Compiled by Thea Lim, with Andrea Plaid and Wendi Muse
My day job takes me into some pretty non-anti-oppressive environments. Generally I try to steer clear of conversations that deal with any parameter of power in depth (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability…) because in my environment, I find these conversations excruciating. It’s not [...]

Though the word Namaste has been a South Asian greeting for centuries, now every yoga student, celebrity (check out Al Gore’s picture in the wiki entry) and creepy guy trying to hit on an Indian woman thinks it’s fine to use it as a way of saying “hey” or “I’m so in touch with what [...]

By Guest Contributor Restructure!, originally posted at Restructure!
Excerpted from Whitey Don’t see that: The rising recognition of ‘white privilege’ in Western academia (PDF) by
Momoko Price at The Ubyssey, November 2006:
Laurence Berg, Canada Research Chair for Human Rights, Diversity and Identity, disagrees with the
idea that PC language and policies are oppressive. Why? Because he doesn’t [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

The other day I was having a drink with a friend, when he began describing a woman he was interested in. “She’s half Japanese,” he said. “Half Japanese?” I said, “She doesn’t have another half?”
At this point my friends have gotten used to my annoying linguistic nitpicking, the subtle (and [...]

By Guest Contributor Aliya; an earlier version of this post can be found at Sanctuary
(*I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum*)
When I started reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, I was already aware that in the movie version of the book, Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams were cast to play Henry DeTamble and [...]

by Guest Contributor Andrés Duque, originally published at Blabbeando

The Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday that a local Hispanic contractors’ organization had removed a video from its website and given apologies after a local television station received complaints that it contained demeaning portrayals of gays (”Hispanic contractors’ group pulls video called demeaning to gays“).
The U.S. Hispanic Contractors [...]

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

Take a look at this photo. What are your initial thoughts on this tattoo?
After being tipped by reader pinkyloveswhisky, I headed on over to the BMEZine blog to check out what all the fuss was about, and I tried to do the exercise I recommended above. What were my initial thoughts [...]

By Special Correspondent Thea Lim

I was minding my own beeswax riding the subway when I stumbled across an ad in the free subway paper for “The Ethnic Comedy Show,” an July extravaganza of touring comics who, um, are all “ethnic”?
This Hour Has 22 Minutes star Shaun Majumder hosts an evening featuring an eclectic group of [...]

by Guest Contributor Jehanzeb Dar, originally published at Broken Mystic

Over the past week, my friends and I have been playing on a new roller hockey court that isn’t too far from my house. Prior to that, we’ve been playing on a relatively unused basketball court (pictured above) for months, which has been fun for [...]

by Latoya Peterson

These are the notes for “ Desi Webs: South Asian America, Online Cultures, and the Politics of Race.” The notes are from a paper by Madhavi Mallapragada, presented at the Texas A & M University Race and Ethnic Studies Institute’s Symposium exploring Race, Ethnicity and (New) Media.
Resist identifying South Asians as a knowable [...]

by Special Correspondent Thea Lim
Earlier this week, while writing about my affinity for Mariah Carey based on the fact that we are both mixed race, I forgot to mention something important. I forgot to clarify that, while me and Mariah are part white and part POC, there are a lot of people who are mixed [...]

by Guest Contributor Hannah Miller
The media reform movement is an offshoot and part of the civil rights movement. It was born in 1963, when Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ initiated a lawsuit against white-owned TV stations in the South for consistently portraying African Americans in a [...]

by Guest Contributor Czerina Salud, originally published at the Huffington Post
Alec Baldwin’s apology over his Filipina-mail-order-bride comment hit the web this past Wednesday. While there were over 400 comments posted to his blog, a strikingly relevant voice was missing from this discussion. Sadly, the discussion was missing (what seems to me, a Filipina-American woman) an [...]

By Guest Contributor Joseph, originally posted at VS. THE POMEGRANATE

I have a love/hate relationship with Bill Maher because I think he represents both the best and worst aspects of the newest generation of political comedians. During the bleakest hours of the Bush administration Maher was often a welcome voice crying in the wilderness about any [...]

by Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Savage. Squaw. Indian. Would we all agree that these are immensely derogatory names that should not be, in this day and age, still used to geographically locate places? Or even people, for that matter?
From the varying answers I’ve received when posing this question, it all really depends on who you ask [...]