links for 2009-09-08

"This past Memorial Day, I opened the medicine cabinet at my aunt’s house looking for toothpaste only to find a tube of Fair & Lovely staring back at me. My heart sank. I yelled for my 10-year old cousin. “What is THIS?” I asked her, holding the tube gingerly.

“What?” she said innocently, “It’s just suntan lotion so I don’t get dark.” I looked at the ingredient list. Indeed, among the ingredients was “sunscreen.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was the same girl who had teased her seven-year old darker-skinned cousin so much that a year later, the poor kid still adamantly states “I’m not pretty.” Little wonder given that our mothers come from a country where bridal makeup still means you pancake the woman in white foundation from the neck-up and then hide her hands under her dupatta so the color disparity doesn’t show."

"People, in the panic of recession, don't dare to put a girl of color in their campaign, full stop." She added, "This year, we have gone back all the way that we had advanced. I don't see any black woman, or of any other race, in big advertising campaigns."

"The shirt at right is a variation on the one I saw, one of several "gangsta" SpongeBob tees you might find for sale in a neighborhood like Sunset Park, at a boardwalk gift shop, or on eBay. The SpongeBob shirts serve notice that a gray-market tradition at least two decades old is alive and kicking—one in which iconic cartoon characters are reimagined as cartoonishly "urban" and then plastered across bootleg merchandise. "

"It's not unusual to find a barbecue restaurant in the South where the ribs are so good you want to run home and kiss your mom. But it's a rare find to discover the South's main delicacy cooked up by Lebanese immigrants in Mississippi, who defied segregation and who've been doing it since 1924."

The tipster ShyGirlJ described it best: "That's right – "ethnic hair"! This was on AOL's front page. "Follow these step-by-step tips a for smooth, sleek, DIY hair." "

"The overrepresentation of African Americans is not explained by use rates. According to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the percentage of African Americans and whites who use marijuana over any 30-day period are similar. However, for the 18-25 age group — which constitutes a substantial proportion of marijuana arrests — African Americans regularly use marijuana at rates lower than whites (16.5% and 18.4%, respectively), indicating that their overrepresentation may be even more profound."

"They envisioned a neighborhood where whites and blacks, gays and straights, could live in harmony.

"What we wanted was an integrated community," Polsky said. "We had wonderful neighbors who were right with us."

Their dream has blossomed into a national model."

" The gallery represents a cross section of official and unofficial Washington, from President Obama to the doorman at the Madison Hotel, from the head of the National Rifle Association to a shoeshine man. There are those who receive their pay in the form of salary and bonuses; there are those who collect theirs in a plastic cup."