race – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

‘Race,’ ‘Diversity,’ and the University

If this was a good time for Canadian academia, you would not be able to tell from the blanket of almost absolute silence that has been pulled over universities. There is no euphoria, no celebratory mood, no applause for the changes that are happening. There is, however, a degree of infighting, mutual suspicion, recrimination, and […]

by Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill

Book Review: The Tribal Imagination—Civilization and the Savage Mind, by Robin Fox

The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind. Robin Fox. Harvard University Press. Hardcover. ISBN 9780674059016. Publication: March 2011. 432 pages, 28 line illustrations, 3 maps. Professor Robin Fox is one of those mildly conservative, somewhat eccentric, Englishmen that even we Irish Revolutionaries cannot help but find likeable. I had read his The Red Lamp of Incest some years ago, and […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Sugar Sammy’s Art: Making Jokes of Ethnicity, Sex, and Conflict

Another installment of Monday Morning Madness takes us to Sugar Sammy, an Indo-Canadian stand-up comedian who offers a narrative that is dripping with racial, ethnic and gender jokes, directed against Indians, and virtually every other major ethnic group in North America. Thanks to UK-based Trinidadian blogger, Jumbie’s Watch, for drawing my attention to these videos. […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The 9th Annual Critical Race Conference: Compassion, Complicity and Conciliation The Politics, Cultures and Economies of ‘Doing Good’

UPDATE: The deadline for paper abstracts has been extended to 16 March 2009. UPDATE: The website for the conference is located at http://sites.google.com/site/criticalracemontreal/ I am happy to further distribute this announcement of a call for paper abstracts (on short notice, my apologies) for a conference that I hold in high esteem — I presented at […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Blackbird: Battles over a browser

O Blackbird! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may’st warble, eat and dwell. — Lord Alfred Tennyson Continuing from the last post on the subject of Blackbird, a new Internet browser ostensibly designed to cater for African American interests, it seems […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Blackbird: Browser for Black People

Yes, there is a browser for black people: Blackbird: Blackbird was developed on the simple proposition that we, as the African American community, can make the Internet experience better for ourselves and, in doing so, make it better for everyone. Primarily we believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Yes You Can. Yes You Did.

What a night. I am happy to have been alive to see this. Right now a million people packed into a park in Chicago await the arrival of Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. John McCain finished speaking a few minutes ago. In part because the competing sides that dominated the election […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

“This is Your Nation on White Privilege,” by Tim Wise

A post about an excellent, polemically incisive essay by Tim Wise, on the double standards, selective blindness, and racist hypocrisy embedded in contemporary U.S. politics. You can read more over at 1D4TW.

by Maximilian C. Forte

R.A.C.E. Conference: RACE-ING HEGEMONIES, RESURGING IMPERIALISMS

R.A.C.E. 2008 Organizing Committee THE 8TH ANNUAL CRITICAL RACE and ANTICOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE OF RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS OF COLOUR FOR EQUALITY (R.A.C.E.) NOVEMBER 14-16, 2008 Ryerson University, Toronto Conference website RACE-ING HEGEMONIES, RESURGING IMPERIALISMS: Building Anti-Racist and Anti-Colonial Theory and Practice for Our Times We are subject daily to revelations about the violence and hypocrisy […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Stuff White People Like: Anthropology, apparently

While reviewing an article titled, “No Surprise Here! Almost No Black Faculty Members in the Field of Anthropology,” in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (No. 16, Summer 1997, 37-39), I performed a very cursory Google search for “white people” and “anthropology” and ended up at a Los Angeles Times article about the blog-turned-bestseller, […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Book Review: Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race, and Reform

There is so much of relevance in the book discussed below, and in the review, to the range of issues discussed on this blog that it seemed best to simply post the full book review here, with some salient elements highlighted. H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-AmIndian@h-net.msu.edu (April 2008)Lucy Maddox. Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Shame on You, Barack Obama? More on Clinton’s (and the Mass Media’s) Racism (5.0)

Of course this issue cannot be laid to rest until it gets wider, more meaningful recognition, not to mention some profuse apologizing from Hillary Clinton and the white troops in her white-oriented campaign, as well as the mainstream media with its racialized double-standards. If one wants to have a discussion about race and gender, then […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

“Models” of Anthropological Colonialism?

I have been considering the diverse ways in which a relationship exists between anthropology and colonialism, sketching some very rough ideas on this blog (as usual, I feel the need to apologize). In part this comes out of some productive engagements with essays written in ANTH 601 at Concordia University, to which I owe many […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Cherokee Nation Expels Native Citizens with African Ancestry

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Native American Cherokees voted to expel descendants of black slaves from their tribe nation in a special election that has prompted charges of racism, according to returns made public early Sunday. But a vote of 77 percent to 23 percent, the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma adopted Saturday an amendment to their constitution […]