Links for 09-22-2009
As law students and future lawyers, they were in positions of power that most of us are not, nor ever will be. How could they lend their skills to this movement in a different way? How could they contribute to a broad, holistic agenda without reinforcing the inequities around race, gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, etc?
…white people should struggle a little more than they often do with names that they find unfamiliar — it’s really not that difficult. Using a person’s actual, correctly pronounced name acknowledges his or her individual humanity.
Through [Danticat's] works, she has amassed a wide range of fans with her simple prose and themes of isolation, human struggle, cultural survival — all set against the complex backdrop of Haiti’s complex history and immigrant life.
Aboriginal leaders in Manitoba are horrified that some of the reserves hardest hit by swine flu in the spring have received dozens of body bags from Health Canada. The body bags — which were sent to the remote northern reserves of Wasagamack and God’s River First Nation — came in a shipment of hand sanitizers and face masks.
Grand Chief David Harper, who represents northern First Nations, says body bags send the wrong message and no one can understand why Ottawa would do such a thing. “It really makes me wonder if health officials know something we don’t,” he said.
Shahrukh Khan, quite possibly the most famous man in India (and even the world) was in the U.S. to promote a movie about the profiling of Muslims and brown folk, called “My Name is Khan.”
And then he was profiled in the airport. And detained. Because his name came up in the airport’s computer alert system. Because his name was Khan.
I’ve got no problem talking to my kids about sex. Race is a different story. Like so many (white) parents, I thought not talking about it was the best way to make race a nonissue…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Phrone wrote:
I had no idea that Shahrukh Khan was promoting a movie called “My name is Khan” when he got detained…the irony of that is just overwhelming/depressing.
Posted 22 Sep 2009 at 3:36 pm ¶
MoonCat wrote:
I think it’s very interesting that most of the comments on the article for “feministe” were discussing class privilege and didn’t answer Jill’s question at all.
Posted 22 Sep 2009 at 4:47 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
Re: Shahrukh Khan. I too was irritated at the suggestion that it was all a publicity stunt. He said it right. SRK doesn’t need stunt for publicity. He’s SRK! I couldn’t help but wonder if some of the “oh, he’s just doing it for publicity” rhetoric didn’t have some anti-Muslim undertones. Or perhaps, self-protective biases – “If it happened to him then it could definitely happen to me, therefore I prefer to believe it did not happen to him, so I can believe that it can’t happen to me either.”
Posted 23 Sep 2009 at 9:21 pm ¶
Correction wrote:
“What is the role of privileged white women in the reproductive justice movement?”
Actually, if you look closer you will notice that a large number of the women active in the reproductive justice movement are not Whites of Northern/Northwestern European ethnic descent but rather they are of ethnic Jewish (Ashkenazi) ancestry.
There is a major difference between those groups — please don’t lump them both under the catch-all term “White”…many people, including many Jews, don’t consider Jews to be “White” since they are actually more of a Semitic Near Eastern ethnic background.
Posted 24 Sep 2009 at 12:19 pm ¶