race

A few years ago, I found a book-length literary magazine, Conditions:Five, amongst the discarded and donated books on the shelves in a local coffeehouse.  I skimmed through it that day, just long enough to finish my cup of chai, before placing it back on the shelf.  At the time, I had no idea that I'd held such a rich piece of history in my hands.

The leaders of the [women's suffrage] movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted with an uncouth sunbonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps. A buzz of disapprobation was heard all over the house, and there fell on the listening ear, 'An abolition affair!" "Woman's rights and niggers!""I told you so!" "Go it, darkey!" . . Again and again, timorous and trembling ones came to me and said, with earnestness, "Don't let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed up with abolition and niggers, and we shall be utterly denounced." My only answer was, "We shall see when the time comes."
--First-wave feminist Frances Gage, reflecting on the occasion of Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech

 Mike Tyson's "confession", The Pocketbook Monologues, un-beweavable Oprah, Pulitzer winners, and Farai Chideya's "Kiss.."...

Why is it always a race war on America's Next Top Model?? Natalie, the contestant who got booted this week (upside down at right), has a spiteful interview up on the E! website, where she says she must have lost because Tyra is giving preferential treatment to the two remaining African-American contestants, Aminat and Teyona.

"Tyra definitely has a soft spot for Aminat and Teyona. I think she just loves [their] personalities. I feel like they're most relatable to Tyra, since Tyra was a black model struggling. I think she has a hidden emotional connection with the black girls, and I think that's where a lot of favoritism comes from. I'm not accusing her of it, but that's just my opinion.

more ranting and raving if you hit the read link below.

*wait for it*

According to a recent Entertainment Weekly article:

'''Tyler Perry understands that much of his audience is African-American women — the most ignored group in Hollywood — so he's doing movies that speak to them,' Bogle says. 'You could see these films as parables or fables. There's a black prince figure who shows up for black women who've been frustrated, unhappy, or abused.' That's the real reason critics don't like Perry's movies, says Nelson George: They're made for churchgoing, working-class black women, not urban hipsters (or tenured professors)."

I'm neither an urban hipster nor a tenured professor, but I'm not a fan of Tyler Perry's movies either. Are you?

During the '08 campaign season, I cringed at comments made about former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s “hotness” and at the idea of the porno “Nailin’ Sarah Palin”--even though Palin's politics, her demeanor, and pretty much everything about her, made me throw up in my mouth a little. And to be sure, if Palin had become vice president, continued objectification of her and ongoing commentary about her of sexual nature would have bugged me to no end--even as I packed up and headed to Canada. And yet...

I think President Barack Obama is smokin' hot.

When people talk about Madonna as a symbol of female empowerment, I have to ask, "Empowering to whom?" Certainly not to the black and brown people populating her Sex book, her videos, or her film Truth or Dare. It is through this lens of Madonna's messy racial and sexual politics that I viewed her adoption of a child from Malawi three years ago, and her recent, thus-far-unsuccessful effort to adopt a second child there.

An apology is delivered after emotion and protests swirl around the New York Post for a controversial cartoon.

The New York Times has a great article up about Cheryl Ziegler, an 18-year-old single mother from the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, who is also a boxer.