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Hey all,

Some very disturbing news here (Daniel, you might be interested?)

Top ten lies extremist right wing Christian fundamentalists tell about America (There. Are. No. Words ) :

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2010/01/ten-top-lies-fundamentalists-tell-about.html

Really...extremist right wing Christians are in a position of power and they think that *they're* powerless and persecuted? Pull the other one.

I wish extremist Christians would stop pulling stuff like this. It gives decent Christians a bad name (I'm not a Christian anymore, but I have friends who are decent Christians). It's unspeakable.

commentary on above link here:

http://community.livejournal.com/atheism/2183853.html
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Long and painful history of Asian and Black characters being played by white people in movies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface


Explanations on how there is a history of people insulting black people by calling them monkeys:

http://community.livejournal.com/racism_101/58003.html

Racefail, and how racist stereotypes can hurt:

http://rosehiptea.livejournal.com/499326.html

Racist stereotypes can seriously hurt. They are not 'minor' or 'trivial'. For instance, if someone portrays all of their black characters as criminals in a story, that is a harmful racist stereotype. That is because it reinforces the common racist belief that black people are all criminals.

Read more... )

I am aware that non white people can be racist. However, I think racism by white people is mentioned more often because some white countries have a much more recent longer and recent history (in general) of colonising and enslaving many other countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonisation_of_Africa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Portuguese_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_expansion_of_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_colonial_empire

Link on slavery of black people in the US

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

Link on the Holocaust in Germany:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust

I believe that racism is racial prejudice backed by institutionalised power (the following link is a fantastic resource on what racism is, and what you can do to fight it):

http://www.racismnoway.com.au/library/understanding/index-What.html

This post was edited to add more links
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Hi there all,

Fantastic articles on how homophobia and sexism in religion don't make sense:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/not-another-word-on-gay-m_b_152282.html

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/losing-my-religion-for-equality-20090714-dk0v.html?page=-1

Sexism hurts all of us. Respecting the rights of women and girls will enrich our livess so much more:

It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

Racism and cultural appropriation. Fascinating info and a gentle look on how Indians see yoga:

http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/680

Some passages from the article above I found to be interesting eye openers:

India, to me, is not spiritual; it is a raucous, exhausting, intense, and yes, at times, violent experience.

Yet I was also curious about the particular form of yoga she was studying, a layer of India with which I am not familiar. I had never met an Indian who went to an ashram; most I knew thought of it as a white person's paradise that cost too much, or it just hadn't crossed their minds to go. At the same time, I knew that yoga was practiced in India, but in subtler, less obvious ways.

Yet yoga was not altogether lost or forgotten; rather it was latent in the culture, sometimes woven into daily and religious life. Yoga, to an Indian, might mean meditation and breathing as part of a morning puja, a practice done quietly at home and without a name. Nearly everyone I spoke with told me the same thing: Yoga was something unremarkable...

The problem he sees--and it's by far the most significant-- is its effect of countering hatha yoga's aim: The heart rate and breath rate are actually increased rather than reduced. All of the teachers I spoke with were concerned about the Westerners misunderstanding yoga. Geeta Iyengar, B. K. S.'s daughter, states bluntly, "Popularity becomes a curse. Popularity introduces dilution. To maintain the purity of the original science and art of yoga is a difficult task. The careful balance between orthodoxy and modernity has to be maintained. However, dilution for the sake of convenience and popularity is not pardonable." Adds Ramanand Patel: "The objection is when these Western influences completely disregard what yoga has to say."
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Hi there everyone,

Sites supporting transgendered people:

http://www.transalliancesociety.org/links.html

Transgender Law and Policy Institute (provides advocacy for transgendered people):

http://www.transgenderlaw.org/

Non-bigoted slurs and language:

http://forums.theirisnetwork.org/viewtopic.php?t=271

Hope you find this useful. Definitely worth reading, for what it's worth.
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My thoughts on vejiicakes marvellous post here:

http://vejiicakes.livejournal.com/254810.html Let me show you them.

It's sad (but not so surprising) that whitewashing and racism still persists in movies nowadays (from the casting of Asian characters as white people) to the hideous lack of research in movies. And why is it that the *real* Asians keep on getting typecasted as the villains even in films nowadays? (see: Avatar: The Last Airbender and Prince of Persia)

It sends out the message that real Asian people can't play positive/heroic roles. It implies that Asian people can't be heroes and aren't worth talking about. I don't care that this might not be what Hollywood directors are intending - it's the message that's being sent out by whitewashing. In this day and age when people are being flooded with images everywhere they go - the images used in movies, ads, cartoons matter. Who you use to represent in movies matters. This stays in people's minds.

And it's unsupportive of Asian actors seeking roles that don't stereotype or dehumanise their race.

lady_jafaria and suburbanspleen sum things up very well about the Prince of Persia movie here:

http://wazira-sharira.livejournal.com/111876.html

http://suburban-spleen.livejournal.com/127341.html

Seriously, people. Not that hard to do research on other cultures. Hollywood makes huge efforts to do research on how people lived in the past. They can do the same when it comes to researching other cultures too.
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Please READ this. The following text in italics is a must read article. It's on the discrimination women and other minority groups face, once they become leaders in their workplaces.

From wikipedia: A glass cliff is a term coined by Dr Michelle Ryan and Prof Alex Haslam of Exeter University, United Kingdom, in 2004.

Their research demonstrates that once women break through the glass ceiling and take on positions of leadership they often have experiences that are different from their male counterparts. More specifically, women are more likely to occupy positions that can be described as precarious and thus have a higher risk of failure - either because they are in organizational units that are in crisis or because they are not given the resources and support needed for success. Extending the metaphor of the glass ceiling, they evoke the metaphor of the ‘glass cliff’ to capture the subtlety to the phenomenon and feeling of teetering on the edge. [1]

Michelle Ryan is a Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter. Alex Haslam is a Professor of Psychology at University of Exeter and editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology. Their research into the glass cliff is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the European Social Fund, and the Economic and Social Research Council.

In 2005 research into the glass cliff was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education's Research Project of the Year and will feature in New York Times Magazine'sIdeas of 2008.


"It therefore appears that after having broken through a glass ceiling women are actually more likely than men to find themselves on a "glass cliff", meaning their positions of leadership are risky or precarious." [2]

The official website on the glass cliff is: http://psy.ex.ac.uk/seorg/glasscliff/

 

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