Johnny Depp As Tonto Doesn’t Feel Quite Right

One of my old favorite TV shows gets an update.

Frankly I am a bit torn on this one:

The Hollywood image of Tonto once had the Lone Ranger’s sidekick wearing a thin headband and lots of dangling fringes. The latest Disney version has a shirtless Johnny Depp adorned with feathers, a face painted white with black stripes, and a stuffed crow on his head.

The character in the upcoming “The Lone Ranger” still speaks broken English and chants prayers. But Depp has said he’s less subservient, honors the proud American Indian warrior and displays a dry sense of humor seen throughout Indian Country. The production even hired a Comanche adviser, making it decidedly a Comanche story, and received the blessing of other tribes through ceremonies during filming.

Yet Disney has caught flak for what some say is the perpetuation of stereotypes through a character that lacks any real cultural traits. Moviegoers will have to wait until July 3 to see how all this plays out on screen. For now, they’re getting a glimpse through movie trailers that have left them both optimistic and angry, and wondering to what extent the new Tonto portrays actual American Indians.

I know Depp has some distant Native American blood in him, but of course, I can’t help but wish there was a full Native American they could have cast in the role of Tonto. And I did see a trailer for the movie the other day and it does make me cringe a bit hearing Depp speak in that broken English, presumably in the way they think a Native American would speak. But I also get how Hollywood works and without Depp the movie likely would not have been made.

But couldn’t he have played the Lone Ranger instead? Still trying to decide if I want to see this one. Here is a link to the full article which includes a trailer.

Most Twitter Hate Speech Comes From East Coast and South

Something tells me this isn’t about grandma.

I found this to be very interesting (from The Huffington Post):

The most hateful tweeters in the United States tend to live in the eastern half of the country, according to a new map that pinpoints hate speech from Twitter across country.

The map, created by geography students at Humboldt State University in California, looks at more than 150,000 geocoded tweets (tweets that say where the user is located) between June 2012 and April 2013, sorting for those that contained a racist, homophobic or anti-disability word. The researchers then decided whether or not the tweet was using the word in a hateful way.

According to our analysis: A majority of hateful tweets are coming from smaller towns and more rural areas. For example, some of the biggest spots for homophobic tweets are along the border of Oklahoma and Texas, and one of the biggest hubs of racist tweets is in a seemingly empty area of western Indiana. There are a lot more racist tweets coming out of an area in the middle of North Dakota than in the larger city of Fargo, for example. Homophobic tweets have a wider spread across the nation than racist ones, which are coming from the southeastern portion of the country more than anywhere else.

The project is a follow-up to a similar study that mapped racial slurs on Twitter in reaction to President Obama’s reelection in 2012. The students used The DOLLY Project (Digital OnLine Life and You), a huge archive of geolocated tweets, to collect data in both cases. This data can be used to track all kinds of tweets. There is also a map of where the word “grits” is most often tweeted (spoiler alert: it’s the south).

The interactive map lets you zoom as far as the county level on the map to pinpoint which counties across the U.S. wrote the most hateful tweets. You can look at all hateful tweets, tweets by category, or just at specific words. The map does not include sexist terms or terms that are offensive to the mentally disabled. Some of the terms shown are sort of outdated, which is most likely why some terms are less frequent than others.

Pleased to see that very little of this craziness comes out of California, which is not to say we don’t have our crazies. Be sure to click on the map in the original article, the interactive ability to focus on certain words is interesting. Of course the East Coast is much more densely populated so it is not too surprising that the total number of hate tweets coming out of there are much much higher. Here it is.

Jason Richwine Should Have His IQ Tested

I guess facts can be made to support any argument.

What an idiot. Here is what one of the leading researchers at a conservative think tank wrote a few years back about Hispanic immigrants to the U.S.

[n]o one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.

Wow. Goes to show that an education does not guarantee someone will not be an idiot.

The author of that statement, which came from a dissertation he wrote in college, though it has been shown that he still believes such drivel, is Jason Richwine, of the Heritage Foundation, one of the major opponents to immigration reform going on in Washington. No wonder Heritage is against immigration reform when they have people like Richwine working for them. Strangely, the Heritage Foundation is trying to back away from what Richwine wrote in that paper. Yet they keep him on staff and happen to agree with the implied point of his argument, that we should not let more Hispanic immigrants into the U.S.

Geez.

Here is a full article on this craziness.

Bigotry At The White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Ridiculous treatment.

This is an excerpt from The Huffington Post this morning. It is written by a physician and wife of a noted journalist who was attending the White House Correspondent’s dinner last week. She happens to be Muslim:

As I left the hotel and my husband went to the ballroom for the dinner, I realized he still had my keys. I approached the escalators that led down to the ballroom and asked the externally contracted security representatives if I could go down. They abruptly responded, “You can’t go down without a ticket.” I explained my situation and that I just wanted my keys from my husband in the foyer and that I wouldn’t need to enter in the ballroom. They refused to let me through. For the next half hour, they watched as I frantically called my husband but was unable to reach him.

Then something remarkable happened. I watched as they let countless other women through — all Caucasian — without even asking to see their tickets. I asked why they were allowing them to go freely when they had just told me that I needed a ticket. Their response? “Well, now we are checking tickets.” He rolled his eyes and let another woman through, this time actually checking her ticket. His smug tone, enveloped in condescension, taunted, “See? That’s what a ticket looks like.”

When I asked “Why did you lie to me, sir?” they threatened to have the Secret Service throw me out of the building — me, a 4’11″ young woman who weighs 100 pounds soaking wet, who was all prettied up in elegant formal dress, who was simply trying to reach her husband. The only thing on me that could possibly inflict harm were my dainty silver stilettos, and they were too busy inflicting pain on my feet at the moment. My suspicion was confirmed when I saw the men ask a blonde woman for her ticket and she replied, “I lost it.” The snickering tough-guy responded, “I’d be happy to personally escort you down the escalators ma’am.”

Like a malignancy, it had crept in when I least expected it — this repugnant, infectious bigotry we have become so accustomed to. “White privilege” was on display, palpable to passersby who consoled me. I’ve come to expect this repulsive racism in many aspects of my life, but when I find it entrenched in these smaller encounters is when salt is sprinkled deep into the wounds. In these crystallizing moments it is clear that while I might see myself as just another all-American gal who has great affection for this country, others see me as something less than human, more now than ever before.

When I asked why the security representatives offered to personally escort white women without tickets downstairs while they watched me flounder, why they threatened to call the Secret Service on me, I was told, “We have to be extra careful with you all after the Boston bombings.”

What a shame that she was treated like this. I hope the men who did this all lose their jobs over it, though I doubt it will happen. No one deserves this kind of treatment and humiliation, especially simply for their appearance since that is all these men could have known about her at the time. And so stupid that with people of color all must bear the brunt of stupid acts of individuals. But no one was paying extra attention to young white males after Aurora, Colorado’s theater shootings. Or the Newtown massacres. Or to white men after one shot up the Sikh Temple. Or many other incidents of stupid people doing awful things. But Dr. Jilani had to bear the brunt of the actions of stupid people. Strange again that those security guards only focused on the misguided interpretation of the Muslim religion by the Boston bombers, but he ignored that they were from the place that the Caucasian ethnicity was named, Caucasus. It was more convenient to focus on their radical religious ties than their skin color I guess. Read the must read full piece here.

Arrogant and Black Are Two Things That Should Not Dare Go Together

Some of her best friends are n-words.

You gotta love this woman’s proof that she is not racist:

Buena Vista Township Clerk Gloria Platko is resisting demands that she step down after another local official, Interim Township Manager Dexter Mitchell (a Democrat), taped a phone conversation in which Platko referred to Township Supervisor Dwayne Parker (also a Democrat) as “an arrogant nigger.”

The 63 year-old Democrat later apologized for the “slip of the tongue,” but shockingly insisted that her use of the slur doesn’t make her racist, because she has “eaten Thanksgiving dinner with black friends at their house.”

Here is the portion of the audio:

Read the full story here.

High School Hold Its Very First Integrated Prom!

Since I posted about this a while back, I wanted to pass on the update.

Hallelujah, the kids had their first integrated prom – ever! At this rate Georgia may catch up to the times in another 200 years.

Asian-American Fraternity Dons Blackface In Music Video

My daughter tipped me off to this craziness and I found this article on the excellent blog “Angry Asian Man”:

This is the kind of stuff that makes me shake my fist at the sky and wonder why the hell I ever bother… Over the years, I’ve seen an abundance of racist idiocy involving fraternities, from racist ragers to hate attacks. This is not necessarily a frat thing, so much as it is a dumbass-dudes-doing-dumbass-things-together thing. The latest incident comes from UC Irvine, and it involves an Asian American fraternity.

Oh yes, we Asian Americans are most certainly not immune to perpetuating our share of racist ignorance. The brothers of UCI’s Lambda Theta Delta recently posted a video (at 0:55), in which a member is seen performing inblackface. Like it ain’t no big deal. I don’t care about good or bad intentions, or why this video was made — this is some ignorant shit, and the people responsible need to know it.

Read the rest of his excellent take on this incident here.

The New KKK Looks Just As Silly As The Old One

The new KKK looks like the same fools to me.

Just heard about this interesting documentary the Discovery Channel did on the “New KKK” and their efforts to portray themselves as a bit more philanthropic.

Give me a break.

Check out this short excerpt from the show.

 

 

Once Again, The Actions of A Few Are Being Used To Paint A Whole Community

This is an excellent discussion about the unfortunate stereotyping, especially of Muslims, that incidents like the Boston bombings and the discovery that the two involved were Muslim bring to light. In it they bring up the truth that every time someone that is white does something bad like this it is amazing how quickly the discussion moves away from their being white to, well they are Chechen, or they are Muslim, or in a case like Newtown or Aurora they are mentally ill, etc. But when a black person does something, or a Muslim person, it indicts all blacks or all Muslims. In this video Dyson nails this point. But the other panelists make excellent similar points.

The Overreaction File – Racist Mexican Barbie Doll

Leave Barbie alone.

Calm down people.

Not everything is racist.

There are more than 200 Barbies in Mattel’s Dolls of the World collection, all dressed in costumes that pay homage to different countries. The collection debuted in 1980 with Parisian, British, and Italian dolls and is aimed at kids and adult collectors alike. But the most recent versions, especially ones representing Latin America, are causing controversy online. The newest Mexico Barbie, released in June 2012, has been rediscovered by Barbie enthusiasts — and is being called out by critics recently for being offensive rather than educational. “@Mattel, maybe #MexicoBarbie should come with a taco instead of a chihuahua- you know, just to be really clear,” tweeted Jennifer Morales on Thursday. “Of course #MexicanBarbie comes with a passport!” @SavannahLime pointed out on Twitter. “She doesn’t want to be deported!”

Give me a break. There are some real matters of racism out there. That the Barbie has on a traditional dress (and I have seen dresses like this at Mexican celebrations) and has the very popular Chihuahua with her, is not one of them. If you look at the other dolls in the collection, representing other countries, they all wear traditional garments.

If they want to go after Barbie, there are better things to make a stink over.