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Thx Hiccups. ” “Look at GM,” Mr. Chu says. “What’s the only bright spot in their report? Growth in business with China. How many Asian-Americans do they have at the top? Zip.”"
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Thx Kimberly. “Kenneth Purvis asked the headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during breaks…The following morning white students had hung three nooses ther
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Thx Wendi. “Clive Campbell, known as D.J. Kool Herc, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the west Bronx. He wants the apartment building to be declared a landmark for its role in hip-hop culture. “This is where it came from,” he said.”
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Thx HighJive. “Young black women you see shaking their nearly naked rumps in all those videos or who serve as groupies to male rappers…are willing, if misguided, participants in their own debasement.”
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“a Thai graduate student at Illinois State University who argued about the American constitutional right to own a gun may be deported from the United States later this month after being expelled from university”
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“According to a story published this week in Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Treasury sends a check for $4,085 every year to the Cuban government to pay for the annual rent of 160 kilometers in Guantanamo Bay. But those checks have not been cashed in 47 years
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“Adult Swim has sorta been in the business of promoting hipster rap for a while now…Part of what seems amiss here is the fact that a lot of this stuff seems like hip-hop for white people who don’t really listen to hip-hop.”
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“there is almost no conceivable way to make a re-done Fu Manchu that will at once address and abolish the racist history of the character…Why not just spend a little bit of extra effort and write a completely new, respectable and inoffensive Asian male
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“we need to start demonstrating to ourselves and to America, at large, that we can not only be decent, worthwhile people, but we can also be fundamentally human and flawed…we are still too content to enjoy the superficial benefits of our “positive ste
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“On a racial level, a woman like Natasha Yi or Asia Carrere, who forsake their ability to pursue higher education to fulfill male fantasies of sexual domination of Asian women perpetuates a stereotype that affects not just them, but me and my career.”
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“CNN announced Friday that Yul Kwon, winner of the 13th edition of “Survivor,” is working as a correspondent on a special series about Asian-Americans. His topics will include portrayals of Asian-Americans in the media and the high expectations placed on
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Thx Wendi. “Tyra chided Jaslene for not being Latino enough, because Jaslene had stopped breaking into random Salsa and saying things in a spicy street Spanish…when Jaslene would come on screen, Salsa music would come out of nowhere”
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Thx Lauren. Horrendous. Gawker Media launches a new blog aimed at women and calls it Jezebels “because it is run by hussies.” Guess they’re not aware of or don’t care about the racial history of the word “Jezebel.”
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Sara wrote:
I totally didn’t think of that re: Jezebel. I was pretty stoked for the blog, too. Should write an editor and ask about this.
Posted 22 May 2007 at 11:39 am ¶
summer wrote:
so glad to see someone else react to the whole “cha cha diva” thing. i wrote about it after the finale on my blog. i also contrasted tyra’s reaction to latina stereotypes w/her reaction to previous winner danielle and black stereotypes.
Posted 22 May 2007 at 10:18 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
I’ve never gotten a handle on how Jezebel could become associated with anything racially-loaded. Jezebel was Phoenician, and Phoenicians were probably closely related to their Canaanite neighbors, which means they were genetically similar enough to the Hebrews as fellow Semites. I’m not sure there was any racial issue in itself with Jezebel. The criticism she takes in the biblical accounts is first and foremost about her worship of foreign gods, which is a religious issue and not a racial issue.
Posted 28 May 2007 at 9:08 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Jeremy:
I think I can break this one down. The story of Jezebel in the Hebrew Scriptures shows a wanton, decadent queen who exists essentially to tempt Israel into false practices; for most of the story, she succeeds and only the virtuous are able to overthrow her. This is of course before any race theory or modern concept of genetic inheritance.
She also was evidently used in the New Testament as well as the same idea: a temptress who lures Christians into evil (I haven’t found the verse, I’m assuming it’s something in one of Paul’s letters).
http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/p123.htm
NOW…
African women, especially those enslaved, were portrated as temptresses, as seductresses, as heathen and ugly, but still compelling to white men.
A common cultural image of the black woman was of a subhuman oversexed female who was the opposite of virtuous chaste white womanhood, who would tempt white men to do evil, and who would “ruin” them.
And the shorthand for that image used in song, text, and daily life was “Jezebel.”
Can that be any clearer?
Posted 28 May 2007 at 6:00 pm ¶
merq wrote:
The only thing I could possibly add to Lyonside’s explanation is that the Jezebel archetype was used to excuse slave masters who raped their female slaves.
Posted 29 May 2007 at 7:37 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Merq, thanks for that addition. I had that in mind, but I think the “ick” factor kicked in.
And my sister-in-law wonders why I don’t want her to make my kid’s nickname “Jess-abella.” I told her she better start hissing her “s”’s….
Posted 29 May 2007 at 8:28 am ¶