Word: racists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Associated Press article appearing in the Crimson (Real World, March 17) described an "Amazon Fire out of Control" whose spread was endangering a number of Yanomamo villages. Despite the well-intentioned concern for the Yanomamo voiced in the article, I was truly surprised at the racist assumptions pervading the description of this people. Beginning with a description of the Yanomamo as a "Stone Age tribe," the article concludes with the following: "For centuries, the Yanomami lived in virtual isolation, hunting and fishing with bow and arrows. They have no written language and count only up to two--anything more...
...could accuse Yusef Komunyakaa, 50, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and a tenured professor at Princeton, of writing self-indulgent, feel-good verse, and he shows why in Thieves of Paradise (Wesleyan University; 128 pages; $19.95). Raised in a particularly racist precinct of rural Louisiana, Komunyakaa, who is black, was drafted into the Vietnam War and assigned to write for the Southern Cross, a newspaper for infantrymen. Thirty years later, the artillery fire still echoes in his work. In "Ia Drang Valley," a slender, striking war poem both lyrical and blunt, a soldier dreams himself into...
...itself on a fine edge between mockery and representation, between historical narrative and cultural commentary. Rather than narrating history, Walker uses history as a backdrop for a less literal, though just as real, melodrama. Her work unabashedly analyzes the collective unconscious of the American psyche. What she dredges up--racist imagery involving bestiality, child abuse, feces and more--is not pretty. It is grotesque, disgusting, ingenious and eerily beautiful...
...woman's skirt or stole is lined with ferrets, and a head of one remains alive, as its silhouette, too, is shown in profile, turning around to observe her. The scene establishes a dramatic irony; the viewer is aware that this black couple has failed to escape the racist terms of the exhibit, but the two black silhouettes dance on, unknowingly...
Some terms generally considered racist or otherwise derogatory change meanings depending on the contexts in which they are used. The homophobic slur "queer," for example, can be empowering when co-opted by the gay community. Stereotypes of Jewish women, however, do not have this redeeming quality, according to Weisbard...