Search Results

Your search for race returned the following results.

miss france_chloe-mortaudNo, Miss Obama doesn’t refer Michelle Obama (and who would have the nerve to call her such a thing anyway?!). No, “Miss Obama” is what France has dubbed Chloe Mortaud, the first woman of African descent to be named Miss France. So I guess she’s Barack Obama’s sister!?

But, no, the “new” also isn’t about Mortaud being mixed race and bi-cultural, with a white French father and an African American mother. If she’s Obama’s sister, it’s in the good ole fashioned political sense. And that, I think, is a big step for France, which officially adheres to policies that do not  acknowledge racial difference. (Race riots? What riots?) 

But back to Miss France.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

These are my links for July 2nd:

  • Kemba Smith Gets a Biopic – “Although the government acknowledged that Smith never sold or took drugs, “she was charged with conspiracy to distribute crack and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.” In 1999 she was featured in Glamour Magazine, which described how she came to be char
  • Young American Indians Find Their Voice in Poetry – “While Nolan and his teammates do not hail from the gritty urban surroundings that are often a breeding ground for slam poetry, where poets are judged on both performance and writing, their team is drawing national attention for its decidedly American Ind
  • Living Up to Her Name Despite the Hurdles in Her Path – NYTimes.com – “Her father has 23 children, 9 with her mother, Harrison said. Her sisters have names like Graceful, Empress, Princess and Muun. An older brother is named God Goldin Zig Zag Zig Allah.” –> That makes me really happy. (Really!)
  • The American Scholar – The Disadvantages of an Elite Education – “The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society?s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some oppor

These are my links for December 1st through March 25th:

  • University Television Ads Depict White Dominance, Study Finds – "The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups. The common image of a group of students st
  • What Created This Monster? – "The Federal Reserve not only taken has action unprecedented since the Great Depression ? by lending money directly to major investment banks ? but also has put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers ma
  • Gays fear an influx of hate – "The tragedy has exacerbated tensions between Sacramento's gay community and the region's booming population of Slavic evangelical Christians, whose most vocal congregants in recent years have mobilized on the streets and statehouse steps to protest homos
  • The Mind of a One-Woman Multitude – Erykah Badu – "As she floated in the tub (?I always go all the way underneath the water and try to hold my breath a long time,? she said), she had a revelation: ?Different thoughts kept coming into my head. The first thought was, ooh, I wonder if my hair gonna be
  • Boy?s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town – "Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime."
  • Read the rest of this entry »

So yay! Here I am. Post #100. I think I thought I ‘d get here sooner, but since I pretty much disappeared for October and November… (something about a day job? about teaching the children?) Alas, I am and shall always be a s l o w poster

Celebrating 100 posts puts a lot of pressure on the post. I keep feeling like I should write about something VERY important. Obama and Huckabee are ahead in the polls; Iran is getting harder to invade; Chavez lost his vote; fucking Don Imus is back on the air. And so it goes.

But then, suddenly, I came across a link to this story over at Sex Like Men: “Is Hello Kitty Turning Feral?

I’m saved!

After all, why go important when you can go VERY important? Umm, in an inverse sort of way. And though I surely bear a stronger resemblance to my beloved Chococat, this article about about the unexpectedly risque Hello Kitty “shoulder” massager combines two favorites: Hello Kitty and feral women, both of which I’m prone to writing about.

You know, between the close readings of moments critical to transforming ideas about race, class, and gender and the occasional sputtering of rage against random machines. And the occasional statement on world-making. And shilling for Obamas.

Read the rest of this entry »

In one of my classes this week we will be reading selections by the late Melvin Dixon, a gay and African American poet-scholar who died during the nineties. In one of his essays, “I’ll Be Listening for My Name,” he touches upon the kind of doubled death lgbt artists face in the AIDS crisis, as they face racial discrimination in the public sphere that is compounded by the denial of their emotional and sexual lives by families and communities who refuse to recognize gays and lesbians. We have also been reading Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, which is about a teenage boy who is the chosen one, smart and athletic. Also gay, he eventually dies under the burden of homophobia, of being forced to see himself as simultaneously chosen and damned, angel and demon.

Well, this morning I was greeted by a story on crimes against the LGBT community in Newark, NJ, “In a Progressive State, a City Where Gay Life Hangs by a Thread.” The story is by Andrew Jacobs, who’s on the Newark beat at the NYT. It’s not a terrible story, and it does a nice job of outlining a broad picture of options for the lgbt community in lower and working class communities of color in Newark.

The story got me thinking, though, about how difficult it is to talk about sex and race– especially when we barely have language for sussing out race and class. So what happens when, as in most cases, we need to talk about all three at once? Often, it seems, we latch onto the one that best serves our own needs, a need fed by our perceptions “what counts” and “what matters.” But, again, what does this mean for the possibility of
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sure you’ve caught wind of Doris Lessing being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But to be honest, I am just posting the picture because it is awesome. Seeing Lessing, old and on her porch, reminded me of the story Toni Morrison told in her own Nobel speech.

It begins, “Once upon a time there was an old woman.”

Read the rest of this entry »

So, according to the AP, the mayor of Jena Louisiana is incensed over a new song John Mellencamp has released in front of his upcoming album. In multiple stories we’ve heard that Mayor Murphy R. McMillin is angry about what he has repeatedly referred to Jena‘s unfair treatment at the hands of media and activists (I’m surprised we haven’t been subjected to hearing about “activist media” in the wake of this case!)

But this time, apparently, someone has gone too far, Mellencamp. Or as McMillin put it to the AP:

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, the sci-fi writer Steven Barnes had a nice piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Why King Tut’s ethnicity is such a complex issue.”

The article offers his take on the currently-raging debate over King Tut’s complexion, which is taken as a signifier of his (and therefore Egypt’s) links to Sub-Saharan Africa and is also taken as bearing on the matter of whether Egypt should be understood as “African” or “Middle Eastern.”

(Whatever. Everyone who has ever seen a Hollywood film knows that the ancient Egyptians were white, just like Jesus! You can click the head for a pictorial history of Tut, and if you haven’t heard this story, background reports are at the end of this post.)

This week’s hoopla actually started in 2005, when a major museum exhibit was accused of whitewashing Tut’s image. The exhibit featured “new” images of Tut popularized by Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, who in 2005 led a team of anthropologists and forensics experts France, Egypt, and the United States. Just this week, Hawass declared:

Read the rest of this entry »

mitt romney with osama obama moma sign

Isn’t it interesting how, on the one hand the Obama and HClinton candidacies supposedly signal a new day for America, but at the same time all this ugliness can’t help but seep out around the edges?

Admittedly, I don’t have much faith in Romney, but I did expect better from John Edwards, before the Esquire thing (see below).

First, of course you’ve seen this: Mitt Romney posing with a sign that reads “No to Obama, Osama, and Chelsea’s Moma.”

Now, I’m all for poetry. I even harbor a genuine soft spot for prosody in general. And I must say, the sign is quite genius in its use of thematic regression, using “osama” to shine some radical Islam/terrorism on Barack Obama, and “moma” to shine some black on Hillary Clinton. Lead-footed American genius!

But really, Mitt. Show some class, not your ass.

Read the rest of this entry »

12.02.07

Top Posts :: last 30 days

  1. Michelle, my belle.*
  2. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*
  3. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
  4. Megan Williams torture suspects get court date
  5. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez’s death*
  6. Ian Johnson, racism, and “social baggage”
  7. Pabst Beer at the Gyna Colleges
  8. A Genarlow Wilson primer
  9. The executioner’s face; or, “Me and you” in Jena*
  10. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark Lesbians case

(okay, technically, posts on Miss Universe, “I didn’t forget,” and feral women should be the top posts. But since my stats show so many image hits for “Adriana Lima,” “shaved head women” (Miss Tanzania), and “Kirsten Dunst’s teeth,” I’m taking them off the list!)

* = personal faves

09.26.07

Top Posts :: last 30 days

  1. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
  2. SYTYCD Goes to War!
  3. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
  4. Michelle, my belle.*
  5. Obama on Scooter Libby and Genarlow Wilson
  6. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry*
  7. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*
  8. Megan Williams torture suspects get court date
  9. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark lesbians case
  10. Feral women, both ways*

 

07.24.07

Top Posts :: last 7 days

  1. Yep, apply liberal mud for good blackface
  2. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
  3. A Genarlow Wilson primer
  4. ummm, uh-oh
  5. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry*
  6. Genarlow Wilson Appeal :: updates
  7. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
  8. Feral women, both ways*
  9. Will wait: A Mighty Heart
  10. some thoughts before the Wilson trial,
  11. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*

 

Top Posts :: last 30 days

  1. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
  2. Jordin Sparks’ Weight Statement + Dreamgirls *
  3. A Genarlow Wilson primer
  4. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
  5. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry *
  6. Yep, apply liberal mud for good blackface
  7. Feral women, both ways*
  8. Hot ghetto masses
  9. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez’s death *
  10. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
  11. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark

* = personal faves


07.17.07

Top Posts : last 30 days

  1. Jordin Sparks’ Weight Statement + Dreamgirls *
  2. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
  3. A Genarlow Wilson primer (updated daily)
  4. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry *
  5. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez *
  6. Maya Angelou endorses Clinton
  7. Hot ghetto masses
  8. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark
  9. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
  10. Feral women, both ways *

Top Posts : last 7 days

  1. A Genarlow Wilson primer (updated daily)
  2. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
  3. Obama on Scooter Libby and Genarlow Wilson
  4. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry
  5. Tintin, nostalgia, and the question of harm
  6. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
  7. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
  8. Hot ghetto masses
  9. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark lesbians case
  10. Can’t Wait: “When Women Rule the World”
  11. Yay! Kiri Davis + more “Hey Shorty”

* = personal faves

More results »