Recently in Racism Category

[Editor's Note] I haven't seen Precious yet, but I have read about it endlessly and already cried just reading reviews. One of the most powerful interpretations I have read so far on Precious comes from my good friend, colleague and mentor Malkia Cyril from the Center for Media Justice. With her permission I am posting it in full here (cross-posted from the CMJ blog). It was also posted at WIMNblog.

As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glenn Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.

Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice "Precious" Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There is only one man in the story as told in the movie - a male nurse- and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences -is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?

Maybe if my hot computer-generated indigenous alien chick is 3D too, I won't have to "deal" with real women either!

Via Gawker, we find James Cameron offering his infinite wisdom to Playboy about being "forced to deal with real women" when discussing the intricacies of creating the perfect computer-generated tits for his upcoming movie, Avatar. It starts out making sense but quickly go downhill:

PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.
CAMERON: Most of men's problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don't look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we're forced to deal with real women, and there's a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let's face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine's hotness?
CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, "She's got to have tits," even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

He also excitedly talks about having her nipples being lit by orange firelight in one scene, but unfortunately they had to take it out since the movie is PG-13. Nothing like some good old racist exoticism!

I have to say, talking about "real women" while degrading and dehumanizing them in the process is pretty impressive.

Pic via Screenrant.

As of yesterday, Lou Dobbs no longer has a spot on the CNN airwaves.

This is a big win for the activists who have been rallying to get him off the air for a while now:

Over the years, Lou Dobbs has consistently used his CNN platform to spread hatred and fear. He played a critical role in skewing the immigration reform debate in 2006, leading to the derailment of that effort, and his obsession with the issue of immigration and with defeating immigration reform continues unabated. Adding to his repertoire of hate and fearmongering, he has recently aligned himself with the "birther" conspiracists and their racially tinged attack on the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency. From his CNN platform, he has bolstered the claims of those on the fringe by asserting repeatedly that President Obama has failed to produce adequate proof that he was born in the United States. His recent focus on the birth certificate conspiracy issue has reinforced what immigration reform proponents have long known -- that Dobbs has a long history of the worst kind of pandering by promoting hate and ethnic and racial division.

Later Lou!

A little old, a lot of awesome.

You know, we love the Queen here at Feministing, despite her complexities.

When I had originally posted on Facebook this shockingly well summarized study from OKCupid about race and reply rates on the popular dating website, I had just written the word, "duh." Race has always been a part of dating for me, whether it be what race my parents find acceptable, finding that my white boyfriend that I thought wasn't racist really was, or figuring out on first glance when a man likes you for you, or because he has a thing for Indian chicks. But my friend Dave took me to task and noted that they actually analyzed an enormous set of data that they then published, so that gets more than a, "duh." I will upgrade to a, "that is fucked up," and "duh."

But enough with my Facebook shenanigans. This study is interesting to no end and not just because I am writing a book on dating. The study found that even though OKCupid has a unique matchmaking system where race shouldn't matter...

First of all, how do we know that race shouldn't matter? Are we just making some after-school-special assumption that "true love is colorblind?" No, we're not: we know race shouldn't matter to replies because the races all match each other more or less evenly, and reply rate correlates to matching.

...it does:

* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.

* White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.

* White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else--and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups' reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It's here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the "should-look-like" one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There's more data on this towards the end of the post.

Via Women's Glib, we find out that Walgreens is selling an "illegal alien" costume. Seriously. Even worse? It's so popular, that it's sold out.

You can contact Walgreens here.

No. Just no.

Via Amanda Terkel at Think Progress, we find that a Louisiana justice of the peace has denied a marriage license to an interracial couple, his reasoning being for the children's sake. From AP:

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

He also added, "I try to treat everyone equally," and when he says "equally" he means he lets his black friends use his bathroom:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way. . . I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Angry Asian Man says it right, "Well, that is great. I was mistakenly under the impression that he was one of those racists who makes his black friends pee in the backyard. Turns out, he treats them 'just like everyone else.' Except when it comes to letting interracial couples get married."

Pam and Racialicious have more.

Warning: Below video is racist, highly offensive

Whatever happened to being a citizen of the world? Why aren't media outlets more conscious about their content in this age of mass information sharing? It is true that I have never been to Australia and probably don't plan on going anytime soon. But it is totally disheartening for me to see privileged, and ostensibly educated, white men appropriating this feigned image of Blackness for comedic ends. Then there is this other problematic moment where the "Jackson Jive" ridicule Michael Jackson's vitiligo and highly complex relationship with color by feigning white face. It's as if, the MJ impersonator wasn't white himself. For shame.

Check out Whoopi's take on the matter on The View:

I am totally floored to read about the attack against Tasha Hill, an African-American woman in Morrow, Georgia, which occurred last week in a Cracker Barrel -- all in front of her 7-year old daughter. My heart goes out to her as she pursues justice. But it seems she might have two fights on her hands: trial by law and trial by media.

CNN's coverage of this event by Rick Sanchez on Thursday was on the shady side. To be totally honest, I really don't watch him that much to know whether he is an ally or an enemy. My suspicion first rose, though, when he framed this piece of news as something that he had been twittered, blogged and e-mailed about.

I wasn't sure if this was simply standard protocol, an innocent appeal to plug CNN's new media. But given that the event happened a week ago and he was just reporting it now, it felt like the media had to be lobbied by readership that demonstrated that there was a growing demand for this news story. And only after this demand was quantified was this black woman's story important enough to cover.

Then, I almost dropped my Miso soup when he started the interview asking the survivor if she "provoked this incident."   This man called her the N-word and the B-word, punched and kicked her several times and she can be asked if the crime was provoked??!!!??   I made a second attempt to assume best intent. Perhaps, this was also a protocol Sanchez was upholding to frame the event from both sides. But because of this framing, Tasha Hill's lawyer, Kip Jones, remained on the defensive throughout the interview clarifying more than once that she did not provoke this attack. Not once did anyone state that attacks of this nature cannot be provoked. That there is no justification for racism and sexism and certainly none for the violence that historically and increasingly accompany these isms.

So I ask, are these simply protocols? Or is there some underlying truth about these protocols that coincide with the reality that a Black woman has survived this crime?

...can be drug traders!

We're a few days late on this but necessary to post nonetheless. Via the Wonk Room, we find that the U.S. Forest Service issued a Labor Day warning advising hikers to "beware of campers in national forests drinking Tecate beer, eating tortillas and playing Spanish music" because "they could be armed marijuana growers."

No joke.

The warning was later retracted and a public apology was made, but come on people - these kinds of gargantuan errors are just too fucked to let fly. In other words, the damage is done. More from the Wonk Room:

A high-ranking Forest Service official in Colorado also identified people speaking Spanish and eating Spam or Tuna as "warning signs of possible drug trafficking."

The warnings, which were issued as part of a slide show presentation for law enforcement officials and the general public, came after police arrested two people for allegedly growing 14,500 marijuana plants in a Colorado forest. However, little information about the case has been disclosed, including the names of the defendants. Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum has accused the US Forest Service of racial profiling and says the warning is discriminatory and could put Hispanic campers in danger.

Not shit. Are we glad that the U.S. Forest Service retracted the warning? Sure. Does this take Smokey the Bear off my shit list? Hell no.

Tagline: "The only reason to choose black. Time for Green."

This German campaign poster (tagline above) for the Green party was recently removed after folks quite aptly pointed out that it was a racist, sexist piece of crap.

The poster put up by the environmental Greens party in the western town of Kaarst contains a play on words: "Black" in German party politics refers to the color colloquially used to describe Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. Other major parties are described as red, yellow and, of course, green.

Sexualizing and dehumanizing black women and their bodies is hardly new, but I still was shocked at the blatant racism/sexism combo at play. Even worse, though, was the Green party's response even after the posters were removed:

The Greens more than anyone else have always stood for policies characterized by tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and equality. Issues such as integration and women's politics stand at the center of the Greens' political work. Accusations that this poster is racist or sexist are thus untenable. (Emphasis mine)

You see the posters can't be racist or sexist because they're the "good guys." Yeah, okay.

Thanks to Susanna for the link.

Others have written before about their (un)feminist guilty pleasure of watching television shows like American Idol and America's Got Talent, and the problematic practices these shows often have behind the scenes. Despite the obvious cheesiness, as well as the more problematic and unfeminist aspects of these shows, there's something about them that keeps me tuning in. I don't know if it's the dramatic story-line videos that make me feel like I am actually getting to know the contestants and identifying with their struggle, or just the reminder that there are other people out there who are pursuing their dreams without letting the threat of criticism or rejection prevent them from doing so. Or maybe it's watching people sweat through songs and the undeserved power I feel in being able to judge from the safety of my own home a skill I don't have or plan on getting anytime soon...ever. ;-)

Anyway, I'm invariably less than satisfied by the feminist values, but usually I suck it up and take from the experience what guilty-but-oh-so-sweet pleasure I can. Until now. This just cannot fly.

This story has been written about to death, but it is rare that you have a high profile black academic maligned by the police, spoken about by the POTUS and a national conversation about racial profiling and the police state. Yesterday the 911 call that was made was released and it turns out that Officer Crowley misquoted the caller. She never mentioned race on the call, making the police report highly suspect.

But outside of the details of this case, I read a comment over the weekend that really struck a chord with me and I wasn't going to write about it since it is a few days old, but as I sit here thinking more about it, I really want to share it. It was a comment from Ta-Nehisi's blog, (paraphrased via PostBougie),

Setting aside all of the other meta-discussions on race and class that surround this issue, the thing about all of this that creeps me out the most is that so many people are willing to defend this officer who, assuming the most charitable possible interpretation, arrested a guy because he didn't like his attitude. That is what [Mike Barnicle] is defending. That is what the execrable Mika Brzenski is defending. That is what I have read numerous commenters on a multitude of sites from the entire political spectrum defend.

They are, as far as I am concerned, defending the indefensible... [The panelists] were saying that if you cannot agree that arresting Gates was just plain wrong then there is no possibility of moving the argument forward. There is no good faith argument to be had without starting from the point that officers do not get to arrest a guy because he says unkind things to him.

I have decided that I no longer have anything to say to people who can, with a straight face, defend this nonsense. Forget about race. Forget about class. Forget whether or not Gates or Officer Crowley are nice guys who treat their mothers well. The bottom line here is that an officer used the authority of law to restrict the liberty of a man who was expressing displeasure with him. If you think that is right, then you fundamentally disagree with the basic principle of a free society.

That is not hyperbole. If you are willing to grant any individual with a gun and a badge the authority to arrest people because they don't like them, then you and I share no common principle on liberty and the right of people to be free from oppression. None.

Emphasis mine.

I think this gets at the heart of this issue. People seem to get blind sighted by rage when you talk about the police and race and it descends into a conversation between innate qualities between two groups of people, a battle of good and evil. The question of justice never enters the conversation, folks are generally stuck on, "well he shouldn't have done that," "wrong place at the wrong time," or "the cops were doing their job." It is rare we step back and think about what that job entails and what it would really look like if it was done properly.

Stand up comics say rape "is the new black."

I'm a big fan of stand up comedy. (Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho, swoon!) I like dirty jokes, controversial comics and dark humor. What I don't think is funny, however, is this:

[Comedy festival] Fringe 2009 also welcomes back Aussie standup Jim Jeffries, whose jokes include: "Women to me are like public toilets. They're all dirty except for the disabled ones." Jeffries tells me: "You can't do a joke these days about black or Asian people - and rightly so - [but] you can do rape jokes on stage and that's not a problem." Why does he think rape is now less of a taboo than racism? "I don't write the rules," he says. Nor, it seems, does he seek to challenge them. [San Francisco comedian Scott] Capurro told me, with some distaste: "For a lot of comics, it's OK to talk about raping women now. That's the new black on the comedy circuit."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. From Family Guy to Seth Rogen, folks joking about rape and violence against women seems to be the oh-so-hilarious thing to do. (Though of course, it's hardly a new trend.)

What I truly don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream - which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they're taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They're not a taboo at all - they're the norm, sadly. So all of these comedians giving themselves a pat on the back for being sooo controversial - when all they're doing is upholding the status quo - really fucking irk me.

Because if their rape jokes were actually challenging the mainstream, they'd be subversive, not holding up what American culture already perpetuates - that rape is a-okay. I think what is particularly telling is that so many of the people arguing that jokes about sexual assault are fine are dudes - the demographic that tends to be ones who, well...rape. (And who get assaulted at much lower rates than women.)

Similarly, some of the comedians arguing that racist jokes are okay are white - and appear to believe that we're in some sort of Utopian world where racism and sexism don't exist anymore.

A younger generation see things differently: challenging taboos is less a betrayal of their recent forebears, more a concession to a changing world. "In the 1970s, black and Asian people were getting shit put through their letterboxes," says [comic Richard] Herring. "But the world has moved on. Now we accept the [anti-racist, anti-sexist] tenets of alternative comedy as true, and don't need to patronise audiences any more."

Perhaps the world "has moved on" for Herring - but it sure hasn't for a lot of other folks. So long as racism, sexism, rape, and violence are accepted norms, telling these kind of faux-controversial jokes will do nothing but prop up a culture that thinks rape is not just not a big deal, but hilarious.

Related: Sense and Humor
Melissa's "Rape is Hilarious" post series
I'm Going to Rape You Later

In this week's New Yorker there is a great profile of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. (Sorry, the full text isn't online.) Although it contained a lot of stuff I already knew about Arpaio -- that he's virulently racist, sexist, anti-immigrant; that he is dedicated to creating the most inhumane conditions possible in his jails; that he is a major attention whore -- it made a few unsettling points really hit home.

Arpaio is popular because he's hateful. He racially profiles Latinos, his ratings go up. He divides families and goes out of his way to deport peaceful people who are just here to make a living, his ratings go up. He treats jail inmates -- some of whom have not even been convicted of a crime -- as subhuman, his ratings go up. He sort of functions as a conduit for the worst impulses in our society.

The sheriff also raises a question I think about often: When do we call out hatemongers who are looking for attention, and when do we decide the best course of action is to ignore them? In Arpaio's case, I think it's important to call it out -- even though what he desires most in the world is more attention. And this is the reason:

Maricopa County is not a modest, out-of-the-way place. It includes Phoenix, covers more than nine thousand square miles, and has a population of nearly four million. Joe Arpaio has been sheriff there since 1993. He has four thousand employees, three thousand volunteer posse members, and an over-worked media-relations unit of five.

In other words, whether we like it or not, he's powerful. When it comes to the immigration issue, one federal policy that empowers him is the 287(g) provision, which essentially allows local police and sheriffs to act as national-security officials. It is this provision that has enabled Arpaio to turn his law-enforcement unit into a racial-profiling and immigrant-hunting unit. Even when this provision is wielded by non-crackpot sheriffs, Nezua points out,

It's simply not a good idea to give police, who are (in ideal) in existence to help the community, the powers to enforce the borders of the nation--a job that is normally in the province of the military

Many organizations have called for the repeal of 287(g). However, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano recently announced she is actually expanding this program, despite some evidence that in 287(g) districts like Arpaio's, actual crime-fighting is suffering because of the focus on immigrant-hunting. Let's collectively smack our palms against our foreheads, shall we?

What the New Yorker profile underscored for me is that Arpaio is more than your average Fred Phelps or Pat Buchanan-style hatemonger. He is one of the most popular politicians in Arizona. And, disgustingly, he has built that popularity by doing everything he can to push people who are on the margins of society even further out. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be closer to the center should be doing everything we can to disempower him.

Harvard professor and editor of The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was arrested in his home late last week after police came to investigate a break-in, which has resulted a call by many for an investigation into racial profiling by the Cambridge police department.

Gates entered his home on Thursday afternoon after struggling with a jammed lock upon returning home from the airport. Shortly thereafter, Cambridge police showed up at his house (due to a call from a neighbor) where he was subsequently arrested, despite him giving them his driver's license with his address and Harvard ID card.

The officer apparently arrested Gates for disorderly conduct when he reportedly (and understandably) got pissed he was being accused of criminal behavior for being in his own home.

S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor and colleague of Gates spoke with him on Friday, saying that Gates was "shaken" and "horrified" with the arrest. Counter is also black, and was nearly arrested in 2004 when two Harvard police officers supposedly mistook him for a robber suspect.

Pam has a good run-down of what happened, and asks very real questions to consider when thinking about Gates' reaction to the police officers and why this is a fucked situation:

• Would a white professor have been subject to the same suspicion by the woman who called in the report of a break-in?
• While a white prof wouldn't have yelled "I'm a black man in America", say he had said something to the effect of "is there some reason you're standing in front of my home?" and proceeded to engage angrily in the same manner. Would he be arrested?
• Would a white prof react as strongly to the police officer's initial inquiry since he would not be a victim of racial profiling?
• Did Dr. Gates's explosion of anger in his own home warrant an arrest? Is this a manifestation of the "angry black man" phenomenon, where the lower threshold of public anger by black men is seen as more threatening than it would be for a white man?
• Was the fact that Gates threw down the "don't you know who I am? card a mitigating factor?

Post-racial America, my ass.

Here is the police report. The Root also published a statement by Gates' lawyer.

Good news for DC residents: on Thursday the House of Representatives passed a spending bill that removes the ban on use of local funds for abortion coverage in the District and lifts a number of other important bans as well. We now need the Senate to pass a funding bill that does the same.

I do want to make note of some really awful comments made on the floor of the House by Representative Todd Tiahrt (R-Kansas) on Thursday regarding the DC abortion ban. The Congressman called the use of local funds for abortion a "financial incentive" to "encourage" women elligible for the funds to have abortions. Linking class with race, Tiahrt asked if President Obama's mother would have "taken advantage of [an abortion]." He asked the same question about Clarence Thomas, which is what makes the racial element of his line of thinking so obvious. I believe Rep. Tiahrt's comments were meant to suggest the disgusting black genocide argument, which claims reproductive rights organizations and abortion providers are engaged in a murderous racist conspiracy. More information on Rep. Tiahrt's comments and an action alert can be found here.

Previously: House moves to lift bans on abortion funding, needle exchange, domestic partnership, and medical marijuana in DC, Quick Hit: House Appropriations Committee votes to lift DC abortion ban.

Only some crazy fringe politician that no one ever listens to or pays attention would say something like that right? I guess only Pat Buchanan on MSNBC. See video below if you can stomach it.

I hope that as we move to more diverse and left leaning people of color in positions of leadership that people of the "almost Pat" persuasion have more tools to see how ignorant this man is, instead of believing he is making legitimate arguments. What frustrates me is that he is speaking to a white anxiety and fear of affirmative action, that I have heard resonated before and specifically through policy that ends up hurting people of color because it is seen as a threat to the white nationalist order. I mean, many of the questions asked by Senators to Sotomayor during her hearing resonated this same ignorance, so it is not such a stretch that some Americans still have this fear of brown folks rising. Buchanan is endorsing white supremacy and racial hatred and the people that have always listened to him, probably have that same animosity within them. I guess these are the same people that voted for McCain, cuz there still were a bunch of them.

Maddow does a good job of keeping her cool, way better than I could have, but I am not totally clear why she has him on the show and maintains this "relationship" with him. She rails into him, but is it hard enough? Or should we just ignore him for the racist wing-nut that he is? Firedoglake thinks it is an explicit attempt on behalf of MSNBC to endorse racial hatred,

And whether you see him actually believing this dangerous nonsense or cynically stoking and exploiting the anger of others who do, there's no doubt he's exploiting his MSNBC perch to stir up racial hatred. He's said he means to do that.

So why is MSNBC promoting this? Yes, promoting. They're not just occasionally interviewing their dear "Uncle Pat" to find out what whacko extremists are saying; they're actively promoting him, every day, and night after night. And this is the same MSNBC that was condemning Reverend Wright for weeks, showing endless loops of video clips and urging their hosts and guests to characterize Wright's views as unacceptably anti-white.

MSNBC knows that Buchanan has engaged in such racist speech throughout his career. The producers of MSNBC's political news/commentary shows must be convinced that they can attract more viewers and sell more advertising if they feature an unabashed white supremacist as their featured "conservative" panelist. They don't care that this must be deeply offensive to huge numbers of Americans; those viewers apparently don't matter. We don't matter.

And I think this is the reality. There are many Americans that don't support this kind of racial hate speech. And what about people of color that watch MSNBC? Do we get no viewing pleasure? Do they need ratings that bad?

I think a much better explanation for this fear of reverse racism via affirmative action is this cartoon from a while back via Amptooms.

The past few weeks have seen important news related to race and the Supreme Court. In the June 29 Ricci v. DeStefano decision the court ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven who claimed they were subjected to racial discrimination when the results of a test for promotion were thrown out because white candidates outperformed non-white candidates. Since President Obama announced Judge Sotomayor as his nominee for Supreme Court Justice one of the primary attack lines leveled against her has been that she is a racist. Both examples represent an attempt to redefine racism without a recognition of history or sociopolitical reality so as to posit people of color as the oppressors and whites as the victims of racial discrimination.

Much more after the jump.

This is sort of insane. As Texas develops new curriculum standards for social studies textbooks, a couple of specially picked "experts" to advise them during the process are trying to omit civil rights leaders who they believe are "given too much attention":

"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" - as in the current standards - "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."

Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure. (Emphasis mine)

And of course they couldn't leave out feminist figure Anne Hutchinson. Marshall contended in his report, "She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble." When he says "making trouble," he means, you know, advocating for equality, religious freedom and other kinds of meddling those broads tend to do.

How does one become qualified to be an "expert" in making decisions about Texas education curricula anyway? Be a Christian minister or the former chairman of the Texas Republican party. Those are some expert historians you've got there!

What a complete and utter ass.

Transcript after the jump. Via The Daily Beast.

If you haven't been watching Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, wow are you missing out on some gems. Versha Sharma at TPM covers some of my favorite moments from oh-so-classy Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

In the most aggressive questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearing thus far, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) read out a laundry list of complaints about the nominee this afternoon. Graham went through insult after insult from anonymous reviews about Sotomayor's temperament, including ones that called her "nasty," "a terror," "a bit of a bull," and one that said she lacks any "judicial temperament." Graham then asked her directly: "Do you think you have a temperament problem?"

As both Samhita and Ann have written, there's a specific sexist and racist narrative that accompanies the accusations of Sotomayor as somehow angry or meaner than her male counterparts. (Because when white dudes are strong, they're just powerful. When women of color are strong, they're scary.) And it's simply infuriating to watch it play out in these hearings.

Sharma also points out that Sen. Graham - who has already made his fear of Sotomayor's "fiery temper" quite clear - became a bit of a bully himself (I'd also add 'condescending asshole' to that) in his "bullying" accusations, telling Sotomayor that "maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection" for her and asking her about her "wise Latina" quote. Because that hasn't been talked about enough, obviously.

When the judge answered in the affirmative, he asked her to recite it - twice. Sotomayor hedged a response, and Graham plowed ahead, said, "I've got it here," and read the quote out himself.

The infantilizing questioning from Graham continued throughout his entire thread; he interrupted her answers multiple times, and made a theme out of asking her to explain her understanding of certain legal concepts and current events...

I think it's clear who has the real "temperament" problem here.

Related Posts: Quick Hit: Jane Roe arrested outside of Sotomayor hearing
Only White Men Can be "Objective."
Sotomayor hearings begin today
Media Justice for Sotomayor
Sotomayor is not meaner, just femaler

Last week, over 60 black and Latino day campers were turned away from a swim club in Philadelphia because of complaints by white adult members of the club that, according to the club's president John Duesler, "[A] lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club."

Community blogger zp27 beat us to the punch on this story, an absolute nightmare and truly telling to the stark reality of the racism and bigotry that exists in this country. The club is of course backtracking and saying that the issue wasn't race, despite some of the kids overhearing racist complaints by the members of the club right before they were asked to leave and the club returned the $1,950 check Creative Steps Day Care had given them to use the pool.

The good news out of this is that the day care center has gotten tons of support from surrounding clubs and schools since, some who have offered their pools for the campers to use. But this doesn't change the fact that these kids, as young as five years old, have already been told that they aren't allowed to swim in a pool because of their race. It's just unreal.

Shark Fu has a great piece up at Angry Black Bitch about this, as does Melissa Harris-Lacewell at the Nation. Go read them now.

A local video on the story after the jump.

Danah Boyd gave a thoroughly thought-provoking presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum this week about how the politics of class play out online -- and thoroughly debunked the idea that the Internet is a Utopian paradise in which we are "all equal."

To get specific, Boyd looks at the divide between Facebook and MySpace users. She quotes Kat, a 14-year-old from Massachusetts:

"I'm not really into racism, but I think that MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever, and Facebook is all... not all the people that have Facebook are mature, but its supposed to be like oh we're more mature."

That's right, a "ghetto." Boyd goes on to note that teenagers from wealthier backgrounds are more comfortable engaging in "adult" environments than teenagers from poorer backgrounds -- hence wealthier teens are probably more likely to favor the "mature" social networking site, Facebook. And here's the part where I am just going to quote from Boyd's analysis extensively, because she is so freakin' smart:

The fact [is] that MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population. Only a month ago, I was doing fieldwork in Atlanta where I found heavy usage of MySpace among certain groups of youth. They knew of Facebook but had no interest in leaving MySpace to join Facebook.

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat's point: MySpace has become the "ghetto" of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.

The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there. And if we think back to the language used by teens who use Facebook when talking about MySpace, we should be truly alarmed. Those who are from privileged backgrounds tend to be far more condescending towards those who are not than vice versa. Many of us in this room come from privileged worlds where we want to "help" those who are not well-off. Here is where a privilege-check is necessary. How often do our language and mannerisms reflect a problematic level of condescension? Perhaps we should look at our teens. They are certainly speaking in a manner that reveals distrust and condescension.

The case of Ricci v. DeStefano involved 17 firefighters who had taken the qualifications exam to become firefighters. All passed, all were white, but one Latino, and the city invalidated the test because they feared a racial discrimination lawsuit. The court found that this was essentially "reverse" racism and violated Title XII.

The ruling yesterday to overturn Ricci v. DeStefano was another bad decision in a series of bad decisions by the SCOTUS that will have implications for communities of color, women and poor people. Legal Momentum tells us why,

The Court created a new, more stringent standard for employment discrimination claims in striking down the New Haven Fire Department's attempt to ensure that its promotional exam did not discriminate against Black and Latino candidates. We believe that the standard articulated by the Court reflects a flawed interpretation of Title VII and is contrary to congressional intent.

Irasema Garza, President of Legal Momentum, stated: "Employment discrimination continues to be a major problem. To this day, women and minorities remain egregiously under-represented in many employment sectors. Astoundingly, the Court's decision acknowledges this fact and yet requires employers to avoid policies and practices that would help to remedy this discrimination. This decision will make it far more difficult for women and minorities to get good jobs in fields that continue to exclude them, such as firefighting, and for employers to eliminate barriers that have proved discriminatory in their effect."

Further, as a supporter of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, Legal Momentum strongly disagrees with those who might use the Court's decision to imply that Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues in the Second Circuit erred in their ruling below. The Second Circuit panel of which Judge Sotomayor was a part acted with appropriate restraint in applying the precedent as it existed at that time. The matter before the Supreme Court involved issues of first impression and the Second Circuit's opinion was consistent with the views of four Justices on the Supreme Court as well as with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice.

Also, what about the possibility that Alito was also racially biased in making this decision? As Adam aptly asks at Tapped, why is racial discrimination only considered an offense when it is women or people of color being biased against whites?

After the news tha the remaining five defendants of the Jena 6 case were getting a plea deal today, we find that they pleaded no contest to misdemeanor simple battery, sentenced to seven days probation and fined $500 plus court costs. Color of Change's Executive Director James Rucker said:

"The story of the Jena 6 was an extreme example of what can happen when a justice system biased against black boys operates unchecked. But it's also an example of what can happen when hundreds of thousands of people across the country stand up to challenge unequal justice. Together, we drew the country's attention to this case and raised the money necessary to fund a strong legal defense."

This is great news.

Via AP, we find that the the Lousiana courts are anticipating reaching a plea deal today with five of the six black students from Jena High School in Lousiana who were being outrageously being charged with attempted murder, the outcome of a series of racist events which in turn led to a huge civil rights movement against the charges. Here's a good sum-up of what happened:

The only thing that's outdated in the video is that the sixth defendant, Mychal Bell, ended up pleading guilty in December 2007 to a misdemeanor second-degree battery charge and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

There's no doubt that the movement that arose out of this injustice led to the plea deal expected to be made today, but we're not sure yet what that lesser charge will be. We'll keep you posted.

Related:

The Jena 6.
Jena 6: Mychal Bell Conviction Vacated
Jena 6 Information and Day of Action
Um, wow.
Jena 6 Revisited
Still awaiting justice in Jena.

I saw an amazing panel yesterday about some different local struggles and their connections to global climate change. Two of the most affecting:

Elisa Young, a 7th generation Appalacian, is part of Meigs Citizens Action Now. She talks about the coal-fired power plants in her area and how they are affecting so many people's health. She's had cancer herself and has lost friends and neighbors to a range of other cancers thought to be caused by close proximity to so much CO2 emissions. Some tests estimate that folks in the area are being exposed to 341 million pounds of sulfur dioxide a year--unprecedented and highly dangerous levels. Young's own family has deep roots in the coal industry, but she says it's time to get real. New plants are planned, which would bring nine power plants in a ten mile radius.Young says: "There's a lot of denial involved. How do you admit that your job is going to kill you? That your job is going to give your kids learning disabilities? You have to put on those blinders so you don't go insane."

Then Lee Sprague talks about how the Little River Band of the Ottowa Indians are also being affected by coal-fired power plants. He introduces himself: "I am a member of the former majority. I am from the territories, currently occupied by Michigan and parts of Canada." He's part of Clean Energy Now. He says that the levels of mercury in women in his area are more than twice that of women in other parts of the country. He shows a picture of his little son, who was in the hospital for quite awhile because of breathing problems, thought to be connected to the power plants in the area. If you live in Michigan, definitely check out their work. They have lots of easy ways to get involved immediately. Check out this inspiring video of a young activist, Lee's daughter!, speaking at a rally:

I'm at a summit today in Detroit, Michigan on environmental justice--specifically looking at climate change. It's an issue that I'm learning more and more about thanks to one of the amazing subjects for my book, Nia Robinson, who is the Executive Director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative.

In short, the environmental justice movement (formally born in the 80s, traced back to indigenous Americans by some people), is aimed at calling attention to the ways in which low income people and people of color have been disproportionately affected by environmental issues (toxic power plants are often built in low income areas, those most vulnerable to the effects of global warming are in the Gulf South etc.). Hurricane Katrina was the most obvious recent example. Like feminism, environmental justice is based on looking at intersections--race, class, gender, environment, economics etc.

The whole community is really excited. A new report out by the Obama administration takes climate change seriously and a climate change bill is in the works. All of this is in anticipation of Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December.

One of the sponsoring organizations of this summit is WEDO--Women's Environment & Development Organization. An excerpt from their mission statement:

Today, WEDO recognizes that policy commitments alone are not enough to improve women's daily lives. That is why WEDO is collaborating more deeply with Southern partners on implementing global policy gains at the national level and holding governments accountable to their commitments on women's rights.

Climate change is the talk of the town today in Washington as the American Clean Energy and Security Act is up for a final vote in the House of Representatives.

President Nicolas Sarkozy says that burqas are "not welcome" in France, and supports a ban on women wearing the burqa in public.

[He] said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.

In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.

"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.

"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement -- I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."

Banning the burqa doesn't further women's rights - it limits them. Now, obviously there's a difference in Islamic women's dress from the hijab to the burqa - but legally banning any of them erases all agency from Muslim women. (I'm especially wary of Sarkozy's comments and this potential ban given that France banned headscarves from public schools in 2004.)

If you're interested in hearing Muslim women talking about the hijab, here are a couple of interesting vids.

UPDATE: Jill has more.

Related posts: Only citizenship for some: France denies citizenship to Muslim woman
Malaysian women speak out on hijab

Samhita mentioned this in her What We Missed post yesterday, but I want to address it more fully.

From Talking Points Memo:

According to local law enforcement, three people posing as police officers forced their way into the home of Raul Flores in Arivaca, Arizona, about 10 miles from the Mexican border, on May 30. They shot and killed Flores and his nine-year-old daughter, and wounded Flores' wife. The three, Shawna Forde, Jason Bush, and Albert Gaxiola, were arrested and charged last Thursday and Friday.

This happened this past weekend.

After Dr. Tiller was murdered, and the guard at the Holocaust Museum was shot and killed, discussions have been afloat about how during more liberal administrations, right wing violence (of the white supremacist and anti-choice variety) tends to go up. The Department of Homeland Security even issued a report about it. For those of us in my age bracket (I'm 25), this is a really new phenomenon. It's been a long time since I could remember a liberal administration--I was pretty young when Clinton was president. This type of violence, often linked to white supremacist and anti-government organizations tends to increase when individuals believe the government is being run by the left. I can only imagine what Obama's presidency is doing to fuel their fire.

The issue of immigration reform has allowed for a new crop of anti-immigrant groups to enter the mainstream dialogue, even though many have ties to hate groups with violent records. One of the perpetrators in this crime in Arizona, Shawna Forde, has been liked to the anti-immigration group FAIR. Here is a video where she is listed as a representative of the group:

We can't let white supremacy and hate mascarade as legitimate politics through the guise of immigration "reform" just like we can't let it slip into mainstream dialogue about women's rights or the right to choose.

For more links to responses from the blogosphere, see the FIRM blog.

I wish I was shocked by this.

A prominent South Carolina Republican killed his Facebook page Sunday after being caught likening the First Lady to an escaped gorilla.

Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."

When taken to task for the racist comment - and after killing his Facebook page - DePass said, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

Yeah - ha fucking ha.

Via Michelle Obama Watch.

Serious props to NPR's Nina Totenberg today. Rather than simply reporting about "concerns over Sotomayor's temperament" or allegations that she's a "bully," Totenberg actually compared audio clips of questions asked by Sotomayor and those asked by her male colleagues -- or those who would be her colleagues if she is confirmed for the Supreme Court. And -- SURPRISE! -- Sotomayor is no "meaner" than your average justice. She is just femaler.

Judge Guido Calabresi, former Yale Law School dean and Sotomayor's mentor, now says that when Sotomayor first joined the Court of Appeals, he began hearing rumors that she was overly aggressive, and he started keeping track, comparing the substance and tone of her questions with those of his male colleagues and his own questions.

"And I must say I found no difference at all. So I concluded that all that was going on was that there were some male lawyers who couldn't stand being questioned toughly by a woman," Calabresi says. "It was sexism in its most obvious form."

And what if such criticism came from a woman lawyer? Well, says Calabresi, women can be just as sexist as men in their expectations of how a woman judge should act.

This echoes so many familiar themes. Women in positions of power in the workplace are often considered meaner than their male colleagues who act the same way. And how many times have we seen a woman of color who exhibits strength and power described as threatening, "fiery," or too angry? (This is why so much effort has gone into reclaiming the term "bitch" -- if society is going to use it to describe a woman who is bold and direct, shouldn't we consider that a compliment?)

Listening to the clips, Sotomayor sounds an awful lot like John Roberts -- who did not face any concerns about his "fiery temperament" during his confirmation hearings. Totenberg exposes this talking-point for what it is: straight-up sexism, with some racism mixed in for good measure.

(For a great take on reclaiming "bitch," see Shark-Fu's post on taking back words. She also talked about this subject on NPR!)

Awful news today: A man opened fire in the Holocaust Museum in DC -- reportedly killing a museum guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns.The suspect is 88-year-old James von Brunn, a white supremacist and anti-semite who has said some truly vile things.

As Dana Goldstein writes,

A World War II veteran and resident of Maryland, Von Brunn is the author of a pamphlet entitled "Kill the Best Gentiles: A new, hard-hitting exposé of the JEW CONSPIRACY to destroy the White gene-pool." He is a Holocaust denier who has written that "Hitler's worse mistake" was that "he didn't gas the Jews."

She also notes that, like Dr. Tiller's murder, this act constitutes domestic terrorism.

I can't really find the words to say much else about this right now. How awful. My thoughts are with Johns' family.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a genius and this article is a perfect example of why. In response to Tavis Smiley's TV special Stand (a film about a bus trip with Smiley and his "boys" exploring the black male experience--trailer above) she dissects the myopic view of identity politics, black history and social change that they explore through the film and the lens through which they determine that Obama doesn't talk about race enough.

She writes,

Its low production value, wandering narrative, flat history and self-important egoism did little to reveal the shortcomings of the Obama phenomenon. Instead, the piece exposed and embodied the contemporary crisis of the black public intellectual in the age of Obama.

The film and its participants (two of them my senior colleagues at Princeton University) appropriated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to implicitly claim that they, not Obama, are the authentic representatives of the political interests of African-Americans. They used King's images and speeches, gathered on the balcony where King was assassinated, and explicitly asserted their desire to play King to Obama's LBJ, and Frederick Douglass to Obama's Lincoln.

This question of authenticity in identity is a very frequent theme in argument between different types of feminists and specifically different generations of feminism. The older "watchdogs" are disappointed with what they see is a diluted brand and less than tough stance on issues by younger generations. The reality that material conditions have changed for women, people of color and other disenfranchised communities is not explored in depth, which has allowed for different types of political identifications, different types of movements.

She continues,

African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

The men of "Stand" yearned for an imagined racial past. By their accounting, this racial past had better music, more charismatic leaders and a more-involved black church.

Their romanticism ignores the cultural contributions of contemporary black youth, forgets the dangerous limitations of charismatic leadership and revises the fraught, complicated relationship of black churches to struggles for racial equality. And these men ignored the democratizing effect of new media forms, which revolutionized the 2008 election.

Black people were not duped by some slick, media-generated candidate. African-Americans were co-authors of the Obama campaign. Through social networks, YouTube videos, political blogs and new-media echo chambers, black people were equal partners in shaping the candidate and his campaign. There was no need for the entrenched pundit class to tell black voters what to think or how to behave; they figured it out for themselves.

Still, there is plenty to criticize in the young Obama administration: the refusal to prosecute those implicated in the torture memos, civilian casualties caused by drone attacks, bank bailouts and inadequate defense of gay rights to name a few. But black communities are already engaged in these critiques and many others. Black local organizers, elected officials, bloggers, pundits and columnists have taken substantive, specific positions on a broad range of issues.

Read the whole article as she lays out perfectly the tension and oversight by public intellectuals, thinkers and journalists that are resistant to new modalities of social change. It is interesting this tension between recognizing that political discourse around race has changed as have lived conditions for people of color, yet we are not in a post racial space.

As I have written about before, this tension between recognizing progress and claiming wins in the service of people of color verse the post-racial stance (most liked by moderates, where radical positions on race are ignored or made fun of) is at the heart of the tension in current racial dialogue. We are at a crossroads where we have to recognize the nuanced ways that racism (including tokenism) plays out, even in liberal politics and then the strategic and nuanced ways we are winning, at least in the conversation, if not via material conditions.

Obviously, my ideal hope is when we start to have a conversation so nuance that we see the way homophobia and sexism are tied into racism, but like I said last week in talking about Sonia Sotomayor, it is a damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation (aka, I love you, I can't touch you anymore.)

Consider, for a moment, the latest issue of the National Review:

I know I should have a more sophisticated initial reaction to this, but, um, WTF?!!

Some white men got very upset when Sonia Sotomayor expressed pride in the fact that she is a Puerto Rican Latina, and noted that her identity shapes her worldview. This was controversial to conservatives because "white man" is not an identity, and therefore white men are not influenced by identity. Only people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and women have "identities" -- which they must ignore, lest they be considered biased.

Conservatives apparently took Sotomayor's comment as license to consider her and every other woman of color as THE SAME. Politico compares her to an African American woman. The racist Oklahoman cartoon implies she's Mexican. Now the National Review portrays her as South Asian.(Can you blame them? I mean, how could they possibly portray a Latina as "wise"? Those things are antithetical! Gotta turn to a different stereotype. /sarcasm )

Apparently if you're not white or male, it really doesn't matter what your racial or ethnic identity is. They're all interchangeable. You're just Other.

Related reads:

Samhita on Sotomayor's "fiery temperament"
Jamelle Bouie on empathy and on how conservatives don't seem to understand "whiteness"
Jill Tubman on conservatives calling Sotomayor a racist
Jill Filipovic on Sotomayor, identity and experience
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the "wise Latina" statement

From the Bangor Daily News:

A woman from the African nation of Cameroon could give birth in a federal prison because she is HIV-positive.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock last month sentenced Quinta Layin Tuleh, 28, to 238 days in federal prison for having fake documents. Woodcock said the sentence would ensure that Tuleh's baby, due Aug. 29, has a good chance of being born free of the AIDS virus.

"Judges cannot lock a woman up simply because she is sick and pregnant," said Zachary Heiden, legal director for the Maine Civil Liberties Union.

"Judges have enormous discretion in imposing sentences, and that is appropriate. But jailing someone is punishment -- it is depriving them of liberty. That deprivation has to be justified, and illness or pregnancy is not justification for imprisonment."

Yet that's exactly what Woodcock did - using the paternalistic justification that he is looking out for the best interest of Tuleh's unborn child, who he apparently thinks will benefit from the stellar prenatal care given in prison.

"My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant," he said at Tuleh's sentencing, "and that public, it seems to me at this point, should likely include that child she's carrying. I don't think that the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault.

"If I had -- if I were to know conclusively that upon release from imprisonment a defendant was going to assault another person," Woodcock said, "I would act in a fashion to prevent that, and similar to an assault, causing grievous injury to a wholly innocent person. And so I think I have the obligation to do what I can to protect that person, when that person is born, from permanent and ongoing harm."

I agree with Jess: I fail to see how Tuleh's inability (if that really is the case) to procure affordable, decent healthcare is an "assault" against her fetus, rather than the system's assault of Tuleh. And of course, one wonders if Woodcock's decision would have been the same had Tuleh been from Denmark or Italy, not Cameroon...though you don't have to wonder long. (70% of cases involving prosecuting pregnant women are brought against women of color.)

For more information on the U.S.' long history of persecuting pregnant women (and what you can do about it) check out the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Women and Prison project, and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights.

Related posts: New report: Mothering in Prison
Woman gives birth in jail cell, alone
Bureau of Prisons bans shackling pregnant inmates
Critical Resistance: Prisons as a Tool of Reproductive Oppression

You have seriously got to be fucking kidding me. This was yesterday's editorial cartoon carried in the Oklahoman. Cartoonist Chip Bok depicts Sonia Sotomayor - the Supreme Court nominee, the first Latina woman who would have this position - as a piñata. Sometimes there are no words.

Please contact the paper here, or call them directly at (405) 475-3311.

The Oklahoma Women's Network Blog has more.

Thanks to Eryn for the link.

Asher Roth, the latest white wonderkind in the rap world, dealt with some controversy a month ago that we neglected to comment on. In short, he tweeted that he was hanging with some "nappy headed hoes" while at one of his college shows. He supposedly thought people would know he was referencing and making fun of the Imus debacle. A lot of people weren't so convinced and called him out. He publicly apologized, saying, in part, "The twitter situation was an immature attempt to poke fun at an infamously moronic joke. In doing so, I unconsciously stooped to the level of its originator, making it just as bad, if not worse. Pathetic. Lesson learned."

Leave it to J. Smooth to not only comment on the whole thing, but bring the "lesson learned" from 101 to Advanced Thesis Seminar type shit.

I can think of so many important parallels to experiences I've had with friends who thought we were close enough that they could be sexist in a funny-sort-of-way and get away with it, because of course I understood they didn't mean it because I knew them well enough to know that they weren't actually sexist.

And on that note, kinda wish J. Smooth had also explored the "Gender Crossroads." Maybe next time?

NY Times: A Judge's Own Story Highlights Her Mother's

What Tami Said: Sonia Sotomayor: How did she get in here? Or...The more things change; the more they stay the same

Think Progress: G. Gordon Liddy On Sotomayor: 'Let's Hope That The Key Conferences Aren't When She's Menstruating'

Feministe: Racism, Sexism and Sotomayor, in a few easy-to-read bullet points.

Post Bourgie: A word on empathy

F.R.I.D.A.: "On the Bench, With Fairness and Empathy"

Broadsheet: Sotomayor and abortion

RH Reality Check: Fair and Balanced: Weighing Sotomayor's Opinionse

Slate: Republicans won't beat Sonia Sotomayor by attacking her as too darn human.

Gender & Sexuality Law Blog: "Justice Sotomayor" - A View from Columbia Law School

What's the best thing you've read so far on Sotomayor's nomination?

Also, I know there's been a lot of non-Supreme Court news this week, too. What have you all been reading and writing?

Yesterday was the birthday of the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, also known as Malcolm X. He would have been 84 years old. I often wonder what Malcolm would say about race relations today. Would he think we have come far? Would he feel satisfied that we have a black president? Was Malcolm's sole motivation the symbolic shifting of race relations in this country or was it the actual change in the material conditions of the black community?

As an up and coming activist there were few books that influenced me as much as the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Not only was his life inspiring and continues to inspire myself and others committed to the movement for social change world-wide, his voice of dissent to mediocrity masked as social welfare to benefit the black community, as opposed to full self-determination and self-actualization, has yet to be replaced. His voice maintains in the background always motivating us for true equality, for basic human rights, and to demand a better world, "by any means necessary" for those that have survived a brutal history of colonization, racism and slavery.

So happy birthday Malcolm X. Your spirit continues to inspire those of us that see injustice and continue to work for a better world. I can't imagine where we would be without you.

Check out this great video of one of his most influential speeches.

Also, check out Grace Lee Boggs on knowing Malcolm X, Adrienne Maree Brown on the application of Malcolm's teaching to building power in communities around violence and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the legacy of Malcolm X.

UPDATE: I have been contacted by a L'Oréal spokesperson and the picture above was actually NOT taken by L'Oréal but a publicity photo submitted to them by Pinto's management.

After Beyonce was pretty much airbrushed whiter by L'Oréal not too long ago, it's all the more infuriating to see that their tendency to equate lighter skin with beauty hasn't changed. When they say Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire "is the new face of L'Oréal," what they seem to really mean is she has a new face of L'Oréal. Un-fucking-real.

Via the Frisky.

Bob Herbert has a really interesting Op-Ed at the NYTimes about how the coverage of white murders tends to be more extensive than the coverage of the murder of people of color. He writes,

[T]he press is still very color conscious in the way it goes about covering murder. Editors may not be asking, "What color is that victim?" But, on some level, they're still thinking it.

Which is why we've heard so little about an awful story out of Chicago. Some three dozen public school students have been murdered since the school year began, most of them shot to death. These children and teenagers have been killed in a wide variety of settings and situations -- while riding a city bus, playing in parks, sitting in the back seats of cars, in gang disputes, in robberies, in the crossfire of sidewalk shootouts.

It's an immense and continuing tragedy. But these were nearly all African-American or Latino kids, so the coverage has been scant.

In contrast, the news media gave the public enormous amounts of information about the Wesleyan student, Johanna Justin-Jinich, and -- in another big story -- about Julissa Brisman, the masseuse who had advertised on Craigslist and was killed in a Boston hotel room last month.

I think that we can recognize the tragedy in these stories and still have an analysis of the rate of coverage of different communities. I actually think that Herbert is giving them an easy way out suggesting that it is just that mainstream media frequently overlooks the deaths and murders of people of color. When people of color are involved in the death or murder of a white person, that is definitely headline news. Or when a person of color lives up to their given "stereotype," i.e. terrorists, cop-killers, "hookers," etc., that is also all over the news.

So, while Herbert is suggesting that the stories that cover the murder of women of color, poor people and other disenfranchised communities are far less, it is not just that they are overlooked, it is that they are strategically woven into the narrative of good verse evil. White women are pitted against communities of color, contrasting innocent verses guilty. Not only does it tell us, as Herbert suggests, how we see each other, it also shows us that white women are considered helpless, innocent, and need the support, coverage, protection and watchful eye of the news media, along with legal counsel, police and politicians. And that people of color are perpetrators of crime, always guilty, not victims and therefore need our harshest penalties and strictest of eyes.

Today Congress will unveil a new bust of Sojourner Truth in the U.S. Capitol. She's the first black woman to be honored there. This is a far cry from the last time Congress proposed "honoring" a black woman, Melissa Harris Lacewell writes:

It is important to remember that Truth is not the first black woman for proposed to be enshrined on federal land. In 1923, Mississippi senator, John Williams proposed a bill seeking a site for a national Mammy monument. The Richmond, Virginia chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy was prepared to pay for the statue, which would stand on federal land "as a gift to the people of the United States . . . a monument in memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South." The statue would have been in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, which had just been dedicated a few months. The "mammy bill" passed the Senate in February 1923 just weeks after the Senate defeated the Dyer anti-lynching bill. In other words, even while refusing to protect African American citizens from the domestic terrorism of the lynch mob, the Senate referred the mammy monument bill to the House of Representatives.

Whenever I am in Washington, DC I try to imagine the psychic assault I would suffer if I had to walk past a granite mammy statue while on the National Mall. Thankfully, fierce and prolonged resistance to the mammy monument undertaken by the black press, black women's organizations, and ordinary citizens kept this horrifying possibility from being reality.

Black women's organizations defeated the mammy memorial nearly 100 years ago and today they are largely responsible to raising up the bust of Sojourner Truth. The National Congress of Black Women, Inc. (NCBW) worked tirelessly to cultivate donors and supporters for this cause. Because of their efforts, instead of a monument to the mythical figure of a happy, faithful, feisty, loyal black woman slave, America will today memorialize a dedicated, serious, freedom-fighting black woman. In commemorating Truth the nation invests in remembering the deeply human and complicated stories of the lives of black women.

Wow. Certainly puts today's milestone in a whole new perspective, doesn't it?

UPDATE: Clip of the unveiling via Jack and Jill Politics.

Last week I talked about the impacts of media consolidation on independent magazines and press. Something I touched on, but is elaborated on Freepress's blog Stop Big Media, is that actual impact this has on coverage of disenfranchised communities. If who you cover is based on ratings, there is a good chance you are not going to make an effort at covering issues equitably. Jordan Berg looks at the case of the coverage of missing women.

The Seattle Medium, a local, independent newspaper, highlighted one particular way Big Media is harming citizens: by failing to report on missing persons based on race.

The article's investigation shows, "...national media operations often fail to present what is in fact a very diverse missing persons population," instead focusing primarily on white victims.

Why the preferential treatment? The corporate news media approach missing persons as another news segment that will draw advertising revenue. In other words, only a certain segment of missing persons is viewed as important enough to cover.

Take, for example, Latasha Norman, a black Jackson State University honor student who went missing for more than two weeks in late 2007, and barely got the media's attention. It was only after her body was found in Greenville, Miss., two weeks later that CNN picked up the story (only to quickly drop it).

At the same time, Stacey Peterson, a Caucasian woman who also disappeared, was becoming a household name due to constant media coverage on all the major TV stations. This is not to say that Stacey Peterson's disappearance should not have been covered. But why weren't both women given equal airtime when they went missing and needed the public's eye to help find them?

As anti-racist feminists this is something we talk about endlessly, but it is rare we discuss the actual reasons for disproportionate coverage of missing white women verse missing black women. Outside of blatant racism, if we can't sell the 10 o'clock news, our stories are probably not going to make it on there. This is a clear violation of what the purpose of media should be, which is a watchdog for our communities and a supplier of information.

Learn more about the work of FreePress and the organization I work for, the Center for Media Justice, two organizations working nationally to stop media consolidation and petition outlets for balanced coverage on the issues that impact our most historically disenfranchised communities.

Also, take action now to Stop Media Consolidation.

Last year I attended Burning Man and wrote a piece about my experiences with what I considered the culture of unapologetic appropriation at Burning Man in the name of freedom and art. This post started a huge flame-war, both here at Feministing, along with Burning Man message boards across the country. I knew I had hit a nerve but this latest incident between the Burning Man community and the indigenous community in the Bay Area sheds more light on the point I was trying to get at.

via East Bay Express.

There was supposed to be a "private" Burner party last Saturday night at the Bordello in Oakland, complete with three hundred guests, twenty DJs spinning thumping techno and bass, dancers, a fashion show, micro-massages, raw food, an absinthe bar, and coconuts. Instead, the event ended in tears.

More than fifty Bay Area Native American rights activists converged on the historic East Oakland property at 9:30 p.m. to ensure the shutdown of popular Burning Man group Visionary Village's "Go Native!" party. The fired-up Hopis, Kiowas and other tribal members spent more than four hours lecturing the handful of white, college-class Burners about cultural sensitivity until some of them simply broke down crying. The emotional crescendo capped a month-long saga that started with a tone-deaf dance party flyer, led to an Internet flame war and a public excoriation of Visionary Village's young, neo-hippy leaders before real tribal elders in the East Bay demanded a cancellation of the event.

"Go Native?" Wow, just wow.

Thanks to Legba for the heads up!

Making issues out of non-issues...

Because sometimes the best way to understand wing-nuttery is to make fun of it.

via Shoot The Messenger NYC.

Thanks to Baratunde for the heads up (he's the dude at the end).

In a House testimony over voter registration legislation on Wednesday, Texas Representative Betty Brown (R-Terrell) suggested that maybe Asian Americans of Chinese, Korean and Japanese descent should adopt names that are "easier for Americans to deal with."

Gee, Betty, how do you mean? After all, they're Americans too. Oh, you mean real Americans like yourself! Via the Houston Chronicle:

The exchange occurred late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Ko told the committee that people of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent often have problems voting and other forms of identification because they may have a legal transliterated name and then a common English name that is used on their driver's license on school registrations.

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

"Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese -- I understand it's a rather difficult language -- do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: "Can't you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that's easier for Americans to deal with?"

What's worse is the her spokesperson says Brown won't apologize for the comments, claiming that Democrats (who asked for an apology) are merely using racial rhetoric to push back against the bill.

"Racial rhetoric." Heh. I say Ms. Brown should change her name to something that's easier for us to deal with. Any suggestions?

Racialicious has more.

Sarahec at the Community blog already posted this mess of an ad, but I just had to write about it as well. The video is obviously gross and hackneyed (how many cat/pussy references does one really need?), but the not-so-subtle racism of who has a "big" bush and who has a "small" bush just put me over the edge.

To clarify, I did not create this picture but was created to accompany this piece. When the creators put up a statement I will add it.

Update: The artist's statement here.

Last week, Lovelle Mixon allegedly shot 5 cops, killing 4 of them. This fact is tragic. It is not only tragic because 4 public servants who have families were killed, but also because the retaliation in the black community in Oakland by police will be severe. If you know what I know, angry cops are capable of anything.

I suppose you are thinking what many Americans are thinking. How could he do this? He deserves to die. Armed dangerous gunmen deserve to die. Why are black youth so violent? But I want to push your thinking on this situation.

As Kevin Weston points out in a really controversial piece at New American Media,

If there were a scoreboard that displayed the number of police killed by black people versus the number of black people killed by police - it would look like the scoreboard of the Lakers playing a junior high school team. So when an aberration like Mixon appears - a once in a generation kind of event -- the implications are cosmic.

When police officers are found to have murdered young black men, they are almost always let off the hook, they do not face life in prison and they are not then hunted and killed. This is not to suggest that the murder of cops is justified, but to ask that we look at it within the context of police brutality and the damage it has wreaked on the black community.

The power that resides in the laps of armed police officers is terrifying. Imagine living in these conditions, in the kind of world where you can be gunned down just for being young, black, male and walking down the street. This story is almost impossible to understand given dominant narratives around race, class, gender and black masculinity. It is considered OK to kill young black men, often violently. We may be outraged, but not nearly as outraged as when cops are killed.

I do not deny that Mixon was armed, dangerous, a career criminal and potentially linked to the rape of a young woman. Lovelle Mixon's actions are deplorable. But if we look at them within the context of police brutality, they sadly start make sense. Lovelle Mixon was trying to get out of going back to jail and this compounded with not finding work led him to desperate actions. Earl Ofari Hutchinson reports,

A general consensus is that it was a deadly mix of panic, rage, and frustration that caused Lovelle Mixon to snap. His shocking murderous rampage left four Oakland police officers dead and a city and police agencies searching its soul about what went so terribly wrong. Though Mixon's killing spree is a horrible aberration, his plight as anunemployed ex-felon isn't. There are tens of thousands like him on America's streets.

In 2007, the National Institute of Justice found that 60 percent of ex-felon offenders remain unemployed a year after their release. Other studies have shown that upwards of 30 percent of felon releases live in homeless shelters because of their inability to find housing. And those are the lucky ones. Many camp out on the streets.

A significant number of them suffer from drug, alcohol and mental health challenges, and lack education or any marketable skills. More than 70 percent of all U.S. prisoners are literate at only the two lowest grade levels. Nearly 60 percent of violent felons are repeat offenders. They are a menace to themselves and, as the nation saw with Mixon, to others. In some cases, they can be set off by any real or perceived slight, insult, or simply lash out from bitter rage. Mixon was one and he made four Oakland police officers victims and left a terrible trail of grieving and distraught families and a shell-shocked city and police department.

I don't support young people in Oakland suggesting that this is somehow fair revenge for Oscar Grant, but I think it is apparent that Oakland is fed up with watching our young men die at the hands of our public servants. While the conversation in mainstream media is really focused on Lovelle Mixon's history of crime, violence and imprisonment, let's try and change the dialog and have a honest conversation about police brutality, the production, harassment, imprisonment and murder of "angry black men" everywhere, and ways we can work collectively to bring peaceful solutions to our communities. And I ask the youth of Oakland to hang back, look at the bigger picture and think honestly about what will help your community the most in this volatile situation.

Sitting in the panel right after ours at SXSW, "Can Social Media End Racism" and all of the panelists have agreed that social media cannot end racism, but is in fact a powerful tool to support in our overall goal to end racism. The panel is full of heavy hitters including, Kety Esquivel, Latoya Peterson from Racialicious, Jay Smooth from Illdoctrine and Phil Yu from Angry Asian Man. Latoya breaks it down that social media can help end racism by 1) spreading knowledge, 2) creating refuge, 3) mobilizing communities.

The audience seems deeply engaged with the content matter which is critical for SXSW. I am really happy this panel is following ours creating a deep and complex narrative around different ways that we as cultural and political workers and thought producers counteract narratives of race and gender.

Check the live twitter stream here.

This post got this song stuck in my head. If you haven't heard Santogold, do so immediately.

I love Michelle Obama. I really do. It makes me so happy to see a woman of color in the White House and I have written before about the sexism embedded in making spectacle of the way the first lady looks while concurrently it being important that historically white standards of femininity and grandeur are being disrupted by having a black first lady. That said, this article really annoyed me in the way it characterizes Michelle Obama as a good role model for black women. It is not that I don't agree that Michele Obama is a positive role model, I just don't think it is appropriate to characterize all other black women that are not like Michelle, as bad role models.

Her youthful, striking looks and dynamism, coupled with the fact that she understands what it means to be a working mother, juggling family life with a successful career, makes it easy for many women to relate to her.

But for black women in particular, Michelle Obama's soaring popularity and high, positive visibility marks a huge step forward.

"If you think of the stereotypes of black women, they are either bossy and emasculating or sexually promiscuous, and Michelle Obama is neither of those," said Andra Gillespie, a sociology professor at Emory University in the southern state of Georgia.

"A woman who has an accessible beauty, is considered feminine and lady-like, has a husband and has kept him for more than 15 years and a husband who clearly loves her -- people are not used to seeing black women in that position," she said.

OK, so yes, Michelle Obama is a good role model. And she doesn't live up to stereotypes because (gasp!) they are stereotypes, which are a function of racism and produce racist images of black women. It is not that successful, working black mothers don't exist, they don't exist in media depictions of black women and black women's sexuality. So, while it may be shocking for the rest of white America that Michelle Obama "dresses nice, speaks well and isn't mean," it isn't for those of us that exist in communities of color.

On the other hand, it is frustrating that the reason Michelle Obama is popular and well liked is because she isn't threatening or castrating in nature, the way the popular imagination characterizes black women. Stereotypes aside, what is wrong with being "bossy and emasculating or sexually promiscuous." Why is that diametrically opposed to being a "good woman?" Is Michelle Obama's popularity rating high because she doesn't threaten traditional notions of femininity and as a result people can breath a sigh of relief and say, "oh at least not ALL black women are like that!"

Probably both yes and no. It is not that Michelle Obama isn't demure, well-educated, polite, pretty and "well-spoken," along with being super bad-ass. The point is that assuming most black women are not, is racist. And the belief that when any woman disrupts our notions of acceptable femininity makes her less of a "lady," well that is sexist.

Related:
"Mocha Moms" takeover the White House.
Michelle Obama is not a militant, a victim, or an albatross.
It's not about Michelle.

This advertisement is not just promoting a skin-whitening tablet - it's promoting a skin-whitening tablet with disgusting, sexist copy. Well done, Imedeen.

Via Copyranter.

Yeah, that cartoon that was run in the NY Post last week that was so obviously racist. Well, Murdoch says the Post didn't mean it that way, but sorry if that is how you took it.

But is that good enough?

Related video:
Baratunde's take
Jay's take.

Women, especially women of color, have been disproportionally affected by getting sub-prime mortgages. Here are some facts:

Women make up 30% of borrowers for mortgages, but are 32% more likely than men to receive sub-prime mortgages, despite slightly higher credit scores (682 versus 675). This disparity occurs across all income levels, with the difference increasing as income rises.

African Americans were twice or more likely to receive sub-prime loans than whites. Additionally, Hispanics were more than three times more likely to receive high interest rate loans than whites in all income ranges. The only group less likely to receive sub-prime loans than whites was Asian Americans.

A study by Wider Opportunities for Women found that older women, particularly older women of color, are more vulnerable to sub-prime loans because of the cumulative effect of lower wages, occupational segregation, and smaller retirement savings. Even with a median retirement income, older women who carry mortgages still fall 20% short of a level that would provide economic security.

Some of these women are now facing foreclosure and evictions. So what are we going to do about it?

Well ACORN, one of the biggest community organizing groups in the country, has one answer. They're setting up networks of people in various parts of the country--starting with New York and extending to 22 other cities--ready to instantaneously mobilize should folks who have been unfairly targeted be forced from their homes. The idea is to get allies and neighbors right to people's homes when officers are on the way so they can obstruct the forced evictions and get media attention. Read more about the campaign here.

I realize the immediate importance of helping folks stay in their homes, but I'm wondering how we are also going to change the system that got these women (and others) into this vulnerable position in the first place. What organizations--governmental or not--are being strengthened that can serve as watch dogs looking out for sketchy loan officers? Who is setting up financial education opportunities in low income communities where these loan offers prey? And how can women--who are especially interested in having a "room of one's own"--make sure that we are realistic about what we can afford?

I would love to see this short term activism be balanced out with some big picture strategizing. Anyone know anyone working at the long term level?

Update: Bizarrely, right after writing this post I found out that Obama answered this call directly yesterday with a $275 billion housing plan. Check it out.

via Racialicious, the New York Post ran this cartoon today:

Talk about the oldest racist image in the book. Al Sharpton responded:

The cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best, given the racist attacks throughout history that have made African-Americans synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual inference to this form of racism when, in the cartoon, the police say after shooting a chimpanzee, "now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill."

Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder whether the Post cartoonist was inferring that a monkey wrote it?

The newspaper's editor defended it as "a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington's efforts to revive the economy." But the cartoonist, Sean Delonas, has drawn plenty of offensive cartoons in the past:

In 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation denounced a cartoon of his that showed a man carrying a sheep wearing a bridal veil to a "New Jersey Marriage Licenses" window, a reference to the State Supreme Court's ruling that year requiring the state to grant same-sex couples the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples through civil unions.

A protest is planned outside the Post's offices (1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan) at noon on Thursday. You can write a letter to the editor here.

PETA manages to outdo itself. Un-fucking-believable.

Related: Quick Hit: PETA's Ad Banned from the Super Bowl
PETA: Cause objectifying women never gets old
When you thought PETA couldn't get worse.
PETA does it again
Same old shit from PETA

Several years ago, I wrote a post about how I thought Barbie hadn't been bad for me. Sure, I said, I agree with criticism of the dolls' creepy blonde, blue-eyed, big-boobed uniformity. But, I wrote, for me the alternative gendered toy was baby-dolls. And at least Barbie was an adult who allowed me to play-act future roles for myself beyond motherhood.

Suffice to say, I would not write it this way if I were to set out to blog about Barbie today. (For better or worse, that's the nature of blogging. Your snap-shot opinions live on forever.) Even thought I didn't endorse Barbie in that post, and I said I understood that this toy is a truly destructive thing for most women, I didn't stop to fully consider -- or didn't really grasp -- the ways in which the "Barbie look" affected other young girls. (I told myself, this is a post about my personal experience. For me personally, Barbie wasn't so bad.)

I haven't thought about the post much since I published it. That is, until I clicked a link from JJP to this post Danielle Belton wrote at her blog, The Black Snob:

Along time ago at a kitchen table in an all-black, middle/working class neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo.'s North County a young Danielle Belton, age five, loved to draw and color more than anything in the world. My older sister, aka "Big Sis, bka Denise, didn't like to color, so I inherited all the coloring books she never used.

I could draw for hours and color for hours, but all I drew and colored were white people.

GO read her entire post. Her experience -- not mine -- is the baseline by which Barbie dolls (and their ilk) should be judged. And she provides a really powerful lens into a lot of the discussion around Sasha and Malia Obama.

Also, if you haven't already, go watch A Girl Like Me.

UPDATE: Veronica also has a good post on this subject.

Michael Steele has been elected as the chair of the RNC. The question of whether he is a token or not is probably laughable considering the history of conservatives and their strategic use of people of color to further their agenda that rarely benefits the needs of people of color. But I have to say, I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates, that while it is obvious that similar to Sarah Palin, Micheal Steele is a symbol, I can't really complain that they chose a black man to be the head of the RNC. It is as though, they want the joke to be on liberals, but the joke is kind of on them. As in they are playing into our agenda a little bit and they might just be becoming more progressive. I have no problem with conservatives alienating their white supremacist constituents and at least begin to move the right back towards the center.

But let me not get too optimistic. Calling someone a token is generally problematic. It assumes that this person, whether it be a woman, a person of color, a queer person or another member of a historically disenfranchised community, didn't work to get to where they are and they are probably not qualified, but instead they function as a symbol. I think given the history of the right-wing in strategically recruiting people of color to be spokespeople for them makes it difficult to think that they actually believe in the advancement of people of color and/or other disenfranchised communities. And by believe in, I don't mean, just a thought or a prayer, but creating, endorsing and passing legislation that will change the lived realities of disenfranchised communities.

So it is a bittersweet nomination as the right gears up to build back after the election that destroyed any belief Americans had that right-wingers are not total racists. Unfortunately, the way that racism functions in this country, people of color are not always put in leadership positions to help their people, but to make white people feel better about their racism. We are entering a very interesting time, where our leaders may be diverse and representative, but disenfranchised communities are still disenfranchised. Will the majority now be marginalized? After all, he may be black, but he is pro-life and against gay marriage, not to mention a supporter of other conservative measures. Not that I was expecting his views to be any different, just restating the obvious.

I really like what my colleague Adam had to say about Juan Williams' comments on Michelle Obama:

This isn't an isolated statement about something someone said last year, it fits into an established narrative of who black women are. Rather than being the hyper-sexualized Jezebel popular in rap music, she's portrayed as the masculine ball-buster, the kind of women ignorant men write "why I don't date black women" essays about, trying to convince themselves that there's something rational about hating the kind of woman who gave birth to you. Williams' statement makes me angry not because it's about Michelle, but because it's so manifestly not about her, but about black women in general. And maybe with some kind of messed up, terrible rationalization I can divorce myself from what happens in Hip-hop because I know Jeezy isn't talking about my mama. But when people talk about Michelle like this, they're talking about this universe of brilliant, accomplished black women who never seem to get their due. They're talking about the women I know; my mother, my aunts, my cousins. And it makes me furious.

NPR's Juan Williams went on Bill O'Reilly's show and said this about Michelle Obama:

WILLIAMS: Yeah. And let me just -- let me just tell you this: If you think about liabilities for President Obama that are close to him -- Joe Biden's up there -- but Michelle Obama's right there. Michelle Obama, you know --

O'REILLY: But it's not her fault in the sense that --

WILLIAMS: -- she's got this Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going. If she starts talking, as Mary Katharine suggested, her instinct is to start with this "blame America," you know, "I'm the victim." If that stuff starts to come out --

O'REILLY: Yeah, it'll be death.

WILLIAMS: -- people will go bananas --

O'REILLY: Right.

WILLIAMS: -- and she'll go from being the new Jackie O to being something of an albatross.

As dnA points out, sounds like somebody took that New Yorker cover to heart. Clearly, in the cable news world, an outspoken woman of color is downright militant when she's anything more than demure arm candy. There's no middle ground: she's either a passive object or an active threat.

And in what world is Michelle Obama a potential "albatross"?! The fact that Barack Obama's partner is a strong and outspoken woman is a good thing. Where Juan Williams sees a militant, a victim, an albatross, most women see dignified strength, intelligence, grace, and independence. Talk about going bananas.

Video is below the fold.

Al Sharpton:

"There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you," Sharpton told a full house on Sunday.

"It amazes me," he said, "when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners."

via Harriet's Daughter (via Pam's House Blend)

Related:
Justice for Oscar Grant-Please spread widely!
Justice for Oscar Grant: Update on Fruitvale BART Protest
Quick Hit: Why Prop 8 Won
Prop 8 Aftermath

The Atlantic's Special State of the Union Issue is chock full of interesting racial analysis, first and foremost, Hua Hsu's "The End of White America?" In it, he pulls together The Great Gatsby, P. Diddy, William Wimsatt, Nascar racing, and so much more to take a look at the anxious state of whiteness. I've got plenty o' criticism about the piece itself, but am enamored with the awesome visuals by Felix Sockwell, clearly a tribute to Kara Walker.

First and foremost, Hsu weaves an intersectional analysis of race and class deftly into the entire piece, but entirely misses the intersection of race and gender. In fact, there is nary a woman even mentioned in his piece--black, white, or otherwise. It's as if he just assumes that men alone determine race consciousness and culture. Not a very intelligent analysis for such a seemingly intelligent dude.

I found the exploration of white culture, or lack thereof, especially interesting. Hsu writes:

Matt Wray, a sociologist at Temple University who is a fan of Lander's humor, has observed that many of his white students are plagued by a racial-identity crisis: "They don't care about socioeconomics; they care about culture. And to be white is to be culturally broke. The classic thing white students say when you ask them to talk about who they are is, 'I don't have a culture.' They might be privileged, they might be loaded socioeconomically, but they feel bankrupt when it comes to culture ... They feel disadvantaged, and they feel marginalized. They don't have a culture that's cool or oppositional." Wray says that this feeling of being culturally bereft often prevents students from recognizing what it means to be a child of privilege--a strange irony that the first wave of whiteness-studies scholars, in the 1990s, failed to anticipate.

Of course, the obvious material advantages that come with being born white--lower infant-mortality rates and easier-to-acquire bank loans, for example--tend to undercut any sympathy that this sense of marginalization might generate.

I think this issue of self-perception and collective identification is at the heart of some of the stagnation around race politics today. White folks voting for Obama felt like they were allowed into a sort of "culture of hope" (NOT a "culture of blackness" or "radical politics" mind you) that felt uncomplicated and comforting. As my friend Charlton McIlwain said on a panel we did together a few months ago, Obama's team strategically prevented Americans of all ethnic backgrounds from feeling like they had to vote for him because he was black, but also allowed them to feel okay about the idea that they might vote for him, first and foremost, because he was black. A brilliant and election-winning paradox.

Growing up with hip hop in the suburbs shaped my idea about what a "culture" even was. I actually felt like I could identify with it, not out of a sense of similar biography to the artists I was listening to, but out of a mutual commitment to storytelling and brutal truth. (Not that it wasn't hellishly complicated, too.) I knew that there was deep pain and secrecy and fakin' in the mostly white suburbs I lived in, but I didn't quite know how to square that up with who I was becoming.

It wasn't until I went to Barnard and lived in New York City, that I started to think a lot more about the culture I had come from, which I define, for the most part, by my family and its traditions, my feminism, the mountains, my grandmothers and their very divergent lives. Whiteness is part and parcel of that, but not something I foreground when I'm considering my culture, which I recognize, is a privilege in itself. Or, as Hsu tries to point out, maybe its also a source of pain. Or maybe that's just guilt and unconsciousness manifesting as denial of the existence of a unified white culture...

Your thoughts?

From the SF Chronicle:

The BART police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man on an Oakland train platform and then refused to explain his actions to investigators was arrested Tuesday in Nevada on suspicion of murder, authorities said.

Johannes Mehserle, 27, of Lafayette was taken into custody in Douglas County, Nev., said Deputy Steve Velez of the Douglas County sheriff's office. The arrest was also confirmed by David Chai, chief of staff to Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

Color of Change has more ways you can get involved.

Related: Justice for Oscar Grant-Please spread widely!
Justice for Oscar Grant: Update on Fruitvale BART Protest

Via zp27 on the community blog.

Via Womanist Musings.

Transcript after the jump.

If you missed journalist June Cross' amazing one hour special on Frontline about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and its affect on one extra/ordinary family's life, never fear. It's online. Out of all of the media that I've seen focused on this issue in the last few years, June's is among the most complex, clear, enraging, and inspiring (along with Trouble the Water). An excerpt of June talking about the women in the film:

I followed the travails of three generations of the Gettridge family for my film "The Old Man and the Storm" on Frontline. The men physically rebuilt their homes, but the actions of women--unseen because their pain was too private--allowed this family to survive. While the Gettridge men set up camp in trailers, their spouses and sisters, often living alone, reared children, fought with insurance adjusters, and in general stayed on top of the myriad shifting bureaucratic battles that have marked the city's first few years of rebuilding.

Go the Women's Media Center for the full text.

There are no words for this. I feel so much rage and I can only send my support and encouragement to my Bay Area organizers and remind everyone that now is a time for non-violence. Yet another example of how gross abuse of power leads to the loss of lives for youth of color.

This is video from a camera phone of Oscar Grant being shot by BART police while he was handcuffed.

*trigger warning*

You can read about it more here and Postbougie has another video that is equally as stunning.

What you can do right now:

1. If you are in the Bay there is a march today at the Fruitvale BART, details here.

2. If you are not in the Bay here are 5 things you can do right now.

We must let the world know we will not stand for our youth being murdered senselessly.

It looks like 2009 will be a very unchanged year for Fox News' bad habits.

On New Years Eve, Fox News Channel allowed folks to text in Happy New Years wishes to be scrolled at the bottom of the screen where news headlines are usually featured. One text I guess "slipped" through the screening process, where someone referenced to the racist "Barack the Magic Negro" song:

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND LET'S HOPE THE MAGIC NEGRO DOES A GOOD JOB. LOVE JEN AND JOHN C.

Via Think Progress.

This is upsetting. Yesterday, nine Muslims, including three children, were escorted off a plane after two passengers overhead them talking about airport security:

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother's wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

"My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, 'Wow, the jets are right next to my window.' I think they were remarking about safety."

AirTran is defending its decision, saying that they strictly followed federal rules. Spokesperson Tad Hutcheson said, "At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them . . . Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions."

"It just so happened." The fact of the matter is that if "these people" weren't of Muslim faith and appearance, this wouldn't have happened.

UPDATE: AirTran's made a recent statement saying they were not notified that the passengers were cleared to rebook a flight, even though passenger Inayet Sahin said that was not the case: "The FBI agents actually cleared our names . . .They went on our behalf and spoke to the airlines and said, 'There is no suspicious activity here. They are clear. Please let them get on a flight so they can go on their vacation,' and they still refused." Hm.

I know there are members of the GOP that believe due to the last election racism is somehow over, but I think it begs to be said that it actually is not and therefore sending a Christmas CD with the song, "Barack the Magic Negro" to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon" is in fact offensive and an embarrassing move for the GOP to support.

I would like to think that blatant and tacky uses of racial stereotyping won't rectify the devastated base of the GOP, but according to Politico.com, this might help perpetrator and RNC chair contender Chip Saltsman in his bid for the post. I don't think racism is going to work to win back the adoration of the Americans whose support they have lost. It is like the insecure bully on the schoolyard that makes stupid jokes behind your back, backtracks when caught by the principal and even issues a half-ass apology.

(Potential trigger warning)

Mind you she was resisting a false arrest.

Two officers in Galveston, TX were alerted to three white prostitutes soliciting a man and drug dealer, after which they mistakenly went to 12-year old Dymond Millburn's home, saw her outside in "tight shorts," assumed she was one of the perpetrators (even though she's not the same race as the suspects) and attacked her:

[A] blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, 'You're a prostitute. You're coming with me.'

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.' One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

The house where they were supposed to be going was two blocks away. And despite the fact that this girl was not only hospitalized with black eyes, throat and ear drum injuries, the police came to her school three weeks later and arrested her for assaulting a public servant.

The case is scheduled for a new trial next month (it was declared a mistrial originally), but her lawyer is confident, saying "I think we'll be okay. I don't think a jury will find a 12-year-old girl guilty who's just sitting outside her house. Any 12-year-old attacked by three men and told that she's a prostitute is going to scream and yell for Daddy and hit back and do whatever she can. She's scared to death."

Two years later, Dymond still suffers nightmares from the attack.

The thought that these officers haven't seemed to even be considered for reprimand after sending this girl to the hospital is unbelievable. Is it okay because they thought she was a prostitute and, you know, police brutality is okay against prostitutes? Or is it okay because she's black? This makes me fucking sick to my stomach.

Wow, just wow. I am not sure what can be said about this really.

JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and Adolf Hitler Campbell.

Good names for a trio of toddlers? Heath and Deborah Campbell think so. The Holland Township couple has picked those names and the oldest child, Adolf Hitler Campbell, turns 3 today.

This has given rise to a problem, because the ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich Township has refused to make a cake for young Adolf's birthday.

"We believe the request ... to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate," said Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman.

The Campbells turned down the market's offer to make a cake with enough room for them to write their own inscription and can't understand what all of the fuss is about.

Good for Shoprite. But what can you really say to this family? "Yo, uhhh, that is really racist!" Offensive is an understatement. That is your WTF for the day.

Thanks to Legba for the link.

A while ago I had written for the American Prospect about the blog Stuff White People Like and discussed some of the trends in race in America it so accurately highlights both intentionally and unintentionally. At the time there were several blogs that were spin-offs, but I guess I missed this most important one, Stuff Desi People Like. It is as though my analysis can come full circle.

My immediate feeling, stumbling upon such a blog was relief and humor. Even the first entry, #36 Fair Skinned Kids, is one of those dirty secrets that I keep close to my chest about my mother's preference for lighter skin, that I find to be frustrating and often fight with her about the racism embedded in such beliefs.

Check out the blog, I think it is pretty funny actually. But I always feel when mocking ethnic minorities it is different than mocking the dominant culture. At the end of the day, we are still not the dominant culture and there is still a sense of voyeurism and curiosity that turns into judgments and racist assumptions about ones culture. As a person of color, the culture I come from is but one part of who I am and does not limit me from understanding the diversity of this country. The onslaught of cultural productions about South Asians/Desis has excited me while leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Since I spent most of my life with people not knowing anything about India or Indian culture (outside of food and yoga), it is frustrating when people are in the "we think we understand your experience now" space. But it is also exciting.

So I guess in looking at SDPL, I suggest we laugh, but don't laugh too hard, because there are so many things that are just not able to be translated effectively given the racist assumptions we all hold about different cultures.

I know fast-food ads are not typically paragons of feminism or anti-racism, but this so incredibly offensive:

(Transcript is here.)

I'm just gonna quote Antigone at PunkAssBlog:

This is easy exploitation of other people; the "poor savages" practically comes screaming off the add. (Don't even have a word for "Burger"? WTF? I bet they have a word for "sandwich" and I also bet that they have plenty of words we don't have in English). Additionally, Whoppers and Big Mac would probably make them sick; most countries on the planet are not used to the high fat, high sugar, high beef, high salt diets of Americans. So, they're giving them food, but they're going to probably be immediately sick afterwards.

Burger King, you fail at making commercials.

The commercials have an accompanying website that takes pains to note they're actually exploitative, not just pretending to be: "Whopper virgins are real people doing real taste tests. No actors were used in this film."

Corporate contact info for Burger King is here.

Nikon's S60 camera detects different people's faces in a soon-to-be-taken photo. And what better way to demonstrate said feature than by depicting dark-skinned jungle dwellers and teenage girls in their underwear?

The ad copy reads: "The Nikon S60. Detects up to 12 faces."

Um, yeah.

You can find Nikon's corporate contact info here.

Via Fubiz.

I am very happy to report that as documented in this blog, racism is over now. I love funny, new, smart blogs that just hit the nail on the head.

Women in playing dead for photography and fashion purposes might be considered high art or cutting edge marketing, but it is usually just a tacky excuse for sexist art and the reason it is considered avant garde is because it is offensive. That type of art annoys me.

**This images are not safe for work and are potentially triggering.**

Exotified images of women of color being tortured and images put together to play to the fantasy of "savage" with sexual overtones is actually just deeply disturbing. I am well aware that you can't curtail someone's fantasies, but I argue you sure as hell can analyze them. Women's bodies placed in native and indigenous seeming contexts where they are being dragged and eluding to torture or essentially comparing their bodies to animals to be hunted is a shocking display of colonial misogyny and woman hate. This calendar should be protested.

(How can one track be so wrong and so right at the same time?)

In a culture where what a woman looks like counts more than what is between her ears, it does make a difference that the first lady is not white, but is black and therefore disrupts normative standards of white femininity. Last week controversy stirred due to a Salon article titled, "First lady got back," a tongue-in-cheek response to the Obama victory as not only for Obama, but for black women with an overemphasis on her "back" a subject of mass introspection academically and in popular culture as a culture signifier of black women's beauty and oft sexualization.

It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

Lord knows, it's time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it's been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho's, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they're certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

Yes, it is imperative to push the boundaries of our racist structures that determine what is beautiful. But something about the unapologetic "booty" gazing of this piece rubs me the wrong way. Latoya hits it saying,

Reader Virigina sent in the tip, writing:

Although Erin Kaplan does make a few decent points about how black women are viewed in this culture, most of the article just reinforces stereotypes. She is defining Michelle Obama and black women in general by their butts and hair. There are so many other traits that she could have discussed.

After reading the full piece, I'm inclined to agree. I get the semi-tongue in cheek tone of the piece, but this article just feels a bit wrong for the audience. Perhaps if it was written for a magazine like Essence or Clutch, which routinely explore the issues of black women and how a lot of our politics are wrapped up in our appearance, I would feel differently about the end result.

And goes on to say, "my problem is that articles about Michelle Obama's wardrobe, booty, and mom duties are what is fit to publish, what is seen as relevant to a mass audience." I agree with what Latoya is saying here, at no point in the Salon piece is there some reflection on the fact that an overemphasis on what first ladies look like as opposed to what they think, feel and say is problematic.

This is just sad. Remember the man that took modelizing to an even more deplorable level? Well, he was found guilty of 1 count of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault.

A Beverly Hills fashion designer, once touted as a future star of the catwalks, was found guilty Thursday of sexually assaulting seven girls and young women, capping a two-month trial that offered a sordid portrait of the fashion world.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated for seven days before finding Anand Jon Alexander guilty of one count of rape and 15 counts of sexual assault and other charges.

In general I don't really support incarceration, but since it is usually the only tool we have access to when sentencing for rape, it is sadly one of our only options. Anand Jon shouldn't be allowed to use his influence to manipulate women and then rape them. It is disgusting. It is necessary and should be noted when the criminal justice system takes the testimony of women seriously in rape cases.

But I do want to take an opportunity to talk about two factors that I think are also at play here that are not being talked about. The first is the way women are treated in the modeling industry and how they are often taken advantage of in unfair or abusive ways and the second is Anand Jon's race and citizenship.

An industry that functions off the objectification of women's bodies will create sexist work conditions if they are unchecked or deeply functioning within the constraints of capitalist patriarchy. Furthermore, women are frequently competing to get to the top and make a career out of modeling which also results in compromising situations whether by choice, by demand or by necessity. Unfortunately, I don't think Jon is alone in his sexual abuse of women in the modeling industry.

But I also think the fact that he is South Asian makes him an easy person to find guilty and throw our (deserved) disgust at, since he is not American, but an "other" that engages in those deplorable things that "others" do. Pushing the blame outside of the context of any type of homegrown abuse that happens within the US (or Western)-centric modeling industry gives us the ability to not be self reflective. This doesn't in any way minimize or justify Jon's deplorable behavior, but more to situate it within the historical power relations at play in the narratives surrounding the sexual assault of white women by brown men. Despite his own behavior that should be punished, I think it is high time we take a hard look at modeling as an institution and think about the sexist stereotypes it promotes that frequently fetishize and make normal the sexual abuse of women.

I am going to have to agree with Womanist Musings here and suggest that Dan Savage just say he is sorry for making racist statements about black voters and Prop 8. An issue that has been tackled by many bloggers. I won't say I am ready to throw him under the bus, but I do think as a thought leader in mainstream gay politics that Savage should figure out a way to articulate for his readers what exactly he is trying to say. Because the way it is coming out is not the strongest argument, if we are talking about a movement that puts at its center those most affected.

Check him out on Colbert.

Thoughts?

What is reproductive justice and why is there a session at Facing Race on it? According to EMERJ, "Reproductive Justice exists when all people have the economic, social and political power and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies, and sexuality for ourselves, our families and our communities."

This panel includes some seriously bad-ass women, Rocio Cordoba and Gabriela Valle from California Latina for Reproductive Justice and Marie Nakae from Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice. are talking about the difference between a movement that is focused on choice verses one that has a justice agenda. A justice agenda takes into account the greater conditions that serve as barriers to women's control of their own bodies, sexuality and health.

Maria Nakae is talking about nail salon workers and the chemicals they are exposed to. Apparently, 11% of chemicals in beauty products are actually tested so it is a great risk to these women that are exposed to them at high rates. Furthermore, exposure to these chemicals has reproductive health hazards. To learn more about their organizing work with nail salon workers check the project POLISH.

Techniques for Concealing Racism:

• Denying and Exceptionalizing

• Coding and Scapegoating

• Deflecting and Confusing

Techniques for Revealing Racism:

• Name it!

• Frame it!

• Explain it!

So, what does this look like? Any examples of how you have seen or used any of these strategies?

I am sitting with some lovely folks at the Facing Race conference (Jodie Tonita and Adrienne Maree Brown to name but a few) and listening to panelists debate the myth of post-racialism, asking the key question, is racism over now?

Obviously not. But what tools do we, as communicators and organizers, need to tell our stories of racism while recognizing the wins of this presidential election, yet recognizing that racism is alive and well. They are discussing two perspectives, one that is "colorblind" and the other that is "racial justice."

Here is one of the questions being debated:

Question 1: Are racial disparities responsible for differing health problems in different communities?

The traditional response is that health problems are based on personal responsibility and racist ideas of genetics, so if you want to be healthier you have to eat better and take care of yourself and no one can take responsibility if your community has a higher rate of certain diseases.

On the other hand, when you look at the way that resources are distributed and how low income communities of color rarely have access to healthy food, usually exposed to serious environmental toxins at work and at home and lack of access to affordable health care it is frequently not possible to even be able to take the personal responsibility.

What do you think? Why are health disparities so high?

So for those of you in the Bay or those traveling from out of town, remember the annual Facing Race conference is this weekend (November 13th-15th) in Oakland and it is going to be awesome. Here is a trailer for some of the amazing speakers and panels in store.

There will also be plenary sessions on:
* Post-Election Reflections: Examining Race in the Presidential Race
* The Race Debate: Challenging Colorblindness with Race Conscious Solutions
* Compact for Racial Justice: A Proactive Agenda for Advancing Racial Equity
* Race and the Global Economy

I will be liveblogging, so be sure to check back for that and shoot me an email if you are going to be there or say hello if you see me!

New York City blog Gothamist reports that on election night, a teenager was beaten with bats in Staten Island:

17-year-old Ali Kamara, a black Muslim, was walking home on Staten Island Tuesday night after it was announced that Barack Obama was elected president when he was brutally assaulted by four white men. Kamara tells the Daily News: "I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating." Luckily, Kamara was able to break away and hide until the thugs left; his mother, who moved with Ali to Staten Island from Liberia in 2000, showed the News a bloody towel she used to staunch his wounds.

The NYPD's Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the attack as a bias crime.

Leah, a blogger at the college anti-feminist organization the Network of Enlightened Women, has the following gem of wisdom to share about Obama's win:

This certainly is a historic night and only time will tell if this is to be a historic night for change a new generation has been hoping for or a night of change the founders feared hundreds of years ago.

Um, for serious? That is fucked.

There are many frightening propositions on the CA ballot that we have covered , specifically prop 8 and prop 4. We already know how you are voting on them. Instead of give a full voter guide, which Ann did already, I want to just shed some light on a proposition that will truly harm the young people of California and is a racist and seriously detrimental piece of legislation, CA Proposition 6.

Proposition 6 Facts

"Worst of the Worst"

1) Drops the age to 14 that a child can be tried as an adult

2) California already spends four times as much $ per prisoner as it does per public school student, prop 6 moves millions of $ away from schools and into prisons

3) Creates over 50 changes in law with redundant spending and duplicated bureaucracy

4) Explicitly removes community representatives from juvenile justice coordinating councils so affected communities have no ability to bring a voice to the table

5) Mandates yearly criminal background checks on everyone living in Section 8 public housing and removes the 30 day eviction notice requirement, destabilizing communities through forced evictions

Prisons are a feminist issue as we have written about before. Please vote no on prop 6! Go here for more info.

I know we've already covered the ridiculous sexism (and general sexualization of young girls) and racist bullshit that we find from too many Halloween costumes, but I couldn't not point out these this gem today. The above is titled the "Oh No You Didn't Wig." Just....wow.

And irritates me to no end: When you do a Google search of "Obama," the top related search is "obama citizenship." Wait, it gets worse:

Please tell me everything is going to be okay. Please?

In light of claims that we have reached a place of post-racism, Latoya at Racialicious aptly points out multiple examples of how this is actually untrue. In light of the events of Hurricane Katrina, the Jena 6, the Jersey 4 and the Duke Rape case, all highly public moments where racism proved to be a relevant factor, we can hardly claim to be in a post-racial country.

But the very nature of our conversation about whether or not America is post-racial proves that, in fact, it's NOT. Just look at the competing narratives on the right and the left about what role race has played in this election. Last week I suggested that Colin Powell put his support behind Barack Obama at least partially because of race, whether he said it out loud or not, and that this support is understandable given the history of racism in this country. In response, there were some suggestions that perhaps this act was in itself racist. I want to talk about what comments like these tell us about how we understand race, especially in the context of this election.

Voting for Barack because he is black is considered problematic for two reasons:

The first reason, pushed by conservatives, is that this is somehow reverse racism (despite the clear proof that the McCain campaign is appealing to people to not vote for him because he is black). This reason is firmly rooted in white power, fear and control of this countries government and the potential threat that a black leader is to this establishment. It is just blatant old fashioned racism. I am not sympathetic to this line of analysis.

The second reason, pushed by liberals, is that he is a qualified candidate outside of being black, so we don't want him to be the affirmative action candidate and play into the right wing agenda of calling us "racist against white people." This reason is based in a belief that we are in a potentially post-racist time where we are actually witnessing a "reverse Bradley Effect" in which Americans are so past their racism that they want to prove it by supporting a black candidate.

It is worth noting these contradictions. Take a look at how themes of post-racialism play out in Frank Rich's Sunday editorial:

There are at least two larger national lessons to be learned from what is likely to be the last gasp of Allen-McCain-Palin politics in 2008. The first, and easy one, is that Republican leaders have no idea what "real America" is. In the eight years since the first Bush-Cheney convention pledged inclusiveness and showcased Colin Powell as its opening-night speaker, the G.O.P. has terminally alienated black Americans (Powell himself now included), immigrant Americans (including the Hispanics who once gave Bush-Cheney as much as 44 percent of their votes) and the extended families of gay Americans (Palin has now revived a constitutional crusade against same-sex marriage). Subtract all those players from the actual America, and you don't have enough of a bench to field a junior varsity volleyball team, let alone a serious campaign for the Electoral College.

I agree with Rich and I find most of his argument to be solid, but I do think he is attempting to pull from the post-racist frame. He even makes the "reverse Bradley" argument -- that voters want to vote for Obama because he's black -- later in the piece. But here's my question: Is a "reverse Bradly" possible considering one of the largest liberal messages being pushed right now is that this isn't about race? Aren't there almost certainly other racial factors at play here -- that white Americans are disgusted by the race-related tactics that McCain has pulled and that Obama's blackness isn't very threatening to them?

With these two frames about race, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. On one hand, we recognize the clear and blatant racist attacks that Obama is facing. On the other, we claim not to notice or care that the first black president is actually black. The simple truth is that in fact there are Americans voting for Barack Obama because he is the best choice AND because it is important for us to have a black president. As we said over and over again during the Democratic primary, gender is a factor but not *the only factor* in choosing a candidate to support. The same goes for race.

But this tension -- is race a major factor or a non-existant factor? -- is at the heart of this election, and I don't believe it is proof that we are in a post-racial space. Perhaps we are stuck somewhere in the middle of two different ways of understanding race. It is so important that Barack Obama is elected (and obviously not just because he is black) but let us not forget what this election is bringing out in all of America -- and not just the "real" Americans as defined by McCain and Palin. We must continue to push the way we understand race in American society and push to change the racist conditions these beliefs have created. Saying that we are post-racial or don't see race does not change the actual condition of our country.

This just looks really good. Aaronette M. White, an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz has a book out called, "Ain't I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom," that delves into the intersection of race, manhood, sexism, family and feminism. It is a series of in-depth interviews with man who have transformed their relationship with themselves and the women in their lives by embracing feminism. White's main point being, sexism hurts everyone.

For black men, feminism can be a positive force that enhances romantic relationships, friendships with other men, and relationships with children, said White, whose findings are based on in-depth interviews and an extensive written survey administered to each participant. Her subjects, whose identities are not revealed in the book, were hand-selected from a pool of about 50 men, all of whom were self-identified feminists.

"These men have defied the odds," said White, whose book breaks new ground in the empirical study of black feminist men. "Their lives help define what it means to be a feminist and an ethical human being."

Via.

And as her title suggests borrowing from Sojourner Truth's pivotal speech, she calls her subjects the sons of Sojourner because, "they refuse to place race above gender, or gender above race."

This looks like a powerful read, and I appreciate the juxtaposition of black masculinity and feminism as they are usually diametrically opposed. I guess the question begs to be asked, which is what makes this a controversial book on some level, is can men be feminists? I think they absolutely can, but what do you think?

Thanks to George for the link!

I hate Rush Limbaugh. This isn't news, I mean he is an asshole. But I love that he is so angry about Colin Powell's historic decision to support Barack Obama, exclaiming that it is "ABOUT RACE." Powell has bore the brunt of the racism of the Republican right for a long time, from being called "well-spoken" to having his race ignored or having to pretend he wasn't a person of color for the benefit of the party. I have frequently disagreed with his perspectives and policies, however, I was *very* moved by his public endorsement of Obama.

I understand that Powell has to say he is not endorsing Obama because of race. I understand that is what Chris Rock has said, what many public black men have had to say. Because they have to pretend to be color blind. Because racism in this country is so deep, so entrenched that as people of color we have to ignore it and can only call it out in polite and really obvious ways. If we get too angry or speak out we are divisive. And if we endorse a candidate because he is black, well then *we* are the racist ones.

So of course Rush is screaming Powell's endorsement is about race. He noticed that there is a shot that a black man might make it to the presidency which is a direct threat to old white male power (as subtle as it is going to be) and Rush has taken himself to the task of exposing us libruls as the racists that we are.

See, calling someone a traitor because they chose to support a candidate because they agree with his politics, thinks that his own party is using bad tactics and because he is the same race, well that makes him a racist, not a well reasoned human being. And making images like this one, well that is just political expression. Not racism.

UPDATE: After thinking about this a little bit more and before the link thread spirals out of control about how we should support Palin because she is a woman...I think it is important to state the obvious. This is not a competition between what is a more compelling reason to vote, gender or race. They are both things to consider and it helps that Obama has politics that I or most feminists do support therefore gaining the support of most feminists. However, I didn't support Powell when he was considering running for President and would have voted against him even if it meant voting for someone white instead.

The point however is that whether Powell says it is for race or not, he is going to have it thrown in his face in a way that a white conservative supporter would not. That is the way racism functions, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't. There is a specific type of anger that Powell's endorsement is unleashing that is tied to white power and control and it is interesting to watch it play out.

When asked last week in the debate about his racist sentiments aired by some of his constituents, McCain tried to weasel his way out of the question them "fringe" members. I think we as the news reading public have found evidence to the contrary. It is starting to seem that the Republican base has become filled with racism. This might be why moderate Republicans hate their own party so much at this point, but I digress. Last week we saw Obama with a noose and talked about the sentiments anti-Obama folks are drawing from in calling a black leader a socialist. That was deplorable, this is disgusting.

I am thinking they didn't get this idea from Old Dirty Bastard's album cover. And when Ol Dirty put this album cover out, we knew it was problematic, but it was also a joke, his idea and thankfully ODB wasn't running for president.

This however is just some really shameful shit. Racialicious has more.

UPDATE: CNN did a story on this. (h/t)

This scared the crap out of me.

Sign this open letter from Color of Change telling John McCain and Sarah Palin to denounce the lies, racism, and hate coming from their supporters.

Via Jack & Jill Politics.

I think it is tidbits like this that tell us the true nature of Sarah Palin and her views on the indigenous people of this country. Her bullshit lines about keeping our country "free" backed with an unapologetic record on women's rights and horrid treatment of indigenous communities keeps it clear. Full of shit would be an understatement.

The Huffington Post reports today,

Gov. Sarah Palin's rural adviser resigned Monday amid criticism of the governor's record on hiring Alaska Natives.

Rhonda McBride, who is not an Alaska Native, made the announcement in an e-mail to several Native leaders, saying there need to be more Native voices in Palin's administration.

She left the position empty despite calls from Native leaders.

State Sen. Al Kookesh, a Democrat, said Palin left the position unfilled her first year in office and ignored Native leaders' suggestions on the selection process.

"We were really disappointed when an Alaska Native wasn't appointed," said Kookesh, a Tlingit Indian who held the job in a previous administration.

Natives bristled early in Palin's administration when she named a white woman to a game board seat held by a Native for more than 25 years. An Athabascan Indian eventually was named to the post after protests.

As though you needed more reason to suggest that Palin represents everything that is wrong with the history of this country. One only looks to the treatment of indigenous folks, one of the most atrocious moments of our history and her mere ignorance of their issues in a face of such a great opportunities. Alaska still have somewhat of an indigenous population, yet Palin barely recognizes them as thinking entities.

Related:
An Indigenous Perspective on Palin, Oil and Alaska
Palin Unpopular Among Indigenous Alaskans
An Open Letter to Sarah Palin
Biden vs Palin on Indigenous Issues

via Pam's House Blend.

So, I am sure by now most of you have caught a glimpse of some of the videos capturing hate and vitriol towards Barack Obama at the McCain/Palin rallies. If you are like me, they probably make you sick, embarrassed and even frightened for what the Republicans have come to stand for. When people tell you racism doesn't exist anymore please refer them to the picture above and the countless examples of wing-nuts screaming, "terrist" and "commie" at some of the McCain/Palin events. Epithets such as "terrorist," show us the fear and anxiety that lies at the intersection of race, education, potential political affiliation, class and sexuality and the possible threat to normative forms of white male power. But these tactics are nothing new. Adam Serwer at the American Prospect delves deeper. In discussing Congressman John Lewis bold calling out of McCain's use of racist tactics he says,

It's no wonder that the tone at McCain rallies remind Lewis of the bad old days. In recent months, conservatives have sounded increasingly retro with their attempts to paint Obama as a socialist or communist. In some ways, this accusation is typical far-right boilerplate. Obama certainly isn't the first Democrat running for president to be accused of communist sympathies. And as usual, the accusations are rarely linked to policy specifics. But the difference with Obama is that, in the eyes of the right, it's not just his political affiliation that implicates him as a socialist. It's his ethnic background.

The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like "socialism" are used to describe the threat.

Growing up in a country where overt and covert, interpersonal and institutional racism are par for the course, it is not only difficult to watch what is happening and nerve-wracking, but it is indicative of what is coming to a head through this election. This unabashed display of racism is humiliating for most Americans, but it shows us that there are two ways ideological standpoints held by the American public, one that is clinging to yesterday's racist attitudes and one that wants to move forward away from a painful history of racism and abuse against our more disenfranchised members. Also, if you look at the history of calling someone a "pinko commie fag," despite not having to use racialized descriptors, it was generally understood that this was an activist, probably a person of color or someone who fights for the rights of people of color, poor people, queer people, etc. So it is describing an emasculated and raced person, the ultimate threat to nationalist understandings and forms of white masculinity. Obama makes the white boys feel less manly, so they have to call him a "commie" to make them feel less paranoid and anxious.

So their campaign rhetoric is surprisingly on point-a vote for Obama is a vote for change. But I don't need to tell you that. You are already there.

With all the vicious, racist attacks on Obama as of late and the McCain campaign's desperate attempts to tie him with terrorism, we have found that McCain is the one who has connections with domestic terrorists.

Not only does he have a relationship with former extreme anti-choice activist Paul Schenck, but has overwhelmingly voted against bills that would protect abortion clinics from anti-choice terrorists. Via Think Progress:

On multiple occasions throughout his career, McCain sought to limit the government's ability to punish violent anti-choice fanatics by:

- Voting against making anti-choice violence a federal crime. As the Jed Report notes, McCain voted in 1993 and 1994 against making "bombings, arson and blockades at abortion clinics, and shootings and threats of violence against doctors and nurses who perform abortions" federal crimes.

- Opposing Colorado's "Bubble Law." McCain said he opposed Colorado's "Bubble Law," which prohibited abortion protesters from getting within 8 feet of women entering clinics [Denver Post, 2/27/00]. The law was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

- Voting to allow those fined for violence at clinics to avoid penalties by declaring bankruptcy. NARAL Pro-Chioce America notes that McCain "voted to allow perpetrators of violence or harassment at reproductive-health clinics to avoid paying the fines assessed against them for their illegal acts by declaring bankruptcy."

This is not to mention he sat in silence at an event while anti-choice extremist Marylin Shannon lauded a woman currently in jail for shooting former Navy veteran and doctor who provides abortion care. Check it out:

This video keeps putting me in tears. I have to say after yesterday's tactics by the McCain/Palin campaign that were blatantly racist, I really started to think about what this election means to myself and to the people in this country that have experienced racism and never been allowed to talk about it, had the tools to deal with it and have always been told covertly and overtly that we are inferior. You never quite fit in but then you are told you are imagining it when you experience racism. It means something to us that Obama is so close to the presidency.

It is good to see some mainstream media heads actually take it there.

I love her.

via Jezebel.

Bad: Telling a joke about Sarah Palin being "gang-raped by my big black brothers."

Worse: Telling said joke at a women's shelter.

Right-wing bloggers and journalists are making noise about Gwen Ifill moderating tonight's debate, because (gasp), she is writing a book about race and American politics. Naturally, this fact combined with her being black makes her blind to her own racism and favoritism of Obama. No, wait, actually, that assumption is racist.

Here is why. If Ifill were a white journalist and even more so a white male journalist, there would be no question in her ability to moderate the debate fairly. Furthermore, George Stephanopoulos moderated a debate between Hillary and Barack during primary season and he worked in the Clinton administration. Did anyone make noise about that? (No, really did they? I can't remember.)

Furthermore, the assumption that her book is somehow "pro-Obama" is also problematic. People write books about key figures in history all the time, does that assume they are biased towards them or merely contributing to the political dialog? Even Elyas Bakhtiari at the Moderate Voice said,

I skeptically use quotations because the book is about how the black political structure of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality. That trend has been observed by many scholars in the last year and isn't exactly a sign of political bias. The title, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," might raise some eyebrows. But honestly, how can you write a serious book about changes in the black political structure without making Obama the central focus?

Andrew Sullivan gives us the worst case scenario. Well, I guess leave it to the right-wingnuts to come up with any excuse, irrelevant of how racist, to stop us from seeing the *real* Sarah Palin.

I can't wait for the debate!

If you are interested in shifting the race debate from one of multiculturalism and inclusion to an actual racial justice agenda, then you can't miss the Facing Race conference this November in Oakland, CA. I will be there, live-blogging, along with some of the most important voices in racial justice today.

Get more information here and register if you can!

I am really into lists lately. After Courtney's ten things she can do without and my own replica, along with all the responses we got, I figure why not make it a weekly feature. So similar to Amanda's Friday Random Ten, here is my second crack at the Tuesday Ten.

I have been thinking about highlighting men that do feminist work in their blogging (sort of in the vain of Twanna's Manly Monday, but different trajectory). Many of these men, I don't know personally, so I will not say they are feminists, however, in much of their writing I have found they support many of my ideals.

So here goes. This is my list of who I consider feminist friendly male bloggers.

1. Scott Lemiuex from Lawyers, Guns and Money

2. Nezua from the Unapologetic Mexican

3. Kevin from Slant Truth

4. Jay Smooth aka the Illdoctrine

5. Jesse Taylor from Pandagon

6. Baratunde Thurston from Jack and Jill Politics

7. Kai Chang from Zuky.

8. J Brotherlove.

9. Hugo Schwyzer

10. AngryAsianMan

So the last time I wrote about American Apparel's use of mock tribal prints and the name, "Afrika" for a line of clothing, it was a little bit controversial. Some folks didn't understand why putting thin, white models, in faux tribal and animal prints with the title, "Afrika" was racist. So be it.

UPDATE: I think one of our commenters put the argument for why the use of "African" symbolism is problematic and racist best here.

She says,

For people who have not been exposed to critical race theory or the study of colonialism and cultural appropriation, the new Afrika line probably doesn't look racist to you. The reason it doesn't look racist to you is because the attractiveness of the line is meant to play on the unconscious attitudes that non-African westerners have about Africa. Here's a set of association words:

exotic
primitive
tribal
jungle
wild
animalistic
hypersexual

I can go on, but you get the point.

You know, I realized this morning how happy people like Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin must be that someone like Sarah Palin is running for VP. I mean, what does the media love more than women that manipulate the words of feminism to justify their calculated misrepresentations of important women's issues. And what do anti-feminist faux feminist women love more than seeing all their tall tales of "real" feminism come true? Palin is the perfect encapsulation of their anti-feminist dreams. But I digress.

I am just annoyed right now after reading this piece by Coulter on Townhall.com via Feministe where she blames the mortgage crisis and flailing economy on affirmative action. At a certain point, I realize that she just doesn't read. Or at least not the same news that I am reading.

So for those of us Feministing gals (Jessica, Vanessa and myself) that went to school in that sleepy upstate town known as Albany we all have a special place in our hearts for Barbara Smith. One of my most formative feminist "click" moments was seeing Barbara Smith lecture at SUNY Albany when I was a young women's studies undergrad (11 years ago, eeeek, LOL).

If you have never heard of her, well she is an anti-racist, feminist, socialist activist and one of the framers of early identity politics. Frankly, her humility extends so far that she rarely gets the recognition she deserves. I am sure her constant calling out of white feminism for their inability to truly incorporate an analysis of race and class certainly has kept her on the sidelines as well.

I was pretty excited to see that Colorlines magazine (always on top of it) has a Q&A with her and what she has been up to, including running for public office. Check it out.

Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo, the charming dude who wants to pay low-income women $1,000 apiece to get sterilized, is speaking out not only to defend his suggestion - but also to complain about the media glomming onto the story. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Watching this guy is painful (and infuriating) but it's worth it, and interviewer Kyra Phillips is decent at taking him to task.

Extra Credit: Drink every time he says "these people." Seriously, he's like a caricature of racism.

White Dude Knows Best! Above: Men who want to control the bodies of women they deem unfit mothers. Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo (left) and Texas state District Judge Charlie Baird (right).

It's been quite a week for government violation of the bodily integrity of poor women and women of color. First, there was the judge in Texas who set "not having children" as a condition of a woman's parole. (I just linked in the WFR on Sunday, but Cara discussed it at length. Go read her post.)

And today, via several readers, comes the news that John LaBruzzo, a state legislator from Louisiana, wants to pay low-income women $1,000 apiece to get sterilized. Everything about this is so incredibly offensive, I don't know quite where to begin. Let's start with a quote from LaBruzzo:

"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Low-income women having children is a "dangerous demographic trend"?! Sounds like the recent round of racist propaganda we saw related to the "Demographic Winter" movie. (Film summary: You should be panicked because brown people are reproducing at faster rates than white people.) But LaBruzzo protests that he is not a racist -- he's a problem-solver!

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist, ' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."

It's not as if this country has ever done a good job providing low-income women with the tools and information to make their own decisions. Programs that aim to do that have been consistently underfunded and poorly implemented. So no, we haven't tried all other options. And even if we had, his idea is still completely appalling.

LaBruzzo is correct that it's very easy to say he's a racist. Because, um, he's espousing a historically racist policy. What he clearly deems to be a new and creative solution has unfortunately been around a long time. Compulsory or coercive sterilizations for low-income women, disabled women, and women of color were extremely common up until the 1970s, and slightly less common but nevertheless occurring with regularity the the decades since. The paternalistic attitude that "certain women" cannot be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions is still an underlying theme of a lot of backwards legal and policy decisions. LaBruzzo and Texas judge Charlie Baird are part of this despicable tradition.

You knew this one was coming.

Approximate transcript below the jump.

Bill O'Reilly goes for the bald-faced racism/sexism:

If you can't stomach watching him, here's a transcript snippet (O'Reilly's guest was Rebecca Johnson, a Vogue reporter who had recently interviewed Michelle Obama):

JOHNSON: I found her lovely, actually, very bright, very thoughtful and, you know, an impressive person, intelligent. She was great. I was impressed.

O'REILLY: Now, I have a lot of people who call me on the radio and say she looks angry. And I have to say there's some validity to that. She looks like an angry woman. Did you ask her about that?

JOHNSON: Don't they say that about you, too?

O'REILLY: Yeah, but I'm not running for -- I'm not going to be the first lady.

He forgot to add, "I'm also not a black woman who has to contend with the sexist, racist assholes who listen to my radio show."

Renee breaks it down further:

Michelle is an ABW because she is a woman that is educated, successful and opinionated. Black women have historically fallen into three categories, the licentious whore (read: jezebel), loving nurturer (read: mammy) or ball busting shrew (read: sapphire). Each stigmatization has the specific purpose of creating us as caricatures rather than real people. These stereotypes are one dimensional and the basis of their existence is their reaction to their environments. Black women are universally seen as objects rather than subjects; and personalities like O'Reilly perpetuate these images because it maintains white hegemony.

An autonomous woman that demands respect does not pander to the concerns of the white male power elite and is therefore a threat to their privilege. While he views his questions as innocent interrogations in fact what they are, are an attempt to reduce her validity as a person. If she is angry, the anger is deemed illegitimate. Quite unspoken is the opinion that her anger is based in her refusal to capitulate to the white male power base. Every ABW could be happy if only they would be more like Mammy or Jezebel.

Go read the rest.

Related:
Quick Hit: Defending Michelle
Fox trashes Michelle Obama: The lowlight reel
Obama Sexism Watch: Sexy Silhouette Edition
Michelle Obama Sexism/Racism Watch ("Angry Black Woman" edition)
Michelle Obama Sexism/Racism Watch (Baby Mama edition)
Michelle Obama Sexism/Racism Watch

Renee at Womanist Musings has a great post up, Can I Touch Your Hair? Black Women and The Petting Zoo.

Natural hair equals revolutionary because it says I do not covet whiteness. It says I have decolonized my mind and no longer seek to embrace the qualities of my oppressor. It flies in the face of beauty traditions that seek to create black women as unfeminine and thereby undesirable. My natural hair is one of the truest expressions of the ways in which I love myself because I have made the conscious choice to say that I am beautiful, without artifice or device. It further states that I will not be judged by the yardstick of white womanhood. My beauty is a gift from my foremothers who knew on a more instinctual level than we know today, that 'woman' is as beautiful as she believes herself to be.

...and, for good measure, criticizes feminists for decrying violence against women.

On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh said,

Obama's patriotism is not being attacked in an ad. McCain's just out there saying he's putting his own personal political ambition ahead of the country's. It's -- you know, it's just -- it's just we can't hit the girl. I don't care how far feminism's saying, you can't hit the girl, and you can't -- you can't criticize the little black man-child. You just can't do it, 'cause it's just not right. It's not fair. He's such a victim.

Ah yes, those ridiculous feminists trying to convince the American people that domestic violence is a bad thing -- even if she was asking for it. And that ridiculous media, daring to publish anything favorable about a black man.

I can't say I'm surprised, though. It's Limbaugh.

Seems like an appropriate moment to republish Samhita's "fuck you" to Limbaugh:

Ann mentioned this in her last PETA WTF? post, but I decided it needed more attention.

Just when you think PETA couldn't get any worse, they take their ad campaigns to another level.

Apparently PETA is petitioning to buy ad space on the fences that are being constructed along the US/Mexico border to display these racist and offensive ads. From PETA:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.

The billboards [pictured], in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will -- Go Vegan."

"We think that Mexicans and other immigrants should be warned if they cross into the U.S. they are putting their health at risk by leaving behind a healthier, staple diet of corn tortillas, beans, rice, fruits and vegetables," said Lindsay Rajt, assistant manager of PETA's vegan campaigns.

We already know they could use some help when it comes to objectifying women. But apparently they also need a serious race and class analysis check over at PETA. Stat. Without even getting into what's fucked up about the message they are trying to send about meat consumption and mexican vs american culture, let's begin with the images on the ad, which are borderline racist and definitely offensive to me. Then how about supporting the screwed up US immigration policy by BUYING ad space on these fences?

News flash PETA: promoting animal rights through misogyny, racism and the objectification of women is NOT the way to go.

Thanks to Cesarina for the link

via Renee comes the latest PETA nekkid-lady ad, featuring U.S. Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard:

The argument against this ad is not that Amanda Beard is being exploited. The issue here is that once again PETA is employing the tired old tactic of using a conventionally beautiful woman with conventionally "perfect" body, posed naked or nearly naked, to call for animal rights. But the thing I hate most about this particular PETA propaganda is that it takes what should be a message of empowerment, Love-Your-Body-style, and turns it into yet another affirmation of the female ideal. As Renee puts it, "It seems that they respect the rights of animals far more than they respect women. Consider that they don't use images of male nudes, nor do they use images of women with varying body sizes."

As you'll recall, PETA has defended this advertising strategy with the weak response that "sex sells." It's an excuse I expect from Axe and Maxim, but not from a movement that is supposedly about justice.

Oh, and we're not done yet! From Debbie at Bitch (via Vegans of Color) comes the horrifying news that PETA now wants to advertise on the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

While many view the contentious border fence as a government fiasco, an animal rights group sees a rare opportunity.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.

The billboards, in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will -- Go Vegan."

WTF?! I have no words. This is so fucked-up, even for PETA.

Via The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (full disclosure: that's my day job and I wrote this press release)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that some Latino citizens in the Rio Grande Valley on the US/Mexico border are being denied access to their citizenship rights based on documentation issues. Their citizenship is being called into question (despite years of residence and employment in the United States, and even successful background checks) due to their birth to midwives in private residences.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health believes this is a racist and unfair practice, which leaves these individuals scrambling to prove citizenship with other documents, where for others a birth certificate is sufficient. This practice unfairly targets Latino citizens on the border and those who were born to parteras or midwives in private residences, a common practice among Latinos. Further, the fact that once additional documentation has been provided some individuals are still being denied makes it clear that the State Department is discriminating against these individuals along the border in Texas.

Join the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health in decrying this discriminatory practice, so we can ensure that all US citizens regardless of race, nationality or place of childbirth are granted access to their rights.

Full press release available here.

Contributed by Adrienne Elyse Wallace

It's been about eight months since the murder of Tarika Wilson.

Reporting on her tragic murder, Christopher Maag of the New York Times wrote:

A SWAT team arrived at Ms. Wilson's rented house in the Southside neighborhood early in the evening of Jan. 4 to arrest her companion, Anthony Terry, on suspicion of drug dealing, said Greg Garlock, Lima's police chief. Officers bashed in the front door and entered with guns drawn, said neighbors who saw the raid.

Moments later, the police opened fire, killing Ms. Wilson, 26, and wounding her 14-month-old son, Sincere, Chief Garlock said. One officer involved in the raid, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, a 31-year veteran, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

On August 4th an all-white jury acquitted Sgt. Joseph Chavalia. Chavalia's attorney said in response: "What kind of world would it be if we didn't have police officers...Joe was doing his duty."

Oh shit, I'm sorry - I didn't realize that killing a woman holding her baby was in the Lima, Ohio Police handbook. The fact that Chavalia was acquitted speaks volumes. His actions were sanctioned by the jury. The take away message is that it's okay to shoot a black woman holding her child. I mean the racism is apparent in the actions of the police officer and the media that covered the shooting but conveniently lacked follow up coverage. Why isn't this story important, why aren't people outraged? Citizens of Lima have spoken up - why aren't they receiving attention from folks outside of the black activist community? It seems the death of a black woman at the hands of a white police officer is fine, even forgettable - at least to twelve jurors and a slew of media outlets. However let me just say:

Tarika Wilson, I will not forget you.

Adrienne Elyse is a general badass who works in the anti-domestic violence movement by working for economic justice. She lives / works / loves in Massachusetts (which is now, officially for lovers).

Sometimes I google things like "feminism" or "sexism" and this time via a google search for sexism I came across this gem. It is a series of clips from Disney movies depicting masculinity and then deconstructing the ways these characterizations of manhood deploy as standard.

There are some other ones in the 'related' section such as this one on racism in Disney.

An Arizona radio shock-jock named Jon Justice (oh, the irony) recently targeted Pima Country Legal Defender Isabel Garcia with a truly disgusting hate-speech campaign. Pima helped organize a protest of Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- a man known for scores of immigration raids, blocking female inmates' access to abortion, and some stupid ideas about gender. (Read more from Jenny Dreadful.) And because Garcia dared to call attention to the fact that Arpaio is doing nothing but creating racial divisions with his "narrow-minded and ignorant policies," she drew the ire of local bigots.

Radio host Jon Justice, in particular, had a really disgusting response to Pima's critique of Arpaio:

...Jon Justice posted a few offensive videos of himself with a piñata with Isabel's likeness, caressing it and making comments about "wanting to take it home with me," among a few other comments about "chorizo" and "viva la raza." Mr. Justice has since removed the video, as well as the one that followed it, which we found to be even more offensive.

Maegan la Mala distills what's going on here:

They did what they do best, spout hate, targeting Garcia, her life (because let's be real this is about life not just making a living) and her body as a Latina woman. There were calls for her to be fired and a very clear message was sent that the body of a Latina woman is fair game.

I apologize for being late to posting about this. I really encourage you to read more from the bloggers who have been covering it from the start. There are comprehensive lists at the Sanctuary and Latino Politico.

Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson group that Garcia works with, has posted a list of ways to take action on Garcia's behalf, against this sort of ugly hate-speech.

Hanaa Rifaey doesn't sleep much. I'll let her explain why. But the next time you find yourself pissed at another policy done wrong, know that Hanaa is on it. And you can be, too. Even if it's a small step, it'll add up.

Here's Hanaa...

Jack has a great post up at AngryBrownButch (and Feministe) about a new Demos report on the instability of the Black and Latino middle class. Jack shares some really interesting insights from childhood, and it inspired me to share some of my own thoughts.

From the report:

African-American and Latino families have more difficulty moving into the middle class, and families that do enter the middle class are less secure and at higher risk than the middle class as a whole. Overall, more African-American and Latino middle-class families are at risk of falling out of the middle class than are secure. This is in sharp contrast to the overall middle class, in which 31 percent are secure and 21 percent are at risk.

My parents are Cuban exiles, who immigrated here in the 60s shortly after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. The reason why class has such different implications for immigrant families in the US is because they bring their class histories with them from their countries of origin.

The United States House of Representatives has issued an apology for slavery and Jim Crow.

Congress has issued apologies before -- to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. In 2005, the Senate apologized for failing to pass anti-lynching laws.

Five states have issued apologies for slavery, but past proposals in Congress have stalled, partly over concerns that an apology would lead to demands for reparations -- payment for damages.

The Cohen resolution does not mention reparations. It does commit the House to rectifying "the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow."

I really like what Melissa Harris-Lacewell (who I have a tremendous intellectual crush on) had to say about it:

Jessica Yee, who has occasionally contributed posts to Feministing, writes on Racialicious (original post at Shameless) about 5 year old Adriel Arocha who is being banned from his Houston-area kindergarten class. Why, you ask?

As an Apache, he has long hair that he has been growing in his Native cultural tradition that "violates" this school's dress code rules.

The kicker though is that the school board is willing to make exceptions on religious or other "proven" moral grounds, but doesn't think that being Native American cuts it.

Yee points out that growing your hair is a tradition in many Indigenous cultures: "Long hair carries our life experiences and reminds us about the teachings we've received along the way."

But apparently that's not good enough for Superintendent Curtis Rhodes, who says, "I was trying to find out what recognized religion they are that discusses they cannot cut their hair and the information I received then was basically it's their choice." Sounds like a real charmer. If you want to give Rhodes a piece of your mind, his contact information is here.

I have to say, I'm kind of in shock that such a gross racist term would come out of John Kerry's mouth - and with such nonchalance! Renee at Womanist Musings has more.

Ophelia at Feminocracy observes something about the language used to discuss two very similar -- and very tragic -- cases in which a pregnant woman was murdered, her uterus cut open, and the fetus stolen.

The details provided about Kia Johnson's death are gory and detailed. Words like "eviscerated" jump out at you as you read the account. They call her a corpse. They note that the foul smell emitting from the body that was in "moderate decomposition" is how they found her.

Bobbie Jo Stinnet is called a "slain mom", a "pregnant woman" who had her "womb" cut open.

Kia is an "eviscerated pregnant teen."

Yes, there were gory descriptions of Bobbie Jo Stinnett's murder published, too. But I do notice a difference in tone -- especially in the headlines -- between the coverage of her and that of Kia Johnson. I think it's less subtle when you see those headlines (all from CNN) next to the pictures of these women:

Maybe this particularly resonates with me because I work as an editor, and I see it as a heartbreaking example of why language matters. How word choice can humanize (and dehumanize). How racism can pervade what probably, to the writer of those CNN headlines, seemed like straightforward, cut-and-dried sentences.

Apparently it is OK to determine gradients of assimilation when granting people citizenship status in France. According to the BBC, last week, a Muslim woman was denied approval of her application for citizenship because she has not shown that she has been able to assimilate effectively into French society.

Social services reports said the burqa-wearing Faiza M lived in "total submission to her male relatives".

Faiza M said she has never challenged the fundamental values of France.

Her initial application for French citizenship was rejected in 2005 on the grounds of "insufficient assimilation" into France.

She appealed, and late last month the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest administrative body which also acts as a high court, upheld the decision to deny her citizenship.

It appears that no matter how many times Muslim women talk about how their religious choices may not always be directly connected to their experiences with patriarchy, no one listens.

My first ever print piece is up at the American Prospect about the blog Stuff White People Like. Enjoy!

From today's New York Times:

Indian versions of Vogue, Rolling Stone, OK!, Hello, Maxim, FHM, Golf Digest, People and Marie Claire have all sprung up this year, and GQ and Fortune are soon to follow. They join familiar names like Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest. [...]

Some, like Maxim, seem to pride themselves on pushing the envelope of good taste even further than they do in their home markets. The magazine's July issue includes the feature "48 Ways to Get a Gori" (gori is Hindi for fair-skinned woman, and is used in this context to mean a foreign white one). Some ideas the article offers: keep in mind most American women are extremely angry at Indians for stealing their jobs; don't ask an Italian woman if her family is part of the mob; to approach an Israeli woman, try a suicide bomber joke.

Ugh.

(h/t Isaac.)

You've probably already seen it in the course of your morning blog reading, but this is the cover of this week's New Yorker:

The artist, Barry Blitt, explained it this way:

I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.

That may be true among the New Yorker's lefty and elite readership. But in large swathes of the country, it's certainly not a given that this image of Obama is "preposterous." In fact, is is a perfect visual summary of what Fox News spews and what right-wing emails allege every day. As Ta-Nehisi puts it, "Expect that image to be on tee-shirts within two weeks."

More at Racialicious, Michelle Obama Watch, What About Our Daughters, Jack and Jill Politics, and Feministe.

UPDATE: Verchiel has contact info for the editors:

webcomments@newyorker.com

themail@newyorker.com

The Mail
The New Yorker
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via Michelle Obama Watch, this video from Brave New Films is a stomach-churning reel of all the vile Fox News clips about Michelle Obama. We've blogged about several of these individual incidents, but it's pretty appalling to see them all put together like this:

Isn't it depressing that the election is still months away and already there are this many examples? Brave New Films has a rundown of what's in the video, and a petition you can sign to tell Fox to stop the racist, sexist smears.

Here's a charming one. Via Jezebel, we find out that the attorney for 26 year-old Kelsey Peterson - a 6th grade math teacher who plead guilty to raping her 12-year-old student - is blaming the victim by using racist stereotypes:

"I resent the term 'child.' You're baby-fying this kid. This kid is a Latino machismo teenager."

You know, so he was asking for it. Just disgusting.

Laura Flanders' great show GRITtv takes on sexism in the media with two of my fave people: Rebecca Traister of Salon and Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen. (They start talking about gender about 12 minutes in)

So I watched this segment on 60 Minutes this weekend (which was a rerun of an old episode) about African Americans using genetic genealogy to find out about their family history. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are finding out that they have white relatives. The whole segment is super interesting but it killed me that not once did anyone talk about the rape of black women and how that figured in to this genealogy. Wtf, 60 Minutes?

Don Imus, whose oh-so-charming "nappy headed hos" comment last year got him fired (and rehired) from his radio show, has once again proven him to be a grade-A asshole and racist.

During a conversation about [Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam] Jones' run-ins with the law, Imus asked, "What color is he?" Sports announcer Warner Wolf said Jones — formerly known as Pacman — is "African-American." Imus responded: "There you go. Now we know."

Imus is trying to defend his comments by saying he was making a "sarcastic point." Uh huh.

Contributed by Jessica Yee.

As proud as I am as a Native woman, by all accounts from the federal governments across North America, this is a difficult thing to prove.

In both Canada and the United States, being legally recognized as a Native person means you have to be biologically measured; by your blood quantum in fact, as to how Native you really are before you can officially become one. For women in Canada this system is particularly more oppressive, since up until 1985, if we decided to marry outside our race, it meant losing our legal status as “Indian”.

The whole structure of being a “registered Indian” was something the colonizers started as a way to differentiate which racist laws were to be forced upon which population of colour. For our people, besides our land, treaties, and basic human rights being taken away, being registered also meant attending residential, boarding, or mission schools which systematically stripped us of any cultural identity and are now responsible for the generational repression that permeates so many of our communities.

It's no secret that there's an appalling lack of diversity in the fashion world. And Vogue Italia thinks it has the answer: the issue that hits newsstands today will feature only black models, and all of the feature articles are related to black women. As you can see from the cover image above, they're calling it their "Black Issue."

Now, while fashion magazines definitely need to make their content and models more diverse, I think this issue is an absolutely terrible idea - one that only further Others black women and serves as kind of a sad band-aid to gaping wound.

By creating a "black issue," Vogue Italia is positioning a "normal" issue as white. Not to mention, diversity isn't a black-white thing. This issue of the magazine makes women of color who aren't black invisible.

And while I think there are positives to the issue - the fact that it's getting so much media attention means that there will be more of a conversation about race in fashion - I can't help but think that this is a somewhat empty gesture by a magazine hoping to avoid widespread change. Because if they put out their "black issue," then no one can accuse them of being racist, right?

“Mine is not a magazine that can be accused of not using black girls,” said [Editor Franca] Sozzani, noting that Naomi Campbell has had several covers, and that Liya Kebede and Alek Wek have also had covers.

Ri-ight. What do you think?

Fox News is at it again.

On an episode of Fox News Watch this weekend, conservative pundit Cal Thomas revealed that there are no black women who aren't the "angry black woman." (Cue scary music!)

Here are a few snippets from the transcript, Michelle Obama Watch has more here and here. You can also watch the video here.

CAL THOMAS: In this campaign, we are being asked to accept three things simultaneously, the first woman with a credible chance of being president, the first African-American with the chance to being president and, whoever Michelle Obama is going to be styled, the angry black woman, first lady? This is an awful lot.

...

THOMAS: I want to pick up on something that Jane said about the angry black woman. Look at the image of angry black women on television. Politically you have Maxine Waters of California, liberal Democrat. She’s always angry every time she gets on television. Cynthia McKinney, another angry black woman. And who are the black women you see on the local news at night in cities all over the country. They’re usually angry about something. They’ve had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting. They are angry at Bush. So you don’t really have a profile of non-angry black women.

And then, I shit you not, someone is like - oh, but Oprah isn't angry! Well, thank goodness for Oprah.

To tell Fox News what you think about their coverage of Michelle Obama, email them here or call 1-888-369-4762.

I was so excited to go see Sex and the City. Like most feminists with any shred of race or class analysis, I have always had a love hate relationship with Sex and the City. There were things about that show that were so god awful that I literally had to tune them out completely to enjoy the show. As a woman of color inundated by media that fails to ever acknowledge who I am or that what I am is valid, I am used to this type of spectatorship. And Sex and the City has always been one of those shows that always made it worth it, because for better or for worse, the show always made me feel better, especially if I was feeling heartbroken (which has been often!).

So naturally I was most excited to go see the movie with two of my best gal pals. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my lofty expectations. Disappointment would be an understatement. Did I laugh? I sure did, but I am stupid like that sometimes. And honestly, I couldn't tell if I was laughing at the movie or with it for most of it.

Fox's Senior Vice President of Programming Bill Shine told the Politico that the producer responsible for labeling Michelle Obama "Obama's baby mama" in a segment "exercised poor judgment." Uh, yeah, I'd say so. (So much for a heartfelt apology.)

Via the newly-launched Michelle Obama Watch, created by What About Our Daughters. (Add it to your blogrolls, and get involved in keeping tabs on the media!)

Not that I expect better from Fox News, but...seriously?!

Via Jack and Jill Politics.

Via What About Our Daughters comes this image of Sasha and Malia Obama, from an exhibit in NYC titled "The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama":

The artist says he meant to be "provocative." “It’s art," he says. "It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination -- about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” Um, yeah. I'm sensitive to free-speech concerns, but this exhibit strikes me as way more than offensive. Assassination is a real -- not a theoretical -- threat. And this exhibit is seriously disturbing -- on all sorts of levels.

These bluntly racist images are not "philosophical and metaphorical." I don't see this "art" as critiquing how the Obamas' race has been dealt with in the media. This is just adding to that media portrayal, amplifying the racist filth that's already being spewed. (More visuals from the exhibit here. Trigger warning.)

The chat is over, but you can still read it. Some of it was even more upsetting to me than the original article. A number of things really pissed me off. Here’s just a quick sampling.

An example suggested to me is that women of color are subjected to pressure NOT to reproduce -- one such report spoke of long term norplant type stuff as a condition of parole. This is different from the pressure TO reproduce that is the subject of much choice energy. The women's movement must protect women of color from this particularly female oppression, if the reports I received are true.

In response to a question about reconciling feminism with “the fact that racism, poverty, etc., disproportionately affects women of color and poor women vs. men of color and poor men?”

I do not know that racism disproportionately affects women of color vs. men of color or poor women vs. poor men. It would be interesting to think about how you weigh the oppressions. Men of color are disproportionately in prison and disproportionately subject to the death penalty. [Emphasis mine, I’ll come back to this later]

And, to clarify what I thought must surely be a misstatement basically blaming black women for Clarence Thomas being on the Supreme Court, she says

Several news sources, including the New York Times reported that polls showing that black voters backed Clarence Thomas were influential in determining the vote of the southern Democrats to confirm. It is a demographic fact that more black voters are female than male.

And, one last thing. I could do this for a long time, but I’m worried about experiencing a rage blackout.

In comments about making the choice to have a family Hirshman states

the heterosexual reproductive family is a fount in inequality. I think motherhood and family should be a central concern of feminism, starting with insisting that men shape their lives with the expectation that they will bear half the burden of child rearing and home making forever.

A new initiative has been introduced in Washington DC to try and curb a recent wave of crime. The new tactic is being compared to a police state, possibly for good reason. From the Examiner:

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

There are many problems with this kind of plan (efficacy, legality, etc) but most concerning is what kind of rights are being violated in favor of security. Sound familiar? Violent crime is a huge problem here (DC has been called the Murder Capital) and that needs to be addressed, definitely. But we need to find a way to address the root causes of this crime (poverty, joblessness, drugs) without holding people living in low-income neighborhoods hostage in their own communities.

From a half-page ad in the NY Times:

One of American's Most Popular Pastimes. Americans spend a lot of time in their cars. Not because they want to. But because of massive traffic congestion. And almost daily gridlock. For many people, commutes to work and school and daycaer can take up to three hours a day. According to traffic management experts, it's only going to get worse if our population continues its present growth rate. In many American cities, it's the same stress with our schools, our emergency rooms, our public infrastructure, even our water resources. A majority of Americans agree that runaway population growth threatens their quality of life. But with US Census projects indicating our population will explode from 300 million to 400 million in thirty years and 600 million in 2100, quality of life for future generations will be gone unless we take action today. The Pew Hispanic Research Center projects 82% of the country's massive future population increase will be a result of immigration between 2005 and 2050. And for every four new U.S. residents whether from births or immigration, approximately three more cars are added to our roads, increasing gridlock, energy use and greenhouse emissions. Together we can do something about it. We're the nation's leading experts on population and immigration trends and growth. Visit our websites to learn more and find out how you can help. Because wasting hours in your car is one pastime you can do without.

The organizations sponsoring: American Immigration Control Foundation, Californians for Population Stabilization, Federation of American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA and Social Contract Press.

You can see a larger image of the text here.