His Soul Is Marching On | MetaFilter
This is where I note that West Virginia is West Virginia, it’s own state in its own right, because they were abolitionist, and dead-set against secession. Virginia is Confederacy - West Virginia is a solid, stout bulwark of the Union, as anti-slavery and pro-industrial as states come.
They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom.
Interracial couple denied marriage license in La. - Yahoo! News
It has been a journey with many twists and turns along the way, but Judaism is the language of my soul, and it’s what resonates with me
1st black female rabbi spent years searching - washingtonpost.com
“Though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” — Frederick Douglass.
Happy birthday, John Brown. (Thanks, Arthur.)
Tiana is the first Disney princess in more than a decade, and the first ever to be black. … Prince Naveen, for the record, is neither white nor black, but portrayed with olive skin, dark hair and, need we state the obvious, a strong chin. The actor who plays him, Bruno Campos, hails from Brazil.
Disney Introduces First Black Princess, Tiana, in ‘The Princess and the Frog’ - washingtonpost.com
I liken the situation about opportunity in this country to a Monopoly game—for the first 300 years, a certain subset of people were allowed to play. Now we’ve opened up the game and encouraged everyone to go around the board. But this newfound participation doesn’t take away from the fact that a lot of the real estate with its established green houses and red hotels is largely untouchable to the new players.
White cartoonist Hilary Price (“Rhymes With Orange”) supports the Feb. 10 comics page action: White Cartoonists Discuss Black Cartoonists’ Comics-Page Action. [via torchbearers] See also: Name that Peanuts character!
It’s like a weather forecast of mostly sunny with patches of racism.
Black Cartoonists Plan Feb. 10 Comics-Page Action: “At least eight African-American cartoonists plan to take part in a Feb. 10 comics-page action to draw attention to the way their strips are perceived and purchased.” The artists will each draw a version of the same strip, to protest being treated as interchangeable by editors. The irony here is that it’s highly unlikely—if not impossible—that you’ll be able to simply open up to the comics page of your preferred daily to see the action take place. [via Torchbearers]
For a school art contest, I proudly submitted a drawing of Peppermint Patty on a baseball mound. I played little league, I was the only girl on the team and I wanted to prove that girls could and did play baseball. … I had always thought her skin tone was strange, so I “fixed” it with a thin, tan watercolor mix that I had watched my mom use repeatedly on birthday cards for my friends. As far as I knew, all birthday cards needed to be “fixed” when you bought them home from the store.
Listen to Tavis Smiley interview Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. about the politicization of the civil rights movement. Dr. Glaude speaks powerful truths. I’d never heard him or even of him — I welcome the discovery.
To align yourself with the powerful and then take aim at the powerless takes not one ounce of valour. To prop up prevailing hierarchies and orthodoxies rather than challenge them demands not a scintilla of bravery.Gary Younge's columns in the Guardian are always superb; today on the abuse of the word brave, and more. I've always thought that majority discourses rely on claiming victimhood, while simultaneously posing as a victim of minorities.
The only way to find out, I decided, was to grow my first proper beard, and so started my four-month journey.Rajesh Thind grows a beard after the London bombings. His diaries are here.
The results were immediate and very intense. People were moving off Tubes to get away from me; I would sometimes have a whole carriage to myself.
The blogosphere is no substitute for face-to-face conversations. It's just another journalistic tool limited by, if nothing else, the amount of time you're willing to spend reading and clicking. I like the way folks like "Professor Kim" and George Kelly feed me quick glimpses at a wide range of thought from mainstream journalism and blogs. I'm also acutely aware that the same dialogic dysfunction that leapt from the solid world to the virtual one, from living room chats to chat rooms, infects the blogosphere.
The Poynter Institute's Keith Woods scopes out bloggers' discussions of racial issues, mentioning George's "Negrophiles" (sic) along the way.
[S]kepticism of campaign pledges runs deep in Indian country, given the government's history of broken promises. The federal government has acknowledged that it has grossly mishandled money it began collecting in the late 1880s, when it leased reservation land to oil, mining and timber interests and held the proceeds in trust for Indians.
The government owes Native Americans billions, but a class-action lawsuit filed eight years ago on behalf of nearly 500,000 Indians is still unresolved.
Meanwhile, on Pine Ridge, three and four families live in single-family houses, eight to nine out of 10 people are out of work, and more than half the population, helpless against disconnect notices, has no phone in any given month.
Washington Post: On Pine Ridge, a String of Broken Promises.
I have been challenged to my first debate at The Iron Blog:
If memory serves me right, while we have enjoyed such Battles as Battle Rumsfeld, Battle School Vouchers and Battle Death Penalty, the truly invigorating Battles have been those that push the boundaries of current debate. Battle Torture, Battle Gay Marriage, and our most recent Battles on Terrorism, Patriotism and Islam have really seen the sparks fly and the rhetoric clash. This is the heart of Iron Blog - discussion of the issues we normally do not discuss. I wish to keep this current trend going, and so I passed on interesting but unexciting Topics like File Sharing, Copyright and Unilateral Intervention. The Topic for the Battle is this:Affirmative Action
Keeping race out of the institution, or institutionalizing race? Let's see what our Combatants have to say.
Somehow, I need to find time to write 4 essays on this topic while working two jobs and taking care of my kids. It should be a fun week for me! It's a cool site...check it out and cheer me on. Or bring me coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
From Ethnic press fights for access to RNC by Xiaoqing Rong:
Gaining access to the Republican National Convention has become a tortuous struggle for a slew of local ethnic publications, even though there are 15,000 media credentials available for domestic and international media.
While the ethnic press had little trouble accessing the Democratic Convention, at least 10 publications, including major Haitian, Bangladeshi, Polish and Muslim newspapers, all had their applications for press credentials turned down by the Republican National Committee. Only under pressure from the New York chapter of the Independent Press Association, an umbrella organization for local ethnic publications (where this reporter was once a fellow), did the Republicans eventually reconsider.
The IPA first realized there was a widespread problem last week. The organization’s election coverage coordinator, Karen Juanita Carrillo, had been calling IPA members to make sure they applied for credentials for both conventions on time and to help iron out any problems. But she began to hear complaints from members saying their publications had been denied access to the RNC. (...)
Carillo said it was only after she made phone calls and threatened to put out a press release that the RNC changed its tune. "I think they suspected the ethnic media doesn’t matter," said Carrillo. "Then they are a little shocked to find out that we do."
[ via infojunkies ]
As Dru and others have pointed out, the biggest problem with Fahrenheit 9/11 is that it glosses over the racism that has been at the heart of the U.S.' so-called War on Terror.
Specifically, when the movie discusses the PATRIOT Act, Moore makes no mention of the thousands of Arabs and Muslims within the U.S. that have been rounded up, detained illegally and sometimes deported with little or no justification.
The face of the PATRIOT Act is not Peace Fresno, the group that Moore chronicles in the movie, it is Farouk Abdel-Muhti.
Farouk was a Palestinian activist that was illegally detained for more than two years before finally winning back his freedom in April. But while he was detained Farouk, in his 50s, was denied his medication. And sadly on Thursday Farouk died only moments after doing what he's done his whole life — speaking out against injustice.
In yesterday's Philly Inquirer, the mainstream media acknowledges that "Jail may have hastened activist's death".
Democracy Now has a page up on Farouk with a story of his passing and some excerpts of past speeches.
Free Farouk also has much on his life and his words.
(More at my place)
originally posted by zagg
Ryan Matthews, an innocent man on death row who I posted about here and here, is home for the first time in five years and hopefully is on his way to being exonerated completely.
originally posted by zagg
Ryan Matthews, an innocent man on Louisiana's death row who I posted about in August, yesterday won a new trial based on DNA evidence that shows he did not commit the crime.
Coverage from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.
originally posted by zagg
Ms. Brown has mixed feelings about the ganguro phenomenon. "Being African-American, I'm flattered that our music and style is so influential," she said. "But I have to say that I find the ganguro obsession with blackness pretty weird, and a little offensive. My paintings come out of trying to make sense of this appropriation."
Ms. Brown's paintings do a little cultural sampling of their own. She takes 17th- and 18th-century Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints of geishas, bathhouse girls, samurai and Kabuki theater actors and gives them a radical makeover. The results are zany hybrids, from kimono-clad M.C.'s and gun-wielding gangsta rappers to sassy courtesans with darkened faces, dreadlocks and long painted nails. She calls them "Afro Asiatic allegories."
The New York Times on Iona Rozeal Brown, who revises Japanese woodblock prints to include hip-hop iconography.
Poynter Online - "USA Today Scandal A Threat To White Privilege, Mediocrity" in which Dr. Ink asks will Jack Kelley's sins be visited upon other white journalists?
Denton has mapped out a route for monetizing the blog world in short order. It is a strategy to provoke outrage and publicity by taking the piss out of celebrities and luminaries of New York and DC. And I don't have any problem with that. It's just that these sites have decided that one way to telegraph their supreme coolness is to continually joke about non-whites as marginalized second-class citizens. It's this casual, damaging disregard that is hard to quantify, and yet, Gawker and Wonkette exemplify the growing phenomenon of white hipsters adopting a casual racism. Is it any wonder so many still feel blogging's a white man's sport?
Africana.com's John Lee: "Blogging While (Anti)Black". Via Romenesko.
Making fun of Asians and Asian-Americans is still perceived as socially acceptable in a lot of places.
California has set February 10 as the execution date for Cooper, for whom there is a very strong case of innocence. Details on that site. February 3 will be a day of action to try to save Cooper's life.
Highlights include a press conference held with people of faith in the Los Angeles area, including the priest of the governor’s church, as well as protests and press conferences in Fresno, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Riverside.
Call Gov. Schwarzenegger at 916-445-2841 or e-mail governor@governor.ca.gov.
originally posted by zagg
"Two Wongs don't make a Wright." No, that's not a typo. It's the punchline in an upcoming installment of the comic strip "BC" by Johnny Hart, referring to two Asian characters who fail in their attempt to build a working airplane — a play on words about the first flight of the Wright brothers. Unfunny, stupid, and offensive. A few papers have already decided to not to run it: Two newspapers substitute "B.C." comic strip. It's a lame, cheap pun, at the expense of Asians. AND TOTALLY UNORIGINAL, lifted from a freakin' t-shirt. Been there, done that, with Abercrombie. That's racist!
Speaking of racist Johnny, I'd be interested to see when the ants first appeared in B.C. I can't imagine it's a coincidence that all these jokes with ants are about underperforming public schools. The ant world is a whole separate society generally invisible to the white characters in the strip.
For Biracial Children, a Look at Attitudes (washingtonpost.com)
"You have to be very careful to explain this on a level that they understand," said Francis Wardle, director of the Center for the Study of Biracial Children in Denver. "Kids don't understand race. They don't understand who is codified by race, and how it differs from country to country."
Wardle said Williams's decision to proclaim her heritage "is a wonderful opportunity to look at the history of race in this country."
He said he does not see that happening yet, because news coverage has focused solely on Williams, rather than on the vast population of other mixed-race Americans from her era who were abandoned by white parents.
Salon.com Life | The Army be thuggin' it
"When I saw the Source was teaming up with the Army, I was outraged," says Bakari Kitwana, former executive editor of the Source and author of "The Hip-Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture." "It's a betrayal of their readership. The military has historically used African-Americans, while the country has not done justice to African-Americans."
Your parents ask "If there is a minority scholarship, why isn't there a Caucasian scholarship?" and there is a simple answer: there are hundreds (heck, thousands!) of them. They are sponsored by Chambers of Commerce in majority white communities, American Legion and VFW Posts with mostly white membership, fraternal organizations comprised of white people, churches in denominations that are almost exclusively white (the neighborhood churches on Sunday morning are among the most segregated institutions in America!) and many other organizations. Their scholarships are aimed at residents of white communities, the children of overwhelmingly white memberships, high achievers in schools that are almost entirely white, etc. In addition, most American colleges and universities have a special affirmative action program that benefits white people highly disproportionately - it's called the 'legacy preference.'
New York Times: Many Speakers at Meeting Cite Racism on S.I.
"White racism is the order of the day here," said the Rev. John Johnson, pastor of a church in the Clifton section and a longtime community activist who warned that "a riot is coming to this island.""Open society has never existed on Staten Island," he told the audience of about 50 people. "We need a federal prosecutor to come in here. Civil rights are being violated."
The Washington Redskins football franchise can keep its trademark name and logo because a group of activists did not provide enough evidence that the team's moniker was disparaging to Native Americans, a judge ruled yesterday.
Evidence? (Maybe they should have checked out the original words to the team's song.)
Pro-Football Inc., the corporation that owns the Redskins, appealed the trademark panel's decision in U.S. District Court. Its attorneys said that the "difficult relations" between Anglo-Americans and Native Americans were certainly unfortunate. But, they argued, in the 21st century, the beloved hometown team has changed the connotation of the word "redskins" to one that is "powerfully positive" -- associated more with touchdowns than tomahawks.
By this token, why not just rehabilitate all racial epithets by assigning them to football teams? C'mon, let's get started!
Blindness Of The Majority @ OliverWillis.Com
We (the public-at-large) *want* to be colorblind, which is at least a step in the right direction. We need to work towards the goal in which race no longer matters to anyone--although I personally doubt this will happen until cosmetic nanotech happens, and we can all be Star-Bellied Sneetches or not, at will.(Contrast the randomwalks view, in which everyone is achingly conscious of their race at all times, and how it impacts their value as a person. Black= self-image ++. White = selfimage --. Asian/Hispanic... *shrug*. Notice how people (and ESPECIALLY randomwalks) never talk about race in any terms other than black and white.)
[anonymous commenter]/January 4, 2002 10:51 PM
"On the road, men go for anything, they really do. But I don't let them in. I don't get men hitting on me, but I get Muslim men hitting me [Mirza has been attacked on stage in London]." She allows herself a rueful laugh.An interview with Shazia Mirza in today's Guardian.
"I don't fit in on the comedy circuit but I do have a laugh with them. But that's it. They don't know how to deal with me. They are a bit scared. They don't cross that line."
The petty jealousies sparked by her meteoric rise do annoy her. "They have been so racist to me. They say that I have only got where I am because I'm Muslim. Well, I had the courage to do what I am doing. You have to have an angle in comedy. And I'm naturally different. I am brown and I am a Muslim woman, what can I do?"
It is fitting that the Connerly-led attempt at ethnic cleansing, the purest product to date of racist American illogic, will be staged in California, the first state to achieve a non-white majority — 53 percent, according to the 2000 census. On October 7, California voters will have the opportunity to engage in two acts of mass self-delusion: first, they can elect Arnold Schwarzenegger governor, which requires that they pretend he is an actual person, rather than an Aryan-modeled hologram with an accent; second, they can vote ‘Yes’ on Connerly’s Racial Privacy Act (RPI):The state shall not classify any individual by race, ethnicity, color or national origin in the operation of education, public contracting or public employment… Classification in other state operations are prohibited unless they serve a compelling state interest and are approved by two-thirds majority of the legislature and approved by the governor.The intended effect of RPI is to make it nearly impossible to compile evidence of the existence of racism, or to create public policy that would counter the effects of racism, or to identify the victims of racism. A ‘color blind’ society would be achieved by blinding citizens and government to the facts of bias. It is the equivalent of vanquishing crime by making it impossible to introduce evidence of lawbreaking, or conquering disease by eliminating the practice of medicine. Racial peace will reign in the land, the theory goes, since there will be no official racial facts available to argue about.
What it always feels like to me is that while I always know my ancestors were slaves at some time, the slave masters, the slavers, the captors, and everyone else involved were these mysterious white people that have no connection to white people today.NegroPleaseDotCom: if i'm the hunted, who's the hunter?
I remember a sociology professor who worked at my university for a time. As a woman of color, she confronted her predominantly white classes with the admonition that white people can't say they're not racist until they compete against a black person in the job market. I thought it was an odd statement. Now I understood what she meant.The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Other Candidate.
‘We’re just tired, we’re just sick of them killing us,’ Benton Harbor resident Bonita Bulger, 28, told the Times. ‘Our backs are against the wall. The jobs are low. Our kids have nothing to do.’ Evette Taylor, 31, told the Chicago Tribune that Benton Harbor residents ‘have had enough. We have to take a stand. It [the violence] ain’t right, but it’s justified.’ ‘They’re not going to keep killing us,’ Bulger told the Detroit Free Press. ‘We’re going to strike back. It’s a black-white issue. It’s a police issue. We can’t go on living like this.’ ‘There just ain’t no justice here,’ Jimmie King, 31, a Benton Harbor native, told the Chicago Sun Times. ‘There are a lot of people in this community who are upset with the way black folks are being treated. A lot of people have just given up’.
Paul Street looks at Benton Harbor.
originally posted by zagg
According to a National Opinion Research Council poll taken in 2000, about half of whites in the United States believe that racial inequality is caused by a "lack of motivation and willpower on the part of blacks."Washington Post: Courtland Milloy: A Ruling Not Entirely Of This Reality.
That just restates a centuries-old racial stereotype: that blacks are lazy and not too bright. An additional 25 years won't make it go away, either.
"The problem is not race; it's white supremacy," Paul Butler, a professor of law at George Washington University, said in an interview. "When most white people evolve to the point where race does not matter to them, we can start talking about ending affirmative action."
In 1983 Bradford became the first local authority to introduce halal meat into school meals. A small local animal rights group led a campaign to reverse the decision. Their numbers swelled as people rallied to the cause, only to leave abruptly once the controversy passed. Letters to the local press, warning "When in Rome", complained about "the systematic torture" of "British animals". It was as if the animals participated in the quality of being British whereas citizens of Asian extraction did not.Brian Klug on why an appeal to repeal provision for Muslim and Jewish methods of animal slaughter feeds inexorably into a racist discourse of 'Us' (modern, civilised, decent) against 'Them' (backward, savage, merciless).
Every year, the appeal for the poor friendless donkeys brings in about nine times as much money as an appeal for the needy children. This solicitude extends even to foreign donkeys. There was a celebrated contest between the tabloids some years ago to rescue a donkey that was to have been dropped from a Spanish church tower as the culmination of a village fiesta. If a French village were found to be throwing asylum seekers from the belltower, the British newspapers would probably not fight each other to rescue the victim and bring him here to live out his days at stud.And Andrew Brown (also at helmintholog) on how no one any longer argues, at least in the broadsheets, for the rights of animals to take precedence over the interests of Muslims.
Felton's deception worked. Not only was he accepted as white; other white prisoners also began to turn to him for racial instruction. He was transferred to Attica, in upstate New York, where in the late 90's there was already a well-organized racist faction. There were 60 or 70 white prisoners in C Block, where Felton was held. Of those, 20 were allowed to come to the two tables in the mess hall that Felton and others had reserved for the ''politicized.''The Black White Supremacist, by Paul Tough.
originally posted by xowie
Farai Chideya on race, journalism and (of course) Jayson Blair:
Race is always an issue; one that, if you live long enough, will work both for and against you. As America gets more diverse, the total number of black and of-color newspaper reporters has stagnated from year to year, in some cases dropping. The failure of America to have a truly integrated media does two things: 1) reinforces racial essentialism (i.e., all black reporters are held accountable for the sins of one; not so for whites) and 2) gives people who really want to play the race game a wide open field in which to do it.
Racial essentialism means that whites are thought of as having no race, and blacks (and to a lesser extent, other non-whites) are thought of as only seeing the world via race. This skewed perspective leads to the assumption that whites are "objective" when covering race (because they are somehow neutral, or raceless) and blacks are biased. It also means that white people don't have to apologize for famous plagarists like the Boston Globe's Mike Barnacle and Ruth Shalit (who penned a controversial article on race in the newsroom for The New Republic). Blacks apparently do.
[ via rc3.org ]
P.S. Why didn't anyone tell me about Pop and Politics, and that she founded it? It looks to be an excellent read.
People who wonder why a majority of African Americans do not support George W. Bush's illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq might want to talk to a black gentleman and fellow Chicagoan I know named Tony. They should also review some recent and important research on hiring discrimination in and around Chicago, to be discussed below.Tony possesses "only" a High School degree but enjoys greater political and sociological wisdom than most of America's college-certified population, including many high academics. He recently posed an excellent question after relating a media commentator's remarks to the effect that the US was going to bring justice and democracy to Iraq. "How," Tony asked me, "you gonna export something you ain't even got at home?"
This is one of the most thorough explanations of our racist system I have ever seen.
Two things I read in the newspapers today:
The number of black Americans under 18 years old who live in extreme poverty has risen sharply since 2000 and is now at its highest level since the government began collecting such figures in 1980, according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund, a child welfare advocacy group.
In 2001, the last year for which government figures are available, nearly one million black children were living in families with after-tax incomes that were less than half the amount used to define poverty, said the new study, which was based on Census Bureau statistics and is to be released publicly today.
And
Like many tech companies, PeopleSoft skidded through 2002.
The Pleasanton software firm's shares plummeted 53 percent. It earned $182. 6 million, down 5 percent from 2001. And sales tumbled 8 percent.
But Chief Executive Officer Craig Conway won a raise. Including options, PeopleSoft estimated his total package soared to $188 million, quintuple his 2001 compensation, according to the company's proxy statement filed earlier this week.
To me items like these illustrate the barbarism at the heart of capitalism, a system designed to benefit the few at the expense of the vast majority, a system that enables CEOs of failing companies to amass bounties while millions in America (and billions worldwide), especially communities of color, live and die in abject misery.
It is a system that rationalizes the heaping of billions more dollars into the destruction of another country, Iraq, so the oil wealth there can be plundered and used to "fund" the rebuilding of that same country. This is nothing more than theft. The U.S. has destroyed Iraq and has taken the oil fields. Now it will sell the oil and will use the profits to continue to pay U.S. corporations to rebuild what the U.S. government just spent billions destroying.
We don't need to defeat capitalism to stop a war, but we do need to defeat capitalism to stop all wars.
originally posted by zagg
"Laci and Scott Peterson are attractive white people, and the media jump all over that," said Sgt. Jeff Ferguson, a homicide detective with the Oakland Police Department. "Luci wasn't particularly attractive, and neither was her husband," said Ferguson, who aided in the homicide investigation.Luci or Laci? by Chip Johnson.
originally posted by xowie
It took me a few hours at the convention before I realized that, of the thousands of members I had seen there, I couldn't recall any being black.Palm Beach Post: NRA bids a loving farewell to Heston. "Heston bent down and kissed her. And they were led offstage. Someone else had to carry the rifle. Heston stopped when he got to the edge of the curtain. He turned and waved, and then he was gone."
They see them on the television, night and day, a nation's treasure exploding into the sky, glowing, white smoke against a night sky, shooting from an aircraft carrier at sea and then, soon, here are the explosions in Iraq, Baghdad mostly, lighting up the night sky. A million-dollar show. School teachers fly in the explosion. Single mothers who learned how to operate a computer. Clerks in a welfare center.
This Jimmy Breslin piece is 10 days old, but still worth a read, if only because he so concretely ties together the war at home with the war abroad.
originally posted by zagg
"We live and work in a very mixed community but I'm aware when we go out of London of being in white England, which is very unnerving. I have also faced antagonism from the Chinese community: some people regard me as a barbarian who is stealing their woman. And then there's inverse racism: it's trendy to have a Japanese girlfriend, so people assume she's Japanese, like a collectible. And we've had people assuming she's a Thai bride, and that I've paid for her."Between two worlds, part of the Observer's special issue on the 10th anniversary of Stephen Lawrence's death.
"When we met, the church thought of foreigners, especially black ones, as people you went out to help; you had jumble sales for them. Training for the ministry was fine, but marrying a white woman was moving above your station. If I'd been married to a Nigerian, people would have done things for us. As it was, I was always being asked when I was going back. [...] When I worked in Moss Side I was much in demand by the Afro-Caribbean community, which wanted me for weddings, baptisms, funerals. But I had to tell them that if they couldn't be civil to Jill, I wouldn't deal with them. Whites were always making me an honorary white and telling racist stories in front of me. You start your relationship with the sense that colour is no big deal, but the big deal is foisted upon you.
originally posted by zagg
originally posted by zagg
originally posted by zagg
They grasped that globalisation was about more than investment and trade, that it was also about military competition and geopolitical domination. They have discovered, or rediscovered that, as Arundhati Roy put it at Porto Alegre, the real name of ‘Corporate Globalisation’ is ‘Imperialism’.Some commentary from Alex Callinicos on debates within the European antiwar movement. Also, activists in New York send an open letter on movement building and race.
originally posted by zagg
I grew up wanting to be white. That is, to the extent of wanting to be colorless and to feel complete freedom of movement. The other night at a neighborhood restaurant the waiter, after mentioning he had read my books, said about himself, 'I'm white, I'm nothing.' But that was what I wanted, you see, growing up in America -- the freedom of being nothing, the confidence of it, the arrogance of it. And I achieved it.I've never read any Richard Rodriguez, but he's moved up my list.
Evidence continues to mount that driving while black and male still attracts the attention of police officers -- even as evidence continues to pile up that young black men are no more likely than young white men to be doing bad stuff on the road.
How we won in Illinois. And statements from the exonerated.
originally posted by zagg
Arab-American groups estimated at least 36 people have been detained -- mostly Middle Eastern and Latino workers who were security guards or concession workers at the stadium. Foreign-born taxi and bus drivers have also been arrested. The San Diego Union Tribune quoted sources as saying 80 people were being held.
originally posted by zagg
If indeed Mr. O’Neal’s statement was meant to be a non-racial attempt at humor, his joke could be directed toward any NBA player while achieving the same humorous effect. For example, ‘Tell Dirk Nowitzki, ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh’, or ‘Tell Pau Gasol, ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh’, or even ‘Tell Dikembe Mutombo, ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh."
I shouldn't find this petition funny, but I do. Would I laugh if Shaq were white?
originally posted by judlew
Are the Southerners defending the Confederate flag in this article kidding, or are they really this ignorant?"This is our heritage. Nobody should be upset with these shirts," said Ree Simpson, a senior soccer player at Cherokee who says she owns eight Confederate-themed shirts. "During Hispanic Heritage Month, we had to go through having a kid on the intercom every day talking about their history. Do you think they allow that during Confederate History Month?"
Simpson said no one complains when African American students wear clothes made by FUBU, a black-owned company whose acronym means "For Us By Us." Worse, she says, school officials have nothing to say when black students make the biting crack that the acronym also means "farmers used to beat us." Similarly, she says, people assume that members of the school's growing Latino population mean no harm when they wear T-shirts bearing the Mexican flag.
The complexities of Latino and Afro-Latino labeling, at washingtonpost.com.Exactly who these immigrants are is almost impossible to divine from the 2000 Census. Latinos of African, mestizo and European descent -- or any mixture of the three -- found it hard to answer the question "What is your racial origin?"
Some of the nation's 35 million Latinos scribbled in the margins that they were Aztec or Mayan. A fraction said they were Indian. Nearly forty-eight percent described themselves as white, and only 2 percent as black. Fully 42 percent said they were "some other race."
50 things you didn't know about Trent Lott
originally posted by Jane Die
The nation's 35.3 million Latinos are still being relegated to the margins of U.S. news consciousness. The networks' dismal record of covering the nation's fastest-growing minority group undermines the information needs of all U.S. residents.Major TV news networks are almost entirely ignoring Latinos, according to a new study from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
If your local paper doesn't carry it, you can finally read Lalo Alcaraz' new daily strip La Cucaracha at the uComics website.
I've been sleeping on wimminandminorities.com but it's time to WAKE UP!
As a lighthearted reminder, Pashkow circulates around the admissions office a three-page memo called "Jews Clues." The first piece of advice is to spot names ending in "baum," "berg," "burg," "bloom," "man," "stein," "thal," "vitz" or "witz." Another dead giveaway mentioned in the memo: If applicants mention that they have had a bar or bat mitzvah.USC is looking for a few good Jews.
originally posted by daiichi
In an edition of his Hop Hop Political Newsletter which is unfortunately not online, Davey D makes a crucial point about Trent Lott's wildly offensive remarks at a birthday bash for Strom Thurmond.
It will be interesting to see how
the media references his remarks when mentioning his name. In other
words there's a tendency to always make mention of past transgressions
when speaking about African American leaders even if the events or
remarks were made 20 years ago. I still read newspapers where Jesse
Jackson's off color 1984 'hymie town' remarks are made mention. Al
Sharpton and the Tawana Brawly case are seemingly always in the same
sentence. The word 'anti-Semite and NOI leader Louis Farrakhan are
always made to go hand and hand. I've heard apologies and
explanations from these individuals just like Lott and his folks are
trying to explain his 'poor choice' of words. My question is will
Trent Lott go back to simply being the Senate Majority Leader or will
he be forever known as the Trent Lott the Senate Majority Leader the
'Jim Crow Law Supporter'? Will we start referring to Trent Lott as a
bigot or will he still be viewed as a distinguished United State's
Senator who leads the Senate?
"We recognize Filipinos, but this is a step backwards," said one of the more moderate voices at the microphone. "I think this would segregate the Filipinos . . . This is just starting a trend."Meet the village idiots of Eagle Rock, California.
originally posted by daiichi
Boston Globe: Harvard Law plan on speech causes stir. What do you think?Harvard's Black Law Students Association and some faculty have been pressing since last spring for a speech code that would punish offending students and professors. The law school community was ruptured at that time by a series of racial incidents - most notably one student's use of the word ''nig'' in an online course notebook, a professor's defense of that student, and another professor's comment that feminism, Marxism, and black studies have ''contributed nothing'' to tort law.
Yet while law school officials have taken steps to soothe campus tensions since then, their primary action - forming the Committee on Healthy Diversity, which said it plans to draft the proposed speech code - has created a new wave of concern.
The November 2001 incident at Auburn University, chronicled at tolerance.org, was the most high-profile incident of blackface at a frat party. But it was far from an isolated incident. In 2001 it also occurred at the University of Mississippi, though that frat was reinstated this week, as well as at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the University of Louisville. And this year incidents have already been reported at Oklahoma State University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Virginia, and Swarthmore.
originally posted by zagg
So you know that site Black People Love Us? The New York Times: Black-White Harmony: Are You Kidding Me?
"I think the anonymity of the Internet allows people to discuss issues without self-censoring and that's politically useful in discussions of race," said Omar Wasow, the executive director of BlackPlanet.com, the most heavily trafficked African-American Web destination, according to Nielsen NetRatings.(More good quotes at ALLABOUTGEORGE.com.)Mr. Wasow stopped short of calling the Perettis' project social activism. "This is more to me like a prank," he said. "A clever, socially engaged prank, but a prank nonetheless."
Diana Griggs, a local African-American internist, would have been the only black person counted by the 1990 census in this little town 30 miles south of Indianapolis -- if she had felt safe identifying herself as such on the census form.
Extremists Undermine Town's Efforts to Overcome Racist Legacy
[Marivic] Bautista was an honors student in [Everett Community College]'s nursing program until her third quarter. When she started having trouble in April, she went to see [nursing instructor Karen] Heys, her adviser. Bautista said Heys closed her office door and told her, "Whatever you do this quarter, your grades will always be lower than the rest of the group because you did not have your primary education here and you do not have English as your primary language," according to Bautista's complaint.
Think discrimination is wrong? Maybe you should sign this petition.
Everyone interviewed was familiar with this phenomenon - that is, Americans being fond of wearing shirts emblazoned with kanji, oblivious as to its actual meaning. Or actually having it tattooed directly on their skin, with probably no greater authority than the tattoo artist present to assure them that they are not forever being branded with characters that mean "stupid American." For the most part, even the most serious-sounding of the respondents couldn't help but laugh at the phenomenon. They find it as funny as most Americans probably find "Japlish." Moreover, the majority of the respondents saw it as a parallel cultural phenomenon to Japanese-English: after all, both give a "sense of exoticism in a twisted way," both hold an appeal that has little if anything to do with literal meaning, and both appear rather humorous to individuals who are actually familiar with the meaning. Therefore, on at least this superficial level, the two phenomena are indeed extremely similar. There are, however, a couple of differences.From half of a senior thesis on English as cultural capital in Japan.
For one, the degree to which both cultural/fashion developments have flourished in their respective countries is separated by a rather wide gulf. While one can often find kanji on T-shirts and tattoos in America, that is more or less where its presence ends. English, on the other hand, literally cannot be avoided no matter where one should happen to go in Japan; even a blind man would perhaps pick up snippets of students practicing their English, or hear it used in commercials. Furthermore, while an American may put on a kanji T-shirt, or even consider a tattoo, it is not likely that he would feel enticed to buy a product because its advertisement contained Japanese characters. The language may seem fascinating and exotic, but with none of the "race envy" discussed earlier.
Moments earlier, Flores says, he and friend Raybblin Vargas, both counselors at W.E.B. Du Bois high school in Brooklyn, had noticed the cop and his partner shoving a handcuffed black teenager face-first into a metal gate alongside the turnstiles in the Kingston-Throop C train station in Crown Heights. Flores fished the Kodak DC3200 from his backpack and from about 10 feet away started snapping.Cop Watchers Beware - by CHISUN LEE.
But soon he and Vargas were snarled in their own tangle with police. Before it was over, they claim, they were unjustly maced, assaulted, and imprisoned. In fact, before they could request it, NYPD Internal Affairs initiated a probe that night. A police spokesperson had little comment last week, saying only, "It's an active investigation. We take the allegations very seriously."
via lia:
i can't get into blogger to post this on rwalks, think you'd want to post it? remind me to never photograph cops with my digital camera EVER. keerist.
Inughuit were told they had no right to return either to Uummannaq or to the land surrounding it. They knew this land intimately over thousands of years. It sustained them. Then, in an instant, it was forbidden.The Inughuit of Greenland have sued Denmark in an effort to close an American military base that shoved them off their land 50 years ago.
The War on Drugs never came to my college dorm. Not because of insufficient enemies in sight—for indeed there were plenty—but rather because the drug war has rarely ever made its way to the cloistered residences of mostly white, well-off private school co-eds. Too busy busting the black and brown in the lower ninth ward of New Orleans, I guess, to make a stop Uptown, where the Tulane freshmen on the 8th floor of Monroe Hall were busy filling up two foot bong chambers with pot smoke, and then inhaling until our eyes rolled back in our heads.Tim Wise: Affirmative Inaction.
Of the men and women serving more than one year in state prisons for drug-related offenses in 2001, over three-quarters were people of color. Regardless of the fact that, numerically speaking, five times as many Euro-Americans use drugs in the U.S. as African Americans, a host of practices in law enforcement and the criminal justice system have led to glaring disparities in incarceration rates.Silja Talvi: The Color of the Drug War.
Corky Lee was set on his course in junior high school by a famous photograph taken at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. The picture commemorated the completion of the transcontinental railroad and showed workers posing with two trains, one from the Central Pacific line and one from the Union Pacific. But something was wrong with this picture. No Chinese workers.New York Times: Getting Asian-Americans Into the Picture.
Thousands of Chinese men worked on that railroad. In fact, Mr. Lee said, the saying "He doesn't have a Chinaman's chance" comes from the fact that when the Sierra Nevada had to be blasted for the railroad, the Chinese were usually the ones lowered from cliffs laden with dynamite and fuses. Each time they went down to set the charges, they got paid a dollar more. But when the time came to party and be photographed, the Chinese were nowhere to be found.
Since Mr. Lee first laid eyes on that photograph, he has devoted himself to making Asian-Americans visible.
White America Misuses MLK Day. "For white America, King's soft-focus image often reinforces white supremacism. " Thanks to beXn for the link.
The cross posting lovefest between movementbuilding.org and rW continues:
Good reminder from an activist mailing list:
Be vigilant against the anti Muslim hysteria that could hit. We already ran into a guy who was spray painting 'Fuck Islam'. After a few stern words, and a talk about the Muslims who surely were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, he helped us spray paint over his racist tag. White people in particular have a real responsibility here to protect our middle eastern brothers and sisters from the mindless, racist, reasonless attacks and finger pointing that are sure to follow this attack.
Race Relations: The American Possibilities.
(thanks Sundog).
Young white men see white men at the top of nearly every organization, court, government office, military position, university, and other powerful structures visible in our society. They are fed an unrelenting stream of history books, literature, TV shows, movies, video games, and advertisements which tell them that the place for white men is on top, in control, in power, in charge and that women, all people of color, people with disabilities, lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals, and recent immigrants are inferior, less worthy, and not entitled to the same power as white men. Many of their parents reinforce this by telling them that they are special, they are leaders, they can be anything they want, and that it is up to them to achieve and be successful. They often end up feeling entitled to special attention, to time devoted to their interests, to resources put into their activities, and to money invested in their future. The messages of entitlement leads them to expect sex and care taking from women, service and deference from people of color, and gratitude, sacrifice, and self-abasement from recent immigrants, from homosexuals, and from people with disabilities. They become angry and confused when their sense of entitlement is not responded to, when others are demanding access to what they do not want to share, and when their ability to get to the top is threatened.I used this great Kivel quote (full article) in response to a post in this MetaFilter thread accusing this Slashdot comment of "racism" against whites (a fallacy, of course). All of this surrounds the Microsoft discrimination suit.
We're supposed to trust this person to be impartial in deciding the Florida election? Other nuggets. She also just hired a law firm with connections to Jeb Bush as a special counsel.
Even if she plays this exactly by the book, she's going to be questioned and this election is going to be questioned.
Oh yeah, and Salon smacks Nader again.
originally posted by zagg
Mr. Busy found a pretty good (brutal?) critique of Race Traitor, but didn't have time to post it. There's still a lot of good stuff in Race Traitor, though. Peggy McIntosh and Amoja Three Rivers wrote some good stuff too (two of my favorite instances of "good stuff").
According to Michael Moore, if the Democrats take back the House of Representatives 22 members of the Congressional Black Caucus stand to take over the chairmanships of 22 House committees and subcommittees.
originally posted by zagg
The latest broken treaty: 147 people were arrested Saturday protesting Denver's first Columbus Day parade since 1991.
"The Italian-American community, which organized the event, has broken an agreement with Hispanic and Native American groups to call it an 'Italian Pride' day, using not references to Columbus. Italian-American leaders back their decision to break the agreement saying it violates their rights to free speech." -- from NPR's summary of this All Things Considered (realaudio) story.
The guy who signed the agreement comes out and says he never intended to honor it. My jaw just fell on the floor when I heard this.
bonus links
why AIM opposes columbus day and columbus day parades
the original american hero -- the real history of columbus
columbus and the imperial ethic -- the facts
american indian movement (AIM)
the state of native america -- recommended by beXn
creativity and resistance: maroon cultures in the americas
indigenous sovereignty
nativeweb news digest
open directory: indigenous people
Cause I ride my slant-eyed slope like a brand new Kawasaki Oh me chinky she`s so kinky got me hot like Nagasaki I think I got that jungle fever but I caught it in `Nam She's like an oriental rug cause I lay her where I please Then I blindfold her with dental floss and get down on her knees
Speaking of the Bloodhound Gang from 3-2-1 Contact, this Bloodhound Gang's racist, sexist and homophobic lyrics have spawned various protests and creative rebuttals, like this one sponsored by the spoken word troupe I was Born with 2 Tongues.
(posted for bexn)
Put simply, so long as our society is one in which certain folks -- say, white, heterosexual men -- are disproportionately found in prominent decision-making positions, and certain other folks -- say people of color, women of all colors, and gays and lesbians -- are disproportionately found in subordinate positions, it will be seen by many as quite obvious that those straight white guys must be smarter, or harder working than the rest, and thus, "deserve" their position, while those without power must likewise "deserve" their subjugation thanks to one or another genetic, cultural or moral flaw. This is how the myth of meritocracy works with regard to class, and it works just as well with race, gender, or sexual orientation: inculcating the mindset that the "winners" won because the "losers" are, well, losers.Remember the President's Advisory Commission on Race? According to Tim Wise, we'll never see their report because they intended to focus on "white racial privilege". What were they thinking?
IAT (implicit association test)
Test your racial bias with this java applet. Pretty cool, interested in the underlying theory.
originally posted by tragicM