Blog Voices 8/16/08

Please join me for a quick tour of some interesting things going on in the diversosphere.

From Black Canseco at Racialicious, an essay titled Why We Want Our Kids Back Too.

I grew up in the inner cities of Chicago-places where buses hate to stop, and cabs hate to come. My parents worked hard. Most of our neighbors worked hard. Some people tried. Some people just gave up. Others gave up while they tried and vice versa.

When there was violence, we cried and tried to stop it. When there was death we cried, wondered why and tried to deal with it. But we had to do these things alone.

There were no crush of grief counselors when our 11 year olds got shot by strays or on purpose. There were no pundits filling column space and air time when our girls got raped or became pregnant too soon. And when our children came up missing… when our children came up missing…

When our children came up missing there was silence. Silence and indifference. There still is….

We Want Our Kids Back, Too is a viral web campaign that combines picks of missing and endangered children of color (Black, Hispanic, Asian, mixed race/multicultural, etc.) with commentary challenging all to consider disparities in coverage, outrage and concern.

Check out this Photobucket page where you can find posters like this.

Over at Jack and Jill Politics, you can read rikyrah deconstruct an article in New York Magazine titled Black and Blacker: The Racial Politics of the Obama Marriage (guess who’s “blacker”).

On Wednesday, bloggers Carmen Dixon of All About Race, Wayne Bennett of The Field Negro, and Casey Lartigue of The Casey Lartigue Show were interviewed about the Obama campaign and other issues on NPR’s News and Notes. Totally kewl!!!!!

There are several interesting entries at The Sanctuary lately, I’ll just highlight a few of them. First of all, kyledeb takes a bit of a pictorial jab at the “English only” crowd. Here’s one example.

Nezua took me on a trip down memory lane to a story I hadn’t heard in years with his The Unlimited Sun.

IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT and the simplest things we forget. So much energy poured away, or stones carried far and then dropped down in our own path and with our own hands. When I look at the world and the trouble in the world and this governments responses to trouble and too many parents’ responses to their childrens’ challenges, the criminal justice system and the razor rifts in our relationships, the rising hate crimes the war of terror the increasing militarization of culture…

I think of that story I was told as a child about the sun and the wind competing to make a man remove his coat. I think about how poorly most people respond to punishment or control tactics. I think of how quickly and easily the human being jumps into arguing, condemning, judging,  fearing, negativity, and how easily we forget to breathe, relax our muscles, drink water, take care, nourish positivity.

And finally, robvato talks about a recent Census Bureau Report in Welcome to América, Soon-to-Be Land of the White Minority.

In another telling truism about how ‘demography is destiny”, the Census Bureau recently released a report with a most radical implication: whites will be a ‘minority’ by 2042 or a full 8 years before most experts predicted.