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Posts Tagged ‘racism’

Somalian Pirate Situation Not So Simple

13 Apr 2009

If you’re like me, you probably haven’t really been paying too much attention to this whole “pirate situation” that the mainstream media is currently masturbating itself over. I did give a passing thought that I wished I knew more about the development of the “pirate phenomenon” that has sprung up over the past ten years or so, and I also considered the three obviously very poor very under funded “pirates” to be more than a bit stupid for so directly confronting a first world nation.

Other than that–I’ve been pretty non-committal. Mainstream news masturbation does not interest me too much, really.

But now alternative media and radical media sources are starting to do what they do best–presenting the story mainstream media is too busy jacking off to pay attention to.

First, start with the following videos from Somalian rapper, Knaan. Read more…

Texas Lawmaker Wants Asian Americans to Change their Names

1:39 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia| Politics| Texas| language| race · 2 Comments

9 Apr 2009

This sounds like something out of The Onion, but sadly, it’s true. This disgusting piece of news comes to us from The Houston Chronicle, and it makes me fear a trip back home to Texas: a Texas legislator, one Rep. Betty Brown (R-Terrell) suggests that voters of Asian heritage change their names to make them “easier for Americans to deal with.” Take a deep breath before reading the following:

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

You can watch a video above of the House Elections Committee where this went down. Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans, testified to the difficulties that Asian Americans often face when attempting to vote.

The Texas Democratic Party has demanded an apology from Brown, while the Republican party says Democrats “want this to be about race”.

If it isn’t about race, then what is it about?

Via / Chron.com

Conservative Commentator: “There’s Trash in the White House”

24 Mar 2009

What would we do without Media Matters, the organization that monitors the disgusting right wing slant we are subjected to — in varying degrees — in mainstream media? Well, we might have actually consume this trash in order to find little gems such as this one. In this asinine rant with absolutely no substance to speak of, conservative commentator (and “ex-liberal Democrat”) Tammy Bruce sounds off with outrage about nothing after listening to a benign quote made by Michelle Obama. Have a listen:

Huh? How is what she said outrageous? Let’s look at the transcript:

BRUCE: But here’s Michelle Obama explaining to some kids what it was like for her growing up because she sounded like a white person, whatever that means.

OBAMA [audio clip]: I did do my best, getting good grades was always important to me, and it wasn’t because my parents were -

BRUCE: It’s all about her.

OBAMA [audio clip]: — hounding me or that they had the expectation, it was just something that I wanted for myself. I wanted an A. And I didn’t care whether it was cool, ‘cause I remember there were kids around my neighborhood who would say, “Ooh, you talk funny, you talk like a white girl.” I heard that growing up my whole life, and I was like I don’t even know what that means, but you know what? I’m still getting my A.

BRUCE: What? What? What — what is that? And then she devolves into that weird fake accent, like Hillary did when talking to black people. What? What is that? That’s, that — you know what that is.

DAVID AFTER DENTIST [audio clip]: Is this going to be forever?

BRUCE: Yeah, that – remember nitrous oxide kid, on You Tube. No it’s not going to be forever, nitrous oxide kid. It’s not. Can you — can you believe that?

OBAMA [audio clip]: So do I need to introduce myself?

BRUCE: What a shame. That must’ve just ruined her damn day. “I wanted the A for myself, and I wanted to do it, and ooh, they said you sounded like a white person, I don’t know what that means, but uhh.” Huh?

Man, oh, man. That’s who he’s married to, what does that tell you? This is what we’ve got — you know what we’ve got? We’ve got trash in the White House. Trash is a, is a thing that is color blind, it can cross all eco — ecosocionomic kind of categories, you can work on Wall Street or work at the Wal-Mart. Trash are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy.

Has Bruce been hitting the crazy juice? Michelle and Barack Obama are “trash” and the comment made by Michelle Obama is supposed to be evidence for this?

“People who consider you bitter and clingy…”? WTF? Sounds like a personal problem to me. Is this lady projecting her feelings towards her ex-BF onto the Obamas?

My diagnosis: mental problem mixed with deep-seated racism and a dab of grasping at straws. What do you think?

Via / Media Matters

While VL Was Down, We Missed a Racist Controversial Cartoon

4:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Media| Politics| race · 3 Comments

23 Feb 2009

Perhaps you didn’t miss it, but if you did, let me know what you think of this cartoon in that pillar of American journalism, The New York Post:

The cartoon ran late last week and could have been expected was met with much public clamor. On the left people are calling this a racist potshot at President Obama. The righties say it’s merely an unfortunate coincidence — a simple allusion to the Chimpanzee who had recently escaped and mauled a woman in Connecticut. Yeah…

What do you think? Racist or bad timing?

Via / New York Post

Black History Month: Race and Racism in Brazil

7:11 am By Maegan La Mala · Brazil| Culture| Latin America| race| society · Comments Off

10 Feb 2009

In honor of Black History Month, are a couple more videos focusing on an element of Afro-Latino culture. This time we focus on the plight of blacks in Brazil, and the reality of a nation that on the surface appears to be colorblind, but where the legacy of slavery remains.

The first video, from Al Jazeera, focuses on the hardships still faced by black Brazilians in Bahía. The second, from PBS, follows university students attempting to “qualify as black” in order to gain access to university in Brasilia.

Enjoy!

Via / Al Jazeera

Sunday Brunch Links

8:37 am By Maegan La Mala · Controversia| Cuba| Immigration| Linking Latinos| Quicklinks · Comments Off

8 Feb 2009

I’ve been way off my game this week and am trying to come back. Mientras tanto, peep what I’m reading/watching this lovely domingo morning:

Shock! Fidel Castro criticizes Obama. Guess he’s not dead yet.

Miley Cyrus may have been nominated for a Kid’s Choice Award, pero she’s still racist.

And, amigo Nezua reminds us of how the land of the free applies to a very specific group of people, not including locked up immigrants.

Feliz Sunday. It’s beautiful out, at least here in NYC it is, so get outside into the sun. She’s missed you.

Don Imus is Contrite about Racist Statements

10:24 am By Maegan La Mala · Controversia| Media| race| radio · 1 Comment

26 Jan 2009

One of the biggest media scandals of 2008, without a doubt, was radio jockey Don Imus’ racist remarks about a group of African American female college basketball players. Let me refresh your memory with the above video.

Over a year later, these comments are just as shocking to me as the first time I heard them. But it appears that one year later, the author of these statements wants us to know that he has seen the light:

“What happened is what should have happened,” Imus said in an interview. “So much good has come out of what happened. I really do think it’s like an alcoholic, which I am, and a drug addict, which I am. You’re presented with the unique opportunity to be a better person than you had been. I consider this situation to be analogous to that, almost identical to that.”

Imus, 68, works now for the ABC Radio Networks and rural RFD-TV after being fired by CBS Radio and MSNBC in spring 2007 for referring to the Rutgers women as “nappy-headed hos.”

What Mala is Reading on Saturday Morning

13 Dec 2008

When do kids realize the difference between weekdays and weekends? Not soon enough if you ask me, which is why I’ve been up since early, reading the internets.

Some things that caught my ojo:

President-elect Obama named his choice for secretary of HUD and it’s a Ny’er, pero not Carrion

According to one radio host, there goes the neighborhood applies to POC neighbors and their gangsta ways.

University students in the Dominican Republic are on a hunger strike over problems registering.

Did you know you could salsa for freedom tonite?

Happy Saturday!

i was having a party and i opened my door – why didn’t they come in?

8:24 am By la Macha · GLBT| US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

7 Nov 2008

dan%20savage.jpg From the beyond irritating Dan Savage:

I’m not sure what to do with this. I’m thrilled that we’ve just elected our first African-American president. I wept last night. I wept reading the papers this morning. But I can’t help but feeling hurt that the love and support aren’t mutual.

I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.

This will get my name scratched of the invite list of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which is famous for its anti-racist-training seminars, but whatever.

Finally, I’m searching for some exit poll data from California. I’ll eat my shorts if gay and lesbian voters went for McCain at anything approaching the rate that black voters went for Prop 8.

It’s interesting to me how mainstream organizations (oh, excuse me, I meant a few gay white guys) are only marginally racist (and yet they don’t even have signs printed off in different languages despite the fact that these organizations exist in one of the most diverse freaking states in the nation), but Black folks (and as usual, the marginalized Latino population) are *hugely* homophobic–homophobic enough, in fact, to deny all the mainstream white gay folks their rights.

But what really gets me is how freaking clueless us Black and Latinos really are. As one commenter noticed:

it’s bizarre that you’re talking about this. i just walked into work (in beverly hills) and sat down. the only two co-workers of mine that are in at the moment are black. we’ve spent weeks talking about politics, we all watched the debates together, etc. I just mentioned my shock and disgust at prop 8 getting passed. they didn’t say anything and quietly went back to work.

what.

the.

FUCK.

It’s a good thing that we have gay white folks running around covertly quizzing Black folks on their voting records. What better way could there be to let Black folks know that they were supposed to vote for Proposition 8 because they owed white folks something?

And never you fear, the quizz master will be sure to quizz Latinos about their votes once he’s figured out how to covertly ask questions in Spanish…

My, oh my, how far we’ve come since the days when racism existed…

::Queue La Macha pointing ironically at the ironic title of this ironic post::

via/racialicious
source/SLOG
title via/

Murdered Bear Covered in Obama Photos

6:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

21 Oct 2008

Ok, I expected that there would be a certain amount of racism with this presidential election. I live next to an awful lot of libertarians and ‘liberal’ white folks (as in, they don’t see color, which means there’s no reason for affirmative action, race based organizations like NAACP etc) and I know that there are many of them that say quietly to themselves, “Obama is nice and everything, but well, I won’t vote for *that* kind of person.”

Which, of course, means, I won’t vote for a black person.

I have some big ass problems with that kind of logic, but these folks are my neighbors, so I can’t very well go around beating them up. I talk with them, they talk with me, and hopefully somewhere down the line, we’ll come to a truce that we can all live by.

But then I read this story–and I am not sure if we live in the 1950’s or in the year 2008:

Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.

Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said.

The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.

Signs and whispers are one thing. Murdering a bear with a gunshot to the head and putting pictures of a human being on it is something else all together.

Where is this blessed “America” that the far right is so eager to rub our faces in? Where is the rule of law? Where does the idea come from that if you don’t like a person’s politics, the next best thing is to kill him (or otherwise imply murder through the murder of other beings?).

I hope the FBI/Secret Service has made its way out to North Carolina.

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