by Latoya Peterson, published at Jezebel.com

On Monday, Madonna broke ground on a new school project in Malawi; today, she takes to the Huffington Post to ask for donations. Her megawatt star power helped engage media attention – but are high profile celebrities actually hurting progress?
In the new issue of Arise, reporter Hannah Pool examines the [...]

by Guest Contributor Jenn, originally published at Reappropriate
[October 14th] was a very big day for America’s Asian American and Pacific Islander community. In conjunction with a Diwali celebration, President Obama signed an executive order that reestablished an advisory committee and a White House initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders. The advisory committee was first [...]

by Guest Contributor Jamelle, originally published at PostBourgie
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
There’s a part in The Audacity Of Hope, where writing about race, Obama notes that, rightly or wrongly, a significant swath of white people are exhausted, and repeatedly scolding them (even if you’re right) is unlikely to alter the poverty stats. What we need, Obama argued, is [...]

by Guest Contributor Catherine Traywick, originally published at Hyphen

One of the first things a (good) transnational activist learns is the practical meaning of solidarity — which, as the latest issue of New York Times Magazine illustrates, is a concept not easily grasped by even the worldliest and most committed of advocates. This week’s installment of [...]

by Guest Contributor (and regular commenter) Atlasien
UPDATE: There is a guy with a gun outside of Obama’s town hall. This shit is getting ridiculous. Gawker has details:
MSNBC just aired video of a man with a pistol strapped to his leg waiting for Barack Obama to arrive at a townhall in New Hampshire.
The man [...]

By Guest Contributor Ben Powless, originally posted at rabble

(Above: Police arrive with heavy reinforcements to forcefully remove demonstrators PHOTO: Thomas Quirynen)
The rhetoric was sharp enough to cut down Amazonian hardwoods. Yesterday, Sunday June 7th, after a number of ministers had been paraded out Saturday and the day before, Peru’s el Señor Presidente, Alan Garcia decided [...]

by Guest Contributor Jeremy R. Levine, originally published at Social Science Lite

Mass incarceration, particularly of black and brown folks, is a hot topic in the social sciences. Hell, it’s a hot topic in nearly every poor, marginalized, urban community of color. Harvard sociologist Bruce Western offers some of the best academic analysis of the carceral [...]

by Guest Contributor Average Bro, originally published at Average Bro
During the campaign season, lots of folks were critical of candidate Obama for not speaking out more vocally about issues that pertain to the African American community. Many saw his race-neutral style as one that largely skirted his ethnicity, and focused perhaps too much on [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Representative Betty Brown of Texas made waves yesterday by requesting that Asian voters “adopt a name we could deal with” when voting and filling out identification forms. The “we” specifically means meant Americans – but obviously, in Brown’s world, there are no Americans of Asian decent.

The Houston Chronicle notes:
“Rather than everyone here [...]

by Latoya Peterson
So, I’ve noticed that a few readers have asked why Racialicious has been so quiet on the situation in Gaza. As the violence continues to escalate, it is hard to not post about what is happening.
However, as much as it troubles me to remain silent, it troubles me more to see the [...]

by Guest Contributor Tagland, originally published at Tanglad

I am an immigrant woman of the Two-Thirds World, who is living with the One-Third World.
I first came across Esteva and Prakash’s concept of the One Third/Two Thirds World via Chandra Mohanty’s Feminism Without Borders. The concepts recognize the transnational nature of capital, and how policies instituted by [...]

by Guest Contributor Tanglad, originally published at Tanglad

It’s easy to understand the appeal of microcredit. Poor women from the Global South use loans as small as $20 to start businesses and lift themselves from poverty. The creditors make a profit when the loans are repaid. Win-win.
What do they say about things that look too good [...]