Click here to watch a two-and-a-half minute video on CNN that addresses last year’s spate of race- and ethnicity-themed parties (see here). What is perhaps most amazing about it is the unbelievably impoverished analysis of what is happening and the fact that the video for some reason decides to end on an uplifting note (“their classmates had an important lesson on the danger of stereotyping”).

Thanks to Richard for this lead.

The coining of the term “frankenfood” to refer to genetically-modified (GM)  food is an excellent example of the way in which words matter. As of today, a search for the word in google returns about 57,000 hits. It’s been quite an effective frame for the anti-GM food activists. Here are some examples of their work:



In her dissertation, Abby Kinchy discussed the way in which anti-GM food activists invented and used these frames to build support for their movement.  In reality, though, (1) we’ve been genetically modifying food by other means for centuries (through cultivation) and (2) there is little evidence (yet) that such foods are all that dangerous.

Sources, in order, Green Acres Farm, Monsterzine, and Democratic Underground.

These advertisements, the first two for a brand of jeans called Apple Bottoms, all fetishize black women’s behinds:


Underneath Beyonce’s name it says: “The body, the booty, the backstabbing.”

In this two-page spread, the body isn’t necessarily black… but it might be an interesting question as to whether the viewers assume, or might be expected to assume, it is.

Text:

MY BUTT is big
and round like the letter c
and ten thousand lunges
have made it rounder
but not smaller
and that’s just fine.
It’s a space heater
for myside of the bed
It’s my ambassador
to those who walk behind me
It’s a border collie
that herds skinny women
away from the best deals
at clothing sales.
My butt is big
and that’s just fine
and those who might scorn it
are invited to kiss it.

I think it’s interesting the way this poem pits “skinny women” against women with a big butt… so valorizing the big butt but only by taking down the skinny (white?) girl.

Divide and conquer.

You might pair these images with this post about a Pilates DVD.

This product nicely captures the fallacious ideas that (1) to be a “liberated” woman is to do what men do and (2) that “liberated” women necessarily emasculate men in a zero sum game.


Thanks to my awesome student, Molly M!

Click here and scroll down for a map showing the number and % of Muslims in various European countries. From NPR.

An ad for a floral shop: “He chose her. She chose us.”

Found in Zions Bank Community magazine, January/February 2008 issue.

This bar chart puts the United States as the dubious front runner with the highest income inequality among 20 wealthy nations. With the exception of Japan, all the countries have European heritage. In 2000 the United States’ inequality stood well above all other rich nations. At the other end of the scale the Nordic countries plus the Netherlands had very low inequality ratios. Most Western European nations, as well as Australia and Canada fell in between.

These data come from the Luxembourg Income Study, the most rigorous data source for cross-national income and wealth. The chart’s income gap indicator in each country is the disposable (after tax) annual income of the top 10% divided by the disposable income of the bottom 10%. In other words, the income gap is the ratio of the 10% of persons with the highest income to the 10% with the lowest. For instance, in the USA the income of the top-earning 10% was 5.5 times that of the bottom 10%.

The statistics in this chart can be found on page 4 of a document on the Contexts website: http://www.contextsmagazine.org/resources_vol6-3.php That document is a supplement to an article by Peter Dreier, “The United States in Comparative Perspective,” in the Summer 2007 issue of Contexts.

Some may read these statistics and say “inequality in the US is overblown” because the bottom 10% live better off than most people in the rest of the world. That is true if Americans are compared to countries where the average income is less than a dollar a day. But if the American poor are compared to the poor in other wealthy countries, American poor are far worse off.