The Associated Press is reporting that there have been "hundreds" of racially-charged events taking place since the election, a number that hate-crime researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center note is "many more than usual." Marsha L. Houston, a professor at the University of Alabama, had a poster of the Obamas ripped from her office door and replaced by a poster featuring "a death threat and a racial slur." As Houston notes, "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork."

Similar hate-filled incidents are taking place across the country, with cross burnings, racist graffiti, and violent outbursts taking place against Obama supporters. The AP reports that "in the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying 'now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.'" Second and third grade children in Rexburg, Idaho were also heard chanting, "Assassinate Obama!" on the school bus. You don't learn that kind of cheer in school music class, so one has to wonder where these children are picking their hateful rhetoric up from.

Perhaps they're learning it from their parents, who may have the same attitude as Gail McDaniel, a Southern woman quoted in the New York Times as stating: “I think there are going to be outbreaks from blacks. From where I’m from, this is going to give them the right to be more aggressive.” In the very same article, another woman "volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me” in the White House." Or maybe they know someone like Greg Griffin, 46, who believes that Obama's victory has "ruined" the country. "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change. If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported."

Children singing chants on the playground and scrawling graffiti on the blacktops is frightening enough, but when adults begin taking bets on when and how the next President of the United States will be assassinated, it's hard to even fathom the mindset required to tolerate or create such a hateful display. Yet the owner of a store in Standish, ME set up an "Obama Osama Shotgun Pool," where customers could pay $1 to place their bets on Obama's assassination date. Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," read the sign, with a note attached to the bottom of the board that read,"Let's hope someone wins."

Ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds anger, and anger breeds violence. Realizing that an African-American man is now "over" them, it appears that many of these people are taking out their fears on less high-profile targets. As BJ Gallagher, a sociologist who specializes in diversity studies, told the AP, "The principle is very simple. If I can't hurt the person I'm angry at, then I'll vent my anger on a substitute, i.e., someone of the same race."

Anyone who watched at least one Palin or McCain rally should not be surprised with this outbreak of hate; the cries of "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" were merely incredibly visible examples of the kind of mentality that is sweeping a certain population of the country. The racist attitudes have been there for a very long time; Obama's victory just seems to have sparked a desire to be more open and more aggressive about it. It may be decades before we truly know the impact that Obama's victory had on race relations in this country; but as of right now, it appears that for every step the country takes forward, there are those who want nothing more than to use hate, ignorance, and fear to keep us locked in the past.

Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes [AP]
For South, A Waning Hold On Politics [NYTimes]

We all know that the man spent nine months in the womb of a white woman, and didn't know his Kenyan father well at all. But in this country, there's a "one drop" rule, which means that if you're got one drop of black African blood in you, you're black. However: For people who are biracial, or multiracial, like myself, there's an undeniable truth: Barack Obama is black, but he's also mixed. A duality exists. And in a world with very few mixed high-profile celebrities or icons, his election feels like acceptance. (Here's former Newsweek editor and biracial American Mark Whitaker discussing the issue.)

Although I will say I am black if I am asked, and so will my mother, her father was Irish, and her mother was born on a reservation; part black and part Chicksaw. (On my father's side it's black, unless you go back before 1863, when there were slave owner-fathers.) Since my editor, Anna, is biracial, we had a little IM chat about how we felt about being mixed while growing up.

Dodai: I went through a phase in which my favorite animal was the quagga. I saw it in a book of horses, the kind that is mandatory for every preteen girl. I guess at some point I'd been called or maybe someone had called SOMEONE else a "zebra." For being black & white.
Anna: Did you ever get "oreo"?
Dodai: Yeah, I did get oreo… But I saw the quagga in the book and I thought this is what i relate to: The thing that is not black, not white, not striped, not solid, all mixed up. I decided it was cool. It became part of the family lingo; my sister and I would see some half chinese half black kids on the subway or something and be like, look, quaggamuffin kids.
Anna: I didn't have lingo because seeing mixed race/biracial children, let alone adults, was pretty rare where I grew up. Also, I just considered myself to be black. That's what you checked off on school forms. There was no other option.
Dodai: Oh, definitely. I considered myself to be black. But I also was sure I was something else, too. Something new. My sister, brother and I would visit my grandfather in the South every summer, and I became more and more aware that people were like, "What is that blue-eyed man doing with those black kids?"
Anna: I was aware that I was "new." I kind of liked it!
Dodai: Me too!
Anna: I think I was a bit upset when I found out there were some other kids in my town who were biracial. Just like I was kinda "huh?" when I first heard about, say, Halle Berry. I knew intellectually that others existed, but I didn't feel as "special" anymore.
Dodai: I was always EXCITED to find other mixed kids. I remember when i first went to Hawaii, and I saw so many black/asian/white/native mixed kids with dark skin and surf-blonde hair and almond eyes. I thought, hmm, I may move here.

Another thing I remember about growing up was that all the black kids on TV — Diff'rent Strokes, Silver Spoons, Good Times, The Cosby Show — seemed to be having a slightly different "black" childhood than I was. They never seemed to have white kids ask, "What are you?" Or have black kids tell them they weren't really black. It wasn't until last week, when my sister told me she was working on T-shirts which read, "Half Black Is The New Black," that I realized Barack Obama is not just a black hero; he's a mixed-race icon. But when people talk about him as a black man, even though I know that is what they see, and that is how he's experienced life, as a black man, I also feel certain that Barack Obama is not a "typical" black American. Not that there is such a thing. But truly: He's African-American, which is different. The black experience in this country — if you come from a black family that has lived here for generations and you have a grandmother or greatgrandmother whose mother or father was a slave — is a different experience from someone whose parents are recent immigrants from Kenya, Senegal or Cote D'Ivoire.

But also, being biracial has its advantages. As Anna said in our chat,

"The reason I grew up thinking I could do and be whatever I wanted was partly because I was precocious and confident (maybe not as a teenager.) But it was also from my parents, who made a big effort to always tell me how 'special' I was. I think they feared my being biracial could cause problems with my self-esteem. That may be a large part of the reason why Barack Obama believed in himself enough to become the man he is now. It's almost like to overcompensate for society's racism, and/or fear of the 'other,' parents of biracial kids give them added support that, perhaps, other children don't get. I'm only theorizing here. But there is also something to be said about the comfort in bridging cultures. When you can interact with white people and black people because you see yourself as part of them, that gives you a lot of confidence in yourself. I think it's almost freeing. I mean, a young black male can walk into a job interview, and the interviewer will have sorts of ideas about who he is before he even opens his mouth based on ingrained stereotypes that aren't even in our consciousness. Whereas someone like Barack Obama, or you, or me, they don't know what to make of us! Now, that's probably different now, in the year 2008, but in the '80s? '90s? I'm not so sure that there were ideas about biracial young Americans that created barriers in the same way that there are barriers for others."

Hopefully Barack Obama's election is a giant step, just in terms of teaching non-black people not to underestimate black people. On the other hand, hopefully no one is out there thinking, well, black people have arrived! They don't need affirmative action, or scholarships, or after-school programs, or outreach. James Hannaham writes for Salon:

Privilege is no Death Star, and one Luke Skywalker can't obliterate it with a couple of lasers, no matter how well-placed. It did not vaporize last night, so in the Obama presidency we can look forward to some amusing and possibly infuriating contretemps that will arise from an African-American family leading the country. (Why was this never the premise for a sitcom?) The same battles will rage over affirmative action — will we cheat ourselves out of the next Obama by cutting it back? — and issues of discrimination in representation, education, housing, etc. For me, racism won't be over until a bunch of black people can move into a neighborhood and watch the property values rise.

Black carries with it so much weight, means so many things: Skin color, culture, heritage, identity, race, tradition. Writes Liddel: "Is he black? I’m not so sure. He has a white mother and a black father, so I suppose he is of mixed race, or what the South Africans used to call 'coloured.'" What's black in America is not necessarily black in another country. To the question "Is Barack Obama black?" There are two answers: Yes and no. One thing is for sure: With the so-called "browning" of America, with the number of people who identify as mixed-race growing, with all kinds of different families out there these days, his story — multi-culti, single mom, black, white — is completely American, and thoroughly modern.

Our Biracial President [Salon]
Is Barack Obama Really Black? Actually, I’m Not So Sure, Obama Isn't Black [Spectator]
Mixed Messages,Mixed Race Portraits [Guardian]
Obama isn't black [Spectator]
For NBC's Mark Whitaker This Election Was Personal [Huffington Post]

Also, why haven't we seen Michelle raise her voice above an "appropriate" decibel level? Michelle Obama doesn't seem to be anything like the image of black women that we see on TV and in films. Who is the real Michelle Obama? Get ready for it:

Michelle Obama is totally normal. A normal, well-educated wife of a politician and mother of two.

Samuels points out that Michelle is a type of black woman that many Americans don't get to see, since mostly, black women are portrayed in the media as either sassy, abrasive and angry or drug-addicted, poverty-stricken and AIDS-infected. But there are many different types of black women out there in the world. Some of whom — gasp — have a college education (complete with gender/race related undergraduate thesis), a good job and generally fit into the "normal" idea of upper-middle-class Americans. You just rarely see them on TV:

Usually, the lives of black women go largely unexamined. The prevailing theory seems to be that we're all hot-tempered single mothers who can't keep a man and, according to CNN's "Black in America," documentary, those of us who aren't street-walking crack addicts are on the verge of dying from AIDS. As writer Rebecca Walker put it on her Facebook page: "CNN should call me next time they really want to show diversity and meet real black women that nobody seems to talk about.''

Like Walker, I too know more than my share of black women who have little in common with the black female images I see in the media. My "sistafriends" are mostly college educated, in healthy, productive relationships and have a major aversion to sassy one-liners. They are teachers, doctors and business owners. Of course, there are those of us who never get the chance to pull it together. And we accept and embrace them—but their stories can't and shouldn't be the only ones told.

Like the fictional Huxtables before them, Samuels sees the Obamas serving as an example to both blacks and non-blacks through their upper-middle-class regular-ness. Perhaps Michelle has "softened" her image throughout the campaign, but if she becomes the First Lady she'll have to figure out her role in the White House amid criticisms much in the same way that Jackie Kennedy and Hillary Clinton did before her.

And even though Michelle will probably never gain acceptance from some of her critics, Samuels still sees her life in the spotlight as a way for Americans to see a "regular African-American woman" in action, showing "what we think and what we face on a regular basis." Some may argue that Michelle doesn't need to "teach" Americans about what it's like to be a black woman, but Michelle's prominent position in the public eye will invariably shape both black and non-black American's perceptions of what a black woman is, and can be.

What Michelle Obama Can Teach Us About Black Women [Newsweek]
Barack Obama Again Dances In A Slightly Embarrassing Manner On 'Ellen' [Wonkette]

Earlier: Following Criticism, 'Mom In Chief' Michelle Obama Charms Americans

The Times notes that only 26 percent of Latinos favor John McCain at the moment, a sharp decline from the 44 percent who voted for Bush in 2004. This is despite some racism among Latinos towards African-Americans, as picked up by the Washington Post:

Geronimo Cruz, a retired factory worker living in Mora County, worries aloud that "blacks are for blacks," and that in the White House, Obama would care for his racial brethren in the inner cities before looking out for the white and Hispanic rural lands. He cites hip-hop videos as proof that confident, aloof African Americans are more interested in a good time than hard work.

He, like many others, refers to Obama as "El Negrito," a diminutive that can be affectionate when referring to one's grandfather, as in "abuelito," or condescending when referring to the potential President of the United States.

The Post, by the way, calls describes those comments as indicative of "subtle racial concerns." I guess compared to "Traitor" and "Kill him!," maybe they are!

So what's the problem with McCain for Latinos, who, as Laura Ramírez Drain tells the Washington Post, used to kind of dig Republicans? Janet Murguía, executive director of the National Council of La Raza has an answer:

"The Republican brand has been tarnished as result of the immigration debate and the extreme rhetoric that came out of that debate. We think McCain remains an advocate of a comprehensive approach, but his standing has been undermined by those within his own party and the tough immigration plank in the 2008 Republican platform."

Many Latinas agree, while others cite the need for health care reform and the poor economy as reasons they are backing Barack Obama this time. In fact, the Latinas who are supporting McCain tend to gloss over those issues and instead talk about how the need to criminalize abortion and eliminate same sex marriage are reasons to back him (in addition to the fact that some of them really like Sarah Palin). The WaPo:

Why McCain? The Latinas for McCain cite moral values. He is antiabortion and for "the sanctity of marriage."

A couple of small businesswomen also parrot McCain's line that Obama's tax plan will kill their businesses. Roxana Cazares Olivas, a small businesswoman herself, former Bush backer and a founder of Latinas Unidas por Obama sees plenty of reasons to back Obama:

"Immigration, the war, the economy, Katrina," she says. "We just need a change. . . . He not only captured me in his actions but also captured my heart." She doubts McCain's continued commitment to immigration reform, and says she has never forgotten Obama addressing a huge march for immigrant rights in Chicago in 2006....
Values matter, too. Sanctity of marriage? Olivas asks which candidate left his first wife and broke up his family. Abortion is tough. She balances it with immigration reform, which she sees as a moral issue, as well. "Yes, we're not for abortion, but immigration is a deal-breaker," she says.

It is a little funny, actually, that the campaign that accused Democrats of holding women hostage on abortion earlier this year is benefiting in some small way from women tied to the abortion issue — and that Latina women like Olivas, who opposes it, are choosing the Democratic candidate despite it.

Photo: Barack Obama Speaks At The La Raza Conference
SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 13: L, Isabel and Francisco Flores wait outside before hearing Presumptive Demcoratic presidential nominee Barack Obama at the National Council of La Raza Annual Meeting on July 13, 2008 in San Diego, California. The NCLR is the largest Hispanic Civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States and works to opportunities for Hispanic Americans.(Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

McCain Is Faltering Among Hispanic Voters [New York Times]
Will Race Deter the Hillary Hispanics? [Washington Post]
Democrats or Republicans, Latinas Are Swaying the Vote [Washington Post]

Earlier: Hey Carly Fiorina, Who Exactly Is Holding My Uterus Hostage?

LATOYA: Good Morning, Sunshine!

MEGAN: I watched the sun rise this morning, and not in the hot stayed-out-all-night kind of way, but rather in the "shivering in the cold waiting for a dog to pee" kind of way, and I liked it about as much as it sounds like I did. I get the sense that you are more of a morning person than me.

LATOYA: That I am! I tend to wake up around this time anyway — but, look on the bright side. I start falling asleep during prime club hours, so there's a darkside to morning chipperness.

MEGAN: Even my friend's dog was all like, you really want to walk me this early? Ho-kay, if you insist. And he's already back to sleep.

LATOYA: Hahaha — you can join him soon. Let's start with the pride and joy of my Sunday — Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama. Meet the Press never sounded sweeter to my ears.

MEGAN: Except that even my mom last night — who doesn't watch it — was like, can you believe that Rush Limbaugh says it's just because he's black? It's starting to get a little amusing, she's got this growing mental list of all our relatives and neighbors who listen to Rush Limbaugh because they've started admitting to it, and I can practically hear her crossing names off her Christmas card list. She is so offended that people she knows buy his crap, almost like she didn't really know that actual non-crazy-seeming people listen to him. What I want to know is: does this mean every white person that supports McCain is just doing it because they're both white? Are only Michael Steele, J.C. Watts and every white person that backs Obama racially justified?

LATOYA: It only counts when minorities do it — white people obviously have in-depth reasoning skills, the likes of which we pigmented folks do not have. And seriously? Can we talk about how racist that assumption is? People are going to try and act like it's just Rush Limbaugh talking crazy, but come on now — I know you've been hearing the same thing I'm hearing. I get at least one comment a day (that is insta-deleted) where they want to say something like "blacks are the real racists — 90% of them are voting for Obama!" Yeah, that's right. And 90% of us voted for Clinton. And 88% of us voted for Kerry. Only 10% of Blacks are Republican.

MEGAN: Oh, right, God knows there would be NO FUCKING REASON for African-Americans to ever vote for Obama otherwise, y'all would totes be voting for McCain if the Democrats had a white candidate. Or, you know, not.

LATOYA: For real — I mean, Colin could have broke out a thesis statement on the trends of presidents and vice presidents in this country, and a detailed evaluation of his own voting records, alongside a side-by-side analysis of McCain and Obama's platforms with his comments in red ink - and someone would have still been like "yeah, he just voted for the black guy."

MEGAN: Fuck class warfare, wtf is up with those people thinking there's a race war going on?

LATOYA: They're a little early with calls for a race war. They call us minorities for a reason.

MEGAN: Well, I don't want to be on their side, obviously.

LATOYA: Most of us aren't dumb — like Chris Rock said, there's a LOT of white folks out there. We might be able to reclaim Chocolate City, and a couple towns here and there, but we'd lose the war. Uh -oh, Megan — you can't go switching sides now. You got drafted.

MEGAN: Fuck drafted! I swear, my family has been in this country for long enough, there's no way that there's not some non-white in me somewhere.

LATOYA: You know the Army of Joe Six Pack doesn't cotton with quitters!

MEGAN: Joe Sex-Pack will get drunk on his Genny Creme Ale and I will sneak off. Uh, Freudian slip there.

LATOYA: Ha — I noticed. Yeah, I'm sure you can play the one drop rule to your advantage.

MEGAN: Hell, they would. They wouldn't want me, anyway. Rush Limbaugh makes my Tourette's act up. He speaks and I'm all like "Fuckity fuck fuck FUCK!"

LATOYA: But speaking of Joe Sixpack — uh, did we ever find out who this person is? We outed Joe the Plumber. Now I wanna see Joe Six Pack.

MEGAN: Joe Six Pack is they guy with the beer belly, sitting on his porch smoking a Winston and drinking said six pack by himself while listening to Rush Limbaugh and muttering under his breath. No microbrews for him! No elitist bottles! Down with the fancy beer conspiracy! He likes his good old American Molson!

LATOYA: The Kitchen Table blog has some good insight on this. Dr. Yolanda Pierce writes:

"When only Joe Six Pack becomes the target audience for political commercials, tax cuts, legislation, and economic incentives, we ignore the fact that most of this nation does not fit this profile. And finally, we ignore the fact that despite the rhetoric, none of our current political candidates currently fit the Joe Six Pack mode, although some of them have come from humble beginnings. When Sarah Palin indicated that her retirement portfolio lost $20,000 in one week (which means there was much more in there to begin with), she lost her street credentials as a Joe Six Pack wife.

She also mentions she thought "six pack" was slang for abs, but obviously that is out the window in '08.

MEGAN: Yeah, um, Sarah Palin ain't talking about the guy who spends hours at the gym to perfect his abs, though I'd be she would "tolerate" him. She's talking about the guy who drinks 'em. Oh, should we go for verisimilitude? I got my retirement account statement in the mail this weekend. Shall we see in real time how much I lost?

LATOYA: Yes, let's! Help me assuage my guilt over not funding my retirement account yet. (Bad, lazy, self employed consultant!) Then again, maybe just keeping that money liquid was a good idea.

MEGAN: Okay, to put it into context, this is my 401k from two jobs ago, and I only worked there 7 months. I have 80% in stocks, 15% in bonds and 5% in a money market. I lost $326.27. (That's just third quarter, I'm down 20% YTD.)

LATOYA: Ow. Though I would say that if you lost $4. Losing things is not fun, especially when it's money

MEGAN: But that is a Joe Six Pack amount of loss, thank you very much Sarah Palin. It's fake money, I can't even touch it for another 40 years unless Obama wins. Ahem.

LATOYA: Oh boy. Maybe you need a second job. You know, whatever's left at this point. Keep telling yourself that.

MEGAN: That is how I'm not crying. I don't want to know how much my other 401k lost, that's where most of my money is. Also, how happy am I that I was too lazy to take my accountant's advice last fall and start a new 401k? By the way, that means Sarah and Todd had about $150,000+ in their retirement account, assuming equal rates of loss. I'm betting they had more though.

LATOYA: It's ok — you love capitalism. No pain, no gain! If the markets fall, it's all part of the process. You aren't some dirty rotten socialist! Woman up!

MEGAN: I might be a closet Muslim, though! I love, by the way, the way that no one says aloud what this is supposed to indicate:

But some of the other older white diners looked surprised and slightly uncomfortable as Obama stopped at their tables to shake hands. “I’m surprised, but I’m not going to say anything else,” said Pat Smith, who was joined by her husband.

A group of six retired women said they were mostly Democrats — but mostly undecided about how to vote.

“I have to pray about it, think about what’s best for our country,” said Dorothy Buie, one of the women

That's code for "uncomfortable shaking hands with a black man."

LATOYA: Umm-hmm — if you've been paying attention, is clear what's best for our country. Major thinking conservatives are breaking with their own party. All you got left is the people who will drive America into hellfire and hatred headfirst. But no, no - stay afraid of the black man. It's ok — no one needed that commie healthcare scheme anyway.

MEGAN: Who needs health care when you can have tax cuts!

LATOYA: If you can't reach health insurance with your bootstraps, you don't need it!

Beginning when she was just 20, and the only black female news reporter in New York, Maynard covered such stories as the funeral of Robert Kennedy, the Apollo space missions, and the medical system in China. With husband Robert Maynard, she also founded the Maynard Institute, which trains minority reporters, editors, and newsroom managers. And she proposed that the American Society of Newspaper Editors strive for racial and ethnic parity in newsrooms by 2000. Sadly, that goal has now been extended to 2025.

Maynard described her ownership of the Tribune as her greatest accomplishment. According to onetime managing editor Eric Newton, the paper had an "utter lack of a glass ceiling." "The higher up you went in the newsroom management," he says, "the more diverse it got." Maynard was also known at the paper as a stickler for accuracy, saying, "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." Says the Maynard Institute's former president, A. Steve Montiel, "She was a fearless, astute champion of diversity in news media. We've lost a leader who made a difference."

Nancy Hicks Maynard Dies at 61; A Groundbreaking Black Journalist [NY Times]
Diversity advocate Nancy Hicks Maynard dies at 61 [SF Chronicle]
Nancy Maynard [Maynard Institute Official Site]

MEGAN: Fucking top of the fucking morning to you, motherfucker!

SPENCER: How's my favorite bitchcuntwhore this morning?

MEGAN: This bitch is kind of feeling like a complete asshole for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that my shitty fucking mouth allowed some cocksucker at the Washington Times to write an article about how cuss-filled the liberal blogosphere is. Also, what the fuck? Does he not live in D.C.? Casual workplace profanity is a lifestyle here.

SPENCER: Here's what I love about this asshole:

The top 10 liberal sites (Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Democratic Underground, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Think Progress, Atrios, Greenwald, MyDD and Firedoglake) have a profanity quotient of 14.6.

MEGAN: Hey, one of your homes makes the list! Bitchin'!
SPENCER: FDL hosts my blog, and ThinkProgress used to, and I worked for TPM before that. NOBODY BUT NOBODY cursed on ThinkProgress before I got there and no one curses now that I'm gone, so I'm responsible for TP's entire profanity quotient.

MEGAN: That's an impressive fucking accomplishment.

SPENCER: TPM is entirely sweetmouthed, with the occasional dirty word in comments, but not even that often. this no-Polk-award-having douche put TPM in this list to smear it, discrediting its achievements on, say, getting Alberto Gonzales to resign and exposing McCain's big oil connections.

MEGAN: Also, you know my significant fucking methodological problem with his study? There's no distinction made between Republican trolls swearing on liberal sites or vice versa. If all the cussing is done by Republicans on Kos — not that it is — then his entire thesis is off.

SPENCER: ...on FDL we curse and curse heartily, though. Yes, very good point.
And you know who encourages trolling like a fucking Dungeonmaster? John McCain!

On McCain's Web site, visitors are invited to "Spread the Word" about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor's screen name. The site offers sample comments ("John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .") and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into "conservative," "liberal," "moderate" and "other" categories. Just cut and paste.

MEGAN: I know! And then their webmaster will go check on it for you!

SPENCER: First McCain wanted to ruin the country, but now he wants to ruin the internet. this shit has gone TOO FAR. Notice, however, that McCain's blog, run by a Weekly Standard asshole who tried and failed to get me fired from ThinkProgress, is too pussyassed to allow comments.

MEGAN: Did you see his list of approved liberal sites? ColoradoPols, Crooks and Liars, DailyKos, MyDD and Think Progress.

SPENCER: It's a good strategy for him: troll, so our communities can fuck the trolls up. Someone needs to explain the internet to him. McCain's desire to throw soldiers into unwinnable wars makes a lot more sense now!

MEGAN: What is hilarious to me is that they pick 5 liberal sites, 5 "moderate" sites — including Politico and the Washington Post's "The Fix" blog — and 10 blogs they classify as "other"... and then 35 right-wing blogs.

SPENCER: This suggested talking point for trolls is AWESOME.

There are serious issues at stake in this election, and serious differences between the candidates. And we will argue about them, as we should. But it should remain an argument among friends; each of us struggling to hear our conscience, and heed its demands; each of us, despite our differences, united in our great cause, and respectful of the goodness in each other.

HAHAHAHAHA yes the McCainiac trolls will take to dKos to spread this one.

MEGAN: It's like... who even is going to buy that shit on the Internet? Also, I don't have to struggle to hear my conscience, it's saying "Don't vote for the weird old guy who wants to take away your right to an abortion but doesn't think it's important to pass pay equity legislation." Or something like that.
SPENCER: hahahaha someone put an Obama 08 sticker on the Straight Talk Express.

MEGAN: It might also be saying "You should call your mom." Oh, wait, that was andBegorrah once. Damn her!

SPENCER: I should really call my mom, but I hate using the phone with the passion of 1000 supernovas. Anyway, you know what question I'm dying to ask Condoleezza Rice? The one Mike Allen of the Politico asked:

When asked her Hollywood crush: “Oh, I’ve got lots of them. I mean, doesn't everybody love Denzel Washington?”

MEGAN: Man was that his way of fishing for the lesbian question? Oh, no, just being a sexist.

SPENCER: 1) She's the fucking Secretary of State. You think he would ever ask Colin Powell that?

MEGAN: Actually, would he ask Madeline Albright that?

SPENCER: 2) Yes, he was obviously trying to get her to say "Why, now that you mention it, I'm a — what's the term they use on Jezebel? — right, right, Lezebel. I am a lezebel. Are you happy now? Feel proud of yourself, professionally?"

MEGAN: I think it's important to chuck into the mix here the fact that he wouldn't ask Maddie that, either. But a black woman was fair game. There's been a lot of talk about how African-American women are either angry finger-snappers or over-sexualized in media portrayals, and then Mike Allen asks her about her fantasy life in an interview.

SPENCER: That didn't occur to me, honestly. I should have read your comment before I tapped out an angry email to a listserv that I'm on with Allen
internet feud! Good for exercising my profanity muscles. The ones below my delts.

MEGAN: I mean, also, can you imagine the uproar if she's said someone else? Someone too young or (gasp) not black? Although, I'd give her props if she referenced the upcoming Bush movie and said Josh Brolin (who is portraying Bush) and thus made fun of the question and the whole "she's in love with George" theme.

SPENCER: You know what I'd ask Condoleezza Rice, whose secretary has declined every interview request I've ever put in? Anything but trivial shit about her personal life. I mean, this is a fucking enabler to a war criminal we're talking about! I'd ask her how she feels about the 500th U.S. troop death in a war she cares about not at all.

MEGAN: That's what I was going to ask you about, actually?

SPENCER: I get these troop death emails from the Pentagon, and the last three months or so, the Afghanistan death notices — practically a trickle in 03-05 — have been as torrid as during the worst days of the Iraq war.

MEGAN: You know what? If McCain used email, I'd want him to get signed up for those emails.

SPENCER: Nor are they going to stop — if I can link my Windy piece this morning, Barry McCaffrey just came back from A-stan, and this is what he found:

As U.S. military casualties mount in Afghanistan, a retired four-star Army general, who just returned from reviewing the six-plus-year war effort, said the country "is in misery" and describes the war as "a 25-year campaign."

MEGAN: Well, at least the troops won't have far to go when McCain ends the Iraq War in 2013. Of course, by then, it'll be a 50-year campaign in Afghanistan, but no worries. We'll surge again and again and again. Or not, because they only have heroin and not oil. Can you make ethanol from poppies?

SPENCER: I did an interview yesterday with the Afghan ambassador to the US, I should've asked him that.

MEGAN: I mean, if you can, we should stop forced eradication programs and just set up a few ethanol plants or something, and then they'll have fuel for our cars and something else to do with the poppies.

SPENCER: As Al Gore says, though, you can't skin-pop your way out of the energy crisis.

MEGAN: Actually, I kid. You can make ethanol from anything, including grass and sugar cane (which is how they do it in Brazil). You can make it from agricultural waste products. Just, you know, not here because Chuck Grassley made sure that that it's all-corn, all the time. Plus we keep super-high import tariffs on ethanol, but if Afghanistan and Iraq are going to be Empire America's newest colonies, I'm sure we'd learn from the British example and not impose high tariffs on manufactured goods shipped in from the colonies. Of course, if we were going to learn from the British example, we probably wouldn't take on colonies that require huge military outlays.

SPENCER: It took the British quite a while to learn that lesson, I recall.

MEGAN: Well, if we're only in Iraq for 100 years, then I guess we'll be better than them. So, fuck it.

Since pop culture often reflects the zeitgest at large, what does it mean if we don't have any amazing non-white mother figures right now? Growing up, Claire Huxtable from The Cosby Show, Florida Evans from Good Times, the mom on What's Happening!! (and, to some extent, Shirley, on the same show) were strong women who were not just maternal figures but actual moms, juggling jobs and raising kids. American dreams, American stories. And they were not white. At some point, many TV moms disappeared — shows like My Two Dads, Silver Spoons and Diff'rent Strokes pushed moms aside. But today, the only non-white mom I can think of is the one on Everybody Hates Chris. Moms today are "hot" (Desperate Housewives), young (Claire on Lost*, Niki on Heroes) or animated (Family Guy, Marge Simpson.) But they're rarely anything but Caucasian. We live in a diverse, culturally rich country. Is Dina Lohan all we have to offer?

Black Mothers Underrepresented in Momoir Genre [Strollerderby]
There's Something Missing from Mommy Lit [AlterNet]

Earlier: Who Are Your Fave Pop Culture Moms?

*Yeah, Sun on Lost doesn't really count as her role as a "mom" has not been fleshed out.

Back in the 90s when Walker won the McArthur grant, conceptual artist Betye Saar called for a boycott of Walker, because her art was a "revolting and negative and a form of betrayal to the slaves, particularly women and children. [I]t [is] basically for the amusement and the investment of the white art establishment."

While promoting the work of black artists is certainly something to encourage, it seems that doing it while tacitly denigrating the success of another artist misses the point. Perhaps, if one is mired in the notoriously myopic art world, it seems that there is only room for one black voice and one black narrative. As a reasonably objective viewer outside that world, I find it hard to believe that anyone would take Kara Walker's art as the only and final word on racism. Isn't race in America an enormous and multifaceted topic that will surely be examined by thousands upon thousands of people through art for hundreds of years to come?

Standing In The Shadow Of The Silhouette Figure [Washington Post]
Kara Walker [The Time 100]
Notes On A Negress [The Root]

There have been a few articles here and there about how the right is dusting off its old playbook from 1992 to tar Michelle Obama with the same brush they so successfully used against Hillary Clinton. And, hey, why not! She's an Ivy League educated lawyer, obviously deeply respected by her husband, whose career paid their bills while he pursued more lofty ambitions. She isn't a potential First Lady in the model of Laura or Barbara Bush, all adoring looks and quiet charm, she's smart, outspoken, not incredibly inclined to political diplomacy and obviously protective of her husband.

Also, she's black. And, of course, that comes with a whole host of other issues, including the ability for people to think things like "Hey, Obama rhymes with baby-mama" and to comment on her physical appearance in a myriad of ways both insulting to women and African-Americans. One of my favorites thus far, was a post on the "Hillary is 44" site, since removed but immortalized here, that called her "lantern-jawed," because it's so appropriate to mock a woman for her bone structure.

Anyway, so for being a strong woman who isn't simpering around her husband, Michelle Obama is gonna be in for a rough ride, and I hope that the same people who are running around yelling about sexism in the primary start watching the general because Michelle is the new Hillary, and it's going to be ugly (which neither of them are).

Michelle Obama Thesis Was On Racial Divide [Politico]
Are We Getting Two for One? [Slate]
Learning to be Michelle Obama [Boston Globe]
Hey Feminists—Why No Love For Michelle Obama? [Glamocracy]
On Michelle Obama, Sexism And Ill-Considered Rhymes [Glamocracy]
Michelle Obama: Ain't She Woman [Racialicious]

MEGAN: So, here we are again, Crappy-ing without Moe who is on vacation because you and me are suckers, possibly. I've heard vacations are nice, though. Through the grapevine.
SPENCER: speaking of vacations, i need to put out an open call to the Jezebels who live in Austin
on Saturday 5/17 i'll be there to see the reunion show of classic 90s Chicago punk band Los Crudos
and i have nowhere to stay and no one to hang out with now that my travel partner has abandoned me for such frivolities as "finding a place to live"
so if any of you guys live in austin and can put up with a respectful houseguest for like a day, holler at sackerman-at-washingtonindependent-dot-com
ok what is in the news
MEGAN: Oh, that sucks about having nowhere to stay! I'd offer up someone but the only person I for sure know in Texas is in Dallas and it's this douchebag lobbyist I used to date and I wouldn't subject anyone to his company. And if you were a girl, he'd mack on you something awful.
SPENCER: so, HRC not dropping out despite our awesome reconciliation-filled comment thread yesterday?
MEGAN: Nope, not in the slightest. She's in it to win it, even if she cannot, mathematically speaking, win it. I am counting down the minutes until she mentions again that "pledged" delegates are not actually obligated to vote for whom they were elected to vote for...
SPENCER: this baffles me
how the press treats her candidacy like it's still viable, even as they're pointing that out
MEGAN: Well, she is a candidate. And she could win if she did manage to convince like 80% of the supers to support her and continued to get at least decent margins in the primaries. It's just unlikely to happen.
Very, very, very unlikely.
SPENCER: i was watching the detroit-orlando last night and was thinking about what would happen if sportscasters started saying things like, "orlando is up by over 20 with 30 seconds left in the fourth, but detroit could still pull it out in the unlikely event of overtime"
MEGAN: Actually, that might make it worth it to me to watch a basketball game. I fucking hate sports commentary, but if it was actually Dadaist in its absurdity...
SPENCER: ok and so not to pick on HRC, because yesterday's CH comments were a beautiful miracle, but the longer this goes on the more it makes her say things like this:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

a strong prima facie case can be made that Ajmi didn't "return" to the battlefield. The experience of being hooded and goggled and flown half a world away in the belly of a C-130; of being caged under the hot sun in the chain-link-and-wood sarcophagus of Camp X-Ray and then the panopticon of Camp Delta — and I have seen it with my own eyes; of being always at the mercy of the Quick Reaction Force and the Joint Detentions Operations Group and the interrogators; and never having a clear and open and fair path to argue for your freedom for years — that is the sort of thing that makes a man plot revenge. To deny that is to deny human nature.

I'm not saying Ajmi was an innocent. I'm not saying Guantanamo gave him a license to murder. And I'm certainly not saying that his victims deserved to die because he spent three years in Guantanamo.

What I'm saying is that a completely forseeable consequence of Guantanamo Bay is the creation of terrorists.

ANNA: A few weeks ago a reader wrote in to me complaining about the items we've
done on women in, specifically, India, saying that she was sick of the fact that we link to the more horrific stories regarding women and girls on the Indian sub-Continent...rape, murder, abuse, etc. The blog post she was upset about regarded a piece in a British paper we linked to about pre-teens selling their virginity to adult men in India in order to financially help their families. The reader referred to our — and by "our" I mean the editors and the commenters — "smug First World selves" and railed against our collective "ignorance" and "condescension". I responded to her saying that I understood where she was coming from but that in terms of stories about women and India, we were strapped: 99% of the stories that concern women that we find coming out of that area of the world are negative and/or upsetting, and we don't even post 90% of THOSE. I added that we work with what we can find, which, in the English language media, is coming either from American news sources, British news sources, or news sources in India that are available in English. We want to acknowledge the problems and horrors faced by women in other countries, but we often get attacked for doing so. What are some tactics that we — and other American, Western media properties — can approach these with more sensitivity?

LATOYA: Ha. I completely understand where she is coming from. Often times, western media tends to promote the things that are sensationalist like teen girls selling their virginity to feed their families or what Ebony magazine termed "disaster pornography" - things like famine, starvation, and suffering that tend to get people to wince and then open their wallets. I can't specifically speak to India, but since I notice this a lot with stories about the African continent. For example, take the elections in Kenya that happened late last year. If you were paying attention, you would know that there was a lot of tension leading up to those elections - so an allegation came in that someone won unfairly and riots broke out. However, when this news was reported, the headline was "Tribal Warfare Breaks Out in Kenya!"

Sensationalist stories grab our attention a lot faster than regular, day in the life stories. It's like the piece with Malawi I posted on last year - the article about how badly the World Bank and donor nations (US) screwed Malawi over in terms of offering them aid money with conditions attached that would keep them dependent on foreign aid dollars. Since people in Malawi were starving, the government made an executive decision to risk losing the money - and we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars - and to instead try to save their people from starvation. And they did it! That article got no play, whatsoever. Buried in the world section of the NY Times.

Late last month I read that profile of Madonna in Vanity Fair and saw all of these assertions about Malawi - and by extension Africa - and they rang false to me because of articles and books I had read earlier. And the article Madonna/Vanity Fair had all kinds of biased reporting - saying Africa when it really meant one specific country, asserting that Africans practice witchcraft when most Africans are Christian or Muslim, saying AIDS is killing the continent but never discussing how things like cuts to international family planning funds, the global gag rule, and allowing faith based programs to use development dollars to take their "abstinence only" ideas overseas. But, as many of my readers pointed out, they would have never made the connections from one thing to the other; since we have all been fed the idea that Africa is poor just because, we never question things like asking WHY African nations are so indebted or WHY AIDS is still spreading at alarming rates. We would just rather fill in our assumptions and keep reading about Madge's new album.

So part of the battle is asking the question "Why?" You'd be surprised at where that will lead you.

It's important that we begin to familiarize ourselves with international policy and politics. Keep in mind, when we read newspapers and other forms of media, there are subconsciously things that we skip - things that don't really pertain to our lives and don't make sense to us. Keep in mind, I read most of the same news sources you do. But the things I read make more sense to me because I acquired some background knowledge on some of the more intimidating topics.

Finally, realize that things aren't always death, destruction and horror - those are just the discussions that jump out at us the most. Over the last month, I've read articles about the development going on in African nations that revolve around technology. The NYT Magazine did a great article on Jan Chipchase who studies human behavior for Nokia and goes into developing nations to figure out how to sell them cell phones. Fast Company just published a piece on how Google is moving to create an internet presence in Africa, even though only 5% of people have access to internet. They feel it will be a huge growth project. Another business magazine talked about how the internet played a huge role in the rise of India's development - by mastering English, the population has been able to take advantage of the lucrative outsourcing market. And they also discussed the rise of cities and changes in traditional culture, as well as how "call center culture" has launched chick-lit novels and movies and the new prototype of the young urban Indian professional. So there is tons of information out there in mainstream media sources - we just tend to overlook it.

ANNA: I hear you on this. I think what I keep coming back to is 1. Issues of
time (we don't have the luxury of time to educate ourselves as broadly and quickly as we'd
like - blogging is quick business!) and 2. Women-specific issues (most of the stories we find regarding women are negative in nature because women around the world are, for the most part, not treated very well.). But here are some other questions: Is it "disaster pornography" to pick up on the stories written by actual, mainstream media outlets about the plight(s) of women around the world? Do we have to ALWAYS ALWAYS question them, at least those that seem pretty clear-cut? Why can't 12-year-old girls selling their virginity in India just be what it is, which is — to many cultures — horrific? Why CAN'T people put value judgments on such things sometimes without being accused of being colonialist, paternalistic, patronizing...even racist? And lastly, what do you think the inherent problems are with Westerners reporting back from non-Western countries, particularly on women's issues? Can a white, European woman living and working the Mideast never tell the full "truth" of her adopted society because of her background? Can an Asian-American woman in, say, South Africa not do the same? And lastly, because so many areas of the world (particularly the female populations in those areas) are in need of support, both financially and politically, what is so wrong with getting people to wince and open their wallets, particularly in an era in which superficial shit like celebrity adulation is so rampant that we have pageant contestants calling Iraq "the Iraq" and a decline in newspaper and book readership?

LATOYA: Anna, you have to understand that those excuses are just that - excuses. Here's why I say that - you all are great (seriously, fucking great) at calling out sexist assumptions about women in the media. You read an article and can instantly pick up on all the bullshit buzzwords and baseless assumptions that someone has concocted to prove their points about women being weaker/less intelligent/more emotional, etc. It's second nature to you, right? But I bet it wasn't always that way. You have to educate yourself about these issues in order to have that framework in your mind to challenge them. So the same way you learned to critically dissect the lies that women's magazines use to sell issues - it's the same thing. No one wakes up with a working knowledge of sexism, power dynamics in sexual relationships, eloquent critiques of impossible beauty ideals and a deep understanding about how strict adherence to gender roles in society causes tons of issues. You had to learn that.

So, in this case, the answer is learn. You aren't going to be able to fully comprehend everything about everything out of the box. Like I said in one of my posts on Racialicious, it took me about three months to stop fighting against the mass media programming that poorer nations are just a bunch of whiny complainers who want to be like America. So it will take a while.

Women are treated like shit around the world, this is very true. Women are also treated like shit in beacon of freedom America, particularly when you start considering issues like race, class, and immigration. But, just like there are kick ass things American women do every day, there are kick ass things that women around the world are doing too.

But to specifically answer your questions:

1. Yes, we always have to question because if we don't, we contribute to that whole narrative that the US is this great paragon of equality and every place else is some kind of human cesspool. Again, back to the Madonna/Malawi example - you could post on "starving babies in Malawi" and people go "oh no!" because that's what they are conditioned to do and we go buy a $24.00 bracelet that sends a dollar overseas, we mention about the horrendous situation there with our friends over cocktails and then roll right back into whatever stuff is affecting us right this minute. And no one talks about the World Bank, which is the leading reason why kids in Malawi are starving to death, and business moves as usual.

I am not saying that every other nation has no problems and nothing bad ever happens. But, it is kind of strange when we can post about the horrible shit that goes on in say, Italy (like your post on how 70% of Italian gynos refuse to perform abortions, even though they are legal) and have counterposts talking about cool/interesting things like how the Italian police department petitioned for more fashionable uniforms or the issues with modern dating in Italy. It provides a balanced view of the country. But that kind of balanced view never manages to make it over to African or South East Asian countries. So while we can read the literature and watch the movies coming out of those countries - there has to be SOMETHING else going on, some kind of larger social/cultural scene that is creating these works of art and lit - for some reason, our news reporting pretends that the only time they are worthy of our notice is when someone is suffering or something horrendous goes down. The answer is not to stop reporting on these events completely - just to be aware that these events do not exist in a vaccuum.

2. Value judgments are a tricky thing. In general, there is a problem with people conflating two separate issues and making them one. So, for example, let's take the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. I think we can all generally agree that it is fucked up when some citizens are entitled to more rights than others based solely on gender, and that's what Saudi Arabia does. However, the problems come in when people start sticking blanket value judgments that don't necessarily apply to that situation - like saying Islam is responsible for the situation in Saudi Arabia. Umm, no. Some fuckheads in power got together and said this is how it's going down and we're going to justify it using Islam. There are 52 nations that are Muslim Majority countries and that's not how they roll. Look at Turkey - it is a nation that is 99% Muslim. 99%! And they have a very secular government system. Malaysia, Ethiopia, Morocco, Indonesia, Bangledesh - plenty of nations are Muslim and they have different systems set up. But people tend to stick one issue in because that's what they think that is what is happening and miss the bigger picture.

Fatemeh, the publisher of the Muslimah Media Watch blog also points out how condescending it is to want to "help" women in a foreign country without listening to them. We tend to infantilize them (example here) and act as those these poor poor women don't have minds of their own and can't speak for themselves, never realizing that they are actively engaging in these issues - just not necessarily where we can see. From the little I know about Muslimah feminism, people who still actively adhere to Islamic principles tend to work within those guidelines while fighting for equality. Our idea of equality may not be the same as what they want. So, for western people, it's a really big fucking deal if Muslim women take off their veils and wear lipstick. To them, it's kind of whatever, they want to focus on employment options and pay equality.

3. In terms of wincing and wallets, let me just say that there is nothing wrong with being informed. The problem is that we respond, crack the wallet, and we aren't informed. So who knows where the money is going and what it is being used for? Think about it this way - we give out billions of dollars in foreign food aid per year - so why haven't we solved world hunger yet? We waste enough food in America to feed quite a few nations, so the issue is more complicated than just food. We need to critically look at where this money is going and who is benefiting. There are also great ways to get involved that don't involve much money and make a longer lasting impact. Want to end hunger? Start lobbying congress, volunteering with NGOs, raise awareness about how the IMF is "the Typhoid Mary" of international development. (Yes, Jeffrey Sachs' said that — read this sitting down.) Or, looking at how governmental organizations and non governmental organizations have tons of money but can't seem to get it together do fix actual problems, even when said problems could be fixed for about $10,000 (see here). So, there are steps to take that would be more helpful in the long run but people just don't ask questions.

By the way, westerners can report on non-western issues, as can expats living in other countries. The issue is not that they are not entitled to have an opinion, it is just that many times that opinion may be ill-informed and may not have the whole story. So, I think western journalists in particular have an obligation to tread lightly in areas that are not directly our own - after all, since we shape of lot of world policy, our words may have serious consequences.

Related: Meet The Neo-Colonialists: Madonna And Vanity Fair [Racialicious]

black is brown is tan
is girl is boy
is nose is face
is all the colors
of the race

For those who have never heard of her, Mildred Loving was an African-American woman who, with her white husband Richard, changed the United States' miscegenation laws by taking the state of Virginia — which regarded their union as illegal — to court and, with a June 12, 1967 decision in her and her husband's favor, effectively dismantled the laws in that state and 15 others that prohibited intermarriage between the races. Mildred Loving, as you also may or may have have heard, has just died at the age of 68 of undisclosed causes. (Richard Loving was killed in a car accident in 1975.)

Mildred and Richard had some formidable foes. Although some states' anti-miscegenation laws came to include other ethnic groups, as Werner Sollors says in his book Interracialism, "all such laws restricted marriage choices of blacks and whites, making the black-white divide the deepest and historically most pervasive of all American color lines." Certainly, Loving vs. Virginia was not the only factor in the rapidly growing number of black/white unions and marriages during '60s and '70s, but it was an important one, and a strong indicator that something new was happening between blacks and whites in the second half of the 20th century, something more concerned with love than hate. (Those who are better schooled in these matters than I am, please elaborate in the comments.)

What I find both fascinating and inspiring is that the generation of biracial (a term I am using here to describe those with one black parent and one white parent) Americans born in the fifteen years after Loving vs. Virginia, is a generation that has, in recent years come of age both in the public and private spheres. All over the airwaves, bookshelves and movie screens one can see representatives of this generation, from athletes (Derek Jeter, Jason Kidd, James Blake) to entertainers (Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet, Mariah Carey) to writers and thinkers (Rebecca Walker, Danzy Senna and Zadie Smith). This is no coincidence: According to figures made available by Race Branch of the United States Census Bureau, the number of interracial (black/white) couples in the United States in 1960 numbered 51,000. Ten years later (almost three years after Loving), the number had risen 27.4% to 65,000 and by 1980 that number had almost doubled, coming in at 121,000. The numbers of children borne from such unions grew just as quickly: the 2000 Census states that there were 4,850 biracial Americans born in 1967; the same census puts the number born in 1977 at 9,261, almost double the number born ten years earlier, and five years later, in 1982, 14,125 biracial children came into the world in the United States. And we are better for it. As the AP reports today, "In a rare interview... last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history — she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy. 'It wasn't my doing,' Loving said. 'It was God's work.'"

Mildred Loving, Matriarch Of Interracial Marriage, Dies
Related: Who Are We Now? New Dialogue On Mixed Race [NY Times]
Black Is Brown Is Tan [Amazon]
Loving Vs. Virginia [Wikipedia]

(I guess it would help if I married someone with the last name "White" or something "typically black" like that and didn't fuck it up by doing the hyphen thing.)

Seriously though, I'm mostly kidding, but I'm also serious, perhaps because Sean Bell's cop/killers were just acquitted on all charges, which reminds me of another unarmed young black victim of racial profiling and police brutality whose death at the hands of a bunch of overzealous cops I covered in my past as an actual journalist. His name was Donta Dawson, pronounced like "Dante" as in the Inferno, which is to say Hell, by which I guess I mean "other people," or anyway, the notion that we can really ever understand what it's like to be one...so I guess I should just stick with the former game plan, which is to say, marrying a guy with a really outlandishly Jewish last name so I can name him something funny like "Mohammed," that he can safely shorten to something safe and uncontroversial like "Moe."

On Having A Black Name [Daisy's Dead Air]
Related: Are Distinctly Black Names A Thing Of The Past? [NYT]

We're asking you to add a 15-word or less phrase to a gender speech that we will create in this post. Please number your comments. Our beginning will be part 1. The first comment, therefore, should be numbered 2. The comment after that should be 3. Each comment should build on what the previous comment expressed. Make sense? We realize the comments can often be wonky, so if there are several number 2s and 3s and 4s, that's totally fine. It will be a wild west feminist free-for-all!

We said we'd start, so here goes nothing.

On August 26, 1920, women were given the right to vote in the United States. We've come along way since then, but the current campaign for president has unearthed just how much misogyny is acceptable in public discourse. We live in a country where women still make less money for doing the same jobs; where sexual abuse and harassment continue to run rampant through every city and state; where only 14% of the senate is female. We need to keep fighting to make these inequalities dissipate and to do so means never giving up the struggle.

Now you go!

Help Us Write "The Gender Speech" [Huffington Post]
Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text [Huffington Post]

Earlier: Why There Will Never Be A Race Speech About Sex

Meanwhile, even white women are whitewashed in women's magazines, Alvarez claims:

The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least "ethnic" and most "neutral" as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls — often with what is described as a "boyish" figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood — hips, ass. Personality. The ideal: Gwyneth Paltrow.

Model Minority: How Women's Magazines Whitewash Different Ethnicities [Racialicious, via Guanabee]

Earlier: Is Vogue's "LeBron Kong" Cover Offensive?
MagHag
Holy Itshay, What Is That Big Black Man Doing On The Cover Of Vogue?!
Is Fashion The Sports Of Chicks? And If So, Isn't That Kind Of Scary?
More Of Vogue's "World's Best Bodies"

MEGAN: Gosh, it's soooo hard to decide what to talk about today

MEGAN: Like, should we talk about the fact that the runaway bride's jilted beau just got married?

MOE: Oh because that's news I can use!
MEGAN: Hey, I thought it was service-y! Victim of the wedding industrial complex, etc.
MOE: Is it time to do one of those The Iraq: A Look Back editions of Crappy Hour?

MEGAN: Well, I already have a wicked headache, so, sure, why not.

MOE: Ugh I, too, have a headache. And I overslept. And my roommate broke the coffee grinder and so I had to go out and get coffee. I am a simple person, Megan, but seriously, don't fuck with my coffee grinder.

MEGAN: Those are truly words to live by. Do not come between me and my intense caffeine addiction, world. I may not have any fingernails, but I will cut a bitch.

MOE: Okay so speaking of COFFEE and how it is the color of certain people's skin, though not mine...
MOE: Do you think Obama threw his grandma under the bus?

MEGAN: My grandpa's from Kansas. This came as utterly unsurprising news to me. It