Oh, fucking A. That one time someone tried to wield straight privilege on your behalf but didn't succeed? It doesn't make you gay. It makes you straight. It makes you someone with straight privilege. Straight privilege that other people try to wield on your behalf. Do you really believe they're all unsuccessful when they try to wield your straight ( Read more... )

Finally! I've been waiting for this study to come out.

( Background )

( x-posted to debunkingwhite)
So, yesterday I was browsing our public library's catalog for books about issues of racism and/or colonialism in paleoanthropology, or barring that, anything as close as I could get to that subject.
In the process, I stumbled across a pair of books by folklorist/historian of science, Adrienne Mayor. Both books are described on her ( Read more... )

Okay, fuck it. I've been trying not to get into this mess, but "not getting into it" starts to look a whole lot like "supporting the status quo," and I'm in no mood to trust that the status quo is in a good place on this. In fact, I strongly suspect that it isn't, because that's the way these things tend to go. So.

( Put down your calculators and go talk to your family. )

A month ago I ran across this quote on Gay Persons of Color[1]:Is this Islamophobia? Probably. Does Islamophobia help the fight against homophobia? Probably.

This is the sort of argument that I see white Western progressives bring up from time to time (although the author of this particular quote is not white), the allegation that communities of ( Read more... )

Happy International Blog Against Racism Week (ibarw)! This year's theme is intersectionality, and I plan to have one or two posts on that topic before the week is out. But first, I wanted to do a wrap-up about a challenge I participated in as a result of last year's IBARW.

So, a little background: I stumbled across IBARW last year -- probably through matociquala ( Read more... )

Three days might as well be a year in internet time--especially after last night's news--but I wanted to respond to this piece by M. LeBlanc at Bitch Ph.D., which itself was a response to Ferraro's most recent asshattery. (I hope it's her most recent -- her ongoing asshattery this season has pretty much crushed any remnant of my starry-eyed ( Read more... )

Rough notes from the "Dismantling Racism" training that Basic Rights Oregon did this weekend:

First, they were very clear that this was an anti-racism training, and not a diversity nor a sensitivity training. (I had to give a little burst of applause at that -- I lost my last shred of optimism about diversity trainings when an HR director said to ( Read more... )

Tom DeWolf, Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History

Tom DeWolf is a descendent of slave-traders. In 2001, he was approached by a 10th-cousin who was making a documentary about the modern legacy of the slave trade, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. Katrina ( Read more... )

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