civil rights and universality

This is a nice approach to protesting California's awful Proposition 8. I just hope it works.

Southern man?

As someone who grew up in the South, I had to deal with misconceptions about the South on almost a daily basis. Once I moved up to the Midwest, I thought I was through with them...but I was not. The state of confusion over Southern identity is pretty much messed up across the board.

This is one of the things that academics need to do: clear up not the confusion but the roots of that confusion. Notice this interview with David Williams covering his book Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War, which argues that most Southerners did not support the Confederacy.

Lies and misconceptions must always be exposed.

one drop?

Is racism really a thing of the past? Did you know that the state of Alabama only legalized mixed race marriages last week? Slate has a good article covering what miscegenation laws say about us as a culture

video and race

As a country, we don't normally think all that much about race. However, it still has large effects in real life for many people, including black video game designers.

another "pop culture is evil" story

...only this one has a twist. CNN tells of the anti-popular culture crusades of the evangelical movement. It's a sign of humanity that there are so many people who, rather than examine something with an open eye, would rather regress into puritanical rage.

identity politics parodied

Another cool parody, this time in the form of a "I Think I Might Be Straight" pamphlet. This one does a particularly good job of covering the uneducated/"this might happen to you" vibe of the original.

offensitivity perfection

Those wacky folks at The Onion are at it again, with a great headline: "Man Finally Put In Charge Of Struggling Feminist Movement." Like all great Onion headlines, this plays on pervasive stereotypes yet ultimately skewers the stereotypee...kind of like Zappa.

everyone has more civil rights than us

Apparently, Uruguay now offers civil unions. Great. As we get more fascist in the name of democracy, the rest of the world gets civil rights.