Monthly Archives: January 2009
Slap in the face
Some friends of mine recently lent me the first season of the AMC series Mad Men. The show is about a fictional Madison Avenue advertising agency and life in general in 1960. My friends recommended the show but warned me that the sexism (of the time) was blatant.
Funny, but although the sexism did not go unnoticed by me, the racism jumped out in the opening scene of the first episode. So I wonder, how come my white friends didn’t mention that?
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Italian women asking for it
So the head of Italy’s government said. Silvio Berlusconi (no comment) stated it was impossible to stamp out rape in Italy because Italian women were so beautiful.
Of course, everyone knows only the gorgeous girls get sexually assaulted.
Post-racial society
The header is sensationalist, the paper is a rag, but the analysis is spot on. Something to think on instead of bandying meaningless words about.
TREVOR PHILLIPS: Why Britain is now the LEAST racist country in Europe | Mail Online
The simplification of race
What the news reports:
On the topic of race and ethnicity, McGruder said that to him, Obama is not black because he is not a descendant of a slave.
“The person who is one of us in the White House is Michelle Obama and her momma,” McGruder said.
That’s cartoonist Aaron McGruder, quoted by the Richmond Palladium-Item. Because everybody knows how important it is to have black people weigh in on whether or not President Obama is really black. Read the rest of this entry
Speaking out and up
So you’re at a party and someone in the group you’re mingling with mentions that they went for a job interview. The job paid really badly, and the person says, “of course, they’re Jewish”.
Another day, you’re in Chinatown and you walk past a tourist pulling the corners of their eyes while having their photo taken in front of a pagoda-like building.
Then you’re driving along in a car with a friend who’s talking about visiting an apartment. Your friend says that the apartment was quite nice but that the family next door are Indian and they wouldn’t want to live there because the place would be bound to stink of curry all the time.
What do you do? Be honest.
‘Color bind’
In a letter to the editor, Sandry Levy of Hyde Park writes as follows:
In the Sept. 7 Style Issue of the Tribune Magazine, there is a commentary by Constance White about the lack of models of color in the fashion world. Then the magazine proves the point by having photos without a single model of color other than one of the male models being Asian. In the photo shoot of “Free Radicals,” the model was not just white, she was blond. I myself am white, with nary a drop of non-white blood in me. And I saw this as wrong.
The editor’s response?
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Less talk, more action
With the British royal family in the news again for racism, (see here, here and, for a bit of history, here), a national debate is going on over what constitutes ‘banter’, ‘slurs’ and ‘political correctness’.
What dismays me most about such polemics is that attention is focused on whether this person or that organisation is racist or not. The simplistic logic goes, “if they weren’t racist, then they wouldn’t say that”, or “if they say that, then they must be racist” – and off we go in a never-ending polarisation of thought.
But nothing is, to quote a phrase, only black and white. To believe it is, is to hold oneself up as lacking in all knowledge of the world and human beings, to reduce oneself to a two-year-old’s view of how the world works.
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‘Latinos Recall Pattern of Attacks Before Killing’
From the New York Times:
Attacks like the one Mr. Orellana reported have drawn new attention since Marcelo Lucero, another Ecuadorean immigrant, was stabbed to death on Nov. 8 near Main Street. Prosecutors say seven 16- and 17-year-old boys, mostly from neighboring Medford, were attacking Mr. Lucero when one of them rushed at him with a knife. The attacks were such an established pastime that the youths, who have pleaded not guilty, had a casual and derogatory term for it, “beaner hopping.” One of the youths told the authorities, “I don’t go out doing this very often, maybe once a week.”
That was not news to Latinos in Patchogue, who say that regular harassment, muggings and assaults have had them living in fear — 11 men told The New York Times of 13 attacks, nine of them in the past two years.
But the Suffolk County police said it was news to them.
