links for 2011-07-07

"At first, I found it refreshing — maybe the middle-class worldview wasn’t so myopic. But after reading the whole novel, I was less upbeat. Despite her key role in the narrative, Lalitha’s character offers little assurance that Indian Americans now occupy a secure place in the American imagination."

"While race is clearly not a factor for Scott in his world, it is a factor in the real one. Constantly denigrating President Obama while requiring nothing of his empowered white colleagues in office is weak, at best. Clearly, black on black crime is not only happening in the hood."

"Former (and current) Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Confederates, and other representatives of the many wings of the “white nationalist” movement are starting to file paperwork and print campaign literature for offices large and small, pointing to rising unemployment, four years with an African-American president, and rampant illegal immigration as part of a growing mound of evidence that white people need to take a stand.

"Most aren’t winning—not yet. But they’re drawing levels of support that surprise and alarm groups that keep tabs on the white-power movement (members prefer the terms “racial realist” or “white nationalist”). In May, the National Socialist Movement’s Jeff Hall hit national headlines in a bizarre tragedy: his murder, allegedly at the hands of his 10-year-old son. But before his death, he had campaigned for a low-level water board position in Riverside, California. The swastika-wearing plumber who patrolled the U.S. border paramilitary-style walked away with almost 30 percent of his community’s vote. “That’s a sizable amount of the vote for a person running openly as a Neo Nazi,” says Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. While Hall’s political future—and life—has been cut short, Mayo points out that we should expect more white supremacist hopefuls next year."