links for 2011-03-23
March 23rd, 2011 by Andrea
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"Throughout my childhood, I learned that class meant contradiction. When I visited my mother’s family in Georgia, I saw working-class black folks who could be trashy and uncouth or who could be hardworking and upwardly mobile. My mother was the hardworking kind. "And in Durham, I saw middle- class Black folks who were mean and colorist and shut out poor folks who were trying to get ahead, and then I saw the generous kind who paid their 'lift as we climb' tithes, who mentored smart, working class kids who only needed chances and legs up. My father was the generous kind."
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"Model Minority emerges at a fascinating point in the evolution of Asian Americans, hip-hop and pop culture. Jin brought battle-tested cred. Koreatown’s Far East Movement has recently demonstrated commercial viability. There’s also the general bum-rush of social media by the likes of Hawaii’s Ryan Higa and the UC San Diego-founded Wong Fu Productions. Model Minority triangulates itself within all this, describing itself on Facebook as 'The Wong Fu of rap. The Asia-centric dead prez. The 2010 Mountain Brothers. The activist Far East Movement.'” "That self-description captures how the group fits into a new (media) breed of artists working with an array of outlets rather than solely fixated on a record contract."
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"Dr. Levitan credited a combination of factors, including a federal waiver of limits on assets of a food stamps applicant, and the city’s own efforts 'to bring in more people who are not the traditional welfare population, but are more the working poor.'" …The rate varied from 13.5 percent among non-Hispanic whites to nearly 25 percent among both Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers; both groups have higher proportions of immigrants who might have been ineligible for some programs that require citizenship or longer residency in the state. Dr. Levitan explained that Asians often have 'cultural issues about being reluctant to get some kind of assistance.' The poverty rate for blacks was 21.1 percent."
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"One explanation sometimes offered for the paucity of American films that engage the Muslim world is that North America, unlike Europe or Israel, is distant from the places where Western and Islamic civilizations converge or collide. In that regard, though, it may be worth noting that of the four foreign-language films dealing with such issues that were nominated for the foreign-language Oscar this year, one ('Incendies') came from Canada and another ('Biutiful') from Mexico."
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