I am liking JK Rowling much more as time goes by

J.K. Rowling Just Said She Loves a Black Hermione: "White Skin Was Never Specified"

The internet promptly exploded this weekend on the news that Noma Dumezweni, a black actress originally from Swaziland, would be cast as Hermione Granger in the next installment of the much-hyped play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. While fans got to know Hermione as white when she was played by Emma Watson in the movies, the books give no indication about the race of the story's most important female character.

On Monday, the series author and final Potter authority, confirmed that her text never indicated Hermione's race and that she "loves" the idea of a black Hermione. "Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione."

I have to admit

I saw this on Facebook (thanks to Bill Hart) on election day and it made me laugh. I think the point is, race shouldn't matter.

Bizarre, backward, and wrong

In China, English teaching is a whites-only club

Take, for example, Mike Lee and Will Evans, students from the U.S. and Canada, respectively, who applied to be English teachers through the New Development School, a teacher-placement agency in Beijing. Being fluent speakers of English, both believed they would make competitive candidates.

What they didn’t know is that recruiters would not be evaluating them just on their English fluency or academic credentials. Instead, they were judged primarily on physical appearance.

“We want him [pointing to Evans], but we don’t want you [to Lee],” the recruiter told them, as the two stood side by side at the front counter of the school. “Unfortunately, parents of our students don’t really want someone Asian to be teaching.”

Lee, who is Korean-American, was rejected from the school despite having previous experience teaching English as a second language (ESL). Evans, a white Canadian, was hired on the spot.

“I was shocked – back home this wouldn’t be acceptable,” Lee told NBC News. “I’ve never been discriminated (against) in that way.”

Then there's this:

A post by Vogue on a popular online forum and classifieds site, The Beijinger, explicitly spells out the phenomenon:

“In Beijing this is the general pecking order in terms of a company's recruitment (by Chinese managers):
1. White Americans/Canadians
2. White British
3. White Australians/New Zealanders and South Africans
4. European Nonnatives/Black Americans/Black British
5. American Asians/Black Aussies (Australians) and Kiwis (New Zealanders)/Filipinos/Africans”

The discrimination comes, Evans said, because Chinese parents simply do not believe a non-white person can possibly be a native speaker. Thus, this logic continues, hiring a white person is the simplest and easiest way to ensure that the teacher is truly fluent.

Well, I have to admit, he has a point, especially given the media

This may be offensive to some, and I'm certainly not saying that the practice is right. It very much isn't. Nor are missing or murdered people funny, really. But although he does it through comedy, the point is very much well taken: the media spend a lot more time reporting on missing white children and women than they do other ethnicities, that's for sure.



Thanks to Graham Murkett (SomeGreyBloke), who posted this on Facebook.

Apologising for an injustice done

Lawmaker wants Ala. to apologize to rape victim

An Alabama legislator wants the state to apologize to a black woman raped in 1944 by a group of white men who later avoided prosecution.

Democratic state Rep. Dexter Grimsley of Newville says he is preparing a resolution apologizing to Recy Taylor, who was 24-years-old and living in her native Henry County when she was gang-raped in Abbeville. Two all-white, all-male grand juries declined to bring charges.

Grimsley said he believes police bungled the investigation and harassed Taylor. The married woman was walking home from church when she was kidnapped, raped and left on the side of the road in an isolated rural area.

It is thought that she's outlived her rapists, but the apology is being sought because of how the state handled the case, including making it sound like she was a prostitute when in fact she was not. She felt so much pressure in her home state that she moved to another state entirely. A lot of things were done during Segregation that were shameful, and can never be made up to those who lived (and died) under its sway.

The state should apologise for victimising Recy Taylor, for daemonising her for her race and trivialising her pain. It think it would certainly be just. I guess it is better late than never. It's a nice gesture. But it still smacks of 'too little too late' for me.

It can never erase a life of knowing justice wasn't done because she was seen as 'deserving' her lot due to her 'racial inferiority'--or so it was thought of then. The men who did this not only escaped justice; others were complicit after the fact. The state can only apologise for its role, though. Plus, she certainly was not the only person treated this way. How do you apologise to everyone who had similar experiences in a meaningful way? Does one apology to one person suffice?

Apologies are simple gestures. I'm not saying they shouldn't be made--they can go a long way to healing a rift. But they shouldn't stand on their own--what would be best is to also make sure no one else is ever treated this way. We've come a long way since 1944, but there are still those whose mentalities are the same. The state has the responsibility to prosecute and discover the guilt of perpetrators of whatever race against victims of whatever race to the fullest extent of the law, leaving behind prejudice. Race should really only come into it if it is a racially-motivated attack. And in cases of rape, the victim's character really is for the most part irrelevant. I don't care if you're a stripper or prostitute or a nice church-going married lady--you don't deserve to be raped. So the use of those sorts of tactics must be abolished. I'd like to think they were never used these days, but we know they are.

It's good these sorts of situations still make the news, though, so we can think about how to make our society as just as possible.

Sad end to a remarkable woman

Once-revered lawmaker freezes to death alone: She was the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature

Juanita Goggins was an educator who went into politics and got ground-breaking education legislation passed. She was a trailblazer, an excellent role-model. But she became increasingly reclusive in recent years and refused help from others. After she was found in her home, dead of hypothermia, signs of dementia were found during the autopsy, which may have accounted for her situation. She sounds like a wonderful woman who had a lonely life towards the end. That's a shame. Yes, it was by choice, but it seems to have been an impaired one. Hopefully her work and her life will be remembered, though.

Interesting study

Is HIV progression sex-linked?

German researchers have identified a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) on the X chromosome that appears to be connected to a slower development of AIDS after HIV infection in women with the characteristic compared to men (with or without the SNP) or women who lack it. The study was done with data from American women of European descent; when scientists searched for the prevalence of the SNP in other ethnicities, they found that Asian women of Japanese and Chinese descent had it in much higher numbers than those of European descent, but it is very rare amongst women of African descent, which could help explain some of the differences in how different races respond to the disease. Perhaps in the future, scientists can find a way to use this information to boost the chances for those who lack this polymorphism.

:)

How often do you see racial harmony selling sectional sofas? From a (real) store in High Point, North Carolina, the 'Furniture Capital of the World'.



Wacky furniture ad becomes Internet sensation: Selling furniture with racial harmony, melody--‘I like deer hunting and bass fishing and extending credit to all people’

Some thoughts

I really wish Kentucky would extend its voting hours. 6 am-6 pm (at least in many areas--we have a variable schedule--some areas have until 7 pm) doesn't work for many workers or parents trying to get their kids to and from school. I took the day off just in case of problems. Not everyone has that luxury.

I apparently belong to one of only two precincts in Lexington with less than 100 voters registered. I know this because a news story mentioned that there were two with only one voting machine because of this. I guess that means if I don't want to encounter lines, I have to stay put. :)

I really think McCain lost this election not because the oeconomy tanked in September (let's face it, it's been doing so for months now--it just became more palpable due to Wall Street tanking), but because 1) his campaign never really found a direction to go forward with (chasing issues from here and there, not really presenting what John McCain himself stood for well, not like Obama's platform for change and slogans that included people like 'Yes, we can') but even more importantly, 2) the choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. No matter how much he might have been liked by many voters, it proved to be a very telling about his judgement, and I think many voters could not stomach her being a heartbeat away from the presidency--not because she is a woman, I think that has nothing to do with it--but because she is Sarah Palin. She has some very scary ideals that believe it or not do not resonate with the majority of Americans, and is obviously unprepared to be vice-president, much less president.

I think the gender card got played way too much during this race. I did not favour Hillary Clinton based on her personality. It had nothing to do with her gender. And I found the selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate insulting, knowing that there were many other Republican women who would have served very well. It seems like some people had an idea that as long as someone had the female plumbing than we are all interchangeable, which is not the case. I would love to have a female candidate I could really have gotten behind like I did with Obama. But whilst I won't say I would have voted McCain over Clinton in this election, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to vote for her, and would only have done so out of necessity. I could not have voted for McCain, however, once he selected Palin, because among other things I question his judgement strongly over that one. I'd rather have a candidate I can believe in. I found that with Obama.

Also, I'm happy that in the end, race was not as important as say, oeconomy. Obviously there was a huge turnout among blacks and apparently a very good one among Latinos. And looking at the breakdown in Applalachian counties (at least in my state), the numbers for McCain over Obama were very strong--but it's unclear whether that had to do with race or if they're just such Republican counties). But one of the pundits also pointed out that a different demographic which Obama did well with were college-educated whites, a group Democratic candidates have not done well with in the past. Since I'm part of that demographic, I'm glad we were able to make a difference.

Oddest thing I've come across on the Internet in awhile

Funny or Die has an Asian commercial that has commentors debating racism. Um...the point of the commercial seems to be that you can't judge by appearances, therefore, I can't really say it's racist. On the other hand, I think the people from the agency that came up with this one had to be on drugs--or maybe the commercial is best viewed that way. I'll let you decide.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

I meant to post about this earlier

I'm at odds with at least one friend of mine. I heard this story whilst he was watching TV on Tuesday. There are some mitigating circumstances that are in this article that I didn't hear then, but on the other hand, I still believe this was murder--cold-blooded, possibly racially-motivated, murder. It reads like a 'bubba' bagging him some (fill in whatever racial epithet bubbas might use here).


Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law

And I quote the 911 operator in the case: 'Ain’t no property worth shooting somebody over, O.K.?'

Okay, so the two men were illegal immigrants from Colombia here under forged documents. They were certainly burglars--they had a pillowcase full of over $2,000 in Mr Horn's neighbours' property. These were obviously not 'Good Men'. But they were also apparently shot in the back running away from him--and were unarmed. In any other state in the Union I suspect that it's considered murder once no one is in imminent danger. But this happened to be Texas, and that's a whole other ballgame.

A grand jury's going to have to sort out, for example, whether you can act with deadly force to protect a neighbour's property like you can your own. And then there's the race issue.

Mr Horn identified them on the line as black. He offered to get his shotgun and then told the operator, who was trying to convince him to stay in his house, that he was going out there and kill them--not stop them: kill them.

In another twist, a plainclothes detective had just arrived on the scene and witnessed the shooting but did not have enough time to announced his position and in fact may have ducked to avoid Mr Horn, thinking he might think he was their driver.

Because of this there have been protests both for and against, and at least one death threat. The city is moving to ban protests in the residential area, which may be for the best, since I'm sure it's causing havoc--and certainly the death threat is wrong and should be pursued. But there's lots of other ways to express First Amendment rights, and people are entitled to their opinions. Many hail Mr Horn as a hero. I'm not one of them. I think there's something wrong with eagerly grabbing your firearm to 'help out' the police and shooting people in the back. I think anyone in a moment of adrenaline can think they're in danger, but he was safe in his house and made that clear to the operator. It didn't sound like he thought his neighbours were in danger--just their property. Property can be replaced--lives can't. And vigilantes don't make us any safer--especially 'helpful' vigilantes with guns.