by Guest Contributor Brigitte, originally published at Make Fetch Happen
I think I’ve touched on why fashion shoots in “exotic” (read non-Western) locales tend to get under my skin. The main issue for me is the tendency for the photographer to use whatever local is handy as a prop and/or or exploit the model’s own ethnicity [...]

US court: Paper money discriminates against blind – May. 20, 2008
“The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish the bills’ value, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.”
(tags: disability discrimination)

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Check out some political commentary from me, Gustavo Arellano of AskaMexican.net, and Angela Shelton and Frances Callier of the comedy duo Frangela on today’s episode of “Day to Day.”
Click here to listen
I woke up today mad at the world, and it’s probably a good thing that NPR edited out some of my [...]

Warning: There are some thumbnail-sized, somewhat NSFW images after the jump
by guest contributor Michelle Schwartz, originally published at Michelle Schwartz Chronicles
In honor of Mother’s Day, Stark and I have been working on a multimedia project. I’m hoping that it can really grow and expand, and that lots of people will participate. Here are the basics:
While [...]

by Guest Contributor Kelvin
As a kid growing up in Nigeria, I was exposed to a lot of music by my parents. I grew up listening to artists such as Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Sting, Phil Collins, Fela Kuti, and Candi Staton. Back then, music was just that – music.
There were no [...]

by Latoya Peterson
The Wichita Eagle ran an article on May 12, detailing the story of Shukura Sentwali, a native of Kansas who has decided to participate in an interesting program:
Shukura Sentwali is going home — to Ghana, West Africa.
Sentwali, a Wichitan and longtime community activist, said she’s moving to Africa next year because two Ghanaian [...]

by guest contributor Lerone D. Wilson, originally published at Blackline
This being the last month of my matriculation at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, I’ve seized the occasion to reflect upon my experience at arguably the leading journalism institution in the country. It is here that I’ve had my first real exposure to the type [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Reader x0x recently sent in this article published back in February in the Valley Advocate (based in Massachusetts), written by Salim Muwakkil.
The article opens:

How can racism still be a problem if so many white Americans are willing to support Sen. Barack Obama for president? This rhetorical question worries some analysts, who warn [...]

YouTube – FOX Compares African Child to Monkey
Specifically, David Banda, the child Madonna adopted, is compared to an adopted monkey from the zoo. – LDP
(tags: via:robschmidt media racism)

Pharyngula: Michael Medved says something dumb
“[The] latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. [...] Oh, [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Talking Points Memo – The GOP War on Democrats Voting
Since its inception, TPM has been chronicling the Republican party’s efforts to push bogus or wildly exaggerated claims of vote fraud to suppress voting among predominantly Democratic constituencies like the old, the poor and the non-white. And here we have another installment from the [...]

by Latoya Peterson
The New York Times Caucus Blog writes:
Known for his humor on the campaign trail, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee raised some eyebrows with his latest improvisation, which imagined a gun pointed at Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
When his speech to the National Rifle Association was interrupted by a loud noise from backstage, Mr. [...]

Excerpted from “Happy Birthday, Malcolm”, originally published at The Root.

Many of our modern leaders live by cynical double standards. They practice slippery personal ethics, while lecturing the masses about morality. They consume conspicuously, while telling ordinary folks to save their pennies. They father children outside of marriage, then blame single mothers for the violence in [...]

by Guest Contributor Nadra Kareem

“I hope he dates a white girl.”
A few years ago a visitor to actor John Cho’s page on the Internet Movie Database left this comment. The commenter, presumably an Asian male, explained that he made the statement because it would serve Asian women right if a desirable Asian male ended up [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
I’ve been enjoying the hell out of slam poet Bao Phi’s “Racist Hollywood” — a series of fake movie pitches in which he pokes fun at Hollywood’s racist depictions of Asians.
But his latest one is by far my favorite, because it’s so scarily real:
BAO PHI’S IDEAS FOR RACIST HOLLYWOOD 5: IMMORTAL KICKBOXER
Tagline: [...]

by Guest Contributor Jehanzeb Dar, originally published at Broken Mystic

I was worried that I was not going to have time to blog about this, but as I waited in rush hour traffic and enjoyed the gentle breeze and pleasant weather, I was reminded of how grateful I should be. Grateful that I am not living [...]