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As part of her effort to promote her Let's Move campaign, Michelle Obama invited Jimmy Fallon over for a little friendly physical competition. The First Lady sheds her friendly veneer right away and drops the hammer, but he puts up a very hilarious fight—and he gets bonus points for being brave enough to wear a spandex jumpsuit inside the President's house. More »
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One of the many privileges that Peggy McIntosh identifies in her famous essay on "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" is that, as she writes, "I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented." This statement resounded when I saw the images below from a 2011 Scottish Woolovers catalogue. Further, I was reminded that it's not only a matter of whether we see people of our race widely represented, but also of how the media makes these portrayals. More »
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When it comes to holidays, the theory is generally that you can never have enough of them. Though one Arizona lawmaker might be pushing the limits of that rule. During a conversation on the floor of the Arizona House Rep. Richard Miranda proposed a Latino American Day in Arizona, to celebrate the accomplishments of the state's many latino residents. That seems harmless enough, but a heated debate ensued, and after a while Rep. Ash jumped in to say, "I'm supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you'll have a day for us." Ohh, interesting idea... More »
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Dear John Waters, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but figured that if you didn't hear it from me, someone else would tell you the tragedy that has befallen your beloved civil rights/self acceptance/ dancing musical masterpiece Hairspray. Are you sitting down? Good. More »
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New research has found that young women who drink caffeinated beverages on the daily experience changes in hormone levels. How much will your Starbucks and Diet Coke addictions affect your chemical ladyhood? Like being arrested in Arizona, the way caffeine treats your lady hormones depends on your race. More »
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Andrew Ti, the mastermind behind Yo, Is This Racist?, has written a column for Grantland, analyzing the show's character of Han: More »
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The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. -Audre Lorde More »
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On last night's The O'Reilly Factor, contributor Bernie Goldberg confused the iconic rappers Ice T and Ice Cube, a gaff that becomes extra embarrassing when you realize Goldberg once spent and afternoon in Ice Cube's company. O'Reilly was quick to correct the slip, saying, "I'm a brother, man. You can't be doing that to me." Yeah, "Brother" O'Reilly is a huge Barbershop fan. More »
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I am a loyal fan of The Big C. It is beautiful in its poignant portrayal of a woman living with cancer, yet deeply flawed in its characterization of a young black woman. I'm talking about Gabourey Sidibe's character, Andrea. Of course, the fact that actresses like Sidibe are given supporting roles in shows about confident, capable women is vital, but it too often comes at a cost: The Big C's writers bestow upon Andrea qualities that have potential to give her depth, but ultimately she is more trope than fully realized. More »
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Winston Wu raised his online profile recently by warning men (at great length) about the evils of marriage. But he's long been something of a presence, running a dating site where American men can meet foreign women, and opining about everything from the paranormal to what constitutes a "typical" Asian man. Let's take a closer look at this unusual internet personality. More »
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Yesterday, a group of Rutgers students took the English Dept. to task for failing to respond to a student's racist email about a whites-only screening of the film "Song of the South". But the department chair has contacted me to say that, in fact, they have responded. More »
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Recently, students in the Rutgers University English Dept. received an exceedingly crap email, inviting them to a screening of a racist Disney movie, where "Darkeyisms" and "watermillyum" were on offer. Now some students, understandably, would like an apology. More »
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New research suggests that black ladies give approximately zero fucks about what you think about their weight, and that attempting to shame them won't do any good in encouraging weight loss. But there's some good news, fat shame aficionados— shame still works on overweight white women, if your aim is to make them feel like crap while staying overweight. More »
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The racial views of the members of the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Kentucky evolved about 60 years in the past week, and all it took was a massive outpouring of shock and rage from people around the world. Yesterday, a week after nine people voted to pass a ban on interracial couples at the church, the decision was nullified. Pastor Stacy Stepp says that in place of the proclamation pushed by his predecessor, the congregation passed a new resolution that welcomes, "believers into our fellowship regardless of race, creed or color." More »
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Apparently, Jesus has been horribly misquoted for roughly 2,000 years. While everyone thinks he was a fan of loving your neighbor as you love yourself, what he actually meant is that you should love your fellow man as long as his skin isn't a different color than yours. Thankfully, there's a small church in Kentucky that's stepped up to remind us that judging others can really bring a community together. More »
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We recently found this crazy coloring book called Mexicans Don't Always Eat Tacos at a used bookstore. It's supposed to teach kids about diversity, but it was published in 1979 and all the pictures are, well, problematic. The book, which proposes to deconstruct racial stereotypes by illustrating (in full ethnographic splendor) how people aren't circumscribed by their particular ethnicities in their choice of cuisine, falls into the honeypot of racial profiling. The authors seem to make a genuine effort to tear down racial boundaries, but there's only so far their good intentions can reach through the tangled masses of curly hair that they scribble on top of their illustrated "Jew." Our enlightened, 21st century eyes may easily see the errors of ignorance in this book, but we can't fault a genuine effort. Maybe a more unifying, universal title, something that emphasized the characteristics all people share and celebrated their differences rather than just highlighting those differences with crude squiggles would have been better. Something like, "Everybody eats...except for Ethiopia." More »
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People often tell me that I don't look like your average Occupy protestor. I was initially drawn to the Occupy movement for several reasons. As an educator, anything that gets young people paying attention to the world around them is something that I feel the need to support. As an activist and organizer, I generally believe in the need for all citizens to engage in this kind of political discourse. As a black woman, I feel any conversation about economic inequality is incomplete if it doesn't also address racial inequality as well. The various occupations across the country present spaces for such conversations to take place. I've found plenty of reasons to support the Occupy movement, but does the movement support me? More »
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One of the least fun parts of being a lady is the constant barrage of media that insists that there are products to be purchased that might help you overcome your crushing lack of Pretty. A new survey reveals that while some women are internalizing this message, one group is rejecting en masse it and declaring themselves awesome: black women. Come on, the rest of you jerks! Get higher self-esteem! More »
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Sarah Silverman is planing to hold a comedy show in Texas, the home state of Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry. And she plans to call it "Live From Niggerhead: Stripping The Paint Off Of Good Ol' Fashioned Racism." Take a deep breath. Let it out. More »
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Overnight, something very interesting happened to the Urban Outfitters website: all 21 of the company's products that had been called "Navajo" vanished. At least at first glance. More »
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Depending on who you ask, Occupy Wall Street is either the inevitable outpouring populist outrage resulting from decades of corporate greed and abuse or a goalless collection of spoiled unemployed hippie sex fiends who just want to complain about something. Regardless of what you think about the protesters, the cause has grown from one mid-September march to a bona fide movement in dozens of cities. With voices from the far right claiming that the people protesting abuse of power by white men are mostly other white men, how are women in the movement making sure their voices aren't drowned out? More »
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Sasha Houston Brown of Minneapolis published a strongly worded open letter to Urban Outfitters yesterday at Racialicious. Brown, who directly addresses C.E.O. Glen Senk, takes the clothing chain to task for its appropriation of Native American arts and crafts, and its frequent use of the word "Navajo" in product names and descriptions: More »
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With the summer over, it's time for Hollywood to pull out a new season of films. Here's some of what's coming up this fall and winter. For each trailer, I note what white people get to do and what non-white people get to do. More »
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Being ethnically ambiguous in 2011 is not as easy as it looks. Living in what some have deemed a "post-racial" society, it seems a mixed person would have it made. Technically I was born post-racial, right? Except our society is, of course, not post-racial. There are more mixed people and multi-racial families than ever yet systematic racism and ethnic insensitivity are still painfully prevalent in this country and beyond. As someone who is not easily identified as one particular race, the world is sometimes like a raging sea of unspoken assumptions, judgments, and misunderstandings. Some days I enjoy it, surfing on the waves of all this subconscious chaos—carried by my racial anonymity and nuanced cultural understanding. Other times I just need a rest from it all. What's a mixed girl to do? More »
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The most-booked non-white Latina model at New York fashion week was Isabella Melo. Here she is, from left, at Edun, Honor, and Ruffian. More »
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College Republicans at the University of California-Berkeley are making waves in the shape of a million eyes simultaneously rolled by charging customers at their bake sale based on their race and gender. More »
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Bill Clinton may have popularized the phrase "looks like America" for his administration, but Barack Obama has him beat, according to a new analysis. "More than 70 percent of Obama's confirmed judicial nominees during his first two years were 'non-traditional,' or nominees who were not white males." Bill Clinton's percentage was 48.1 percent, and George W. Bush's was 32.9 percent. Judges were only counted once, meaning that, say, Sonia Sotomayor wouldn't be double-counted. More »
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A recent Gallup poll of 1,319 adults in the U.S. found that approval for interracial marriage has reached a high point, with 86% saying they have no problem with it. Apparently this is supposed to be reason for celebration, but it's still disturbing that more than 1 in 10 people are against two people loving each other because of the color of their skin. It seems the results may have been influenced by a number of elderly people who are "set in their ways" (read: committed to remaining bigots). The poll found approval of marriages between blacks and whites is slightly lower among Southerners, Republicans, conservatives, and those in lower education levels, but the elderly are the least approving group at 66%. More »
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A Paris court has found former Christian Dior designer John Galliano guilty of making racist and anti-Semitic comments at a bar; publicly insulting someone on the basis of their religion, race, or ethnicity in France is legally actionable hate speech. Galliano was fined €17,500, or around $24,589 at current exchange. More »
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Recently, a Japanese Vogue spread for which Crystal Renn had taped her temples garnered a lot of controversy when a behind-the-scenes video showed the tape (which didn't appear in the final spread thanks to the magic of Photoshop). Given fashion spreads that glorify or reference blackface have become common in recent years, you could forgive fashion writers for concluding that Vogue had employed eye tape to make Renn look "more Asian." Indeed, that was my initial assumption. I brought the shoot up on the phone with Crystal yesterday,* and she surprised me with her explanation of the eye tape, and why she — not the makeup artist or the fashion editor — had requested it that day. Renn had a lot to say about race, transformation, the many editorial choices that go into the production of the imagery fashion trades in. More »
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New Jersey resident Jennifer Delany responded to a blast email from state Senate hopeful and former Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis by saying, "Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equalled (sic) knowing something about politics." Not long afterwards, though the email hadn't been publicized, her husband quit his job as a Republican Assemblyman. More »
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Some black women with natural hair report receiving hair pat-downs from TSA employees — in some cases while white women with similar hair sailed through. Is this a case of racial profiling? More »
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Is The Help a heartwarming tale of racial reconciliation or condescending, stereotypical tripe? Let's ask people who have seen the movie, which opens today, or plan to! More »
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If you're a black woman in America and you want to get married, statistics indicate that you're likely to have a hard time of it. Almost seventy percent of American black women are unmarried. Over half of black women's marriages to black men end in divorce. More »
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Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel famously said she would rather get paid $700 a week for playing a maid than $7 for being one, after civil rights groups criticized the portrayal of black characters in Gone With The Wind. Seventy years later, The Help and Viola Davis are enmeshed in a similar controversy. More »
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The publication of parts of Rosa Parks' archive, specifically a letter in which she describes an attempted rape by her employer, has angered members of the Institute she founded. Parks wrote of the encounter, "I was trapped and helpless. I was hurt and sickened through with anger and disgust." (Previously it was described as an "essay," but ABC News calls it a "letter.") A lawyer for the institute says, "The fact is she didn't want the document to be disclosed. It's equivalent to looking through her diary or journal. … She never authorized any person to look through her private papers." More »
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Spirit Week events like "Pajama Day" and "School Colors Day" are tremendously boring and overdone, so Red Wing High School in Minneapolis decided to mix things up. Rather than going along with the student council-approved theme in 2008 and 2009, students at the predominantly white school held "Wednesday Wigger Day," which involved wearing clothes that, "from their perspective, mimicked black culture." Or so says a black alumna who's filed a federal class action lawsuit. More »
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Not everybody thinks Kreayshawn — who was signed to a $1 million recording contract on the strength of one self-released single about Gucci Gucci Fendi Fendi Louis Louis Prada, and the basic bitches who wear that shit so Kreayshawn doesn't even bother — is the coolest thing since penicillin. But Kreayshawn is undaunted. "Most of the haters are just miseducated," says Oakland-based rapper Kreayshawn. "It's just like, ‘What the fuck you want? Why don't you go make a song and listen to yourself and shut the fuck up, you know?' Shit." More »
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New York has published a story that is more or less a profile of Anne Sinclair, wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. We learn about her trajectory and motivations, her fortune and her ambitions for her husband, who we learn for the first time (or I did, anyway) is rumored to be lazy. More »
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