The Future Children Project lists Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein among the creators of its official video. After the shoot, Goodby probably encouraged the minority kids to enroll at IAM and consider careers in advertising—because, by golly, it’s just so difficult to find qualified adult candidates of color.
Is this Renault campaign from France any less offensive than the wedding video created for Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Biel?
Fair-skinned Indian women paid $1600 more to be surrogates than others
Couples seeking surrogate mothers in India are willing to pay more for women of similar castes or with fair skin, according to a women’s health charity. Despite the fact that surrogates don’t contribute any DNA to the child, some caste-conscious Hindus consider it “caste pollution.”
Fair-skinned high caste women are being paid $1,600 more to be surrogate mothers than their dark-skinned, low-caste rivals, an Indian study has found.
India has become a medical tourism destination for fertility treatment and surrogacy among both childless Western and Indian couples from around the world.
But according to researchers surrogate mothers still face discrimination over their caste, skin color and attractiveness despite the fact that the fetus they carry has none of their own genetic material.
The survey by the women’s health charity SAMA, carried out in-depth interviews with surrogate mothers, agents who commission them on behalf of couples suffering fertility problems, and gynecologists.
They found that couples commonly insisted that the woman who carries their child should be beautiful, from their own or similar caste, and have fair skin – similar requirements to those expressed in India’s notorious newspaper advertisements for brides and grooms.
Researchers said the demands reflect wider caste prejudices in India and among the Indian diaspora.
“Parents want someone from the same background in terms of caste and religion. When they are asked ‘how does it matter?’ they don’t explain but they are willing to pay extra – up to one lakh rupees ($1864) more. It’s caste or religious prejudice and notional ideas or what is acceptable and unacceptable,” said Deepa, program coordinator at SAMA.
She said that while the surrogate mother merely gestates the fetus and does not contribute any of her own DNA to it, commissioning parents still think of her as a mother who contributes her “body and blood” to nourishing their child. For caste conscious Hindus this could be regarded as ‘caste pollution.’
Dr Naina Patel, who runs one of India’s most successful fertility clinics in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, said she does receive requests for surrogates to be of specific castes or religions, but once parents understand the surrogate’s background will not influence the appearance of their child they usually accept any healthy and stable woman.
“All they want is a healthy child, they want a healthy surrogate, someone who is mentally sound and not unhappy. Maybe initially they say about caste or religion and if there’s an option five per cent will say ‘give us Hindu, but if not we’re ready for anything,’” she said.
Advertising Age published an editorial by Carl Warner titled, “Out of the Agency Closet: It’s a Voice -- Gasp! -- from the Right”—and it’s not right on so many levels.
Warner is dead wrong from the subhead. “Political Conservatives Are Rare in Our Industry, We Should Hire More of Them,” asserted the author. Mark Robinson presented a succinct rebuttal in the comments section:
Oh please. There aren’t enough conservatives in advertising? Who are you kidding? The advertising industry is legendary for its conservative political thinkers. Every major Republican candidate since Richard Nixon in 1960 has been aided and guided by “Mad Men”, not just any guys, but the great icons of our business.Do you actually believe that advertising agencies would have one of the poorest workforce diversity records of virtually any white collar profession (no pun intended) if its ranks—and its leadership—were not dominated by conservatives?
Mr. Warner, you either know very little about the profession that we share, or like many in our business, you’re trying to sell me a load of baloney.
Warner’s ignorance accelerated its momentum with his opening sentences: “We all agree that diversity is not only important to this industry, but something we struggle with. For this conversation, we often discuss the differences of gender, race and lifestyle. But what about diversity of thought?” First of all, the majority of people in the business do not agree diversity is important to the industry; otherwise, it wouldn’t remain a dream deferred for over 60 years. Secondly, for Warner to ask why no one discusses “diversity of thought” indicates he’s never participated in the conversation. The entire argument for creating inclusive workforces is routinely based on “diversity of thought”—only the culturally clueless and blatantly racist position the discussion as being about “the differences of gender, race and lifestyle.”
With his next sentence, Warner established his stupidity. The moron typed, “Diversifying our industry with women, minorities and people with varying lifestyles was the right thing to do.” Was?! Um, what planet is this jackass living on? Warner appears to believe Madison Avenue is in a post-racial state, oblivious to the reality that we’re closer to mirroring a time period prior to the Civil Rights Era.
Warner’s insanity continued with the following pap: “As we search to create original ideas, we benefit from a talented, diverse mix of people who will bring different experiences and ideas into the room. It’s one of my favorite things about advertising—how different we are, yet how little that matters to each of us as we work together toward a common goal.” Again, it’s astounding that Warner is propping up the industry as a Multicultural Mecca. His words are patronizing at best, and offensive at least. Warner should be forced to elaborate on his personal experiences with diversity. Please share your firsthand accounts and Kum Ba Yah moments, Mr. Warner. Ironically, the man reflects the worst of political conservatives with his absolute incompetence regarding anything that isn’t White and/or male.
To underscore his brainlessness, Warner referenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I believe, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, that the content of a person’s character is all that matters, and not the color of their skin,” declared Warner. For the record, MLK said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Sorry, but Warner’s interpretation of the quote is a tad self-absorbed and selfish.
Expounding on his loneliness as a conservative—as well as his brave decision to reveal his conservative identity—Warner blubbered, “It’s been difficult deciding if coming out is the right thing to do. I have wondered, will it hurt my livelihood and subsequently my family? It seems odd that in an open-minded field like advertising, where differences are celebrated, that any group would feel stifled. … I also believe that openly accepting conservative people will help our industry.” Alas, poor Warner! The pitiful guy has such a cross to carry. Struggling to gain acceptance on Madison Avenue as a conservative White man has to be physically and emotionally draining. The isolation and exclusion must be unbearable.
However, the truth is exposed via an “About The Author” blurb stating, “Carl Warner has created campaigns for brands such as Lexus, Tabasco, the U.S. Marine Corps, Bud Light, Ford and American Airlines for more than 20 years.” In other words, Warner is a career huckster. He is full of shit and a freaking con artist. The man has reaped the rewards of the field and represents everything that is wrong with our industry. And that’s a conservative opinion.
Adweek presented “The 2012 Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence”—and the Gold Winners included a few dubious entrants. The Campaign for Existing Brand award went to Leo Burnett for its Allstate Mayhem campaign. Dennis Haysbert deserved an honorable mention, no? The Social Media Strategy award went to Ogilvy & Mather in London for its Dove Ad Makeover App that was more hype than hot.
Jay Chiat once asked, “How big can we get before we get bad?” These awards bearing his name certainly answered that question.
At Business Insider, Jim Edwards posted “The 29 Biggest Executive Perk Packages in Advertising, Ranked by Extravagance.” It appears to essentially—and exclusively—be a list of White men. Which is not the biggest surprise. In fact, it’s no surprise at all.
Sarah Palin blasts Obama for ‘shuck and jive’ response to Libyan U.S. consulate attack, draws ire for racially loaded term
The former Alaska governor tweeted the swipe after reports confirmed the White House learned a jihadist group had claimed responsibility soon afterward for the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
By Erik Ortiz / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sarah Palin took a notable swipe at President Obama on Wednesday, accusing him of ignoring early email warnings that a terror group had taken responsibility for the deadly protest last month at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
But Palin’s choice of words in her online post — that Obama did a “shuck and jive” in handling the attack — outraged some social media users for its racial connotation.
“Why the lies? Why the cover up?” Palin wrote on Facebook, adding, “We deserve answers to this. President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end.”
The former GOP vice presidential candidate also used “shuck and jive” in the headline of her note.
“How very racist and stereotyped you are!” blasted Twitter user @pat1944. “Thank God you never got to be a heart beat away from the president!”
CNN contributor Roland Martin wrote in 2008 that the “shuck and jive” term dates back to the 1870s and was an “originally southern ‘Negro’ expression for clowning, lying, pretense,” according to the book “Juba to Jive.”
“‘Shucking and jiving’ have long been words used as a negative assessment of African Americans, along the lines of a ‘foot shufflin’ Negro,’” Martin wrote. “In fact, I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase used in reference to anyone white.”
Martin, at the time, was responding to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, then the state attorney general, who used “shuck and jive” in reference to the Democratic primary race between front-runners Obama and Hillary Clinton. Cuomo later said he wasn’t referencing Obama.
Meanwhile, Palin’s use of those same words “shows her ignorance” and distracts from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign, said Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University.
“As a governor, she should know the meaning behind it. Alaska has a very historic black population,” Greer said, adding that the use of loaded language is “what happens when people get desperate.”
Palin has been criticized before for other comments deemed insensitive. She said in a video posted online last year that she was the victim of “blood libel” after critics blamed her rhetoric following the deadly shooting in Arizona that seriously wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The term “blood libel” historically has been used to describe accusations that Jews kill Christian children for religious rituals, and the word choice was considered inflammatory since Giffords is Jewish.
Palin aide Rebecca Mansour told ABC News that the ex-governor’s latest word play was meant only as a “common phrase that means to manipulatively dodge an issue.”
She added that White House spokesman Jay Carney also used the term in a 2011 press briefing. Carney was referencing himself.
Some on Twitter defended Palin while blasting the Obama administration for not acting faster against the jihadist group that claimed responsibility for the consulate attack in Libya on Sept. 11, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
“Sara Palin is, of course, correct,” tweeted @Docjp. “But the psychology of Obama will not permit him to be wrong... even when he is ... .”
Jamie Chandler, political science professor at Hunter College, said campaign rhetoric will only become more heated as Election Day draws near.
“The Ann Coulters and the Sarah Palins will have a diminishing effect as we get closer to the election, because the Republican Party wants to get more moderate,” Chandler said.
“The legitimate surrogates will continue echoing the message of the campaign,” he added.
Hate crimes up 15% in L.A. County
White supremacists and gangs are among the reasons for the increase, which contrasts with a statewide decline. Blacks are the most frequent target.
By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times
After three years of steady decline, hate crimes in Los Angeles County rose 15% last year, due in part to an increase in white supremacist and street gang incidents, officials will report Wednesday.
The change is similar to a recent rise reported in Orange County but bucks a continuing decline statewide. The 489 hate crimes reported last year in Los Angeles County were still the second-lowest total in two decades — in 2001 the county saw a high of 1,031 — but county officials said they were still concerned about the increase.
“This is a reminder that we’re in no way a post-racial society,” said Robin S. Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations. “When you have hundreds and hundreds of hate crimes, it’s way too many.”
A hate crime is defined by California law as an incident that shows bias, hatred or prejudice based on the victim’s race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The rise in Orange County was 14% and the drop statewide was 4%.
Los Angeles County officials said they could not point to a single reason for the increase, although they noted that white supremacist ideology was evident in nearly a fifth of the incidents and that gang members were suspects in 12% of the crimes, which were both small increases over the year before.
Almost half the incidents were found to be motivated by racism, with African Americans being the most frequent target. Anti-black hate crimes rose by almost a quarter since 2010, while the number of crimes against Latinos fell by almost 35%, according to the report, which is released annually by the county.
The number of crimes targeting lesbians, gays or transgender people also rose.
The largest number of incidents was reported in the San Fernando Valley, followed by the downtown area, according to the report.
“There’s very few places in the county that have not experienced hate crimes,” Toma said. “Sometimes residents think that they’re not in an area where it is an issue, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.”
Almost 1 in 3 of the crimes occurred at homes, and nearly half involved vandalism, although there were also assaults and other acts of violence, including:
• A Middle Eastern high school student in Simi Valley who was punched in the face several times by a Latino who said: “I hate Iraqis.”
• A black man who was stabbed twice in the lower back while being attacked in Altadena by seven Latinos.
• An Asian man who was walking in West Hollywood when a Latino driver pulled over, called him a homophobic slur and punched him in the face before fleeing.
This Australian ad shows once again that pharma advertising sucks worldwide. It looks like “wayside youth” will be served drugs at the BBQ fundraiser.
Advertising Age reported Gap is shifting away from a global AOR model, opting to partner with a roster of agencies. Leave it to Ogilvy to fuck up a perfect example of Corporate Cultural Collusion. In 2011, the agency won global AOR status and simultaneously let Gap hire an Ogilvy executive as its global chief marketing officer. How awful must you be in order to have your own inside man reject you? Wonder how long it will take before Gap decides Ogilvy should be gone.
Gap Moves Away From Global AOR Agency Model
Brand Will Work With Roster of Shops
By Natalie Zmuda
Gap brand is decreasing its reliance on a main global agency in favor of a roster of agencies tapped on an as-needed basis.
In early 2011, Gap brand tapped Seth Farbman, Ogilvy’s worldwide managing director, as its chief marketer and said the shop would handle its business globally. Now, the brand is looking beyond Ogilvy to shops including Peterson Milla Hooks and AKQA.
PMH, a Minneapolis-based shop, has worked with Target, Kmart and JC Penney. The shop created Gap’s summer “Be Your Own T” campaign and is working on the upcoming holiday campaign. AKQA worked with the brand on its digital Styld.by program.
“Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide helped us tremendously over the last year in establishing the Gap brand ‘Be Bright’ platform, which we launched with our spring campaign,” said Edie Kissko, a Gap spokeswoman. “Ogilvy also created our fall ‘Icon Redefined’ campaign.”
According to an executive close to the company, Gap Inc. maintains a relationship with Ogilvy. Ogilvy referred calls to the client.
“Gap brand has been and will continue to work with a roster of advertising agencies to support our global needs,” Ms. Kissko said.
Ms. Kissko also said that Gap brand is not in the midst of any agency reviews, despite a recent global restructuring that puts the North American, international, online and franchise divisions for each of Gap Inc.’s brands under a single division. Steve Sunnucks, current president of Gap Inc.’s international division, will become global president of Gap. Jack Calhoun will become global president of Banana Republic, and Stefan Larsson is serving as global president of Old Navy.
Contributing: Rupal Parekh
Anytime Fitness claims to be “The Club for Busy People.” The businessman on his cellphone forcing his way into the elevator and the woman driving while drinking her latte (and not wearing her seatbelt) actually represent annoying people. These are the club morons who text on the treadmill and hold conference calls in the weight room. And what’s with the exotic Black woman eyeing ice cream with a grocery cart full of pineapples and bananas?
MediaPost News reported Starcom MediaVest is facing a second discrimination lawsuit. How much interest did the story garner? Two comments at the post are hawking sneaker sales.
Starcom MediaVest Slammed With Discrimination Lawsuit
By Steve McClellan
Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest Group has been slapped with another discrimination lawsuit, the second such action filed against the media agency network this year.
In the latest complaint, filed with the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Manhattan, former planning strategist Angela Cahill said she was stripped of a number of responsibilities last year after she became pregnant and then was fired after she complained about it.
Cahill, who had been a top planner for local advertising on the Walmart account, alleged that both actions violated New York State and New York City human-rights laws.
The suit comes amid worries that Adland hasn’t made a lot of progress on the diversity front.
During Advertising Week earlier this month, a number of executives decried the lack of women in industry leadership roles. In April advertising and media recruitment firm Tangerine Watson released an industry diversity study that concluded most minorities working in the field believe their experience as an Adland employee is different from whites, and that the industry is not diverse enough.
SMG has not yet responded to the suit, which was filed in late September, although a pre-trial conference has been scheduled for Nov. 30. Cahill is now working at marketing services firm Focus Media as senior advertising and business development director.
Cahill’s filing stated that she is seeking “all compensatory, emotional, physical and punitive damages, lost pay, injunctive relief and any other damages permitted by law.”
The suit follows an earlier complaint filed by a Detroit-based former SMG staffer in March. In that action, Kristi Goldner claimed she was passed over for promotion because of her race. Goldner worked on the General Motors account and was let go after SMG lost the business. However, Goldner alleged her termination was retaliatory and in response to her earlier complaints about being passed over for promotion.
SMG has asked a judge in the U.S. District Court in Michigan to throw the Goldner case out “in its entirety,” denying any discriminatory behavior on the part of the company and asserting that Goldner failed to take steps required before filing suit, including taking her complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The case is winding its way through the discovery phase, which is expected to last at least until Mid-December, maybe longer, according to court filings.
Black firefighter discrimination lawsuit tab twice as high as expected
By Fran Spielman | City Hall Reporter
Chicago taxpayers must pay $78.4 million by Dec. 26 — twice as much as previously anticipated — to compensate nearly 6,000 African-American would-be firefighters bypassed by the city’s discriminatory handling of a 1995 entrance exam, a plaintiff’s attorney disclosed Monday.
Last year, the city agreed to hire 111 bypassed black firefighters and pay $30 million to $40 million in damages to about 5,900 others who would never get that chance to comply with a federal judge’s order.
Now, the actual damages have been calculated, and they’re much higher than previously anticipated.
Back pay alone for the 5,850 people who did not get jobs will total $59.7 million, according to plaintiffs’ attorney Matt Piers. Of that money, $51.4 million will be distributed to individuals. The remaining $8.3 million will be deposited in the firefighters pension fund as the employees’ contribution for the 111 lucky enough to get hired.
The city is also responsible for contributing another $18.7 million for its share of pension liability for the newly hired firefighters.
That brings the total tab to $78.4 million. The checks must go out and pension deposit made by Dec. 26, according to a court order.
Why is the price tag so much higher than anticipated?
“We projected $40 million, but that was an educated guess that turned out to be way too low once we got payroll data that allowed us to calculate actual wage increases over time,” Piers said.
“The lesson from all of this is that the closed-mindedness of the prior [Daley] administration ended up being incredibly expensive. If the city had hired at random from among those who passed the test, like plaintiffs’ counsel asked them to do before the lawsuit was filed, there would have been no violation of the law and no massive back-pay award. And instead of paying cash to people who didn’t work for the city, they would have been paying people to fight fires.”
Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago said the $78.4 million tab is in the hands of the Law Department and he has no idea whether the higher-than-anticipated price tag would blow a hole in the city’s 2012 budget.
Piers noted that, of the 5,850 bypassed black candidates who did not get jobs, only 4,674 people have filed claims. They have until midnight Saturday to stake their online claims at chicagofirefightersclassaction.com. If none of the missing file claims, individual checks will be closer to $11,000, he said. If they do, cash awards will range from $9,000 to $10,000 per person.
The 1995 firefighters entrance exam was drafted by an African American with an eye toward diversifying a Chicago Fire Department with a long and documented history of discrimination.
When results for minorities were disappointing, the city established a cutoff score of 89 and hired randomly from the top 1,800 “well-qualified” candidates.
In 2005, a federal judge ruled that the city’s decision had the effect of perpetuating the predominantly white status quo, because 78 percent of those “well-qualified” candidates were white.
Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed that African-American candidates did not wait too long before filing their lawsuit.
Earlier this year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel showed up unannounced at the fire academy to deliver a pep talk to the 111 middle-aged black firefighters who waited 17 years to realize their dream of becoming Chicago firefighters. He told the rookies that the city “made a mistake” in how it handled the 1995 exam and that, “You are about correcting that mistake.”
The Fire Department’s age limit for new hires is 38. That did not apply to the 111 black firefighters because the discrimination occurred before the cutoff was established.
The older rookies, most of who will graduate Nov. 1, entered the fire academy amid concern about how many would survive the grueling six-month training and how well those rookies would be accepted by the rank-and-file, once they get assigned to firehouses.
“Some people have required multiple opportunities to pass some of the major tests. A handful are still doing re-testing. Some couldn’t complete the training due to physical injuries. They’ll be held over to a future class. But nobody’s washed out yet,” Piers said.
“They’re in their late 30s and late 40s, much older than typical classes. Like most of us, they’re in worse shape. But given those factors, we’re very happy with their progress.”
Santiago noted that many of the older rookies have shadowed ambulances as part of their training to become emergency medical technicians.
“They ride the ambulances, so they actually stay in the firehouse. It gives them an opportunity to see what the environments are. But also, the officers get to look at ’em and see how they’re doing,” he said.
“Some of the feedback we’ve gotten back from the field has been really, really positive and that’s usually a good sign because those are firemen.”
Atheist group sponsors billboard attacking Romney’s religion, but Mormons slam its accuracy
American Atheists prez slams Mormonism as ‘racist,’ ‘homophobic’ and ‘misogynistic.’
By Christine Roberts / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A mobile billboard attacking Mitt Romney’s faith will accompany the GOP presidential nominee on the campaign trail this week.
The American Atheists-sponsored sign, which will park outside the site of Monday’s debate in Boca Raton, Fla., blasts the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its views on African-Americans and gays, CNN reported.
“We feel that America doesn’t know or understand the possible ramifications of a Mormon president,” David Silverman, president of American Atheists, told the Daily News. “Mormonism is marketed to us as another sect of Christianity. But it is not.”
The LDS Church, however, says the billboard’s messages, “No Blacks Allowed (until 1978)” and “No Gays Allowed (Current),” are baseless.
“People are surely free to disagree with us on the facts,” church spokesman Dale Jones wrote in an e-mail to CNN. “This group seems not to know that there have been black members of the Church since our earliest history, and there are many faithful gay members of the Church today.”
The sign’s first statement refers to the church’s refusal to ordain black male members until 1978, when the church head said he had a revelation to change the policy.
People of all racial groups, however, have been allowed to be members of church since it was founded.
The second statement addresses what Silverman tells CNN is the church’s “intolerance” and “bigotry” towards members of the LGBT community, a characterization the church denies.
”The fact is that Mormonism is racist to its core. It’s homophobic in its behavior. It’s misogynistic through and through,” Silverman told the Daily News, adding that he “laughed” when he heard the church said his group’s statements were inaccurate.
Silverman maintains that the sign, which will cost about $8,000 to run for the week, is not aimed at Romney specifically.
Rather, he said it’s designed to make people realize that they know next to nothing about Mitt Romney’s “views on equality and tolerance.”
“We want to know if he can guarantee every American citizen equality,” Silverman said. “We want to know if he’ll be open to diversity. And we want to hear it from him tonight.”
There’s something kinda scary about this friendly recruitment for lab experiment participants.
Writer’s long road to ‘genius’ is a story of overcoming racism
By Mike Thomas | Staff Reporter
During his first day as a freshman at Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Dinaw Mengestu broke from the class tour and vomited in a nearby bathroom.
While his orientation nausea abated, there remained a gut-level discomfort that persisted for the next couple of years. Its primary cause: race.
“To some people I wasn’t considered African-American enough or black enough,” the 34-year-old Ethiopian-born author and recent MacArthur Fellowship recipient says of his days at Fenwick, from which he graduated in 1996.
“And then, of course, there were some white students who just saw me as a n-----.”
Not only that, they called him ‘n-----’ to his face.
“Most of my freshman year I had students sitting next to me calling me ‘n-----’ in class,” he remembers. “I had students walking down the hallway who yelled, ‘That n----- smells!’”
Teachers, he says, tended to turn a deaf ear.
Quiwana Bell, a classmate at the Dominican-run Catholic institution whose alums include Pulitzer Prize winners and an astronaut, knew Mengestu only casually, but she felt his pain acutely.
“It was isolating, it was lonely,” says Bell, who is black and was raised in an all-black Chicago neighborhood. “It must have been especially difficult for him, because he was black but he wasn’t black American.”
Not surprisingly, Mengestu’s fiction (“The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,” “How to Read the Air”) owes a debt to those less-than-thrilling days of yesteryear. Race and economics are central concerns in all of his books, he notes, and born out of his time at Fenwick. So, too, is isolation and an acute awareness of “how easy, almost inevitable it is to absorb the bigotry of others; it leaves an indelible mark.”
Although Mengestu (whose first name is pronounced “dih-NOW”) had emigrated to America — Peoria, specifically, where his father worked for Caterpillar — when he was barely a toddler, his 14-year-old self suddenly began trying “to identify very strongly with Ethiopian culture” by wearing Ethiopian symbols on his clothing and immersing himself in Ethiopian history and politics.
“The one form of defense I had against the overt racism in the school,” he says, “was to try to identify myself outside of it.”
As he quickly came to realize, outside was a far more comfortable place to be. Outside and alone: with his thoughts, with the world and eventually with words.
Vatican to award sainthood to Native American it says miraculously cured young flesh-eating bacteria victim
When he was 5, Jake Finkbonner was on his deathbed. Suddenly, he recovered — a miracle his family and the Vatican say they owe to a 17th century Native American, Kateri Tekakwitha.
By The Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — Jake Finkbonner was so close to death after flesh-eating bacteria infected him through a cut on his lip that his parents had last rites performed and were discussing donating the 5-year-old’s tiny organs.
Jake’s 2006 cure from the infection was deemed medically inexplicable by the Vatican, the “miracle” needed to propel a 17th century Native American, Kateri Tekakwitha, on to sainthood. Kateri will be canonized on Sunday along with six other people, the first Native American from what is now the U.S. to receive the honor.
Jake is fully convinced, as is the Catholic Church, that the prayers his family and community offered to God through Kateri’s intercession, including the placement of a Kateri relic on Jake’s leg, were responsible for his survival.
Jake, now 12 and an avid basketball player and cross-country runner, will be present at the canonization, along with hundreds of members of his own Lummi tribe from northwest Washington state and indigenous communities across the U.S. and Canada who have converged on Rome to honor one of their own. It’s a ceremony the Catholic Church hopes will encourage Native Americans to keep to their Christian faith amid continued resentment among some that Catholicism was imposed on them by colonial-era missionaries centuries ago.
“I believe everybody has a purpose on this earth,” Jake’s mother Elsa Finkbonner said this week soon after the family arrived in Rome for the ceremony. “I think this Sunday Jake will define his purpose, and that’s to make Kateri a saint.”
Jake, a poised, lanky kid who just got his braces off, seems perfectly at ease with his role in the whole thing, gracious and grateful to the doctors who performed 29 surgeries to save his life and reconstruct his face.
“It’s a really special thing,” Jake told The Associated Press, flanked by his parents on a hotel terrace sofa. “We’ve never been to Rome, and especially meeting the pope? It’ll be an experience of a lifetime.”
Besides Kateri, Pope Benedict XVI will declare another American a saint Sunday, Mother Marianne Cope, a 19th century Franciscan nun from Utica, New York — near where Kateri lived two centuries earlier — who cared for lepers exiled to Hawaii’s Kalaupapa Peninsula. Another new saint is Pedro Calungsod, a Filipino teenager who was killed in 1672 along with his Jesuit missionary priest by natives resisting their conversion efforts.
The Catholic Church creates saints to hold up models for the faithful, convinced that their lives — even lived hundreds of years ago — are still relevant to today’s Catholics. The complicated saint-making procedure requires that the Vatican certify a “miracle” was performed through the intercession of the candidate — a medically inexplicable cure that can be directly linked to the prayers offered by the faithful. One miracle is needed for beatification, a second for canonization.
