I’ve been saying for over a decade that students should learn Mandarin if they want to ensure that they’ll have a future in the economic marketplace that includes unlimited upward mobility…and a job. Out of the thousands who have heard the message, a few have listened. Not bad.

So here is an article about the increase in the number of high schools teaching either Mandarin or Cantonese, even though there is an overall reduction in teaching of foreign language classes. (Spanish remains constant, by the way.) Hmm…someone is listening. Not teaching language in high school is probably not a big deal; I’ve rarely met anyone who truly learned to speak a foreign language after even four years of study. So why waste the time? But if we’re going to invest, I suppose Mandarin (and Spanish) is the way to go.

This from the New York Times: “Foreign Languages Fade in Class–Except Chinese”

And here’s your first Mandarin Chinese language lesson in case you want to get started:

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I’m struck by how it is that someone would think that this “game” is a good idea. Of course, I’m also struck by how it is that people think that violent shoot-em-up video games represent a positive step forward for humanity. (But since I seem to be in the minority about that, I’ll just assume that it’s me that is out of alignment with my culture.) This particular video game, however, defines “off the hook” if anything ever could. I suppose that somebody will argue that this video game could offer potential rapists an outlet so that they don’t have to actually assault someone. But in truth, I don’t think some outside-the-box psychologist is behind this game. I really just want to know who thinks of something like this and then can find him or herself sitting across the table from their mother or sister or daughter sharing a meal.

In any case, check this out. And judging by the first few comments, it’s going to be easy to say “this is sick and disgusting” and then make some anti-Japanese comment. However, it strikes me that this is symptomatic of some larger and deeper process that is occurring in the world and that is connected to us all.

And one more thing…how many of you men reading this would play this game with your male friends and a couple of beers? Honestly.

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So globalization is bringing about some profound changes as the United States makes the final turn onto the home stretch toward a truly multicultural society. We’ve long predicted that white people will become a minority group by mid century (around 2050), but this is the first real marker on that journey–their children are soon to be in minority status.

It doesn’t really matter, mind you, and I’m sure that most people reading this are wondering why it’s being reported on at all. So what is the big deal? Do you feel some sort of way about this? White people…do you feel even a twinge of concern, as though you’ll be forgotten and soon holding the short end of the stick? People of color…do you feel a tiny bit emboldened at the thought that one day people like you will be holding most of the levers of control? From within the dialogue about race and ethnic relations, this is a major issue and one that will surely reflect and change how we get on with one another down the road. Transformation happens…

Read the article: Births to Minorities Are Approaching Majority in U.S.

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So I’m curious about what you all thought of that video about the dolls. What do you make of how people in class answered the question about how and why this happens? Here it is again. That segment begins around 3:20 if you want to watch it again.

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Michael McMillen, Constance McMillen's father, expresses his support of his daughter

Read the article: Lesbian Teen in Prom Flap

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posted by Sam Richards

It’s rather sobering to think that there are upwards to half of the approximately 7,000 languages that are used in the world today will no longer be spoken by the time time twenty-something college students are lowered into the ground. Another language, one of the world’s oldest, just gave up the ghost the other day when the last remaining speaker died. I supposed that it’s not as devastating as the earthquake in Haiti, all things considered, but there is something existentially unnerving about knowing that a complex form of communication that brought so many people together over so many centuries is lost forever. And maybe I’m too sentimental…and maybe I’m just feeling the effects of living in a time of rapid social, economic, and environmental transformation.

I don’t think we “should” feel some sort of way about this. But I do think it’s worth setting aside our phones and remotes and pondering that nobody will EVER hear these words spoken…ever again. If you don’t feel something about that, then perhaps you’re just not tapped into this particular mystery.

Check out this article from the BBC: The Tragedy of Dying Languages

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posted by Sam Richards

Here’s an interesting article from TIME/CNN about the upcoming U.S. Census and the use of racial signifiers. Quite fascinating discussion of “new school” – “old school” terminology and who should get to decide which terms should be deemed acceptable for public use.

“Should the Census Be Asking People if They’re Negro?”
By Barbara Kiviat – TIME/CNN

Use of the word Negro to describe a black person has largely fallen out of polite conversation — except on the U.S. Census questionnaire. There, under “What is this person’s race?” is an option that reads, “Black, African Am., or Negro.” That has raised the ire of certain black activists and politicians as the Census Bureau gears up to mail out its once-a-decade questionnaires. The controversy has been cast by many as an instance of a tone-deaf agency not keeping up with the times. In actuality, the flash point represents a much larger theme: the often contentious way the Census both reflects and forges our evolving understanding of race. (See the best pictures of 2009.)

The immediate reason the word Negro is on the Census is simple enough: in the 2000 Census, more than 56,000 people wrote in Negro to describe their identity — even though it was already on the form. Some people, it seems, still strongly identify with the term, which used to be a perfectly polite designation. To blindly delete it is to risk incorrectly counting the unknown number of (presumably older) black Americans who identify with the term. (See rare photos at home of Martin Luther King Jr.)

But the Census Bureau is aware that times are changing — and not just when it comes to the word Negro. As part of the 2010 Census, the bureau will test 15 major changes to questions about race and Hispanic origin. For each, approximately 30,000 households will receive a slightly different questionnaire so that demographers and statisticians can use data — along with follow-up interviews — to decide if the modification helps or hurts the accuracy and consistency of information collected. “We hope this will help us better understand the way people identify with these concepts,” says Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census’ racial-statistics branch. One change being tested: deleting the word Negro. Others include combining queries about Hispanic origin and race into one question and getting rid of the word race in the question altogether.

Those modifications could have a lasting impact on how Americans think about race. Census data underpin broad stretches of society, from federal regulations to corporate marketing strategies, and how data are framed when collected speaks to our collective worldview (both contemporary and historical). Consider that in a 2006 study of 138 censuses from around the world, New York University sociologist Ann Morning found that only 15% of those asking about ancestry or national origin used the term race. Almost all of those that did were former slave economies. (See a video of perspectives in Harlem on President Obama’s first year in office.)

Further, among nations Morning studied, only the U.S. asked about Hispanic ethnicity in a stand-alone question. (Race and ethnicity are synonymous practically everywhere else in the world.) Morning concluded that talking about the two separately, as is done in the U.S., could unintentionally reinforce the view that while ethnicity is a product of culture and society, race represents something else — a set of characteristics inherent to a certain type of person (e.g., black people are athletic; Asians are smart). (See TIME’s special on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

If it seems like a stretch that the Census would have such grand influence, take a moment for a little history. The first Census, in 1790, explicitly asked about only one race: white. Blacks, for the most part, fell into the slave category. Race was about civil status. In the 19th century, concerns about keeping the white race pure led to the addition of the “mulatto” category in 1850 (and “quadroon” and “octoroon” in 1890), a process traced by Harvard political scientist Melissa Nobles in her book Shades of Citizenship. With rising immigration, Chinese and Japanese were added as categories — but not Irish or Italian — underscoring that somehow Asians were more fundamentally different.

In the civil rights era of the 20th century, Census data took on a whole new meaning. The antidiscrimination laws written in the 1960s and the affirmative-action policies that followed relied on Census data to determine if minorities were underrepresented in any number of realms, from home sales to small-business loans. One of the largest leaps in the Census’ racial scheme came in 2000 when, for the first time, respondents were allowed to check more than one race box. The change was celebrated by those hoping to usher in an era of postracial America and assailed by those fearing the weakening of civil rights enforcement.

As it turns out, neither extreme came to pass — partly because only 2.4% of the population checked more than one race. Nonetheless, the instruction to “mark one or more boxes” signified a major turning point in how the Census sets the parameters for national discussion. In the words of former Census director Kenneth Prewitt, we are now moving from “a justice-based classification system” to “an identity-based classification system.” If not revolution, that is at least evolution. (See the world’s most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100.)

And it continues today. One of the possible changes the Census is testing during the 2010 count is allowing respondents to check more than one box not just for race but for Hispanic origin as well. A popular rally cry during the push to allow multiple races was, Why should a person with one black parent and one white parent be forced to choose between them? Indeed, why should a person with a Hispanic mother and non-Hispanic father be any different?

Another change under review is letting people who check “white” or “black” to write in more specific information afterward. In recent years, groups representing a number of backgrounds, including Afro-Caribbean and Arab, have lobbied to be included separately on the Census instead of being confined to broad categories (black for people of Afro-Caribbean decent; white for those with Arab ancestry). By trying out additional write-in blanks, the Census is attempting to see what other designations it might be able to reliably collect data about.

For the time being, write-in responses still often need to be shoehorned into broader categories for the purpose of following certain laws based on official statistics. But in the longer term, the write-in box could prove to be an even more momentous step in the evolution of racial categorization than the ability to check more than one race. By encouraging wider swaths of people to explain as precisely as possible how they see themselves, the Census is implicitly acknowledging that its count of the U.S. population is increasingly becoming a conduit for self-expression. “We are measuring the characteristics of the American people as they wish to be known,” says Prewitt.

That is true even when the way a person wishes to be known is as a Negro — at least for the time being. Considering that older black people are more likely to use the term, Negro will almost surely eventually come off the Census. But it is important to remember that when it does, it will not be a simple reaction to changing social mores. In 1970 the Census changed its black category from “Negro” to “Negro or Black.” The Federal Government sent a form to every U.S. household and effectively said, We have a new way of thinking about this particular group of people. Census categories reflect perceptions. But they also forge them.

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Admittedly I have not seen the film. The last time I visited a movie theater was in 2005. Before that it was sometime in the early 1990s. I just don’t get out much. And while Avatar does seem like the kind of film that ought to be experienced on the big screen, it’s highly unlikely that that is where I’ll see it given my track record.

Nonetheless, reading this op-ed by David Brooks makes me a bit curious about the movie. Not sure why, really, as it sounds a lot like just another film from a long list of other films that I was neither drawn to, nor do I feel somehow deprived as a result of not seeing. But Brooks makes some serious accusations about a film that is being widely and universally viewed that it does make me curious about this persistent theme that just won’t go away — about how it is up to white people to save people from disastrous fates that might befall them.

I supposed one could readily argue that Brooks is reading far too much into the film. But these conscious and subconscious themes that drive popular cultures have a way of landing in us and shape our minds and hearts and just because you didn’t draw his conclusions from the film does not mean that he’s not dead on. In fact, if you’ve grown up in this culture and you haven’t not critically restructured your thinking about gender and race and culture and imperialism, then it’s highly unlikely that you would come to his conclusions. It doesn’t make him “correct” or you “wrong”–but I’d give his ideas time to gestate.

Here’s what Brooks had to say: The Messiah Complex

AVATAR VS. POCOHONTAS

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[I just read a few of the earliest responses to this post and not one mentioned the insane number of whacky ways that Brazilians described themselves on a census thirty years ago. It's in the box below the video. Please read through those. Very funny and telling.]

Check out this story about affirmative action and discrimination in Brazil. To quickly summarize it, Brazil is trying to combat centuries of discrimination against Africans and Indians (people indigenous to that country) and one way they’ve done it is through a very aggressive affimative action program in their universities. There still remains some blistering discrimination in Brazil (think Jim Crow in the United States) and so it’s not difficult to make the argument that something needs to be done. But what, exactly?

Keep in mind that there is considerable opposition to this policy. Much of it sounds like opposition faced here in the U.S. — things aren’t that bad so let sleeping dogs lie. CHECK OUT THIS BBC ARTICLE.
CHECK OUT THIS BBC ARTICLE.

So here is the problem. Here are the racial classifications from the 1976 Brazilian Census — all 134 of them. And you thought the U.S. was complicated! Read some of these names. Mind you, these are how people categorized themselves and not the categories that the Brazilian government used to classify its citizens.

Acastanhada (cashewlike tint; caramel colored)
Agalegada
Alva (pure white)
Alva-escura (dark or off-white)
Alverenta (or aliviero, “shadow in the water”)
Alvarinta (tinted or bleached white)
Alva-rosada (or jamote, roseate, white with pink highlights)
Alvinha (bleached; white-washed)
Amarela (yellow)
Amarelada (yellowish)
Amarela-quemada (burnt yellow or ochre)
Amarelosa (yellowed)
Amorenada (tannish)
Avermelhada (reddish, with blood vessels showing through the skin)
Azul (bluish)
Azul-marinho (deep bluish)
Baiano (ebony)
Bem-branca (very white)
Bem-clara (translucent)
Bem-morena (very dusky)
Branca (white)
Branca-avermelhada (peach white)
Branca-melada (honey toned)
Branca-morena (darkish white)
Branca-pálida (pallid)
Branca-queimada (sunburned white)
Branca-sardenta (white with brown spots)
Branca-suja (dirty white)
Branquiça (a white variation)
Branquinha (whitish)
Bronze (bronze)
Bronzeada (bronzed tan)
Bugrezinha-escura (Indian characteristics)
Burro-quanto-foge (”burro running away,” implying racial mixture of unknown origin)
Cabocla (mixture of white, Negro and Indian)
Cabo-Verde (black; Cape Verdean)
Café (coffee)
Café-com-leite (coffee with milk)
Canela (cinnamon)
Canelada (tawny)
Castão (thistle colored)
Castanha (cashew)
Castanha-clara (clear, cashewlike)
Castanha-escura (dark, cashewlike)
Chocolate (chocolate brown)
Clara (light)
Clarinha (very light)
Cobre (copper hued)
Corado (ruddy)
Cor-de-café (tint of coffee)
Cor-de-canela (tint of cinnamon)
Cor-de-cuia (tea colored)
Cor-de-leite (milky)
Cor-de-oro (golden)
Cor-de-rosa (pink)
Cor-firma (”no doubt about it”)
Crioula (little servant or slave; African)
Encerada (waxy)
Enxofrada (pallid yellow; jaundiced)
Esbranquecimento (mostly white)
Escura (dark)
Escurinha (semidark)
Fogoio (florid; flushed)
Galega (see agalegada above)
Galegada (see agalegada above)
Jambo (like a fruit the deep-red color of a blood orange)
Laranja (orange)
Lilás (lily)
Loira (blond hair and white skin)
Loira-clara (pale blond)
Loura (blond)
Lourinha (flaxen)
Malaia (from Malabar)
Marinheira (dark greyish)
Marrom (brown)
Meio-amerela (mid-yellow)
Meio-branca (mid-white)
Meio-morena (mid-tan)
Meio-preta (mid-Negro)
Melada (honey colored)
Mestiça (mixture of white and Indian)
Miscigenação (mixed — literally “miscegenated”)
Mista (mixed)
Morena (tan)
Morena-bem-chegada (very tan)
Morena-bronzeada (bronzed tan)
Morena-canelada (cinnamonlike brunette)
Morena-castanha (cashewlike tan)
Morena clara (light tan)
Morena-cor-de-canela (cinnamon-hued brunette)
Morena-jambo (dark red)
Morenada (mocha)
Morena-escura (dark tan)
Morena-fechada (very dark, almost mulatta)
Morenão (very dusky tan)
Morena-parda (brown-hued tan)
Morena-roxa (purplish-tan)
Morena-ruiva (reddish-tan)
Morena-trigueira (wheat colored)
Moreninha (toffeelike)
Mulatta (mixture of white and Negro)
Mulatinha (lighter-skinned white-Negro)
Negra (negro)
Negrota (Negro with a corpulent vody)
Pálida (pale)
Paraíba (like the color of marupa wood)
Parda (dark brown)
Parda-clara (lighter-skinned person of mixed race)
Polaca (Polish features; prostitute)
Pouco-clara (not very clear)
Pouco-morena (dusky)
Preta (black)
Pretinha (black of a lighter hue)
Puxa-para-branca (more like a white than a mulatta)
Quase-negra (almost Negro)
Queimada (burnt)
Queimada-de-praia (suntanned)
Queimada-de-sol (sunburned)
Regular (regular; nondescript)
Retinta (”layered” dark skin)
Rosa (roseate)
Rosada (high pink)
Rosa-queimada (burnished rose)
Roxa (purplish)
Ruiva (strawberry blond)
Russo (Russian; see also polaca)
Sapecada (burnished red)
Sarará (mulatta with reddish kinky hair, aquiline nose)
Saraúba (or saraiva: like a white meringue)
Tostada (toasted)
Trigueira (wheat colored)
Turva (opaque)
Verde (greenish)
Vermelha (reddish)

Frankly, I’m inclined to think that the reason that Brazilians never had a “race issue” is because people are too confused about their own racial identity to have any thoughts about the matter. Affirmative action is bound to fail, at least without the help of a supercomputer.

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