Beyond White Guilt

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

A friend of mine posted this on G+ and it was good enough that I wanted to share it. It is a really nice geek friendly way of trying to get the concept of privilege across without provoking the rabid cheetah on steroids response.

It does have failings - for some reason it does mention race, gender and sexuality, but doesn't mention class - and it is very geek centric, but I thought it was definitely worth passing around.

I just learned a new term today, and as an immigrant living in Denmark, I live constantly with this phenomenon.

Anyway, this excellent site provides lots of fuel for discussion and seemed very very appropriate for this community.

http://www.microaggressions.com/

Enjoy!

I know "hipster racism" or "ironic racism" has come up in this community before, but West analyzes some of the subtypes I do not recall seeing addressed here before:

A Complete Guide to Hipster Racism

In particular the idea of "recreational slumming" was new to me.

As usual, don't read the comments, unless you are prepared to see all kinds of denial and other infuriating nonsense.

Apparently this has gone viral so I imagine you'll be hearing about this elsewhere, if you haven't already. This is so awful that I feel like apologizing for even bringing it to your attention. Like, those could have been a few more hours or days without knowing about the racist cake thing, you know? :(

Basically--correct me if I have details wrong--the Swedish Minister of Culture, supposedly well-known for her anti-racist activism, participated in a performance piece on World Art Day at a modern art museum in Stockholm.
( Cut for disturbing, even in summary format )

A man on trial in Swansea, Wales, for illegally possessing badger paws and eagle wings is claiming as part of his defence that he is "a member of a Native American Apache tribe" and "lives with these communities in summer". It seems he's appropriated the name of Mangas Coloradas, who was an important tribal chief in the 19th century.

I first got linked from Twitter to this version of the story, which says that the US Government refused to let him join a reservation in 1997. Can't imagine why not. He is also quoted as saying "we Natives don't believe in letting anything go to waste". Ugh. (The Mail has a very poor reputation, though, so it's always possible that the quote is made up.) Other sources for the story:

HuffPo
This is South Wales
Mirror

"The Shit Girls Say" meme may have had some not-so-good origins, but Franchesca Ramsey changed that when she made "Shit White Girls Say . . . to Black Girls" to expose some of the microaggressions black women deal with on a regular basis. (Thea Lim and Tami Winfrey Harris have written more about the sequence of events.)

Here is a round-up of some of the anti-oppressive "Shit Girls Say" videos I have found; each features a person of color giving us a glimpse into hir world.

Here is the original and its sequel:

Shit White Girls Say . . . to Black Girls

Shit White Girls Say . . . to Black Girls: 2

( More . . . )

Does anyone have more?

Tennessee GOP-drawn redistricting plan could cost Dems nine seats, officials say

Because I'm kind of n00b when it comes to the more detailed Voter Rights Laws, I couldn't explain to you how this is screwed up. I just know it is, as, apparently, does the author of the article. (Sher doesn't exactly display bias here, but the fact that he was paying close attention to race matters while reporting on the possible redistricting shows he is skeptical of Republican motive, I think.)

I found this on youtube while roaming today.

http://youtu.be/V6xKT9rq-i8

Someone has uploaded the whole of the 1997 version of Cinderella with Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother. I thought that it might be a worthwhile resource for some people, especially parents. I know that I spent ages ago looking for non-white portrayals of traditional fairy stories heroines for my goddaughter a while ago, and this was recommended but I couldn't find it at the time.

It is kinda crazily race-blind - Prince Charming is Filipino, his father is White and his mother is African-American - but that comes across as part of the fairytale feel of the whole thing. It's also got some really fun songs.

Anyway, I thought this might be of interest.

fire_fly once noted that white women's oppression plus men of color's oppression does not equal women of color's oppression. It is also the case that white trans people's oppression plus cis people of color's oppression does not equal trans people of color's oppression. The following comes from Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey:

NIMH [The National Institute for Mental Health] also reports that generally African-Americans, Latino/ as and Asians have much lower suicide rates than whites and American Indians; our sample [of transgender individuals] showed a different pattern of risk for suicide by race, with Black and Latino/a respondents showing dramatically elevated rates in comparison to their rates in the general population.

In fact, while 38% of the white transgender respondents reported having attempted suicide (which is already quite alarming, considering that only 1.6% of the general population in the US reports having attempted suicide), among the respondents of any of the other racial/ethnic groups listed (American Indian, Asian, Latino/a, White, and Multiracial) the percentage was higher.

In regards to suicide and other important matters the Black respondents faced oppression so much greater than the others that the organizations conducting the survey wrote a separate detail elaborating on their experiences, which can be found here:

Detail on the Black Respondents

Nicholas Peart talks about being young, black & male in New York City