Sunday, March 28, 2010

Links via Diigo (weekly)


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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Links via Diigo (weekly)

  • LENIN'S TOMB: American class self-identification

    "It doesn't actually matter if it was the state or private capital who decisively formulated these conventions, but the poll question cited above is undoubtedly shaped by them. Decades of thought - or doctrine - are embedded in this simple query. It assumes that there is such a thing as a "middle class life", that it would have as its essential characteristics certain consumption patterns, and that the only real disagreement is over how important each element of consumption is. What's interesting about these results is that many respondents appear to have defied the implicit bias in the poll, and defined themselves as, say, working class when their income would give them a reasonable chance of access to all of the "necessary elements" of a "middle class life". "

    tags: classism

  • Kevan Harris, "Are the Iranian Poor a Bunch of Welfare Queens?"

    tags: iran, welfare, health care

  • UC Berkeley student senate passes divestment resolution | KABOBfest

    Much respect to Berkeley!

    tags: israel, palestine, apartheid, activism

  • altmuslimah.com - Beauty: Part 2: Stories from You: Unlearning the obsession of fair skin

    "“I often have to wonder [what] my great grandfather, who converted to Islam from Sikhism in Delhi, would [say if he were to] see all this. He broke from his family, lured by the egalitarian and authentic message of Islam. How would he feel if he knew, generations later, [that] his son would be confronted by educated, religious Muslims who are obsessed with skin color?”"

    tags: colorism, race, islam

  • Qantara.de - A Literary Treasure from Hindu-Muslim Culture

    ""Hoshruba" is a fantasy epic written in 19th century Muslim India. Now Muhammad Ali Farooqi has produced the first ever translation of "Hoshruba" into any language. In this interview with Lewis Gropp he talks about this unique epic, Urdu literature, and the colonially induced Urdu-Hindi divide"

    tags: south asia, literature

  • Federal Panel Finds NY Dept. of Education Discriminated Against Arabic School Principal

    "ALAN LEVINE: Well, the popular conception about all this was that Debbie was the victim of a smear campaign. And she’s described that smear campaign. But she was really the victim of the Department of Education. The bigots in the community had no power to fire; the Department of Education did. They succumbed to the bigots. So that’s the significance. "

    tags: arab america, race, islamophobia, education

  • Truthdig - Israel Crackdown Puts Liberal Jews on the Spot

    "“The impact of the Goldstone report is tremendous,” the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein said when I reached him in New York. “It marks and catalyzes the breakup of the Diaspora Jewish support for Israel because Goldstone is the classical [pro-Israel] Diaspora Jew."
    ...
    “Israeli liberalism always had a function in Israeli society,” said Finkelstein, whose new book, “This Time We Went Too Far,” examines the Israeli attack a year ago on Gaza. “When I talk about liberals I mean people like A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman and Amos Oz. Their function was to issue these anguished criticisms of Israel which not only extenuated Israeli crimes but exalted Israeli crimes. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, the Israeli soul, how it is anguished over what it has done.’ It is the classic case of having your cake and eating it. Not only were any crimes being committed extenuated, but they were beautiful. And now something strange happened. Along comes a Jewish liberal and he says, ‘Spare me your tears. I am only interested in the law.’ ” "

    tags: israel, palestine, gaza

  • Multiculturalism displaces anti-racism, upholds white supremacy. « Restructure!

    "I think multiculturalism has been a very effective way of silencing anti-racist politics in this country. Multiculturalism has allowed for certain communities—people of colour—to be constructed as cultural communities. Their culture is defined in very Orientalist and colonial ways—as static, they will always be that, they have always been that. And culture has now become the only space from which people of colour can actually have participation in national political life; it’s through this discourse of multiculturalism. And what it has done very successfully is it has displaced an anti-racist discourse.

    You know, I teach and I have young students of colour, they come, and they completely bought into this multiculturalism ideology. They have no language to talk about racism. They know that if they talk about racism, they will get attacked. "

    tags: race

  • Ramzy Baroud, "Alternative Reading of the Al-Mabhouh Murder" (The Palestine Chronicle)

    "But Palestinians – like many oppressed peoples around the world – have no right to their own narrative. Their story is negligible, if not wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, Israel offers the explanation, and eventually Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. Al-Mabhouh’s murder might eventually inspire several documentaries that highlight the murderous nature of Palestinian militants, and the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. Another Steven Spielberg’s Munich might already be in the making. The first scene of this would not be al-Mabhouh’s family forced to flee their village in Palestinian after untold butchery by Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives. "

    tags: israel, palestine


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Sunday, March 14, 2010

Links via Diigo (weekly)

  • Palestine already exists on film

    "The filmmakers of the new wave have succeeded in constructing a Palestinian national identity that transcends the fragmented diaspora; they have made cinema a key medium for the documentation and preservation of the history of their struggle. Crucially, they preserve the Palestinian Arabic dialect - not easy, considering the geographic dispersion of the community. The American-Arab journalist Nana Asfour says: "What binds Palestinian films together are the language - Palestinian Arabic - the subject - Palestinian lives - and the desire of each director to portray his own take on what being Palestinian means""

    tags: palestine, cinema, film, identity

  • ei: Pushing the boundaries of identity: an interview with Jennifer Jajeh

    "Jennifer Jajeh: I grew up with a split life, half Palestinian and half American --where the two identities were very separate -- to becoming an adult and combining the two. It wasn't until I went to Palestine that I really figured out what it meant for me to be Palestinian on a personal level and what part of that identity felt vital for me. As far as becoming radicalized, it first had to do with pure anger at what I experienced on the ground in Palestine, but now it's about challenging the status quo both externally and within the Palestinian community about what it means to be Palestinian and raising the difficult questions. It was also really important for me to claim my space as a Palestinian woman and look into what it means to be a woman in my community and what the role of women is in the struggle inside and outside that space. So, part of becoming radicalized was also about being a Palestinian woman who openly challenges my own community's ideas about women's roles, sexual mores and religious affiliations and divides. This has been really liberating."

    tags: arab america, diaspora, theater, palestine, identity

  • Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies

    Check out this new journal: "Pakistaniaat is a refereed, multidisciplinary, open access academic journal offering a forum for scholarly and creative engagement with various aspects of Pakistani history, culture, literature, and politics. Published online as well as in print, Pakistaniaat is supported by the American Institute of Pakistan Studies. All sales of our Print Version support our online open access mission."

    tags: pakistan

  • Racial Privilege or Persecution for Arab Americans | KABOBfest

    "Considering that Sudan is grouped as a part of "North Africa," this would render Lomong and other nationals from Sudan white, while the famous Cuban below, could receive minority protection for her nonwhite federal classification ... Now, based on this compact lesson on legal categorizations of race, who is the benefactor of minority privileges in the US? Yes, that would be the "white" looking Cameron Diaz. It might seem counterintuitive to what we know as "race" and "racial privilege" that a "white" woman would accrue more privilege for "disadvantage"(the language used in the Small Business Act's Section 8(a)) than the "black" man/" But it is the very "privilege" of our "white" categorization that has precluded us from basic civil protection. "

    tags: arab america, race, diaspora, identity

  • ei: "Palestinian cinema is a cause": an interview with Hany Abu-Assad

    "Hany Abu-Assad: Since 1948 we are a resistance movement and keeping the case alive is a form of resistance. Making these films is like unconsciously making documents that can be kept in history and keep your case alive. It's a way of resistance. "

    tags: palestine, cinema, film

  • Poll: Half of Israeli high schoolers oppose equal rights for Arabs - Haaretz - Israel News

    "Nearly half of Israel's high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel, according to the results of a new survey released yesterday. The same poll revealed that more than half the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset. "

    tags: israel, race, apartheid

  • E.E.O.C. Sees Bias in Almontaser Ouster at Khalil Gibran School - NYTimes.com

    "A federal commission has determined that New York City’s Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language public school by forcing her to resign in 2007 following a storm of controversy driven by opponents of the school. "

    tags: arab america, race, islamophobia, education

  • (Neo)Orientalism with an Attitude: In the Footsteps (and Beyond) of Richard Burton « P U L S E

    "Did the Editor of The New York Times not know the price difference between the ticket to the IMAX theatre plus membership to a local library and the cost of Dowd’s lavish travels to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? The Neo-Orientalist fantasy to tread in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton is accelerated with privilege and precisely because of this privilege skips and misses its target even more widely."

    tags: media, orientalism, saudi arabia, islam

  • Irene Monroe: Black Motherhood Lost at the Oscars

    "Some African American woman told me they saw the character Precious as our culture's new "Hottentot Venus." Hottentot Venus was Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman from South Africa, who was forced to reveal her huge buttocks and labia to curious Europeans in a traveling human circus show. The "Hottentot Venus" has become the iconic image for portraying black female bodies as subhuman, and this image is still very much part and parcel of our culture's social discourse."

    tags: black america, gender, race, women


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Posted by Brown Folks at 4:30 PM 1 comments

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Links via Diigo (weekly)

Posted by Brown Folks at 3:30 PM 2 comments
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