Entries Tagged 'Race' ↓

Simply crazy about the 44th president? Don’t you wish you could just grab him and take him home with you? Well, now you can, and, when you get there, you can eat him, soaked in a delicious curry dip. (Thanks for the tip, Ray.) Says USA Today‘s “On Deadline” blog,

The German frozen food company Sprehe is offering a new product called “Obama Fingers,” which the packaging [above] describes as “tender, juicy pieces of chicken breast, coated and fried,” the German news magazine Der Spiegel reports.

The magazine quotes Judith Witting, a sales manager for the company, as saying Sprehe decided to offer the product after noting  that “American products and the American way of eating are trendy at the moment.”

“Americans are more relaxed,” Witting explained. “Not like us stiff Germans, like (Chancellor Angela) Merkel.”

Possibly still doused with post-racial goodwill, however, there was no comment from “On Deadline” about something of which Der Spiegel seemed highly aware: Namely

a risk that the product might be seen as racially insensitive. Fried chicken has long been associated with African-Americans in the US — naming strips of fried chicken after the first black president could cause some furrowing of brows.

According to Der Spiegel, “The company says it was unaware of the possible racist overtones of the product.”

Witting told SPIEGEL ONLINE the connection never even occurred to her. “It was supposed to be a homage to the American lifestyle and the new US president,” she said.

Twenty bucks says Obama smiles it off.

[via On Deadline]

Black people frequently accuse white people of treating us as though we all look alike. So, when one hears of a Black person having been wrongly convicted in a case of mistaken identity, particularly in as tragic a context as sexual assault, one is usually prepared to write it off as another instance of said Caucasian arrogance, taken to grave ends.

In the 1984 case of Jennifer Thompson, 22, however, raped in Burlington NC while attending college, I can actually see why, in a photo lineup, she mistakenly and tragically identified Ronald Cotton, above left, as her assailant. (She confused him with Bobby Poole, above right, her actual rapist, but whose picture was not part of the grouping.)

Can you say doppelgänger? The duo don’t even look like they’re related. They look, at least, like before and after pictures of the same man, taken a year or two apart.

The close physical resemblance of these two men plays, as well, another unexpected role in this two-part feature from last night’s 60 Minutes. If you missed it, check out the transcript, or ogle part 1, then part 2 of the episode via online video.

Exline Park by R. C. Hickman (1955)
From the R. C. Hickman Photographic Archive at the
Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin

I’m giving you really short notice, as this show will only be up until Sunday, March 8. But if you’re anywhere near the Irving Arts Center (3333 N. MacArthur Blvd) in Irving TX between now and then, make it your business to stop by and see Behold the People: R.C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, which features 56 black and white photographs from his eponymous archive at the University of Texas at Austin.

For those who, like I, had never heard of the man,

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Photographer Delphine Fawundu-Buford is a smart, worldly woman, with a masters degree from NYU and solid commercial assignments. (Her picture of asha bandele and bandele’s daughter, Nisa, forms the cover of the author’s new book, Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story, right, for example.)

But she’s also quite youthful. So, as she’d not heard of it before, it was bracing to connect to her horror and outrage, in a recent post for her blog, And She Don’t Stop. There, she describes how, last year, she encountered an archival photograph, then, subsequently, what seems like the entire history of racist ephemera, above, depicting African-Americans, especially infants, as alligator chum.

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The cover of The Nation magazine‘s February 2 edition, above, depicting the inauguration of Barack Obama as it would take place were America, and not God alone, truly just.

Go to The Nation‘s specially prepared key for the identities of all persons portrayed.

Art by John Mavroudis.

[via thisisbandit.com]

Freelance writer, novelist, and screenwriter Erica Kennedy‘s Facebook group, Feminista’s Advertising Hall of Fame (or Lame?), documents the “best and worst examples of commercial advertising.” In fact, this winner, above, isn’t an ad, as American Apparel rushed to make clear, shortly after the page ran in i-D Magazine back in 2007, but part of that publication’s own outré fashion pages. (You’ve gotta be offensive if a scummy advertiser of half-naked immigrant women like AA doesn’t want anything to do with your editorial.)

Readers who recall my quasi-crusade against VOGUE’s foul LeBron James / Gisele Bundchen cover almost a year ago aren’t surprised at the way racist imagery continues to be subsumed into white High Style, and neither am I. However, upon sight of this photo, I have to admit to a flash of weariness. Like, the need to create this stuff never dies, does it?

I don’t know how much you know about Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, above, astrophysicist and Frederick P. Rose Director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium, right, here in New York City, or if you know anything about him at all. Even though he’s a big guy, was a 2007 TIME 100 leader, and is on TV more than most scientists, you may not have noticed him, as most Americans don’t pay attention to the people who head knowledge-based organizations.

Yet, even if you hadn’t heard of him, you’ve lived on this planet long enough to know that, if someone, at random, asked you who’s the person that has run the nation’s best known public science education institution since 1996, you almost certainly wouldn’t think of a Black guy.

That fact led me to wonder: Is being Neil deGrasse Tyson a little bit like being Barack Obama?

I don’t mean in the sense of being the first African-American in his position, which he is. I mean in the sense of having to deal with white people.

That is, in certain surface ways, Obama and Tyson are somewhat similar. They’re 47 and 50, respectively. Both went to Columbia and Harvard. (Tyson also graduated from the exclusive Bronx High School of Science, and was on staff for three years at Princeton, where Michelle Obama went to college.) Both are physically dominant, good-looking, humorous men, noted for their easygoing manners. Both are married, with young children.

I guess what I’m wondering, though, even though, from a distance, I have some sense of it, is when you’ve got all that going for you, how does race affect your life?

Like, for example, how much of that overt friendliness—ready humor, a wide smile, and a gentle (or big) laugh—is, though genuinely you, also a key way of putting white people at ease? Also, how much of your day is dedicated to that?

In their work, both Obama and Tyson deal with a lot of really smart people. But there have got to have been more than a few occasions, for them both, and especially for Tyson—whose CV has 29 sections, and who deals a lot with the aforementioned ignorant public—where they’ve been the smartest, or one of the smartest guys in the room, yet knew someone was talking down to them, or trying to go around them, because of their racial classification. (We’ve already discussed this happening to Obama.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, January 2, at 2 pm ET.

In this repeat edition of the broadcast, Dr. Tyson, who’d stopped by WBAI to discuss his book, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, talks about some of these issues, while also discussing his love for both the universe and its methodical study.

You can hear his ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.

The functionally titled Tall Black Women blog posts pics and info about women of African descent who range between six feet and seven-and-a-half feet in height.

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Differences in the conditions borne by Black and white Americans can be measured by all kinds of metrics—life expectancy, infant mortality, rates of incarceration, and many more.

But according to Smart Money magazine, when it comes to quantifying the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, median net worth may be the most trenchant and clarifying measure of all. Says the magazine in blunt, yet utterly startling language,

White households in the United States had a median net worth of $118,300 in 2004, the most recent year for which Federal Reserve data is available—10 times the median net worth of the typical black household, which was just $11,800.

Why does this absolutely outrageous ratio exist?

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