Created by Graydon Sheppard and Kyle Humphrey (and boosted by the star power of Juliette Lewis), “Shit Girls Say” went viral by taking a male perspective on common things “women” do and presenting it as humor. Internet forums filled with comments like “Omigod, all my friends do that” or “that is so me.” The sketch proved to be so popular, there are now three episodes, probably with more in the pipeline.

However, everyone wasn’t laughing at “Shit Girls Say.” Quite a few people noticed that the “girls” referred to in the top video were a certain type of woman, an experience that was not shared by all. Others noted that the humor that made the video funny was actually rooted in sexist stereotypes. Over at Feministing, Samhita explains:

While, I usually applaud men in drag, I can’t help but be critical of these characterizations of women. Are some of these stereotypes uncannily true? I’m sure they can be. But that’s the problem with stereotypes, it’s not about whether they are true or not, it’s that they are used to disempower people or deny them certain privileges. And I get that it is comedy, but it’s like the most boring and lazy comedy possible. You know, let’s make fun of girls cuz we already know everyone thinks they are dumb and annoying tee hee. These videos might as well be beer ads.

And Lynn Crosbie, writing for the Globe and Mail, notes:

Girls, or young women, who already speak largely in the interrogative and treat the world of men as another, completely inscrutable species, have enough on their minds already. They are already sexualized to the maximum. Must their every word be a potential joke?

Girls speak casually about inane things. Girls speak, too, about sexual violence and quantum physics. They talk about fear and art, children, murder and opera; philosophy, blood, sex and mathematics.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing is also some stuff a girl said.

In an interview with the Onion A/V Club, the two creators explain their reasoning:

AVC: Formally, the videos are great because they work like the Twitter feed—they’re just little one-liners stitched together. The obvious precedent would be something like Shit My Dad Says, and the TV show, which spins these sayings into 22-minute episodes. Were you trying to keep things a bit more rapid-fire, in the spirit of the Twitter feed?

GS: I think we were aware of Shit My Dad Says, and we wanted something that would live in the same Internet world as the Twitter feed. In a way, with Shit My Dad Says, it makes sense to do something longer and more anecdotal, because that was Justin [Halpern]’s story: his life with his dad. It was biographical, and there was a lot more material. But [our] tweets aren’t necessarily a single character. They’re not one woman. They’re a specific kind of woman. We don’t in any way purport to represent all women, and I think people understand that. I think our next video goes a little further than the tweets. It’s not a narrative, necessarily, but it’s a little more abstract.

AVC: Some of the criticism your project has received seems to miss this “certain kind of woman” concept that you mention. Something that refers to “girls” as an idea is essentializing, but it doesn’t seem like the concept would work if it were called Shit A Certain Kind Of Woman Who Has Been Socialized To Behave A Certain Way Says. How are you responding to criticism suggesting that the project is sexist or misogynist?

GS: You can’t really respond to it, other than positively. We respect women; we love women; we grew up around women; the people who helped us on the project were women. Obviously we can’t critique anyone for critiquing us in this way. Everyone has the right to critique it. It’s a really interesting dialogue that has come up because of the people criticizing it. It’s tricky territory. It’s sensitive territory. But people have the right to be offended. It’s par for the course, especially if something goes this big, which we never thought it would.

But I’m gay, and Kyle’s gay, and people put things out there about gay people. There are television shows about gay people, and I think we try to not let that define us. We know they don’t necessarily speak for us. I think it’s a really interesting topic. We’ve been learning a lot.

So while there was critique, there was also quite a bit of creation. The next sensation to hit YouTube was a racialized version of the first, “Shit Black Girls Say” clocking in at close to 5 million views.

Comedian Billy Sorrells portrays a character named Peaches, which also proved to be a sensation, though for more puzzling reasons. Naima Ramos-Chapman flinched at some of the humor, noting:

When the meme got a racialized twist with Billy Sorrell’s “Shit Black Girls Say” version, I choked mid-chuckle. Both videos refer to adult women as “girls,” and portray them as weak, stupid, silly, bad with technology, and helpless. And in Sorrell’s version, a part about black women being stuck in abusive relationships is too disturbing given that they are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than white women.

Then came “Shit Asian Girls Say,” which surprisingly saw very little in terms of critique:

Some of these videos sparked heavy internal debates, like “Shit Spanish Girls Say:”

The comments on the YouTube video ranged from “This video = all my Spanish friends” and “I am puertorrican and I found this video extremely hilarious and right on! :0 OH MAA GAAD MAAAAAAAA! I do it all the time!” to “BTW all this shit is Nuyorican and Dominican shit. Don’t disgrace my island.” Many commenters tried to distance themselves from the video:

@mymailbox4404 Yeah, I agree. It’s super embarrassing for Latinos. Caribbeans in particular. Now with that title, they get to attach some ghetto to my people too, lol. No biggie though. Most people on here know these are not Spanish people. But even to classy Puerto Ricans, this must be embarrassing. Did you see all the comments saying “This is sooo my family” or “I talk and act just like that”, like they are proud of this trashy lifestyle. It’s embarrassing.

IslenoGutierrez

And some good old ethnicity and nationality based prejudice:

@mymailbox4404 You are right. It’s taking the title of my people (Spaniards) and attaching ghetto trash to it for the world to see on youtube. All I can say is wow. que vamos hacer? Lol.

But while there are some interesting interpretations of racial stereotypes (white girls eat chips, black girls eat Cheetos, Asian girls eat Pocky, and I couldn’t quite make out what was on the bag in the Spanish video) and some annoyingly persistent gender stereotypes (CAN NO ONE USE A COMPUTER WITHOUT ASSISTANCE?!?! Oh wait, Spanish girls can.) I’m a bit more interested in the aftermath when people started using the meme for social commentary. While there were definitely people using the meme to advance their racist opinions of certain groups of people say, without the wink-nudge insider cred that the above videos rely on to be funny, the meme started mutating, turning the stereotypes in on themselves.

First, the original videos sparked some rebuttals, from women parodying men. Reminiscent of battle (of the sexes) rap popular in the 1990s, the videos featured women performing in drag giving commentary on the men in they know (accompanied by the inevitable “women just aren’t funny” comments).

There’s “Shit Guys Say” – which I have to admit feels like a quicker version of Jersey Shore:

And then there’s “Shit Black Guys Say:”

(Notice the commentary on how often men comment on women’s bodies in both of the videos.)

There are also challenges to the ideas of a unified experience for any group. Look at all the variations on “Shit Gay Guys Say”.

There’s this one:

There’s “Shit Black Gays Say:”

And a part 2:

And “Shit Southern Gay Guys Say:”

It’s notable that these videos are the principals representing themselves (as opposed to someone else’s interpretation of them) – perhaps since these groups are still so invisible in the public eye that no one else but them could speak to their experience.

With a slight tweak, the meme becomes social critique. Just by adding “to” and a second group, the meme found new life.

There’s the hit “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls, ” which we’ve pointed out before:

and the follow up:

There’s also “Shit White Girls Say to Arab Girls:”

“Shit White Girls Say to Asian Girls:”

“Shit White Girls Say to Brown Girls:”

And “Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls:”

As our own Thea Lim recently explained in The Guardian:

[T]hings took a turn when Franchesca Ramsey released Shit White Girls Say … to Black Girls, which quickly inspired Nicola Foti’s Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys, and Sameer Asad Gardezi and Kosha Patel then unleashed Shit White Girls Say … to Brown Girls”. Each video showcases a bewigged Ramsey, Foti and Patel reeling off a list of the most awful things your best white girlfriend has ever said. These videos skewer that verbal equivalent of friendly fire: friendly prejudice, if you will.

What’s friendly prejudice? The most common defence of racism is: “But I didn’t intend to be racist.” This response relies on the idea that if we didn’t intend to offend someone, then their feelings can’t possibly be hurt. The Shit X Says to Y videos are delightfully validating because they show that those with the genuinely lovely intentions of being your friend and seeking commonality with you can still be rude and hurtful.

Unsurprisingly, the Shit X Says to Y meme has itself been called offensive. As a commenter on the NPR blog says, “if the roles were reversed … Jesse [Jackson] & [Al] Sharpton, would be involved, lawsuits filed, perhaps riots …” But the roles can’t be reversed. The reason why relationships between white and non-white people, or straight people and gay people are fraught, is because of our history – long gone, recent or ongoing. Racist, homophobic or simply thoughtless comments are insulting not just in and of themselves, but because they are a bilious reminder of the times when straight, white people have dehumanised and denied other groups their human rights. Of course, non-white and gay people can say nasty or even prejudicial things to white and straight people, but those things don’t deliver the sting that comes from decades of being on the wrong end of an unequal relationship (and could I recommend further viewing on this topic: comedian Kumail Nanjiani’s “Racists”).

What bothers some viewers about the Shit X Says to Y meme is that it targets only white women. Critics have said of Foti in particular that it is always sexist when men use women as the brunt of any joke. But privilege does not work in debits and credits, whereby your lack of cultural power as a gay person is paid back by your stores of cultural power as a man. A white woman can be racist to an Asian man, just as a straight black woman can be homophobic to a gay white man. These videos are important because they ask all viewers – regardless of what power they have and what power they lack – to reconsider if their best friendship with non-white and gay people grants them licence to cross the line.

Due to the popularity of the meme, people are reconsidering the impact of their words to their friends, which is the point of this next batch of takes. Exploring the dynamics of relationships between friends can be painful, but what these users created basically amount to humorous public service announcements.

“Stuff Cis People Say to Trans People:”

“Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys:”

And, finally, the ultimate activist mutation of the meme, Shit Everybody Says to Rape Victims:

Outside of “Shit Black Girls Say to White Girls,” none of the other videos got anywhere near the amount of play that “Shit Girls Say” and “Shit Black Girls Say enjoyed.” Maybe that’s because, as a culture, we are accustomed to laughing at stereotypes, but we aren’t prepared to unpack how we perpetuate them.

Stumbling through Tumblr, I found this gem from comedian and vlogger Hari Kondabolu breaking white liberal guilt all the way down.

Transcript after the jump.

So, I went to a prestigious small liberal arts college in Maine. Like many other people of color who’ve gone to prestigious institutions of higher learning, I had a lot of white liberal friends. And I am sick of some these white liberal friends telling me how guilty they feel all the time, how their whiteness makes them feel bad: “I feel bad. I have so much white guilt.”

You know, I’m not impressed! Because, if I had the choice between white guilt and racism, I’d take the white guilt every time. White guilt sounds great! Are you kidding me?!?

Imagine this: you’re on a line, right? You’re about to board an airplane. All of a sudden security shows up. They pull a sikh man with a beard and turban off. They’re search his bag again. And you’re watching, and what do you think to yourself?

“Oh, this is terrible. I feel terrible. This again? Racial profiling? That man’s done nothing wrong. How about they search me? They should search me. I’m a white man. I could be the next Timothy McVeigh. They don’t know that. Why don’t they search my bag? Because I’m white. I feel terrible. I feel so terrible—I mean, I’m still going to board the plane—but I’m gonna feel bad about it. I’m gonna sit in my chair and feel—oh! I’ll write Rachel Maddow an email! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll tell Terry Gross. And I’ll read bell hooks on the plane! Then everything…everything will be better! I’ll feel better. I’m a good white liberal…I’m a good white liberal…I’m a good white liberal…OK.”

So, by any chance, if there are any white liberals watching this video, remember this: your white guilt is a part of your white privilege. Enjoy it…while it lasts.

With all of the jokes about “Birthers” and Donald Trump’s toupee as well as the leftysphere excoriating the mainstream media for not taking Trump to task for his antics, Jack and Jill Politics’ Baratunde Thurston breaks down what we lost due to Trump’s BS.

Transcript after the jump.

It’s been a very difficult morning for me. Got the news that President Obama released his long-form birth certificate due to the increasing media circus surrounding claims that he is not one of us. That he is not an American. And it comes at a very interesting time for many reasons, one of which is, it’s April 27 2011 and this just happened. So that’s really interesting to me. Also because I’m reading, right now, a book by Manning Marable called Malcolm X a life of reinvention and he unearths a lot of amazing detail and correspondence around this exceptional American. But through this book you also get a window into the civil rights movement throughout this country’s history – especially the 40s 50s and 60s and you are reminded if you read this book or see a documentary special or know anything about the complete history of the United States, you’re reminded of the extraordinary level of sacrifice that has been involved in allowing all Americans to exist as, be treated as, participate as Americans. To be that which they are took a lot of work. A lot of tears, a lot of pain, a lot of death.

There were people who dropped out of their ordinary lives, sacrificed their personal safety, their reputation, their ability to earn money, to intervene on behalf of those who they also saw as American. They got on buses and Freedom Rides. They sat in, they died in waves and waves of domestic terrorism so that someone like me could go to a voting booth and not be asked by some racist poll worker to pay a tax or prove that my grandfather wasn’t a slave or pass a literacy test that got increasingly difficult the more I passed it. And today, the President of the United States had to prove that he was an American, to the satisfaction of the 75 percent of Iowa republicans who doubt that or the 43 percent of National Republicans who believe that or the one heinous low-class individual who took credit for it after: Donald Trump.

A man who was given every advantage – who inherited millions and lost it all twice but had that opportunity because no one’s ever had to ask him to prove anything. A man who lacks intelligence, compassion, common sense, respect, decency, or an understanding of WHAT THE FUCK it means to be an American that he would come out moments after the President of the United States – and I stress that: the President – released his long-form birth certificate – and Donald Trump comes out moments later and says, “I’m really proud of myself – but it shouldn’t have taken so long. I wanna see the birth certificate for myself. I want to test it for authenticity. I don’t want the press asking me about birth certificates anymore.”

I find it hard to summarize in mere words the amount of pain and rage this incident has caused. It’s humiliating – not just to Barack Obama, not just to the office of the President, not just to Black Americans who died and those who supported our quest for freedom. It’s embarrassing to the entire nation that we would sit and let this nation. We have all been debased by this incident. By a charlatan, by a con man, by a mere promoter of himself. And for him to take credit for this, and for him to revel in it, and yet not be satisfied makes him no better than a Klansman. No better than a Bull Connor. No better than an anonymous, privileged white man in the 1950s who, regardless of his position in society, knew his position was higher than that of a common nigger. And that is what the fuck Donald Trump has done to the President of the United States. To the office of the President of the United States. To me. And to you.

I am disgusted. I have cried, because I know my own ancestors paid a very high price, and never would have imagined that we might have the President that we do, but certainly, part of their joy in the ancestral, celestial skies right now has been greatly diminished by what has happened here today. I hope that eventually, not just in the post-mortal world of karma and spiritual justice, Mr. Trump pays an exceptional price. I hope that price comes during his life. To then be able to walk around, a super-free, super-white, super-privileged man lording over all who would pay attention – which is far too many – at what you have done has got to cost you something in this life, as well.

I don’t wanna hear about The Apprentice. I don’t wanna hear about your new cologne. I don’t wanna hear about the new tower you’re building in whatever fuckin’ town. That cologne smells of racism. That tower is built on the blood of disrespected slaves and freedom fighters, and that show is merely a showcase for the dishonor you have brought among anyone who would call themselves an American.

My name is Baratunde Thurston. I’m heartbroken over this.

As soon-to-be-former UCLA student Alexandra Wallace packs her stuff and leaves the university due to fear for her life, I’ve watched how some people and the press reacted to her.  As Colorlines and other blogs noted, combating her anti-Asian racism with life-threatening misogyny really wasn’t the best social-justice idea:

Nor combatting racial stereotypes with…racialized sexual stereotypes:

and

Or even having a “yeah, you’re racist, but I’d still fuck ya” vibe, a la the guitar-strumming crooner, in an otherwise witty comeback song:

As blogger and GRITtv ‘s senior writer/web manager Sarah Jaffe said, the move of some Asian American men who “stereotypically not seen as sex objects, putting the white woman in her proper place AS sex object or, ‘Shut up bitch, you’re just there to be fucked’ in essence…”–which the Black woman expounds on in her clip–is just a kyriarchal pile-on.

I do believe is Wallace could have been criticized in terms of one of the most taboo—yet most needed—conversations: white female privilege.

Of course, when this phrase is put into the public square of ideas, quite a few white women, both feminist and non, will storm in with their vociferous exceptionalizing  to this privilege—more specifically, how their individual selves are the exceptions to this because of mitigating identities and circumstances: they aren’t able-bodied; they don’t fit the blonde-and-blue phenotype; they aren’t slender and/or or buxom; they are poor or come from poverty; they are not educated and/or hipsters; they are in interracial relationships; so on and so forth.  Usually, the exceptionalizing derails the conversation into silence.  But for a person without that privilege, especially if the privilege is based on that person’s degradation or erasure, the mitigated advantage is still an advantage.  The mitigation(s) shape(s) the privilege as that of gradation, not kind. 

But, as Audre Lorde said, silence doesn’t protect … in this case, the privilege getting read.

So, if I had to unpack the White Female Privilege, it would look something like this (and I’m citing and paraphrasing heavily from Alienation, Peggy McIntosh, Mary Dee Wenniger, Nsenga Burton, and ballgame, and this list isn’t exhaustive):

• Can benefit from their association with white men as a wife, daughter, sibling, and mother.
• Have all their faults and flaws into perfect imperfections.
• Easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring women like them.
• Can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer any communications without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of their race.
• When told about our national language or about “civilization,” they are shown the people of their color made it what it was.
• Can turn on the television, open a newspaper, or go online and see people of their race widely represented.
• Can remain oblivious of the language and of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in their culture any penalty.
• Are feel free to exhibit a wide range of emotions, from tears to genuine belly laughter, without being told to shut up.
• Can use the “sheer fear of tears” to their advantage. (Sarah Jaffe calls this “White Lady Tears.”)
• Are not compelled by the rules of their gender to wear emotional armor in interactions with most people.
• Are allowed to be vulnerable, playful, and “soft” without calling their worthiness as a member of their race being called into question.
• Are seen as the embodiments of value and purity and, due to their phenotypes (especially if it’s close(r) to the blonde-and-blue-eyed ideal), be considered worthy of protection—including having nations go to war over this purity and piety–and instantly become the objects of universal desire.
• They are seen as the default and the ideal embodiment of physical beauty and sexual attractiveness.  This idea(l) is replicated, despite the efforts of visual diversity, in all form of media, from paintings to plays to porn.

But don’t just take my word for it. As a couple of people pointed out on Tumblr a while ago:

we here on tumblr have found every single way imaginable to admire white girls. soft white girls, fat white girls, dreadlocked white girls, naked white girls, bicycling white girls, hairy white girls, clean white girls, white girls in shower, white girls catching butterflies, white girls cooking, white girls cooking naked, white girls with babies, white girls with kittehs, white girls with tats, white girls in catholic school girl dresses, white girls with hippy clothes….what fucking other ways in heavens green earth and jesus can we find to admire white girls?

… and yet i still see a whole lot of “admire my hotness” white girl shit. and a whole lot of it involves white girls appropriating ish and acting innocent while doing it.

Or, in Wallace’s case, post a virulently anti-Asian rant (complete with her “innocent” claims of having hometraining and how her rant isn’t about her “Asian friends”) on YouTube then fauxpologize with some nonsense about “not knowing what possessed her to do it.” To that, I’ll say here what I said in a comment section regarding this: “At some point, even the Devil would roll up and say, ‘That one’s on you, homie.’”

And what’s on her is her unchallenged white female privilege.  To me, Wallace’s tirade pivots on Jaffe calls the Sarah Palin Thing, “where you can say more outrageous shit because you’re a pretty white lady.”  Wallace visually presents as the physical and sexual ideal of the “all-American” blonde white girl-next-door doing something so not-PC, the “pretty white lady” who thinks she can get away with this verbalized racism—which Wallace attempts to get across as some sort of racial “truth-telling”–because it would be more “palatable.”  I also wonder if she thought—since she seems to deeply believe in some anti-Asian stereotypes, like they function in “hordes” bent on “taking over” her beloved UCLA with their familial “ways”—that Asian Americans wouldn’t push back because of the stereotype of their being “quiet.”   (She found out quite differently.)

Combine all this with, at the time, what Wallace may have perceived as having a platform for more of her racist views due to her newfound “internet fame” with her first clip and the revealed bikini photos—her father admitted on his Facebook page that she was creating a vlog of similar rants–probably reinforced something Arturo observed about the photos: “After all, there’s a certain sector who’s perfectly willing to forgive/accept her views because she’s ‘hot.’”  Again, Wallace found out quite differently, with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block speaking against it in a video as well as in an email along with other people responding to it with sometimes life-threatening viciousness.

At this point, though, this particular saga seems over: even though UCLA stated Wallace was within her free-speech rights as a student, she is gone.  But that doesn’t mean that white female privilege left with her.

Image courtesy of You Offend Me, You Offend My Family

I think the question, “Who the **** Is Esperanza Spalding?” is getting a rather thorough answer since her Grammy win: incredible jazz instrumentalist/vocalist whose game is recognized by Prince, POTUS Obama, and the Portland Jazz Festival.

And, Best New Artist nominee/competitor Justin Bieber’s answer to the question is: “…and a mixed-race woman who has a pettable afro.”

I first saw the offense on my Tumblr dashboard–and reblogged it: (click on the link if the animated GIF below doesn’t work):

Which came from this source (the “petting” starts at :21):

I guess Usher and nem (yeah, I’m considering Bieber’s mom as a part of “nem”) didn’t school young Bieber on this cardinal rule:

Let alone on the Presumptuous Hand Action, which is what he did.

I thought Spalding was rather gracious about the incident but, as quite a few of us afro-rocking Black women have had to be after such a personal space-invading move least, as one Tumblizen remarked, we “get pegged as an Angry Black Woman”…but in that animated GIF, Spalding looked like she made a split-second decision not to cut Bieber.

Of course, the media has made much of the fact that some of Justin Bieber’s fans hacked Spalding’s wiki page due to the upset. And she was a trending topic on Twitter, much of it from said Bieber fans–and perhaps fans of the other artists who lost to Spalding–who were fuming over it three days later.  Though no one’s articulated it yet, the attacks have a  strangely racialized element to it, namely that the vitriol around a white man losing to a woman of color and how quickly those who identify with that privilege come to defend it by shredding those who challenge it. Just has a certain Tea-Party, “they’re taking our…” contour in the shade-throwing.  So, Bieber’s touching Spalding’s hair–regardless of the complimentary intention behind it–and the vituperations towards her win are linked in the exercise of white privilege: both attempt to made Spalding an object to touch and to dismiss (if not erase) her as a talented person.

In light of this incident, the “who the **** is Esperanza Spalding” question gets replaced with simply with “what the ****?”

Wait….another Black female singer is causing a brouhaha with bondage/domination/submission/sadism/masochism (BDSM) imagery?

Like Ciara’s kinky video, I’m not going to clutch my pearls over this one, either.

For the last week, parts of Onlinelandia has been chatting about Rihanna’s latest vid, “S&M,” in which she indulges in a Technicolor blur of ball gags, cellophane, PVC gear, whips, electrical tape, and ropes.  Oh yeah, and her fellating a banana and getting sexy with a strawberry. (I can see PETA putting Rihanna on their short list for future campaigns on the strength of that alone.) Check it out (NSFW):

MTV News reported that the clip has been banned in 11 countries and YouTube’s already restricted it.   To YouTube’s restriction, Rihanna gave it side-eye on Twitter: “They’ve watched Umbrella…..I was full nude.”  She also told her fans to peep the uncensored clip on her website.  Other news sources have reported that MTV itself is trying to clean up the video so it can be shown the maximum audience.

And unlike Rihanna’s influence, Madonna and her visual ode to BDSM, “Human Nature,” or even Ciara’s “Love Sex Magic” (where the sexin’ “tricks” ultimately becomes a segue to or reason for “falling in love”), Rihanna just lets you know:

Feels so good being bad (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Cause no way I’m turning back (Oh oh oh oh oh)
And now the pain is my pleasure
Cause nothing could measure (Oh oh oh)

Love is great, love is fine (Oh oh oh oh oh)
Out the box, out the line (Oh oh oh oh oh)
The affliction of the feeling
Leaves me wanting more (Oh oh oh)

Cause I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it
Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But chains and whips excite me

Na-na-na come on, come on, come on
I like it, like it, come on, come on, come on
I like it, like it, come on, come on, come on
I like it, like it, come on, come on, come on
I like it, like it

S-S-S&M-M-M
S-S-S&M-M-M
Ooohh

Oh, I love the feeling you bring to me, oh, you turn me on
It’s exactly what I’ve been yearning for, give it to me strong
And meet me in my boudoir give my body some ah-ah-ah-ah
I like it, like it

In other words, the lyrics are a more literal match with the whiplash images.

And, of course, this is the part in which people may want to analyze exactly why RiRi is doing a video about BDSM (especially when she’s tied up) post-Chris Brown because, they’d argue, doesn’t she want to heal from her abuse?  I could understand that explanation when discussing her guest spot with Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” because I thought, by her participating in a song grounded in an abuser’s perspective, she was “victim-empathizing” (“I can see why he was abusive—I must have done something wrong–so it’s OK”) with the man who abused her and from whom she just extricated herself.  In fact, I held that opinion until I realized that I was dictating how she “should” heal and whom she “should” forgive as part of it, as if I have a patent on the healing process.

As for this color-saturated whips-and-rope confection and what Rihanna “should” be doing as far as her indulging in kink post-intimate partner violence?  I suspect, because BDSM’s and abuses’ manifestations may look the same to some people—all they’re “seeing” and “hearing” about are the physical contact and the verbal viciousness and it all “looks” the same and it “looks” bad because some people cannot fathom why some other people want to be in pain as a part of their sexual experiences—it’s easy to see why some pearl-clutching would ensue.

But here’s the thing:  I severely doubt Rihanna consented to Chris Brown abusing her.  Abuse, by its very nature, is never about consent.  However, Rihanna (from what I gather) agreed to be, say, tied up and cellophaned for this video.  BDSM, by its very nature, is all about consent.  Now, can a person who’s been in abusive relationships use BDSM to work out zie’s issues around the abuse? Yes.  Can a person be involved in an abusive BDSM relationship? Yes.  But the part of the nuance is to realize that these are not the cases of every person who’s been abused or into BDSM.  Is this what’s going on with Rihanna? Shrug.

I think the video’s BDSM images are a bit of a cheat–as race play expert Mollena Williams said about Ciara’s “Love Sex Magic,” it’s kink used to sell musical units moreso than a celebration and/or exploration of the acts themselves. I also think it’s Rihanna conveying to us concerned viewers/fans and The Media — to whom she is both sub (the reporters, themselves with ball-gags in their mouths, dragging Rihanna into the press conference in a dress created from their employers’ headlines about the singer and taping her up in cellophane) and domme (celebrity gossip-monger Perez Hilton on a leash, and various press types whom Rihanna has taped to the bed and the wall as she struts and preens with her PVC gear and matching whip) — that, to quote Racialicious cohort Arturo García, she is still a sexual human being, not a Barbie doll needing to stay wrapped, boxed, and news-itemed as only An Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Victim.

Surviving IPV hasn’t dampened her love for sex, especially switching kink involving grinding biker mamas, blow-up dolls, tongue-and-fruit play, and taping and kissing Black women of size … and all with Rihanna mischievously mugging at the camera. She’s a surviving sistah — which counteracts narratives that Black women survive abuses and other social/personal onslaughts and slights, including from Black men, with fierce stoicism–and doing so with a wink and a smile. (Again, that’s how she‘s surviving. It’s not a prescription for how and/or what others “should” do.)

What I also enjoy about “S&M” is the many people of various hues and sizes participating in RiRi’s kaleidoscopic kink display.   At the same time, she’s doing a lot of girl-girl action in the vid which, as several feminist and other cultural critics point out, such sexual action is seen in this society as safely titillating because it’s usually for the straight male gaze. As well, her domme role does have a racial element to it, namely that it plays into stereotypes of dominating Black women which lends itself to a popular race play scene of a Black woman domming a White man.

And even though Rihanna’s video been banned, her video has yet to cause the usual racial upset, perhaps because she doesn’t have any Race™-Unapproved White Guys for whom she’s trying to perform/seduce.  (Considering the fallout around a 2007 interview in which she said she’s found herself attracted to white guys, perhaps she sussed she would be courting enough controversy with the kink. As Ciara proved, kink + Justin Timberlake = possible Black Card revocation.) But it’s not like the singer hasn’t been cheeky about desiring white guys in videos (the cheekiness starts at 2:35):

So, Rihanna just may make it after all.

Image credit: NY Daily News

Via Curly Nikki, we find this awesome video by Diamond Stylz about rocking a natural as a transgender woman. Unfortunately, there is no transcript, but Diamond makes some major points about what informs the choices we make.

Key Point:

First, I wanted to get used to the short, you know, because it’s just something psychological. I just wanted to get used to having my hair short. [...]

[After explaining she dons wigs for YouTube videos, but wears her natural hair in real life] I get way less attention from men when my hair is like this. When I have the long, flowy, “ooooh” – wait, let me go get a wig. [Cut to Diamond in long wig.] When I’m giving them this [...], when I’m serving them the Jacqueline Smith look, you know the boys go wild. [Flips back to natural] But when I give ‘em this, I don’t really get that much attention. There’s a certain type of guy that will [pay attention], but not like it used to be, it used to be all across the board. When you’re looking like that, the guys just flock to you. But when you’re looking like this, its a certain type of guy to you. Usually he’s natural too, or he’s some kind of [puts up the black power fist] you know. [...]

So it’s weird. But, the flipside [to the drop in attention], is that as a transgender woman, it helps you blend in more. [...] To society, it makes me regular. I just don’t get the same attention. And I’m fine with that. I can go in the world, and not worry about people being in my face trying to clock me and figure out, you know, “Hmmm…”all that kinda bullshit, I just go about my business. Dudes just look over me. But when I have that hair on, things are totally different.

I guess if anyone had to offer a corrective to the Black (Women’s) Hair Debate™, it had to be Sesame Street.

And if the YouTube comments (as if my submitting this) are any indication, quite a few people really appreciate what the PBS show did, with some lament of wishing this was on for them when they were little.

“I felt really warm & fuzzy after seeing this.”

“I love this video! It is so cute, and so many young girls need to see this video. Definitely didn’t have anything like this when I was younger.”

“<3 SESAME STREET you are so awesome! Thank you so much for this! <3″

“This is the most revolutionary thing i’ve seen in a looong time. And it feels sooo good too!”

“I WANT TO CRY! I could have used this back when I was little…and it’s still motivating being that I still watch Sesame Street as an adult.”

“I love this song! Sesame Street is on point with this one. I’m showing this in my class tomorrow! Love it!”

“I just watched this video for the first time and loved it I am so glad that sesame street has this! I think its great because itll boost the confidence of little black girls to accept their natural hair as they can relate to this and know that they are still beautiful just like anyone else with any other grain of hair!

i love it ”

“am so glad that a show like Sesame Street is reiterating such a message. It helps not only young black children, but children of all races — acknowledging, embracing, and celebrating aspects of each other. That is fantastic!!! Thank you Sesame Street!! ALL CHILDREN’S TV SHOWS NEED TO TAKE NOTE!!!”

“As a father of Two Girls , one Mixed Race and one Black . They have to deal with this issue A lot. Their non-black peers , some tend to make fun of their curly hair , some parents even told them about using relaxer (that made me angry). I have decided even before this NO MORE Relaxer in my Daughters Hair. I love their hair too!”

“THANK YOU SESAME STREET!! I AM NATURAL, MY SISTERS, MY MUM AND I AM GOING TO SHOW THIS TO MY NIECES TOO!

PLEASE SHOW YOUR DAUGHTERS THIS VIDEO WHATEVER YOUR HAIR IS CURLY, WAVE, AFRO., AND WHATEVER RACE YOU ARE TOO!

LOVE YOURSELF WHAT GOD GIVE YOU.”

“I’m Hawaiian, with really curly “hula hair” (my family’s term for it- lol!), and I grew up in Illinois with lots of caucasian children. So everyone around me had long straight hair, little noses, etc., and I got teased a lot for looking different and having a “fro”, because I didn’t look like anyone else. I wish Sesame Street did this one when I was a kid! Bravo, Sesame Street!!!”

A critique or two:

“I LOOOOOOOOVE this! This means that people are starting to accept african/african american hair, and that it’s becoming main stream….I am really LOVE this…I almost cried but um…natural hair people dont go to salons?? I mean I know she meant that she dont have to get it straighten, but still lol….um yeah Sesame Street, we gonna let yall slide w/ that one ha.”

With a dig or two at BET

“it is so sad that BET can’t do anything like this.”

“BET is too busy ruining the way we see ourselves, to do stuff like this.”

And this:

“I love this video! But to the people saying “I wish something like this had been on TV when I was growing up” do you really think that would have made you NOT get a relaxer (if you got one) or stopped anyone else? It’s up to parents to teach their children to love themselves how they are and what they have, not television programs.”

I’m not going to lie:  I think this is pretty darn cute, too.  Even with the adorable, my quibble is that the video assumes 1) there’s only one natural state  of Black hair (curly), when there are many (though the video caught a few), 2) it assumes, as one of the commenters stated above, that only Black people can naturally grow ‘fros, which isn’t true, 3) that the only ones who need such affirmation are cis girls, not cis boys or any child who’s trans or gender non-conforming who has similar hair.  Also, what about us baldies, regardless of our gender?

Then again, I have to check my own assumption: though the muppet is brown, I’m assuming the muppet’s phenotype–based on seeing the ‘fro, the twists/locs, the braids, the pigtails in succession–is Black because the only group I see rocking those varieties of looks are women of African descent.  So, my bad on that faulty line of thinking.

That’s where I’m at so far with this video. What do you think about this Sesame Street segment?

ETA: Here are the lyrics:

Don’t need a trip to the beauty shop,
’cause I love what I got on top.
It’s curly and it’s brown and it’s right up there!
You know what I love? That’s right, my hair!
I really love my hair.
I love my hair. I love my hair.
There’s nothing else that can compare with my hair.
I love my hair, so I must declare:
I really, really, really love my hair.
Wear a clippy or in a bow
Or let it sit in an afro
My hair looks good in a cornrow
It does so many things you know, that’s why I let it grow
I love my hair, I love my hair
I love it and I have to share
I love my hair, I love my hair!
I want to make the world aware I love my hair.
I wear it up. I wear down. I wear it twisted all around.
I wear braids and pigtails too.
I love all the things my hair can do.
In barrettes or flying free, ever perfect tresses you’ll see
My hair is part of me, an awesome part of me
I really love my hair!

Monday videos!

Via Pam’s House Blend, Don Lemon revealed a painful truth on television while covering the Bishop Eddie Long scandal. (The Bishop is accused of manipulating young men into sexual relationships with him.) Media Bistro explains:

Lemon had just played a soundbite from the lawyer of one of Long’s accusers about how the bishop allegedly got close to one of the young men in his church.

Let me tell you what got my attention about this and I have never admitted this on television. I’m a victim of a pedophile when I was a kid. Someone who was much older than me.

Lemon’s admission led to an audible gasp from one of his guests. “I’ve never admitted that on television and I never told my mom until I was 30 years old,” Lemon said later in the segment. “Especially African-American men don’t want to talk about those things.”

Looking at this week’s schedule, I’m not sure Arturo or I will have enough time to delve into this, but it is amazingly important, and we will host a discussion about this next week.

Via & For the Love of Fashion, this video on model Anais Mali, which is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Mali is bubbly and full of life, with gorgeous photos and a heavy love of designer gear. But the casting folks in Paris just say straight up “You’re black? This is a problem.”

From the tips pool comes this video on Avatar Remix – A.V.A.T.A.R. (Anglos Valiantly Aiding Tragic Awe-inspiring Races). It’s a mash up of Avatar – and other films with very similar themes.

Good Magazine produced a quick video on the state of education. No explicit racial content, but worth watching:

We will return to this in light of the recent report about black and Latino male graduation rates in the US. Again, we will have to host a larger conversation on this next week.

Farai Chideya interviews black Tea Party Candidate Allen West. I always appreciate Chideya’s interviews because she is always interested in understanding people, and it really helped to illuminate the mindset of those in the tea party. It was also stunningly ahistorical – before West makes the pronouncement that institutional racism is over in the United States, he refers fondly to the good old days of Western expansion – aka Manifest Destiny. He also claimed the settlers didn’t go out and ask other people for wagons and pots and pans – but that was exactly what families did to survive, because the trail was hard. Full interview below:

Over at Andrea Rubenstein’s blog, she’s posted an interesting commentary on gender roles told through a video game lens. Nothing especially racial (and it’s definitely the typical view of women’s battles in the workplace) but interesting and worth watching. Andrea has also provided a transcript, for those who cannot see the video. (The only sound in the video are bleeps and bloops – story told through the action.)

Girls suck at video games / Les filles sont nulles aux jeux vidéo from Stéphanie Mercier on Vimeo.

My girl gamer feeds have been blowing up with this parody of Katy Perry’s “California Girls.” The Border House led me to the “G33K and G4M3R Girls” mix by Team Unicorn. (The Border House has also kindly transcribed the lyrics.)

While there is a lot to love about this video (Seth Green! Manga! Hasbro! Fan subbed vs. Dubbed Anime!) there’s two things that stick at me. The first one was already covered by Lake Desire at the Border House:

I usually love corny fanservice, and would really like this video except that I just can’t get over the naked singers with their naughty bits covered by controllers and lightsabers. It is so over-done! My verdict: once again geek girls are fanservice for the stereotypical male gamer and what he supposedly finds attractive. I think it’s pretty well established now that geek girls exist, but I guess we’re stuck in existing to be hot girlfriends of geeks. Can we do something new?

Interestingly enough, the naked girl covered by game gear is actually an iconic image of sexism in game advertising. Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat uses a copy of the original Sega ad as an illustration, and I’ve used that image in almost every presentation/paper I’ve written on sexism in gaming.

But here’s the other thing that hits me. Over at the Star Wars blog, Team Unicorn explains why they wanted to do the video:

Because like unicorns, geek girls are not supposed to exist!

But watching the video, I realized who else doesn’t exist, again.

Geeks of Color. With the possible exception of Milynn, all the women represented are white. In addition, the four women svelte, and conventionally attractive. Which is fine, I’m sure they game and geek out with the best of us. But if geek girls are invisible unicorns, brown geek girls (which compose most of my nerd crew) might as well be Cthulhu. So while I wanted to put my hands up, I’m going to have to rip the MP3. And ignore my issues with Stan Lee and Joss Whedon. And the fact that I hate the source song.

I can’t remember where I was or whom I was with when I heard and realized that we are all temporarily able-bodied. I’m sure it was this decade, perhaps 2003, because I really had not thought about my privilege as an able-bodied person until I began my graduate work and met Angel, a woman in my cohort who was focusing on women of Color with disabilities. I also didn’t think about it until I lost one of my abilities.

Being trained as a scholar specializing in intersectional theory and thought, disability was a “difference” rarely mentioned and discussed unless Angel brought it up. We can see the continued absence and exclusion of people with disabilities in popular culture. Yet, if they are present, we mostly see how people with disabilities are considered anything but “normal,” and usually there is a level of wanting to find a “cure” to become “normal.”

What would images that view disability as a social construction look like? How can those of us who are educators incorporate discussions of disability into our teaching? Where are resources for us? How can we use popular culture when we teach about disability?

In response to these questions, my small cohort of friends and scholars working within an intersectional framework started to share resources. I’ve spoken with Angel about the song “Blind Mary” by Gnarls Barkley and how there are positive aspects of the song and some problematic areas, yet it is one of the better teaching tools involving music we have to show how disability is a social construction.

Last week Angel shared two YouTube videos with us that focused on disability in Zimbabwe and Lebanon. Her friend who runs the website Krip Hop Nation where you can find information about hip-hop artists with disabilities around the world, shared with her these videos. The videos center respect and acceptance of all bodies and the messages in the videos are powerful.

The first clip is part of a documentary in progress about an Afro-fusion band from Zimbabwe named Liyana. The documentary’s working title is “iThemba: My Hope,” directed by Roger Ross Williams. Liyana are touring in the United States and their full touring schedule can be viewed here. Unfortunately, this film does not have full translation. Here is a clip from the film called Liyana: The Band.

The second film is a music video directed by Rania Rafei and is part of the Sprout Touring Film Festival which focuses on films about developmental disabilities.

This video is called Difference Is Normal, which uses hip hop to share the collective testimonies of youth in the Arab world. There is a discussion of the youth led filming and writing of lyrics for the film at the Sprout Touring Film Festival site. Today, their work has expanded as war has lead to more people living with disabilities. The video includes English translation.

How do you see these films being utilized to expand our understanding of difference? In what ways can we implement an intersectional framework to discuss able-bodied privilege through popular culture?

Warning – Explicit Language

While I was researching a piece for Feministe, I stumbled across an old video.

The video is of a TV appearance for John Lennon and Yoko Ono, performing their song “Woman is the Nigger of the World” on the Dick Cavett show.

John Lennon goes into great detail as to how the record was made. He mentions that most of the people who have an issue with the title are white and male. Also in his explanation, he notes “All my black friends feel I have quite a right to say it.”

He also reads a statement from the then-chairman of the Black Caucus:

“If you define nigger as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society is defined by others, then good news! – you don’t have to be black to be a nigger in this society. Most of the people in America are niggers.”

Lennon goes on to say “I think the word nigger has changed, and it does not have the same meaning that it used to.”

They then go into the song.

Thoughts?

I recently had the pleasure of watching two amazing videos that really cut to the heart of the racial issues at play in this election cycle.

The first is “Black, White, Whatever” by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a ridiculously talented spoken word artist who has appeared on Def Poetry. Her work and bio are found on her website, Yellowgurl.com.

In “Black, White, Whatever,” Tsai critiques the missing elements from the candidate’s political speeches – the fact that race in America goes way beyond black and white – and those who fall outside of the binary certainly aren’t just “whatever.” And as she says in the video, “Whatever doesn’t represent me.”

Also of note, from the Ill-literacy site comes a new(ish) YouTube video that really digs into McCain’s infamous “that one” comment from the debates. Unfortunately for McCain, vlogger Adriel Luis provides a hip-hop themed juxtaposition of clips and events detailing what “that one” really means – in the context of remarks and actions taken over the last eight or so years.

(Thanks to Joanna, Kai, and Nezua for the tips!)

(Sarah Silverman’s video for the Great Schlep)

There’s a thing you might have heard about, The Great Schlep.

Behind it is an organization called Jews Vote. Looking at their bios at Jewsvote.org, they look like pretty great guys. One’s the son of a partisan. There’s a video with Sarah Silverman (see above). If you’ve heard of the project, it was probably from a link to the video.

I like Sarah Silverman.

Sometimes, she fails at what she’s trying to do, and sometimes I think that she needs to put a little more thought into it, but mostly I think a lot of the criticism she gets in undeserved. She does obnoxious, self-absorbed characters you’re not supposed to like. I can understand that it can be hard to get into, but the joke is consistently about herself. On her most infamous joke, I agree with Kate Rigg. The character Silverman portrays doesn’t understand that the word ‘chink’ is still racist even in the context is ‘I love chinks,’ but I don’t think it would be a joke unless both Silverman and the audience both understood otherwise. She wouldn’t have written it if it weren’t about that juxtaposition. I say that mostly to point out that I’ll give Silverman more room than most Racialicious readers would.

However, I have a bit of a problem with her video for The Great Schlep. Not with the goals of getting people to vote for Obama or visit their grandparents. Please, do vote for Obama. And visit your grandparents. I can tell you most Jews are soundly behind those goals. Looking at my own family, my grandfather certainly would have voted for Obama. My grandmother, who said a few racist things in her day, I think would have voted for Obama. My mother and uncle (both in their 60s) will be voting for Obama. I asked my aunt about the campaing, and she started ranting about Palin. And the elderly Jews I know here in New York will all be voting for Obama.

But, when the Silverman video is offered for a general (not exclusively Jewish) audience, which I’ve certainly seen a lot, I feel a need to interrogate it further. As Jackie Mason (who’s rarely the voice of sanity) pointed out, you shouldn’t really threaten to withhold your love from your grandparents to force them to vote the way you want, but to me that’s Sarah being Silverman. She also puts up an image of a large nose to illustrate the word “Jew.” But when she says the Jewish grandparents won’t vote for Barack Obama because he has a scary name that sounds Muslim, that strikes me as more genuine. Isn’t that the point of the entire Great Schlep project? If that’s not the motivation, then why the video at all? And though I don’t think the Jewish nose is meant to racialize Jews, is it perhaps meant to remind us of antisemitism? Well, according to Jewsvote.org:

Everyone knows that Jews vote. By some estimates, 80% of Jews are registered to vote. Among registered voters, Jews tend to vote at twice the rate of the typical voter. In certain swing states, Jewish votes can make a significant difference between victory and defeat.

In presidential elections, when choosing between a more progressive candidate and a more conservative candidate, Jews overwhelmingly choose the more progressive candidate. Between 1924 and 2004, Jews have given their vote to the more progressive candidates at an average rate of 76 percent. In fact, none of the more conservative candidates has ever mustered more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote, while more than half received less than 20 percent. But do Jews really make a significant difference between victory and defeat?

Given this history, why is Barack Obama hovering at 60 percent of the Jewish vote, according to three separate polls? Is this all the product of a highly effective rumor campaign, spread through Jewish networks often by well-meaning individuals concerned that they information they received was true? Or is there something more?

I think that confirms me suspicions that this well-meaning project is based on some distorted ideas.

It seems born under duress. There’s been, as usual, a lot of focus on the Jewish vote during this campaign season. Some terrible, some merely bad. I’ve asked a few people about it, and I’ve been disappointed to hear that some people actually think Jews will vote for McCain. It seems the project aims to prove that Jews will vote for Obama, but it’s like when someone says Obama isn’t a Muslim – I don’t want the conversation ending there.

Some of those facts from Jewsvote are, to the best of my knowledge, reasonable. I don’t know how much more likely Jews are to vote, but I think we do, for various reasons, tend to participate in civic duties like voting in high numbers. And there are many more Jews in Florida than Omaha (though I have no idea what other swing states they might be thinking of). But have Jews ever made the difference between victory and defeat. Jewish votes don’t count less than anyone else’s (butterfly ballots excepted, though an information campaign can’t do anything about that), but I think that’s pushing things a little too far.

There is, of course, a long history of antisemitism that imagines Jews as controlling the countries in which we live. Recently, when SNL did a skit depicting George Soros as “owner” of the Democratic party that pissed a lot of people off. (That image with the flags is genuine Nazi propaganda.) Or, to quote from a more rabid antisemite:

Throughout the centuries, Jewish bankers bought for themselves some real reputations of backers and financers of wars [2] and even one communist revolution [3]. Though rich Jews had been happily financing wars using their assets, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, found a far more sophisticated way to finance the wars perpetrated by his ideological brothers Libby and Wolfowitz.

When I’ve talked to people who try to convince me that Jews really do have outsized power, they often point to Florida’s Jews. It’s not a careful study of Florida politics, but the “every stereotype has a grain of truth” school of logic. It ignores the rest of Florida and the rest of the nation. Even though Jews might be especially likely to vote, and we might be concentrated in just a few places, there still just aren’t that many of us, only about 6 million Jews total in the US. Further, Jewish citizens of America are treated as a special interest group rather than as Americans. Jewish voting is not seen as an exercise in democracy, but as a lever of Jewish control.

It’s also true, as Jewsvote notes, that we tend toward left/liberal politics, so Democrats since FDR have been able to rely on the Jewish vote. (Of course, if our vote is so reliable, it’s hard to imagine how we ‘swing’ any vote.) And it is true that Obama’s support among Jews this year is less than Democrats could count on in the past. But when Hillary Clinton was still in the race, she wasn’t doing too much better. Polls pitting each candidate against McCain showed that 61% of Jewish voters would vote for Obama while Clinton could have counted on 66%.

So instead of asking what is it about Obama that makes Jews less likely to vote for him, it seems that we ought to ask what it is about McCain that makes Jews more likely to vote for him.

That seems obvious to me. It’s the same reason so many Republicans threatened to abstain from voting if McCain was the nominee: he’s not from the evangelical wing of the Republican party. His conservatism is mainly about economic matters. While that doesn’t mesh well with what most Jews consider to be Jewish values, it’s nowhere near as scary as the evangelical dogwhistles of Bush’s campaigning. McCain is from a school of individual liberty conservatism that’s completely at odds with the fundamentalist and evangelical segments of the right-wing. Though Palin is trying especially hard to undermine that trust, there are real reasons most Jews don’t view McCain the same way we view other Republicans. In fact, during the time when the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bills were a hot topic, most Americans had a similar view of McCain.

So let’s something straight. I haven’t seen any indication that elderly Jews are less likely to vote for Obama than elderly non-Jews. I can believe that elderly people of every racial and ethnic group might be less likely to vote for Obama.

Unsurprisingly, there exist elderly Jews, but why focus on Jews?

Secretary-Treasurer of theAFL-CIO Richard Trumka talks about unions, race, internalized racism and Obama:

Author Irwin Tang discusses his new book, “Gook: John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters.” He goes into the history of the term and how it is a term of war. Key quote: “It’s a term you use toward people you are willing to kill.”

Something I missed in all the Tyra frenzy – an interesting interview with the Shannon and Shauna Baker and Irene Bedard, working Native American actresses who spoke openly about being an underrepresented minority and passing as Latina in order to work.

And finally, an interesting video on The Girl Effect – breaking the cycle of poverty by educating women:

What the hell is this?

Seriously, what is this? This video, and more like it, can be found on this YouTube channel which is apparently part of CBS’s Mobile programming. And there are twelve more videos in this idiotic “Farnfucious” series. I know it’s just a puppet, but damn.

I cannot believe someone would deem this appropriate material to post as part of a major broadcast network’s online content. I actually originally found them on CBS’ main YouTube channel, but they were taken down pretty quickly.

Does it still count as yellowface when you dress up a white puppet character like an old Asian man? That’s got to be a first. It’s ridiculous. Once again, someone thinks racial caricatures mocking Asians are funny. That’s racist! (Thanks, Andrew.)