Posts Tagged ‘race’
March 22nd, 2013 | 
Author: 
Jaquandor, who continues to be western New York’s finest blogger, wrote, even before I asked him to Ask Roger Anything:
May I ask, what’s YOUR response to the question that ALWAYS gets asked in February? I’m referring, of course, to “How come there’s no WHITE History Month?” Anymore I just snort and say “That’s all the other ones. We just don’t announce it.” Problem with that response is, it doesn’t always get taken as the sarcasm it is.
He added:
I really hate hearing that question, with its pouty tone and its implication that racism is over and we need to just stop talking about it.
Let me tell you some of the things we talked about at my church in late January and February:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | 
Tags: Ask Roger Anything, Black History Month, education, environment, history, Jaquandor, justice, race, racism | 
4 Comments »
National Public Radio aired a very interesting story last month that hit me where I live.
“Music writer Laina Dawes is a die-hard Judas Priest fan. She’s all about the band’s loud and fast guitars, the piercing vocals — and she loves to see the group perform live.
“Now, a fact that shouldn’t matter: Dawes is a black woman. This, she says, can make things uncomfortable on the metal scene. She says she’s been verbally harassed and told she’s not welcome…
“Dawes writes about the issue in her new book, What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal.”
I so relate to this.
Read the rest of this entry »
I had heard for a long time how awful and offensively racist D.W. Griffith’s landmark 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, was. It’s good that I saw it, but I’m glad it was as an adult, so that I could appreciate it in the historic context in which it was made. I’m not much on banning movies, but there is something to be said about seeing it at the right point.
A couple blog posts I’ve seen recently reminded me of this point. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: Birth of a Nation, Django Unchained, Holiday Inn, Jeni le Gon, movies, race, racism, Roger Ebert, SamuraiFrog, Song of the South |
5 Comments »
Leonard Pitts wrote a tremendous article, Dumbest idea in history? Race. You should read the whole piece.
Among other things, He explains that race became “that which would allow one person in rags to feel superior to another person in rags.” In the United States, “Whiteness was something that had to be learned and earned, particularly for those — Jews, Poles, southern Italians, Hungarians, the Irish — who were regarded as congenitally inferior. They were seen as white, says [Nell Irwin] Painter, but it was a sort of defective whiteness. They were ‘off white’ for want of a better term, and as such, a threat to American values and traditions. And they were mistreated accordingly until, over the passage of generations of assimilation, they achieved full whiteness.”
“As whiteness was invented, so was blackness. Read the rest of this entry »
“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back – but they are gone. It is up to us. It is up to you.” – Marian Wright Edelman
I saw this quote on Facebook a couple days after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. The quote made me think about what would MLK, Jr. be doing and saying about current events. I have read and/or listened to many of Martin’s writings and speeches, so I could (I hope) reasonably extrapolate his views.
Of course, it’s difficult to ascertain what his impact on society and the culture would be had he survived. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: birthday, economic justice, equality, justice, Martin Luther King Jr., race |
5 Comments »
My old college friend Claire is 55 and Still Alive. Her late father, BTW, was awarded the Bill Finger Award at Comic-Con 2012.
Jaquandor’s review/reflection about the book Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Pie by Beth Howard, which is about processing grief. And dessert. Check out her website.
Legal Analysis Outlines Potential Crime In Mitt Romney’s Financial Disclosures
“Recent DNA and genealogical evidence uncovered by Ancestry.com researchers suggests that President Obama is a descendant of one of America’s first documented African slaves. What surprised many is that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: anniversary, Arthur@AmeriNZ, Beatles, Claire Doyle, Coverville, Dustbury, Harvey Pekar, Jaquandor, justice, music, outer space, pie, race |
2 Comments »
I’m watching this television program called JEOPARDY! On the episode airing way back on February 25, 2009, which I almost certainly watched at least a week later, there was a category called THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, with all of the clues given by black historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The $200 clue: “In a recent essay, I cited the election of Barack Obama as one of the 4 ‘transformative moments’ in African-American history; this 1863 event was the first.” The question, of course, was “What is The Emancipation Proclamation?” (The other two moments, which Gates revealed in a video clip leading to a commercial break Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: Barack Obama, Dan van Riper, JEOPARDY, Presidents, race, racism, transformation |
2 Comments »