Racism | VivirLatino

Posts Tagged ‘racism’

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.

But But But…what’s wrong with making a movie about Mexican Chihuahuas??

2:07 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Movies · 3 Comments

17 Oct 2008

Of course, in writing about the complex feelings and confusions that the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua brings up in me, I must be challenged by local lovers of chihuahuas. How on earth could I possibly write such hateful and horrible rhetoric onto the purely innocent puppy dog–especially when said puppy dog has no greater ambition than to make innocent school children as happy as can be?

How could I?

Maybe this is how?
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t hyper sensitive Latinos that created Latino=dog imagery, but politicians that are hell bent on playing on fear and difference to get elected?

“They are distorting the facts and ridiculing the Hispanic community,” said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “It’s a shameful piece. It really is gutter politics.”

Carrie Cantrell, a spokeswoman for The Republican State Leadership Committee, an Alexandria, Va.-based political organization that works to elect down-ticket Republicans in state races, said she appreciates the groups’ opinion, but that the ad was simply a parody of a well-known popular culture reference, a Chihuahua once used in Taco Bell advertising.

She did not apologize.

Oh, look at that–popular culture used and manipulated to make a racist point? How unuuuuusual.

Can I break the Whole Racism Thing Down A Little? Obama on a Food Stamp? Really?

10:55 am By Maegan La Mala · race|US Presidential Race 2008 · 3 Comments

17 Oct 2008

I know that it’s hard to admit and I’m sorry for all the pain that it causes you people when racism is pointed out to you. It must be tough, balancing the weight of privilege and using stereotypes. How do you all do it?

Chaffey Community Republican Women, it must be hard for your artistic and creative talents not to be recognized. I mean damn, you all dehumanized a presidential candidate and used numerous stereotypical food images in one small space, on an image of a program that people use so that their children don’t starve.

The group’s president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club’s meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

“It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don’t want to go into it any further,” Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn’t my attempt.”

Fedele said she got the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the Trumpeter newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She declined to say who sent her the e-mails with the illustration.

She said she doesn’t think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president.

“I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.”

She said she also wasn’t trying to make a statement linking Obama and food stamps, although her introductory text to the illustration connects the two: “Obama talks about all those presidents that got their names on bills. If elected, what bill would he be on????? Food Stamps, what else!”

Beverly Hills Chihuahua Defeats La Macha

8:38 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Movies · 3 Comments

16 Oct 2008

I’ve tried to go to see the Beverly Hills Chihuahua three times since the movie came out, but alas, the Chihuahua is stronger than La Macha. I can’t do it, I just can’t. I want to be able to see the movie, and offer a valid critique of it, but everything about it makes my teeth set on edge. For example, this is the blurb about the story:

Drew Barrymore is the voice of Chloe, a high-maintenance, pink-bootie-wearing Chihuahua with a hovering celebrity owner (Jamie Lee Curtis). When her careless dog sitter (Piper Perabo) takers Chloe to Mexico, the pooch is kidnapped by a dog-fighting ring. But in this pup’s harrowing quest to return home to the Hills, she ends up finding her inner bark.

So, all the leads are white folks, right? But watch the trailer:

Where are all the white folks? For some reason, watching the trailer, I get the idea that the movie is about George Lopez for.

Could Disney be using Latinos to justify a racist movie that plays on tired stereotypes? But if it is, why on earth is every Latino under the sun in the damn movie? Does Latino Hollywood need jobs that badly??

I can not watch the movie to give some answers–maybe my dear VLatinos can?

via TIME

The Children are Keeping it Real : They Know About Racism and the Electoral System

1:27 pm By Maegan La Mala · children|race|US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

6 Oct 2008

bdj.2007.201-i1.jpg There are way too many adults in the country who would rather ignore or play pretend when it comes to the role of race in electoral politics. Children, however are not playing pretend. A study released yesterday suggests that:

Children are aware white males have monopolized the US presidency, and most attribute the trend to racial prejudice.

Wait, so children (and not just my own) get white male privilege something so many adults still refuse to acknowledge plays any role in anything? Well, not exactly.

The research team interviewed 205 children aged five to ten in 2006, a year before Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began their historic bids for the White House. Clinton lost to Obama in the primary fight for the Democratic nomination.

The study asked the children, from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, about their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about the US presidency, and specifically about similarities between presidents and the absence of female, African-American and Hispanic presidents.

A third of the children said the white male monopoly was due to “racial and gender bias,” and another third believed members of the excluded groups “lacked the skills to hold the position,” according to the study.

One in four participants told researchers they thought it was “illegal for women and minorities to hold the office of president.”

Racism? Que Racism? Anti-Obama Fliers Appear in New Jersey

2:35 pm By Maegan La Mala · New Jersey|race · 1 Comment

25 Sep 2008

Some New Jersey residents received more than the usual junk fliers in their driveways this past weekend.

Roxbury resident Elizabeth Corsetto says a flier was left in her driveway asking, “Do You Want A Black President?” and showing a doctored photo of Obama with a long beard and turban.

The fliers came from the New Jersey-based League of American Patriots, which notes on its web site that membership is “restricted to adult heterosexual men and women who are entirely of European Christian ancestry.”

The flier claims that “Black Ruled Nations most unstable and violent in the world,” and asks, “Why should we seal our fate by allowing a Black ruler to destroy us?” The one-page flyer, which misspells the Democratic presidential candidate’s first name…

Via / Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo

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