It's black history month!

I love how my sister sends me her pictures from Christmas... JUST IN TIME FOR FEBRUARY.
But, gee, pictures of her at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, mere inches from Harrison Ford, well, golly-gee, those pictures end up in my inbox the next day. Priorities, I guess.
Anyways, I won't inflict more holiday snaps on you, except for this one:



... Just because they look as crazy as they are in reality.

So, with the ticking over of the clock in a mere five hours, it becomes Black History month once again. I won't spin tales of Kwaanza or extol the virtues of having more chicken and watermelon in your diet, but I will pass on this story coming out of the states. It's pretty good.

Oh, and for you football fans, don't forget to read all about this.. Just because I'm acknickulous like that.


THE GANGTSA SYNDROME: Recent spate of college parties mocking black stereotypes sparks outrage

By Bruce Smith
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — White students at Tarleton State University in Texas hold a party in which they dress in gang gear and drink malt liquor from paper bags. A white Clemson University student attends a bash in black face over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear “bling bling” grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.
From Connecticut to Colorado, “gangsta” theme parties thrown by whites are drawing the ire of college officials and heated complaints from black and white students who say the antics conjure the worst racial stereotypes.
At the same time, some black academics say they aren’t surprised, given the popularity of rap music among inner-city blacks and well-to-do suburban whites alike.
The white students, they say, were mimicking the kind of outlaw posturing that blacks themselves engage in in rap videos. They suggest the white students ended up crossing the same line that says it is OK for blacks to call each other “nigger,” but not all right for whites to do it.
Whites often don’t realize their actions are offensive because they are imitating behaviour celebrated in music and seen on television, said Venise Berry, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Iowa who has researched rap music and popular culture.
“The segment of rap music that is glamorized and popularized by the media is gangsta rap,” said Berry, who is black. “It has become an image that is normalized in our society. That to me explains clearly why they don’t see it as wrong.”
At an off-campus “Bullets and Bubbly” party thrown by University of Connecticut School of Law students in January, pictures showed students wearing baggy jeans, puffy jackets and holding fake machine guns.
The University of Colorado’s Ski and Snowboard Club advertised a “gangsta party” in September, with fliers featuring rappers and fake bullet holes. The theme was dropped after complaints, but some students, who didn’t get the message, showed up in gangsta garb, hoping to win prizes.
Often such parties go unnoticed outside campuses until students post pictures on Facebook.com and other websites. That’s how images of the Clemson party surfaced this week. One student wore blackface; another white student put padding in her pants to make her rear end look bigger.
Harold Hughes, a black fraternity member at Clemson whose frat brothers attended the party, said white students “see this on MTV and BET they think it’s cool to portray hip hop culture.” Hughes said he found it especially offensive that the party was held over a holiday created to honour the slain civil rights leader.
Many white Clemson students said they did not believe the party was held to intentionally offend blacks, and after news of the party reached beyond the campus, organizers issued an unsigned letter of apology.
Still, school officials are investigating, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the party was not harmless fun.
“We once lynched African-Americans as good fun and humour,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP.
One hip-hop insider, Chris Conners, programing director at Columbia radio station WHXT HOT 103.9, said he has no problem with whites imitating certain aspects of black culture — driving cars with flashy rims, for example. But he said students who put on blackface or padded their rear ends crossed the line.
“They weren’t really celebrating hip-hop culture. They were making fun of African-Americans, and that’s what really concerns me,” he said.
James Johnson, a black psychology professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington who has researched racial attitudes and teaches a seminar on race and prejudice, said he is more discouraged by the rap performers who perpetuate stereotypes than by the “clueless kids” who imitate them.
“In the civil rights movement, you didn’t have blacks who called themselves `niggers’ and who called their women `bitches’ and `whores’ and who glorified being violent and being thugs,” he said. “Now these white kids are kind of confused.”
These incidents come at a time racial tolerance on college campuses is perceived to be steadily improving. But the truth may be more complicated.
A University of Dayton sociologist who analyzed journals kept by 626 white college students found the students behaved substantially differently when they were in the company of other whites than when they were with other races.
When the students, who were asked to record their interactions with other people, were alone with other white students, racial stereotypes and racist language were surprisingly common, researcher Leslie Picca found. One student reported hearing the “n-word” among white students 27 times in a single day.
The results suggest white students have little sense of shame about racial insults and stereotyping and treat them as simply a part of the culture.
“This is a new generation who grew up watching `The Cosby Show,”’ Picca said. “They have the belief that racism isn’t a problem anymore so the words they use and the jokes they tell aren’t racist.”
Picca said she found it “heartbreaking” to see so many well-educated students perpetuating the stereotypes.


Here's my stance on this. And yes, you get my two cents whether you want to or not. This is my blog after all, dammit.
It seems to me that there's a double-standard at work here. It's OK for black people - like Dave Chappelle, for instance - to openly mock white people (the majority), but it's not OK for the reverse to happen. Picking on the minority is like rooting against the underdog - it's just not Kosher.
Take the current "smear campaign" against the Conservative head of the Commons native affairs committee.
The Liberals want him to resign after he responded with "good joke" to an email he got last summer. Here's the joke:

An Indian walks into a Tim Hortons with a shotgun in one hand and a buffalo in the other.
"What can I get you, Chief?" the server asks.
The India drinks his coffee, blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere, then walks out.
The next day, the he comes back.
“Whoa, Tonto!” says the server. “We’re still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?
“The Indian smiles and proudly says, 'Training for an upper management position in Canadian Government: Come in, drink coffee, shoot the bull, leave mess for others to clean up, and disappear for rest of day.’”

He's right: it is a good joke.
Now Mayes, whose wife is Japanese, and whose daughter has two adopted sons are from Haiti, is being labeled as a racist. But if you were to substitute a "Newfie" or "Polack" — both common caucasian stereotypes in there — it would be seen as harmless and inoffensive. But then again, you're listening to the opinion of someone who dressed up as a sheep-humping Chilliwack Redneck one Halloween. So what the hell do I know?