Boing Boing » racism

Shell's racist pesticide ad, 1957

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:02:09 +0000

From 1957, a disturbing, patronizing, racist Shell ad for pesticides, selling the superiority of big agribusiness.

Documentary on hidden victims of Greek austerity that's crowdfunded, free & CC-licensed

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:50:02 +0000

Into the Fire writes, "Into The Fire is a film with a difference. Besides being a hard hitting documentary which shows the plight of refugees and migrants amidst a collapsing Greek economy, it's also an experiment in new film production and distribution techniques. A year ago, we made a first, crowd-funded trip to Athens. We filmed shocking levels of racism, police brutality, and right-wing extremism - as well as the courageous and inspiring people who are organising against it.

"Into the Fire will be released on 21st April on the internet. We crowd-funded the film and crowd-sourced the subtitles: it's been translated into eight languages using the open subtitler Amara. We are also using crowd-sourcing as the release and distribution strategy for the documentary: anyone who signs up to participate will receive embedding details ahead of time, and the film will be released on various websites simultaneously. The audience becomes the distribution network."

Django Unchained: "A white revenge fantasy"

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:54:08 +0000

Noah Smith (who is white) saw "Django," and loved it. "Not for the cartoonish violence (which was OK, nothing special) or for Tarantino's trademark witty banter (which was a bit subdued)," he says, but for its politics. "I'm pretty sure that for all its elements of blaxploitation, Django's politics are all about white people," writes Smith. "It's not a black revenge fantasy; it's a white revenge fantasy." Django isn't black people's story of slavery: it's white people's.

Database documenting payouts to UK slave-owners to be launched for public use

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:30:17 +0000

The British government paid out £20 million to compensate 3,000 slave-owning families for the loss of their "property" when slave ownership was abolished in Britain's colonies in 1833. At the time, that sum amounted to 40% of the UK's annual spending budget; today, one could calculate the total value of the 19th-century payouts to be around £16.5 billion (=USD $25 billion; the actual sum can vary, depending on how you calculate).

In The Independent, an article digging in to the data, which will be released this week in the form of a publicly accessible database.

The previously unseen records show exactly who received what in payouts from the Government when slave ownership was abolished by Britain – much to the potential embarrassment of their descendants. Dr Nick Draper from University College London, who has studied the compensation papers, says as many as one-fifth of wealthy Victorian Britons derived all or part of their fortunes from the slave economy.As a result, there are now wealthy families all around the UK still indirectly enjoying the proceeds of slavery where it has been passed on to them.

According to a researcher quoted in the piece, rich and socially prominent families benefitted, but so did "very ordinary men and women." The benefits of slavery affected "the entire spectrum" of the UK's economy. The newly accessible data is sure to spark renewed debate over reparations to former British slave colonies.

Read the full report: Britain's colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition (via Ned Sublette)

"The blue eyed people get 5 extra minutes of recess, while the brown-eyed people have to stay in"

Mark Frauenfelder — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:34:52 +0000

Over at Dangerous Minds Melissa Sweat wrote about the 1968 "blue eyes/brown eyes" classroom experiment.

The class of third graders are told that blue-eyed people are smarter and better than brown-eyed people. Blue-eyed people get an extra five minutes of recess, and the two groups aren’t allowed to play with one another on the playground. The brown-eyed children wear fabric collars so they can be identified from a distance. When, during recess, one of the children calls the other “brown-eyed” as an epithet and the child retaliates by slugging the taunter, Jane Elliott does what any good teacher would do: the child is reprimanded, but the overall exercise continues.

It was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 that Elliott ran her first “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise in her Riceville, Iowa classroom. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. Below, is a portion from the 1985 PBS Frontline documentary A Class Divided which features the ABC footage as well as clips of a class reunion.

Blue eyes/brown eyes: Jane Elliott’s controversial classroom experiment on racism, 1968

Stupid sorority insults Mexicans

David Pescovitz — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:03:44 +0000

Members of the Chi Omega sorority at Penn State posed for this photo during a "Mexican-themed" party. Chi Omega's president apologized and the university is "taking the matter very seriously." (CNN)

Report: Black mother who sought help as sons drowned during Sandy was denied

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 13:19:36 +0000

Two brothers, ages 2 and 4, were swept away Monday night when waves of water crashed into an SUV driven by their mom in Staten Island. They were later found dead. A story now emerging: their mother, who is black, went door to door begging for help—and was turned away. (via Steve Silberman)

San Francisco's Travelodge on Market Street accused of racism

David Pescovitz — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:28:53 +0000

My friend Jason Perkins, who owns several nightclubs in the San Francisco Bay Area and has an impeccable reputation, says that he and legendary guitarist Leo Nocentelli of The Meters were treated to some ol' fashioned hardcore racism last night courtesy of the Travelodge on Market Street near SF's Mission District. Jason writes:

"I bought 4 rooms for the band and prepaid for them on debit card. After sound check, Leo and the band went to the hotel and tried to check in. The manager refused to accept 3 of 4 members credit cards for incidentals (4th member is Rich Vogel/white dude). Leo called me and (my family and I) drove to the hotel at 7:30 pm. I asked what the hell and manager pointed at 3 members and said he wouldn't accept credit cards and "those people" need to pay cash deposit. When I asked what did he mean by "those people" - he pointed at Leo and said "black people."
I felt like I was hit in the face. It was stunning. I called the police and when they arrived, the police went through it with him and then he caught himself and said that they cannot check in any longer as he didn't feel "safe." He then refused to talk. Leo and Bill Dickens then had to console ME as I was beyond upset and they explained that as older fellows who grew up in the South, they understood this happens....
The manager refused to give his name until Police instructed him to give a contact reference and that is when I received a card for "Ginger" (Latu) who now supposedly does not work there!
I have called the hotel five times. No one will respond."

I called Travelodge myself and was told by the person answering the phone that a man named Matthew is the manager, and that he is in a meeting. He said he did not know Matthew's last name. I left a message for Matthew and also with the media relations department of Wyndham Hotel Group, franchisors of Travelodge.

There is an active thread discussing this on the Facebook page for The New Parish where Nocentelli is performing this weekend.

UPDATE at 12:39pm: Rob Myers from Wyndham's media relations department just called me back. He said he is aware of the story and that "all of our hotels are franchised, meaning they are independently owned and operated, so certainly this is not our policy, these allegations that exist here, but it wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on it. It would be more appropriate for the hotel owners to comment on it."

Myers said he will ask the hotel to respond to my request for comment. He also asked for the names of those involved so that he can reach out to them. I sent him a link to this post and forwarded his contact info to Jason Perkins.

UPDATE at 1:28pm: Just posted on the Travelodge USA Facebook page:

Thank you to everyone who has brought this to our attention. We are deeply troubled to hear of this allegation. This is not in line with the quality of service that we expect guests to receive when staying at one of our franchised hotels. Please know that we are looking into the matter.

UPDATE at 1:45pm: Someone posting at The Examiner apparently reached the Travelodge's "Mr. Matthew":

Travelodge Central manager who identified himself only as Matthew W., claims hotel policy is to deny access to those whose credit cards reflect insufficient funds.
When asked if Mr. Nocentelli’s credit card had been run through for a credit check, Mr. W. responded, “there are cameras in the hotel.” Mr. W. then stated he was being harassed and hung up the phone.
"The Meters' Leo Nocentelli denied lodging for being black"

UPDATE at 4:35pm: The New Orleans Times-Picauyne interviewed Leo Nocentelli who went into greater detail about what happened before Jason Perkins arrived at the hotel. According to Nocentlli, the hotel clerk demanded $100 cash for incidentals from Leo and the other band members who hadn't yet checked in, and an argument ensued. "Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli's confrontation at San Francisco motel making waves"

UPDATE Sunday 10/21: From the East Bay Express:

Perkins told us he argued with the manager through a hole in a plastic window, pressing him as to why he would not even let the band into the lobby. The manager told Perkins the hotel "didn't take credit cards from those people," finally admitting that by "those people" he meant "black people."
When Perkins called the police to the scene, they said this was not the first time they'd had similar complaints about that Travelodge. The police tried to negotiate a full refund for Perkins, which the hotel denied him.
"An SF Travelodge Allegedly Denies Guitarist Leo Nocentelli Lodging, New Parish Management Calls It Racism"

Violentacrez exposé should be taken on its own merits

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:12:20 +0000

Freddie deBoer doesn't like Gawker's publication of an exposé on infamous internet creep Violentacrez: "I'll take honest depravity over depravity masked as righteousness."

It's not sympathy for ViolentAcrez that moves me, but rather contempt for the deep hypocrisy of Gawker, along with its always-hilarious sanctimony of convenience. I would argue that, in fact, Gawker's writers and audience partake in essentially the same thing that many Redditors who frequent the uglier sub-Reddits do: being titillated, in various ways, by content that they simultaneously disclaim and enjoy.

Without casting aspersions on deBoer's motives here, I can't help but notice that this looks a lot like the oldest steering trick in the book: if you don't like something that someone has written (or the journalist who wrote it), try and associate it with the publisher.

If the publisher has a good reputation, the aim is to to force the institution to take collective responsibility for the individual's beliefs—for example, to cast a contributor's opinion as that of the publisher itself.

If the publisher has a questionable reputation, however -- let's say, Gawker -- the intent is to cast the contributor's work as untrustworthy by association, regardless of its qualities.

In both cases, it encourages the reader to think not of the story's facts, but the moral and intellectual abstractions surrounding its publication: the politics, the motives, the journalistic legitimacy. The publisher, the writer and the story all become props in the play of ideas.

DeBoer's opinions about Gawker are interesting, but in picking Violentacrez as his horse--casting a explicit equivalency between what he did and what Gawker does--I think he's made a terrible mistake.

Consider two simple truths of this story:

1. Michael Brutsch acted in public, made only lazy attempts to pseudonymize himself as Violentacrez, and openly revealed his identity to others who knew him. Even if we accept the crazy proposition that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in all this, its was used often to conceal his own invasion of other people's.

2. Brutch's public activities -- he maintained a hugely popular 'jailbait' forum which sexualized children; boasted of sexually exploiting his own step-daughter; and participated in a 'creepshots' forum that preyed on unsuspecting girls -- are definitively matters of public interest. Moreover, it's all taking place at one of the world's best and biggest web forums: Brutch was a key player in exploiting Reddit's strong free-speech policies and its weak management to create a safe place for misogynists, racists and pedophiles to gather and acculturate.

There's nothing criminal here--like deBoer, I'd guess that most of us following the story are free speech maximalists. The world won't be a safer or less misogynistic place for the downfall of Violentacrez. But it's absolutely creditable to write about it, and about him, no matter where you're doing it.

If you want to argue over institutional legitimacy, publishing Chen's exposé surely improves Gawker's reputation ... even if you think that it's got a long way to go.

Much of deBoer's post is given to dressing down New York lefties and writer Bhaskar Sunkara over a tweet that deBour misunderstood. But he's shooting straight when he makes this point:

ViolentAcrez is a deplorable guy. But he is honest in his ugly behavior ... it is a culture of open depravity. Gawker, and the larger scene of elite New York media it exemplifies, are something more devious, something more dangerous.

I just don't buy it. Who can, hand on heart, prefer the "honest depravity" of a prolific victimizer of the weak over the "hypocritical" journalism that exposes him? It's an entirely too abstract--and too privileged--viewpoint.

What it's like to be a black man working in a tech startup where white guys are free to be racist

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 20:59:20 +0000

This first-person account of Qu33riousity's experience of racism in a Bay Area startup will no doubt ring familiar to other "others" who've been there, too. And, it will no doubt inspire some number of privileged white guys to post comments about how wrong he is. The startup is not named, but it would appear to be this one, a place that practically invented "brogramming." There's a lot of talk this week about how great a recent recruitment ad from this company is (video link).

Update: the author has removed his post from public view. A person claiming to be the author contacted Boing Boing today and asked us to take down this blog post linking to it, because he is pursuing legal action against the company. A Google cache remains.

Thomas Jefferson, enthusiastic, brutal slaver

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 03:59:46 +0000

Update: Be sure to read Annette Gordon-Reed's rebuttal to Wiencek's biography.

Marilyn sez, "My historian friend Henry Wiencek was distressed when he found, halfway into his research on Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves a new book about Thomas Jefferson, that generations of historians had been covering up Jefferson's dark side: he wasn't the lenient, soft-hearted, reluctant slave owner that he'd been made out to be. He found he could make money by raising slaves and selling them, and he allowed the littlest boys who worked under miserable conditions in his nail factory to be beaten if they were disobedient. Preview of the book in this month's Smithsonian Magazine."

We can be forgiven if we interrogate Jefferson posthumously about slavery. It is not judging him by today’s standards to do so. Many people of his own time, taking Jefferson at his word and seeing him as the embodiment of the country’s highest ideals, appealed to him. When he evaded and rationalized, his admirers were frustrated and mystified; it felt like praying to a stone. The Virginia abolitionist Moncure Conway, noting Jefferson’s enduring reputation as a would-be emancipator, remarked scornfully, “Never did a man achieve more fame for what he did not do..."
Once, a missing bundle of rod had started a fight in the nailery that got one boy’s skull bashed in and another sold south to terrify the rest of the children—“in terrorem” were Jefferson’s words—“as if he were put out of the way by death.” Perhaps this very bundle was the cause of the fight.
...The critical turning point in Jefferson’s thinking may well have come in 1792. As Jefferson was counting up the agricultural profits and losses of his plantation in a letter to President Washington that year, it occurred to him that there was a phenomenon he had perceived at Monticello but never actually measured. He proceeded to calculate it in a barely legible, scribbled note in the middle of a page, enclosed in brackets. What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. Jefferson wrote, “I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.” His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The percentage was predictable.
In another communication from the early 1790s, Jefferson takes the 4 percent formula further and quite bluntly advances the notion that slavery presented an investment strategy for the future. He writes that an acquaintance who had suffered financial reverses “should have been invested in negroes.” He advises that if the friend’s family had any cash left, “every farthing of it [should be] laid out in land and negroes, which besides a present support bring a silent profit of from 5. to 10. per cent in this country by the increase in their value.”
...And this world was crueler than we have been led to believe. A letter has recently come to light describing how Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills. This passage about children being lashed had been suppressed—deliberately deleted from the published record in the 1953 edition of Jefferson’s Farm Book, containing 500 pages of plantation papers. That edition of the Farm Book still serves as a standard reference for research into the way Monticello worked.
...It was during the 1950s, when historian Edwin Betts was editing one of Colonel Randolph’s plantation reports for Jefferson’s Farm Book, that he confronted a taboo subject and made his fateful deletion. Randolph reported to Jefferson that the nailery was functioning very well because “the small ones” were being whipped. The youngsters did not take willingly to being forced to show up in the icy midwinter hour before dawn at the master’s nail forge. And so the overseer, Gabriel Lilly, was whipping them “for truancy.”

The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson [Smithsonian]

Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves [Amazon]

(Thanks, Marilyn!)

Shit White People Do, part umptybillion: "Les Indes galantes—Les Sauvages" (video)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:20:32 +0000

[Video Link]

BB Community moderator Antinous (the person who nukes your comments at Boing Boing when you act like a dick) plucked this gem from the jaws of YouTube and says,

I could watch this a hundred times and find something new to be horrified at every time. I love Rameau's music, but who thought that it was a good idea to have the singers doing the chicken dance in front of a giant turkey cloaca while clenching corncob pipes in their teeth?
You need to see it on a proper monitor to appreciate the full cavalcade of racialist nuances.

The opera-ballet shown, "The Noble Savages" is by French Baroque era composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. More about its history here, and you can buy the music on Amazon if you're so inclined. I can maybe give the dude a break, seeing as how it was all, like, 1725 when he wrote it and stuff, man. But there can be no forgiveness for any of the contemporary humans involved in this production.

Delta refuses boarding to Poop Strong man for flying while brown and wearing the security theater shirt I designed

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:00:23 +0000

Back in 2007, I designed a shirt for Woot! that featured a screaming eagle clutching an unlaced shoe and a crushed water bottle, surrounded by the motto MOISTURE BOMBS ZOMG TERRORISTS ZOMG GONNA KILL US ALL ZOMG ZOMG ALERT LEVEL BLOODRED RUN RUN TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES. Among the lucky owners of this garment is Arijit "Poop Strong" Guha, who proudly wore it this week as he headed for a Delta flight from Buffalo-Niagara International Airport to his home in Phoenix.

But it was not to be. First, the ~~TSA~~ Delta agents questioned him closely about the shirt, and made him agree to change it, submit to a secondary screening and board last. He complied with these rules, but then he was pulled aside by multiple Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority cops, more TSA, and a Delta official and searched again. No one found anything untoward, but --

The Delta official told Arijit he wouldn't be allowed to board, and neither would his wife. Period.

When Arijit complained about this, the Niagara Transport cops got "aggressive," questioning him further and noting in their discussions that "he looks foreign." Now Arijit understood that the problem was Flying While Brown. The Niagara Transport cops had lots of dumb questions, like why Arijit's wife hadn't taken his last name, why he had opted out of the pornoscanner, and then they sicced the drug-seeking dogs on him.

Delta rebooked them for a flight the next day, but didn't offer Arijit and his wife a hotel room overnight -- and when they turned up at the airport, they discovered that their "confirmed" seats weren't confirmed, and unless eight passengers on the oversold flight agreed to fly later, they wouldn't be getting on that plane, either.

It turns out that Delta has a pattern of removing brown people from its airplanes when its pilots and passengers evince thinly veiled (or obvious) racist fears, too.

Having been booted from our flight, the transit police now began to aggressively question us. At one point, I was asked where my brother lives (he was the one who gifted me the shirt). A bit surprised by the irrelevant question, I paused for a moment before answering.
“You had to think about that one. How come?,” she asked. I explained he recently moved. “Where'd he move from?” “Michigan,” I respond. “Michigan, what's that?,” she says. At this point, the main TSA agent who'd questioned me earlier interjected: “He said ‘Michigan’.” Unable to withhold my snark, I responded with an eye-rolling sneer: “You've never heard of Michigan?”
This response did not please her partner, a transit cop named Mark. Mark grabbed his walkie-talkie and alerted his supervisor and proceeded to request that he be granted permission to question me further in a private room. His justification?: “First he hesitated, then he gave a stupid answer.” Michigan, my friends, is a stupid answer.
And then, he decided to drop any façade of fair treatment: the veil was lifted, this was about who I was and how I looked: “And he looks foreign.”
Well, Buffalo is pretty close to Canada, so maybe he thought I looked Canadian. What does a Canadian look like anyway? Whatever it is, I’m sure that’s precisely what he was thinking. Certainly he wasn’t implying that dark-skinned people are not real Americans and that white people are the only true Americans. (I wonder what those who settled this land well before the arrival of Europeans would have to say about that.)

Arijit Vs. Delta

Neo-Nazi MEP from Hungary discovers he is Jewish

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:00:46 +0000

A Hungarian neo-Nazi leader has had to retire from professional antisemitism because he discovered he was Jewish. Csanad Szegedi, who had decried "Jewishness" in Hungary's political class, and referred to Jews as "lice-infested, dirty murderers," was outed by a rival within the neo-Nazi movement, who revealed that Szegedi's maternal grandmother was a Jewish Auschwitz survivor, making him Jewish as well. From an AP story in the NYT:

The fallout of Szegedi's ancestry saga has extended to his business interests. Jobbik executive director Gabor Szabo is pulling out of an Internet site selling nationalist Hungarian merchandise that he owns with Szegedi. Szabo said his sister has resigned as Szegedi's personal assistant.
In the 2010 tape, former convict Zoltan Ambrus is heard telling Szegedi that he has documents proving Szegedi is Jewish. The right-wing politician seems genuinely surprised by the news — and offers EU funds and a possible EU job to Ambrus to hush it up.
Ambrus, who served time in prison on a weapons and explosives conviction, apparently rejected the bribes. He said he secretly taped the conversation as part of an internal Jobbik power struggle aimed at ousting Szegedi from a local party leadership post. The party's reaction was swift.

Hungary Far-Right Leader Discovers Jewish Roots

A moveable mosque: One young Muslim woman's daily photoblog (video)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 16:41:41 +0000

The "30 Mosques" guys are producing some wonderful "30 Days Ramadan" videos this year that really give you a sense of what it's like to be a Muslim person in America. I enjoyed this one, featuring a young woman named Deena who loses her job, then decides chronicle her life through a photoblog. More about the project here. Subscribe to their video channel here. Deena's photoblog is here, and full of beautiful things. (thanks, Bassam Tariq!)

Crazy stuff they'll teach in Louisiana's publicly funded charter schools

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:12:01 +0000

Louisiana governor (and retired exorcist) Bobby Jindal has signed an aggressive charter school bill that will transfer millions in tax dollars to religious academies run by evolution-denying, homophobic, climate-change-denying Christian extremists. Mother Jones's Deanna Pan went for a dig through these schools' official texts and discovered that Louisiana's publicly funded education system will soon tell some of its luckiest students that the KKK "achieved a certain respectability" by fighting bootleggers; "the majority of slave holders treated their slaves well;" dragons might be real; "dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time," and many other fun facts.

3. "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."—America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994...
7. The Great Depression wasn't as bad as the liberals made it sound: "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath…Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots and exaggerated statistics representing the number of unemployed and homeless people in America."—United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996...
10. Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson were a couple of hacks: "[Mark] Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless…Twain's skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel."—Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University, 2001
"Several of [Emily Dickinson's] poems show a presumptuous attitude concerning her eternal destiny and a veiled disrespect for authority in general. Throughout her life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life."—Elements of Literature for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University, 2001...
12. Gay people "have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists."—Teacher's Resource Guide to Current Events for Christian Schools, 1998-1999, Bob Jones University Press, 1998

One text also decries mathematical set theory as ungodly.

14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools

Antisemitic Elmo

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:50:28 +0000

Elmo was removed from Central Park zoo in an ambulance after embarking on a anti-semitic tirade: "the scariest Elmo I've ever seen in my life," observed a bystander. Video link via Gothamist, The Awl, etc.

Update: There is also footage of Antisemitic Elmo screaming "TOUCH MY SHIT," etc.

Dean Obeidallah: "Sacha Cohen's movie is a modern-day minstrel show"

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:40:59 +0000

Comedian and former attorney Dean Obeidallah, co-director of the previously-Boinged documentary project, "The Muslims Are Coming!," is not a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie, "The Dictator." Regarding Cohen as "Gen. Shabazz Aladeen," the leader of a fictitious Arab country, Obeidallah writes: "Cohen, who is not of Arab heritage, plays this Arab character while sporting a long fake beard and speaking in a strong Arabic accent, which would be fine, except the character is showcasing the worst stereotypes of Arabs." (CNN.com)

Hasan Minhaj nails the Ashton Kutcher/PopChips dumb racist ad debacle (funny video)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:58:45 +0000

[Video Link] "You have a shitty accent. You're not even being racist correctly. If you're gonna be racist, come correct with your racism."—Hasan Minhaj. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook.

Anil Dash, whose familiar mug appears briefly in Hasan's video here, has a few things to say about the matter.

(via Aman Ali)

"Klan, Klam, and Oyster" bar in Georgia displays racist sign calling President Obama the n-word

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:06:10 +0000

This just in: racists remain racist. Local news, HuffPo, and MSNBC's The Ed Show have reported on the shocking roadside sign below, but the bar's website (above) includes a collection of past signs, a horribly dated mouse trail effect, and the inability to correctly spell the word "original." All very troubling. (screenshot below courtesy Fox News Atlanta)

Update on killing of elderly black Marine veteran by police: no charges will be filed

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:06:29 +0000

No criminal charges will be filed in the fatal police shooting of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old Marine vet. He was shot to death in his White Plains, NY apartment after his medical alert device accidentally went off and signalled police to his apartment. According to reports, audio recordings captured by that device showed that a responding officer used racial slurs in addressing the man.

Coverage around the web: CNN, Associated Press, CBS NYC, NY Daily News, The Journal News, NY Mag.

Anthony Carelli, the White Plains police officer who killed Chamberlain, has been accused in a separate racially-charged incident of police brutality.

African Men, Hollywood Stereotypes (video)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:37:27 +0000

[Video Link] A new video for Mama Hope, by Joe Sabia and crew.

Wouldn't it be better if African men weren't always depicted as warlords or victims?
Written by Benard, Brian, Derrick, Gabriel and the Mama Hope Team
Directed and Edited by Joe Sabia
Executive Produced and Shot by Bryce Yukio Adolphson
Produced by Nyla Rodgers
Motion Graphics by Jason Chandra
Sound by Equal Sonics
Original Music by Michael Thurber

Black London firefighter beaten, tazed and charged for offering assistance to cops had his complaint buried

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 05:22:18 +0000

London's Metropolitan police are at the centre of another set of awful racism allegations, the tenth in three weeks. Edric Kennedy-Macfoy is a black London fireman who trained as a police constable. While coming home late one night, dressed in a suit, he stopped to offer assistance to a policeman after seeing a young black man throw a rock at the officer's van. Before he could speak, he says the officer in the van shouted "Fuck off you prick" at him. He moved on to a line of police officers who were facing a group of unruly young people to offer his assistance to them and to complain about the abuse from the van-driver. Before he could speak to them, he says the officers shouted abuse at him, then pulled him bodily out of his car through the window. He says he showed the officers his empty hands and calmly repeated that he was a fireman offering assistance. He says the police demanded that nearby people stop recording the skirmish with their phones ("Turn those fucking cameras off"). Then he was tazed, without warning (a fact the officer who shot him does not contest).

Then it got worse. The police then arrested Kennedy-Macfoy and asked the prosecution service to prosecute him, which would have cost him his job if they'd been successful. When he complained, the police buried his paperwork and did not refer it to the independent complaints commission (they say it was an oversight). The firefighter says he only complained because the police sought to prosecute him, saying that he would have settled for an apology otherwise because "People make mistakes; you've got good cops and bad cops." When his case went to trial, several police gave testimony against him.

He says that he has a history of being pulled over by the police while driving his Audi ("Oh, you know, loads of these cars get stolen, so we just need to check you are who you say you are, blah blah blah") but that when his white co-worker borrows his car, he doesn't get pulled over.

Kennedy-Macfoy's solicitor, Shamik Dutta, of Bhatt Murphy solicitors, voiced concerns at his client's allegations, saying: "The question many people are bound to ask is why an off-duty firefighter, wearing a pinstriped suit and offering assistance to the police, should have been dragged from his car, shot with a Taser, locked up for many hours and then prosecuted for an offence he did not commit by the very officers he was trying to help.
"Our client now expects a comprehensive investigation which examines what role his race has had in the horrific events he has been forced to suffer."

Black fireman says he was abused and Tasered by Met

Screaming black female circumcision cake controversial

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:34:14 +0000

Swedish culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth cut into an unusual cake at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm this Saturday, and found herself at the center of a controversy some might say could have been predicted.

The remarkable cake design--featuring a edible black torso and the artist's head screaming as guests tucked in--was intended to draw attention to female genital mutilation in Africa.

Campaigners, however, say it is itself an unacceptable caricature. From Sweden's The Local:

"In our view, this simply adds to the mockery of racism in Sweden," [said] Kitimbwa Sabuni, spokesperson for the National Afro-Swedish Association."This was a racist spectacle."
... the culture minister began cutting a large cake shaped like a black woman, symbolically starting at the clitoris. Makode Aj Linde, the artist who created the installation and whose head is part of the cake cut by the minister, wrote about the "genital mutilation cake" on his Facebook page.
"Before cutting me up she whispered, 'Your life will be better after this' in my ear," he wrote in a caption next to the partially eaten cake.

Minister in 'racist circumcision outrage' [The Local]

Quien es mas malo: Tennessee vs Arizona

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 01:11:09 +0000

Tennessee and Arizona have been locked in a race to see which state can past the worst, most invasive, least constitutional anti-woman and racist legislation. In case you've lost track of which state is winning the race to the bottom, Skepchick provides a helpful scorecard. Arizona makes a strong showing, but I think that, for the moment, Tennessee is in the lead for most barbaric state in the union.

Also this week, Tennessee senators approved an update to the state’s abstinence-only education policy – which, I should add, doesn’t work seeing as the state has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country – which would outlaw the teaching of “gateway sexual activity.” I know what you’re thinking: what is this “gateway sex” all the kids are talking about? Is it as awesome as oral?
According to Tennessee legislatures, “gateway sexual activities” are kissing and hand holding. You know, things that small children do. Joyous things that bring us closer together, as humans. Ways we express affection every day. Evil.
The bill would warn teens about the dangers of kissing and hand holding, and prohibit teachers from demonstrating such activities. I’m not really clear on whether that means a teacher would be fired for, say, kissing his wife when she picks him up at the end of the day. And what about the teachers of small children who need their hand held every now and again? Off limits? Again, unsure.
What I am sure about is that a bill effectively warning teens about affection is one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. But what do you think? Is Arizona worse for increasingly limiting the rights women have over their own bodies, or is Tennessee worse for providing us with a future world full of idiots who think evolution and global warming are myths and holding hands is a sin?

Tennessee vs Arizona: Which is the Worst?

Police officer in fatal shooting of Marine vet ID'd, was sued in 2008 racism and brutality case

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:48:31 +0000

Democracy Now has a big update in the homicide of 68-year-old Kenneth Chamberlain, a black Marine vet shot dead at his home by police in White Plains, New York, last November after he accidentally set off his wearable medical alert device. A previous BB post on the story is here. The victim's son and other advocates have been pressuring authorities to release the name of the officer involved:

Documented in audio recordings, the White Plains police reportedly used a racial slur, burst through Chamberlain’s door, tasered him, then shot him dead. "The last time I actually really saw my father, other than the funeral, was at the hospital, with his eyes wide open, his tongue hanging out his mouth, and two bullet holes in his chest," said Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr. "And I’m staring at my father, wondering, 'What happened?'"
The alleged shooter, Officer Anthony Carelli, is due in court later this month in an unrelated 2008 police brutality case. He is accused of being the most brutal of a group of officers who allegedly beat two arrestees of Jordanian descent and called them "rag heads."

Video, audio, and transcript here.

Black Marine veteran, 68, shot dead by police after wearable ...

Black Marine veteran, 68, shot dead by police after wearable medical alert gadget went off in error

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:51:18 +0000

The Trayvon Martin story remains in national headlines this week, but little media attention has been paid to a similarly troubling case: that of Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., a 68-year-old Marine vet killed in his home last November by police officers in White Plains, NY.

The officers were responding to a false alarm accidentally triggered by Chamberlain's medical alert pendant while he slept. Instead of helping the man, who had a heart condition, they broke down his front door, tasered him, reportedly called him the "n-word" and mocked him, then shot him dead.

Audio throughout the incident was recorded by his medical alert device.

Democracy Now has an extensive segment on the case, including an interview with the deceased man's son, Kenneth Chamberlain Jr. The New York Times ran a story on the case a few weeks ago.

The police department has so far refused to release the name of the officer who killed the elderly man:

“In the other incidents that you have out here of questionable shootings, the officers' names were given out. So it only makes my family and I wonder why isn’t this officer’s name released?” said Chamberlain Jr. “Had that been myself or any other citizen inside here that shot and killed someone, our whole life history would be on television, on the radio and in the newspaper. I feel that it’s only right, it’s only fair that that officer’s name be released.”

The officer is believed to currently be on duty, still working for the White Plains police. After public outcry, local protests, and an online campaign for case review, the local DA this week promised that a grand jury will hear the case. The family intends to sue.

(via @emeedub)

Bill Keller on Hate Crimes

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 23:20:34 +0000

Should the same crime deserve greater punishment if motivated by racial hatred or bigotry? At The New York Times, former editor Bill Keller says no, with the murder of Treyvon Martin as his entry point to the issue. He thereby instantaneously won the argument for his opponents, explains Choire Sicha. Here there is a convergence of things—urbane yet tone-deaf, sententious yet half-baked, researched yet undiscovered—that we may term Kellerian.

TOM THE DANCING BUG - Hunger Games 2012

Ruben Bolling — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:49:50 +0000

Visit the TOM THE DANCING BUG WEBSITE, and follow RUBEN BOLLING on TWITTER.

Teju Cole on "The White Savior Industrial Complex"

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:15:29 +0000

In The Atlantic today, a must-read piece by Teju Cole on some of the cultural issues raised by Kony 2012, and reactions to it in the media-blog-Twitter-opinion-sphere.

I disagree with the approach taken by Invisible Children in particular, and by the White Savior Industrial Complex in general, because there is much more to doing good work than "making a difference." There is the principle of first do no harm. There is the idea that those who are being helped ought to be consulted over the matters that concern them.

Read "The White Savior Industrial Complex" at the Atlantic.