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Angry white men

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 20:13:00 +0000

It could be terrorism, but we don’t yet know. It could be someone who has a beef with Sikhs. It’s too early to talk about gun control. These statements ran in a continuous loop through my head yesterday, even when I wasn’t watching coverage of the mass shooting at an active gurdwara in a suburb of Milwaukee. Throughout the day, the hollowness in my solar plexus signaled grief and the tightness in my throat signaled panic, and I felt deep, deep resistance to the notion of saying anything about it. What is there to say that isn’t a cliché?

Details are going to emerge in the coming days, but I already know what they’ll amount to. A white man, in his 40’s, nursing resentment over 9/11 for more than a decade, planned for a long time to kill some “enemies.” The guns will turn out to be legally acquired, or if not, so accessible as to make the law meaningless. The man will turn out to be mad. In the debate, people will argue that the cause is racism…no, it’s gun control…no, it’s mental health. It is impossible for us to navigate the deadly tangle of all three.

8-year-old tells off Leno

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:59:00 +0000

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” took the top prizes at both Sundance and the Cannes Film Festivals earlier this year. The film’s brilliance is in large part due to director and co-writer of the screenplay Benh Zeitlin but it’s the 6-year-old heroine of the film that made it a cinematic experience.

The film’s star Quvenzhané Wallis was a regular five-year-old school girl in Houma, Louisiana when she auditioned for the role of Hushpuppy in the film. She was six during production and now that she’s out promoting the film she’s eight. (And as you’ll see in the clip above from the “Tonight Show” Wallis isn’t afraid to tell a man seven times older than her how to do his job.)

We’re not your model minority

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 15:35:00 +0000

It’s not every day that deep and rigorous research about Asian Americans is released to the public. So when the well-respected Pew Research Center released “The Rise of Asian Americans,” a comprehensive report on the community on Tuesday, it should have been reason enough to celebrate. Instead, the report, which hailed Asians as the fastest-growing and highest-achieving racial group in the country, drew widespread criticism from Asian American scholars, advocates and lawmakers who raised alarm about the report, and warned against taking it seriously at all. Poor research of an oft-overlooked community, it turns out, might do more damage than no research at all.

We are “deeply concerned about how findings from a recent study by the Pew Research Center have been used to portray Asian Americans,” the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, a network of civil rights advocacy groups, said on Wednesday. The report's authors, the AACAJ said, “paint a picture of Asian Americans as a model minority, having the highest income and educational attainment among racial groups. These portrayals are overly simplistic.”

Ten LGBT leaders

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:58:00 +0000

The movement for LGBT rights and community has expanded well beyond the once-dominant circles of Washington, D.C., New York and California. Today, leaders in the South and Midwest are working to build their own political communities in their own ways—and increasingly, that means creating links between LGBT rights and the many other issues that impact their lives, including racial justice. In an accompanying article, “The New LGBT Politics,” I explore how that work is shaping the movement’s future. But just who are some of the folks leading that shift? Below are 10 such individuals and organizations—pastors and cyclists, artists and academics—who are helping to reshape the LGBT movement.

CANDACE HARDNETT
Savannah, Ga.

Playing for Michelle Obama

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:25:00 +0000

First lady Michelle Obama is known for pushing healthy eating and exercise but at a campaign stop last Thursday she was all about pies. One apple and one sour cherry pie, to be precise.

The first lady made an unannounced stop at Mom’s Apple Pie Co., a family-owned bakery in Occoquan, a small town about 23 miles southwest of the White House, ABC News reports.

Six-year-old Sydney Trapp happened to be in the shop and serenaded Mrs. Obama with “Ode to Joy” on her violin.

Lastly, take a look above and check out the new Pinterest and Reddit sharing buttons.

I’m willing to make the claim that Mrs. O’s beautifully colorblocked pink and mint outfit will get you “re-pinned” on Pinterest, so go share.

How did this parent end up in jail?

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:22:00 +0000

Kelley Williams-Bolar is giving a speech in the dark. The Ohio mom is rattling off the standard remarks she’s delivered in public appearances since being catapulted onto the national stage last year. It’s an unseasonably warm day and the lights in the room are off, her face lit only by the glow of the computer screen in her father’s home. The address on the door outside is the one she used on her now-famous falsified documents—the ones that landed her in jail for nine days for illegally enrolling her daughters in a neighboring public school district.

“First, I talk about how I received my indictments, and then I give the laundry list of stipulations for my probation,” says Williams-Bolar, who is halfway through her two-year sentence. The 42-year-old single mother, with an otherwise spotless criminal record, is not allowed to drink, must submit to drug tests and reports monthly to a probation officer. She had to perform 80 hours of community service and pay $800 in restitution, as well as the cost of Summit County’s prosecution against her.

Schools for the corporate era

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Gov. Bobby Jindal has remade the Louisiana public schools system with impressive speed over the past legislative session. Last week, he signed into law a suite of landmark reform bills that will likely change the direction of public education in Louisiana forever. But not all change is good, and critics say both Jindal’s agenda and the strategy to move it come right from the playbook of conservative advocacy group ALEC, in an effort to revive Jindal’s national political profile.

Louisiana is now home to the nation’s most expansive school voucher program. Charter school authorization powers have been broadened. And teacher tenure policies have been radically transformed. Louisiana already had something of a reputation as a radical-reform state, thanks to the post-Katrina educational climate in New Orleans. But not all change is good, and education advocates have deep concerns about the efficacy of Jindal’s overhaul, and the interests that have pushed it.

The language of “terrorism”

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Police in Southern California have insisted that the brutal beating death of Shaima Alawadi is an isolated incident, and not a crime motivated by hate. Alawadi was killed after a brutal beating last week in El Cajon, Calif. and the attack has sent shockwaves across the country.

At a memorial service this week for the 32-year-old wife and mother of five, Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said it would be irresponsible to jump to conclusions cautioning, “We don’t know if it was a hate crime. We don’t know if it wasn’t a hate crime.” What we do know is that Alawadi 17-year-old daughter Fatima, found a note next to her slain mother’s body that read, “This is my country. Go back to yours, terrorist.”

The “Trayvon Martin had it coming” narrative

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:44:00 +0000

Trayvon Martin had it coming, or so we will soon be led to believe. The surely unattractive details of his short life as a black man in America will tumble forward—his troubles in school, the weed baggie that got him suspended, the altercation in which police and George Zimmerman claim he was the aggressor. He was a maladjusted, Negro man-child, so ferocious he could kill an armed man with his bare hands. He had to die.

On Monday, local law enforcement offered a preview of this old, familiar narrative when someone leaked Zimmerman’s account of the night to the Orlando Sentinel. According to the Sentinel, Zimmerman had given up his hunt of Martin and was returning to his SUV when the 17-year-old caught him by surprise. Do you have a problem, Martin is said to have asked, before answering for himself, “Well, you do now.” He reportedly began pummelling Zimmerman, leading the armed man to shoot and kill.

There’s money in the white savior complex

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:46:00 +0000

U.S.-based non-profit Invisible Children responded directly on Monday to criticism over its widely popular Kony 2012 campaign, a viral video that has drawn tens of millions of viewers and major celebrity endorsements. However, despite the group’s best efforts, the campaign is still taking heat over its portrayal of Africans as victims whose only hope lay in the actions — and wallets — of white saviors. And critics say it’s that centuries-old narrative that’s in part responsible for the campaign’s viral success.

In a video that clocks in at just over eight minutes, Invisible Children’s CEO Ben Keesey attempted to reinforce his organization’s commitment to ending political unrest in Uganda.

“I understand why people are wondering is this is just some slick, kind of fly-by-night slacktivist thing,” Keesey says in the video, “when actually it’s not at all…. It’s connected to a really deep, thoughtful, very intentional and strategic campaign.”