Boobquake's Het Male Supremacist Seismic Aftershocks: be careful where you cyber-step

[image is from here. You can click on it to see the smaller text.]

It is so typical of white societies to discuss things like this ad nauseam, while millions of children and women die and suffer from marital or date rape, men beating up women, lack of clean water, or lack of health care, being bombed or raped by white country's leaders' coloniser-by-proxy soldiers, or due to the lack of so much that white men have, globally. It's so damned typical. Economic-social-political privilege does many things; making some human beings utterly unaware and callous to the suffering of others is high on the list, in my view.

Witness the sputtering and mutterings of Jacobus van Beverningk, following the utterly misogynist terminology of an "evolved" man named Jerry A. Coyne, who penned a book and, now a website, titled Why Evolution is True. How egotistically emphatic we whiteboys are about our truths!! Have you noticed?

What follows is from *here*. Warning, you are entering a zone where white men and all our privileges are fully engorged. Tread carefully. Or, rather, just stomp on anything that looks too egotistically engorged. First, the initial post by Jerry A. Coyne, who does, I'll admit, try and do something good here. And he does quote from a feminist blogger who does speak to the issues rather effectively. Too bad Jerry doesn't get the following:

-- That making fun of an Islamic Iranian cleric is oh-so-easy when you ignore the misogyny of your own culture's dominant faith traditions. (We can't have cultural self-reflection and accountability. No, no, no. That's not how white het male supremacy works AT ALL.) (Yes, there's plenty that's grossly misogynistic and loaded up with sexist double-standards that cleric Sedighi reportedly said. And I feel no need to protect him from criticism. My issue is this: white Christian-cultured men always find it very profitable to their egos and stature to put down men of color around the world, as if white Western men are god's gift to aetheistically and scientifically understood human life.

-- Or that using a term like "blag hag" isn't helpful to the cause of ending misogyny.

-- Or that putting down radical feminists as "priests" isn't funny either. As if radical feminists organised, ruled, and maintain a centuries old religious institution for the primary purpose or raping children and nuns. Oh, wait. He said "acolytes", not "altar boys". That means he's Anglican or Episcopalian. My bad.

As for Dworkin, other radical feminists, and myself lacking senses of humor. Hardly. He clearly hasn't read a damn thing Dworkin has written, or he'd get how funny she is, about the stupidity of white men's logic. (Funny. White men don't laugh about that.)

Here's a good one, boys:

Q: What's the quickest way to a man's heart?
A: Through his chest.

Misogynist white het doods, why aren't you laughing? Oh, right. Antifeminist men have no sense of humor. Moving on to Jerry's words of attempted wisdom:

Boobquake

Okay, we all know that Blag Hag (Jen McCreight) had the bright idea of “Boobquake,” a way to make fun of a Muslim cleric’s accusation that immodestly dressed females cause earthquakes.  Jen jokingly suggested a “scientific” experiment in which women would test this hypothesis by showing their breasts today on the internet and looking for an increase in seismic activity. (Actually, this isn’t really a test of the cleric’s idea, since he blamed earthquakes on the adultery attendant on display of boobage):

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Regardless, the idea has been taken up with approbation by some of my favorite bloggers, including P.Z., erv, and Russell Blackford.  How do I feel?

I can’t get behind it.

Call me humorless, call me a militant pro-feminist, call me a prude—call me what you want, but somehow the idea of women mocking religion by showing their breasts comes perilously close to making points through sexuality instead of through good arguments and brains. (Just imagine how tepid the response would be if, in the same cause, all of us male bloggers decided to show ourselves in jockstraps).  The predictably leering response of men, who of course have tendered enthusiastic thanks for the mammaries, just confirms this suspicion.

What’s worse is that some women who don’t want to participate in this affair have been derided as anti-sex.  Even Russell Blackford took this tack:

Unfortunately, there was a lot of 1980s pseudo-feminism that took a similar attitude to that of Christianity and Islam, problematising displays of female beauty and even expressing disgust with heterosexuality itself. The worst offender was the egregious Andrea Dworkin – who died relatively young back in 2005. In her case, good riddance. These pseudo-feminists merely use feminist-sounding language to rationalise the religion-based anti-sex morality into which they were socialised. But they lack the self-insight to understand that it’s what they’re doing.

Look, Russell, if you really think that male and female bodies are both beautiful, why do you suppose that this event is getting much more publicity than would a similar display of male skin? Do you think CNN would be all over the event if it was men who were showing their junk? Of course not—and you know why.
And do you really want to tar women who object to selling ideas with sex as acolytes of Andrea Dworkin?  That’s simply unfair.  Some women don’t want to bare their mammae, and NOT because they have a “religion based anti-sex morality”; they simply have good reason to think that in the long run such stunts will hinder women being taken seriously as thinkers and colleagues.

I have to agree with the take of Miranda Hale at Exquisite With Love,  who is an atheist and a feminist, but won’t be doffing her duds today:

The idea is fantastic and well-intentioned. It points out both the ridiculousness of the cleric’s claim and the despicable and harmful practice of blaming all sorts of horrible things (including sexual assault) on women.

However, the great majority of the responses to this effort have been anything but fantastic. Instead, it has inspired, primarily at its Facebook event page, many comments of the “show us your tits!” or “Dude, awesome, I’ll get to see some boob photos on Monday” variety. And, for some reason, women are complying. They’re posting photos of their cleavage and men are responding with “awesome boobs!”, etc. The Facebook event page has almost 200,000 “attendees” and the effort has received a great deal of media coverage. And that’s all well and good, but how many of these individuals are actually concerned with raising awareness of this issue? Very, very few, I’d say.

Sure, one can assert that the event has been unfairly “hijacked” by the men who are reacting in this way, but this response wasn’t hard to predict. And although the men making these types of comments are solely responsible for the attitudes expressed in them, why provide them with fodder? I understand that this is intended to be a lighthearted attempt to point out the ridiculousness and stupidity of the assertions made by the cleric, but that intention has been completely buried under a constant stream of “show us your tits” comments. . .

. . . Let’s dress however we want to, let’s be as modest or as immodest as we choose, and let’s use our sexuality however we see fit. It’s all about choice. If Boobquake is your kind of thing, then, by all means, enjoy it. But don’t stop there. Write about these issues. Raise consciousness about them. Speak out against the “show us your tits” reactions. And please don’t pretend that merely showing as much cleavage as possible is somehow making any kind of difference. It’s not.

If it doesn’t make a difference in promoting atheism and mocking faith, what good is it? It’s just Playboy on the internet.

UPDATE:  Ceiling Cat weighs in.

---

81 Comments

Assisted Genocide: Tracking the Blood in the Soil of Africa to U.S. White American Hands

From YouTube, *here*.



Cinequest — Secret recordings. Once classified films. Hidden documents. From in side the archives of the United States government comes a story of racism and manipulation that reveals how the actions of a nation ultimately brought about the collapse of a continent: Africa.

It took the deaths of six million Jews before we finally said, "never again." Yet, with at least twenty million Africans killed so far, due to wars in Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda and many, many more, the body count continues to rise.

With powerfully haunting images, this controversial new film exposes the story of Africa's collapse and will fill you with an intense passion for the importance of human life.

Buy Apocalypse Africa: Made in America on DVD today at Cinequest Online

( http://www.cinequestonline.org/theater/detail_view.php?m=1536 ).

Life Lessons from Alaskan Native Women

This is a cross post from the wonderful Brenda Norrell's blog, Censored News. You can click on the title below, under the date, to link back to her blog.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Bolivia: Voices of the Raven and Caribou Peoples

Bolivia: Life lessons from Alaskan Native Women
Alaskan Native Women describe what is happening to Alaska and what must be done for the future Seven Generations

By Brenda Norrell/Censored News http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/04/bolivia-voices-of-raven-and-caribou.html

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia – When the ducks first saw the vapors rising from the highway, the ducks that could not distinguish between the heat waves rising from the pavement, and the heat waves rising from the rivers and ponds, perished.

In a similar way, it is unknown what lies within each of us that someday may result in our own survival. As with the ducks, being able to distinguish between the rising vapors of the man-made world and the world of natural creation, ensures survival of the fittest.

This is one of the stories shared by Kay Wallis, Athabascan and Gwich’in elder, during the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. During an interview recorded live by Earthcycles, Wallis shares the beauty and majesty of her Yukon homeland.

Wallis said she appreciated being given the opportunity to speak for the animals and Mother Earth. She said her name “Arrow Carrier,” means, “I carry messages between people.” Her father is from Fort Yukon in Alaska and her mother from across the border in Canada at Old Crow.

Wallis described how the ground shakes and vibrates when the caribou arrive at the calving grounds in Alaska. She tells how the ocean breezes greet them across the plains. In the mountains, too, the wolves, their predators, are giving birth, in the cycle of life.

“We love the land, and the land loves us, otherwise it would not give us our nutrients." But, she said, things are changing.

“When the ducks used to come in my grandpa's day, they would block out the sun, there would be so many of them.”

Other creatures have vanished altogether. “We don’t hear swallows anymore.”

Glacier water moves fast in her homeland, where the people hunt and fish, living off the moose, caribou, birds, fish and salmon. In this land where a frozen chicken can cost $50 in a store, the people are taught to hunt, hunting in a manner where the animals give themselves to them.

It is life on a grand scale, and life that is a harbinger of things to come. “Some parts of the Yukon River you can’t see across. It is one of the largest rivers in North America.”

It is in this land, of the far north, that the people see what is coming. As temperatures rise, the salmon can not survive in high temperatures without sufficient oxygen.

“The world is going through change. We can’t go back. We are going to be called upon to make great sacrifices and great changes.”

Wallis said people have a natural tendency to go into denial mode, but humanity must act now to ensure the gifts of Mother Earth for Seven Generations.
Mary Ann Mills, Kenaitze Indian Nation, said the world needs to understand that the Arctic must remain frozen because it acts as an air conditioner for the earth. The Arctic cools the earth’s temperature. Climate change goes beyond all racial boundaries, she said, asking: "What happens to the spirit of the people when the foods they have been eating are no longer available."

What most people do not know is that 75 to 80 percent of the population of Native Alaskans was lost after first contact with those who came to their land, Mills said during the interviews.
Mills warned that 31 villages face immediate threats and 200 villages are impacted by floods and erosion. Ice is coming down the rivers.
Ice is melting now that has never melted before.
“We are the first people to be effected,” she said. The sensitive areas of the north are being compromised by emissions and oil drilling. Alaskan Native villages will have to be relocated because of the melting ice, or the people will perish, she said.

Mills said in the prophecy, it is told that there will be those who will attempt to destroy the land.
It is the Raven People who will protect the land. If others destroy the land, then the Creator will destroy these people, according to the prophecy.

“We have a chance, but we have to show respect.”

Alaska is the land of the Native people, but today there are few jobs and fuel sells from $10 to $14 a gallon. While trillions of dollars in resources have been taken out of Alaska, little has been returned to help Alaskan Natives.
While the United States and corporations have been taking with little given back, it was President Hugo Chavez and the country of Venezuela that brought heating oil to help Alaskan Natives.
Meanwhile, she said the result of the US Congress deceptively making Alaskan Natives into corporations has brought division, as it was designed to do, in this method of divide and conquer.

“The intent was to take our land,” she said of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. “It was to get the land for the big corporations.”

She said the United States does not own the land in Alaska, Alaskan Natives do.

“In my heart I am not a corporation. The truth is so powerful. Our people would like to have their freedom and like to have their land,” she said, adding that no one knows the land better than the Native people of Alaska.
Wallis and Mills thanked the people of Bolivia for their kindness during the World Climate Conference, President Evo Morales for calling for the conference and President Chavez for bringing heating oil to Alaskan Natives.

Watch the video interviews, recorded live by Earthcycles in Bolivia:http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6340428
.
More information: Gwich'in Steering Committeehttp://www.gwichinsteeringcommittee.org/index.html

Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com at 3:11 PM

On Freedom Day: Analysis of Boerish White Lies and The Truth Behind Allegations of Discrimination Against White Men In South Africa

This post acknowledges the 16th anniversary of Freedom Day in South Africa. But celebration isn't really appropriate, as white supremacist racism is still very firmly in place to this day. This post is dedicated, with love, to my friend Katlego Matsila, who provided me with this information. But he offers this caution about what follows: "I would focus on the numbers, not so much on his rationale." I offer some analysis as we make our way through this discussion of what has and hasn't changed since 1994, in brackets and in bold text, below.

[image is from here; please click on it to enlarge the image and text] 

What follows is from *here*, at the South African Institute of Race Relations.

SAIRR Today: Whither the whites? - 29th January 2010

White South Africans are quick to complain [as whites are want to do in a racist state that tries to remedy a gross history of Apartheid or other disgustingly white supremacist practices] that affirmative action and black economic empowerment policies have stymied their career opportunities and chances of economic advancement in South Africa. [The hardships of the delusionally stymied! Surely nothing can be worse.] Curiously, however, a review of income and employment indicators for the country does not bare this out. [SURPRISE!! Whitey is still on top!!!] Rather there is now some evidence that the white community may turn out to be an inadvertent [or the planned] beneficiary of the Government’s various empowerment and affirmative action policies. 

In 2009 levels of unemployment among white South Africans stood at around five percent. This was considerably lower than the national average of just over 23% and even further below the figure of 27.9% for Africans. The unemployment rate for white South Africans was in fact half that for the United States.

Employment equity reports indicate that white South Africans also continue to occupy about 70% of top and senior management jobs in South Africa. They also occupy more than half of all professionally qualified positions. Africans on the other hand occupy under 20% of top and senior management positions and only slightly over 20% of all professionally qualified positions. [And who is surprised by this?]

Since 1996 annual per capita income for whites increased by 217%. [So the rich more than doubled their income.] This was only slightly below the increase of 235% for African South Africans. [So the shitty wages set for Blacks managed to double, to be less shitty, but not equal to whites.] White South Africans have therefore matched the level of income increase for African South Africans [that's devious languaging: whites' income went up far more than did Blacks' because Black people's income started at a much lower rate] even though African incomes have grown off a much lower base. This has happened despite the fact that the Government sought to provide preferential economic opportunities to African South Africans.

In 2009 real per capita disposable income for white South Africans was measured at just under R60 000 per annum. This was six times higher than the figure of just under R10 000 per annum for African South Africans. A further income indicator shows that while white South Africans make up an estimated 13% of adults in South Africa they account for close on 70% of people earning more than R500 000 per year. Almost 75% of adults in South Africa are African but these make up only 20% of people earning over R500 000 per annum. [You know, the way this always works in racist economic systems: wealth is always concentrated in white populations, and populations of color suffer accordingly.]

On the other side of the income scale the level of poverty in the white community was measured at 3.6% in 2008. While this figure was almost double that of 1994 it must be compared to the poverty figure of 49% for African South Africans – a figure largely unchanged since 1994. The measure used here to calculate poverty was an income of below approximately R900 a month for an individual or R3 500 for a household of 8 people. 

The white community remains the most equal of South Africa’s four major race groups. [This is the oddest use of that term. What "most equal" means is "most superior/most dominant/most wealthy"] It is also the only racial community that is now more equal [dominant] on the Gini-coefficient than it was in 1994. The Gini-coefficient measures inequality on a score from 0 to 1 with a 1 indicating complete inequality and 0 indicating complete equality where all people would earn the same amount of income. White South Africans score 0.45 on this scale down from 0.49 in 1996. This is almost on a par with the figure of 0.4 for the United States. The figure for the African community stands at around 0.6, up from 0.54 in 1996. Scores of over 0.55 are deemed to indicate extremely high levels of inequality [including economic and social subordination].  

While incomes and living standards for African South Africans have improved since 1994 the data is unambiguous [or not that ambiguous] that white South Africans continue to maintain a vastly superior standard of living when compared to the standard enjoyed by African South Africans.

This poses two questions. The first is why so many white South Africans are so quick to feel that their opportunities for career advancement and economic prosperity are limited. [Here's a guess: because whites and men HATE IT when their supremacist social structures are altered in any way to become humane and just.] Doubtless affirmative action and black economic empowerment policy is discriminatory [Julian's note: "discriminatory" is the white racist term that could be replaced by "just and fair given the history"] and has closed opportunities for whites to access soft jobs [soft??] in the public service and ‘easy’ tenders for government work. [Shall we get out the violins for the "poor white men" in South Africa? Hell no!] Yet despite these ‘challenges’ [read: attempts at remedying historical and on-going white racism] the white community’s standard of living has been maintained and in fact improved. [Right. So much for the "discrimination".]

This suggests that the discriminatory [just and fair] employment and empowerment policies of the ANC may have forged a greater sense of entrepreneurship and independence among white South Africans. This despite the fact that large sections of the white community had always shown a flair for entrepreneurial activity. [Profitable flairs for entrepreneurial activity comes far more easily to those who are considered South Africans by the purchasing class. Black South Africans were exiled and remain discriminated against, despite reports to the contrary.] Now without the opportunity of soft jobs in the public service (or private sector) or of doing business with government many whites have been forced [well, "force" is a strong word: there are no State-supported police beatings, for example, against white men] to become more independent and take what might be described as even greater ‘personal responsibility’ for improving their own standards of living. Cut off and effectively discriminated against by the State it can only be entrepreneurship, the taking of risks, and the acquisition of ever improving levels of education and expertise that explain the maintenance and improvement in living standards within the white community after 1994. [Here's a thought: descendants of white imperialistic colonisers getting the fuck out of South Africa! I support this for Israeli whites too, as well as U.S. American whites. Go back where you came from!]

Further examples of this growing independence from the State [read: dependence on historical legacy and contemporary forms of whites' racism] can be taken as far as to include reliance on private healthcare and security through which many whites now have access to far higher standards of service than those on offer through the public sector. [Yes, with wealth comes greater access to private systems of support.] This independence [dependence on maintaining white male supremacy] may even be considered to include the very large number of young white South Africans who have taken the risk [gasp!] to pursue careers in other parts of the world [white male supremacist parts?] even as they maintain close social, family, and economic ties with South Africa [read: inheritance rights]. [So some are leaving. Well, that's encouraging, if they forfeit those inheritance rights. And they will fare well by leaving. Far better than Black South Africans who leave and still have to contend with anti-Black racist discrimination and violence wherever they go. Whites from South Africa don't endure that when they settle down elsewhere.]

Arguably, therefore, the income and employment data above is early evidence that white South Africa might emerge as the unlikely [or not so unlikely] beneficiary of affirmative action and black economic empowerment. [Don't white men inevitably benefit from any system that is built from the bloody ground up on racist economic systems, values, and practices?] What is certain is that the independent and entrepreneurial mindset that may have been further invigorated by black economic empowerment and affirmative action will come to be a formidable economic asset. [My read of this: white men in South Africa will have the education and means--including through inheritance--to do whatever the fuck they want to do, because they still live in a deeply and profoundly white supremacist state.]

The second question is the converse of the first and is why so many African South Africans still appear to cling to the hope that Government driven affirmative action and empowerment policies offer them a real chance at escaping poverty. [Whites are "independent" while Blacks "cling". Whose state is it? There's your answer.] Over a decade of evidence now suggests that other than the establishment of a small African middle class, most Africans have been left behind. [And this comes as a surprise to whom?] The proponents of affirmative action and empowerment policy will argue that these policies have not failed but rather that they were not enforced or implemented properly by Government. [Wait! You mean the government holds onto white supremacist practices? And this comes as a surprise to whom?] Some on the left of the economic spectrum now even advocate granting the Government authority to nationalize private business in order to hand this ‘wealth’ over to the poor. [His language sort of portrays wealthy whites as adults and poor Blacks as children, doesn't he? Try: thieving, colonising historically inhumane whites handing over stolen and/or unjustly earned resources to Black South Africans. Try, making a system that remains unjust and unfair, more just and more fair. Capitalism is racist and sexist. It always is. So moving toward socialism might allow for some of that to dissipate.]

This mindset of ‘government will provide for me’ [that white men have enjoyed and benefited from since the government began] if only it was granted even greater powers and responsibility is likely to see affirmative action and empowerment policies continued. [Yes, as it should, until such time that whites have no greater status, wealth, social position, or esteem than Blacks.] It may even lead to more extreme economic policies including nationalization. [One can hope.] However, when one considers education data which shows that white children significantly outperform African children in school subjects such as science and mathematics [which, historically, are tools of the master race and were not quite so needed in non-industrial primal Indigenous societies that are sustainable and not destroying the Earth; Black societies were destroyed by whites; Blacks have never had the opportunity to obtain the same education with the levels of national encouragement that whites have enjoyed in South Africa] the suggestion that the failure of affirmative action and empowerment policy lies in weak enforcement seems implausible. So does the argument that white wealth lies primarily in mines and banks. If anything the record of white living standards after 1994 suggests that that wealth now rests primarily in the mindset and the skills-set [and in the bank accounts and homes and land] of that community which is an asset that the Government can never expropriate. The failure of public education alone [read: the racism embedded in all systems, not just in education] has sabotaged [read: fully intended to undermine] the chance of African South Africans gaining any broad benefit from affirmative action or black economic empowerment or that they will wrest much benefit from the confiscation of a major bank or mining company. [The economics of banking and mining are necessarily ecocidal and genocidal. All Western-form societies are both, as well as gynocidal.]

The difficulty of improving African living conditions will of course be even further compounded by the mindset that has been cultivated to believe that ‘government will provide’ [that whites historically and currently enjoy]. For there can be no chance of this [white male supremacist] mindset competing on an equal economic footing with the growing independence and self reliance on display in the white community. [This notion of "independence" is and always has been bullshit. CRAP. Because white wealth is never "independent" of  robbing Indigenous peoples of their land, resources, and human rights. Whiteness, itself, is entirely dependent on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in order to even exist.] Herein lies what may well become the cliché of South Africa’s future and irony of its recent past, that affirmative action and black economic empowerment policy disempowered its greatest proponents while empowering its most fervent critics. [And when does it ever do otherwise?]

South Africa’s ‘racial communities’ often appear to be stuck in perceptions of reality that bare little resemblance to facts about the country. As the French philosopher Pierre Valery commented, “a fact poorly observed is more treacherous than faulty reasoning”. As a result for many whites the argument that affirmative action will stall their economic progress is repeated verbatim even as their relatively high standards of living are maintained. For African South Africans the idea that the Government will lead their emancipation from poverty survives in support for the Government despite the growing evidence that such emancipation is now unlikely [until whites stop being dependent on pillaging African land of its resources, and the wealth generated from them, stolen from Blacks]. In politics perceptions are often more important than reality and therefore the unsubstantiated perceptions of both white and African South Africans come to dominate much discussion about racism and poverty in the country. [And the reality that white male supremacy lives in practices, structure, and system doesn't hurt whites any either!] What is unfortunately likely is that maintaining this status-quo [read: virulent and embedded white male supremacy] is going to cause future problems both for race relations and for the general stability of the country. [White racism tends to have a negative effect on "race relations" and "stability" if by stability, we mean a society founded on ethical principles and just practices.]

-          Frans Cronje [a white dood]

What is the Future of Indigenous Peoples? Read This to Learn More.

The image above and all that follows is from *here*.

The Future of Indigenous Peoples
This collection of articles is the outcome of an international gathering of scholars to discuss the future of indigenous peoples throughout the world. The contributors examine contemporary conditions of indigenous peoples, explore future possibilities for social, economic, and political survival and development, and offer strategies for shaping future nation-state relations with indigenous peoples. Particular attention is given to the nation-state structure that preempted land rights and autonomous cultural, social, economic, and political development in the Americas, the Middle East, and China.
272 pages
$20 paper; ISBN 978-0-935626-57-3
$60 cloth; ISBN 978-0-935626-58-1

Table of Contents
Preface

Introduction - Keynote Address
Indigenous Strategies for Engaging Globalism
Duane Champagne

PART I: LAND ISSUES
Land, Culture and Community: Envisioning Native American Sovereignty and National Identity in the Twenty-First Century
Rebecca Tsosie

Bedouin Arabs and the Israeli Settler State: Land Policies and Indigenous Resistance
Oren Yiftachel

The Territorial Roots of Latin American Indigenous Peoples' Movement for Sovereignty
Stefano Varese

Brazil: Legal Rights, Concrete Situation, and Examples of the Struggle for Land Demarcation
Betty Mindlin

PART II: EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Education in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Theoretical Discussion of Citizenship, Democracy, and Multiculturalism
Carlos Alberto Torres

Bedouin Arabs in Israel between the Hammer and the Anvil: Education as a Foundation for Survival and Development
Ismael Abu-Saad

National Minority Education in the People's Republic of China
John N. Hawkins
PART III: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The Lessons in Our Blood: Reflections on Protecting Aboriginal Children
Gord Bruyere

Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy with Indigenous Peoples: The Bedouin Arab Case
Alean Al-Krenawi

From Sedentarization to Urbanization: State Policy towards Bedouin Society in Israel
Hubert Law-Yone

Urbanization Policy for Indigenous Peoples: A Case Study of Israel's Negev Bedouins
Harvey Lithwick

PART IV: SELF-GOVERNMENT AND SELF-DETERMINATION
The Crisis for Native Governments in the Twenty-First Century
Duane Champagne

Globalization and the Relevance of the Local: Arab Local Government in Israel
Ahmad Sadi

Self-Determination, Cultural and Educational Rights, and the Role of the State in Policies Concerning Indigenous Rights in Brazil
Betty Mindlin

Concluding Remarks and Conference Declaration

Are You Listening to Rebecca Tsosie? I think all U.S. privileged people should be. Here's why.

 

[this photograph of Rebecca Tsosie is from here]

What follows is from *here*.

The economic incentive model is at odds with how we must move forward on climate change

Apr 26th, 2010 at 8:51 am

Professor Rebecca Tsosie, a lawyer who has served as executive director of the top ranked Indian legal program in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University since 1996 is the keynote speaker for the Salish Gathering Climate Change Summit.

Of Yaqui descent, Tsosie has written and published widely on doctrinal and theoretical issues related to tribal sovereignty, environmental policy and cultural rights.

The current model of extracting resources from tribal lands is all about the profit and shortsighted, Tsosie said. Planning for the future and what is best for the land and the climate is a long-term process that requires careful planning and valuing the resources for more than the profit they bring.

“We are being stuck with the consequences of the economic model  of thinking,” said Tsosie. The legislators, businesses and government are all engaged in this model. Today is about being engaged in the cooperative model, transcending the physical and government boundaries that is the cultural way of the past and needs to be the way of the future, she said.

The sovereignty of tribes and how they are affected by these changes extends beyond the boundaries of their lands.

Radical Feminist Patricia Hill Collins' new book: Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities

 

[image of book cover is from here]

"Public school" and "Private school" mean entirely different things depending on whether you're in the U.S. or the UK, among other places. In the U.S. "private schools" for children are expensive and tend to be accessible (affordable) only to the very class-privileged, disproportionately white folks, which means to very few people, relative to the whole population. Public schools are paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The more the U.S. spends on murder-via-our wars on the rest of the world, the less funds we have for public school education. President Obama will not cut military spending. That shows where his priorities are: with murdering Afghan and Iraqi children and women more than with educating children of color in the U.S. Just so you know.

All that follows is from *here*.

Product Description

Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins opens this brilliant new book on race and education by describing how in her senior year at the Philadelphia High School for girls, near the end of a public school education that “had almost silenced me,” she was invited to deliver a graduation address on the meaning of the American flag. She refused to deliver the censored version her teacher demanded, and someone else took her place on stage.

Another Kind of Public Education spins the threads of that story—the way education, race, and democracy are intertwined; the way racism and resistance work through a variety of unspoken means; what schools do to limit or to open up possibilities—into a call for “another kind of public education,” one that helps us “envision new democratic possibilities.”

Collins begins, in a tour de force of social analysis with practical implications, by demystifying what she calls “color-blind racism as a system of power.” She argues that the generation coming of age at the turn of the twenty-first century—in a post-civil-rights society that publicly claims to be “color-blind”—needs a new language for analyzing the new “color-blind racism” of contemporary society that has stymied efforts to live up to the promise of American democracy.

She shows us how racism as a system of power works in four distinct yet intertwined domains—structural, disciplinary, cultural, and interpersonal. Drawing examples from schools, politics, pop culture, personal experience, and more, she demonstrates in eye-opening ways how racial inequality is manufactured and reinforced, even as we publicly espouse an ideology of color-blind fairness.

And she points, crucially, to what we can do about it. Noting that everyone is situated differently in the complex domains of power, she urges us to “think expansively about resistance,” to figure out in which domain we can have the most effect in resisting racism as a system of power, and how. She also discusses classrooms around the country, teaching as a subversive activity, “cultivating countersurveillance,” and the power of storytelling and media.

Blending entertaining storytelling, social theory, and practical suggestions for changing institutions, including schools, Another Kind of Public Education is both a call for change and a reminder that public education—in every sense—is at the heart of American democratic possibilities.

Read more about this and see other reviews here: Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities