We pay for things all the time that we didn’t do. I wasn’t around when World War I happened but we’re still paying pensions. That had nothing to do with me, but I understand that I have to pay into that. That’s sort of what government means. If a state dies with every generation, what kind of state is that? When people talk about debt, or the state of Social Security, they talk about what kind of world are we leaving to our children. They understand that the country continues, that the country was here before us and that it will be here after we die.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the Atlantic’s June cover story on reparations, responds to four common arguments against them.

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

bexns: what do you think of http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/?
its getting a lot of press

me: i wasn’t really impressed

bexns: why is it all over then?
i was telling d about blackpeopleloveus
which i thought was hilariuous

me: yeah that was totally awesome
whitepeopledon’tlikeblackpeopleloveus

me: it’s all over because it’s by white people for white people and it doesn’t challenge them on race

bexns: so white people trying to make fun of themselves?

me: it’s a celebration of whiteness pretending that it’s a critique of whiteness

bexns: interesting
so why so much press?

me: i have seen it linked but haven’t really read what people are saying about it, so i don’t know.
probably because it’s so safe

bexns: http://www.thinkunique.net/stuffasianpeoplelike/
http://www.racialicious.com/
latoya peterson wrote about both sites

me: “white” has become a signifier of a post-racial consciousness, so white people are happy for a chance to use it without actually engaging anything substantive

bexns: totally on point d
like all those hipsters calling themselves white and embracing the fact they’re white, while not doing anything beyond that

me: right, as if to acknowledge one’s whiteness is sufficient

bexns: yes exactly
these are the same poeple who call themselves uber liberal too

me: yeah. dude do you mind if i blog this convo

bexns is typing…

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. My First Lesson In Being Black

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?

Making fun of Asians and Asian-Americans is still perceived as socially acceptable in a lot of places.

angry asian man:

"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."

Ask Auntie Pinko

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."

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

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.''

originally posted by xowie

“Ebon-Aide is the adhesive bandage specially designed for people of color. From the licorice look to mocha, coffee, cinnamon, and honey skin, new Ebon-Aide blends with your skin to help conceal as you heal.” [Pop Culture Junk Mail]

"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.

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.

AllAboutGeorge, Uffish Thoughts and Woods Lot remember Nina Simone.

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.

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."

originally posted by daiichi

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. 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.