white weekend links

• "The Audacity of Whiteness" (Renee @ Womanist Musings; re-posted @ Feministe)

  In the generous post racial world in which we live whites continues to feel entitled to their anger at the minimal loss of privilege that they have experienced, yet when a WOC rightly speaks out about issues effecting our lives our anger is somehow overly aggressive or uncalled for. How dare we express even the slightest angst that we continue to remain about the bottom of the social and economic pyramid when white people have so generously given a few of us the opportunity to rise above poverty. See look at that one referential black over there, she isn't angry, you just have a chip on your shoulder. I swear I know why black people live shorter lives...we are literally stressed to death.

• The Niggaro Universe Proclaims: "Sarah Palin Is a Welfare Queen Who Is Out of Touch with Mainstream America" & "'Quota Queen' Sarah Palin's ABC Interview Is More Proof that Affirmative Action has Failed All Americans" (Chauncey DeVega and Zora @ We Are Respectable Negroes)
  

  Palin’s oldest son and daughter carry the sins of their mother – Hezekiah is addicted to crack and La’Shawnda is unmarried and pregnant. Not surprisingly, Palin has expressed not an ounce of shame about her children’s difficulties. Instead, she is parading her daughter’s “baby daddy” on the national stage with claims that marriage is imminent. (Insiders report that the “baby daddy” was actually threatened with physical violence by elders within Palin’s religious sect if he refused to participate in the current sham.) Unwilling to help her son through his addiction, Palin has made Hezekiah the government’s problem by forcing him to join the military. The saddest and most shameful of all is Palin’s neglect of her youngest child, Pooty.

• "This Is Your Nation on White Privilege" (Tim Wise @ Red Room) UPDATE: Tim's revised version
  

  For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
  
  White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
  
  White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
  

• "on 'white'" (peter li'ir key @ Debunking White/Beyond White Guilt)

  white as a socially constructed racial characteristic is culturally normative. that is to say there are cultural norms around white. these are cultural norms that whites buy into without much examination, and that not whites also buy into, but with some resistance and friction. while it is tempting to call these cultural norms "white culture", that isn't correct or useful. this collection of cultural norms is a kind of "meta culture" - a "culture" that is shared by/included in many cultures.
  
  these cultural norms are what define white.
  
  

• "Space Race Matters" (Eric Stoller)
  

  Last week, while checking out a NASA-related post from one of my favorite blogs, the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture Blog,” I happened to observe that none of the 7 astronauts for NASA’s latest space shuttle mission were people of color. . . . I decided to post a seemingly innocent question regarding the racial makeup of the 7 astronauts in picture #23: The pool of astronauts isn’t the most diverse is it? 7 white people. 6 guys and only 1 woman. Where are the astronauts of color??? ~Eric Stoller
  
  I had no idea that my comment would generate a shower of racist rhetoric and inflammatory comments.

• "Burning Man 2008: The American Dream" (Samhita @ Feministing)

  What does a feminist woman of color see at Burning Man?. . . I looked around at all the naked bodies slinking around everywhere. Noting that there weren't many people of color or really many different kinds of bodies. What i saw was thin, white bodies. Most of them weren't totally naked. Usually they were wearing something, like hot pants, or a cowboy hat, showing the rest of their body. I immediately realized that I wouldn't feel comfortable naked. I would stick out, because I was curvy and brown. That didn't feel very feminist.

• "T.O.T.: Animal Planet and Race" (Fair Weather Vegan)

  A few months ago I posted a link about Food Network and its annoyingly blatant whiteness. Since I moved to San Francisco and relaxed my channel restrictions, I have rarely watched it. Perhaps because I feel even more acutely that I am not allowed to have a pet in this dog-mad city, I am turning frequently to Animal Planet. As is typical for someone who expects to see persons of her race depicted with regularity on television (see: privilege, white), it took me a long time to notice that something was wrong.
  

• "Just Keep Drawing that Circle Smaller and Smaller" (Aunt B. @ Tiny Cat Pants)

  We don’t have to pretend like Pat Buchanan is not an unrepentant white supremacist, do we?. . . "We” live our Christian beliefs. We have a lot of kids. We are small town conservatives. We are reformers who aren’t afraid of taking on large, faceless, powerful entities. We are fighters. We’re good looking. We hate abortion. We love guns. We go to public schools and state universities. We kill our own food. We’re in unions and we work two jobs. We’re very normal (in the churches we go to and the lives we lead). We’re rebels, though, too.
  
  Now, ask yourself. How many people do you know that fit all that?
  

• "Is it FAIR to hate?" (Nezua @ The Unapologetic Mexican)

  The truth is, despite their uncontested status as an extremist group, FAIR remains a powerful lobbying group. . . . In addition, FAIR is considered an extremist group and even a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FAIR shares this distinction with groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, and the Aryan Nations organization.
  
  FAIR is holding an extensive Capital Hill lobbying campaign this week in which participants will visit their legislators and urge them to oppose “Illegal Alien Amnesty” and support even more intense border and workforce crackdown. My goal in this post is simply to educate or inform any who were not aware of these facts.
  

• "Hate Group Holds Own Feet to Fire" (America's Voice)

  Yesterday a Coalition of concerned organizations, including America's Voice and SEIU, launched a campaign to call attention to what FAIR is really about. They unveiled full-page ads in newspapers on the Hill, which were written up in the Washington Post and circulated on the internet to spur action. The ads present disturbing quotes from the hate group's founders and leaders and ask a very simple question: "When Did Extreme Become Mainstream?"

  Well, FAIR responded immediately with one of its signature, grammar-impaired press releases, in which it vaguely but categorically denies any ties to racism or extremism. Next FAIR attempts to brand the organizations who dare to question its motivations as constituting an "open-border lobby" (we've yet to encounter this open-border lobby, but we're sure it exists- really, they swear!)

• And finally, Nina Simone doing some Randy Newman, via Siditty, who's in my thoughts because she lives in Texas.