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