Resist racism

Rest in peace, Irena Sendler.

A true hero, Sendler joined the Polish Underground. She started her work by transporting food and supplies to the Jewish ghetto. Later she began smuggling children out and hiding them with sympathetic families.

Sendler was arrested in 1943, was tortured (her legs and feet were broken), but she refused to disclose any information.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on the Earth and not a title to glory.

“Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget the tragedy.”

We previously wrote about Sendler here.

Omowale Akintunde, Multicultural Education v. 7 no. 2 (Winter 1999)

Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen. This limited view of such a multilayered syndrome cultivates the sinister nature of racism and, in fact, perpetuates racist phenomena rather than eradicates them. Further, this view of racism disguises its true essence, thus allowing its tenets to proliferate. Read the rest of this entry »

The No Child Left Behind Act is not meeting the needs of Asian American students:

As Congress considers the reauthorization of NCLB
and other education reforms, legislators, policy makers,
and policy advocates must take into account the
needs of Asian American students, an often neglected
group. Contrary to stereotypes that cast Asian
Americans as model students of academic achievement,
many Asian American students are struggling,
failing, and dropping out of schools that ignore
their needs. Many immigrant youth are from working
class families who find themselves without adequate
resources necessary to succeed. Most school
districts do not provide sufficient services for
English Language Learners (ELL), especially those
who speak a language other than Spanish. Asian
language interpretation and translation services,
bilingual programs, or translated assessments are
hardly ever available even though they are essential.

From the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund report (pdf document).

… that the officiant at Jenna Bush’s wedding was Kirbyjon Caldwell?

From a search that brought someone to this site: “Why are white people so racist?”

Answer: White people’s racism is a classic example of how rewards for bad behavior perpetuate that same problematic behavior. So let them have a couple of slaves or two, and next thing you know the idea that brown people are born to serve has become entrenched in the white mind. Because of course it’s great to have people to order around! Who wouldn’t want a slave, given the chance? Read the rest of this entry »

“What kinda name is THAT?”

“Oh, it’s an American name,” I say.

“An American name? No, you know what I mean. That’s not an American name.”

“Sure it is,” I reply. “I’m an American, and that’s my name.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I’m sure I don’t. What exactly is an ‘American’ name?”

Heh, this is a lot of fun.

This article is about the difficulty college administrators have when announcing names at commencement. You know, because of all that diversity. Deans and other commencement speakers now ask students how to pronounce their names:

“Often they say something like, ‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter,’ because they’re so used to having it butchered over the years,” she says.

So … does it matter to you if people mispronounce your name? Have you ever said your name repeatedly for someone who just couldn’t get it?

I was at a commencement a few years back and noted with some annoyance that the ASL translator was spelling the names any old way. Given that he had a program and a listing, you would think he might spell the names correctly.

Mildred Loving, who fought to overturn Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws, died on May 2, 2008, at 68. Read her story here.

In finding the Lovings guilty of violating Virginia law, Judge Leon Bazile reasoned that if blacks and whites were meant to mix, God would not have put them in separate continents. Judge Bazile obviously would not have been for “globalization,” but did he really think white people were created in North America? 

The Lovings’ appeal led to a Supreme Court ruling in 1967 which struck down laws banning mixed-race marriages, then still in the books in 16 states. Until 1948, when California became the first state to overturn its law, 38 states had anti-miscegenation laws. The U.S. thus had something in common with Nazi Germany and South Africa during Apartheid, a distinction no other country had. Lovely bedmates! Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I know the U.S. government didn’t infect those African American men with syphilis. At least I hope it didn’t. But the freaking experiment went on for something like 40 years and involved hundreds of men.

But seriously, why wouldn’t you think that history would make people a little suspicious of people in power?

Two paths of Bayer drug in 80’s: Riskier type went overseas

A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs - medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS - to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980’s while selling a new, safer product in the West, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. Read the rest of this entry »

Laura Bush, speaking about Myanmar:

It’s troubling that many of the Burmese people learned of this impending disaster only when foreign outlets such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America sounded the alarm. Although they were aware of the threat, Burma’s state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm’s path. The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta’s failure to meet its people’s basic needs.