Well, I think fixing this stuff requires a “both, and” approach, rather than an “either, or” approach. Yes, we should re-integrate schools, and that will help. But it also helps to deliberately do things like what Sherman Alexie did here in order to help correct existing imbalances. It takes all kinds of tactics at…

This one is tough for me. As an African American man, I can see why Alexie did this. He wanted help someone of color get a leg up in spite the fact the work is mediocre to just plain not good. In trying to raise the voice of someone of color - who traditionally has had and still has trouble having their voices heard -…

That’s just confirming their own biases when they believe that J.K. Rowling must by default be male, otherwise it’s fraud. She didn’t assume a completely different identity, that *is* her name and she’s entitled to abbreviate to just her initials if that’s what she wants to do.

Thanks for this great piece, Jia. What a fascinating, frustrating, and complicated story, made much more interesting by Sherman Alexie’s generally sound commitment to tell-it-like-it-is racial politics. (He gave a talk at my college freshman year and called us all “privileged fucks,” which was (a) awesome and (b)…

It’s troubling that the most fledgling attempts towards reaching equal representation could seem, to anyone, like evidence that the still-dominant class of white men has already lost the upper hand.

They just did.

Vox has hired a number of Bright Young People—and is run by the Brightest Young People—and the house style seems to be, “Write as if you are an expert, in a tone assuming that everything one needs to know about a subject can be found in your article.” These Bright Young People may well be near-experts on one or two…

Yeah, I mean. We do stuff like that all the time, but it’s based on our editorial judgment and not what ad sales decides is something we should appear to endorse.

The irony is that Jez might have just run the thing as a blog post, for free, if asked.

Because the average reader doesn’t know about the Chinese wall between ad and editorial staff decisions. And will assume, wrongly, that Jezebel is being hypocritical by not running a pro-choice ad. And this will cause controversy that will (they hope) go viral and even spill over into the mainstream media, since the…

I’m here after the edit, but my vote is in the janky/fake promoter column. Same thing happened with Missy Elliot down under.

Oh come on, this is obviously a case of a dodgy promoter telling the event organizer they had booked Chris Brown, but actually not having confirmed the booking.

I’ve seen this question pop up a ton of times so I figured I’d just answer it myself.

DUDE I worked on a TV show where Chris Brown was supposed to make an appearance, and he did the same exact thing. The day he was supposed to show up, he just didn’t show up. Our casting office had to scramble to pull up people to go on in his place.

As for me, I’m afraid of gay men because I’m afraid they will see me wearing jeans with white socks. I can’t bear that humiliation.

“It’s unclear how Brown knew there were men in the crowd”

I'm going to need a minute to process this information. I just have had such a high opinion of Chris Brown, who has long been a champion of women, and assumed his attitude would also extend to the LGBTQ community. So it's difficult to believe he would do something like this.

cis hetero men are afraid of gay men because they believe gay men will treat them the way they treat women. cis hetero men are afraid of gay men because they believe gay men will treat them the way they treat women. cis hetero men are afraid of gay men because they believe gay men will treat them the way they treat…

Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. Is there anything more that doesn’t just make it worse?

I really hope there is a hell of a lot not being captured by that camera. Cause hell that looks boring.