tagged w/ Race Issues
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Council of Conservative Citizens attacks Marvel for giving role of deity Heimdall to Idris Elba, star of The WireCouncil of Conservative Citizens attacks Marvel for giving role of deity Heimdall to... more
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I’m without a laptop right now, so I’m getting my social media fix in the apartment’s common area, which has two public computers. Hanging out and working in the area is an easy way to connect with the other people in the complex. We talk about Tumblr, Twitter… and Tuesday night, we talked about the Bed Intruder Song.
Antoine Dodson was originally interviewed by a reporter in Alabama after his sister was almost attacked in her bedroom. He was obviously disturbed about having to protect his sister, and the local news media ran his emotional interview. Not too long after the video hit the web, a group remixed the sound bites into the song above. Click here to read more about how this video went viral.
We were just talking about the video, when someone said he would be live on the BET Hip Hop Awards. So we gathered around the 4-foot television and watched his performance.
He nailed it. One of the Gregory Brothers from Auto-Tune The News played piano and also sang his part of the song.
You don’t WANT to like the song or the story, but it has a good beat. You could tell the people in the audience were also hesitating to sing along, but they couldn’t help themselves. They stood up and danced.
Dodson is now doing well for himself, and he has since purchased a house for his family.
According to an article on NPR, “Dodson credits the popular music video ‘Bed Intruder Song’ — made by two young white men — with helping his family cope with their trauma.”
However, Dodson and the song have a substantial amount of criticism. The people at “Know Your Meme” wrote:
While Antoine was becoming an internet sensation, many residents of the Alabama community criticized WAFF-48, saying that “interviews with people like Antoine reflect poorly on the community.”
WAFF-48’s corespondent Elizabeth Gentle officially responded to criticism by saying that “censoring people, like Antoine, is far worse.”
Dodson has also responded to all the negative attention he has received, saying he is using the song as a way to keep fighting crime in the projects top of mind.
Considering the things other musical artists choose to promote in their songs, I’m not seeing this guy as the worst thing that could happen to the BET awards.
And at the very least, you have to give the guy credit for his style. Check out these shoes:I’m without a laptop right now, so I’m getting my social media fix in the... more
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An ad posted by a company called Rent A Laowai (Chinese for "foreigner") on the online classified site thebeijinger.com, reads, "Occasionally companies want a foreign face to go to meetings and conferences or to go to dinners and lunches and smile at the clients and shake people's hands...There are job opportunities for girls who are pretty and for men who can look good in a suit."
But more than that, these unemployed actors and english language teachers are often hired to portray fake executives. Jonathan Zatkin, an American actor who lives in Beijing, posed as the vice president of an Italian jewelry company that had, allegedly, been in a partnership with a Chinese jewelry chain for a decade. He was paid about $300 to deliver a speech for the grand opening ceremony of a jewelry store there.
"I was up on stage with the mayor of the town, and I made a speech about how wonderful it was to work with the company for 10 years and how we were so proud of all of the work they had done for us in China," Zatkin said. "They put up a big bandstand and the whole town was there and some other local muckety-mucks."
The requirements for these jobs are simple. 1. Be white. 2. Do not speak any Chinese, or really speak at all, unless asked. 3. Pretend like you just got off of an airplane yesterday.
Some call it "White Guy Window Dressing." To others, it's known as the "White Guy in a Tie" events, "The Token White Guy Gig," or, simply, a "Face Job."
Others might simply call it systemic racism.An ad posted by a company called Rent A Laowai (Chinese for "foreigner") on... more
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A year ago this week, Barack Obama stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to take the presidential oath of office.
That moment was described throughout the media as the climax of a journey that began 46 years earlier, at the other end of the National Mall, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
But Peniel Joseph, a historian at Tufts University, says not enough attention has been paid to the other main line of succession in African-American leadership — the one that leads from Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and the black power movement.
"The connection between black power and Barack Obama doesn't fit a neat and simplistic national narrative about the success and evolution of the civil rights struggle," Joseph tells NPR's Guy Raz.
In his latest book, Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, Joseph argues that the black nationalists have been too easily dismissed as a formative force.
"Black power is usually characterized as a movement of gun-toting militants who practice politics without portfolio," he says, "and drag down a more promising movement for social justice, the civil rights movement."
That image, Joseph says, forced President Obama to distance himself from those roots.
"The president and the popular media don't often look at the quieter side of black power, the pragmatic side," he says, pointing out that Malcolm X and Carmichael both started their public careers as community organizers — a path that Obama took 30 years later.
"Malcolm X is the quintessential, self-made African-American political activist," Joseph says.
Author Peniel Joseph. Courtesy Basic Books
Enlarge Courtesy Basic Books
"The president and the popular media don't often look at the quieter side of black power," author Peniel Joseph says.
Author Peniel Joseph. Courtesy Basic Books
Courtesy Basic Books
"The president and the popular media don't often look at the quieter side of black power," author Peniel Joseph says.
After a troubled childhood and his father's death at the hands of a lynch mob, Malcolm X spent six years in prison. He emerged in 1952 as a member of the Nation of Islam and quickly grew into a national spokesman for the more militant wing of the civil rights movement.
Malcolm X was gunned down in 1965, a few years after leaving the Nation of Islam. A year later, Stokely Carmichael coined the term "black power," and the group of activists he created was rechristened the Black Panthers.
So how would those two leaders have viewed the country's first African-American president?
"They would have looked at this as a mixed blessing," Joseph says. "On the one hand, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael would have been impressed by Obama's self-determination. … At the same time, both would have criticized the president for a reluctance to talk about racial matters and for a reluctance to really use the presidency as a bully pulpit" to address specific African-American issues.
Chick on the link for an excerpt in this book:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122569310A year ago this week, Barack Obama stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to take the... more
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(Jan. 6) -- As the government prepares to roll out the 2010 Census on March 15, one of the 10 questions on the form already has people cringing. Question 9 asks respondents to designate their race and gives them the option of choosing "Negro," a term many have considered derogatory and antiquated for years.
The question asks "What is person 1's race?" Of the 15 possible options, one is "Black, African Am., or Negro."
The Office of Management and Budget sets racial definitions for the Census Bureau and all federal statistical reporting. In its standards, it says a "Black or African American" person is "A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Terms such as 'Haitian' or 'Negro' can be used in addition to 'Black or African American.'"
The agency last revised its standards in 1997, and the new definitions first appeared on the 2000 Census, which was also the first time people could identify as more than one race.
A U.S. Census Bureau spokesperson told the Web site The Grio that while the word "Negro" may be old-fashioned, there are still people who prefer to use it to identify themselves. She said the census questions were well-tested and that it was determined that using the word "outweighed the potential negatives."
Still, to many the word "Negro" is a throwback to Lester Walton's days, to slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation.
The term may have been a preferable delineation of black heritage in 1913 when Lester A. Walton, managing editor of the New York Age, the country's first African-American newspaper, wrote a letter to The Associated Press imploring the group to use the term to refer to a race of people, not a skin color.
"The Census Bureau, in taking the last census, defined as Negroes those who were black. As the majority of my people are not black, in making out the census papers submitted by the enumerators, thousands classed themselves as either mulattoes or of mixed parentage. Others who were not black classed themselves as Negroes," he wrote.
But a century later, the distinction is antiquated and reprehensible to many.
"I don't think my ancestors would appreciate it in 2010," Pamela Reese Smith, a 56-year-old Rochester, N.Y., native, told the New York Daily News. "I don't want my grandchildren being called Negroes."(Jan. 6) -- As the government prepares to roll out the 2010 Census on March 15, one of... more
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KSirys
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added this
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2 years ago
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As the first snow fell at the foot of the Italian Alps, the centre of Coccaglio presented an idyllic scene. In front of its 18th-century church, the flakes came to rest on a magnificent Christmas tree, rising almost to the height of the Roman tower opposite.
But in this town of 8,000 inhabitants between Milan and Venice, the approach to Christianity's most sacred festival has been marked in a very special way. On orders from the local council, controlled by the conservative Northern League, police have been carrying out house-to-house searches for illegal immigrants in an action dubbed Operation White Christmas. The operation is due to finish on December 25.As the first snow fell at the foot of the Italian Alps, the centre of Coccaglio... more
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I grew up in this town, left in 1997 to go to college only coming back during the summers. Left Pennsylvania completely in 2004 after I had come out as a lesbian and we (my partner and I) moved to Delaware to be with her family. I love my hometown, I loved growing up there; but I don't like the narrowmindedness that still infects the town and area. This makes me sick that something like this happens there more often than not, maybe not to this extent but the intimidation against people who aren't the "norm" for the town is rampant.
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/21627915/detail.htmlI grew up in this town, left in 1997 to go to college only coming back during the... more
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Congressional Democrats, and the White House, have no interest in engaging in a racial arguement.Congressional Democrats, and the White House, have no interest in engaging in a racial... more
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I have to admit that I would be mildly annoyed if I saw two people get in two separate lines and then join each other in the faster moving line. However, that does not excuse the actions of Kennett Police department and their alleged KKK participation.I have to admit that I would be mildly annoyed if I saw two people get in two separate... more
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This is a sensitive subject for me since I am a scifi fan and black. I have and had high hopes for District 9. And while I believe that the film had huuuuuge problems I also think that the film was a harbinger for good things to come wherein People of Color in scifi is concerned. I've gotten a lot of flack for saying this amongst some of my friends. (Actually, I've had my head taken off a few times.) And while I see their points--and they *do* have a point--I look at the film for the door it opens and not just for the inflammatory images that it presented.
There seems to be two drastically different reactions to the film. One of complete pleasure ("This film is awesome!") and one of complete hate ("That film sucked eggs! Boooo!"). It comes down to the images. The depiction of the Nigerians was the main problem. And that was very problematic. A lot of people found the voodoo rituals quite insulting. So did I. But I also saw what the film was trying to do. Though slightly misguided, they were trying to depict ALL humans as disgraceful, bloodthirsty, greedy individuals. The message got garbled along the way. That is the fault of the director. He needed to have more control over the images he used. I may have understood. MANY did not.
I hope that the film will open the door for many scifi films to be made in Africa. But for this to happen the RIGHT way, this discussion about how Africans are depicted HAS TO HAPPEN. We have to argue this out and LISTEN to each other. Don't dismiss one side or the other because you disagree. BOTH sides have valid points and by expressing them I think will make the scifi genre stronger, more relevant, and much, much better.
10 ways District 9 will change sci-fi moviemaking forever
* http://scifiwire.com/2009/08/10-ways-district-9-will-c.php
Is District 9 Racist?
* http://io9.com/5340409/is-district-9-racist
Addendum: This is a really interesting review
District 9: Splatter Fable on Fantasy Magazine
* http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/?p=4980
Addendum:
The science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor's reaction to District 9
* http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-response-to-district-419i-mean.htmlThis is a sensitive subject for me since I am a scifi fan and black. I have and had... more
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Justine Larbalestier's new book, "Liar," which is scheduled to be released in the US this year, has gotten a new cover. Why is this a big deal? Well, the book is about a black girl who is supposed to be dark-skinned, with short "nappy" hair, and the ability to "pass" for a boy. And the publisher, in their infinite wisdom, was about to release the book with a white girl on the cover. When asked why they chose to do this, the publisher responded that black people on covers do not sell books. Yuck!
--via http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/23/aint-that-a-shame/
The author, who is a white Australian, has made a conscious choice to write protagonists that are people of color. She was shocked when she first saw the cover for her book and raised a protest. When asked why her protagonist are not usually white Larbalestier answers:
"Because a young Hispanic girl I met at a signing thanked me for writing an Hispanic character. Because when I did an appearance in Queens the entirely black and Hispanic teenage audience responded so warmly to my book with two non-white main characters. Because teens, both here and in Australia, have written thanking me for writing characters they could relate to. 'Most books are so white,' one girl wrote me."
--via http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2009/07/22/why-my-protags-arent-white/
Because of the protests of many in the SF&F community and others, the publisher relented and changed the cover. It will now feature a black woman, though some still complain that she still looks very little like the girl described in the book. I say hooray for baby steps!! At least the publisher folded and there will be one more book on the YA shelves feature a person of color.Justine Larbalestier's new book, "Liar," which is scheduled to be... more
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The girl, from Doomadgee, had been ill for days and was turned away from the Doomadgee Hospital several times in the past week before being admittedThe girl, from Doomadgee, had been ill for days and was turned away from the Doomadgee... more
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A series of promotional packages designed to hawk Disney’s The Princess and the Frog to its core demographic were broadcast during The Princess Protection Program TV movie on Sunday evening. As is always the way with these things, they found their way to YouTube. See all five embedded below the break.
What’s most interesting, at least if you’re not that fussed about The Princess and the Frog (though, in fact I am - I’m really quite fussed about it) is the mild controversy surrounding one newly unveiled character.A series of promotional packages designed to hawk Disney’s The Princess and the... more
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Diversity in the Workplace is always fun. This article goes over some stereotypes about the workplace that have never occurred to me.
Here's number 2:
2. "You're not diverse"
Diversity includes white people. It is incorrect and insulting to use the word "diverse" to refer to people other than white heterosexual men with no ADA-defined disabilities. All people are included in the concept of "diversity." As a result, properly executed diversity management benefits all people in an organization.
Also, too often, non-white people assume whites don't come from a diverse background or have any experience with different cultures. Some white people also make this mistake. But Peacock points out that while his skin might be "white," his background is diverse, even more so than many people from traditionally underrepresented groups.
"I come from a family with two different histories, from different sides of the world," says Peacock, who is from England and whose mother was originally from Iran. "I am more multicultural than a lot of people who have never stepped outside of this country. By saying [you're not diverse], all you're doing is switching people off."
Peacock adds that in today's society, being exclusionary by any standard should not be tolerated. It is also not the best method of building networks. "Anything that is exclusionary you have to avoid," says Peacock. "The reason Sen. [Barack] Obama is so successful is … because he's getting the white vote. Why is he getting this? Because for the first time, someone is talking about how all of us will achieve this American dream, and the important word is 'all' of us."
Furthermore, Visconti makes the point that in today's America, many white people have a personal involvement with traditionally underrepresented groups. "Twenty-two percent of American households have a biracial component," says Visconti. "Practically every family has an LGBT component, and many people have a non-visible disability and/or will develop an ADA-defined disability in their lifetime."
Moreover, Visconti affirms that to assume a white person cannot have a true, heartfelt connection with diversity is historically wrong.
"Benjamin Franklin was the president of the Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison founded the abolitionist newspaper 'The Liberator' and was a mentor to Frederick Douglass, and Lyndon Johnson had a profound change of mind and became an advocate of civil-rights and anti-poverty legislations. Many white people have been and still are at the forefront of societal change to eliminate oppression and increase equity," says Visconti.
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However, this is more of an issue of language than Visconti makes it out to be — measuring the company's "percentage of diversity" is misleading, and calling a single person diverse or not diverse is just bizarre. The assumption that white people can't be included in diversity at all is a bad one, but we're not sure how often people actually make it.
An interesting read, fo sho!Diversity in the Workplace is always fun. This article goes over some stereotypes... more
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Growing up in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side, Liz Toussaint straddled a musical divide.
“In front of my friends, we listened to Biggie Smalls and Tupac,” she recently recalled, sliding into a stage whisper. “I never told anybody that at home I was listening to the Dixie Chicks.”
Toussaint’s crush on country began on her family’s summer road trips — when that high lonesome sound was all their station wagon’s radio could dial in. Once back home, the teenager kept quiet about the passion she felt would ostracize her, and country music was a cultural curse made worse by the fact that Toussaint was a promising pop singer, performing alongside a young Jennifer Hudson.
“You’re supposed to be Mary J. Blige — a hip-hop queen!” her brother Mustafa Abdullah remembers telling Toussaint when she first informed him that her heart ached not for Nas, but Nashville.
“No,” Abdullah pleaded with her, pointing out that the family had a musical pedigree to maintain — he works as a popular Chicago hip-hop DJ and uncle Allen Toussaint is a well-known R&B pianist.
“You cannot do country music!”
But Toussaint couldn’t help it.
“I was dead set: I’m not singing unless I’m singing country,” the now-30-year-old Toussaint said last week, wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a pearly grin.
Still, “it took a while before I could actually sing my original material in front of people without (wetting) myself.”
This summer, Toussaint plans to release an album titled, “My Name is Liz,” where she sings of being a “City Girl with a Country Soul.”
Like other country records, the album is full of songs about tough times, lost love and gunfighting — although this single mother of two ain’t just whistling Dixie.
“Someone was shot down on my corner just last week,” said Toussaint, who now lives in the city’s West Pullman neighborhood. “It’s real out here!”
If Toussaint’s forthcoming album manages to succeed, it’ll put her in rarefied company as a black country singer: Only two of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s 105 members are black, and the last time an African-American artist had a hit on the country charts — before Darius Rucker this year — was Charley Pride in 1983.
“And let’s be honest, Darius Rucker wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t in Hootie & the Blowfish,” said Frankie Staton, who runs the Black Country Music Association out of her Nashville home.
“I’ve seen (black performers) come and go, I’ve been at the bedside of those who died trying to make it happen and didn’t, but that shouldn’t dissuade Liz from trying.”
Toussaint said she’s no stranger to discrimination: When she first sent her demos and head shot to country-friendly clubs, no one responded.Growing up in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side, Liz Toussaint... more
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One of the more provocative critiques to come from conservatives concerning the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has been the charge that her nomination is racial politics at its most cynical. But in the past, Republicans were eager to play up the diversity of their own nominees.
She is "an affirmative action pick," declared Pat Buchanan on MSNBC's Hardball. "Clearly the president was down to four choices, all of them woman, and he picked the Hispanic." Earlier in the day, Rush Limbaugh ramped up the rhetoric even further, proclaiming Sotomayor "a reverse racist" who was appointed by "the greatest living example of a reverse racist" -- Obama.One of the more provocative critiques to come from conservatives concerning the... more
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Let America Be America Again
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
By Langston Hughes: Click this link to read entire item.Let America Be America Again
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned... more
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Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
by Ilan Pappe
ISBN: 1851685553
ISBN-13: 9781851685554
Format: Paperback, 320pp
Publisher: National Book Network
Pub. Date: September 2007
Synopsis
In this controversial new book, a prominent Israeli historian at Haifa University revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord during the War of Independence, he offers archival evidence to demonstrate that a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. This book is a passionate plea to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 as the root cause of the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict.
Publishers Weekly
In his latest work, renowned Israeli author and academic Pappe (A History of Modern Palestine) does not mince words, doing Jimmy Carter one better (or worse, depending on one's point of view) by accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, beginning in the 1948 war for independence and continuing through the present. Focusing primarily on Plan D (Dalet, in Hebrew), conceived on March 10, 1948, Pappe demonstrates how ethnic cleansing was not a circumstance of war, but rather a deliberate goal of combat for early Israeli military units organized by David Ben-Gurion, whom Pappe labels the "architect of ethnic cleansing." The forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians between 1948 and 1949, Pappe argues, was part of a long-standing Zionist plan to manufacture an ethnically pure Jewish state. Framing his argument with accepted international and U.N. definitions of ethnic cleansing, Pappe follows with an excruciatingly detailed account of Israeli military involvement in the demolition and depopulation of hundreds of villages, and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab inhabitants. An accessible, learned resource, this volume provides important insights into the historical antecedents of today's conflict, but its conclusions will not be easy for everyone to stomach: Pappe argues that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today, and calls for the unconditional return of all Palestinian refugees and an end to the Israeli occupation. Without question, Pappe's account will provoke ire from many readers; importantly, it will spark discussion as well. (Jan.)Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
by Ilan Pappe
ISBN: 1851685553
ISBN-13:... more
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