MetaFilter posts tagged with racism

He took his job!

Sys Rq — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:44:42 -0800

Lou Dobbs has quit his job at CNN. But will he quit whining?

The Education of Little Fraud

reenum — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:12:49 -0800

Many kids read The Education of Little Tree in school, but the author of the book, Forrest Carter, was actually Asa Carter, a staunch racist and charlatan.

What Bogan is that?

awfurby — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:23:14 -0800

Someone has started publishing a handy guide to the Australian bogan. One bogan is not amused. (Previously)

The Lurking Fear

Artw — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:13:44 -0800

Lovecraft 101: Get To Know The Master of Scifi-Horror. For more detailed insights into each of Lovecraft's tales in publication order you might want to follow the H.P.Lovecraft Literary Podcast. For another story-by-story guide to Lovecraft you might want to check out Kenneth Hite's Tour De Lovecraft (also available in expanded form as a book). China Mieville on Lovecraft and racism and a lecture at Treadwells by Archaeologist James Holloway which delves deep into Lovecraft and identity. The making of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The making of Cthulhu (Hipsters! Ego! Madness!). Happy Halloween with H.P. Lovecraft!

How to make a Jellystinian

moorooka — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:41:00 -0800

Jewish-Australian John Safran is (in)famous for his outrageous style of comedic television documentary, including the AFI award winning "Music Jamboree" and "John Safran vs God" (previously). His latest effort, "Race Relations" has already been described as the "lowest point in the history of Australian television". Including a "sniff test" comparison of Eurasian and Jewish panties and a scene involving a plastic cup and a copy of Obama's "Audacity of Hope" inside a Palestinian sperm-bank, episode one (of eight) aired last Wednesday to a buzz of controversy, and there's plenty worse to come.

The South Will Not Rise Again

bguest — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:37:07 -0800

AP article about the chant "The South will Rise Again." In the past few years University of Mississippi officials have done away with both the waving of the Confederate Battle Flag at football games and Colonel Reb, the school mascot who resembles a white plantation owner. However, the school band, nicknamed "The Pride of the South," still plays "From Dixie with Love" at each game and the students still shout "The South will Rise Again" at the end of the song. The AP has a nice article on recent efforts by both the student government and the new school Chancellor, Dan Jones, to end this "tradition."

This is just getting embarassing!

Pope Guilty — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:35:41 -0800

You know, if I ran the BNP, I think I would think twice about this whole "trusting people with the members list" idea.

Shades of Jim Crow and the Black Codes, in 2009

zarq — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:02:23 -0800

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way." Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward in Louisiana, has denied a marriage license to an interracial couple, using Tragic Mulatto reasoning. He claims that children of interracial marriages suffer needlessly, and the couple's union won't last. Previously on MeFi: The Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

"I don't think it's nice to have diversity anywhere, myself."

afx237vi — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:43:42 -0800

BNP Wives. A 46 minute documentary following three female members of the far-right British National Party.

"In America, it would be like 'Hey, Hey, There's No More Show"

barnacles — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:42:40 -0800

Australian television show "Hey Hey It's Saturday" is currently back on the air after a few decades, running a series of reunion shows, and the other night a group that had been on the show in the 80s came back with the same act, in blackface. Harry Connick, Jr., who was a guest judge on the show, was unequivocal in denouncing the act, saying (after an apology from the show's host):

just want to say, on behalf of my country, I know it was done humorously, but we've spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that we take it really to heart.

While American news outlets have been roundly condemned the skit, not all Australians seem to realize the offense taken at it. Some certainly have, and ex-regular Kamahl has gone so far as to say the show was always racist. Meanwhile, the performers have attempted to explain why they did the act, saying that when they did it at a Medical Revue a few months back, no one complained. And what's more, that it couldn't have been racist because one of the team was Indian. Is the tolerance of blackface on a national TV broadcast indicative of a deeper trouble with racism that has yet to be explored in Australian society, or is it, as many bloggers and commenters point out, not an issue because white portrayals of African Americans is an American issue?

The race is on.

naju — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:42:36 -0800

"We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well." The people who run the dating site OkCupid continue to analyze the aggregate data of their users, shedding light on preferences and behavior. The most recent OkTrends post takes a look at their compiled racial data: Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back. (previously 1 2)

Birth of a Notion

shetterly — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:18:55 -0800

Birth of a Notion: Implicit Social Cognition and the "Birther" Movement asks why 'white Europeans are more “American”' to many people than nonwhite Americans and includes details like this: "Horne was asked to give two concerts at Camp Robinson in Alabama, one to white servicemen, the second to black GIs. But she refused to do the second one when she saw that black Americans were sent to the back of the theater. Who got the good seats up front? German prisoners of war." Institutional Racism Ignored notes “racial bias in conviction rates and length of sentences of both juvenile and criminal courts,” “direct discriminatory practices in housing…as well as in mortgage lending,” and in the educational system, “racial bias in the type of disciplinary action given to white or minority students.” Tucson schools create race-based system of discipline and Tucson Arizona school discipline policy is not racist; Alan Keyes is right address one anti-racist solution. But anyone interested in racial justice should note The Queer, "Racist" Case of the Spank-Happy Judge.

Conservatives of Color are Angry White People?

shetterly — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:15:57 -0800

Lifestyles of the White & Suggestible opens and closes with a Conservative of Color. The singer heard (but not seen) in the background is Lloyd Marcus, who provides the American Tea Party Anthem. Obama doesn't think it's about racism. Neither does Republican Chairman Michael Steele. An introduction to the beliefs of Conservatives of Color: Emancipation Revelation Revolution

What's going on America?

adamvasco — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 02:37:26 -0800

Return of the Militias; an article by Larry Keller for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
List of Militia by State; Map of Hate Groups by State. (Constitutional Militia).

The future is all straight, white men?

FunkyHelix — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:44:58 -0800

GLAAD recently published their third annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index, evaluating networks on the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. The SyFy (Sci-Fi) channel was given an F rating for their failure of their depiction of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) characters. In response, the head of the SyFy network promised to be more diverse. Scifi writer, John C. Wright, is outraged. So outraged he ranted on his livejournal equating homosexuality with necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality. This comes on the heels of the Scifi racefail by writers Patricia Wrede, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and her husband Patrick, Kathryn Cramer and Will Shetterly leaving many SciFi fans wondering why the future seems so backward.

O Black and Unknown Bards - Among Other Things, Regarding The White Invention of The Blues

y2karl — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:08:58 -0800

...The narrative of the blues got hijacked by rock ’n’ roll, which rode a wave of youth consumers to global domination. Back behind the split, there was something else: a deeper, riper source. Many people who have written about this body of music have noticed it. Robert Palmer called it Deep Blues. We’re talking about strains within strains, sure, but listen to something like Ishman Bracey’s ''Woman Woman Blues,'' his tattered yet somehow impeccable falsetto when he sings, ''She got coal-black curly hair.'' Songs like that were not made for dancing. Not even for singing along. They were made for listening. For grown-ups. They were chamber compositions. Listen to Blind Willie Johnson’s "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.'' It has no words. It’s hummed by a blind preacher incapable of playing an impure note on the guitar. We have to go against our training here and suspend anthropological thinking; it doesn’t serve at these strata. The noble ambition not to be the kind of people who unwittingly fetishize and exoticize black or poor-white folk poverty has allowed us to remain the kind of people who don’t stop to wonder whether the serious treatment of certain folk forms as essentially high- or higher-art forms might have originated with the folk themselves.

From Unknown Bards: The blues becomes apparent to itself by one John Jeremiah Sullivan. I came across it while browsing Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers On The Albums That Changed Their Lives. For Sullivan, that album was American Primitive, Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897 - 1939), which is my favorite CD of the year. Which came out in 2005 while I just got around to buying it this year. Foolish me. It is a piece of art in itself in every respect--all CDs should have such production values. In it, Sullivan recounts how in 1997 or 1998, he--as a junior editor at the Oxford American, fact checking an article by Greil Marcus--and John Fahey, then yet another recluse in a welfare hotel in Salem, Oregon attempted to decipher the lyrics of Geeshie Wiley's Last Kind Word Blues, which most of you may know from the soundtrack of Terry Zwigoff's documentary film Crumb. There are three or so copies and he, R. Crumb, would have one. Well, among many other things, at least one hearing of Last Kind Words is required for your Cultural Literacy Certificate. As is at least one hearing of I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape. NuGrape - now available again at Fred Meyers and QFC here in Seattle. And here is a discussion of the lively reader response in Harper's to his interpetation of Wiley's lyric. Not wanting to spend money on assorted essays on the Smiths, Beastie Boys and Jay Z, I read Unknown Bards standing up at Borders Books. An ethically suspect practice, no doubt--as is posting the article entire in pdf form. Or in a series of comments at a thread at Jazzcorner's Speakeasy. Well, the scrupulous may pay for it at Harper's where it originally ran. Unknown Bards discusses the CD American Primitives, Vol. II and two must read books, In Search of the Blues: The White Invention of Black Music by Marybeth Hamilton and Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson, and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald. Oh, and for the guitar players out there, here, from Guitar Seminars Dot Com, is a thread with a rough tab of Last Kind Word Blues by one Mr. Mando. For what it's worth, Marybeth Hamilton's overall thesis about the white invention of the blues sounds about right to me--and I was fascinated by her story of James McKune, the Father of Us All, to whom, more than any other person, we owe the most for the consensual reality we inhabit, and cultural construct we share, when we hear the word 'blues.'

...decades ago it was a lodging house run by the Williamsburg branch of the YMCA, and it was here, in a single room on the uppermost floor one unknowable day in the mid-1950s, that the Delta blues was born. Born, that is, in the imagination of one of the YMCA’s long-term residents, a record collector named James McKune. A journalist turned postal worker, reclusive, homosexual and alcoholic, McKune conducted his life as a long downward spiral: moving into the Y around 1940, losing job after job as his drinking intensified, and eventually ending up on the streets, where he died at the hands of a violent stranger in 1971. Yet during his years at the Y he scavenged junk shops and used record stores to build up an extraordinary collection of blues 78s. In time that collection became the driving force behind the 1960s blues revival, when white Americans and Europeans discovered - one might say invented - a tradition that they called the Delta blues, constructed out of scraps of old recordings that African-Americans had long left behind.

Oh, and for what it's worth, the title Unknown Bards comes from the James Weldon Johnson poem O Black and Unknown Bards.

“N****r rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions”

ericb — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:10:22 -0800

"I don't see where there's a story, I'm not the only one that does it." Such is the excuse of patriotic Atwater City (CA) Councilman (and Mayor Pre Tem) Gary Frago for sending out "at least a half-dozen e-mails to city staff and other prominent community members containing racist jokes aimed at President Barack Obama, his wife and black people in general." Frago received some of the e-mail jokes from ex-city worker Bob Rieger and forwarded them on "to various community leaders, 'including a county supervisor, a former police chief, a city manager, a former city council member, a former president of a veterans group, a former grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, among others.'" Rieger said the jokes he sent had no racial meaning. "As far as I'm concerned the e-mails need no explanation," he said. "I sent them out, I'm not concerned with it," he said.

"Previous disastrous interactions between racially-insensitive public officials and modern technology include the 'historical keepsake photo' sent around by a Tennessee state government staffer, the picture of watermelons on the White House lawn distributed by a California mayor, and the Michelle Obama gorilla joke posted on Facebook by a GOP activist and ex-official." *

Not So Much 'Brotherly Love?'

ericb — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:23:50 -0800

More than 60 African-American day campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club because -- according to John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club -- "there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club." Creative Steps Day Camp paid The Valley Swim Club more than $1,900 for one day of swimming a week, but after the first day, the money was quickly refunded and the campers were told not to return. "I heard a white lady say, 'What are all these black kids doing here? They might do something to my child,' " recalled [14-year-old camper Dymir] Baylor [video | 01:52], who says he lives in a neighborhood so diverse, he'd never heard anyone speak like that before. "It was rude and ignorant."* Fortunately Girard College, a private Philadelphia boarding school for children who live in low-income and single parent homes, has stepped in and offered their pool to the campers.

"It may surprise some Americans to learn that not only do certain private clubs still refuse to admit African-Americans, women, and gay people, but that this kind of enrollment discrimination is considered perfectly legal."*

Now, If I were you, I'd just take a few minutes and plan my escape route.

filthy light thief — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:27:12 -0800

55 years ago, Brown v. Board of Education was decided, which lead to the controversial court-ordered school integrations in the South. Four years later, the prolific Charles Beaumont wrote his only solo novel, The Intruder, based on a true story but set in a fictitious small southern town of Caxton that is riled up by a mysterious man from out-of-town who wants to halt the school integration. The novel was turned into a movie by the same name in 1962, produced, directed and financed by Roger Corman, starring a charismatic William Shatner as the mysterious intruder, some 4 years before the start of his iconic role in Star Trek. Shot on location, using locals who were not fully aware of the plot of the movie, the whole film was made for $80-$90,000, and was Corman's only film to lose money at the box offices. The production was banned in some Missouri cities because the local people objected to the film's portrayal racism and segregation. The film finally saw a profit after its re-release on DVD in recent years. (Previously discussed as part of this 1970s Shatner post; video links inside) For reasons not entirely clear, The Intruder turned up on various "public domain" lists in the early '80s and showed up on different cable channels specializing in such fare, but it was never actually out-of-copyright, though you can watch the full movie at the Internet Archive or on YouTube. Also on Youtube: interview segments with Corman and Shatner, which seems to taken from a longer interview (no video link).

Thank Goodness! Finally!

BitterOldPunk — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:42:04 -0800

Racism is over!

Resi Racey Redux

Artw — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:28:53 -0800

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.

Minority bounty

hayvac — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:32:22 -0800

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."

Hate Wins

chuckdarwin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:40:42 -0800

The far-right, whites-only British National Party (BNP) has won two seats (Andrew Brons, Nick Griffin) in the European Parliament. According to its constitution, the BNP is "committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948." The BNP also proposes "firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home."

Pillocks

Artw — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:57:31 -0800

"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.

Discrimination to Fight Discrimination?

Effigy2000 — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:42:12 -0800

"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.