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June 28, 2003
Political Animal
Strom Won't Be Missed 
"We have learned to have duality in our views. There's the view that's OK for the yankees and the cameras, then there's the view at the supper table. In this place, where Confederate flags are more common than American flags, a feeling of quiet hatred permeates the humid Southern air. It's all part of the South's lasting legacy of racism, and we can only hope that we can end it over time. Strom Thurmond was a part of that hatred, and his passing is the passing of part of that legacy; for that, I'm grateful." AlterNet
June 16, 2003
Political Animal
Atticus Finch & Gregory Peck "The news of Peck's death at age 87 reminds us that America is rapidly losing both the cultural and the political champions of a still unfinished struggle for racial justice - Peck frequently used his prominence to raise awareness about civil rights and civil liberties struggles, even appearing in television commercials that challenged the Supreme Court nomination of conservative Robert Bork. For people who were very young in the heady days of the 1960s, Peck's death is particularly jarring, as his Oscar-winning performance in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' taught them about the struggle - and the proper place within it." Wisconsin Capitol Times
June 15, 2003
Beef-a-Real
Cheshire Inn apologizes over ban on dreadlocks "'You can't wash that hair, and it stinks, and we're a crowded bar, and we don't want stinky people in the bar,' he said in the interview." St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Books
The Truth About 'Harry': Race Permeates Novels "When Winky, a house-elf, is freed from servitude in 'Goblet of Fire,' she becomes depressed, unstable and disheveled. In addition, the house-elves speak a fractured English that some have interpreted as a crude takeoff on the speech of American slaves.
Farah Mendelsohn, editor of 'Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction,' likens the house-elves to what she calls the 'happy darky' stereotype of the antebellum South. 'No one who has seen "Birth of a Nation" or "Gone With the Wind" could fail to recognize the resemblance between the relationship of Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy and of Master Barry and Winky,' Mendelsohn writes.' Rowling will have a hard time justifying how she's characterized the elves if anyone dares press her on the issue. Interestingly enough, Dobby, the house elf who gains his freedom through Harry's intervention, is smart enough to code switch when talking with Harry, et al., but the other house elves speak an appalling "elf-bonics". Atlanta Constitution-Journal
June 14, 2003
Books
Fast Forward Into Trouble "How quickly their ancient culture is being supplanted by a mish-mash of alien ideas, while their parents loiter for hours at a time in the Welcome Guest House, farmers with their new socks embossed with Fila logos, all glued to David Beckham on Manchester United TV. A local official tells us that in one village so many farmers were watching television that an entire crop failed. It is not just a sedentary lifestyle this official is afraid of. Here, in the Welcome Guest House, farmers' wives ogle adverts For a Mercedes that would cost more than a lifetime's wages. Furniture 'you've always desired', accessories 'you have always wanted', shoes 'you've always dreamed of' - the messages from cable's sponsors come every five minutes, and the audience watching them grows by the day." Television was introduced in Bhutan only four years ago. Guardian Unlimited
June 13, 2003
Books
What If Jayson Blair Were Black? "This is not a matter of who is or is not 'authentic.' I consider everyone authentic, from Pat Boone to Eminem, from Clarence Thomas to Malcolm X. I'm authentic and so is Blair. But Blair is an authentic black man who grew up in an upscale white neighborhood with upscale white friends, doing things that white kids do in white settings, going to school with white classmates and learning from white teachers." Take Back the Media
June 12, 2003
Books
Black like me -- but not too black "I don't doubt Rohrich's sincerity or the assertion that nose jobs are actually becoming more enlightened (I can see the "Oprah" promo already). But my initial suspicion of black folks getting nose jobs holds. It's difficult for me to believe that anybody black getting their nose done isn't doing it to some degree to look more white and less black -- such is the still considerable burden of history. Because of a tortured struggle for mainstream acceptance that began with slavery and has never ended -- drugstores still sell skin-lightening cream in the beauty aisles, after all -- changing black faces is almost never a purely aesthetic consideration. As they are so often in matters of appearance, racial considerations are never far from the surface." Salon.com
June 8, 2003
Review
Is Stagolee's Stetson Like a Rapper's Baggy Pants? "Sure, it is easy to say that all of black masculinity owes a debt to Stagolee in the same way that one could argue that contemporary Hollywood movies are really updated Greek tragedies. But Stagolee, a legend of oral culture, is about as relevant in today's mass-media-dominated digital age as a horse-and-carriage on a crowded Los Angeles freeway during rush hour." New York Times
June 5, 2003
Fnord
Unusual Use of DNA Aided in Serial Killer Search "But then they sent DNA samples to DNAPrint Genomics, a company in Sarasota, Fla., that owns the rights to Dr. Shriver's test. Of 20 samples tested, Dr. Shriver said, only one was linked to the suspect, and the company was not told which. It typed the crime scene sample as being 85 percent African ancestry and 15 percent American Indian."
From the company's press release:
"'The difference between determining biogeographical ancestry admixture with Ancestry 2.0 and the old methods of racial classification is like that between a solid state transistor and a vacuum tube', said Richard Gabriel, CEO and President of DNAPrint genomics. The Ancestry 2.0 test comprises one of four the Company expects to provide under the DNAWITNESS 2.0 forensic testing banner, the remaining three for the inference of iris color, hair color and precise skin tone are still in development and/or validation. DNAPrint lists the Ancestry 2.0 test at $1,000 per criminal sample, but provides customers up to 20 blind validations with their first order."Precise skin tone! New York Times
June 3, 2003
Music
Keepin' It Unreal "But not much more. At its core the hubbub around Get Rich and the return of gangsta rap is crack-era nostalgia taken to the extreme. Imagine—articulate young black men pining for the heyday of black-on-black crime. Like all nostalgia, neo-gangsta is stuck in history rather than rooted in current reality. The sobering fact is that the streets as 50 presents them, brimming with shoot-outs and crack fiends, do not exist. Of course, drugs are still a plague on America's house, and America's gun violence is a black mark on the developed world. But millennial black America is hardly the Wild West scene it was during gangsta rap's prime. Gangsta could once fairly claim to reflect a brutal present. Now it mythicizes a past that would fade away much faster without it." Village Voice