Monday, December 28, 2009

Monday Reading List

"We Are Not Animals in the Hood":
Lisa Gray-Garcia says the tours “zoo-ify” poor people and people of color, who will clearly not be paying $65 to drive around looking at projects, tags and bullet holes.
Single-Minded:
Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year.
Why I Hate Label-Hating:
What is a label? It’s a description. It’s a name. Words are the primary tool our species uses to communicate and “labels” are just that: words we use to explain ourselves and others. The wrong word, especially when it is instituted upon a person by the entire culture, can do tremendous damage, and I understand that most queer people are walking around with considerable baggage because of this, myself included. But that isn’t an argument against labels per se. Once again, it’s an argument against coercion.
When Men Were Men, And Burned To Death:
When men were men and film was in black and white, race car drivers died and were injured in crashes with what now seems like shocking regularity. European motorsports resumed after a nearly decade-long hiatus caused by the Second World War, with sports car and Grand Prix racing adopting advances in engines, materials and aerodynamics spurred by military technology, and the cars went faster and faster from the early fifties on. The speeds quickly outstripped the cars’ rudimentary abilities to protect drivers in a crash, leaving ever thinner margins of for lightweight machines with hundreds of horsepower on tracks made of winding public roads.
From Cute Overload:

3 comments:

Bond said...

Thanks for the link!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the link! The more people that hear about those crazy tours that turn poor people into safari animals the better. This is not the way to fix social inequities.

petpluto said...

Thanks for the link!

No problem; I really liked your post.

The more people that hear about those crazy tours that turn poor people into safari animals the better. This is not the way to fix social inequities.

I was pretty horrified. I mean, aside from the economic imperative it creates to not fix those social inequities (why slaughter the cash cow, even if that cash cow is supposed to be giving back to the community, it still pays for tour "guides" and the like), and those should definitely be highlighted, I want to know who thought it was a great idea to exoticize a neighborhood where people actually, you know, live.