April 2012
Little-Known Black History Fact (No. 74)
Paul Jennings was a personal servant to President James Madison in the 1830s during and after the latter’s term in the White House. Jennings is credited with writing the first White House memoir, titled “A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison.” Jennings is also credited with planning the largest slave escape attempt in U.S. history.
Follow Friday: Trans* Positive
What Trans* Positive blog should we all be following? Add the name of your favorite Trans* person run blog or your favorite blog that is dedicated specifically to Trans* people/topics. It’s up to you! Last week’s Follow Friday: Photography (Please let me know if I missed any. I’ll do my best to keep it up to date.)
Meet: Callie Crossley
Callie Crossley is an American journalist and host of “The Callie Crossley Show”, a one-hour daily talk show on WGBH-FM, 89.7. She talks with guests about local and national politics, public affairs, arts, and culture. Past guests on the show include filmmaker Errol Morris, historian Howard Zinn, authors Junot Diaz, Frank Bruni, Edwidge Danticat, Colson Whitehead, Isabel Wilkerson, David Remnick, lawyer/author Charles Ogletree, actors Rachel Dratch, Leonard Nimoy, Anna Deavere Smith, and Wayne Brady, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and many more.
A television and radio commentator, moderator and public speaker, Crossley lectures on the collision of old and new media, media and politics, media literacy, and the intersection of race, gender and media. She is a panelist on WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press”, and a frequent host of WGBH-TV’s Basic Black. Crossley is a regular contributor on Public Radio International’s The Takeaway (radio), and has guest hosted NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin, for which she also contributes commentary about wine. She is an occasional commentator on CNN’s “Reliable Sources”, and appears regularly on Fox Morning News WXFT-TV.
Last night, I watched someone justify their racist rant by saying “It’s the internet, it doesn’t mean anything.” The internet is the nose picking of the world. It’s what people do, or in this case say, when they think no one is looking. When they believe that no one knows who they are or more importantly, where they are. There is no better place to see the true nature of humanity. Sadly, it does mean something.
Race & TV: Shades of Light
I wouldn’t even count OUAT, since Lana is playing a white ided person.
I couldn’t be both unbiased and make decisions on who was or wasn’t PoC enough. I can’t say I’d agree with anyone making that decision for someone else.
Race & TV: Shades of Light
This is a pictorial list of the People of Color on the big four (ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX) networks. In the first post we looked at the number of PoC in comparison to the number of non-PoC. In this list, I would like to draw attention to the issue of shadism. Often, even when PoC are on Television, they still fit into a very specific place on the shade meter.
No real shock: The list heavily favors light skinned people from every race/ethnicity. It seems that the darker skinned people are more likely to be found on game shows.
NBC’s Whitney (don’t judge me) has Neal played by Maulik Pancholy. His photo is in the top right corner of the show’s website and here’s his bio. I didn’t realize he used to be on 30 Rock.
Also, the cast list for The Voice is from last season.
I only did shows that aired this week. It looks like Whitney didn’t air. That was the reason this one was missing. As for The Voice, I don’t know. I haven’t ever seen the show so I am not sure of the people listed. I went by what was on their web site.
Meet: Audie Cornish
Audie Cornish is a journalist and a current co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered.
Cornish is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. During her years there, she interned with NPR, and worked with campus radio station WMUA.
Previous jobs include reporting for the NPR station WBUR, a reporter for the Associated Press in Boston, NPR’s reporter for 10 southern states and reporting on Capitol Hill issues.
On September 4, 2011, Audie replaced Liane Hansen on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Hansen had served as host of the show for more than twenty years.
At the end of the December 18, 2011 broadcast of Weekend Edition, Cornish announced that she would be leaving the program in January 2012 to co-host All Things Considered during the 2012 election year; to be replaced on January 8 by Rachel Martin. It was subsequently reported that the change was due to Michele Norris’ decision to step down from All Things Considered during the 2012 election year because her husband had taken a position in the Obama re-election campaign. The implication was that Cornish would return to Weekend Edition after the election.
Race & TV: The Big Four
In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the lack of representation of PoC on Television. When deciding to see if it were true, it seemed the best place to start would be the major four networks. They are the most likely to try to please the most people. They need higher ratings than the cable channels so they would be the most likely to want to represent a diverse group.
The shows listed below air Monday-Sunday, 8pm-Whenever that station’s NEWS starts. Also, it is the list from the current week. Meaning, if there is a regular show that airs on one of these channels but is not airing this week, it will not be on the list.
As there were many shows to look through and in order to keep this as unbiased as possible, the cast members looked at were the those shown in the “Cast” section of each show’s web page. If there is a character that you don’t see listed under your favorite show, please click on the link provided for that show and look in the cast section before you tell me that I’ve missed them. With that said, there were a lot of shows and faces to go through, if there was a person missed, that is represented on the show’s site, please let me know so that I may make corrections.
This is how it breaks down:
- 68 shows.
- 152 PoC.
- 609 total main/major cast members.
Meet: Sylvia Coleman
Sylvia Coleman, BA, CMT, is an award-winning health journalist, editor and author who specializes in topics of sexual abuse and trauma.
Coleman has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University, Philadelphia. During her career, Coleman served as the coordinator for the Philadelphia and New Jersey editions of the Learning Key, a weekly educational supplement for The Philadelphia Tribune. Under her direction, the Learning Key received the National Newspaper Association Award for Best Youth Section in 2000.
Coleman later served as assistant editor for Advance for Nurses, one of the nation’s premier clinical publications for registered nurses. While there, Coleman created Kaleidoscope, a monthly column that focused on different nursing cultures. A ground-breaking addition to the magazine, Kaleidoscope topics ranged from racial inequities to gender and health inequalities. In 2003, she won the first place prize for “Forgive and Forget,” a column she wrote about the workplace discrimination faced by a nurse recovering from drug-addiction.
Coleman also received an award in the profile division for “Nursing the Homeless Holistically,” an article that focused on the gallant efforts of one nurse to provide complementary health modalities to homeless and drug-addicted populations in Washington, DC. Coleman has also received the Mary Alice Rowdenhosier Award in writing; the Alan R. Yoffee Award in writing and the Golf Writer’s Schripp Award in writing.
6th grade? SIXTH GRADE??! *crawls into a hole and dies*
Yes. I am a product of poor parenting BUT I sure can dance!
Really…isn’t THAT the important thing?
;)
Arizona Ethnic-Studies Ban’s Unintended Result: Underground Libraries →
thedailybeast.com
Some 30 students, teachers, and activists emerged from the bus carrying boxes of books. As they stepped onto the pavement Saturday and into the bright Tucson sun, they chanted in unison, “What do we want? Books! When do we want them? Now! Who are we? Librostraficantes!”
The Spanish term, which means “book smugglers,” is the brainchild of Houston Community College professor and author Tony Diaz, who with a few dozen supporters set out March 12 for Arizona to protest a 2010 state law that prohibits certain types of ethnic studies in public schools. In January officials shut down the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American-studies curriculum. The Librotraficante Caravan traveled through Texas and New Mexico, stopping in cities along the way to hold literary readings, collect donated books, and establish “underground libraries” filled with titles from Tucson’s banned courses. Several authors whose works were discontinued participated—Rudolfo Anaya, widely considered the godfather of Latino literature in the Southwest, even invited the caravan into his Albuquerque home for posole, traditional pork stew.
Years ago, I met Anaya, and came away from that encounter delighted by what a gentle, wonderful man he’d been. It’s nice to see my adolescent impression of him wasn’t wrong.
Underground libraries? Like man, the U.S. needs to do better. There’s no way this should be happening in 2012. This makes my heart hurt. It makes me angry. Upset. How offensive is it that knowledges, histories, documentation of narratives and lives have to be treated like this? How assaultive is it that communities are forced to do this? Everyday I’m trying to figure out new strategies to not letting racism affect me - simply the air of it - and every day I’m reminded of how powerful the structure is in not making that task easy for me at all. I’ve read some of these books and some are on my bookshelves. This is like white threat onto Communities of Color, when unfitting, assaultive ideologies become the law - it’s a problem… I dont even know what to say
Intersectionality: This is why.
I have a lot of things going around in my head about the video made by the father whose son was bullied and abused by the teachers in the class for children with autism, and I’ll probably reblog it by and by when I’ve come to better grips with them.
This is not going to be the most coherent thing I’ve ever written, because I’m dealing with some bad news on the family front and because the video has me thinking about my own elementary school experiences.
But there’s one thing that stood out to me in the reblog thread, and it’s the comment:
equal treatment for people with disabilities is the one social issue i am really passionate about and man this…… i don’t even know man
If the person had just said “Equal treatment for people with disabilities is a social issue I am really passionate about” or “I am really passionate about equal treatment for people with disabilities”, I wouldn’t think much of it… but if you go out of your way to say, “I care about this, to the exclusion of other things”… well…
It doesn’t work like that.
People keep telling the radfems (and other mainstream feminists, but mainstream feminists don’t go so far out of their way to say things like “I don’t care about the issues of WOC, just the issues of women”) that feminism without intersectionality is bullshit, that you can’t care about the issues of all women if you don’t care about the issues of women who are ______, and this comment, that comment right there is the failure of intersectionality in a nutshell.
Mr. Chaifetz went to bat for his son Akian. He went to the school and while what’s happened might not be called “justice” or “fair”, he got some results. His son’s now in a different class and he’s doing well, by all accounts, and that’s good. I’m happy for them. I hope every child has an advocate as fierce as Akian has in his father, and I hope no child ever needs it.
My parents went to bat for me. I was given access to a computer (and one had to be brought into the classroom for me to use, this was the 80s) to do my classwork on so that my teacher couldn’t give me a zero for unreadable or “incorrect” answers, I was allowed to go to a quiet room for a certain portion of the day, and there were probably other accommodations made that I don’t remember or wasn’t aware of. And the teacher in question knew that she was being watched and though she wasn’t ever nice, the most overt nastiness stopped.
These are the stories of middle-plus class white parents and children dealing with school districts. We have to fight for equal treatment, for equal access, for the accommodations that we need.
But we’re allowed to fight for them. We’re expected to. Nobody just rolls over for us, but they do yield to us, and they yield to us because white children are valued by society and everyone understands the social power of an angry white parent.
Our stories aren’t always happy, but they tend to have happier (and sooner) endings than the Black parents and other parents of color who have to go to bat for their children in the same way. I’m not going to volunteer anyone’s life story as an example here, but parents talk about their children and this means parents who blog blog about them, and the stories are there to see.
Society does not privilege all of us with the equal right to fight for our children. it does not reward everyone for courage. It does not even allow the possibility that some people may be courageous, rather than… militant. Angry. Unreasonable. Other, more racially coded adjectives I’m not going to repeat.
I’m not saying this on the Stuart Chaifetz video post because I don’t want to take away from what his son went through or what he’s done for his child, but… this is why without an intersectional approach, any cause is hollow.
If you’re not will to fight against unequal treatment based on race, you cannot fight for equal rights and equal accommodations for all people regardless of disability. Because we could institute any number of legally protected rights and programs and supervision and oversight, and the unequal treatment of race would keep everyone who needs those things from accessing them.
I’m going to say that again: you cannot fight for equal rights on one front while you’re ignoring others. And because modern English is imprecise in some matters, I’ll spell it out. This is not “can not” as in “may not”. I’m not withholding permission from you. I’m telling you, it is not possible to do so.
You can proclaim that you believe in equal access, but if you ignore race, you’re taking a stand for white access first and foremost.
#IfTransTalkedLikeCis
‘I had this darkly amusing link dropped into my IM chat box by a friend. Natalie Reed decided to turn the tables on the nonsense transgender folks get lumped with, imagining if cisgender people were treated the same way:’
- Stop calling me “trans”. I’m not “trans”, I’m just NORMAL.
- Oh, you’re cis? Nice to meet you! So, what’s your vagina like?
- Wow! You look great! I never would have gussed you were cis!
- But are you SURE you want to remain male? How do you know for sure this is right for you?
- But “cis” people might regret not transitioning! We need strict criteria for diagnosing cisgenderism to prevent that
- People with mental health disorders might think they’re cis when they’re really not. We can’t trust their choices
- It’s not my fault I’m not attracted to cis ppl. I just find your bodies icky. It’s just my sexual orientation!
- No, but what’s your REAL name? You know, the one you actually chose.
- Wait, so you think you’re a womon-born-womon? Isn’t that just equating sex with gender and buying into the patriarchy?
- Look son, I understand you identify as your birth sex, but why can’t you just transition to being a butch lesbian?
- Isn’t it a bit selfish to go around claiming you’re really your birth sex and expect us all to just go along with it?
- You may think you’re a woman because you’re XX, but I think of you as male, and you need to respect my beliefs.
- But if we let cis men use the men’s room, what’s to stop one of them from raping your children!?!?
- Son, you say that you’re a boy, but I think you’re a bit too young to be making that decision.
- Honey, I know you think you want to remain male, but are you sure this isn’t just a mid-life crisis?
- WOW! You’re so SHORT! Wish I was SHORT! Why do you want me to stop mentioning it? It’s a GOOD thing to be that SHORT!
- You must be SO BRAVE to go through menstruation every month. It must be so hard. I really admire your courage!!!
- You have gonads? And grow gametes inside your genitals? I’m sorry, but that’s just gross and unnatural.
- BREAKING NEWS: WOMAN GETS PREGNANT!!! “What’s this world coming to?”
- …Oh, it was just a CIS woman who got a pregnant. Not a real woman. Pssh. That’s not news.
By flipping the script we can see the “hidden” cissexism in common, taken for granted beliefs about trans people.
Meet: Gwen Ifill
Gwendolyn L. “Gwen” Ifill is an American journalist, television newscaster and author. She is the managing editor and moderator of Washington Week and a senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. She is a political analyst, and moderated the 2004 and 2008 Vice Presidential debates. She is the author of the book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.
Taken from Wikipedia. Read more here.
