Actually, yes I do ask the same question when someone says they want a president/presidential candidate to do something about X where X is something that the administration intentionally doesn’t have much or any jurisidiction over. Clearly, the extent of the jurisdiction is up for some debate, depending on the issue.

Clinton or Sanders when neither has adequately addressed this urgent problem.

Something I’ve noticed in the last couple of years are the number of people I’ve met who have described their “still-able-to-be-amicable-with-my-ex-at-least-with-the-kids-around” post-divorce lives as “wierd”. I include myself in that, and sometimes even try to emphasize just how “wierd” ours is. I’m trying to stop,…

Actually, I am definitely and absolutely NOT blaming anyone, and especially not Black people for this. The way that we’ve ended up with such a physically and culturally segregated society is almost entirely a function of racism.

Clearly I should have picked someone other than Lena Dunham as an example.

It is hard to really agree with this. When Girls started, I remember Dunham on Fresh Air saying precisely what you say she should have said. Then we got into the mid-season and people started talking about the complete absence of any POC. At that point, she explained it as discussed, as a response to the questions of…

Is it every story-teller’s obligation to tell a more representative story than their own experience would support? What happens if Dunham’s goal was precisely to tell the story of people like her? Does she need to step back and say, “Hey! Wait a second! I have a cable TV show now, and that changes my responsibilities.…

You didn’t pick up on “nic10” telling “stella lewis” that she must be white, or other people telling “stella lewis” that she had internalized racism, or must have because otherwise she wouldn’t waste time talking about how all women get criticized for body modifications?

Regarding point #2 ... I read Jezebel way, way too much. There is rarely a day that goes by here without at least one or ten comment sub-threads that contain posters who are nominally women asserting that white women (or white people) can’t really understand the lives of non-white women (or people). Even when someone…

Nothing that you just said contradicts anything I said.

[ redacted because a longer twitter exchange from IA seems to suggest that she’s really serious about this sample thing. I still don’t hear the sample - the two songs are not the same, they just share a similar bass synth patch and drum programming, which in turn did not originate in “Fancy” ]

I feel as though a simple diagram is required. Words will have to do.

I’m really of two minds about this. If a birth certificate is really just a record of two people who identify as the parents of the child, then this sort of grandstanding by jurisdictions opposed to same-sex marriage is offensive and illegal.

I was talking this over with my daughter during a 7 hour drive today, and she made an excellent point too. It is one thing for a single individual (whether a Jezebel writer or not) to express their own personal feeling that a person is ragingly hot and inviting you to share in their (sexually objectified) delight over…

Sorry, but in the media I consume, Bristol Palin was ridiculed as basically a step (barely) above white trash for her teenage pregnancies and general behaviour. And in the media I read, Beyonce is no more criticized for her appearance than other high profile celebrity female (which is to say: a lot, even right on…

My point about class wasn’t that it can protect/advance African-Americans. It was that our general culture looks down on poor (*) people in general. Since we have permitted racism to shape (or even construct) a society in which a huge majority of African-Americans are poor (*), any observations about the way that the…

Now that’s what I would call an excellent reply to my snarky post.

OOH! Look at that! How clever! You dropped the “mainsplaining” bomb on my post that doesn’t actually try to explain anything to anyone. I’ve evaporated into a cloud of male tears. Amazing!

No, its not all about class. We live in a racist society. That’s clearly true. But we also live in a classist society, and because of racism, classism disproportionately impacts African-Americans as an additional side effect of racism.

My point wasn’t that money and social class membership can protect African-Americans from racism. It was more that not all of the reasons why people have a different reaction to (relatively or absolutely) wealthy women using aspects of black culture are about race: some of them are about social class, which can be…