Race & Ethnicity

“Budrus” documentary on peace activism

Last week I saw a fantastic documentary: “Budrus“, an inspiring look at some of the non-violent activism that is shaping the Israel/Palestine conflict right now. Snip from the site: “Budrus” is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in [...]

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Goodbye, Rev. Shuttlesworth

October 5th was a rough day for civil rights leaders: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who not only helped establish and lead non-violent anti-segregation actions and the civil rights movement as we know it but also took the right to protest right up to the Supreme Court, passed away yesterday. He stared the devil in the face [...]

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Pro-slavery propaganda from the 1800s USA

Oh. My. God. Thanks to LoriAdorable’s Twitter stream, I learn that in the early 1800s, pro-slavery authors reacted to the anti-slavery classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin by writing their own pro-slavery propaganda. I guess that makes sense. What’s really cool is that you can go ahead and read one of those pro-slavery books, in all its [...]

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Dealbreaker: He Has An Asian Fetish

Dealbreaker: He Has An Asian Fetish

Love this piece by Lena Chen: Though I could excuse his penchant for cultural appropriation, I couldn’t overlook his peculiar dating history. All of his exes, I soon learned, were Asian. A handful of data points aren’t enough to constitute a trend, but even my 18-year-old self realized that there was a very low statistical [...]

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What if Michael Vick sold beemers, and other stupid questions

Toure wrote an article titled “What if Michael Vick were white,” and he seems to think the Photoshopped White Michael Vick illustration was the worst part. Toure found himself in a position of having to defend his original piece because… well, because he wrote it. He spun a tale of an alternate-reality Vick who grew [...]

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Not liking The Help that much

(I know Jill posted on the movie. I read the book and I have thoughts, which I was finally able to edit today.) I haven’t seen the movie The Help, but I did read the book. I wasn’t impressed. First, I am sick to the teeth of feel-good, revisionist fiction. I am really fed up [...]

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Step into my film school! The importance of casting in breaking open movie stereotypes

Did any of you catch Matt Zoller Seitz’s pieces on underrated actors and actresses? Given that the purpose of “top ten” lists is to make people argue about who should really be on the list and obviously there are great people not on the list who are underrated, I’m going to say that any list [...]

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Love, Sex and Interracial Dating

Over at Racialicious, Latoya is hosting some amazing roundtable discussions about race and dating. You can find them all here. Our own Holly is featured in the Asian roundtables (parts one, two and three), and Lauren and I will both be contributing to the white roundtable, which I believe will go up at some point [...]

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Are you guys reading Carefree White Girl?

Are you guys reading Carefree White Girl?

You should definitely be reading Carefree White Girl.

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On “The Help”

On “The Help”

Haven’t read/seen it, won’t read/see it* and was generally squicked out by the whole premise of the book to begin with — let’s tell a story that is kinda-sorta about race but more about how these nice black ladies helped white women Find Their Voice, from the perspective of white women of course — but [...]

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Recommended reading

E.J. Graff’s series on Slate about children who were “adopted” (quotes wholly deliberate for reasons which will be immediately clear from the article) from Sierra Leone is gut wrenching. Definitely worth reading.

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