Op-Ed Columnist – Welcome to the ‘Club’ – NYTimes.com.

This week, the fog of racial profiling hung heavy over Harvard Square.

The arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., the eminent Harvard scholar, at his own home thrust the police’s treatment of minorities, particularly black men, back into the spotlight.

Whether one thinks race was a factor in this arrest may depend largely on the prism through which the conflicting accounts are viewed. For many black men, it’s through a prism stained by the fact that a negative, sometimes racially charged, encounter with a policeman is a far-too-common rite of passage.

Sociological Images » On Sotomayor And White Privilege.

Really interesting read, and Colbert is spot on. I’ve kind of on & off in keeping up with the Sotomayor hearings and I know very little of her background. Maybe she’ll never live down her mention of being a “wise Latina,” but when you think about it, the white males who are doing the questioning are naturally assuming that whiteness and maleness are the norm in this country, and anything deviating from that is somehow tainting a judge’s neutrality.

…Which begs the question — what is the problem with being a wise Latina in this country? Does that phrase have the judges concerned because it means Sotomayor is going to side with all women and all Latinos? If that’s the simple and erroneous deduction that people will make, should the same logic apply the other way? That white male judges might possibly side with all males and all whites in court cases?

Of course it’s not that simple, but it’s always such a taboo moment the second any person of public importance mentions race, and all these questions have to be raised about PC-ness and objectivity. And yet, the dominant race as seen in the media and in the majority of the most powerful people in America is white, but nobody ever mentions it because it’s become The Norm.

Just something to think about.

Gut reaction: The longest action film ever, but so good. Better than the first. Shia Lebouf is worthy of better things than this, to be honest.

And now the slightly longer, more in-depth look at two new characters that critics have said are “racist” caricatures. Minor spoilers ahead!

So there are two new characters introduced into this movie, named Mudflap and Skids. I don’t know anything about the Transformers universe, so I Wiki’ed the two characters, and the important things I’ve gathered from the characters are that:

Mudflap’s character in the original Japanese version was named Demolisher. In the American animated series, the character had a variation of a French accent.

Skids was originally named Diaclone. “Skids was characterized as the perfect absent-minded warrior. Highly intelligent and always collecting data, Skids is nonetheless always daydreaming. He is a scientist first and foremost, and has made many valuable discoveries.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Of course they’re feeling fucking stigma, people are so uninformed and prone to panic at every little thing all the effing time,

From Chile, where sports officials declined to host Mexican soccer teams, to China, where the authorities force even healthy resident Mexicans and Mexican travelers into quarantine, Mexicans say they have been typecast as disease carriers and subjected to humiliating treatment.

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But non-stop media coverage of a feared pandemic and the belief that the sometimes fatal virus originated in Mexico — which is disputed by Mexican health experts and officials — have overwhelmed calls by global health authorities to avoid panic while preparing for a broader outbreak.

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According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it contains genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, as well as avian and human genes.

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According to Mexican consular officials, those taken from their hotel rooms include some families with small children, who were initially told that they would be tested for the H1N1 virus and released, but were later informed that they would be held for a week.

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In Beijing, 10 Mexican citizens have been confined to the Guomen Hotel, which sits directly behind the city’s designated influenza pandemic hospital. On Sunday, the Mexican consul delivered food to the hotel, but he was not allowed to talk to the sequestered guests.

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Amid the uncertainty of the outbreak, Mexicans are also being subjected to discrimination by other Mexicans.

Late last week, a crowd of people in the Mexican state of Guerrero stoned two cars that had license plates from Mexico City. The protesters were apparently worried by the arrival of people from the capital, where the influenza has hit hardest.

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Irked that some in the United States — especially groups that favor limiting the number of Mexican immigrants — have begun calling the virus “the Mexican flu,” some radio commentators in Mexico City have fired back with a label of their own for the outbreak: “California flu.”

Reading the rest here.

I don’t like the tone of this article. It’s so effing annoying that the NY Times is always ramming China. Well, most of American media is. I’m not getting into the politics side of it because 1) I don’t think Americans will EVER see communism as something remotely okay, and 2) I don’t think China will adopt democratic rule any time in my own lifetime. But the fact is that medical treatment in China is NOT as advanced as compared to that in the US. Not even close. Yes China has the second largest GDP ABC CED XYZ what-have-you in the world but all that wealth has not precipitated into their health care system. I’ve been to my share of Chinese hospitals — believe me — and they don’t even have the notion of health insurance. Everything is pay out of pocket or NO TREATMENT GOODBYE. They wouldn’t be equipped to treat an outbreak of swine flu if it were to occur in China, what with the GIGANTIC population and how closely the people live amongst each other. Their precautions are discriminatory, no doubts about it, but the mainland and Hong Kong have already been “responsible” for their share of the flu — SARS — so I can understand the extremity in their actions.

But just the ignorance and the lack of responsibility coming from all people all over the world is mindblowing. It fucking makes me distressed that people can be like this to one another. The media has a huge hand in contributing to mass fear but I wish people would calm the fuck down sometimes.

I’m laughing, but I’m really crying on the inside.

By Josh Olin, Spring issue of V Man