Posts tagged: race
- On Looting in Haiti and New Orleans
- There is an institutionalized racism in the way these poor black disaster victims are treated. The victims of Katrina were treated with so much presumption, as if you could assume they were going to loot, because they were black. Just like we know that the people in Haiti are bad because they’re black. And: When the media [...] [22 Jan 2010]
- On whiteness
- “Are Lebanese white people?” we asked the 71-year-old gentleman who considered himself white. “Yes,” he said, “although they’re real dark.” How about Italian Catholics; are they white? Sure. And Jews? Yes. What about the Chinese? “Yes,” he said, “they go to the white schools.” And Mexicans? “They’re becoming more white,” he said. “More of them [...] [29 Dec 2009]
- On Facebook, MySpace and being ghetto
- On the one hand, the ghetto is a part of a city historically defined by race and class. On the other hand, being ghetto refers to a set of tastes that emerged as poor people of color developed fashion and cultural artifacts that proudly expressed their identity. Just as physical spaces and tastes are [...] [29 Dec 2009]
- Africa(n movie roles) for Africans
- Now, let’s start by saying that Jennifer Hudson is a capable actress. She blew Beyoncé out the water in Dreamgirls and by all accounts she did her thing in The Secret Life of Bees. But like all outfits aren’t for all weather conditions, all parts aren’t for all people. It was an outright shock to [...] [21 Dec 2009]
- On black representation in movies
- It’s absurd to expect every piece of black art to reflect everyone’s black experience, but that’s exactly what many black artists are expected to do. This discourages black artists from taking the kind of risks that make what they’re creating worth consuming, because unless you want to draw someone’s ire for “making black people look [...] [16 Dec 2009]
- Elin Nordegren: Angry White Woman?
- With just one swing of a golf club, Tiger Woods’s wife, Elin, has shattered, or at least cracked, the stereotype of the angry and uncontrollable black woman. I, along with what I suspect to be countless other black women, would like to thank her. Not that I condone violence against anyone, but for far too [...] [8 Dec 2009]
- On black folks and the movie “Precious”
- From the Los Angeles Times piece Black viewers are divided on film’s ‘Precious’-ness by Erin Aubry Kaplan. Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive — “Do the Right Thing,” “The Color Purple,” and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in “Tropic Thunder” come to mind. But that’s not [...] [30 Nov 2009]
- Latin America is …
- From The Future of Latin American Fiction (Part I). a talk by Jorge Volpi. Latin America is extravagant and irrational, nothing can be done about it; its dictators are savages and inhumane, but we miss them as characters of a novel; and we find solace in its inhabitants’ ability to maintain their will to dream in [...] [18 Nov 2009]
- On a decade of living in the South
- The northeast will always be home to me. That’s where I grew up. But the South is Grandmama House.1 Me in an old conversation with JT. Why yes, I did just quote myself in a blog post. As a kid, Down South was the land of Kountry Folk, people like loud-ass, country-ass, twangy-talking Tina and her quieter, [...] [14 Nov 2009]
- Thoughts on Barack Obama and Choosing Blackness
- I use “black” and refer to blackness and black culture in a variety of ways in this post. In some contexts, I mean “descended from Africans and living in the United States.” In others I mean “descended from Africans enslaved in the United States.” I tried to be clear, but sometimes that just isn’t enough. [...] [8 Jan 2009]