We’re looking on the lighter side this week, with Jon Stewart and Wyatt Cenac explaining why we’re so bad at talking about race. Enjoy!
Tag Archives: Race issues
Video Thursday: Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes
An old but good video this week, featuring a teacher who split classes—here a group of corrections officers being trained—into brown eyes and blue eyes and used that as the basis for (temporary) discrimination:
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.
Video Thursday: Racism vs. Wit
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkw27k9J0c&w=475]
This video is from Australia. Videos from abroad give Americans an international perspective on race relations. I always enjoy videos or statements that confront racism with humor and wit. Sure, overt racism is disturbing, but if one is able to collect oneself, avoid the knee-jerk reaction, and calmly and reasonably respond, I feel more wars would be averted and peace would prevail. Besides, it is no small feat to turn an ugly situation into one where we can actually laugh (Warning: Contains adult language).
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.”
Video Thursday: Flashback
This week’s Video Thursday is a flashback to 1965, and a movie whose distributors sold tickets by using blatant racial scare-tactics.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy-zVlB4mvA&w=475] Via Shani Hilton guest-blogging for Ta-Nahisi Coates via PostBourgie via Oscar Willis.
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.
Video Thursday: Illegal European Immigrants
Via Stuff White People Do, a different perspective on Arizona’s new immigration law:
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.
Video Thursday: Unthinkable
Via RaceWire, a new music video from Alicia Keys showcases an interracial relationship—and facing the condemnation of friends and families as a result.