Rebuilding the Bridge, Sichuan Earthquake Charity Event – This Saturday!

More information at the website – Rebuilding the Bridge
Brave New Voices

Youth Speaks Presents
In Partnership with HBO’s Def Poetry, DC WritersCorps, Sol & Soul, the Creative Writing Alliance, and Hip-Hop Theater Festival
The 11th Annual
BRAVE NEW VOICES
International Youth Poetry Slam Festival
Washington, D.C. July 15 – 19, 2008
500 Poets [...]

Lola Adesioye: Jesse Jackson was the one ‘talking down’ | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
“I would argue that Jesse Jackson may be doing more harm to African Americans [...] by suggesting that they are unable to effect positive change in their lives until the society around them is perfectly equal – which it may never [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Carmen has published another piece on Anderson Cooper’s AC360 blog, titled Walking the Racial Tightrope: Whose “side” is Obama really on?”
Carmen once again delves into the thorny topic of mixed race identity in America:

Watching news coverage of Jesse Jackson’s remarks about Barack Obama “talking down to black people” reminded me of a conversation [...]

by Guest Contributor Luke Lee

Let’s say you’re a woman of color climbing the ladder in one of the most male-dominated “boy’s clubs” in America. You’re the assistant to the top spot and when at a meeting with others in your business, a man singles you out asking who you are, why you’re there, what you [...]

by Special Correspondent Nadra Kareem
Mexico’s favorite monkey-boy, Memin Pinguin, may now find an audience in the U.S. That’s because Wal-Mart has decided to carry the reissued comic books series, first released in the 1960s. There’s just one problem. Memin Pinguin isn’t simply a monkey-boy but referred to in the series as a “Negro.”
With that description [...]

by Latoya Peterson

An interesting article made its way to me last week. “Coded Prejudice is a Cloaked Dagger,” from the Chicago Tribune:
Tomeika Broussard thought it was so absurd when she overheard her supervisor refer to her as a “reggin” that she just laughed. Then she realized it was the n-word spelled backward.
The only African-American in [...]

What I Learned at Reality TV School – MSN TV News
“Even though the idea is to be “real,” it turns out you can learn how to be an arguably better version of yourself and increase your odds of getting cast on a reality show. How? By going to school.”
(tags: tv realitytv)

What’s In a Name? – [...]

by Guest Contributor Sewere
I grew up in a country where despite the fact that the vast majority of people there are black folks, there are serious limitations to interactions between people from different ethnic groups.
These differences are particularly pronounced when it comes to who you decide to pair with (dating or marriage). As the [...]

by Racialicious Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie

In this clip from YouTube, we see Gitmo the Puppet’s first appearance, as well as a subsequent appearance. In Gitmo’s first appearance, he’s introduced as a bearded (and presumably Muslim) detainee of Guantanamo Bay with a fakey “Middle Eastern” accent. (He is also an obvious relative of Elmo, for those [...]

by Guest Contributor Matthew Egan

My fiancée, Soo, put The Savages on our Netflix queue. Despite plenty of slice-of-life humor, I found it to be an unyieldingly bleak story about two children putting their father in a nursing home. In one scene, the son (Philip Seymour Hoffman), shows an old movie to help his father with [...]

Damned If Feminine, Damned If Feminist | Election 2008 | AlterNet
“Women are held up simultaneously to feminist and feminine standards, and must fulfill both, but with a bias (still) toward the feminine. The ideal seems to be the Steel Magnolia.”
(tags: sexism politics racism)

Beauty’s not all it’s cracked up to be – Inside Bay Area
“There is [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Dear readers, I have been on an informal banning hiatus. At this time, I am trying to come up with a Writer’s Guide for the site and a Guide to Good Conversation.
However, incidents pop up all the time. And the time to write is short.
Now, Carmen and I have been going around [...]

by Guest Contributor Joe R. Feagin, originally published at Racism Review

There seems to be no end to mocking of the language and speech of people of color by whites. A Los Angeles Times article recounts some mocking of the names of black high school students, likely from a white high school student:
Administrators at Charter Oak [...]

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Addicted to Race Premium is the premium version of New Demographic’s podcast about America’s obsession with race.
Since this is the public RSS feed, you will receive just a 15-minute preview of the interview. If you’d like to hear the hour-long interview in its entirety, subscribe to Addicted to Race Premium today!
Here’s what [...]

by Latoya Peterson

So after Joanna posted her article on Gimme Sugar I decided to check out some of the episodes On Demand. Since On Demand was horrifically slow with adding new episodes, I found the rest on Logo’s site.
After watching the first few episodes, I was charmed. I generally liked the show, the [...]