "Indeed, how *can* white society atone for enslaving, for raping, for unmanning, for otherwise brutalizing millions of human beings, for centuries? What atonement would the God of Justice demand for the robbery of black people's labor, lives, true identities, culture, history?"

In the month, you will see a lot of media stories about the “legacies of 9/11.” Please engage these critically, w/a keen eye on how Muslims are framed, by both “liberal” and “conservative” media. With specific regards to US Muslim communities: (1) Notice how Muslims are (still) mostly only legible through the logics of surveillance and security. Or how they embrace or reject “American values.” Or how they embrace or reject religiosity, & more specifically “traditional” Islam.

Non-white POC: If you're not Black or Indigenous, any modicum of comfort or "freedom" you have, any "rights" you possess, are the DIRECT result of struggles, suffering, labor, toil, protests, insurrections, & radical-revolutionary actions of Black & Native peoples. You benefit every day from lives lost, blood spilled, bodies shackled and imprisoned, and dreams deferred of folks in those communities. You would be NOTHING in the eyes of the US nation-state without them. In fact, you probably wouldn't be here at all.

Here are some suggested readings for non-Black Muslims (and anyone, really) on race/racism in the United States. This is simply a starting list for basic concepts, not comprehensive in any way. I believe most of these are available in PDF form online (a short thread) * Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness As Property.” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993).

* George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Temple University Press, 1998).

* Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge, 1994).

I was wrapping up Baldwin's The Fire Next Time in my Race & Ethnicity course @RutgersU when semester got cancelled. Was thinking about what to say when we resumed online & realized Baldwin teaches so much for our current "fire." Here's the lecture I put together for my students. I was asked to share, so here goes. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, "experts" tell us what we need to know and how to protect ourselves. From the opening pages of TFNT, Baldwin establishes an authoritative, yet compassionate, voice. The crisis at hand, he tells us, is a pandemic.

Dear God, this country needs Ethnic Studies. Don't know what Ethnic Studies is? That's why we need it. 1/10 Ethnic Studies teaches you the most basic things about how race works in the country. Like how racism is structural and generational. How power operates. What intersectionality ACTUALLY is. How racial categories are constructed in law, culture, politics, and society. 2/10