Thursday, October 31, 2013

Boston Strong: Music to Fans' Ears

On baseball, music, and the persistence of civil society in the midst of so much incivility, with a nice dose of Kennedy (well, Fitzgerald) heritage mixed in:

Boston Strong: Music to Fans' Ears:
New Englanders awoke this Halloween to the realization that they weren’t just dreaming Wednesday night: The Boston Red Sox really did win their third World Series in the last 10 years.
Much w...

Friday, October 25, 2013

Shared article: "Race Relations in Black and White"

I recently came across this fascinating article on the way film (still and motion) implicitly embodied a hierarchy of race.  This History News Network article in turn links to another interesting piece published by the Washington Post.  An excellent example of the way cultural norms carry within them an embedded code of meaning.

Pieces such as this are a useful reminder of the limitations of "colorblindness" as a doctrine.  True "colorblindness" results from a very real and active awareness of how deeply and subconsciously our perceptions are influenced by race.  Only engagement will give us the tools to surmount racism.  Turning a "blind" eye and refusing to grapple with our embedded hierarchies?  That's just ignorance.