By Guest Contributor Michael Le from Racebending

Racialicious’ Note: Racebending is a site that was set up in response to the whitewashed casting of The Last Airbender. Racebending has since extended its reach to discuss the poor representation of people of colour in film and tv in general.
In case you missed the headline yesterday, Facebook [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
Over at Femonomics Coca Colo asks why everyone on the Bachelor and the Bachelorette is white:
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are two of the whitest shows on television.  Not only is the star always white, but so is the host, and so, by nature of our society’s continued discomfort with interracial [...]

by Guest Contributor Imani Perry, originally published at Afronetizen

These are strange days indeed. We are firmly into the 21st century, and yet the 80s are haunting us. For African Americans it is yet again a decade of dream and deferral.
Back in the ‘80s, for the young Black and college educated, the doors of corporate America [...]

by Guest Contributor Bao Phi, originally published at Your Voices

This is not a review.  This is a blog entry where I explore issues of race and representation in pop culture, in this case, video games.
I’ve been hooked on videogames since the days of the Atari 2600, though my family was too poor to have [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Nothing good can come of a new Speedy Gonzales film. No matter what the intentions, or the updates George Lopez’s wife, Ann, is promising:
“We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s – the racist Speedy. Speedy’s going to be a misunderstood boy who comes [...]

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid
I guess there are days when I’m thankful for having been an ice-skating fan in my younger days, though I was absorbing some floaty, dreamy, and cornball heteronormative crap against the white-ice backdrop.  So, as much as I did enjoy figure skaters Oksana Domnina’s and Maxim Shabalin’s technical excellence, I [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

How do you know when a story is allying, versus appropriating?
In other words, if someone of privilege writes a story about the political oppression of a group they do not belong to, what is the difference between:
a) a story that brings marginalised voices to a wider platform and advocates for their [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Artist Nohjj just made history with his music video for “Love” – for various reasons.
Reader Ron sent us the news that Nohjj was the first black male winner of one of the OUT Award.  Nohjj explains the concept behind the video:
Saying “I believe love is for everyone… homosexual and heterosexual….One day soon our [...]

By Guest Contributor Mimi Thi Nguyen, originally posted at Threadbared

I do mean to return to questions of vintage in the future –beyond that one great conversation I had with Minh-Ha– but I find right now I’m unable to devote much time or thought to its multidimensional, multifunctional phenomena. (More on my overstuffed schedule later.) However, [...]

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid
My gut-honest reaction to finding out singer John Mayer admits that he doesn’t romantically or sexually like Black women is like finding out Tom Cruise saying doesn’t dig us sistahs: I’m not shocked because I didn’t get that vibe from him.  
Mayer’s highlighted history of dating the crowning White women [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
Over at Sepia Mutiny, Anna writes about the fact that the new Facebook trend of replacing your profile pic with a photo of the celebrity who looks most like you poses a unique problem for some people of colour. She quotes from a number of friends who couldn’t find a celeb [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Chris Sims at The Comic Alliance highlighted the cover to Archie #608, which points in the direction of a decidedly different type of crossover between Archie and his gang and Josie & The Pussycats – specifically, the eponymous Mr. Andrews and Valerie, so uh, memorably played by Rosario Dawson in [...]

Patrick Gonder’s work on “the primitive” in 1950s horror films is useful here. Gonder discusses the ‘devolved’ monsters of 50s horror cinema, such as Mr. Hyde and the cavemen-primitives, in terms of race, class, and notions of civilization. He writes that the “hybrid nature of the [devolved monster] asserts white masculinity against and through the [...]

By Guest Contributor Bao Phi, originally published at the Star Tribune’s Your Voices Blog
(Thanks to Katie Leo, Darren Lee, Jasmine Tang, Charlotte Karem Albrecht, and Phil Yu, who proof-read and offered edits, thoughts and arguments for this entry, and a big shout out to Tatiana, Thuyet, Sajin, Lisa, Juliana, Jasmine, Darren, and the rest of [...]

by Guest Contributor CVT

Here’s one of my first Portland (Oregon) memories:
I’m at a bar with two white male friends.  Well, actually, I’m at a Chinese restaurant and bar . . . at a karaoke night. (*1)  With two white male friends.
Anyway.
My friends, in looking for a larger table for us, chat up these three cute(ish) [...]