Sardonic Sistah Says

The Washington Post just finished a week long retrospective of the Chandra Levy case amid criticism that the focused on the killing of one white intern while hundreds of unsolved murders of African Americans happen in Washington DC every year. 

For the last few years the black community has called out mainstream media for not following stories about the disappearances of black women, instead focusing on young women with fair skin and long tresses.  Who will tell our story?  Who will care about our young women?

We will.  And we should.

Lavena Johnson

LaVena Johnson’s story is slow to gather attention in the news although it has the earmarkings of what usually sells.  The 19 year old private from Missouri was proudly serving her country.  She was drawn to the Army out of love for travel and the promise of money for college.  In July 2005 LaVena was found dead and her death was ruled by the Army a suicide although up to her death LaVena spoke regularly with family and friends and had given no sign of contemplating suicide.

When the Johnson family received their daughter’s body they saw signs that she had been beaten. 

“After two years of being denied answers and hearing explanations that made no sense, the Johnsons received a CD-ROM from someone on the inside,” writes Color of Change.org.   ”It contained pictures of the crime scene where LaVena died and an autopsy showing that she had suffered bruises, abrasions, a dislocated shoulder, broken teeth, and some type of sexual assault. Her body was partially burned; she had been doused in a flammable liquid, and someone had set her body on fire. A corrosive chemical had been poured in her genital area, perhaps to cover up evidence of rape.”

As the Army sticks with their story bloggers like Phillip Barron have taken up the cause.  Her story has also been discussed on Common Dreams.org and Salon.com.  Color of Change.org has a petitioncalling on Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to investigate the Army’s cover-up of LaVena’s death.

LaVena’s father feels that they aren’t the only family to suffer a loss in this way.  In June ‘08, Dr. Johnson told the New Zealand Herald that he has been contacted by 10 other families of “suicide female soldiers” where the common thread among them is rape.

Dr. Johnson believes that a high ranking official was involved in his daughter’s death.  “If this had been a private, they would have thrown him under a bus a long time ago,” he said.

Is she wishing for her film to be made or scrapped?

This is July and Disney is still making changes to “The Frog Princess”?

EURweb is reporting that Disney is going back and removing anything that seems like a black stereotype or racist.  Her name has been changed from Maddy to Tiana and she no longer has a voodoo priestess for a fairy Godmother.  They also changed the race of her prince, who has gone from white to having Middle Eastern heritage and is named Naveen. 

The story still takes place in New Orleans during the Jazz age. 

I can understand that many want the first black princess film that Disney makes not to be reminiscent of “Songs of the South”.  We are right to protect our image, but some of it seems like unwarranted nitpicking.  Like the name Maddy.   Maddy sound a lot like Mattie which, in fact, is the name of several relatives of mind and a name that I’ve entertained giving to a future daughter if I should have another.  Yeah, I guess it rhymes with mammy but so does Sammy.  And really, I’m not too hyped on Tiana which sounds like it could possibly be an average ghetto name.

The fact that they don’t have a black prince is sad (although I don’t have a black prince either, so I guess I can’t really cry) but aside from that is it really necessary to look at everything that a mainstream company does and make them tell the story the way we would tell it if we could get someone black to do it.

Jimi Izrael thinks it might be too much for us to expect that Disney will get the black experience right on the first try.  Besides that, Disney’s main objective is to make movies that make money. 

“Unfortunately, while there are a few ethno-centric ‘toons, no black animation companies with Disney power come to mind, so we’re stuck.” Izrael wrote on The Root. “The truth to tell, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. I have a daughter, so it is important to me for her to see images that reflect her beauty.”

But then we did have someone come out with a full length feature film 16 years ago.  Bebe’s Kids *(we don’t die, we multiply) was hyped as the first black cartoon film and it was replete with black stereotypes (crazy black ex girlfriends, badass kids, single motherhood) but did we take exception to that?  Heck no, I still hear people referring to little black rambunctious as “bebes”. 

So can we really expect someone else to take our image more seriously than we do ourselves?

*And yeah, I know that it was a cartoon of the comedy routine by Robin Harris (RIP).  

Elder Porn is Picking Up in Japan

Is this like elder abuse except reversed?

I know I shouldn’t be laughing that 73 year old Shigeo Tokuda is getting freaky-deaky on film.  According to a current issue of Time Magazine where they found Japan to be the most sexless society of the industrialized world,  gramps may need to show the young dudes how it’s done.  A World Health Organization study in March said that 1 in 4 married couples in Japan have not had sex in the last year and ” 38% of couples in their 50s no longer have sex at all”.

I am sure that these videos may stoke the appetite of the over 60 set but I’m not sure it will do much for those who may prefer plump over wizened behinds baring it all on screen.

Although to his credit Tokuda is also the leading man to young women in his films.

I’m not sure if this is something I necessarily want to see here, retired people supplementing their Social Security checks by doing who knows what on screen.  I know its hard out there with the expense of prescription drugs and doctor visits but lets hope we never have to see Granny gumming anything on youtube.

These older people today, what’s with them?

For all those ladies waiting for Joseph Doughrity to release his film festival hit it appears the date is coming fast.

From Popcultureshock.com:

Finally, the announcement many of you have been waiting for … a street date for the Akira DVD. We’re looking at Tuesday, August 19th for a street date for the DVD. The price will be $10 plus $4.80 for shipping in the U.S., details on International shipping will be forthcoming. This release will be supported by an appearance by myself and James Kyson Lee in Los Angeles in September. More details on that later.

Okay, let’s see, so that’s four movies now with Asian Male/African American female love interest with the previous ones being Romeo Must Die, Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, and Fakin da Funk.  If the category of AM/BF romance is defined loosely then one can add the film Nowhere to this repetoire. 

Not a whole film festival, but it’s at least one night.

Everyone has an opinion, but when a celebrity talks people listen.

Or at least can be given prime real estate in a widely read national newspaper without being fact check or checked, period.

So an actor whose heydey was about 30 years ago and who is now known as Angelina Jolie’s estranged father or the punchline from Seinfeld (“I’m driving Jon Voight’s car!) wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post against Obama. 

Highlights from his piece:

• The Democratic Party, in its quest for power, has managed a propaganda campaign with subliminal messages, creating a God-like figure in a man who falls short in every way. It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.
• The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds.
• Gen. Wesley Clark, who himself has shame upon him, having been relieved of his command, has done their bidding and become a lying fool in his need to demean a fellow soldier and a true hero.
• And while a misleading portrait of Mr. Obama is being perpetrated by a media controlled by the Democrats, the Obama camp has sent out people to attack the greatness of Sen. John McCain, whose suffering and courage in a Hanoi prison camp is an American legend.

The only part of his diatribe that I agreed with was giving props to the soldiers overseas.  Everything else seemed like the ramblings of a disgruntled old man.

It should be noted that Voight is a Republican who often appears on television blasting the right.

I don’t care that Voight is speaking out against Obama.  In a Democracy everyone has a right to voice their opinion.  But what I dislike his the way the argument is framed.  When you bring it, come correct.  Obama wasn’t raised on Farrakhan and to put it out there is disingenuous.  Voight’s statement just helps to perpetuate a lie that riles up plenty of white Americans who fear a black male (in this case, really a biracial male) who tries to run for a position many deem for just white men.

As for young people, I’m not sure how easy it is to “program” a young person’s mind but I do know it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  Sometimes its hard for older people to realize that things change, outlooks change, and we have to move on to move forward.

I am disheartened by the Post’s decision to print his piece.  But I don’t want what some would deem a “liberal” celebrity to come on and answer his column.  For someone else to come and write an illogical answer just helps to deteriorate the discussion.

Vanity Fair's Answer to the New Yorker Cover

Not to be outdone, Vanity Fair offers up their spoof of the McCains.  Ripping on John’s age, he is depicted with his head bandaged and using a walker.  Cindy McCain has an armful of painkillers while the constitution burns in the fireplace over which hangs a portrait of a bewildered George Bush 43.

Okay show of magazine solidarity.  It would have been even better if the cover was on an actual newsstand instead of only on line.

CBC reports that some people think it didn’t go far enough in its satire of the McCain, negating to spoof the McCain’s money and business ties.  Others think it went too far in talking about Cindy McCains prescription drug addiction and McCain’s health problems.

“But others appreciated the cartoon as a satire of a satire and thought it hit just the right note of humour,” the CBC writes.

I say if I could buy it along with an article to match then everything would be fair and equal.

But that’s just me.

According to Politico.com next week the House wants to take up resolution H.Res.194 that will apologize “for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans.”

The resolution, which was introduced at the beginning of the 110th Congress, makes no mention of reparations, but it does state that black Americans ”continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished ….”

The resolution also acknowledges that an apology “cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past.” (Politico.com 26Jul2008)

A similar bill was introduced to the House over 10 years ago.  “The Apology for Slavery Resolution of 2000,” is a concurrent bill whose first submission was made before Congress June 2000 by Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio).

“When you hurt somebody, it’s not easy to say I’m sorry,” Hall said. “But without an apology there can be no healing.  “As a country we participated in slavery. We tore families apart.  Our Constitution didn’t even count them as people; we counted them as property. In fact, this Capitol, I understand, was partially built by slaves.”

During his time in office President Clinton made a formal apology for the Tuskeegee Experiment but stopped short of going back in history to say the government was sorry for slavery. 

Many who oppose a formal apology by the government are afraid that it will open up the door to paying descendent of slaves reparations.  Many white Americans today question why they should repent for the sins of someone else, whether they are descendents or not.

In 2002 the country of Benin issued a formal apology to descendents of slaves in the Americas for it’s role in the slave trade.  Benin is located on the West African coast and was a hub of activity for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Profits from the sale of human slaves encouraged many people to raid other villages and sell them to European slave traders.

Ambassador Cyrille Oguin made the state when he toured the U.S. in 2003.  Speaking on behalf of the president and people of Benin he made a formal apology in hopes of making it a first step in reconnecting with “brothers and sisters” who were hurt by the slave trade.

“Today, no one wants to take responsibility,” Oguin said. “It’s so easy to say white man did it to us, but we share in the responsibility.” (Advocate, 28Jun03)

The resolution was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee.  Cohen is a white democrat whose constituents are mostly African Americans in the district of Memphis.  Although the resolution makes no mention of reparation is does address the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws on African Americans today.

“African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow”, Cohen said.  “Long after both systems were formally abolished–through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity…”

In his speech Cohen also mentioned Bush’s trip to Senegal’s Ile de Goree where President Bush 43 referred to the slave trade as forced migration.  The Island of Goree was at one time a trading post, where along with human slaves peddlers sold beeswax, hides and grain.

While on his trip President Bush spoke of American slavery, which he referred to as “forced migration”.

“Human beings delivered, sorted, weighed, branded with marks of commercial enterprises and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return,” Mr. Bush said. “One of the largest migrations in history was also one of the greatest crimes of history.”

In the early summer cicadas were serenading me from every window in my house.

They were loud.  They were everywhere. 

On the east side of Hamilton county they claimed their territory.  Their husks all over the ground and the newly sprouted insects made their way up tree bark and plants.  They will fly directly at you and land on you whether you stand still or run.  They are dumb and I suspect they may also be blind with their vibrant red eyes.  One landed on me and I flicked it off.  Then I was mad at it so I kicked it and it screamed as it careened across the pavement.  I felt remorse for being cruel to a lower level creature.

My husband J isn’t.  “Just pull off the legs,” he told me.  Two years ago when the big 17-year swarm came the took over the whole county I told him how my friend Grace tortured them in high school. If you pull off one leg it lets out a high pitch sound but when you pull off another leg the head pops off, Grace said back in 1987.  I told J and he captured several of them to try out his pseudo Dr. Mengele experiments.  After two successful decapitations he wanted me to watch the third but I coaxed him into releasing the other stupid insects.

The cicadas arrived this year right at the beginning of what I call our “Great Garden Experiment”.  Two years ago we moved into a townhouse with a large backyard that the previous occupants’sdog digging and urine rendered to dirt with small patches of grass.  Last spring/summer we didn’t do anything to the areas but watch the grass grow back in to where it could but this year we decided that with the rising gas and food prices we could make a garden.  J would clear an area for a vegetable garden and the square foot that the dining room windows overlooked would be a shadegarden.   In the dirt around the fence we would plant more shade perennials.

I decided to start with seeds.  I don’t know why, especially considering how the last time I put some seeds in a few clay pots they didn’t even germinate.  I’m not sure if I overwatered, underwatered, didn’t give them enough sun or maybe the birds used them for a snack.  I don’t know.  When I was younger I had a green thumb.   Aside from growing mold on bread, I could pick up a spider plant or coleus and within a month or two I’d be taking cuttings and a few weeks later replanting those into their own pot.  Now my bread just gets stale (if it isn’t eaten up first by the hungry men in the house) and so far the small pots sprouted a few seedlings and while in my head I was making plans, trying to figure out where to put them in J’s garden (he’s very territorial) they went away.

How can seedlings just go away?

Maybe it’s my fault and I haven’t been taking care of them like I should: hovering over, keeping track of the soil and making sure they didn’t get too much sun.  Maybe I’m too distracted. Maybe I’ve lost my touch with age.   Maybe these things just happen. 

Whatever it is, I’m watching the plants that we’ve bought from the nursery dwarf the seeds that I’ve planted in pots.  He waters them, gives them fertilizer and uses his little garden rake to keept he area weed free.  Each day J gives me the garden report: the cucumber plant looks like it’s floundering.  The squash is flowering and we’ll probably have a lot of those.  The squash is beginning to dwarf the basil, he wants to move the basil, should he?  The rosemary might be getting over watered.  It’s not doing too well.  He’s worried about one of the pepper plants, too.  Why isnt’ it flowering. 

And the tomato plant.

The tomato plant is his favorite.  He lavishes water on it.  “It needs lots of water,” he shrieks when one day that I’m off I fail to water it in the morning.  “Tomatoes are mostly water.  You have to water it a lot.”  He runs outside with the water pail after filling it up to overflowing.  I think I hear him talking to the plant.

After this I’ve become a bit disinterested in gardening.

“Are you pregnant?” J asks me while I’m working a sudoku puzzle in the garden.  He had just come out with his second full watering can, ready to water the plants and drown cicadas at the same time.

I raise my eyebrows and glare at him.  “No, are you?”

“When is the last time you had your period?”

It had been at least two months.  Early April was the last time and when it came it was pretty light, which he had also noted.  But I wasn’t pregnant.  I didn’t feel pregnant.  It has been a little over 18 years since I was pregnant but I know what it feels like.

“I’m not pregnant,” I restate.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”  I eyed his stomach which has grown noticeably round since I’ve been on a cooking strike when the warm weather hit.  His dietary intake has had an upswing in pizza and beer, two things he doesnt’ get a lot of in the winter.

The question soon became a mantra for him and he asked me repeatedly.  Areyoupregnant?Areyoupregnant?Areyoupregnant?Areyoupregnant?  I told him no each time.  Finally to shut him up I took a home pregnancy test, early in the morning while he was at a wrestling match with J2.  When he came home I threw it to him.

“You see it’s negative.” I said to him  He examined it and looked satisfied and disappointed at the same time.

“We can’t have a baby right now,” he said to me.  I nodded my head.  He’s starting graduate school in the fall.  Cricket’s leaving for college in the fall and J2 is starting high school.   He’s worried about gas prices.  He’s worried about food prices.  He’s worried about school loans and fees; extracurricular activities and books.  I assess everything that he sees but factor in my age as well.

“Then when?” I ask.  He says the fall, as if its a magical time that will make everything alright.

By mid June my visit from Aunt Flo still hasn’t arrived. Tired of fielding questions from him even after a second negative home test I make an appointment to see my gynecologist.

He checks me out; I have a clean bill of health.   I’m not pregnant, he tells me.  But afterwards we sit down to discuss my options.  My period will come, he assures.  Maybe heavier than normal when it does.  He projects that I could possibly have another 10-12 years of fertility without doing any fertility tests.

Just because I look young I know I’m not young, I grumble to myself.

Afterwards we sit down to discuss a new birth control method, if I wanted one. “Do you want to get pregnant?” he asks me.  This simple question sounded existential coming from him.  What is he, my doctor or my philosopher?  Do I want to get pregnant?  Do I want to get pregnant? 

“I don’t know?” I say, sounding more like a teenager than a grown woman of nearly 40.  Shouldn’t answers like this come easier at this point in my life?  I have a daughter starting college and I tell him about that.  A son beginning high school and I tell him about that.  By most people’s standards I’m closing in on the finish line so why start over?  And what should happen if I do?  Will a baby be healthy? Will I be able to successfully carry one to full term?  What are the odds considering I was high risk with my daughter when I was in my early 20s? 

He wrote out a prescription for birth control and told me again that he didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t get pregnant, if I chose to.  And, if I chose to he said just stop the pills and call him and he’d get me a prescription for vitamins.

“What about my period?” I asked.

“Do you need it?”

“Well, yeah… I guess.” I don’t really like it but after years of having it, it’s reassuring when it comes.

He said to give it some time, it will return.  But in case it didn’t to give him a call and he would give me something that could jump start it.

I sound like a de-energized battery.

As I walk to my car I notice the border of flowers outside of the builings.  I think something is missing.  What is missing?

There are no cicadas on this side of town.  Lucky for them.

When the cicadas were in full swing at the beginning of the summer he suspected they were eating on all our plants.  “How can we get rid of the locusts?” he asks me.  “You can’t get rid of them,” I tell him.  “We just have to ride them out, but you can cover the plants with gauze.” 

He doesn’t go for the gauze idea.  Instead whenever he can he goes to flick them off the plants.

The mini cicada swarm was pretty bad.  They were even in our living room, having burrowed their way up through the chimney somehow.

I’ve decided to blame the derf of seedling growing on the locust.  Some of the seeds that I planted directly into the ground, not in pots had followed down the deep holes that released the nympal instars.  There goes my columbines, I say to J.  He sees it as no big loss.  He doesn’t see the point of flowers or other plants that I have bedded.  You can’t eat them.

“Everything doesn’t need to be eaten,” I tell him remembering how he wanted to pull up the hostas at our old place. He thought they were big weeds.  When I went to get hostas for this garden he was surprised at the cost.  “Pretty expensive weeds, aren’t they?” I asked.  He frowns at me.  Then he pulls me close and asks, “Did you get your period yet?”

I walk away exasperated.

He says that he wants a boy, when it does happen.  At one time he wanted a girl but dealing with a new teen daughter who throws castigting looks as if we are all stupid and beneath her he has changed his mind and decided he just wants boys.  Boys make sense, like an edible garden.  Boys are sturdy and you can put them in football and wrestling, two of his favorite sports.  If he had a girl he’d let her wrestle because he has seen one or two girls at a few wrestling meets.  But she couldn’t play football.

“What if you had a son who wanted to go into ballet?” I asked bringing up my favorite extracurricular things I did with Cricket like dance and theater classes on Saturday mornings.  There will be no more of those this fall now that she will be away.  The last Saturday we were there I saw little girls of all colors carrying dance bags, wearing tights and scurrying off to class.  I remember when Cricket was that young and dancing.  She was born to dance and sing.  Now I won’t have it and I wonder what it will be like to have another little girl.  I wonder what I can do to ensure it?

J scoffs at the thought of any son of his in dance classes.  Whose kid did I think I’d be carrying? 

At the beginning of July, with no big fanfare my period finally arrives.  I send J a text message as soon as I know.  This will shut him up, I think. 

The cicadas were gone, too. I didn’t notice their absence until one night walking home with Cricket from her job she said the neighborhood sounded deafly quiet with their disappearance.  How could I not notice the silence of hundred of singing bugs?  Even their shells were gone. 

The last one I remembered vividly was one that had infiltrated our living room.  We had heard it for hours till J finally discovered it behind the couch.  He brought it into the kitchen to show me. 

“Get it away from me,” I said.  That made the kid in J come out and he chased me around the house with it.  “Just put it out!  Put it out!”

Tiring of his game he opened up the door and pitched the but outside into the night.  He made sure it landed in the grass, far away from his garden.  We heard it let out a high pitched scream.

“What did you do to it?”

“Nothing.”  But we listened as the cicada continued to scream.  It made me think of a primal plea a small, frightened woman would make; it sounded timid and meek but shrieking out for help as if her life depended on it.

Is an Obama/Edwards Ticket Too Sexy for the White House?

There is buzz that John Edwards is being thought of as a potential running mate for Barack Obama or attorney general.

Edwards is thought of as an upright and honorable man.  He ran a good for president earlier this year and many felt he may have jumped ship too early.  During his run the North Carolina senator tried to put the plight of lower class/working class Americans as the main agenda for this election cycle and after several months of silence he threw his support to Obama for president in May.

They could be a good team.  Both young, both intelligence with Edwards years of service making up for what Obama lacks.  He already knows the game since he was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.  Even though months ago he said he wasn’t running for vice president he recently said he would “seriously” think about it.

 ”Anything that I’m asked to do by Senator Obama, either as a presidential candidate or as the next president of the Untied States, I would take seriously and seriously consider,” said Edwards.

It remains to be seen if Obama will ask him and now with the recent stories about him in the National Enquirer and Slate.com Obama might tap someone else.

Slate.com has several times relayed on their site the hot story in the National Enquirer about finding Edwards creeping out the back way of a Beverly Hills hotel during early a.m. hours.  He was allegedly there to see a woman the National Enquirer accused him of having an affair with last October and their supposed “Love Child”. 

Slate is wondering why the mainstream press is sleeping on this scandal.

It should be noted that a political alliance of Edwards named Andrew Young (not the former mayor of Atlanta) is the baby’s father.  Young is also married with children and, supposedly, Hunter and baby have been to the home of Young for dinner with Mrs. Young there.

So the question is if Edwards is the father of the baby should that influence how we think of him as a politiican?  Does it matter?  Do we really need to know that much about a candidate’s personal life?

Maybe yes.  After questions about McCain and his history with melanoma he released his health records.

Maybe no.  Using McCain as a reference again, Cindy McCain is his second wife.  During his first marriage he had a few extramarital affairs and ended up leaving her for his second wife.

People think that his slipping up in his marriage and having an affair would reflect badly on his character.  His wife is dealing with cancer, after all.  They’ve built a life together for 30 years and even grieved together over the loss of their son.  Many people take his infidelity personally and find this failing to be one that can override the work that he has done in the senate.

I see it differently.  I care more about whether he’s becoming best buds with lobbyists and getting special gifts and whether he has a white sheets with strategically placed eye holes hanging in his closet. If he’s cheated on his wife (it still hasn’t been proved) I wouldn’t like it.  But I think that there are better ways to gauge the character of a man than what he does in his bedroom.  A lot of our politicians have been philanderers but that didn’t make them any worse for it.  FDR had an affair Lucy Mercer (which the American public never knew about until years after his death) but if it influenced how he governed then the country must have liked it because he was elected four times.

I can understand why some people might change their opinion about Edwards if it’s true.  To many people marriage is still sacred and if he break that solemn vow to her then what are millions of strangers to him.  So they want to be informed about any picadillos, they want the whole truth and nothing but. 

Besides, sex is easier to follow in the news.  People forgave Ollie North, Ronald Reagan and George Bush 41 for their role in the Iran Contra scandal but people start spitting rocks when they think of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

We might not be puritans anymore but just because sex sells just about everything doesn’t mean we’re any less uptight about the subject.  And there is no way that we could ever look the other way if we had a president pull a Nicolas Sarkozy.

Well, maybe if  we were weaned on it through a really good night time drama.

What the Washington Post did for Black Males two years ago the Chicago Tribune is doing, but in a wider spectrum.

The Exploring Race series that the Chicago Tribune began running online and in the paper for about eight months and is facilitated by Dawn Turner Trice.    After getting some interesting emails from readers they opened it up and began posting/publishing interesting essays from those living it or reflecting heavily upon it.  On the site you can read various essays like one woman began ruminating about race when told by people that her European name sounded black. A white female discusses her  30 year marriage to a Chinese man.   A  man ponders what’s in a name when weighing whether to be called Hispanic or Latino.

For a nation that doesn’t like to talk about race it sure is on the tips of our tongues lately.

What’s even more interesting is the section on gauging your own racism in Prejudice Compass.  In it you can read essays and watch videos.  I found the 1960 Cosby Video called “A Boy Like Me” to be really interesting.

This newspaper series is just a baby set but a needed one if we are ever to move towards any type of racial healing in this country.  Perhaps more major papers in more cities will try to encourage a discussion on race with its readers.  We have to talk about it sometime and putting it off won’t make it any easier.