Interesting piece today in the L.A. Times regarding the long duration of unemployment faced by Asian Americans during this economic downturn. As you know, white conservatives often use Asian Americans as an example of how “hard work and good cultural values” are all you need to make it in the U.S. They will argue, in [...]
Several good items today: First, an excerpt of what looks like it could be her best book yet: Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich, in which the author critically examines the uniquely American tendency to elevate “positive thinking” to the level of both a coping strategy and social movement. Lots of good insight here. Then, a piece [...]
Memo to Ross Douthat: Sometimes, people fact-check. One of the perks of being an op-ed columnist, as Douthat is — he being the resident conservative essayist at the New York Times — is that you can say pretty much anything you like. It’s your opinion, after all, so the standards of accuracy to which a [...]
In this summer of white resentment, one would think it sufficient to have to suffer through the daily droning of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the crew at Fox News, or perhaps the dishonest machinations of professional liar and fear-pimp Andrew Breitbart. What with their endless claims that the Obama Administration is [...]
Prominent white conservatives are angry about racism. Forget all that talk about a post-racial society. They know better than to believe in such a thing, and they’re hopping mad. What is it that woke them up finally, after all these years of denial, during which they insisted that racism was a thing of the past? [...]
Sometimes it seems as if there are people who sit around, almost hoping for awful things to happen, just so they can use these incidents, however tragic, to make some kind of political point. So consider the evangelical preachers who responded to Hurricane Katrina by claiming that the tragic inundation of New Orleans occurred because [...]
Published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, November 10, 2003 Although I’m not psychic, I know what many readers are thinking right now. “Oh no, here we go again, someone else complaining about racism. Why do we have to talk about this? Isn’t it time we moved on?” Well, no actually. No matter how uncomfortable the topic, [...]
Published as a ZNet Commentary, May 19, 2001 The experts call it projection–when someone subconsciously realizes that a particular trait applies to them, and then attempts to locate that trait in others, so as to alleviate the stigma or self-doubt engendered by the trait in question. It’s a well-understood psychological concept, and explains much: like [...]
