Over the past two years, I have spent a great deal talking about (and even more time learning about) the way that group privilege operates on our evaluations of people, of events, of ourselves. It’s almost like an evaluation of ‘room temperature’ – where we sit on various latitude lines will influence what we think …
Monthly Archive: March 2012
Mar 23 2012
Movie Friday: DIY
Here’s a chance for you to make your own Friday movie. Gender Commercial Remixer Just take any two commercials, and swap the audio from the ‘boys’ commercial with the video from the ‘girls’ commercial (or vice versa). Hit ‘mashup’ and enjoy! And then cry, I guess. If you have kids, maybe show this to them so …
Mar 22 2012
Trayvon: my thoughts and reactions
So this morning I tried to focus pretty much exclusively on the facts of the case and leave my own personal interpretation out of my analysis. Of course, this is a blog and I am far from an objective, dispassionate observer of events. I also mentioned that I couldn’t quite put my finger on the …
Mar 22 2012
Trayvon: a stroll through the facts
A couple weeks back a story crossed my eyes that made me feel sick to my stomach for reasons I couldn’t quite place. It was the story of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old kid who was shot and killed in Orlando by neighbourhood watch captain George Zimmerman. Obviously the story upset me for the normal …
Mar 21 2012
Good for the goose, bad for the gander
So this morning we looked at the ways in which our judicial system is seemingly set up to disappoint those in greatest need of justice, particularly black people. Our racist biases (which, I believe, we are all subject to regardless of how “non-racist” we like to fancy ourselves) find the cracks in our institutional frameworks, causing …
Mar 21 2012
Justice may be blind, but we’re not
So tomorrow I am going to be talking about a story that’s been in the news for a while and has only recently begun to pick up steam. It’s a heavy story with a lot of moving parts, and there’s absolutely no way that I can cover it comprehensively. What I’m hoping to do with …
Mar 20 2012
Today’s policy boner
So I have a shameful secret to divulge: I get viscerally, enthusiastically, quasi-orgasmically happy about evidence-based policy. Some people get a little thrill in their nether regions when their favourite celebrity is on TV, or when their sports team wins an important game, or when their favourite band announces a new album. All of those, …
Mar 20 2012
Canada: this is your government
This is one of those stories that, if it weren’t so goddamn sad, would be fucking hilarious: With Conservatives targeting a Liberal staffer who posted the sordid details of Vic Toews’s divorce to Twitter, the Speaker of the House has ruled that threatening videos by the hacker group Anonymous violated the Public Safety Minister’s parliamentary …
Mar 20 2012
The passing of history
It is a fairly common and mainstream opinion to deride formal apologies from governmental institutions for historical wrongs. Often it is couched in the language of privilege: “why should the government apologize for something that happened a hundred years ago?” , as though there is a statue of limitations on right and wrong. Other times …
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