Tag Archive: race

May 14 2013

“But I’m a man and I don’t feel like I have any privilege.”

Another one inspired by the comment thread of doom. The hardest thing about explaining privilege to members of dominant groups is that, usually, the fact that you’re advantaged in certain ways doesn’t mean you’re not disadvantaged in many other ways. So when we’re talking about gender and a man is told that he’s privileged–or when …

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May 12 2013

Richwine and the Inherent Goodness of Intelligence

[Content note: racism] In news that should surprise absolutely no one, conservatives have once again embarrassed themselves by attempting to “prove” with “science” that people of color are stupider than white people. Yup, again. You’ve probably read this story elsewhere so I’ll make my recap brief: It has come to light that Jason Richwine (I’m …

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Mar 31 2013

How To Get People To Care When It’s Not Personal: On Rob Portman

I’m going to talk about Rob Portman now even though that bit of news is pretty old at this point. (Hey, if you want to read about stuff in a timely manner, go read the NYT or something.) Brief summary: Portman is a Republican senator from Ohio (yay Ohio!) who used to oppose same-sex marriage but changed …

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Oct 19 2012

Affirmative Action Rant

A few days ago, the Daily Northwestern published a column called “Affirmative Action Dangerously Shortsighted.” It was predictably awful and spawned 269 (mostly dissenting) comments as of now. Some excerpts: I oppose the use of affirmative action in college admissions, the workplace and essentially any other setting. I am pleased that Fisher had the courage to revive …

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Jul 12 2012

Why Dan Savage Shouldn’t Use Hate Speech Against Gay Republicans

I’ve got a post up at In Our Words today! Here’s a preview. A few weeks ago, an organization of conservative LGBT folks and their allies called GOProud endorsed Mitt Romney for president. Surprise, surprise: a conservative group endorsing a conservative presidential nominee. Dan Savage, however, was apparently irritated enough by this to comment on …

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Apr 24 2012

Northwestern: Even More Racist than We Thought

Northwestern’s not known for being an oasis of tolerance. (Examples: here, here, and here.) But a few members of our student body have decided to sink this school to a new low this past weekend by hosting a party/drinking game called the “Beer Olympics.” A student who saw the event described it this way: [W]hat …

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Jan 01 2012

Learning Racism on the NYC Subway

I spent this past week in New York City with my mom and little siblings, who are six and nine years old, respectively. Aside from a few times that they were too young to remember, this was their first time in the city and they had a great time. On our last day in New …

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Jun 27 2010

Middle Class Sexuality

I saw this interesting op-ed at the New York Times’ website today. It talks about the “Viagra for women” (flibanserin) that was recently rejected by the FDA and how the sexual problem for American women isn’t medical but societal, because the “white upper middle class” has essentially become uptight and frigid. I agree with the …

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:)