Category Archives: Race, racism and related issues

Feminism, Men, and Redemption

[Trigger/content warning: Violence] A couple of people have emailed me asking what I think about the Hugo Schwyzer, erm, Internet Feminist Situation. (See Alas, for a roundup of related links and background.) (tl;dr version: What role should or can a … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, sexism, etc, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Men and masculinity, Race, racism and related issues, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 107 Comments

What Dr. King Did

We all know what Martin Luther King, Jr. did. He marched, and integrated the lunch counters, and made white people and black people friends forever and ever, and also he opposed affirmative action because he had that one line in … Continue reading

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 3 Comments

Michelle Obama Must Be Fat

So with all the swirling excitement about Iowa, not to mention my having a day job, I missed this awesome story: Can you imagine how the incident would play out if an African American congressman made a crude remark about First Lady Laura … Continue reading

Posted in Elections and politics, Fat, fat and more fat, Race, racism and related issues | 10 Comments

Things That Are Not Racist

A landlord putting up a “Whites Only” sign on her swimming pool? Not racist: An Ohio landlord accused of discriminating against an African-American girl with a “white only” sign at her swimming pool told ABCNews.com that the sign was an antique and … Continue reading

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 11 Comments

It Was Never Easy for Me. I Was Born a Poor Black Child.

I don’t have time go give Gene Marks’ asinine column the kicking around I’d like to. Suffice to say that if you’re white, you probably don’t want to write a column on what you’d do if you were a poor black child. … Continue reading

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 21 Comments

News from White Land

Karnythia sort of beat me to this, but I found two very interesting news items yesterday. One comes from James Fallows’ blog on The Atlantic, courtesy of an anonymous reader: You all (and by you all I mean whites, yes … Continue reading

Posted in police brutality, Race, racism and related issues | 25 Comments

Great YouTube Video on Racism by Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Ian Edwards

I just used this video in one of my classes to talk about two issues: how complex trying to talk effectively about racism can be and why comedy is so often such an effective way of confronting racism. I think … Continue reading

Posted in Race, racism and related issues | 4 Comments

Cartoon: The Modern Sisyphus

[spoiler]PANEL 1 The first panel has a close-up of a Black person’s hands pushing a boulder uphill. The title of the strip, “Modern Sisyphus,” is written on the boulder. PANEL 2 We see a black woman, wearing casual office clothing, … Continue reading

Posted in Cartooning & comics, crossposted on TADA, Feminism, sexism, etc, Race, racism and related issues | 16 Comments

Study: Lighter-Skinned Black Women Get Lighter Prison Sentences

From the blog “Layers of Blackness“: ‘The Impact of Light Skin on Prison Time for Black Female Offenders’ is the first of its kind to examine the relationship between skin tone and sentencing among African American women. It looked at … Continue reading

Posted in crossposted on TADA, Prisons and Justice and Police, Race, racism and related issues | 1 Comment

Movies should show that good people can still be bigots

Patricia Turner considers the depictions of white characters in The Help: With one possible exception, the white women are remarkably unlikable, and not just because of their racism. Like the housewives portrayed in reality television shows, the housewives of Jackson … Continue reading

Posted in crossposted on TADA, Race, racism and related issues | 21 Comments