Al Jazeera has purchased Al Gore's Current TV, giving them a much wider American audience. However, the deal suffered an immediate casualty when Time Warner Cable Inc., the nation's second-largest cable TV operator, announced it is dropping Current TV due to the deal. "Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible," the company
said in a statement.
posted by dejah420
on Jan 2, 2013 -
76 comments
Why We Stare, Even When We Don’t Want To “When a face is distorted, we have no pattern to match that,” Rosenberg said. “All primates show this [staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see. They need to investigate further. ‘Are they one of us or not?’ In other species, when an animal looks very different, they get rejected.” The article is about why humans stare at disfigurements, but it may say something about why we stare at anyone who seems different. Previously:
Seeing race: the Other-Race Effect.
posted by shetterly
on Jun 22, 2009 -
39 comments
Seeing race: the Other-Race Effect. Why do so many people think people of other races look alike? Babies as young as three months old "tend to recognize faces from their own race better than those from other races," but "babies raised with frequent exposure to people of other races don’t develop this early bias." The Other-Race Effect, aka the
Cross-Race Effect, "carries practical implications for cases of mistaken eyewitness identification."
A follow-up study with Chinese babies confirmed the effect, and notes that it can change: "Korean adults who were adopted by French families during their childhood (aged 3–9 years) demonstrated the same discrimination deficit for Korean faces shown by the native French population." Yes,
you have to be carefully taught.
posted by shetterly
on Jun 20, 2009 -
36 comments
Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old.
Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address.
While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War. [more inside]
posted by caddis
on Jan 19, 2009 -
30 comments
Oh, I say old chap--do you mind not going all "
immigrant" on me, and spitting all over the place? Thank you very
much.
(how Britain proposes to solve the problem of integrating its migrant population)
posted by hadjiboy
on Feb 6, 2008 -
109 comments
Under the ole shade tree... Welcome to Jena, LA -- mix high school segregation, racism, nooses, fights, ineffective school administration, attempted-murder charges, shotguns, and a town in upheaval--
a "racial powder keg".
Much more here, including links to help.
posted by amberglow
on May 23, 2007 -
87 comments
New study reveals prejudices amongst disabled. A
research paper by Mark Deal, a PhD student and researcher at UK disability charity
Enham reveals the
news that disabled people have the same prejudices about disability as non-disabled people:
the research points to a hierarchy of impairment, ranking Deaf as the most ‘desirable’ impairment followed by Arthritis, Epilepsy, Cerebral Palsy, HIV/ Aids, Down’s syndrome and Schizophrenia amongst disabled people. These prejudices are almost identical to those held by the non-disabled sample, with the only difference being that Cerebral Palsy and HIV/Aids were placed in reverse order.
posted by patricio
on Mar 22, 2007 -
48 comments
The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths --
No longer satisfied with “mere acceptance” by our society, heterosexual political pressure groups have launched a well-planned, well-financed campaign, which, if left unchecked, threatens to destroy the most fundamental structures of American society. (actual report itself is a pdf from there--a takeoff on
this stuff, which is NSFHumans)
posted by amberglow
on Oct 2, 2006 -
24 comments
"If anything, a civil rights background is considered a liability." Meet the politically-appointed career staffers of the Justice Dept.'s Civil Rights Division:
... the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians. ... Thorough Boston Globe article on how the administration disbanded the hiring committee in 2002 to appoint lawyers with a very different vision of what civil rights are, and the ensuring and ongoing results.
posted by amberglow
on Jul 23, 2006 -
24 comments
...a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. ...Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.
By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. ...
"Think how marginalized racists are," said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "If we don't address this now, it will only get worse." Should Christians be able to sue for the right to not tolerate or abide by anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies meant to apply to all? Should they still be able to get school activity funding?
posted by amberglow
on Apr 10, 2006 -
95 comments
El Indio in Hispanic proverbial speech "The proverbial speech of Hispanic America preserves, even today, numerous traces of the interaction between explorers, conquerors, or settlers and the native populations they found in the various regions of the so-called New World"
posted by dhruva
on Jul 11, 2005 -
6 comments
It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968,
Jane Elliott, a
elementary school teacher in
Riceville,
Iowa, conducted her
Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise with her students, dividing them by eye color to ilustrate prejudice and racism. Since retiring from teaching in the early 1980s she's repeated the exercise for adults in corporations, at colleges, and
on Oprah.
PBS's 1985 documentary
A Class Divided is
viewable online [Real and Windows Media], as are parts of the 2002 documentary
Australian Eye [QuickTime and Windows Media]; both feature
participants' reactions. (Related:
different reflections by a participants in similar exercises; and
a program evaluation and
transcript of the exercise.)
Ms. Elliott
recently said, "What is distressing is that I get the same results today with adults that I got using the exercise with children in 1968."
posted by kirkaracha
on Jun 13, 2005 -
64 comments
Smell The Brimstone --
Have you ever asked yourself, "Self, what if the folks at JibJab made another political cartoon, but before doing so were to remove their souls, morals, intellect, decency, and common sense?"--
Good as You's review of this little flash piece, from the GodHatesFags crew (Phelps). I think it's so poorly done and insane, it's actually funny, but NSFW and offensive.
posted by amberglow
on May 7, 2005 -
75 comments
April 14, 2005: The Day of Truth. On April 13th thousands of students will don black-and-red t-shirts and remain quiet for the ninth
Day of Silence in order to "recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT students and their allies." But this year the
Alliance Defense Fund, "a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth [yes, "Truth" is capitalized] through strategy, training, funding, and litigation," plans to add a twist to the occasion by following up with its so called Day of Truth in order to protest the
homosexual agenda and promote their interpretation of Christianity. Though in their
"Hostile Questions" section they claim they're not Day of Silence copycats, in addition to the silent treatment like their DoS foes students who register will receive
t-shirts and explanation cards to distribute to inquiring minds, albeit with a slightly altered message.
But will it draw participants? Well, Clint Armstrong can't wait--he staged a protest of his own last year.
posted by schroedinger
on Apr 13, 2005 -
43 comments
Only in 1967 did Loving v. Virginia overturn vigorously-enforced laws against interracial marriage in these 15 states--Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Only in 1964 did the
Civil Rights Act overturn laws against equal access to voting, public accommodation, and public education. Only in 1963 did the
Equal Pay Act mandate that men and women be paid the same wage for the same work at the same job.
History isn't a superhighway, leading us in straight lines toward utopia. We
fall back and we
move forward, but over the past fifty years, the United States has become considerably more inclusive and equality of access to opportunity has widened. Take a look at
this article from the
Atlantic Monthly in 1956--1956!--if you don't believe me.
posted by Sidhedevil
on Nov 4, 2004 -
190 comments
Is It Racism If You Admit You're A Racist But Decry Racist Behaviour? Geoffrey Sampson, Professor of Natural Language Computing at the University of Sussex in the UK is likely to be sacked from the Conservative Party for his defense of "racialism" as a legitimate human emotion. In an interview on this morninn's BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme, he said recognising people's racial prejudices is a scientific fact has nothing to do with espousing discriminatory behaviour. The Observer coyly shrank from linking Sampson's offending article but it wasn't difficult to find:
here it is. Judge for yourselves.[
My two cents and a question for UK Mefis: as a conservative, I'm quite impressed with Ian Duncan-Smith's(the new Tory leader's)efforts to dissociate himself from the Tory Party's reactionary bastions(e.g.The Monday Club) and attitudes. Is it just a pose, electioneering or is there something to it?]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on May 13, 2002 -
33 comments
Please, Dad, Tell Me: How Do I Stop Being Complicit? I actually came across this in
another thread (props to
cell divide), but I think it's worth it's own discussion. As a 30-year-old American Jew, this essay completely echoes the exasperation I feel whenever I have a "discussion" (read:argument) with someone of my parents' generation about the Middle East Conflict. It's true that my generation, in America, has never seen widescale Jewish hatred in our lifetime, but has that made us blind or allowed us to gain a better perspective on Israel?
posted by mkultra
on Apr 10, 2002 -
56 comments
The God Squad Christopher Hitchens gives (another) one to organized religion, and reminds us of the important role that the Islamic world played in preserving Western Civilization.
posted by Ty Webb
on Apr 3, 2002 -
7 comments
