links for 2010-12-01

“Have you seen this yet?  I’m simultaneously horrified and baffled.”

“That some — even now — are honoring secession, with barely a nod to the role of slavery, underscores how divisive a topic the war remains, with Americans continuing to debate its causes, its meaning and its legacy.”

“Philly police, at the direction of that city’s mayor and its Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, have “stopped and frisked” thousands of its black and brown citizens, subjecting them to illegal searches and questioning for no other reason than they “looked suspicious.” The declared goal of the policy is to fight crime and get guns off the streets. However, according to a recent article on Philly.com, Philadelphia police department statistics indicate a dramatic jump in pedestrians being stopped and frisked, from 102,319 in 2005 to 253,333 in 2009 – an increase of 148 percent. Of those individuals stopped in 2009, some 72 percent were African-American. Only 8 percent of the searches led to arrests, and most of those arrests were for disorderly conduct because the folks stopped and frisked complained about their treatment.”

“I used to naively believe that educated people were less racist. Instead I found they are simply representative of the population at large. In fact, sometimes they are more racist simply because power and privilege blind them. Similarly, cultural competence has little to do with formal education. I used to think that cultural competence has to do with exposure, but now I don’t believe that either.”

“The three chosen names were Khadija Diouf (an easily-recognizable Muslim first name, while Diouf is well-known as a common last name in France’s Senegalese community), Marie Diouf (to represent a Christian Senegalese name), and Aurélie Ménard (a common French name with no particular religious associations). To highlight the religious differences, ‘Khadija’ had worked at Secours Islamique, a non-profit, ‘Marie’ had worked for Secours Catholique, another religious non-profit, and ‘Aurélie’ hadn’t worked for any religious-affiliated employers.

“The results are striking. Aurélie got the most responses of all three. However, Marie Diouf also got responses from 21% of the employers the CV was sent to. The nearly identical CV, however, when used with the name Khadija Diouf, got responses from only 8% of potential jobs…”

“The Black Issue that launched her on this path was a way to talk about diversity in fashion, but also about diversity and acceptance in general. ‘The issue made, for me, a special point,’ Sozzani says. ‘When you talk about fashion, you are also talking about many things. . . . I wanted to give a message.’
“Even young people are very conventional. They are very bourgeois, generally speaking. But they buy Vogue, people who would never buy other things. They discover it’s not bourgeois discourse. It’s art and life.” And, perhaps, through fashion their view of life will be broadened and changed.”