media

media, entertainment, pop culture, social media

True Match Foundations: The Link Between Ethnicity and Foundation

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L’Oreal has released a series of commercials that make me a little uncomfortable. The commercials are for L’Oreal’s True Match foundations which are supposed to “precisely match your skin’s tone and texture.” The commercials feature a few celebrities: Beyonce Knowles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc50e02zDt8&feature=BFa&list=PLF68B3695EF7533DC), Jennifer Lopez (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njIKU3sZy4E&feature=BFa&list=PLF68B3695EF7533DC), and Aimee Mullins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0GbUTjQdaY&feature=BFa&list=PLF68B3695EF7533DC). The script for each commercial is the same. They start with “There’s a story behind my skin. It’s a mosaic of all the faces before it. My …

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Taking The Next Step

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Throughout the past few weeks I have noticed many people posting comments about Trayvon Martin on Facebook. Their comments range from different news articles, pictures of a boy holding skittles and their own personal opinions filled with anger at the injustice of the situation. Whereas I am glad to see that these individuals are clearly outraged by what happened, I also know that these postings are their only efforts to speak out against this problem. Many of the postings I have seen were from students here and the number of postings I saw that demonstrated disagreement did not match the number of people who attended the talk about the Trayvon Martin case at the Multicultural center the other week, as I did not see any of my peers who were posting these things in attendance.

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The Help and Oscars

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Last week in my Psychology of African Americans class, a student presented a PowerPoint on the latest book she had read: The Help. When I saw the movie this summer, I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of a White woman speaking on behalf of Black women—which is ironic as White women have been a source of oppression to Black women. In blog post by Miss Caldonia—which was written on the blog “The Ladner Report”—the author expresses similar sentiment. She writes about her experience as being a maid to a White woman, Jo Lee, and describes being asked to perform disgusting tasks, such as cleaning the period stain out of her underwear. Miss Caldonia writes, “There is nothing glorious about cleaning up after dirty people and nothing like being exploited by people who don’t give a damn about you…can you imagine Jo Lee writing a book about me, my feelings, dreams, thoughts, aspirations and goals? Can you imagine Jo Lee being able to step out of her role of racial superiority long enough to give voice to me and my family? (Caldonia, 2011). The author certainly has a point, but why is it that the story glorifies the exploited work of Black women? Why was there such frenzy around this book? Was it White guilt, or something else?

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The World as a Mob

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So, as many of you may know, I am part of an all male music group here on campus. My involvement in this group has been a source of laughter, an immense amount of fun, and, of late, a really interesting focus group of people to think about from a social justice standpoint.

The group, when it comes down to it, are really a social experiment in a pietri dish. This experiment is one that is really important: what happens when you put 17 males in a room. The vast majority of these males are white and extremely privileged. People love to watch these males perform, and thus they, well…we, have a large platform to display our privilege.

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The Unknown Gravity Of Stereotyping

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The following links provide news coverage about an assault that took place at Trinity College, which is about 15 minutes from the town I live in CT.

http://vimeo.com/37918446

http://articles.courant.com/2012-03-05/community/hc-trinity-assault-0305-20120304_1_frederick-alford-trinity-tripod-trinity-college

The victim was a Sophomore at Trinity College and the incident occurred in the early hours of the morning on Sunday March 4, 2012. Trinity College is located in Hartford, Connecticut, an area that does not hold a very good reputation for being safe. The second link is the first article I read about the incident a day after it had happened. It does not provide a description of the suspects’ or provide much information about them in general. The feeling I got from reading the article (the second link) was that Trinity’s Campus Safety needs to do a better job of protecting their students from crime that may occur on campus and incidents occurring with people who aren’t members of the Trinity Community (people who may live around the campus and have easy access onto the campus).

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Trayvon Martin: ‘Racism without Racists’

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Everyday people of color, especially young men of color are profiled. They are seen as criminal, unsafe, suspicious, etc. Unfortunately, this issue has to be brought to light to the eyes of many Americans through the story of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed for appearing “suspicious.” Trayvon was unarmed, wearing a hoodie, and about 100 lbs lighter than his killer, George Zimmerman, but for some reason Zimmerman felt threatened. Zimmerman has yet to be arrested under a self-defense claim. Normally, in cases of self-defense, the one claiming self-defense bears the burden of proving that is the case, but in this particular situation, the police have chosen to take Zimmerman’s word for truth. It took three weeks for this story to receive the attention it deserves, despite the recent emergence of a socially aware group both for and against Kony 2012.

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Kony 2012: An Observer’s Perspective

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As of right now, I have remained a sideline observer of the Kony 2012 initiative. I have read countless facebook status updates, tweets, and quite a few articles from everything from news sites to blogs on Invisible Children and the make Kony famous initiative. I have been apprehensive about deciding whether I am for or against Kony 2012 for a few reasons, most of which are about the racial issues about it.

A few of my concerns are highlighted in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KLVY5jBnD-E

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College denies diversity?

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In this blog post I want to bring up something that actually discovered earlier today. A friend of mine transferred from Muhlenberg to Smith College, an all girls college in Massachusetts a couple years ago. When speaking with her today, she told me about a Smith alum, Anne Spurzem, who posted a letter about how adding diversity to Smith College is virtually ruining it. Here are two links that discuss (and present) the letter to the editor:

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Modern Clark Study

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During Thursday’s class discussion, we compared speeches from Dr. King and President Barack Obama. Though forty one years apart, we agreed that the speeches called for similar action; time had not changed much. I found the same to be true of the results of a landmark social psychology study. In the course of reading James Jones’s article “Psychological Knowledge and the New American Dilemma of Race”, I found myself wanting more details about the Kenneth and Mamie Clark doll study because of its influence in Brown v. Board of Education. So, as is my natural reflex I typed it into a search engine. One of the first items that came up was the video below.

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