by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Ever since those photos came out of Tyra Banks looking not very svelte in a bathing suit, it seems like she’s been obsessed with proving that she’s not fat.
You might have heard about the show she did a couple weeks back where she wore the same bathing suit that appears in the [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
A brand-new episode (No. 60) of Addicted to Race is out! Addicted to Race is New Demographic’s weekly podcast about America’s obsession with race.
Carmen is joined by guest co-host Jason Sperber. Jason Sperber is a former stay-at-home-dad living in California’s Central Valley. Currently a writer, blogger, and online community manager, he [...]

Students of color in sociology – C.N. Le
“sociology clearly encompasses many issues that have important effects upon the lives of people of color in the U.S., such as racial discrimination, education, income and wealth inequality, crime and violence, etc. But the question becomes, how well repre
(tags: academia diversity)

Defeat for Affirmative Action – Inside Higher Ed
Thanks [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
What do you think of this image?
It’s supposed to be Bob Dylan mowing down Kyp Malone from the band TV on the Radio. Martín Perna, who’s associated with the band, wrote a long letter to the Voice criticizing the image (see below).
Reactions to the letter that I’ve seen on other blogs are [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
The latest issue of Newsweek features a review of the film Magic Negro Saves White Nympho, I mean, Black Snake Moan , director Craig Brewer’s follow-up to 2005’s Hustle & Flow. There’s also a little quote from yours truly:
There’s no polite way to describe Craig Brewer’s “Black Snake Moan,” so [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Newsweek thinks so. In a recent article about nerdcore hip hop, Brian Braiker writes:

Of course, ever since Vanilla Ice’s 1991 flameout, the rare white rapper has been derided, forced underground—or both—with the exceptions of Eminem and the Beastie Boys. But all of a sudden white rappers are enjoying a mainstream renaissance: VH1 has a hit on its hands with “The (White) Rapper Show,” an “American Idol” for would-be Eminems, and in February Bloomsbury will publish “Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America,” by Jason Tanz, an editor at Fortune Small Business. There are two indie documentaries about nerdcore in production, and their online trailers have each netted more than a half-million views. The concept of being a white rapper is no longer a joke.

CNN’s Beck: Obama is “colorless … he might as well be white” – Media Matters
“Beck claimed that Obama “is colorless,” adding that “as a white guy … [y]ou don’t notice that he is black. So he might as well be white, you know what I mean?” In addition, Beck said: “I guarantee you, there will [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Are you interested in attending New Demographic’s workshops via phone? In a few weeks, I’m going to start offering teleseminars that you can participate in, no matter where you live.
Please take this super-quick, 1-minute survey to let me know which teleseminar topics most interest you:
Click here to take survey
Thanks!

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Check out this letter to the editor in The Enterprise, a newspaper in southern Maryland. (Thanks to Angelyca for the tip!)
Why must our children, no matter what race, creed, religion, etc., be forced to celebrate Black History Month?
As far as I know, this is not a required curriculum yet every year, it [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

A new magazine titled “Secret Files of Foreigners’ Crimes” is cashing in on anti-foreigner sentiments in Japan. (Thanks to Dan for the tip!) From The Guardian:

The magazine, which is available in mainstream bookstores and from Amazon Japan, makes liberal use of racial epithets and provocative headlines directed mainly at favourite targets of Japanese xenophobes: Iranians, Chinese, Koreans and US servicemen…

One section is devoted to the alleged tricks foreign-run brothels use to fleece inebriated Japanese salarymen, while another features a comic strip retelling, in graphic detail, the murders of four members of a Japanese family by three Chinese men in 2003.

The KKK is back, and targeting Latinos – VivirLatino
“A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League is showing a surge in KKK activity and cites that the organization has a new target: Latinos.”
(tags: whitesupremacy latino hispanic racism)

From black holes to black history – MSNBC.com
“Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson…may well be one of the world’s best-known black scientists. [...]

by guest contributor Pat Miller, originally published at Token Minorities

So one of the latest stories to trickle through the video game news grapevine is about a student-run magazine at the Art Institute of California at San Francisco. Word has it an African American student named Simone Mitchell published an essay named “Homicide” in the student magazine, “Mute/Off”, about constructions of blackness in video games. From the Los Angeles Times:

Simone Mitchell enrolled in the Art Institute of California at San Francisco hoping to catch attention with his visual art, but it was his writing, contained in an essay about racial stereotypes in video games, that catapulted a small in-class short story to the front lines of debate on the timeless “what is art?” question.

Mitchell wrote the 10-page spread for Mute/Off, a small magazine produced as part of a cultural studies class. The school pulled the magazine from circulation Dec. 6, hours after it was distributed, saying it hadn’t been approved by the administration.

Panel says that black America is adrift – Chicago Tribune
” On Saturday, more than 8,000 people returned to the historically black university to chart how far they have come. They gathered for the “State of the Black Union,” an annual traveling town hall that is considered a barometer for black America’s ills.”
(tags: africanamerican black)

The I’m [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

A brand-new episode (No. 59) of Addicted to Race is out! Addicted to Race is New Demographic’s weekly podcast about America’s obsession with race.

Carmen is joined by guest co-host Corbin Laedlin. Corbin is a sophomore at Rutgers University – New Brunswick where he is majoring in Africana Studies and Political Science. In the summer of 2006 he was an intern for Addicted to Race and since then he has done some outreach work for New Demographic.

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

It seems like college students across America were really busy on January 15th coming up with ways to mock the memory of Martin Luther King. Not only did students at Tarleton State University, University of Connecticut School of Law, and Clemson University throw “ghetto parties” on MLK Day, now comes word that students at the University of Arizona did the same (thanks for the tip, Kynn).

Only this party didn’t even go with the vague “ghetto” theme. They actually asked attendees to dress up as their “favorite black person.”