stereotyping

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White America’s Response to the Killing of Mike Brown…

 

“Last night, I made the abominable mistake of reading the comments under Fox News’ Facebook page’s post of the alleged Mike Brown “strong-arm robbery” video. What I read was altogether infuriating and heartbreaking, yet I could not stop reading. Many of the comments, by what appeared to be “average white Americans,” were seething, sarcastic, racist, and steeped in hate. They called Mike Brown a “thug” and spoke about his killing in a bizarre celebratory way―some implicitly and others explicitly expressing how the video justifies his murder. Some of the comments even unnecessarily brought up Trayvon Martin, also speaking about him in the most derogatory and disparagingly of ways. These white Facebook users were so quick to dehumanize, demonize, generalize, speak hatefully, and justify the death of a young black man―in rhetoric oozing with racism, white supremacy, and white privilege―that I began to wonder if they were able to acknowledge that Mike Brown was a human. How and why do they hate him so much?
It made me sick to my stomach.
I think the part that was most troubling to me was the fact that most of these white people making these horrendous comments were not the anonymous, faceless, cowardly, racist internet trolls that I often encounter on Twitter―though enraging, I can somehow shrug them off as “fake.” These people had faces, rather. These folks were seeminglyreal people, behind seemingly real Facebook accounts―some of their profile pictures were family pictures or pictures of them with their kids, even lovingly embracing them. I imagine they are people who have authentic, caring relationships with individuals who they choose to love deeply―friends, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, grandmothers, grandfathers. But the hatred they verbally spewed for a dead black teenager they do not even know, and the dehumanizing nature of their discourse, led me to begin to see them void of humanity―their dehumanization of Mike Brown was the cause of my dehumanization of them. It’s a vicious cycle. It’s truly ugly.

 

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Source: thoughtsofbrown.com

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Dwarfs, Little People and the M-Word

 

The following exchange, reprinted here in its entirety, began with an e-mail to Ebert’s Movie Answer Man column.

From Daniel Woodburn to Roger Ebert


April 6, 2005

Dear Mr. Ebert,

I am an actor that you have reviewed neither favorably nor unfavorably in two different movies: one was “Death to Smoochy,” the other “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her.” I have absolutely no objection to you trashing a film or lauding it. I do object to the use of the word “midgets” in your review of “Death to Smoochy.”

As a writer you are aware of the power of words. The use of the word midget is, for Little People, equated with any other hate word someone might use to describe a minority group. I simply ask you: if you were to see Little People children would you take away their humanity in the same way with the use of such a hate word? I can respect a yes answer but I cannot respect the person who answers yes.

Sincerely, Danny Woodburn

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Source: www.rogerebert.com

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This Law Was Based on a Racist Stereotype. Now It Punishes Thousands of Families for Being Poor. 

Last April, Melissa Ortiz, a low-income mother of four, gave testimony to a committee of the California Assembly detailing her life on the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids program, or CalWORKs, the state’s welfare program. “When we first had the twins, the only person in my family getting…

Source: www.slate.com

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White On White Crime

 

“The conservatives have labeled crimes that occur in the Black community as “Black on Black Crime”. I am of the belief that crime occur where people live to include crimes such as murder; people kill where they live. I am in no way condoning or sanctioning this behavior in either community.”

 
See on thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

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An Executive Got Mistaken For Kitchen Help. But Instead Of Getting Angry, She Turned It Into This.

 

“People shouldn’t be judged by the color of their skin, right? For most of us, that’s Martin Luther King 101. So maybe the solution to racism is to forget race exists. Forget color. But this video might make you think differently. Investment executive Mellody Hobson starts off by talking about an embarrassing moment. She suggests a really compelling thought experiment at 4:16, and at 9:04, she tells us why diversity’s good for business.”

 
See on www.upworthy.com

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A Comic Points Out The Absurdity Of A Famous Fantasy Film For Not Including A Certain Kind Of Actor

The reality of Hollywood can be hilariously unreal when it comes to fantasy movies.

 

Community Village‘s insight:

 

Hollywood does a lot of work in maintaining segregation and inequity. When they do not include people of color, they are keeping the jobs and the money from people of color.

 

Their movies often do not reflect the real mixture of races in today’s United States.

See on www.upworthy.com

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How Children’s Books Fuel Mascot Stereotypes – COLORLINES

 

“This brings me to the issue of how we frame diversity. I want to ask you whether you think it’s helpful to refer to Natives as people of color—or if this ultimately obscures political status. 
It absolutely works against our best interest to be placed in the framework of people of color. White children’s authors, for example, write about American Indians and civil rights. And my response is that it’s not about civil rights, it’s about treaty rights. And that’s an encapsulation of what goes wrong when you use a civil rights framework. To start with, people don’t know that we’re sovereign nations, that we have a political status in the United States, as opposed to a racial, cultural or ethnic one. So it’s easy to see why people fall into that multicultural framework. But it’s really not culture—it’s really politics. When people in education start developing these frameworks and chart out the ways that people of color have a history in the United States, they’ll slot us in there, too. But that collapses, erases and obscures our distinct political designation in the United States.”

 
See on colorlines.com

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What They’re Saying When They Talk About Us

 

“From January 1 through June 30 of 2013 (26 weeks) ChangeLab, an Asian American-led racial justice laboratory and the publisher of this blog, conducted a study of what are known as the Sunday political shows in order to learn what they’re saying about Asian Americans. The study focused on what are known as the Big Five Sunday shows: Face the Nation (CBS), Fox News Sunday (Fox), Meet the Press (NBC), State of the Union (CNN), and This Week With George Stephanopoulos (ABC).

 

In addition, we also studied two MSNBC political talk programs, Melissa Harris Perry and Up with Chris Hayes/Steve Kornacki. Both follow the general format of the Big Five, but run two-hours each on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and serve a somewhat different market, both in terms of size and demographics. For these reasons, we’ll report on them separately.

 

Those MSNBC shows do a lot more talking about Asians and race in general than the Big Five. But what they have to say is often neither very flattering nor credible”

 
See on www.racefiles.com