The state legislature in Arizona seems to be under the control of a white supremacist group. A recent proposal targets race-based groups (note that groups that are all or mostly white are not mentioned) that largely consist of students of color.
Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.
Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state’s universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.
The creator of this racist, Euro-centric measure is Republican Russell Pearce. Pearce who was formally the Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff, sneaked the measure into a state senate bill on homeland security.
Dr. Judy ‘J.J.’ Jackson, set to become the University of Kentucky’s first vice president for institutional diversity, has big plans for developing and implementing a diversity agenda that she says is essential for learning.
Jackson, who starts this summer, will work strategically to craft UK’s diversity agenda, which she says is essential to establishing a strong foundation for learning. She notes that one of the most important goals during her first year at UK will be to conduct a university-wide “gap analysis” to devise various strategies on recruiting a diverse group of students and faculty.
“Often times, people don’t think of diversity and excellence as the same concept … the goal and the mission that the University of Kentucky has embarked upon demands that people think of diversity and excellence as conceptual cohabitants,” says Jackson, whose responsibilities will include advising the university’s president and provost on matters relating to academic, fiscal and administrative policy.
Roger Williams University has apparently been planning to include people of color on its board of trustees since the early 1900’s (note the sarcasm). Unfortunately, the plan had never been implemented. I guess it takes a lot of “planning” for an all white board to include people of color. Perhaps the implementation was delayed due to the overt racism of the board?
In April I posted some audio from Al Gore’s keynote at the NASPA/ACPA National Conference. This post drew the attention of a certain blogger by the name of Radar. Radar had also attended the NASPA/ACPA conference and he had a few things to say about Al Gore. I love getting comments on my site that differ from my own opinion. This diversity of viewpoints keeps things interesting and forces me to flex my brain cells.
I’ve been reading a lot of news reports about a racist party in Delaware. On May 5th, several members of the Phi Sigma Pi honors fraternity at the University of Delaware held a racist party in which white students dressed up as stereotypes of Latinos.
The “South of the Border” party held on Cinco de Mayo featured white students with racial epithets on their shirts.
While searching for the identity of a racist, homophobic, pro-chief hate e-mailer, I came across this gem of a statement from the University of Illinois Alumni Association’s President:
The University of Illinois Alumni Association is supportive of the Board of Trustees in light of its difficult decision concerning the Chief Illiniwek tradition. We recognize the board’s responsibility to act in what it believes to be the best interests of the University as a whole. At the same time, we respect the emotional impact this announcement is having on the alumni and friends who treasure this longtime University tradition. Illinois loyalty has never been constricted to one issue or dependent on any one activity, and, as a community, I believe we will emerge from this period stronger, closer and more committed to our shared fundamental values.
Loren R. Taylor
President and CEO
University of Illinois Alumni Association
Translation: The University of Illinois Alumni Association respects the longtime racist tradition of chief illiniwek at UIUC and is sorry for the emotional turbulence that losing the mascot has caused to the dominant majority at UIUC. Our white privilege, racism, and othering of Native folks will continue to make us closer and more committed to our shared fundamental values.
Jason Kottke has an excellent post about the gender disparity amongst several of the most popular (successful?) web conferences and their featured speakers.
Women make up less than 25% of the featured speakers at the majority of the conferences (TED, PopTech, An Event Apart Boston 2007, Future of Web Apps - San Francisco, etc) that Kottke analyzes.
According to Kottke:
it seems to me that either the above concerns are not getting through to conference organizers or that gender diversity doesn’t matter as much to conference organizers as they publicly say it does. The Future of Web Apps folks seem to have a particularly tin ear when it comes to this issue. For their second conference, they doubled the size of the speaker roster and added only one woman to the bill despite the complaints from last time.
Absent from the official UIUC response is any mention of the ethical reasons for eliminating the “Chief.” Labeling Chief Illiniwek as a positive tradition, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees has done little to address the racism of this “tradition.” Chief Illiniwek may be finished. However, racism, stereotyping, and oppression seem to unfortunately be going strong amongst the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. The board seems more concerned with losing money from alumni and re-gaining access to lucrative post-season collegiate athletics.
This sends a terrible message to all white students at UIUC. The University and its Board have made it clear that listening to people of color and their allies does not matter. I’ve included the full text of the press release from the University of Illinois. Nowhere in the release is it mentioned that the Chief was a racist caricature that stereotyped Native Americans.
I think I have a social justice crush on Angela Davis. More than 1,000 people attended her talk at Oregon State. Two professors from OSU had the privilege of being her students at UC Santa Cruz. Angela Davis could have talked for a week and I think we all would have listened.
Angela Davis‘ talk covered many topics including: historical memory, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Condoleeza Rice, George Bush, Affirmative Action, Diversity, Marriage, Activism, Racism, Critical Awareness and Prison Systems.
Davis talked about the importance of “historical memory” and the Civil Rights Movement. “The figure of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been set aside and isolated and represented as the lone historical figure, so everyone else who participated in the Civil Rights Movement falls away.”
Davis mentioned that she took umbrage with the term “diversity.” She said that “Diversity is difference that doesn’t make a difference.” Her comments were extremely relevant for institutions of higher education. Enrolling students of color, women, students with disabilities, lgbt students, and students with high financial need does not mean that racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia/heterosexism, and classism will simply disappear. However, “diversity” is thrown around as if it’s a magic anti-oppression elixir. Without social justice oriented, anti-oppression oriented, anti-racist oriented educational efforts, diversity cannot affect change amongst members of the dominant paradigm.
Apparently, both Condoleeza Rice and Angela Davis grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Davis mentioned that people often attempt to refer to Rice as her “homegirl” (cue laughter from 1,000 people) because they share the experience of growing up in the Jim Crow south.
According to Davis, “Rice narrates her life as triumph over racism.” Davis said she needs to constantly “disassociate her story” from Rice’s story. “How can I claim my story is a triumph? We’ve won some victories..some important victories…, but from the time I was quite small, I learned from my mother that it was about collective victory…community triumph, not about an individual rising above the rest. Affirmative action was a strategy designed to enable communities to move forward, collectives to move forward.”
I attempted to record her entire talk, but my pda wasn’t working correctly so I have over an hour of audio that I pieced together from 40 audio snippets.
The fidelity isn’t the greatest but the message is amazing.
“The victories that we win are not always the victories for which we fought.” — Angela Davis
Update:ODEO.com isn’t allowing new user uploads so this might be the first and last usage of ODEO on this site. I’m going to try the Audio Player from 1 Pixel Out.
