racism
mikethemadbiologist | April 19, 2011I'm a bit late to this story, but, if you missed it, the LA Times had a superb article about how IKEA treats and pays workers at its U.S. facilities much worse than at its Swedish factories:
Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it's common to find out on Friday evening that they'll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can't or don't show up....
Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a…
mikethemadbiologist | April 14, 2011Sadly, too many Americans are probably unaware that the anniversary surrender of the Confederate rebels at Appomattox happened a few days ago. I've found three posts I highly recommend. First, Tony Wikrent:
One thing I really would like you to take away from this diary is a basic sense of how the United States, as a self-governing democratic republic, cannot long tolerate oligarchic and aristocratic ideas in its body politic. This is becoming an increasingly urgent issue for us today, because the American conservative movement today is basically a replica of the slavery-defending, anti-free…
mikethemadbiologist | December 16, 2010Well, technically speaking, it's Fox News, but, really, what's the difference? Fox News has a website, Fox News Latino, that ran with this headline:
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem Are Having an Anchor Baby.
It's like a nervous tic or something. They just can't help themselves.
And remember, as driftglass likes to say, no nation can endure, permanently half Fox News and half free.
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2010In Ohio's ninth congressional district, Republican voters have nominated Rich Iott, a wealthy businessman, who has an interesting hobby: he likes to dress up as a member of the Waffen SS, which were Nazi Germany's elite and ideologically motivated shock troops. Here is how Iott's play-date buddies describe the Waffen SS (italics mine):
Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other…
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2010
Seriously. I do. Over at Gin and Tacos, Ed decries the deluge of stupidity in which we are awash:
The real issue, and I mean the real, honest-to-god Problem With The World Today, is that Americans as a nation are dumb. Really fucking dumb. The Pew [religious knowledge] survey, the Tea Party, or the afternoon baseball call-in show on WFAN underscore the point that Americans will fail a quiz about any topic you can throw at them. Americans will make crappy, emotional, illogical arguments about whatever subject holds their interest, from the Supreme Court to the World Cup. We have…
mikethemadbiologist | August 12, 2010By way of Digby, I came across this poll of white attitudes towards various ethnicities (including whites) based on self-identified Tea Party support (note: respondents were only from four states, NV, MO, GA, and NC). One of things that struck me while looking at the data (pdf and pdf) was the extent to which whites who identified strongly with the Tea Party didn't trust other whites.
72% of skeptics of the Tea Party thought other whites were trustworthy, while Tea Partiers thought only 49% of whites were trustworthy (p = 0.0022). The other significant result, and which is puzzling is…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2010Remember last year, when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by the Cambridge Police (charges were dropped). We all sat around, had a beer, and discussed race. Well, there's been a review of the Cambridge police's arrest behavior from 2004 to 2009.
At the time, I thought it had nothing to do with race, but challenging police authority, and an atypical response based on Gates' class:
But I actually don't think this is about race, but a challenge to police authority. Basically, once Gates' challenged the officer's authority--and mind you, he had already shown the officer…
mikethemadbiologist | June 7, 2010Snark can't even begin to cope with this sickening display of hatred--directed at elementary school children:
A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott [Arizona] school.
The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the school's principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.
The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign…
mikethemadbiologist | May 26, 2010Amanda Marcotte has a must-read post about Rand Paul, and why we shouldn't just sweep his libertarianism under the rug. I'll get to Amanda in a bit, but, to explain the title, I want to first provide some context by way of deceased Republican political operative Lee Atwater:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-gger, n-gger, n-gger." By 1968 you can't say "n-gger" -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally…
grrlscientist | May 12, 2010tags: A Sneak-Peak at UK Conservatives, Not the Nine O'clock News, UK politics, conservative politics, immigrants, racism, comedy, humor, funny, satire, parody, television, Rowan Atkison, streaming video
This British comedy reminds me of conservative politics (and politicians) in the USA, especially those in Arizona. Amazing how little things change, isn't it?
This was the second episode from the first season of Not the nine O'clock News (1979).
grrlscientist | May 4, 2010tags: New Fitness Craze: White Women's Workout, exercise, fitness, racism, social observation, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, Godfrey, Ty Bowman, streaming video
I know that many Americans want to lose weight, and here's a novel new workout craze to help you do just that! Combining racial stereotypes with exercise techniques, exercise guru Ty Bowman has created Southern Cali's latest workout craze...The White Women's Workout. As a NYCer, I think this will work well in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx!
[Comedian, Godfrey, plays Fitness Guru, Ty Bowman.]
grrlscientist | May 2, 2010tags: I'm A Teabagger For Jesus, teabaggers, America, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, socialism,humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, social commentary, cultural observation, Edward Current, streaming video
What would Jesus do to help America? In this video, William Current, one of my favorite social satirists, explains how he decided that he would be a Teabagger. No taxation without representation!
sastyk | April 26, 2010I'm just now finishing wading through the Earth Day e-waste/propaganda/inspiring educational bullshit in my in-box. After a certain point, I stopped reading. Which means I almost missed my new favorite use of Earth Day, which was sent to me by FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the largest of our anti-immigrant groups here in the US. It turns out that FAIR is deeply, deeply concerned with the ecological impact of Brown folk, and they really want us, on Earth Day, to think hard about the impact of people who are not white (and thus, of course, are not like us real…
ddobbs | April 13, 2010Ed Yong, Mo Costandi, Scientific American, and others have covered nicely a new paper finding that people with WIlliams syndrome (a condition I've been interested in since writing a long feature about it for the Times Magazine a few years back) show little or no racial bias. But I wanted to add one thought about the finding.
Most of the write-ups have emphasized, rightly, that people with Williams tend to show little or no social fear -- a lack that could explain a lack of racial bias. If you don't fear people, you don't feel out-groups. Yet as I noted in my article, people with Williams…
mikethemadbiologist | April 12, 2010Digby brilliantly snarks what I've been trying to describe for a while about the Tea Buggers:
...if you just remove the poor blacks from the equation it would be clear to everyone that America doesn't like Obama. Now, this isn't about race, mind you, not at all. It's about resistance to all these lazy blacks living off the dole which their black socialist President is funding by stealing money from hardworking whites. Why everyone has to bring race into it all the time is beyond me.
You have to understand that African Americans aren't loyal to Obama because of his history making role as the…
grrlscientist | March 30, 2010tags: obama, racism, America, Why Obama Is So Scary, humor, funny, satire, fucking hilarious, social commentary, cultural observation, Edward Current, streaming video
Another one of my boyfriends, Edward Current, uploaded this video today, even though he filmed it in August 2009. It's another rip-snorter, but the last few seconds is the real capper .. those last few seconds might be the reason he waited to share it with us until now ..
mikethemadbiologist | March 21, 2010There's nothing like the prospect of a black person receiving a government service to rile up the Republican base. Anyone who has spent extended time in the South, when listening to the Tea Partyers, has heard this ugly, racist dogwhistle. But with the possible passage of Romneycare--for people who aren't white, too!--which apparently portends The Demise of Western Civilization As We Know It, all bets are off (italics mine):
Abusive, derogatory and even racist behavior directed at House Democrats by Tea Party protesters on Saturday left several lawmakers in shock.
Preceding the president's…
emjohnson | March 20, 2010RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices . . . decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a "hypocrite" who had "gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam," Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest…
razib | February 13, 2010I have pointed before to dating research which shows a stronger race-bias from women than men, correcting for physical appearance. In other words, if a man found a woman attractive the extra bonus for being of the same race was relatively marginal compared to the inverse. Well, it seems that this strong element of race-consciousness in the fairer sex might manifest in an even more evolutionarily relevant context. Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk Across the Menstrual Cycle:
Although a considerable body of research explores alterations in women's mating-relevant preferences across the menstrual…
grrlscientist | February 5, 2010tags: A Brief History of the United States of America, humor, funny,comedy, African-Americans, Black Americans, guns, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, NRA, National Rifle Association, racism, streaming video
This video explains the intimate relationship between guns, freedom and racism. Yes, I know there are exceptions to this guns-freedom-racism link, but I grew up among morons like this, and I couldn't escape from their festering hatred fast enough.