White or something else?

Thank God, some people get how stupid our concepts of race are. I think I was tipped to this article by the blog, Mixed American Life, and I really wish it were required reading. Here is an excerpt:

It’s been widely mentioned among a certain set on social media networks that the suspect in the Boston bombings is Chechen, and therefore, “Caucasian.” The good-natured purpose of this being to foil the usual insipid bigotry let loose in similar situations, which assumes that all terrorists are non-White, that Muslims are of a separate, lesser race, and/or that any particular terrorist act is part of some larger, epochal war of “us versus them.”

All of these racist conclusions are ridiculous, and would be easily refuted with the most basic and widely-accepted social and scientific data of contemporary times. However, stating that because the suspect is from the region of the Caucasus Mountains he “is White” is a troubling statement. Most readily, this reifies a notion of Whiteness. But additionally, this overlooks the history of the term “Caucasian,” and how the racial history of anthropology brought this term into common parlance. To a person from the United States, where “Caucasian” is a synonym for racial Whiteness, there is an etymological connection that would allow you to say this, and think you are correct. But “Whiteness” has always only ever been exactly what “White people” want it to be. What part of the world a person is from has little to no affect on whether anyone thinks s/he is actually “White”, because “White” is a social class, not a place.

“Caucasian” was first identified as a race by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1779, as one of five: the others being Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. These categories were based upon the measurement of the human skull. While he was a proponent of “Degreneration Theory,” that theorized that all humans were originally Caucasian before having their appearance change due to poor living conditions, he was able to note what is now widely known—that phenotypical differences within races are as large as those between races. In other words, in any measureable characteristic, there is as great a difference between individual Africans, and as great a difference between individual Europeans, as there is between Africans and Europeans compared.

I sincerely hope you take the time to read the rest of this excellent, not long, article that blows up our notion of what divides us. I just don’t get how people, once they are educated to these facts, can still see people in terms of race. Here is the link.

Reminder that this is what matters.

Sometimes it takes tragedies like the Moore, Oklahoma tornado to make us realize we are all people who just want to live and love. The above photo says it all. No color, no race, no differences.

Here is the story behind the photo.

He had to go there.

Good heavens, this was a stupid thing to say:

Sergio Garcia crossed a line Tuesday he never should have toed.

At the European Tour’s annual gala dinner ahead of its flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship in England, Garcia responded to a question asking if he would have dinner with Tiger Woods at next month’s U.S. Open at Merion.

His reply, according to The Guardian: “We will have him round every night. We will serve fried chicken.”

The comment can only be construed as racially charged, particularly if one harkens back to remarks made by Fuzzy Zoeller in 1997 after Tiger Woods won the Masters. Zoeller, the 1979 Masters winner, was asked about Woods’ record-setting performance and injected several racial undertones – not to mention some overtones – into his response.

“That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well,” Zoeller said. “He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it? … or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”

I just wish the racists would be creative enough to come up with something fresh, rather than bringing out the same old tired stereotypes. And don’t you just love those non-apology apologies. Here is Garcia’s:

“I apologize for any offense that may have been caused by my comment on stage during the European Tour Players’ Awards dinner,” Garcia said. “I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner.”

“May have caused.”

Wow. Here is the full article.

Totally senseless.

Well worth lending your voice to. I got this email the other day and of course e-signed the petition. Hope you will as well. Reminds me of what Martin Luther King used to say: “Injustice anywhere (and to anyone) threatens justice everywhere (and to anyone). Parentheses are my additions to his wise words.

32-year-old Mark Carson was walking down a street in New York City on Friday evening when a man came up to him and his friends, yelled “f—ot” and “queer,” and shot him in the head.

Mark’s horrific death was part of a string of anti-LGBT violence in New York City.

Hate crimes are sadly nothing new, but we’ve written an open letter to the mayors of every major U.S. city and all 50 governors to capture the spirit we’re all feeling right now: horror, outrage, and a determination that love will conquer hate even in a moment as awful as this one.

If you agree, sign on to the letter linked here to demand equality now.

Thanks. Bigotry and hatred are just so sad.

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.

The changing concept of “race.”

Saw this article on the blog Mixed American Life. America, and the world, is indeed changing when it comes to seeing more and more mixed relationships and kids. Glad to see it. Love does’t know color or ethnicity. Here is an excerpt:

President Obama is biracial, and in media, multiracials are everywhere. More than ever, they’re touting their mixed heritage.

Comedians Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are biracial, half-black and half-white. They made their names playing black characters on MADtv. But last year, they premiered their own show, where they take on multiracial issues with glee.

But taking on such issues doesn’t always go smoothly, as music diva Beyonce discovered in a commercial for L’Oreal. In it, she declared the secret to her skin was a “mosaic of all the faces before it.” The screen flashed the phrases: “African-American. Native American. French.”

The backlash was immediate. The singer was criticized for abandoning her black identity. But the multiracial community embraced her.

It’s not just that there are more multiracial and biracial people. The government is now counting the group differently. For the first time in modern history, the 2000 Census allowed us to check off more than one box for race.

The last Census showed 9 million people, about 3 percent of the population, reporting more than one race. That’s an increase of one-third from the decade before.

“The youngest age group, kids under 5 [years old], 7 percent are identified as having more than one race group,” says Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. “If we look at the elderly, over 65, it’s only 1 percent.”

That means more people are choosing spouses outside their own race. The change, Passel says, comes from evolving attitudes. Over the past few decades, he says more people have simply come to view intermarriage as no big deal.

“More than two-thirds of people in our surveys, when asked how they’d feel about someone in their own family marrying someone of a different background, said they’d be fine with it,” he says.

Ask young people — those under 40 — and the number rises to more than 80 percent.

To read the full article go here.

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.

This is one sharp lady.

The MSNBC talk show host and college professor has a white mother and a black father, though she self-identifies as black.