1. Tiffany over at Blackfeminism.org has a review of a special on AIDS in Black America, and accompanying links.
2. Any Christians in the house? This guys has a Christian blog, and he’s talking about racism. I think it might be useful for some of my readers to go over and comment. I personally don’t agree with the premise of some of the questions, but I’m not knowledgeable enough about Christian theology or scripture to give the type of answer I would like.
3. Autobiogrpahy of a Face has a good critique of how biracial and multiracial identities can be used to further racism.
4. Dork Nation is talking cultural appropriation, comparing Quentin Tarantino and Vanilla Ice. If you want to read Gandoff Mantooth’s whole series on cultural appropriation start here, then go here second, go here third, and finally go here.
5. The Think talks about his experience as a “diversity facilitator.”
6. Prof. Marc Lamont Hill takes on the MTV’s “Yo Momma” show. Now here is a good example of the kind of cultural appropriation that is dangerous. I have seen this show, and it is troubling.
7. C.N. Le has a post about a new program that allows people to see how common their surnames are.
8. Matt_Bishop at Crooked Timber wonders if we are seeing the end of carry on luggage.
9. Lester Spence asks why we keep putting stories about Black male politicians in the style section. This is a really good comentary on how the personal lives and styles of black male politicians become the more prominent features that reporters choose to highlight. I agree. Do I really need to know how big Kwame Kilpatrick’s earring is?? I think this phenomenon also happens to black women, but in a much different way. Black men are complimented on their allegedly “hip” “cool” clothes, while black women’s sense of style is scrutinized. Are people still talking about Cynthia McKinney’s hair?
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I’m not a Christian, but I was raised one. I left a comment at galliblog.
There have been a lot of favorable comments about the appearance and clothing style of Sen. Obama (D-IL) . Obama himself downplayed it, saying that his wife is responsible for his clothing choices; if it was up to him he’d be lounging around in sweatpants and White Sox T-shirts all day (yeah, sure). To which I say, “Who cares?” I know why the papers print such things; people seem to want to read it. What I don’t know is why anyone would care.
I read the “diversity facilitator” post. It actually made sense to me. Kids come to college from all over and get thrown into situations where a) they have to deal with people of cultures they are not familiar with and b) deal with people not familiar with their culture. I do remember those days myself. Having someone who can help sort that out is a good idea.
I think everyone here would be very interested in this Washington post article. A recent study looks at the effect that subconscious gender stereotypes can have on women’s performance, even on tests where women traditionally do worse than men. The study demonstrates that certain types of reinforcement of stereotypes can have a pretty large effect. It’s a nifty article.
Hey Sailorman,
Didn’t read the article, but I know there is pretty thorough literature on the “stereotype threat hypothesis” proposed by Claude Steele. You may want to look this up if you are interested in the topic.