Just a couple links for you on this fine August Friday!
Colorlines reminds us that the 45th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and they present some amazing photos of courage and determination from the Selma to Montgomery Right to Vote March.
Category Archives: Diversity, Race, and Representation
Conversation about diversity, multiculturalism, race, and inclusion.
This Week in Diversity: Appearance
Greetings on another Friday afternoon!
Steph Su Reads starts us out with Why I Want More Asians on YA Book Covers: My Experience with Racism, in which she shares a personal experience with racism and her dismay over the revised cover of Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix.
This Week in Diversity: Changing and Expanding Communities
Some interesting essays round the blogosphere this week touching on all kinds of diversity—race and more!
Cynic’s blogging for Ta-Nehisi Coates, and he has a really interesting look at the progression of ethnic groups through his neighborhood: first the Irish, then the Jews, now the African Americans. Each group starts as outsiders, whom the insiders swear never to accept, so they create their own institutions and maintain their culture but eventually assimilate, spread out and leave the enclave available for the next group of outsiders—and with the vibrant African American community there now, he wonders, what comes next for them?
Race: Are We So Different?
Diversity means more than meeting the status quo in the workplace. It means more than blindly complying with societal norms. It means more than a 2 hour seminar in your office’s conference room. Luckily, there are individuals out there who realize this is a much bigger project.
“Race: Are we so different?” is a traveling exhibition developed by the American Anthropological Association. The exhibit examines racial issues through three different lenses: history, science, and lived experiences. “Race: Are we so different?” utilizes interactive components, historical artifacts, iconic objects, photography, and a wide range of multimedia displays to open the American public’s eyes about this important subject. The exhibit is typically open for a few months in each location. Here is a list of the upcoming dates:
- 5/17/2010 – 9/4/2010 – Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
This Week in Diversity: There’s an app for that
Well, it’s HOT, and it seems like the urge to stay out of the heat has led to lots of thoughtful conversations around the web this week.
We begin with a new take on To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic by Harper Lee that celebrated its 50th Anniversary just this week. While it’s been taught for years as the quintessential anti-racism novel, Stuff White People Do has a fascinating argument for why the book can also be read as racist. Among the arguments: “The novel reduces black people to passive, humble victims, thereby ignoring the realities of black agency and resistance.” Even if you’ve got a deep love for To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s worth thinking about who it was written for, how it can be read differently by different readers, and how it fits into the larger picture of a literature curriculum heavily dominated by white authors.
This Week in Diversity: It’s a Jungle Out There
Racialicious starts us off this week with a thoughtful look at books about black southerners written by white authors, and street-lit written by black writers.
The Washington Monthly takes a look at some disturbing rhetoric that’s come up in the Elena Kagan hearings—not rhetoric about Kagan, but about Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice.
This Week in Diversity: Heat Wave
Most of the country looks poised for a hot weekend, so here are some pieces to read while you lurk in the air-conditioned splendor of indoors.
Hampton Stevens, guest blogging for Ta-Nahisi Coates, shares a story of a child trying to puzzle our increasingly globalized world, courtesy of the FIFA World Cup, and points to the communication issues inherent in terms like “African American.”
This Week in Diversity: Oil, Russia, and Avenue Q
The oil spill in the Gulf has been all over the news lately, and, frustrating though the lack of progress has been, there have been many efforts to stem the oil geyser. What about oil spills that don’t have a large impact on Americans? The Times looks at the Niger River Delta, which has seen the equivalent of the Exxon-Valdez spill a year every year for fifty years, with little attempt at cleanup or attention to the disastrous effect on the area’s ecosystem or economic future.
This Week in Diversity: American Geography
Oh, Arizona. Why are so many things happening in your beautiful state lately that give us reason to talk about you in these roundups? This time around, it’s a mural featuring the faces of local schoolchildren—but the schoolchildren are a diverse crowd, the mural was drawing racist slurs, and the school’s principal asked for a prominent Latino face to be lightened on the mural. He’s since reversed the decision, and the mural will stay. The Atlantic Wire has a good summary of the situation and the response to it.
The repercussions of Arizona’s anti-immigration law are still rippling outward. RaceWire elaborates with a look at the disappearing schoolchildren, as parents, particularly illegal immigrants, are keeping their kids—often natural-born citizens themselves—at home to protect the family.
This Week in Diversity: Memorial Day Edition
Book Expo America has finished and Memorial Day is almost here, but in between, here’s your weekly batch of diversity reading!
Looking back to the era of Civil Rights protests and Civil Rights legislation, Breach of Peace presents some amazing portraits of some of the 1961 Freedom Riders—with their mugshots, recent interviews, and recent photos. Some amazing stories here. Meanwhile, an editorial at the Washington Post looks at the 1964 Civil Rights act and government support of private segregation.