Lets cut it simple and say we're all in the cave. I know Par might say he's not in the cave, but I say he's in dammit!

"by participating in the paradigm (of racism in this case), we are being complicit and we are furthering the proliferation of that paradigm"

Alison, just my opinion, but i think your Women's Studies Class is offering a very narrow understanding as to how paradigms work. your statement immediately brings to mind for me Foucault's Penopticon model of survailence and discipline, where we are constantly instigating self restrictions and boundries on ourselves in the constant fear that we are seen as being complicit to some social wrong. again it's of my own opinion, but this self restriction hardly offers any sort of discursive deconstruction to those terrible paradigms, and if anything have a hand in reifying their effects. with open mockery and satire our notions of racism can directly challenged and if nothing more become delegitimized...well whatever.
the last point i would like to make is that paradigms are in no way static fixtures, and more than anything they are social constructions premised on legitimity and authority. by calling something "racist" one inherently institutes an authorization process- i am calling this racism, this is racism, and it must be recognized as such because this is what i have said. in doing so this is itself a paradigm. it situates people not likewise confronting the example as racist as being outside the power of authority. i find this also extremely problematic because it offers the possibility of the process of coding things as racist or not to be wielded against others whom do not offer a counter argument to that authority.

i hope that all makes sense.

Sister's back from Thailand...no more cellphone...

Sorry about the not-posting, folks. Made a slight miscalculation on some file permissions. It's all good now...

yeah, I know, it's sort-of like showing that you're trying to be progressive but also still being a bigot.... I know. It wasn't something I really consciously did until I after I'd first noticed that there were two black kids bunched together both as the more universally "bad" characters in the costume list.

I didn't intend it as something discriminatory, but yes, as we've been discussing in my WST class, by participating in the paradigm (of racism in this case), we are being complicit and we are furthering the proliferation of that paradigm... so yeah, I hipocritically hang my head in shame... though that wasn't my intent. It's just hard to point something out without implicating yourself in it these days... and how far will we ever get if we don't start questioning these things anyway? huh? How do you expect to make progress, or do you want to? huh? ;)

http://subliminal.ytmnd.com/
http://emopunkers.ytmnd.com/
http://ashlee-simpson.ytmnd.com/

Not to be annoying... (actually, perhaps it is to be annoying...) but isn't it kind of discriminatory to go around counting which races are depicted in which ways, particularly in meaningless mock articles?

I could just be bitter that the role of the shoebomber was played by a white kid. We earned that stereotype, dammit. I think it's high time that people started showing respect for that.

Ralph Nader's "bad"? I thought he was more of a nuisance...

Haha. It's coming true! Now Chrissy's blonde! (warning: one of the people in the picture may be topless... also, one of them may be Beck...)

Meanwhile, in Nintendo's Porn Division...

Don't worry Alison I won't have a costume. Unless a starving university student counts as a costume or a bystandard in a horror/natural diaster/science fiction movie.

Why we should all be a little more evil.