According to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, “regular folks” = “white folks”. Chris Matthews isn’t even trying to be covert anymore. He’s just outright saying that whiteness is “regular”. Unbelievable. The stench of white privilege is emanating from the video. Whiteness is “regular”. Whiteness is “normal“. That’s what he’s saying.

So Chris, if white folks are regular, what are folks of color? I can’t believe that you are allowed to sit behind a desk and broadcast this racist garbage and call it news.

From Media Matters:

On the July 7 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews teased an upcoming segment by saying: “They’re the working-class white voters Hillary Clinton won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama now win over the regular folks, white folks, against John McCain? We’ll ask the strategists.” On the June 30 edition of Hardball, Matthews similarly teased a segment by asserting: “Up next: They’re the working-class white voters Hillary won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama win over the regular folks against John McCain?”

I remember the first time I closed my eyes, put on a pair of headphones and browsed the web using a screen reader. It was extremely challenging. Images without ALT attributes, Flash objects, and poorly coded websites left me feeling extremely frustrated and gave me even more empathy for web users with visual impairments. I think all website designers/coders should experience what it’s like to browse the web using a screen reader. This video shows Aaron Cannon, blind since birth, browsing a website using a screen reader.

Tim Wise has written a new essay that critiques the racist rhetoric that’s being furiously spread around the interwebs in the wake of flooding in Iowa - “Adding Insult to Injury: Race, Disaster and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering.” It’s a deeper analysis that is very similar in context to my post on “Comparing Iowa to New Orleans.”

Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.

On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation’s people are with those in need.

And on the other hand, there’s Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

This week, as folks in Iowa, Indiana and parts of Illinois have watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

I noticed this photograph on the Flickr set of the Red Cross’s Midwestern flood relief efforts. The photo provides an idea of how much water was flowing around Cedar Falls, Iowa on June 10, 2008.

Sandbagging efforts in Cedar Falls kept the raging waters of the Cedar River from flooding the downtown area. The sign is located in an area that is usually above water. My guess is that the water level in the photo is somewhere between 2 to 3 ft. high.

I was curious as to what the text on the sign said. Fortunately, a hi-resolution version of the original photograph had been uploaded and it was easy to discern the text on the marker.

By the way, I think it’s important to note that critical thinking can still exist within a discourse of support…just wanted to give everyone a heads up as I am going to delve into some thinking that is critical of a historical marker that needs some serious editing.

(continue reading…)

In 1942, xenophobic U.S. officials enacted policies that resulted in the internment of over 100,000 Japanese American citizens. 42 Japanese American students at Oregon State University were forced to leave the university and sent to internment camps. Most did not ever return to OSU. On Sunday, June 15th, OSU awarded honorary degrees to every Japanese American student who was unable to complete their degree.

via the OSU Admissions Blog

(continue reading…)

Sergeant Dave Hendrie said: “I think the thing that was shocking to me and gave me a better understanding when people talk about white privilege, it’s offensive to me, it feels like a judgment term to me but having watched this specifically as it relates to housing practice and how that works, we talk about white suburbia and here it is, it was a policy that these were the only people allowed to move out there, was whites. So I have a better understanding of white privilege. If I was a G.I and I’d come out here I’d have been able to get a loan for a home, wheras that same advantage would not have been given to Chuck. And to see that as part of the government instituted process of giving loans was disturbing to me.”

Yes you did just hear a Portland Police Officer changing his perspective of white privilege. There’s plenty more discussion, all of it equally fascinating, and you get to find out who Chuck is, after the jump.

via Blogtown, PDX

Canada will apologize for a policy that forced native children into boarding schools in an effort over a century ago to “civilize” and assimilate the nation’s indigenous population into mainstream culture and religion, the Los Angeles Times recently reported.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will offer an expiation on behalf of the schools and will ask more than 150,000 students and their descendants to consider forgiving the country.

Sixty-year old Thomas Louttit was forced to attend one of the dozens of residential schools for eight years. He told the Times that children were assigned numbers for an identity, sexually abused and terrorized, thus leaving many scarred as adults. Many of Louttit’s friends committed suicide or battled alcohol abuse.

The federal government has already begun payouts from its $1.9 billion compensation fund for natives, the Times reported. Yet for many, monetary compensation is not enough. Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Native Studies program at St. Thomas University in Saskatchewan, said these schools and their affiliated churches must confront the truth.

“The important thing is that they own up to what they did, admit that it is unconscionable, and it was genocide,” Chrisjohn said.

The last residential school was shut down 12 years ago, decades after some of the first schools were built. In 1996, a federal commission determined that the schools were detrimental to the native population and outlined a program of healing and redress.

via Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

Faris responded to several of the comments on his letter to white LGBT siblings at OSU. Scroll down to number 27 for some Farisian awesomeness. I’ve excerpted a few choice sentences…

Below, I will address the claims made in the above comments.

Before I do this, though, I want to make something clear about what I wrote in this column. In the above comments I read that I called people racists or that I resorted to personal attacks. This column did no such thing. I wrote, “I believe that for a white person to host a party themed “Cowboys and Indians” is racist.” No where in this sentence does it state that I believe that someone who holds this party is racist. I wrote that the ACTION of holding this party is racist. If we break down the above sentence, the subject is “to host a party,” which is an action.

This is a subtle distinction, but one that needs to be made. I don’t believe that calling someone racist does any good, as we are all affected by institutional racism and prone to racist acts when we do not think critically about our actions.

Nor was this meant to be a personal attack: I was not attacking the personhood of who hosted this party or the people who attended. I was attacking and critiquing an ACTION. It is imperative, I believe, to keep this distinction in mind.

(continue reading…)

Michael Faris, a friend, fellow Iowan, hero, and gym partner of mine has written an amazing letter - “An Open Letter to My White LGBT Siblings.” The letter was initially published in the Oregon State University student-run newspaper - The Daily Barometer. The comments on the newspaper’s website to Michael’s letter have ranged from the bizarre (saying that Faris is a homophobe is like saying that I hate Star Wars), the ridiculous (one commenter seemed to think that because Michael’s letter was well-written that he must have used a thesaurus…umm Michael’s formal training is in writing, of course his letter is at a high level of articulate awesomeness), and the banal (the trolls brought along their dusty suitcases of unoriginality for most of their comments).

Here’s a brief snippet of the letter. Feel free to travel the info pipes to Michael’s blog for the full read…

And your party, asking folks to dress up like caricatures of Native Americans, is perpetuating the historical representations of racist images created and perpetuated by white society.

I am sure that you would say your party is ironic, that you knew these representations were racist, but you did it out of absurdity. I would reply that you are refusing to deal with your white privilege.

(continue reading…)

Life@Lane is a “student moderated blog” at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon. I happened to stumble upon the site while checking out some summer classes at LCC. The blog is prominently advertised on the Lane Community College homepage.

I scrolled down through several posts and was intrigued by a post titled “Would The World Be Better With Women As Leaders?” The post basically says that women are emotional and therefore are not capable of being leaders. Jeffrey, the writer of the post and student at Lane, states in a response to a comment that “i don’t think my gender is superior i just don’t think women would be a good world leader.” Unbelievable. How can Lane Community College support this blog? How can Lane Community College stand behind this overtly sexist post/comment?

Here is the initial blurb about the blog via the LCC Marketing and Public Relations Office:

LIFE@LANE, A STUDENT MODERATED BLOG, launched from Lane’s homepage. Topics are generated by Lane’s Student Service Associates. Student blogs are common at four-year institutions. Lane is among the first community colleges to host a student blog. The purpose is to provide a communication tool primarily for current and prospective students and to increase “community” access.

How in the hell does this blog “increase ‘community’ access”? Student blogs are a common method of providing student insights into the student experience at a college/university. Student blogs are supposed to build community. They are not supposed to perpetuate stereotypes. It seems that Jeffrey, the student blogger at Lane, wanted to generate controversy and not build community. Marketing and Public Relations officials at Lane Community College should post an apology on the Life @ Lane blog, fire Jeffrey, and start moderating the commentary of the Life@Lane blog. I highly doubt that this is how they want life at Lane Community College to be represented.