links for 2009-12-17

In which our own Jessica Yee rocks.

"Jessica Yee has some blunt words for the RCMP’s failure to address aboriginal women disappearing on BC’s Highway of Tears.

"'It’s total systemic discrimination,' said Yee, who has worked to strengthen sexual education for young women living along Highway 16 in northern BC.

"'There was one non-aboriginal victim and the amount of attention paid to her was so much higher,' she said. 'Not to say that her life is any less valuable, but it is a process of discrimination.'"

I will not link to it. To read the full thing, you can head over to huffpo directly. Linking is an endorsement in this digital age and drives up the search ranking. I will not reward Huffington Post for this. Suffice it to say that the rest of the piece is as full of mismatched analogies and cloudy-eyed analysis as the headline and opening paragraphs.

With her light-brown skin and Islamic headscarf, Khadigah Alasry of Dearborn said she doesn't see herself as white.

But the Arab American is officially classified as such by the U.S. government, which says that anyone with roots in the Middle East — including north Africa — is white.

"That's just weird to me," said Alasry, 23, born to immigrants from Yemen.

Ren, Ly and Denniswara helped drive the biggest Army recruitment boon for Los Angeles in two decades — led by an 80% increase in Asian enlistments in the last year. Asians have traditionally joined the military at the lowest rate among all races.

But lured by job security, enhanced tuition aid and, for some immigrants, the chance for U.S. citizenship, Asians this year made up 22% of all active-duty recruits, nearly twice their proportion in the Los Angeles County population.

The resulting response to the choice of that particular image and that coverline was not anticipated by the person most closely involved with this week’s cover. That person was me, PW senior news editor, Calvin Reid.

On the other hand, though, which I think is perhaps more interesting, there’s the reaction in the bhangra community. I actually found the track on a bhangra blog, it’s been reposted and become popular on a bhangra youtube channel where it’s generated positive comments, the band has toured to desi audiences in Canada and it’s played on several bhangra radio stations… The bhangra community is not offended at all, they rather like it. (For as they say: Imitation is…)

So who’s right? Us radical critics or the people we think we’re defending? Perhaps it’s worth thinking about.