A photo series of Myra Green's white friends. A study of whiteness in America.
hat tip: Seeing White on Scene on Radio
Tag: racism
🎧 Episode 42: My White Friends (Seeing White, Part 12) | Scene on Radio
For years, Myra Greene had explored blackness through her photography, often in self-portraits. She wondered, what would it mean to take pictures of whiteness? For her friends, what was it like to be photographed because you’re white? With another conversation between host John Biewen and series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika.
Photo: Matt Geesaman, Chicago, 2009. By Myra Greene.
There’s term in marketing and advertising called markedness. Markedness says, that which is marked is different, that which is unmarked is normal.
—Deena Hayes-Green, of the Racial Equality Institute
It’s interesting to see this word “marked” defined in a modern advertising sense and comparing it with the word “stamped” in the quote “The ‘inequality of the white and black races’ was ‘stamped from the beginning'” from Jefferson Davis on April 12, 1860 on the floor of the U.S. Senate as quoted by Ibram X. Kendi in his book Stamped from the Beginning.
So now you’re combining Frisbee and golf. I mean, how much whiter can you get than that?!
—John Biewen, host of Seeing White
🎧 Episode 41: Danger (Seeing White, Part 11) | Scene on Radio
For hundreds of years, the white-dominated American culture has raised the specter of the dangerous, violent black man. Host John Biewen tells the story of a confrontation with an African American teenager. Then he and recurring guest Chenjerai Kumanyika discuss that longstanding image – and its neglected flipside: white-on-black violence.
👓 A Note on Steve King | Weekly Standard
The congressman disputed a story we reported. We stand by it.
I’m curious about the statistics on the number of people that read this versus the number that listened to the attached audio. I suspect the latter was a tiny fraction, which means that to some extent that the outlet wins. In the end it’s nice to have access to the original sources of reporting like this.
❤️ AnikaNoniRose tweet: Next white house press event with the president, only send your Black woman reporters.
Anika Noni Rose (Twitter)Dear news outlets, you want to do something radical and powerful? Next white house press event with the president, only send your Black woman reporters. #IfYouHaveAny
— Anika Noni Rose (@AnikaNoniRose) November 10, 2018
👓 Man fired after wearing t-shirt with noose on it | ABC13
A Mississippi man was fired from his job at a hospital for wearing the wrong shirt to the polls.
📖 Read pages 14-30 of 592 of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
📖 Read pages 14-30 of 592 of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
Chapters 1 & 2 are an overview of prior history of ancient Greece and the “climate theory” of Aristotle and then the Genesis 9:18-29 “curse of Ham” (son of Noah) as the early roots of racism. It then moves into the slave trade of Portugal with Zuarara, Ibn Khaldūn, Las Casas, a Leo Africanus’ writings and their effect on the roots of modern racism.
Given the politics of the day, its curious to note that so many Republican party members would simultaneously be climate deniers on the one hand, and climate believers on the other.
As I look at the title of the forthcoming chapter 3 “Coming to America”, I can’t help but think about the potential ironies of the relationship to the text and the Eddie Murphy film of the same title.
On page 21 Kendi writes:
As strictly a climate theorist, Ibn Khaldūn discarded the “silly story” of the curse of Ham.
Here he references this to The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History by Ibn Khaldūn, Franz Rosenthal, and N.J. Dawood (Princeton University Press, 1969). I’m curious exactly where the “silly story” portion stems? Is it from Ibn Khaldūn directly in translation or from the more modern book? Given that Ibn Khaldūn lived from 1332-1406 and certainly didn’t write in English, I’m curious about the original translation by which the phrase “silly story” comes about. Silly has an archaic meaning of “helpless; defenseless” (roughly around the time of Shakespeare) prior to its modern definition, and prior to that it derived from the Old English word “seely” which meant “blessed”. Given that the phrase is used to describe a passage from Genesis, it’s entirely possible that the word “silly” held the “blessed” connotation here, but it’s not obvious from the context or the reference which is the proper meaning to take. Certainly taking the modern definition on its face seems like the wrong path to take here. I wonder if Kendi could shed some additional light on his sources to clarify the issue?
👓 Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk | The Atlantic
If the governor’s race had taken place in another country, the State Department would have questioned its legitimacy.
👓 Fox News, NBC, and Facebook pulled Trump’s racist campaign ad. He’s not happy about it. | Vox
The latest controversy over Trump’s final campaign ad, explained.
🎧 The Daily: A Year of Reckoning in Charlottesville | New York Times
In the 12 months since white nationalists and counterprotesters clashed there, the Virginia city has continued to struggle with centuries-old tensions.
👓 Why no one is laughing in Baltimore | Washington Post
The president of Baltimore’s police union didn’t find a “Saturday Night Live” sketch funny, but instead of just shaking his head and grumbling to the person next to him and moving on, he took a bold and very public step. He wrote a letter to the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels, expressing “great disappointment over the distorted representation of Baltimore Police Officers.”
🎧 The Daily: A New Path for Presidential Pardons | New York Times
Granting clemency was long a cumbersome bureaucratic process. That has changed under President Trump.
👓 What Does Gab’s Demise Mean For Federation? | Interdependent Thoughts
The Twitter-like platform Gab has been forced offline, as their payment providers, hosting provider and domain provider all told them their business was no longer welcome. The platform is home to people with extremist views claiming their freedom of speech is under threat. At issue is of course wher...
📑 Reply to Ben Werdmüller | Interdependent Thoughts
They can spew hate amongst themselves for eternity, but without amplification it won’t thrive. ❧
This is a key point. Social media and the way it (and its black box algorithms) amplifies almost anything for the benefit of clicks towards advertising is one of its most toxic features. Too often the extreme voice draws the most attention instead of being moderated down by more civil and moderate society.
👓 Reply to Ben Werdmüller | Interdependent Thoughts
I think this is a false dilemma, Bernd.
I’d say that it would be great if those extremists would see using a distributed tool like Mastodon as the only remaining viable platform for them. It would not suppress their speech. But it woud deny them any amplification, which they now enjoy by being very visible on mainstream platforms, giving them the illusion they are indeed mainstream. It will be much easier to convince, if at all needed, instance moderators to not federate with instances of those guys, reducing them ever more to their own bubble. They can spew hate amongst themselves for eternity, but without amplification it won’t thrive. Jotted down some thoughts on this earlier in “What does Gab’s demise mean for federation?“