In case you missed it…

by Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove

Every Friday afternoon we sum up the week’s best posts from New Demographic’s various projects. Here we go!

Race Changers
a community of people working towards an anti-racist future, one week at a time

• Assignment 5 – Understanding the complexities of international adoption: We hope that through this assignment, we will all begin to see that international adoption is an extremely complex issue that poses many quandaries having to do with race, culture, language, class, power, privilege, economics, politics and the law.

Conscious Media Maker
a blog for entertainment, media, advertising and public relations professionals who are committed to bringing about more realistic, three-dimensional representations of people of color

• Eulogy for a magazine: VNU dumps Marketing y Medios: From a publishing perspective, the Latino marketing community literally goes from star to minority status.
• Is another racist reality show headed our way? “A NEW CBS SHOW SEEKS New York families who have traditional family values but are uneasy around Muslims.”

Addicted to Race
a podcast about America’s obsession with race

• Episode 46: We hand the reins over to our listeners in this episode – it’s a special all listener feedback show!

Anti-Racist Parent
a blog for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook

• Why my daughter will never dress in a national costume for Halloween: Everyone guessed everything from Aunt Jemima to Kizzy, the slave girl who was one of the main characters from Alex Haley’s then-recent epic movie, Roots. By the time the day ended, I’d ripped the head wrap from my head, and scrubbed my face clean of any makeup.
• Hope vs. Optimism: And in thinking about Cornell West’s quote, I too want to help my children have hope – not just blind optimism that leads to a passively waiting for things to get better – but the kind of hope that leads to actions as a personal agent of change.

Racialicious
a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture

• Anti-Racist of the Week: Mutombo!: On Thursday night Houston Rockets center Dikembe Mutombo got into an altercation with a fan who allegedly yelled racist slurs at him, including the word “monkey”, during a preseason game against the Orlando Magic.
• A million to one. Again.: Gee. For a “million-to-one” odds, it seems like we’re seeing a whole lot of “miracle black and white twins” these days. Just a few days after our last reported twins, here comes yet another set.
• Borat: just plain funny? or racist and xenophobic? What do you think of the Borat movie? Is it just silly and funny? Or do you think Sacha Baron Cohen is tapping into a racist and/or xenophobic vein in the United States?
• Kimchi in aisle two! Basically, at this point, we still see that anything aside from apple pie and hot dogs is relegated to “ethnic food” aisles. It would be nice to see a bit more integration at the grocery store , but perhaps it will take a while since clearly, the way that we discuss ethnic cuisine sets it apart.
• Sofia Coppola feminism: dependent on class, race, and cultural subjugation: It is a feminism that demands emptiness (real or invented) of reflection, instead replacing it with self involvement. It requires that culture and emotion be reduced to tropes and materials so that possession of these trinkets is possession of the cultural significance.
• Whites stereotype Asians, Asians stereotype blacks: Check out this old Jell-O ad from the sixties that mocks an Asian baby trying to eat Jell-O with chopsticks. It has just about every offensive stereotype you can think of: the dreaded Asian font and a presumably white dude narrating with an awful fake accent.