Racism is over!
posted by BitterOldPunk on Jul 5, 2009 - 16 comments

In the wake of the Resident 5 racism flap (previously), and with the final game released, one of it's chief detractors, N'Gai Croal, talks to its producer, Jun Takeuchi (Part 1, Part 2). Meanwhile industry magazine MVC takes a look at Africa as a games market.
posted by Artw on Jun 12, 2009 - 137 comments

Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks: "They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as 'those people have bad credit', 'those people don't pay their bills' and 'mud people,' " [a Wells Fargo subprime loan officer] said in his affidavit, filed in the NAACP's lawsuit (pdf) against 13 mortgage lenders. "The company put 'bounties' on minority borrowers. By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market subprime loans in minority communities."
posted by hayvac on Jun 8, 2009 - 40 comments

The far-right, whites-only British National Party (BNP) has won two seats (Andrew Brons, Nick Griffin) in the European Parliament. [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Jun 8, 2009 - 224 comments

"The BNP represents Britain's workers? They don't even represent basic British craftsmanship" - a response to the recent political broadcast by the UKs far right extremists the BNP, who are currently trying to exploit expenses scandals hiting the larger parties. Weirdly despite demanding British jobs for British workers their advertising uses American models.
posted by Artw on May 18, 2009 - 83 comments

"How do black women fight crime? They have abortions." "How do you stop a poofter from drowning? You take your foot off his head." These and other 'jokes' featured in an advertisement on The Gruen Transfer, an Australian television program focusing on advertising. The ad, part of a segment called 'The Pitch' which usually produces humorous ads, was banned by the ABC, but the national broadcaster has still allowed it to be viewed online, and hundreds have now seen it. The ad was designed to sell "fat pride", with creator Adam Hunt explaining his motivation behind the ad being to say "if you discriminate against somebody on the basis of their shape then you are no different to someone who is racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic." Debate has raged online if the ad is offensive and discriminatory, as the ABC has declared, and whether or not it was effective. Watch the ad and judge for yourself.
posted by Effigy2000 on May 15, 2009 - 157 comments

What's wrong with anti-racism? A Unitarian-Universalist answer: Why Anti-Racism Will Fail by Thandeka. A socialist answer: Race, class, and "whiteness theory" by Sharon Smith. A conservative answer: The Lightness of Critical Race Theory by Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr. For background and more criticisms, see the Wikipedia entries for Whiteness studies and Critical race theory.
posted by shetterly on May 13, 2009 - 134 comments

My gut reaction was that the story--although a legitimate consumer complaint—seemed to reinforce a cultural stereotype about Black people and chicken. I know for a fact that no one on our staff meant for that to be the point of the story, but the fear that we would be accused of this sounded an alarm to me. It’s sad that I even had to worry about this.

The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is a directory of historic sites that interpret themes related to ethical, political, and social issues worldwide.
posted by Miko on Apr 17, 2009 - 5 comments

Chinese is a rather difficult language. That's why Rep. Betty Brown (R), of Texas, suggests that Asians change their names to something "that’s easier for Americans to deal with." Via.
posted by Ms. Informed on Apr 9, 2009 - 240 comments

Elwin Wilson burned crosses. He threw jack handles at kids. He hung black dolls in nooses. He threw eggs at men. He beat people up at bus stations - people who would one day become United States Congressmen. He lay in wait for the Freedom Riders in Rock Hill, SC ( more Freedom Rides video 1, 2). And now Elwin Wilson is apologizing for what he did.
posted by Addlepated on Apr 5, 2009 - 247 comments

As the Jim Crow overt style of maintaining white supremacy was replaced with “now you see it, now you don’t” practices that were subtle, apparently non-racial, and institutionalized, an ideology fitting to this era emerged... -The Linguistics of Color-Blind Racism.
posted by lunit on Mar 9, 2009 - 191 comments

The notorious torrent tracker The Pirate Bay was originally established with the support of Carl Lundström, who continues to hold a significant stake in the enterprise and support it financially. Carl Lundström is also a supporter of far-right anti-immigrant parties and was allegedly involved in an violent attack against three Latin Americans. Now a well known online computer magazine suggests that geek sympathies for The Pirate Bay have kept reporters from covering this issue. Wired's coverage only says that Lundström's detractors point to a past in nationalist politics. The Pirate Bay's defenders dismiss the questions as being nothing more than a slur, but the attacks and defense beg a fundamental question: can the views of a financial supporter taint an otherwise neutral organisation?
posted by Joe in Australia on Mar 2, 2009 - 89 comments

Racism in Austria is a problem that has been well documented for quite some time. With the recent rise of the far right political parties, however, things seem to be getting worse. The recent case involving an African American teacher who was mistaken for a drug dealer and beaten by the police however has the potential to bring some changes to the country.
posted by Slash_fan on Feb 19, 2009 - 31 comments

I don't know if this is more troubling than any of the other anti-immigrant movements that have been cropping up in Europe, or whether it's just that Italy has Silvio Berlusconi (previously on MeFi), but with the fingerprinting of Roma, including their children, the destruction of Roma camps and the blase attitude towards two Roma girls found dead on an Italian beach, one wonders whether comparisons to the 1930's may become justified. Now, in an act that, while not violent, is perhaps even more indicative of the country's views on race the city of Lucca and the region of Lombardy have banned the opening of new "foreign" restaurants, as, one newspaper put it "a new Lombard Crusade against the Saracens." [more inside]
posted by Hactar on Feb 3, 2009 - 48 comments

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions Via The Daily Beast
All of your worst suspicions confirmed. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 on Jan 9, 2009 - 155 comments

Many of us have seen or read The Wave, but how many of us have seen A Class Divided? It depicts one third-grade teacher's attempts to teach Midwestern children about the civil rights movement, many of whom had never met a black person before. As part of a daring experiment, she split the class between brown-eyed children and blue-eyed children, and gave the "browneyes" special privileges. The children were told, in no uncertain terms, that the "blueyes" were inferior. What followed was a lesson in discrimination that the kids would remember for the rest of their lives.
posted by Afroblanco on Dec 28, 2008 - 53 comments

Whites used Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to lynch their black neighbors. The shootings have never been investigated.
posted by shii on Dec 19, 2008 - 274 comments

Bram Schouw's short IMPASSE [more inside]
posted by pwedza on Dec 11, 2008 - 8 comments

According to political scientist Wayne Parent, “The South has moved from being the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics.” Are we finally seeing the end of Nixon's infamous Southern Strategy? For years Republicans have depended on the region to win elections. Some now argue that the G.O.P. has "transformed itself from the Party of Lincoln into the Party of the Old Confederacy." In any case, playing to racism and resentment [PDF] isn't as effective as it used to be. Furthermore, many Republicans have publicly disowned such tactics.
posted by 912 Greens on Nov 11, 2008 - 75 comments

Tolerance over Race can Spread, Study Says. ...psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual’s close friends. This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust. A matter of hours...hmmmm... that might explain the subject of this thread.
posted by storybored on Nov 7, 2008 - 33 comments

In the field of humanitarian aid, personnel decisions are life and death business. The UN knows all too well the costs of poor oversight, but aid worker and blogger Michael Kleinman makes another observation, far more disturbing. In the multi-billion dollar humanitarian aid business, some lives are worth less than others, and not only among the populations served. [more inside]
posted by cal71 on Oct 28, 2008 - 11 comments

The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect proposes that even if racists lied to pollsters in the 1980s, there's no evidence of that happening in 2008. The Bradley Effect - Selective Memory goes further: "The Bradley Effect was born amidst some major polling errors and a confusing array of mixed predictions, hardly a firm foundation to construct a theory."
posted by shetterly on Oct 16, 2008 - 62 comments

Have the wheels come off the straight talk express? At least one sleeping giant woke up today: the NYT finally gives Sarah Palin a thorough vetting and the results aren't pretty. The McCain campaign's aggressive - and many say dishonest - tactics in promoting Palin may have sparked the beginnings of a media backlash. Camp McCain's reaction: We don't care and intend to stay on offense. And about that offense, they will soon have some help: Group With Swift Boat Alumni Readies Ads Attacking Obama. How low will things go? At this week's Values Voters Summit, 'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotypes were all the rage.
posted by madamjujujive on Sep 14, 2008 - 1755 comments

Newcomers, with the zeal of recent converts, are often the most vocal in resisting change to the neighborhood they have just discovered. An exploration of NIMBYism. If not in your backyard, then whose? Probably a low-income minority group. Opposition to affordable housing is often thinly-veiled racism. How NIMBYism affects a seven-year old boy on LA's skid row. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Aug 25, 2008 - 61 comments

900 caricatures of noted Victorian and Edwardian personages from British society magazine Vanity Fair which ran from 1868 to 1914. Among those pictured are Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Disraeli, Herman Melville, Alfred Dreyfus, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Boycott (from whose name comes the word). A couple are mildly not safe for work, a few quite racist, as was the prevalent attitude of the time, and at least one is both.
posted by Kattullus on Jul 21, 2008 - 30 comments

"Patriotic" and Republican Products at Republican Market.
posted by mrducts on Jun 17, 2008 - 120 comments

It's like gunning the engine of a car. The recent documentary Unnatural Causes examines the health consequences societal inequalities have on people. The PBS series has a couple dozen embeddable video clips exploring atomic testing, Native American Health, Latino Health and more. One clip examines why when African women come to the U.S., within one generation, their daughters suffer higher rates of premature babies and poorer birth outcomes. One group is putting hundreds of millions of dollars into alleviating health disparities in 14 communities across the country. [more inside]
posted by cashman on Jun 9, 2008 - 11 comments

Mildred Loving of Loving v. Virginia (1967) has passed away.
posted by Morrigan on May 5, 2008 - 51 comments

On Having A Black Name "I am a white woman, a blond, blue-eyed white woman, and I have a first name strongly associated with black women. My mother, a southerner by birth, never stopped telling me she made the name up. The fact that she truly could not remember ever hearing the name before, is a testament to the strength of southern segregation. It is likely she heard it once or twice, and simply forgot it until later. And so, even at 50 years old, I have a name that makes people do a double-take. "You're _____?" is something I have heard all my life. "Yes, that would be me," is what I say, as they look confused. I have upset the social order. Names, I have learned, are a big, big part of it."
posted by nooneyouknow on Apr 24, 2008 - 257 comments

This has not been a good week for woman of color blogging. About two weeks ago, Black Femi Power, a well-read woman of color blogger, resigned her blog in protest to an incident wherein Amanda Marcotte, a notable white feminist blogger, was accused of appropriating BFP's ideas. On the heels of the controversy that had reverberations in the feminist blogosphere which are far from forgotten, Marcotte is releasing and promoting a new book, with a new cover to replace the old one after outcries that it was racist.
posted by lunit on Apr 23, 2008 - 140 comments

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack as illustrated by lolcats. Also, White Liberal Bingo.
posted by streetdreams on Apr 17, 2008 - 197 comments

If you hadn't heard of Jim Crow before, this is where you can find a brief history on the subject (along with a radio broadcast of some of the people who were involved). Bayard Rustin's Journey of Reconciliation: America's First Freedom Ride (You Don't Have To Ride "Jim Crow") was a precursor [audio and video] to the Civil Rights Movement of the 50's and 60's. (Also, a look at the Jim Crow Museum and a walk down Jim Crow Road today.) [previously*]
posted by hadjiboy on Apr 2, 2008 - 24 comments

Obama and Race: "In short, the success of Barack Obama has proven, perhaps more so than any other single thing could, just how powerful race remains in America. His success, far from disproving white power and privilege, confirms it with a vengeance." Tim Wise, an American anti-racist activist, writer, and author of White Like Me, has published two new essays about Obama, racism, and the 2008 election bid. More can be found on his official website.
posted by lunit on Mar 11, 2008 - 176 comments

1 in 99.1 American adults are now incarcerated according to a new Pew Center study (pdf). Some interesting numbers from a NYT article on the report: 1 in 36 Hispanic adults are incarcerated, 1 in 15 blacks, 1 in 9 black men aged 20-34, 1 in 355 white women aged 35-39. Some context from the World Prison Population List (pdf).
posted by aerotive on Feb 28, 2008 - 136 comments

This is a post about 6'4", 380 lb. professional fighter and entertainer Bob Sapp. A good place to start is this fantastic, disdainful overview of Sapp's kickboxing career through 2005. It features lots of pictures, crooked officiating, illegal blows to the back of the head, and some well-deserved humbling. Sapp is also known for a less distinguished MMA career, which includes one of the most exciting fights of all time, against the great Antônio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira (Watch it here: [Round 1] [Round 2]). [more inside]
posted by 1 on Feb 13, 2008 - 50 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

"Australians must not use whales to justify the racist ideology" The Australian government's [proto] stance on Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean has drawn a strong response by an anonymous youtube poster, citing racism as the core reason the Australian Government is taking a stand on the Japanese Whale Research Programme [caution, gruesome video and yet more racist youtube comments]. It seems Steve and Terri Irwin are trying to stop them.
posted by mattoxic on Jan 7, 2008 - 75 comments

Kinism Kinism is the belief that the God-ordained social order for man is tribal and ethnic rather than imperial and universal. In other words, they are segregationists. Can YOU tell the difference? [more inside]
posted by konolia on Dec 29, 2007 - 41 comments

The White Noise Supremacists: Lester Bangs on race, words, post-punk, and society. [more inside]
posted by koeselitz on Dec 17, 2007 - 57 comments

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Culture from 1967 to 1979. Douglas is still alive and making posters for the cause, in this case the San Francisco 8, who were arrested earlier this year for the murder of a police officer in 1971 -- despite the fact that evidence was thrown out of federal court in 1976 because "officers stripped the men, blindfolded them, beat them and covered them in blankets soaked in boiling water," and "used electric prods on their genitals." The SF Weekly published a detailed 5-page story about the case in November 2006.
posted by mediareport on Dec 14, 2007 - 19 comments

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel says in its annual report that Israel has reached "new heights of racism". Embedded WMV video, article, and, typically for Ha'aretz, some very interesting reader comments. [more inside]
posted by stammer on Dec 12, 2007 - 30 comments

After outrage was sparked by a Dutch couple who abandoned their Korean adopted daughter in Hong Kong (and they wouldn't be the first couple to consider returning an adopted child like a shelter puppy) some may start to wonder whether adoption is an unmitigated good. Foreign adoptions are especially prone to accusations of child buying, and some adoptees are mad as hell at the racism inherent in the adoption trade. Even domestic adoption is criticized by some for being traumatic to both mothers and their children.
posted by InnocentBystander on Dec 11, 2007 - 138 comments

Morrissey makes some controversial remarks to the NME. Defensive explanations by the interviewer, attempts at defusing the situation and threats of legal action ensue, as does satire.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 1, 2007 - 53 comments

Jason Whitlock again raises the specter of a "Black KKK", some take issue with his ideas, and Jason levels his response.
posted by mikoroshi on Nov 28, 2007 - 29 comments

"Okay, I work for GameStop, and in one of the local stores, someone returned Spanish for Everyone claiming it was exceedingly stereotypical." And it turns out it kinda was. It's a game for the Nintendo DS, where the framework involves an accidentally stolen DS which is taken by a kid whose father is in a limo, being chased by the police, going back across the border to Ensenada. Luckily, the kid's aunt (who apparently doesn't recognize him other than vaguely) is here to give him a ride as far as Tijuana, leaving him stranded in the middle of a foreign country where he doesn't speak the language! Fun, and it gets worse from there! Here's The Intro, Level 2's cut scene, level 3's cut scene and the ending, featuring a whole mess of cars, "fireworks" and, ahm, drug running? Of course, this'd just be a pile of YouTube links if it weren't for The lead designer of the game popping in to share his 2 cents on it. [via] [more inside]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Nov 25, 2007 - 45 comments

Shame on him for saying it, and shame on us for tolerating it. In an article in Monday's Guardian, the writer Ronan Bennett argued that the lack of a popular outcry against Martin Amis' remarks about Islam (covered previously) represents a cultural failure that ought to shame us. Yesterday, Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan wrote attacking Bennett and defending Amis. Perhaps they ought to have deployed a slideshow.
posted by hydatius on Nov 22, 2007 - 48 comments

Ni Putes Ni Soumise (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) is a French organization started by Fadéla Amara to combat the growing misogyny in the banlieues, the housing project suburbs that ring the major cities. Her organization began to protest a rash of gang rapes, and now works on human rights issues in and around the experience of Arabs in France. Amara has joined Nicholas Sarkozy's conservative cabinet as the minister of urban policy. For some, she is a hero, for others a hypocrite, but everyone agrees that she's shaking things up. [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Nov 20, 2007 - 12 comments

"Reflections on White Privilege" by Tad Lawrence, dean of faculty, Cambridge School of Weston "That white Americans would send cards such as the ones I will show you for the most ordinary of purposes indicates the frightening extent to which they had internalized, accepted and condoned the presentation of African Americans that were the public face of the cards they sent." [more inside]
posted by exlotuseater on Nov 13, 2007 - 57 comments

A top immigration official has apologized after awarding 'most original costume' to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency. [more inside]
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Nov 6, 2007 - 50 comments