Posted on 12/10/2009 4:28:23 AM PST by Zakeet
The New York Times '09 Holiday Gift Guide page has some intriguing suggestions.
There's the "Holiday Books Guide," the "Personal Tech Holiday Gift Guide," the guide for people of color...
Wait. A separate gift page for people of color? Yes. The NYT Picker blog noticed the Times has a special gift section for non-whites:
We don't like to throw around words like "racist" in the same sentence as the NYT's name, but there's no other word we can think of to describe this page in the NYT's annual Holiday Gift Guide -- called "Of Color/Stylish Gifts" and aimed exclusively at the paper's non-white readers.Or, as the NYT describes it, "gifts created for and by people of color"....it's the first time we can remember a gift guide, anywhere, openly defining its offerings by their appeal to a specific racial group.
The top of the page features an introduction by Simone Oliver, who seems to mostly produce "Trendspotting" videos for nytimes.com:
Somali fashion, do-it-yourself henna kits, children's books that draw inspiration from the lives of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor: it's not hard to find gifts created for and by people of color this holiday season.
Among her suggestions: "Wise Latina" T-Shirts. Oliver explained:
Wise shoppers can commemorate the moment in history when Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the first Hispanic justice to the Supreme Court, not to mention when she uttered one of the most memorable quotes of 2009: "Wise Latina." Bonus: 15 percent of the proceeds will be donated to the Bronx Global Learning Institute for Girls.
That's not even journalistically accurate: Sotomayor's controversial "wise Latina" remark was made in 2001.
Mediaite's Glynnis MacNicol was taken aback by the separate gifts of color page as well, calling it "badly, terribly thought out, bordering on offensive....I am utterly amazed it made it past the editing process and am baffled why anyone felt the need to separate these gifts from the more generalized categories into which all these items fit, to one based on skin color."
'Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope'
by Nikki Grimes
Why give your kids yet another video game when you can open their minds? Nikki Grimes’s children’s book about President Obama comes with an educational guide and colorful illustrations. (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, $16.99)
'Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx/La Juez Que Crecio en el Bronx'
by Jonah Winter
This children’s book, available Nov. 10, tells the coming-of-age story of Justice Sotomayor. It’s a fitting bedtime story for future justices. (Atheneum; Bilingual edition, $16.99)
Hair Rules
We live in a multitextural world, especially when it comes to hair. Anthony Dickey is to women with “problem hair” what Batman is to Gotham City. With his out-of-the box approach, innovative products (including his new travel kits for kinky, wavy and curly hair), Mr. Dickey has been a hair hero to Michelle Obama, Kelis, Alicia Keys and others.
Baby Jamz
Solange Knowles and her father, Matthew Knowles (yes, Beyoncé’s sister and father) have teamed with Planet Toys to create an interactive hip-hop and rhythm-based toy line. The line includes a Mix Master Music Chair that allows children to be their own D.J.’s, a Move ’n Groove dance mat, a Jammin’ Microphone and other items. There is also a singalong DVD series, featuring the voices of the Knowles sisters singing remixed versions of your favorite nursery rhymes.
I saw that Obama book right after the election. I have been nauseous since.
Someone help, please lol. Many years ago, the late (?) Art Buchwald wrote a classic column. In it, a hooded KKK person gets on a bus, sits next to a Black Power adherent, and the two start talking. It turns out they have SO MUCH in common lol, they want separate schools, separate clubs and everything else. The Black Power person says, “yes, we should go back to Africa and have our own country,” and the KKK person says, “you know, we’ve been asking for that for years” lol.
If anyone can point me to this column, I would appreciate it.
Ohhh. It is just in the spirit of Kwanza, don’tcha know...
The hip-hop Baby Jamz has two white boyz but no black kids. Where’s the Christmas list for their white-trash customers?
I thought on most forms, hispanics were supposed to mark the caucasion box but now they’re “of color” (whatever that means). I’ve got color too, sort of a pinky color, but color none the less. If I didn’t you’d be able to see connective tissue, blood veins, and bones. Hussein has brought race and discrimination back into vogue.
Isn’t it odd that “People of color” is oh-so current and sophisticated whilst “Colored People” (same words, just in a different order) would earn you a trip to a reeducation center?
We were watching the PBS series about Broadway and one of the critics started talking about how “The Lion King” is racial because when whites see it, it’s nothing about being blace and when blacks see it, it’s all about being black.
My nine year old (who has a black aunt,& cousins on my side and black cousins also Korean cousins, on the other side) said, “None of those animals are black. They’re all African.”
Why do the libs make everything about race?
Hey! They are still colored people to me as long as the NAACP still has that order of words in its title. I don’t know of any national organizations that have different words in their own registered names.
Blace=black
I am waiting to find an NYT review of the “Al Jolson Halloween Make-up Kit” where you can put on blackface and pay homage to the jazz greats of old....
It could include scenes from the movie "Holiday Inn."
Coming soon in liberal bastions of diversity! A separate water cooler for the office for people of color.
plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Or "Amos 'n' Andy"
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