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Category Archives: racism

sex sux

June 13, 2009 – 8:08 pm

When I started working as a teacher in the Recovery School District in the fall, there were a lot of things I wasn’t really prepared to see. Fights breaking out in the hallway, for instance, and graffiti on the walls of the hallway scrawling out prison release dates for assorted used-to-be students. And then, on [...]

By sophie | Also posted in education, new orleans, politics, race, upside down | Comments (2)

race race

November 22, 2008 – 8:31 pm

A national poll taken last week showed that 69 percent of Americans believe that race relations will improve with Obama in office. And I don’t blame this majority for their optimism: after all, didn’t you see all those people — black and white alike — crying their eyes out in Grant Park on November 4th? [...]

By sophie | Also posted in 2008 presidential election, barack obama, media, new orleans, politics, race, upside down | Comments (1)

guns, horns

November 10, 2008 – 11:13 pm

I work at a high school in the Recovery School District in New Orleans. I love my job, for the most part, but I am every day emotionally stretched thin by how quickly my students have had to grow up. There is a boy who sits in the Academic Resource Room with me during my [...]

By sophie | Also posted in new orleans, politics, race, upside down | Leave a Comment

outside the lines

September 14, 2008 – 10:19 pm

Still an avid reader of The Nation, I was interested this recent article by Lizzie Ratner about apparently abundant and rampant racism in New Orleans, particularly in terms of housing laws in a post-Katrina society. It’s a good article; it’s poignantly punctuated with horror stories from real residents from outer New Orleanian parishes and antediluvian-seeming [...]

By sophie | Also posted in politics, race, upside down | Comments (1)

missing in action

March 28, 2008 – 9:07 pm

I kind of dropped the ball last week, and I’m sorry. There are many perfectly good reasons for it, though, and I thought I might detail them for you so you can feel like you’re more involved in my life.
news.
My life mentor, Salim Muwakkil, came to speak at Whitman this week, which was a [...]

By sophie | Also posted in animal rights, art, barack obama, internet, media, mp3, race, upside down | Leave a Comment

the cause of violence

September 3, 2007 – 7:34 pm

Today the New York Times ran a pretty fascinating little piece on Colorado Springs and its music scene. Surprise, surprise: Police are blaming gangsta rap and hip-hop music for a spike in homicides in the area (there have been 19 already this year, compared with 15 in 2006).
I know what’s obvious, here: You can’t blame [...]

By sophie | Also posted in hollywood, media, mp3, music, politics, race | Comments (1)

old heroes

July 20, 2007 – 8:22 pm

It’s a disgusting world we live in when the forces that are meant to keep us safe are the most corrupt and dirty of them all.
Case in point: Today’s article in The New York Times on the Chicago police department. The article is just another in a long string of never-ending stories about police brutality [...]

By sophie | Also posted in politics, race | Comments (5)

cold blood

July 17, 2007 – 2:48 pm

Bob Herbert’s opinion piece in the Times this morning was about Senator Barack Obama’s speech yesterday at the Vernon Park Church of God, in which he addressed the increasing number of murders among Chicago school children in the past year.
Herbert’s column basically parrots Mr. Obama’s plea for greater governmental action as well as individual responsibility:
In [...]

By sophie | Also posted in 2008 presidential election, barack obama, politics, race | Leave a Comment

carefully worded

July 10, 2007 – 8:04 pm

There was a funeral in Detroit, Michigan yesterday: a big one. As hundreds of non-mourners looked on, the NAACP buried the n-word — once and for all.
Obviously, the burial was controversial among everyone — especially in the Black community. The symbolic motion had undertones of the Civil Rights-era passion that had been so widespread and [...]

By sophie | Also posted in politics, race | Comments (1)

invisible race

June 28, 2007 – 4:39 pm

The New York Times just broke this story which reports on a court case today which takes a huge leap backward in race struggles which have been slowly improving for the last century:
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left [...]

By sophie | Also posted in politics, race | Leave a Comment