Jezebel
crappy hour
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crappy hour
view askew
Discussion Of Racist Epithet Brings Elisabeth Hasselbeck To Tears
Things got really heated on The View today during a discussion of the N-word. The gals were talking about that tape on which Jesse Jackson can be heard uttering the racist insult, even though he was one of the main proponents of banning it. Anyway, Elisabeth Hasselbeck was trying to tell Sherri and Whoopi that they shouldn't be using the word at all, no matter the context, because of children. Then she started crying. Then Barbara Walters made a funny face. How can people not love this show!?
alma maters
How Come All The Pop Culture Moms Are White These Days?
Over on the Strollerderby blog, there's an interesting post regarding the lack of "momoirs" by black women. Apparently most of the books written by mothers — about being a mother, and the nature of motherhood in this day and age — are written by white women. Deesha Philyaw wrote an article on this topic, noting: "Low-income and working-class women, black women, and other women of color don't see their mothering experiences and concerns reflected in the mommy media machine, and we get the cultural message loud and clear: Affluent white women are the only mothers who really matter. Further, media overexposure of these women bolsters the perception of them as self-absorbed brewers of tempests in teapots." Even if you've never read a "momoir" or given birth, you've got to wonder: Where is this generation's Claire Huxtable? More »
Foot Fetish
Have you seen those cheesetastic and nasty commercials for PedEgg on TV? Apparently an actor-couple (also featured on the Amazing Race) featured in the commercial are super-pissed (and suing PedEgg's manufacturer) at the "cheap, low quality" of the ads and the fact they are being played worldwide on television. (The actors would have never agreed to appear in a commercial with "horror make up" on their feet if they knew they would be grossing out people worldwide.) Listen: if you are an unrecognizable contestant from a reality TV show you are not too good to appear in an infomercial, no matter how cringe-worthy it ends up being. [The Smoking Gun]
artsy fartsy
New Exhibit Claims Black Artist Kara Walker's Success Is A Form Of Oppression
Kara Walker is arguably the most prominent black female artist in the country. She won a McArthur genius grant when she was 27 and was featured as one of the Time 100 last year. Walker's work is idiosyncratic and immediately recognizable: she makes Victorian-era black silhouette portraits pasted on white walls, often depicting graphic and exaggerated stereotypes of African Americans (i.e., the silhouette people have enormous lips and distorted breasts). So in essence, Walker is reclaiming these stereotypes and spinning a new narrative. But an art show currently up at the Arlington Arts Center called "She's So Articulate," claims that the art world dominance of Walker's narrative leaves no room for other black, female narratives. Henry Thaggert, the show's curator tells the Washington Post that this exhibition is "an attempt to reclaim the narrative" from Walker. And he's not the first to question Walker's work. More »
sexism and the election
Michelle Obama Is Going To Be In For It
While a senior at Princeton University, Michelle Obama wrote her thesis on "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." That thesis was, for months, the subject of speculation until the campaign released it in February, after which it was lambasted by many on the right (I'm only going to link to one article because the rest are even more nauseating in their ignorance) for being an example of Michelle's supposed reverse racism blah blah blah. The Boston Globe this weekend has a long piece about Michelle's collegiate experience in which she was one of 94 black students in a class of 1,141. Most of the students, by all accounts, felt pretty marginalized and she described the experience thusly: "I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong." Naturally, to some on the right (who have never once been in the minority), this means she some sort of activist type out for black separatism or whatever those types of crazy people think about people who write about feeling marginalized when they, you know, probably are. Anyway, but this is always how it begins, right? If you can't make voters dislike the candidate, make sure they know he's got a smart wife, it means he's obviously pussy-whipped. More »
Let's Talk About Sex(ism)
No Matter What Happens, Hillary Has Helped Start A Conversation
Much has been written — here, elsewhere — about the issue of Hillary Clinton and sexism. Some people, including, it seems, Hillary herself, believe that Clinton is missing out on the Democratic nomination because "more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman [than] to vote for an African American." Whether or not this is true — and I think Democrats will be debating this for years to come — Clinton's candidacy has, if nothing else, started a dialogue about sexism and misogyny, two topics that haven't been taken seriously in mainstream media for a long time. More »
crappy hour
Who Would God Vote For? Probably the Fascists!
Not that I ever smoked, but I guess I'd start, too, if my house looked like that. But there are disasters all over the place today, from Hillary's wonderful comments on race to the innocent guy we held in Gitmo who decided that the terrorists were right about us to the Myanmar cyclone pictured. It's disaster day on Crappy Hour, as Moe takes a much-needed break and I take a moment away from Glamocracy to talk Texas, Hillary, terrorists, fascists and God with the Washington Independent's Attackerman, Spencer Ackerman. More »
chit chat
Race Relations: What's So Wrong About A Rich White Woman Interested In "Africa"?
A few weeks ago, Latoya Peterson, editor of the blog Racialicious, emailed me to proffer compliments over the success of the site and talk about Jezebel's coverage of racial issues, which, she explained, she wasn't particularly thrilled with. After a few email exchanges, I called her, and we talked for what seemed like hours. We did the same the following day. And, (if I remember correctly) a few days later. Although I didn't always agree with her assessment of our content and the intentions behind it, I found her and her commentary to be intelligent, charming, sensitive and, of course enlightening... so much so that I decided to recreate part of our conversation over email so that commenters could weigh in. After the jump, Latoya and I discuss reader complaints, accusations of colonialism, coverage of Third World countries, and how to deal with issues of "the patriarchy" abroad without being patronizing. More »
tributes
Mildred Loving Made People Like Obama & Mariah (More) Possible
black is brown is tanIn 1973, the year I was born, Harper & Row Publishers released a book from its children's publishing division that signaled the emergence of a new racial demographic in the United States. Titled Black is Brown is Tan and authored by poet Arnold Adoff, the 32-page book's "story-poem" (excerpted above) told the tale of a modern interracial family not unlike Adoff's own (Adoff, a Jewish writer from New York City, married African-American writer Virginia Hamilton in 1960, a union that produced two now-grown children, Leigh and Jamie). Although neither Adoff nor Harper & Row realized at the time that Black is Brown is Tan would be the first picture book for children about a biracial American family, Adoff did suspect that his book would reflect the realities of a rapidly developing domestic demographic - the black/white marriage - through the eyes of its children...Mildred Loving's children. More »
is girl is boy
is nose is face
is all the colors
of the race
baby names
What If My Parents Had Named Me Tawana?
A blogger who goes by the name "Daisy" on the internet recently wrote about having a "black" name. She's white, but her mom named her a black-sounding name she thought she had made up. Her whole sad tale of misapplied racism and misinformed job discrimination and shocking amounts of casual N-wordery is hilarious and amazing and delightful and terrible all at once and I can't really do it justice because it's Friday, but it's the best thing I've read all week. Just go, read it. And tell me: is there anything you wouldn't name your kids? Daisy seems to suggest that her mom, a chainsmoking civil rights activist, subliminally named her daughter Rashida or Shaniqua or whatever so she could get a little taste of How Race Is Lived In America. I always figured I would do like my own parents and raise my kids in a shit-poor country for a few years to try and instill in them a suitable amount of white guilt at an early age, but now I see that I could achieve the same result simply by naming my offspring Tawana or Condoleezza or whatever. More »
it takes a village
If Hillary Won't Write A "Gender Speech," We'll Do It Ourselves
After Barack Obama's stunning, revelatory speech on race, many feminists wondered if Hillary Clinton could give a similarly rousing speech on gender. We already figured that Clinton wouldn't be the one to give such a speech, which is why we were so heartened to see that the Huffington Post is taking matters into its own hands. Blogger Marie Wilson thinks we need to "open up the conversation on gender in America," and invites HuffPo commenters to make contributions to a speech on gender. We thought that was a phenomenal idea, and so we are asking you, our fearless Jezebel peanut gallery, to do the same. More »
crappy hour
Would It Kill These Candidates To Eat A Frickin Cheesesteak?
Readers, this campaign season we've borne witness to many things. The rebirth of the word "trollop" and Ann Coulter endorsing Hillary...Geraldine Ferrarro fell victim to racism, and now Bill Clinton telling us Obama used their vast race card conspiracy against him too; he's got memos to prove it. We've learned about Obama's brother in China and Hillary's brothers from Retardville. We've watched Hillary throw back shots like a drunk sorority girl and promise to totally obliterate Iran like a drunk frat guy. We've seen Barack Obama reference Faulkner, Marx and Jay-Z like some consciousness-raising enlightened hip-hop dude who gets laid way too often for you to trust him entirely. But readers, for six weeks we have been stuck in this state, a state so authentically lowbrow it gets away with calling its homeless shelters overnight cafes, and somehow we have yet to see a presidential candidate eat a fucking cheesesteak. So Megan and I are off to do that now (oh, yum) and vote, but not before gracing you with this morning's riveting IM exchange. More »
maghag
Whose Fault Is It That The Ethnic Women In Magazines Are Whitewashed?
In a piece originally on Guanabee and now on Racialicious, writer Alex Alvarez breaks down the racial stereotypes in women's magazines. "Latinas are portrayed as being sultry and seductive," writes Ms. Alvarez. "[They are] encouraged to have more overtly sexual bodies, with an emphasis on curves, dark eyes and bright, plump, shiny, slick, wet lips shown in loving close-ups, usually while the face to which they're attached is growling or purring or doing something else that's totally fierce." As for black women, Halle Berry is the ideal, even though, as Alvarez notes, "she happens to have a white mother." Black women with darker skin often end up "treated more like sculptural objects than flesh and blood women." Asian women? Always petite and "doll-like." Never mind the fact that "some Asian girls are chubby. Really! Some are muscular, some are tall, some are dark, some are doughy, and some are boney and awkward." More »
clips
Ad Man Donny Deutsch & Comedienne Nancy Giles Weigh In On Controversial Vogue Cover
This morning, advertising expert Donny Deutsch and actress and writer Nancy Giles sat down with Ann Curry on the Today show to talk about the Lebron James Vogue cover. Deutsch had no problem with the image, because he's a "dumb white guy" and a sports fan — Vogue's very demographic! Nancy Giles was more measured and articulate than Deutsch, but no real earth-shattering revelations were made. Still, Today producers: When you're trying to investigate whether something is offensive to — and a negative portrayal of — black men, how about you ask a black man? Because as we mentioned, over at Concrete Loop, actual black people have found this image troublesome. (Clip above.) More »
crappy hour
So, Barack Obama Throws His Dead Grandma Under The Bus And You Cry About It?
Yesterday Barack Obama gave a very long speech in which he dissed his dead white grandmother. His dead white grandmother who raised him. His dead white grandmother who raised him because his hippie white mother was too busy saving the world with her idealism — HA HA SARCASM — and his black father was off taking new wives in Africa where pagan nonsense like that is allowed. But his grandmother, the grandmother who raised him, was a teensy bit racist! Well now Barry, why do you think that was? So there was that, and some boilerplate standard fare liberal ideology and some empty words meant to appeal to radical communist Jane Fondaphiles and some people actually fucking cried. Can you believe these guys? What in the name of Judas do they expect all these pretty stories and idealism and disarming rhetoric and terrible granny talk to achieve? What good is supposed to come of all this "hope" shit anyway? Everyone knows that pessimists are the only ones who get anything done, and pandering shamelessly to long-established poll-tested demographic niches is the only route to the White House. "Hope" is just a distraction, a nuisance. Fuck that noise! The cynics have an election to win. (If, uh, no candidate.) Glamocracy Megan agrees with me, after the jump. More »
maghag
Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
Have you heard? There's a black man on the cover of the April 2008 Vogue. (Richard Gere and George Clooney are the only other men ever to be on the cover, reports Time magazine.) Vogue does not have a history of embracing African-Americans on its covers. Back in November, Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici pointed out that while 4 out of 12 covers of Men's Vogue had black men; when Jennifer Hudson hit the cover of Vogue last March, she was only the third African-American celebrity to do so, though the magazine was founded in 1914. But on the cover of new issue, Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James seems to be embodying ugly stereotypes about black men: The wild, savage, white-woman-obsessed beast. More »
femiracism
