Long and Short Links – 2008-12-30
The Angry Black Woman explains why The Dictionary is Not a Perfect Rhetorical Tool.
Bottom line: whipping out a dictionary definition during a discussion of complex issues is ill-advised at best. I would even go so far as to say it’s dumb. It doesn’t put you over on anyone else and it doesn’t win the debate. It usually shows that you don’t have any kind of true understanding of the concepts under discussion and usually leads to people either working to educate you or dismissing you outright.
A Chatterbox posts on Airbending Racism in the Last Airbender.
For them, race is such an unrelated issue that it shouldn’t even be brought up in context. “Avatar” is a fantasy world, so whether or not it’s based on real Asian cultures is irrelevant, by their view, in determining which actors are cast. It should be “colorblind”, which is a nice seeming word that doesn’t look as nice in practice as it does on paper. Many of them go so far as take the moral high-ground of “well, we’re just going to watch the movie and judge them on their acting and talent, while you lot are still off judging people on their race.” It’s unfortunate that they’re taking the moral high ground for the sake of a industry that’s already in the racial sewers.
And a great round up on the predictable responses (and needed rebuttals) by glockgal.
Renee over at Womanist Musings posts a section of the Black Women Walking documentary, noting:
Walking down the street should be a simple thing. We all need to get from point A to point B and yet we must exist with the fear that the next set of eyes we meet will demand much more from us than a friendly smile of recognition. We are expected to shrug this off and not feel anger or resentment, because others feel that they have the right to demean us. We are living, breathing targets because we have been born black and female in a world that has cumulatively decided that we are less than.
Veggiegrrl sends in this article from ABC News, which asks “Are Black Women Getting Smaller?”
An economist in Germany has noticed a curious trend among Americans: For the past 50 years, black women have been shrinking with each new generation.
Young black women today are nearly an inch shorter than white women their age and about half an inch shorter than black women born in the late 60s, according to an analysis of CDC data by John Komlos, a professor of economics at the University of Munich in Germany. [...]
“A measure of height takes into a number of aspects that money alone doesn’t measure,” Komlos said. “It’s sort of an overall indicator of well-being.”
MoriTeuercen sends in a reminder that colonialist habits never change – Kathryn Jean Lopez blogs for the NRO that Africa Needs God. (She essentially quotes a British Atheist for most of the post.) Money quote: “Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete. ”
Eric Stoller sends in news that the Presidents of a few Nashville colleges and universities are speaking out against an English-only charter amendment. The article notes “The English-only message is an anathema to schools that thrive on international students and faculty diversity.”
Ananser sends in some fun with the ten Bollywood movies that influenced Slumdog Millionaire and some of the backstory behind the Cadillac Records and Chess.
The Washington Post covers a director’s new vision – “Indian Filmmaker Casts Off Stereotypes” (h/t Rob Schmidt):
[R]ather than setting the film’s show-stopper dance numbers in what Jagadeesh calls “the Indian movie version of Washington” — marble monuments, ethnic Indian restaurants and sari shops — she has chosen the sort of backdrops against which life really plays out for many first- and second- generation immigrants here: offices of Northern Virginia high-tech firms; the upscale, make-your-own-meal restaurant Dinner Zen in Reston; a suburban ice-skating rink; and a mixer held by NetSAP, the network of South Asian professionals, at the Willard Hotel, where the music of choice is not bhangra but salsa.
“I’m not setting this in Washington because of the pretty architecture,” explained Jagadeesh, 29, who has worked on television movies in India and has brought in several well-known Indian film actors to play the leads. She said her aim is to correct some Indian misconceptions about immigrant life in America.
“There’s this stereotype in Indian movies that Indian girls raised here are morally debauched and end up being rude to their parents, promiscuous and losing their [Hindu vegetarian] religion — you know, eating meat right and left,” she said. “Also, the women characters are either long-suffering, self-sacrificing mother types who are put on a pedestal, or jezebel vamps to be reviled. Well, what about the rest of us who are just trying to live our lives?”
Ignoblus sends in sad news that the Harvard University Menorah has been vandalized and many of the “Happy Chanukah” signs around it were vandalized multiple times.
And an old one I lost in drafts…
The New York Times – From a Quiet American, a Story of War and Remembrance
Dr. Abe kept in touch with his wartime comrades and worked hard to keep their story alive. He raised money for an internment memorial in Washington and helped to found the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He and other veterans still get together. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, a hero of the 442nd, calls him Doc.
But time has been steadily taking what the war did not. Veterans and internees are dying, and so is the memory of that ugly time. It has been 20 years since the United States officially apologized for the internment, paying $20,000 in reparations to each victim. That anniversary, on Aug. 10, passed quietly.
“The money didn’t mean anything,” Dr. Abe said, without anger. Nothing could replace what the country took away. “People lost everything,” he said.
The apology closed a chapter, but the country remains as panic-prone as ever. Citizenship was hardly enough to protect Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, and it did not keep thousands of American Muslims from being seized after 9/11. Helpless Latino immigrants have been harassed and brutalized in states from Arizona to Iowa and sent to languish in federal custody.
There is an antidote to America’s toxic fear of supposed strangers. It does not rely on late, inadequate apologies, but simply on listening to people like Dr. Abe and remembering who they are. The country owes a debt to those who forgive but do not forget, who live to tell their stories, as often as they need to be repeated.
(Thanks to Zalel
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
atlasien wrote:
The height decrease seems like it’s really, really related to diet and nutrition. I’m surprised the article doesn’t go into any further detail along those lines.
“For example, why the height decline, the study found, is mostly among the lower and middle income group.”
Diet has changed a lot, and rapidly, since the 1960s… especially the levels of hormones in meat products. People in upper incomes can afford the nicer quality of meat that doesn’t have such high levels, therefore they aren’t as affected. But bad diet, itself related to economic stress and lax regulation of agribusiness, leads to earlier puberty and shorter heights.
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 10:11 am ¶
UGLY PUNK GURL! wrote:
atlasien got that right.
many upper class white people can afford healthy food, whereas many middle and working class folks (whether black or white) can’t.
it’s all about the ECONOMICS OF FOOD, PEOPLE
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 11:19 am ¶
Lloyd Webber wrote:
Damn, I’m still angry about the avatar casting situation, but despite all the anger and justified complaints, I’m still incredibly pessimistic that anything will actually happen. I’m prepared to boycott the movie if I have to. I mean, seriously, Jesse Freaking McCartney as Zuko. Perish the thought
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 11:54 am ¶
Lisa J wrote:
Interesting about the height thing. I took a course in college on British History in the 20th century and when we were studying the early 20th century they found that many lower-class men and boys who they tried to induct were below the height requirements and when they studied it further they found on average those men were quite shorter, I think almost half a foot, shorter than their upper class and middle class counterparts. They also mentioned how the US soldiers in WWI and WWII but less so, TOWERED over their British counterparts b/c most were well fed farm boys. After that they tried to improve nutrition a bit for poorer children.Obviously we need to do the same today.
I don’t really get the point of the not using a dictionary definition and that it is proof that the definer doesn’t know the word. Guess I’ll have toread the article, but I’ve often found that if the person you are talking to doesn’t understand the meaning of the word, it can help to pull out the dictionary and say, see I told you what this means and the dictionary backs me up!
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 12:17 pm ¶
Lisa J wrote:
Nevermind, I just read the piece on the dictionary. Now I get it, it is about larger and subtle uses of words. I was thinking in terms of speaking to someone who isn’t too savy with words and who you genuinely have to explain a term too. It is a really good piece.
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 12:22 pm ¶
Persia wrote:
Lloyd Webber, I’m still pissed and am going to remain pissed, especially until I can get a letter to the producers (check aang-aint-white.livejournal.com for details). One of the great things about Avatar was that for once, and completely casually, there wasn’t a white character in sight, and no one cared. Ugh.
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 12:39 pm ¶
Anya wrote:
I’m curious whether food economics also affect menstruation — in my own experience and that of some of my friends, Latinas got our periods somewhat earlier. Is that also caused by nutrition? I think there was something about this issue in ColorLines a while back… Perhaps height and puberty both affected by food economics?
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶
socstudent wrote:
I haven’t read the article about height differences so I may just be stating the obvious. Atlasien also mentioned this. The flood of estrogen that comes along with puberty effectively stops the adolescent growth spurt. There were studies about black girls getting their periods earlier than white girls. This early onset of puberty probably contributes to the height disparity.
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 3:13 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
Early puberty is definitely caused by nutrition. And the two major factors that affect nutrition are cultural traditions of cooking plus economics. So a family could be very poor, but if they live in the country with a garden and have a strong family tradition of cooking fresh food they might have much better nutrition than a richer family in an urban environment.
I remember a study that was done comparing West African immigrants and African-Americans, and the African-Americans had much earlier puberty, and I think they controlled for economic class. One idea was that the West African immigrants still had a strong tradition of cooking fresh foods as opposed to eating more processed foods.
Once you lose the tradition of cooking fresh foods, your family might be in big trouble. If your family is middle-class or higher, you can learn it back again, but lower-income people don’t have those resources of time and energy and therefore get stuck in a cheap processed carbohydrate, fatty meat, fast food dependency cycle.
I think genetics has almost nothing to do with it, because it’s a pattern that holds true across diverse groups in diverse countries.
1. Widespread malnutrition in childhood creates delayed puberty, stunts growth, reduces height.
2. Better nutrition leads to huge gains in height and life expectancy
3. Too much of a good thing: high fats, hormones in meats, high sugar diets, less activity, less tradition of cooking fresh food all lead to early puberty (which also reduces height) and diabetes and other health problems
4. Upper income people move on to the next stage , or skip stage three entirely by being able to afford proper nutrition, healthy food and exercising. Poorer people get trapped in stage three.
You can see it in Japan, for example, which has had massive economic changes, more so than America. The oldest generation in Japan experienced malnutrition due to poverty. A lot of elderly women you’ll see there walk bent over nearly double from calcium depletion. In the postwar years nutrition improved and the average Japanese height shot upwards. And now fast food is making big inroads and diabetes rates are rising.
Posted 31 Dec 2008 at 3:20 pm ¶
Free wrote:
Late commenting here, but I second atlasien, and add that there is a link between early menstruation and cancer. Consider this 2002 Web M.D. article about a study comparing the differences black and white girls and the onset of “early menarche” Although, this study concluded that girls who menstruated before age 11 are “heavier and taller” than girls who menstruate after age 13 and that black girls are “more advanced in terms of skeletal development” than white girls.
http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20021009/girls-menstruating-earlier
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶