I am 34, married with 2 kids and have accepted a new job in Los Angeles. I’d like to live in a White suburb, do you have any recommendations?

Oh no he didn’t!  And then:

I turned down the job.

After seeing those Mexicans [...]]]> Crazy shit from 2006 from my wife’s research into racism in LA housing:

I am 34, married with 2 kids and have accepted a new job in Los Angeles. I’d like to live in a White suburb, do you have any recommendations?

Oh no he didn’t!  And then:

I turned down the job.

After seeing those Mexicans making a ruckus on the freeway on the news I realized it isn’t a safe place. I also read that prisoners are deported after their sentences back to Mexico and then they simply return to America to rape/murder again.

It’s unfortunate also that California is now apparently, “Aztlan”. What the HECK is that?

Ah.  A silver lining to Richard Beddington’s racism: he gets to be some other city’s problem.  Of course, according to the 2000 census, 35% of LA County’s white people live in areas that are 75% white or more.  So it’s not like there’s a dearth of places where white people can escape the brown menace.  And if  75% is too colorful for you?  Well there’s always Malibu or Huntington Beach where residents are proudly pushing towards 90%.

The extremely diverse, Latino-majority city core has fueled the “white minority” narrative, but the truth is that there’s still a lot of white folk, and they tend to segregate themselves.  So nostalgia for the good ol’ days of racial covenants seems a little displaced.  Oh, and pretty disgusting too.

Now, Mike Meginnis used a period instead. Silly man. Now I [...]]]> See what I did there? By putting a question mark at the end of my post title, I make it clear I’m just a curious fellow, and in no way insulting the character of that lovable blogger “of no party or clique.”

Now, Mike Meginnis used a period instead. Silly man. Now I have to offer a qualified defense of Sullivan.

It is certainly is nonsense to, as Mike says, “draw a lesson about ‘Arab culture’ and (what Sully would call) its many shortcomings from the time we blew up their country without their consent and then stuck around to remake it in our own image.” However, in that it’s acceptable to make generalizations about Arab culture based on empirical data, arriving at bad conclusions based on outliers isn’t racist…it’s just wrong.

The bright line between acceptable cultural criticism and unacceptable racism is essentialism — you can condemn a social construct, but not the traits of a people. I think Mike too recognizes this distinction since he claims Andrew is trying to “prove some sort of congenital flaw in the so-called ‘Arab character.’” However, this is a leap, as Sullivan’s commentary never moves into a discussion of the nature of Arabs.

What Sullivan does is argue that (present-day, mainstream) Arab culture offers only pessimistic prospects for (western) democracy (and that this is a bad thing). The parenthetical statements being implicit in the piece, and me lacking sufficient exposure to the Sullivan oeuvre, it’s possible I’m misjudging his meaning and he means something worse than this. But on the surface, this statement’s fine, even if the Iraq experience is a lousy basis for it.

UPDATE: So, I’m not ready to throw around ‘racist,’ but after Meginnis’s response offering more examples of Sullivan’s ethnic criticism, I would suggest to Andrew that less time spent discussing the behavior of the brown & black brethren might be a good idea.

I often make a joke about an insider stereotype that many blacks have of whites–white people’s hair smells like a dog when [...]]]> Excellent post over at Ally Work about the lack of explicitly white-oriented institution relative to black-oriented ones, and how to explain it to questioning white folks.  The most educational part for me was this:

I often make a joke about an insider stereotype that many blacks have of whites–white people’s hair smells like a dog when it is wet.  I ask how many of my students have heard of this.  Usually, the only students who have heard it are black.  Many students laugh because this stereotype seems absurd.  Then, I say, “How many of you have heard the stereotype that blacks are violent and crime prone?”  Almost all the students raise their hands, and nobody laughs.  I make the case that the first one is humorous to them because it really doesn’t have an impact on the day to day lives of whites, but the crime stereotype isn’t funny because it has a profound impact on blacks.

The story does a good job of showing the difference between stereotypes and racist stereotypes.  It takes people one step further towards understanding the power component of racism.

No I’m going to go wash off the dog smell…

[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="0" mediatype=""] Rize Movie Trailer [/coolplayer]

Everyone should see it, and not just for the ridiculously fast body movements and pretty shots (which come [...]]]> Seeing news of this J-Lo music video (of which I am skeptical) reminded me of David LaChapelle’s Rize, the amazing documentary about clowning and krump dancing.  Here’s the trailer:

[coolplayer width="480" height="380" autoplay="0" loop="0" charset="utf-8" download="0" mediatype=""]
Rize Movie Trailer
[/coolplayer]

Everyone should see it, and not just for the ridiculously fast body movements and pretty shots (which come together best during the night dances at the Watts Towers).  The movie says a lot about challenges and successes of the Los Angeles black community post-1992 riots and demonstrates oppression again becoming a catalyst for art.

Fascinating.  Beautiful.  Worth watching thrice…

That said, there is something positive about de-racializing naming [...]]]> This New York Times article about living with Spanish surnames in the oft-xenophobic US was compelling, and I hope one trend it points to — assimilation by adopting Anglo names — stops. A world populated only by Bryan, Daniel, Mary, and Elizabeth would be pretty depressing.

That said, there is something positive about de-racializing naming if it happens collectively, rather than by eliminating the names of one group. I know a number of couples who have given their children non-traditional names. Examples:

• Killian
• Zayden
• Niazayre
• Pilar

So maybe…one day…this man can be named Enjefu Schootersmith.