“And then, in 2010, Marvel Comics presented a Spider-Man (the 'Ultimate' version) who was 13 years old and brown. To see Spider-Man pulling his mask over a tiny brown chin – to see a boy with short curly hair sticking to the ceiling of his bedroom— well, something happened. Dagim has been Spider-Man for two Halloweens in a row. He takes a bath with his Spider-Man and a toy killer whale. He has Spider-Man toothpaste and a Spider-Man toothbrush. If Spider-Man offered medical coverage, I think he would want that, too. ............. I thought for a while that my son would never be interested in my comics. I was afraid they would just represent another club he couldn’t join: all those big-jawed white guys with their hair parted to the side. But thanks to Spider-Man, my son imagines himself jumping on giant robots and saving the city. I hear him doing that behind the door of his room.”
—NY Times: A Superhero Who Looks Like My SonMe, On The Screen: Race in Animal Crossing: New Leaf
I’m sitting on my bed for the third day in a row.
I’m waiting for 5PM to hit so that I can finally close my 3DS. I’ve been ‘tanning’ my avatar in the latest entry of Nintendo’s long running Animal Crossing series, New Leaf. I put ‘tanning’ in scare quotes because the method doesn’t match my intention. Yes, I’m doing the the thing the game calls tanning, but my objective isn’t just darkening my avatar’s skin tone, it’s being able to see in the screen what I see in the mirror
“This is the first time you have whites thinking they face more discrimination than blacks do," said Camille Charles, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies class and race. "You have people who have come to believe the system is set up to benefit black people at the expense of white people." Such beliefs, she said, reflect ignorance about the persistence of discrimination, about how much harder minorities were hit by the Great Recession, and about how affirmative action actually works (many incorrectly conflate "affirmative action" with "racial quotas," which the Supreme Court long ago ruled unconstitutional). ”
—Dr. Camille Charles“Casting directors: EVERY TIME a role is non-race-specific, I urge you to throw a diverse mix of artists into the casting pool and just see what happens. I know that there are so so many actors vying for your attention and that categorization is necessary, but too often I hear of talented minority actors who’d be perfect for a role but they can’t even get seen for the part. I don’t mean to in any way single you out, but the reason I focus attention on casting directors specifically is because casting is – as you know – a numbers game. The fewer artists of color the director and playwright even see in the first place, the fewer that will make it to the stage. So as a policy I urge you to just think a little wider when you’re thinking of who'd be perfect for a role. When an actor loses a plum role to somebody else, that’s hard. But when they never even had a shot to begin with, that’s devastating.”
—How to Cast Actors of Color - Mike Lew - Playwright
Dear E.W. Jackson: Giving Me Birth Control Access Isn't the Same as Burning a Cross on My Lawn
rhrealitycheck.orgThe Republican Virginia Lt. Gov. candidate said Planned Parenthood has been “far more lethal to Black lives than the KKK ever was.” How is allowing low-income women of color non-judgmental access to birth control more dangerous than a group of cross-burning terrorists?
My latest at RHRC
