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Responding to hateful speech from Howard Stern feels almost silly - after all, being an asshole bigot is what the guy does for a living. But I'm too damn pissed off by his comments about Gabby Sidibe to leave them alone.

Stern and Robin Quivers, a black woman who lost 70 lbs through extreme dieting, went off on Sidibe following the Oscar ceremony, mostly targeting her for her weight. Stern called her, "The most enormous fat black chick I've ever seen." And the hate just kept coming:

"You feel bad because everyone pretends that she's part of show business and she's never going to be in another movie," Stern added. "What movie is she going to be in? 'Blind Side 2,' she could be the football player."

Stern tried to frame the fat shaming as concern for Sidibe's health:

"You just want to say to her, listen honey, now you got a little money in the bank, go get yourself thin, you're gonna die in like three years."

What a load of crap. Hollywood runs on the disordered eating of female celebrities. We watch actors get thinner and thinner and thinner and be praised for it. We read about the fad diets that are really dangerous eating disorders with trendy names. But the health concerns only come up when talking about an actor who's fat?

The radio segment is also a huge racism party. Stern gets Sidibe's name wrong in as many ways as he possibly can, which is apparently hilarious. Then there's Stern and Quivers' take on the, "Ohmygod, Gabby Sidibe is not Precious Jones!" meme. See, some folks are really struggling with the idea that Sidibe isn't Precious, as if the character is the only kind of person a fat black woman can be and out of an inability to recognize that someone who looks like Sidibe can, um, act. Stern and Quivers aren't buying that Sidibe is a real person, though - of course she must be Precious!

Robin Quivers: Look at that girl, she's had despair. 

Howard Stern: She does despair. You don't think she walks around like Precious?

Well, in Sidibe's own words:

"When I was 14 I decided that whatever people say and no matter what I look like, I was going to be happy with myself - it's like a force of will. And it worked for me."

Stern and Quivers sadly can't seem to see why Sidibe is so popular among celebrities and fans alike. She's a total fan girl and is not letting her new-found fame change that. How do you not love her when she aces 'N Sync trivia (with Lance Bass' help) on Leno or hits on Gerard Butler on the red carpet? And Sidibe doesn't look like your typical Hollywood star. She's refreshingly relatable, like that friend you talk pop culture with all the time actually became a star and is still awesome. Sidibe's a great role model for followers of pop culture who don't meet Hollywood's ideal of beauty, meaning, to varying degrees, anyone.

Stern and Quivers' rant wasn't just cruel to Sidibe, but to everyone who looks up to her as a model of change in pop culture, especially fat black girls who finally get to see someone like themselves in a positive light when they turn on the TV or open a magazine.

And I know this isn't actually relevant to the discussion, but I thought Sidibe was one of the most gorgeous people on the Oscar red carpet:

As for the claim that Sidibe will never work again? Sadly, this hits home - there are not a lot of parts in Hollywood for black actors or fat actors. Prove Stern wrong, Hollywood.

If you want to subject yourself to the whole segment like I did you can listen to it on YouTube (I haven't been able to find a complete transcript, but there's not great subtitles available for the video). You can contact the Howard Stern Show to let them know what you think about their fat phobia and racism here.

A must-read article about race, class, caste and the American prison system. A few facts from the piece:

• There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
  As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

The mass incarceration of African Americans over the past 30 years is primarily related to the War on Drugs — a convenient cover for a program essentially targeted at the black community. The talking points all came back to the supposed rates of drug-related violence, but that doesn’t exactly compute with historical fact:

President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

The vast majority of people arrested for drug-related offenses are non-violent, and are arrested for possession rather than selling. Just read the whole thing.

The poster is from the LAGAI website, here.A bit on LAGAI before moving on. What follows next is from that website, linked to just above. Who We Are We are a small independent radical queer activist group. We started in 1983 as Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention and have been through a bunch of name changes, but kept our acronym, even though no one can figure out what it stands for any more

I just finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  The book has been highly praised and rightly so.  Rebecca Skloot is a poised and passionate storyteller who doesn’t absent herself from that which she weaves, nor does she impose upon it.  The story is so compelling that she is at once [...]

'Whip Smart': Memoirs Of A Dominatrix[cross post from *here*]March 8, 2010Audio for this story from Fresh Air from WHYY will be available at approx. 5:00 p.m. ETTranscript Enlarge Caitlin Delohery, Author Melissa Febos lives in Brooklyn.text sizeAAAMarch 8, 2010 Melissa Febos' new memoir, Whip Smart, details the four years she spent working as a dominatrix. Febos enacted fantasy sequences,

William Saletan takes on the “abortion is genocide” campaign, pointing out that guns are really killing a lot of African-Americans, but the “pro-life” movement doesn’t seem too concerned — in fact, they’re unapologetically pro-gun.

The numbers are provocative. But there’s something odd about the billboards. The child who appears beside the text is fully born. Abortion doesn’t kill such children. What kills them, all too often, is shooting. If you wanted to save living, breathing, fully born children from a tool of extermination that is literally targeting blacks, the first problem you would focus on is guns. They are killing the present, not just the future. But the sponsors of the “endangered species” ads don’t support gun control. They oppose it.

Two months ago, the Violence Policy Center issued an analysis of black homicide rates based on the latest FBI data. The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among whites, it’s 3.1 per 100,000. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82 percent of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73 percent of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.

The report calculates that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, blacks were 13 percent of the U.S. population but suffered 49 percent of all deaths by homicide. And the problem has been getting worse: From 2002 to 2007, the number of young black males killed by guns increased by more than 50 percent.

Maybe that’s why blacks, unlike whites, strongly favor gun control. In a Pew poll taken last year, whites said by a plurality of 50 percent to 44 percent that it was more important to protect the right to own guns than to control gun ownership. But an overwhelming majority of blacks, 72 percent to 20 percent, said it was more important to control gun ownership.

Saletan highlights the hypocrisy of anti-choicers raising a stink about race, when gun fanatics have pretty solid Klan roots — or, as he so beautifully phrases it, “People who live in glass hoods shouldn’t throw stones.” Indeed.

When someone calls you out for a privileged comment, it can be hard to realize that you were in the wrong. After all, everyone you know uses that word/you didn’t know it meant that/you didn’t mean it THAT way/you weren’t doing it on purpose/other people are too sensitive, right?

Wrong.

This has come up lately with the word “gypped” in my experience. Gypped is a racist term against Roma. When we use the term, we further the prejudice against the Roma and the stereotype that institutionalized the word and made it part of our vocabulary. So let’s imagine a dialogue right now:

Mary Sue: “That vendor gypped me!”

Becky Jean: “Mary Sue, gypped is sort of a racist term. Do you mean he cheated you?”

Mary Sue: “I’m not a racist! How dare you! Everyone uses that term, it’s not about black people or anything!!! Why are you attacking me, you’re not perfect!!!”

Becky Jean: “I know you don’t consider yourself a racist, but the language you use can betray your actual beliefs, so you need to be careful. I’m not attacking you, I’m informing you so that you can look into the term and eliminate racism from your vocabulary, so your words match up with the lifestyle you want to lead. The term refers to a stereotype of the Roma people, often referred to as Gypsies, and they suffer a lot of discrimination and hate, so we need to not further that with our words.I’m sorry if you felt attacked, that was not my intention.”

Now ideally, this is where Mary Sue calms down a little and says…

“Oh, I’m sorry I got so upset. Racist is such a scary term, and I immediately jump to my own defense. I was scared of my beliefs and words not matching up. Thanks for telling me. I know you don’t mean that I hate others, just that we live in a racist world and need to be conscious of our speech. Are there any other terms like that I should be aware of? We can help educate each other.”

Or…

“It isn’t racist!! I don’t even know any gypsies, and everyone uses the word!! You’re oversensitive, and you can’t save the world!!! I didn’t MEAN it, so it shouldn’t matter!!”

And here is where you want to cry, or start poking them very hard in the eye, right?

Well, violence is never the answer, and though crying might help you feel a bit better, it should probably be saved for when you can hug a puppydog and rant about the injustices of the world to your stuffed animals and significant other.  And since right now, Becky Jean wants to come away from this conversations positively affecting Mary Sue, we’ll skip the crying.

Ganieda, one of our lovely commenters, linked me to this http://community.livejournal.com/fight_derailing/9867.html

It’s an excellent post entitled, “How to Discuss Race and Racism without Being a Jerk.” My favorite part is the part she quoted to me, during yet another of my epic rants about NOT BEING ABLE TO GET THROUGH TO PEOPLE AND GETTING FRUSTRATED

“Intentions aren’t the only thing that matters.

(Last one, and it’s short.) Suppose I step on someone’s foot. They say, “hey, ouch, you stepped on my foot.”

My proper response is, “Gosh, I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” Depending on the situation, I might add something like, “I was looking for my kid’s sneaker that she always kicks off,” or “I’ve got something in my contact,” etc.

My proper response is not, “Well, I didn’t mean to step on your foot, so why are you angry?!” “

This is a great example to point out to Mary Sue. You can explain yourself, you can ask for reassurance that the person calling you out isn’t considering you a Bad Person, but you have to show that you realize that your intention is not the be all and end all of the term and that it has a greater affect than “just being a word.”

Which is why Mary Sue’s explanation of not knowing the term’s severity and feeling attacked is a lot more valid and provides a lot more discussion than “well I didn’t know!!! you’re oversensitive!!!”

Another great example is a few posts earlier, in my Yay Spain! post. A commenter called me out on the image of Spain I’d put out. I apologized, agreed with her that my words did not get across my intentions, and explained what I exactly meant. Voila! Did it feel good being called out? No, I felt bad about unintentionally perpetuating a harmful stereotype by not using my words in a clear manner. But I drank some lemonade, felt sad for a minute, then sucked it up and responded. And I learned from it.

Now, if you’re wondering why I have a very long post on racism, the answer is intersectionality, and because the following tips can be used with sexists as well! Along with ableists and homophobes and sizeists and…..

More about intersectionality this time. Off to eat pizza bagels!

 [photograph of Desiree Adaway is from here] This is a cross post from here, at Desiree Adaway's blog. What follows was written by her.The Feminization of PovertyMarch 6, 2010 ·  In honor of International Women’s Day all of my post in the month of  March will be focused on Women Rights and Women Issues. When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes

[image is from here] Let's face it: in the U.S., the white woman on the left is better known than the Black woman on the right. This reality is emblematic of "the story of feminism". Can anyone point out what is totally messed up about this summary of "feminism"? Read more http://www.docstoc.com/docs/27854175/Birth-of-Feminisms-%E2%80%93-Lecture-1-Introduction-to-Feminism I'll offer a few

What really angered me when watching Geert Wilders on Newsnight, last night, was his hypocritical attempts to justify his desire to ban the Koran in the Netherlands. This is the man who we wrongly banned from coming into the UK. Whilst his views should not be endorsed, banning him has only led to the BNP and the EDL using him as a hero to promote their fascist right-wing ideology. Banning him was also a serious attack of our civil rights. However, whilst after protest within the UK and from political parties such as the Libdems he was rightly granted access to the UK and was allowed to play his video condemning Islam as a fascist ideology, in the Lords yesterday.

How can he argue on one level that it is against freedom of speech not to allow him into the country and then abuse freedom of speech by wanting to ban the Koran and to arrest any Muslim who does not conform to what he thinks is a ‘true’ citizen? He seems to believe that the Koran is different to other religious texts because it is an ideology. Well if I am not mistaken, all religions to some extent have ideological aspects to them. Furthermore, each religion has different aspects that can be interpreted wrongly – such as within the Bible women are seen as the originator of sin, and impairment is seen as the punishment of sin. Thus, what Geert is practicing is censorship reflecting his prejudice.

He can huff and puff all he wants in his attempts to distance himself from fascists but when it comes down to it, he is just as racist as the BNP and the EDL. He is an abuser of freedom of speech. He should have learnt from his own banning that undermining civil liberties is a fundamental problem within politics and that he is only furthering it with his own hypocritical attitude towards the Koran.