Teh Rain

This is something I really encourage white people to do, I really don’t think I need to tell PoC that they generally aren’t represented well in media. Though I haven’t done it in awhile, the I used to pick up The City Paper and count the people represented in photographs or drawings, and think about how they were depicted. It didn’t surprise me when I had several days where out of the fifty to sixty people pictured less than five were PoC. I also count people depicted in advertisements due to the generally positive depiction in them. Please note that this is not me singling out The City Paper, if you pick up most mainstream publications you’ll likely find the same thing.

So just as a snapshot, here’s the count from the June 26-28 2010 edition, with some notes.

Total people: 93
White : 68
Poc : 18
Indeterminate: 7 (silhouettes or very small depiction)

This is actually far better than normal, but when you look at the breakdowns something else emerges:

PoC:

• Atheletes – 6
• Prison – 4
• Family – 7
• Professional – 0
• Misc – 1

Whites:

• Athletes – 0
• Prison – 4
• Family – 19
• Professional – 32
• Misc – 13

Just a note about the numbers above, not everyone marked as Prison related were prisoners. The numbers came from one photo for a story about rehabilitation in prisons, and I marked everyone depicted in the Prison category, as it was not indicated who were there as part of the staff or as participants in the program. Given Attire It is likely that both PoC and white people were professionals participating in the program. All of the depictions of PoC being part of a family were from one advertisement for Movies in the Park, and I have to really give them credit for that. There are any number of good breakdowns of why media representations matter, but unfortunately I’m in the process of moving so can’t track any down. If you know of some, please post them in the comments and I’ll revise this post to include them.

I’ll be posting up more counts over time, but I do encourage you to look at the depictions of all types of people in the media surrounding you. Not just PoC, but LGBT people, people with disabilities (none depicted by the way), and any other group you can think of. From an equality and attitude standpoint it’s depressing.

This is not news. This is not how it should be. We can and must do better than this.

I’m still fiddling with it, but this is based off of the Connections Reloaded default wordpress theme. Thoughts anyone?

Someone broke into our apartment this morning. They stole three laptops, the xbox, my phone, a friend’s camera, and some other stuff. I’m blessed to have been able to have those things, many in the world don’t even have one… but it obviously still hurts. I’m angry with the person who did it, the cop didn’t help (he was all “What you were home and you didn’t wake up?” ), and I feel naked without my phone. Even with all of this, my prevailing feeling is more general sadness that someone was in a state of mind where they felt this was the what they needed to do. I wish them a good life, though I’d be hard pressed not to at least yell at them if I ever met them… but I’m sad that people get to that point.

It’s not just economics… even during this downturn crime has still been on the decline. It’s not just our societies lack of seeing other people as human and worthy of respect. Some people just steal, hurt others, and do bad things. And all I can do is feel sorry for them. But I can’t really see why people do these things, I can’t really understand the mindset behind this… And it’s the same mindset that I think is messing up the world.. that the self is more important than everything else. Or perhaps they just needed a fix. I donno.

Ugh.

So, Lady Gaga won a GLAAD award. Cuz, you know, there’s nothing like supporting the lgbT community like making an openly transphobic video.

The Bad Romance hitmaker was honoured with the Outstanding Music Artist award in recognition of her most recent album, The Fame Monster, and for her efforts in promoting equality in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

BLAH. Whatever.

E.T.A. link from pink bat princess – – “..It’s not sexy, I look like a tranny.”

Arizona seems to be in the midst of a complete meltdown, but I can’t help but wonder how much it is actually worse than before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the fucknuggetry isn’t horrible or hard to deal with. I’m saying that I’m pretty sure that the level of fucknuggetry that is going on there and elsewhere isn’t new. Perhaps it’s hit a temporary peak with President Obama and the accompanying right wing fear-fest, but I doubt it had that far to go. This level of hatred and doesn’t come out of nowhere. Guess what, this is what PoC have been saying all along.

Erasure, disenfranchisement, being targeted by law enforcement, told their history is unimportant or dangerous, and that laws of this nature actively encourage violence against minorities. And all of those are just in one state. There is more going on every day all over the country. Acting like these trends are new has the same effect as trying to deny the context of a racist society they exist in. It gives the serial fuckheads cover under which to operate, and perpetuates the culture of purposeful ignorance that is so harmful to any actual dialog that might come from any one event.

Oh and for those celebrating the firing of the racist twit who was behind the mural campaign, yes it’s good he lost that platform from which to speak, but I have to agree with Serolf Divad:

Don’t get too excited. I mean, after all, it took a bucket full of bad national press to get this guy fired. He wasn’t fired for promoting White Supremacy through his radio show, or he’d have been fired the day he first launched his whitification campaign. He was fired for embarrassing the wrong people.