race

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 »

I’m watching Fox’s Don’t Forget the Lyrics. There is a black minister from Topeka, Kansas singing karaoke-ing The Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”

Something is very wrong with this. It’s difficult to be sure. But I am reminded of sitting in my tiny study in my old Flatbush apartment. Looking out the window, I see a squirrel perched on a fence post, chowing down on a chicken wing.

A chill goes through me. Oh Wayne.

In The New York Times today:

“Skulls Confirm We’re All Out Of Africa”

Well, apparently UNICEF Germany, like The Guardian, might have already gotten the memo:

But maybe they also took it a little too seriously? (curtsy to Black Women in Europe, via African American Political Pundit)

Read the rest of this entry »

John over at Theory My Culture has a nice post on the recent brouhaha over a British group asking Borders to remove Tintin in the Congo from shelves.

(And don’t worry, I’m not jumping on the tintin hate bandwagon lorry… I’ve hated this tintin shit my whole life!)

At the center of his post, John asks an interesting question: Read the rest of this entry »

According to this story by Christi Parsons in the Chicago Tribune, Barack Obama came with it during a Democratic candidate’s forum yesterday to the NAACP (story below). The article compares his statements to the NAACP with a speech he gave at Howard University, where he spoke in “mostly lofty terms.” At the NAACP event in Detroit, however, Parsons’ describes Obama’s statements as combining “his intellectual assessment of social problems with a stronger does of personal feeling.”

Read the rest of this entry »

So, following my previous post on Jamaica, which got me thinking about race and class, of course I came across this news gem at Jack and Jill Politics, about “Hot Ghetto Mess,” a new show on BET. The news originally came via Racewire.

Here’s a quote from BET, but there is more to read at Jack and Jill:

“Hot Ghetto Mess” is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek examination of the good, the bad and the ugly of Black popular culture. Read the rest of this entry »

I posted a little bit on this on Cypher&Syllable last week, but it’s time to listen more closely. The original 911 recording and some transcription are after the jump.

Via Racialicious, I found this article at the L.A. Times, regarding Edith Isabel Rodriguez’s death at the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital: Read the rest of this entry »

Christina Olivares has a pretty fabulous post over at Cypher&Syllable titled “On Boxing,” in which she takes us through an afternoon as a novice boxer. Her post got me thinking about my class on girlpower just this past semester, and how I would go on these tangents about how boxing, like many other contact sports, fundamentally affects women and girls’ relationship to their bodies, and how transformative that can be. Such activities change one’s relationship to one’s body because it makes more opportunities for being experience the self as a subject rather than as an object, as able to make and take blows– rather than only subjected to blows.

Read the rest of this entry »

African American Political Pundit has an excellent survey of some of the takes on the Obama Girl video, which I’m sure you’ve probably seen by now (it’s after the jump, if you haven’t).

What do you think?

Fun and irreverent take on being young and down with the Obama campaign? Or sinister shadow of the Harold-Fordism Obama should expect throughout his campaign?

[6/20/07: Jack and Jill Politics has a nice update, here.]

Read the rest of this entry »

7.26.07

Click here for the latest Genarlow Wilson updates at $3.60.

20 July, 2007 @ 11a

• Wilson’s appeal trial is being held right now. It was being simulcast, but the feed from the courthouse has gone out. You can check here for updates.
• The Daily Report (a paper out of Georgia) has one of the best information pages I’ve seen on the case. You can check it out here.
• Radley Balko has a particularly useful survey of some of the more recent issues with the Wilson case, particularly viz. McDade’s release of the party tape. I’m not a fan of the title (I’m just not in a glib mood lately), but it’s definitely worth checking out: “Genarlow Wilson and the N Word.” And here’s the link to my long comment thereon. (Reason.com)
• Democracy Now just posted this interview with Genarlow Wilson’s mother, Juanessa Wilson: “10 Years in Prison For Consensual Sex: Genarlow Wilson’s Mother Speaks Out on Why Her Son Remains Locked Up“ (click to listen).
• CNN transcript in which the actual Genarlow Wilson tape is discussed.

Have you seen this, about the tape being leaked/released to members of the public?

Release of Ga. Teen Sex Tape Draws Fire (NYT)

How could they have not protected the girls involved in this incident? What is going on in Georgia?:

Senator: Release of Wilson sex video should be investigated (AJC)

Following is some important background:

You can read the full story here at CNN, or here at the New York Times. And here is a CBS news story from last year, which more detail, if you are unfamiliar with the case.

After the jump, a timeline of stories on the Genarlow Wilson case.

You might also find this article, “The Harsh Wages of Sin: Why Genarlow Wilson is Languishing in Prison.” It’s written by Sherry F. Colb, a professor of law at Rutgers.

Read the rest of this entry »

I caught this over at Jack and Jill Politics. It looks like the Hilary Clinton campaign has released a video of the poet Maya Angelou officially endorsing Clinton’s candidacy. (It’s after the jump.)

The video is so interesting, as it uses Angelou’s blackness to authenticate Clinton’s femininity, and by some kind of metaphysical extension, her integrity as a candidate. Mainly consisting of images voiced over by Angelou, Read the rest of this entry »

I started this post thinking it would be about some of the brouhaha (or is this more of a hullabaloo?) about Angelina Jolie portraying Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart. Beauty as Power has a nice post on the choice as a race issue. The post also includes some background and interview material from Defamer, People, and msNBC, whose various responses to Jolie playing a women of African descent range from accusations of her doing “blackface,” (msNBC) to the suggestion that she has only donned “bronzer and a wig” (Defamer) and also Cinematical). Read the rest of this entry »

A whiff of insanity, which I caught from Robyn over at Fat Feminism:

Earlier this week, FoxNews ran a segment on which Ramin Setoodeh, a Newsweek correspondent, and MeMe Roth, a representative from the National Action Against Obesity (NAAO) debated whether “the full-figured teenage Idol Jordin” is physically fit to be an American Idol. (The video is after the jump.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t want my students from Racial Passing to feel left out of the end of semester postings. We’ve just finished reading Percival Everett’s Erasure, so here is one for you– from Gawker, by way of Racialicious: “Blacks Terrorize Harvard Students”:

Last weekend, on the bucolic Quad at Harvard University–typically, the site of a casual game of Ultimate, or perhaps an afternoon reading of some Shakespearean sonnets before English class-an unusual and, to some, frightening scene was played out. There were people throwing things! And running! And jumping! And most scary of all, every single one of them was black. So the Harvard students watching from their dormitory windows, growing increasingly agitated at the sights below, did what any normal, white Harvard student would do when they saw a large, seemingly unruly group of black people: They called the cops! Read the rest of this entry »

I just caught this link over at Racialicious, and followed it over to The Louisana Weekly, where Charreah Jackson has an article titled “Education equals higher chance of abuse for black women.” In the article, Jackson cites this quite startling statistic, that black women with college degrees are “145 times more likely to suffer sexual, domestic or other abuse than those who did not finish high school, according to a recent study.” It continues:

One reason offered for the major increase of the likelihood of college-educated Black women being abused sexually, among others, is the backlash theory. It states that as women become more successful outside of the home, men become abusive due to resentment of their move outside of the traditional roles of women.

The article is quite interesting, and also talks a bit more about how the statistics were collected, as well as also discussing how part of the problem is linked to ways in which abuse is not discussable in many black households. Check it out!

I know it isn’t about me, but I have nontheless decided that Quentin Tarantino is trying to wear me out. Oh wait, it’s not just me, Angry Asian Man is tired too! It is about Tarantino’s self-indulgence, and I am becoming less and less sure what to make of it.

I am only thinking of Tarantino at all because, while dinking around to prepare for Kill Bill, I came across scans at AMPHA of Tarantino’s photo spread in the latest issue of GQ. As you can see, the pictures Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a new twist on some of our conversations on identity and performance, from Ben Westhoff, over at the Village Voice. It’s a story on Victor Varnado, who is an African American with albinism. He works as actor, and is also a stand-up comedian.

In his decision-making about which opportunities to take, he must confront the question many artists, particularly artists from marginalized backgrounds, often face: where is the limit between wanting to be known as an “artist of x,” and knowing that some of your success as an artist might also hinge on your deployment of your racial, sexual, melaninal specificity?

Read the rest of this entry »

As if to follow-up on my previous post on The Jim Crow museum, today I came across this slideshow by David Segal, over at Slate. It’s titled “Uncle Ben, CEO? The strange history of racist spokescharacters,” and it begins with the Mars company’s strange idea that Uncle Ben should be updated. So I guess that with a lot of hard work, you too can ascend from slave, to butler, to CEO.

O popular imagination, you give so much… but never really seem to take much away!

It’s a nice photo and video clip essay, so please check it out. Further, as a way of producing an online essay, girlpower people might also find this an appealing way to share thoughts on visual and audio culture (I am happy to show you how to make one).

Thanks JD for the heads up on The Jim Crow Museum of Hateful Things at Ferris State University. I must say I hadn’t seen this before, and won’t say much until I have some time for full perusal. There is much to look at, so let me know what you find and what you think. The museum’s collection seems particularly striking to me in light of the whole Imus Read the rest of this entry »