I carry around a Nexus One and an iPhone. Karanja carries around a Nokia 1600, the cheapest data-enabled phone you can buy ($25). Why? He does this so that he understands what his customers need and use. His clients aren’t your upper-class Blackberry toting professionals, they’re the “wananchi” (the ordinary person). That’s Erik Hersman of [...] [Posted: 14 May 2010]
One of the most rewarding aspect of researching and writing the book was my growing realization of the central role of gender in social and political life, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Reality television animated the discussion of gender by featuring unmarried young men and women dancing, singing, eating, and (in some shows) living [...] [Posted: 12 May 2010]
Historically, Mexican-Americans have generally been considered “white” in Texas; they served in white units of the segregated military, including the National Guard, and were allowed, during the Jim Crow years, to marry white (but not black) partners. In the early ’40s, the Texas Legislature even passed a “Caucasian Race Resolution,” which affirmed their status as [...] [Posted: 7 May 2010]
Every time immigration debates pop up, I think about how we’ve treated previous waves of immigrants. Each successive wave of newcomers was first viewed with suspicion and hostility. That suspicion and hostility eventually gives way to some degree of assimilation into whiteness. ‘The Beige and the Black’: Segregation in Marriage Twelve years ago, the New [...] [Posted: 1 May 2010]
All true, but mean-spirited small-mindedness is part of our tradition, which brings us to Benjamin Franklin. In 1753, he called the German immigrants flocking to Pennsylvania “generally the most stupid sort of their own nation” and warned: “They will soon outnumber us (and we) will not, in my opinion, be able to preserve our language, [...] [Posted: 1 May 2010]