By Guest Contributor gwen, originally published at Sociological Images

In the early 1980s the Reagan Administration engaged in an active campaign to demonize welfare and welfare recipients. Those who received public assistance were depicted as lazy free-loaders who burdened good, hard-working taxpayers. Race and gender played major parts in this framing of public assistance: the image [...]

By Guest Contibutor Antonio Ramirez, originally published at WireTap Magazine
Interview: Campaign for Youth Justice’s Liz Ryan talks about the thousands of teenagers detained in adult jails and prisons.

When 16-year-old Bobby Nestor’s mother found a marijuana roach in his jacket pocket she called the police, hoping to scare him. She never intended for her teenage son [...]

By Guest Contributor Leticia Miranda, originally published at RaceWire

A New York Times article reports that more and more courts are ordering mentally ill youth to jail as community mental health programs are facing bigger cuts and thinning resources.
“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to [...]

by Guest Contributor Nisha Chittal, originally published at Politicoholic
Early Friday morning in Tehran, 23-year-old Delara Darabi was executed in the Rasht prison in Iran for a crime that happened when she was 17. Human rights groups had been protesting and trying to save her from execution for months, since it is a violation of international [...]

by Guest Contributor Missives from Marx originally published at Sociological Images
A month or two ago I commented on the New York Times Upfront magazine for high school kids. I recently came across their latest, which features a cover story titled “What We Eat.” The story is really just an interesting collection of photographs of families [...]

by Guest Contributor Shannon Prince

Two years ago while I was studying abroad in Paris, my younger sister called me from the U.S. giggling that she had delicious news to share with me. She announced breathlessly that Disney was creating its first black princess movie. Despite the fact that I was a sophomore in [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Today, I got three text messages in rapid succession from my friend Hae.
“Check out the new MV from 2ne1 called Fire!”
“Song is addicting!”
“Street version is better than space version!”
I knew YouTube wouldn’t let me down, so I headed over there to see if someone posted an English translation:

2NE1 is just one group in [...]

by G.D., originally published at PostBourgie

One of the (many) reasons I oppose the death penalty is because of the shitty track record the criminal justice system has not just in the prosecution of capital offense but also for routinely botching non-capital felony cases. Why should we have faith in the system when it comes to [...]

by Guest Contributor Jenn Fang, originally published at Reappropriate
A few months back, Miley Cyrus (a Disney Channel ingenue better known for pop-star alter ego, Hannah Montanah, whom she transforms into by donning a blonde wig — wait, isn’t that the storyline of the Jem cartoon?) raised a blogosphere uproar for this picture of her (centre) [...]

by Special Correspondent Thea Lim

On Tuesday Samhita Mukhopadhyay posted the article Understanding the Dialogue Around Lovelle Mixon on Feministing, discussing the case and response to Lovelle Mixon. A 26 year-old black man and parolee in Oakland, last weekend Mixon died after shooting and killing four Oakland police officers.
Some excerpts from Mukhopadhyay’s article:
I do not [...]

by Guest Contributor Sumeia Williams, originally published at Ethnically Incorrect

I came across an article on the Pact website written by Elizabeth Bartholet. In it she says:

The research does indicate some interesting differences in transracially-adopted people’s attitudes about race and race relations, which critics of transracial adoption cite as evidence that supports their position. But this [...]

by Guest Contributor Rachell Arteaga, originally published at The Majority Post
A member of Women in Children’s Media, I recently had the privilege of attending this year’s 10th annual KidScreen Summit. With just over 1000 attendees and hundreds of speakers from across the country and all over the world, this truly was a Mecca for [...]

by Guest Contributor Average Bro, originally published at Average Bro

This post’s title is a rhetorical question. Of course poor whites exist, but not that you’d know so if you’re informed by the mainstream media. While Ronald Reagan was successful in painting urban black women as “welfare queens”, whites receive nearly 2/3 of all welfare benefits [...]

by Guest Contributor Jen, originally published at DISGRASIAN

There’s a new Slumdog Millionaire scandal a-brewing, with the families of two of its child stars claiming exploitasian. The parents of 8 year-olds Rubina Ali and Azharuddin Ismail, who play young Latika and Salim in the film, respectively, and are both still living in Mumbai slums, have accused [...]

by Latoya Peterson
From the Washington Post:

Republicans who are vying to lead the national party offered a mix of reactions yesterday to the decision by one candidate for the job to mail out a music CD including the song “Barack the Magic Negro.”
Chip Saltsman defended his actions, telling the Hill newspaper that the song — and [...]