2009 December Archive

Race does not determine criminality.

I can’t tell you how terrifying it is to learn that a plane flying into an airport less than 30 minutes from your apartment — on Christmas morning, no less — has been targeted by a terrorist. It’s almost as frightening as learning that the kind of man that would put on an underwear bomb is getting medical treatment at the University you attend, minutes away from your home. But none of these things scare me more than how civil liberties, of the racial variety, have become expendable in the past week. Despite my fears, I fully reject racial profiling as a means to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil.
Race and nationality are simply inadequate as deterministic ...

I can’t tell you how terrifying it is to learn that a plane flying into an airport less than 30 minutes from your apartment — on Christmas morning, no less — has been targeted by a

By Samhita • 14 years ago

All the Single (Beige*) Ladies!

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that ABC New is running articles about the ills of single ladies, since they have several stories/videos about “crazy cat ladies,” but I am of two minds about this piece about single, black, successful ladies. The premise of the piece is an attempt to look at a potential racial divide between when black women get married and when white women get married.
From the video:

Forty-two percent of U.S. black women have never been married, double the number of white women who’ve never tied the knot.

and

For starters, there are 1.8 million more black women than black men. So even if every black man in America married a black woman today, one out of ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

Warden Responsible for “Lesbian Cell Block” Is Stepping Down.

It was discovered that the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Virginia was separating inmates they felt had masculine attributes and putting them in their own cell block to separate them from the rest of the population. All of the links to this original story seems to be down. Hmm.
Now the warden, Barbara Wheeler, is stepping down in the middle of the investigation.
via NYTimes.

Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said Monday that Barbara Wheeler will retire as warden of Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. He would not say when or provide other details.
State Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Mecklenburg, asked the department in June to look into allegations that the prison curtailed inmates’ access to religious services and ...

By ariel • 14 years ago

Avatar: Count the “isms”

Spoiler alert.
Saturday night, I watched James Cameron’s Avatar in 3-D. James Cameron spent thirteen years of production time to produce special effects and animation realistic enough to fulfill his lifelong dream of making this movie. But to add insult to injury, Cameron’s long wait time before production is because Avatar is the most “realistic” human resemblance. If “technology has never looked so human in film”, then caricatures of indigenous people have never before been so blatant.
Annalee Newitz, of i09.com, asked “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?”

“It’s a fantasy about race told from the point of view of white people. Avatar and scifi films like it give us the opportunity ...

By Samhita • 14 years ago

Groundbreaking Women In Hip Hop Tour Documentary: THE REVIVAL

By the inimitable Invincible, check out this short documentary about women in hip-hop, following the We B-Girlz tour and framed around a conversation between Roxanne Shante and Bahamadia, two MCs I love.

By Vanessa • 14 years ago

What We Missed

While folks were celebrating the holidays this weekend, police in Iran opened fire on protesters, leaving hundreds wounded and ten people dead.
Anne E. Kornblut at the Washington Post reignites blaming young women who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton and the oppression olympics to boot. Jessica and Jillian at Equal Writes have more.
A shopping center in China has built a parking lot designed for women only – with wider parking spaces.
A Wisconsin high school is enforcing a new dress code on their dance squad, forcing them to wear jackets during their routines because their spaghetti-strap tank tops were too revealing.

By Vanessa • 14 years ago

EC sales more than double after New Year’s Eve.

That’s right, emergency contraception sales more than double the days after New Year’s Eve. It’s good to see someone addressing that; this comes from a new project of the Back Up Your Birth Control Campaign.

Let’s just not forget that there are plenty of grandmas out there who can text with the best of ‘em.

Let’s ...

By Ann • 14 years ago

Quote of the Day

“Transgender people… understand more than anyone the high cost of gender, having adopted identities as adult neophytes. People often work harder than they think to maintain the boy/girl behaviours expected of them. You may have learned through painful trial-and-error not to use certain phrases, or to walk a certain way. After a while, learned gender behaviour becomes almost second nature, like trying to compensate for a weak eye. Again, transgender people are just experiencing what everyone goes through.”

– Charlie Anders, in the essay ‘Mama Cash: Buying and Selling Genders’