Posted on December 15, 2006 - by Administrator

In case you missed it…

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Every Friday afternoon we sum up the week’s best posts from New Demographic’s various projects. Here we go!

ADDICTED TO RACE
a podcast about America’s obsession with race

• Episode 51: Carmen is joined by guest co-host Karen Walrond in this episode. They discuss the cop who made two black men rap for him to get out of a ticket, Wentworth Miller’s real-life “Human Stain” experience, Damon Wayans’ declaration that the n-word is part of black culture, and Rosie O’Donnell’s ching chong mockery on “The View.”

ANTI-RACIST PARENT
a blog for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook

• How do you celebrate the, um, holidays? Anyway, in my household, with our toddlergirl old enough to enjoy ripping paper off of presents this year and my Filipina Catholic better half covering the religious part of our daughter’s education…I do my part to mix it up, pun intended, by reppin’ secular ethnic (half-)Jewishness with brisket and latkes sometime in December. Not sure how to incorporate sansei grandma’s Buddhism yet–though, of course, the brisket recipe is hers.
• On adoption and race: The question, therefore, is not whether the baby looks like you expected her to, but whether you can handle it if she doesn’t. And this, my friends, takes some serious soul-searching — a flippant “of course I can, I’m not racist, I have friends of all colours” is not enough. It requires honestly looking at biases that you may have based on others’ skin colour, or culture, or nationality, and really being frank with yourself as to where any discomfort you feel comes from.
• Gratuitous cute kid pic: Anti-Racist Parent Denise writes, “My little girls “getting married” today with my half slips on their heads!!!”
• The preschool dilemma: We started our search with a list of three schools in our area recommended by other parents (the ultra-liberal school, the hippie school and the neighborhood school). When asked, the other parents claimed the schools had “diversity.” It didn’t take much research for me to eliminate all three of them because they had only one or two children of color in the entire school.

RACIALICIOUS
a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture

• Reclaiming Racist: Because we stopped calling out people as being racist, the very people who support systems of oppression now label us racists. Because racist became perverted, some are now distorted enough to think the oppressed are the oppressors.
• Anthropologist: Mel Gibson’s ‘Apocalypto’ is a pornographic Western fantasy of supremacy: Traci Ardren, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Miami, argues that the film resurrects racist notions about Mayan culture that have long been disproved by scholars.
• Comedian: James Kim died because “Asians are such bad drivers”: “What can you expect though? Of course they got lost, because everybody knows that Asians are such bad drivers.” I really wanted to fling myself off the balcony and throttle him with my bare hands. Or weep. Or both.
• Bridal magazines seem to think black women don’t get married: “Our data seem to support the idea that the phrase ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride’ was actually meant for how women of color are represented in bridal magazines,” Frisby said.
• Do Korean-Americans control the black hair care market? There’s a self-funded documentary causing some buzz online. It positions itself as an expose revealing that “Koreans have come to control virtually every aspect of the multi-billion dollar, black hair care industry, from manufacturing to distribution to retail sales, while simultaneously employing tactics to put African-American merchants and wholesalers out of business”
• Racism abounds following Rosie: Comments on the story have taken several classic, yet undeniably ignorant, turns. 1. Rosie Didn’t Mean To Be Racist. 2. If It Were (X), They Wouldn’t Be Mad… 3. “Ching Chong” is a Bad Accent of an Otherwise Accurate Representation of Chinese. 4. “Ching Chong” Is Funny. 5. “Get Over It”. 6. Now’s My Chance To Hate on Asians, Too…