September 2011
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If you’re gonna teach diversity, you have to talk...
Interesting challenge to Pioneer woman (http://thepioneerwoman.com/) about engaging children about Diversity..
“The thing is, I don’t want my daughter’s choices, opportunities, identity, sense of belonging and self-worth — and those of her black brothers and sisters in this country — to be dictated by the pseudo-educated, pale-faced Baby Drummonds of the world. The planet ...
August 2011
110 posts
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A Hanging
Powerful writing by George Orwell, originally published in 1931 in The Adelphi, a British literary magazine, reproduced with permission in The Hindu as part of aneditorial campaign for the abolition of capital punishment in India.
“It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the...
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“Great piece about the relationship between race and fertility in a US context...”
– A Forced Eugenics Survivor Speaks Her Truth
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100 Years of East London Fashion, Dance and Music... →
This is charming and gorgeous, for all the Fashionistas as we head into NZ Fashion Week!
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“Bachmann says that European immigrants “did not come here for the promise of a...”
– This piece highlights the importance of history and the privileges made available to certain groups and not others-makes a myth of the liberal level playing field.
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Who gets tasered?
“Forty per cent of those tasered during the 11-month period were Maori, an ethnic group that make up just 15 per cent of the population, while 18 per cent of those tasered were Pacific Islanders, whose ethnic group accounts for 7 per cent of the population.”
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How to write about Aboriginal Australia
This reminds me of the Granta piece on writing about Africa..
“When describing the elders, make sure they gaze at things. Aboriginal people are forever gazing mystically into the landscape, because of their special relationship with it. You too should gaze into the landscape – desert hills preferably, but a claypan or a swamp will do. Emphasise the ineffability of the desert/tropical...
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Carol Gilligan on Gender and Human Nature
Love this..
“Yes. Sexism bifurcates human qualities into masculine and feminine. It imposes a gender binary where being a man means not being like a woman and vice-versa. Sexism is often another name for patriarchy, meaning a hierarchy or a rule of priests where the hieros, the priest, is a pater, a father. It designates an order of living that elevates some men over others, separating...
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“When someone works for less pay than she can live on…she has made a great...”
– Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (via newwavefeminism)
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Do We Need a Militant Movement to Save the Planet...
“Lierre Keith: Right now on the Left what we have is an alternative culture, and I would say that is kind of a subculture where you can withdraw from the mainstream and hang out with people who think pretty much like you do and have a whole lot of alternative institutions, but none of your actions and none of your institutions pose a threat to the power structure. You can have a nice...
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“Development” Initiatives and the (In)Visibility...
Great calling out by Sociological images of the nauseating and vomit inducing re-run of the old tape “of white female subjectivity as compassionate and caring, dependent upon the Othering of women of colour in the south. In fact, since colonialism, the advantages that accrue to those of us in developed countries have been linked to the disadvantages faced by the rest of the world. Our ...
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What Disney teaches our Boys & Girls. {Warning:...
Not to mention heteronormativity..
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Architectures of violence: Famine and profits
Fantastic writing about the financialisation of food
“Now consider a second, more common image of hunger - the anonymous, starving black child. We’ve all seen her picture at some point: semi-naked, flies gripping eyelids, stick-like limbs, parched lips, sunken cheekbones, balding head, and sightless eyes. The child is obviously severely undernourished and requires food, but we...
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Media and representation of minorities
“…the media not only constitutes almost the sole source of information for the images and attitudes that they create. They also perpetuate historically inherited stereotypes and cultural imaginaries that form part of the national collective memory bank”
Gema Martin-Munoz 2002:1
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Reproduction of racism in the Press
“…the reproduction of racism by the Press is largely effective, not so much because all readers always adopt the opinions of the Press, which they often do and sometimes do not, but rather because the Press manages to manufacture an ethnic consensus in which the very latitude of opinions and attitudes is quite strictly contained. They not only set the agenda for public discussion (what...
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Liberalism and Christianity
“Liberalism is not a possible meeting ground for all cultures, but is the political expression of one range of cultures, and quite incompatible with other ranges. Moreover, as many Muslims are well aware, Western liberalism is not so much an expression of the secular, post-religious outlook that happens to be popular among liberal intellectuals as a more organic outgrowth of...
Somalis in the UK
Just writing up a report on Refugee women in NZ and reading literature about clothing and inclusion, when I came across this article about Somali’s in the UK:
“Somali men from the British Protectorate of Somaliland working in the Royal or Merchant Navy first arrived in the UK in the second half of the nineteenth century and settled in British ports and docklands including London,...
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There is an urgent need for us to appreciate […] the complex relationality that shapes our social and political lives [… .] [S]ystems of racial, class, and gender domination do not have identical effects on women.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
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How to Write about Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina,...
A classic on maintaining colonial representations:
“Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.
In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and ...
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All Of These Things That Have Made Us By Tom...
Exquisite writing about life and mortality and comics..
“Being in comics long enough allows you special insight into large, dysfunctional groups of people, which is handy when you’re living in a hospital. The sooner you learn to accommodatingly plug into the staff’s work day as opposed to continuing to demand that they find a way to work within the confines of the artificial...
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