As some of you know, I have served for the past two years as President of the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE). My term ended just yesterday (and had been preceded by a two-year term as Vice President).

GSOLE is a hard-working group of volunteer educators dedicated to online writing and literacy instruction. Underlying everything we do is a commitment to access and inclusivity in online learning.

In that spirit, I wanted to share here the Statement on Anti-Racist Online Literacy Pedagogy and Administration that our organization composed and posted recently. This collaboratively written statement uses what I believe is strong, clear language, and by following through on the action items at the end, I hope GSOLE can continue to do its part to support accessible, inclusive, anti-racist teaching and learning practices.

Tags: race & culture, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Marking a special day out here, in the far western reaches of Texas, reaching back over the centuries to recall a day of celebration and thanks  near the end of a long and arduous journey.

Marking a time when a band of European settlers were seeking new opportunities in a new land. It was a venture that did not pass quickly or easily, there were delays of all sorts – some natural, and others political. Even by the standards of that time, centuries ago, the journey challenged the bodies and the souls of all – men, women, and children – yet they persevered until they reached the gateway to their destination. There, on the banks of the waters, they paused to celebrate, and give thanks.
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Tags: race & culture by Jeff McDonald
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One week ago today, I was in the food court at Houston-Hobby Airport, waiting for a flight home following the latest round in my ongoing Texas Cancer Smackdown. This round had gone well, with good test results and encouraging words from the folks at M.D. Anderson.

For obvious reasons, I was in the mood to relax – even celebrate – with some lunch. The food was good, and a cold glass of local brew added to my enjoyment of the meal. Several feet away, the Apollo Chamber Players were performing light classical pieces as part of the airport’s “Harmony in the Air” program … all in all, I was in good spirits.

But then there was change, as Apollo switched gears and began playing “The Star Spangled Banner.”
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Tags: diatribes, race & culture by Jeff McDonald
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“They were like all other parents. My mother liked to feed us. My father liked to take pictures.”

from The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Recent news of Lionel Shriver donning a sombrero to protest identity politics in the creative-writing world reminded me of Jenny Zhang’s Buzzfeed response to white poet Michael Derrick Hudson’s use of the Chinese pen name Yi-Fen Chou to wiggle his way into a Best of American Poetry collection.

I ignored the controversy over cultural appropriation but “took” from the Zhang essay to compare and contrast her parents’ fear of a child’s future as a writer to my own parents’ feelings about my choices. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, creative writing, race & culture by Alex Kudera
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WARNING: Reading Phyllis Chesler’s book “Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews” may be hazardous to your sense of well-being. It could lead to increased levels of skepticism. This, in turn could lead to a variety of side-effects … a willingness on your part to question what we are told about the world around us, to make an extra effort to gain more information. You may even find yourself rejecting what ‘everybody knows and believes,’ in favor of a view that is more complicated, more detailed … and perhaps more truthful. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, race & culture by Jeff McDonald
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10. May the road rise up to meet you.

9. May the wind be at your back.

8. May your Facebook friends delete you
                         If they refer to you as a ‘Mick’.

7. May the rain fall soft upon your fields.

6. May you feel like they’re nirvana.

5. May all your fields have massive yields
    If you’re growing marijuana.

4. May you find a place for your willy.

3. May you see the Emerald Land.

2. May your green beer stay quite chilly.

1. And may God hold you in His hand.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, race & culture by Bob Sullivan
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10. Shagging

9. Knocking Knickers

8. Licking the Leprechaun

7. Drowning the Shillelagh

6. Mashing Potatoes

5. Sharing a Gallon o’ Guinness

4. Putting the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder

3. Coaxing a Rainbow Out of the Pot o’ Gold

2. Knicking Knockers

1. The Wearin’ o’ the Grin
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, race & culture by Bob Sullivan
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Last night George Zimmerman, America’s most hated night watchman, was found not guilty in front of a jury of his peers. Soon afterwards, the level headed “pick your battles” Reverend Sharpton was already scheming for a civil conviction and federal civil rights investigation. Deep into the night there was a protest in San Francisco. And this morning the talking heads on MSLSD went back and forth about racial injustice in America.

Even looking at Facebook and Twitter, you would have thought that a gang of Klansmen were just acquitted for killing an 18 year-old black girl in a voting booth on election day with the deciding vote in Obama’s reelection. But if you quell all the emotion, you would see that this case was not a landmark racial injustice, but rather a compelling focal point, precedent, and lesson in political pressure, self-defense, and the burden of guilt. [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, race & culture by Robert O'Hara
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10. “Where I grew up, we always believed in calling a spade a spade.”

9. “I was misheard; I was actually talking about chigger bites.”

8. “I suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.”

7. “I thought it stood for ‘Needing Inalienable God-Given Equal Rights’.”

6. “All that butter has clogged up my brain.”

5. “My pal George Zimmerman said it was okay.”

4. “I’m a Southern racist cracker — what did you expect?”

3. “I spell out everything in my new autobiography White Like Me.”

2. “I just wasn’t thinking…about all the endorsement deals I’d lose.”

1. “I was hoping to get my own show on Fox News.”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, race & culture by Bob Sullivan
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Xi’an, China is a big bustling city of over seven million people. It was a Chinese capital of ancient dynasties that thrived centuries ago, but today takes second stage to the prominent coastal megacities—Beijing and Shanghai and that more recent capitalist “import” to the mainland, Hong Kong. Beijing of course hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics while Hong Kong hosts some of the most amazing economic inequalities anywhere in the world (think ten million dollar penthouse suites while poor city residents rent cages to live in), but Xi’an’s seven million residents would easily make it a top-five city in the United States and the most populous city of a majority of countries in the world. By contrast, my native Philadelphia, America’s fifth largest metropolis according to the 2010 U.S. Census, has a population within city limits of about 1.5 million. [Read more →]

Tags: race & culture, travel & foreign lands by Alex Kudera
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I had been in the US for five years before I encountered my first white supremacist. It happened outside a gas station on a rural back road in Texas, next to a used tire lot that I suspected was a front for skullduggery. We didn’t exchange any words; we just walked past each other, scowling. How did I know he was a white supremacist if we didn’t talk? The “White Power” tattoo on his gut was a dead giveaway.

Tags: race & culture, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I don’t feel angry at Adam Lanza. I know that makes some of you cringe, but I don’t have room in my heart right now for anger. I’m too filled up with pain for the lives that were lost, admiration for the heroic acts of our nation’s teachers, guilt for not doing enough to keep things like this from happening, and fear for what the future may hold. If Adam Lanza were standing in front of me right now, I would wrap my arms around him and tell him I’m sorry.

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Tags: race & culture, trusted media & news by Jessica Alfreds
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I said yesterday that I wasn’t going to talk about this in public. I guess I lied. With the Subway incident that occurred on Monday, it seems to be stuck on repeat in my mind. Maybe if I write about it… maybe that will help me to think about other things…

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Tags: race & culture, religion & philosophy by Jessica Alfreds
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I don’t know if you guys have been following the story of Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, but for those who haven’t I will give a brief summary.

Just about a month ago, Amanda posted this video explaining in detail what happened to her. When she was twelve years old, Amanda exposed her breasts to a man she was chatting with online via webcam. A year later he (or another man, it is unclear) threatened to send a topless screenshot of her to everyone she knew if she didn’t put on a private show for him. She refused and he made good on his threat. He sent the topless picture of Amanda to her parents, teachers, friends, and neighbors. She was humiliated and depressed, began using drugs and alcohol, and attempted suicide several times. This past Wednesday, October 10th, she finally succeeded in taking her own life.

The reaction to Amanda’s death seems to be focused on two themes: 1. we should make sure children never use the internet unsupervised, and 2. we have to impress upon our kids the permanence of the internet and make sure our girls value their bodies enough to be more selective about displaying them.

I think they are missing the point.

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Tags: family & parenting, race & culture by Jessica Alfreds
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Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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The gentleman we will call Brugan is 90% real, his balance is made up of input from other folks present at our chat who shall remain nameless but not voiceless. Recall that YOU are 90% water. Brugan is a twenty-something light-skinned brother about as ghetto as Arthur Ashe. He is feeling his oats and so he should. He has a plum gig; he is breaking into the business of politics as an advisor to a challenger to John Lewis for his House seat. That challenger is, of course, a Democrat and his aspiration to replace Lewis is, ah, quite a project. But this cat was definitely loving life, on the payroll of a real, honest-to-god campaign. We have the opportunity here to observe the gunslinger in his pupal form. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Ken Watson
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Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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In an interview with ABC News yesterday, the President finally came out of the closet — kind of. He stated for the first time on the record that he supports gay marriage. But he stopped short of promising any executive or legislative action toward this cause. How convenient. Just the night before, North Carolina voted by a wide margin for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, becoming the 30th state to pass such a ban.

I admit that Obama’s vocal support for gay marriage is monumental. I also recognize that the issue of gay marriage is the next social battlefield in America. However, I hope this election does not get bogged down with social issues. High unemployment, the poor housing market, and a disaster of impending debt are the urgent and important issues. No one is going to be able to afford gay wedding ceremonies, easily accessible birth control, or teenage abortions if we don’t fix the economy. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, race & culture by Robert O'Hara
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Conditions in Florida are dry and hot. General conflagration has not broken out but that is not from any lack of ignition. There has been a sudden squall but whether it delivers more rain than lightning remains to be seen. George Zimmerman is in custody, surrendering without incident with the public release of the charges against him.

This should be a moment of great relief, should it not? The Martin family has consistently said that what they want is Justice for Trayvon, as the copyrighted phrase has it. Further they have said that what they desire is an arrest and a REAL investigation inverting the usual order. The implication is that there has not been a real investigation until now, the one delivering charges of second degree murder on a set of facts that the original Sanford based prosecutors thought warranted no charges at all. It is easy to understand why observers might think that so but mostly because of faulty information or explicit DISinformation, all of which will now be hashed out in open court, as it should be, while much of it has been hashed and re-hashed in the public sphere. Here is another helping of hash, including leftovers that have since gone sour.

The initial cause of outrage has become moot as it has proven to be false. The Martin family advocates originally stated three untruths: first that Zimmerman never was taken into custody on that fatal night. That falsehood stood nearly unrebutted until the release of a security video showing Zimmerman in handcuffs at the cop shop. Team Martin also declared that the crime scene was never attended to in any meaningful way but we have since seen video of the usual technicians and procedures being performed promptly and as competently as we can tell. The third falsehood was that Zimmerman’s pistol was never taken in as evidence. This also we know to be a flat inversion of the facts.  [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, race & culture by Ken Watson
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There has been a spark in Florida. Whether it proves igniting depends on the condition and volume of the available fuel. It has been hot and dry across the nation for some time so we should be cautious with cigarette butts and any other sort of burning. In that case, maybe Al Sharpton should have stayed home. Too late for that now. He has broken out the tropical suits and the high-humidity hair treaments. Rev Sharpton has been one of the leading voices championing Justice for Tayvon as this movement is aptly known, calling for patience and support for the Martin family as they brace for the possibly imminent arrest of their son.  [Read more →]

Tags: on the law, race & culture, trusted media & news by Ken Watson
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