just when you think you've seen it all...
 
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Skin+whitening+Facebook+launch...

I am not of this world...I give up...
We moved to Canada for a gentler, just a bit kinder world...and socialized medicine.  Since we have been in Quebec, Muslim women have been a target for hearings, and the notion of "reasonable accomodation." 
Following a Muslim woman's expellation from a College in Quebec last week, this new rule has just come down.  Read it and weep.
This is about freedom, belief, gender, and oppression, make no mistake
 
http://news.aol.ca/article/quebec-will-require-bare-face-for-service/789450/?icid=main|canada|dl1|link3|http://news.aol.ca/article/quebec-will-require-bare-face-for-service/789450/
 

The following article appeared in newspapers across Australia highlighting the over-representation of Indigenous youth in juvenile justice systems, not just in the State of Western Australia where this case took place, but right across Australia.
 
A 12 year old Aboriginal boy has been charged with receiving stolen goods, a 70 cent chocolate Freddo Frog. The Freddo Frog was stolen by a friend of his. This 12 year old has not had any prior convictions.
 
According to the newspaper report "when the boy last month missed a court date due to a family misunderstanding, police had apprehended him about 8am on a school day and taken him into custody. The boy was then imprisoned for several hours in the holding cell at the police station."

The first time I heard the phrase, post-racism,was when I delivered a speech in Vancouver in April.  I mean, seriously heard the phrase.  After delivering my work, the first question asked was by a white Australian man, who, in all sincerity, asked me if we were now in a post-racist era.  Of course, my speech didn't indicate it, I can only assume he came in asking the question with a plethora of reasons in his basket.  I hadn't a clue where he was coming from.  What prompted this question?  Certainly, the election of a bi-racial president in the US couldn't possibly be the reason.  Or could it?  Could the simple act of placing one man who identifies as African American in the White House place the see

So, Slumdog won the big ones....

Priya Parmar and I are co-editing an issue of Taboo:  The Journal of Culture and Education on South Asians in Hollywood, using Slumdog Millionaire as the start off point.

Please send me a short abstract of 100 words about your possible article.  We are putting them into peer review, but doing it rather quickly, as this issue will be out June 1, 2009.  Articles are due May 1, 2009. Articles from 3000 to 5000 words..

Any questions?  Email me at msgramsci@aol.com

Shirley

Critical Pedagogy in the age of Obama

For the past ten years I have practiced a form of critical pedagogy in all of my undergraduate and graduate classes.  Regardless of the content of the course, I have tried to encourage my students to think more critically about the political nature of schooling and education; to examine the relationship between knowledge and power; to address subtleties of ideology in the teaching and learning process; to think through the notion of authority; to analyze the formation of social identities; to critique social norms and take an accounting of the affects of these norms in terms of exclusion and inclusion; to think about the relationship between institutional and individual needs; to analyze what are often contradictory values in capitalist and democratic discourses; and to become aware of how dominant epistemological frameworks position our understanding of what is possible. 

This semester, one of the courses I'm teaching is a large 2nd year course called Sociology of Education in the primary education program. It is a big issue course that looks at education and inequality in Australia. After the students return from prac, the next topic is multiculturalism. I actually use a number of writings from the United States, particularly some of the different typologies that have been developed. As an undergraduate at Curtin University in the 1980s, it was reading the revisionist colonist history of Henry Reynolds that challenged what I was taught in school (particularly the myth of Aboriginal passivity when confronted by White colonisation).

Well, between now and my last blog, I managed to get overwhelmed with work etc. Not 2 much time for social activism. I had intended to provide a follow up on my visit to the Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC) in Redfern (visit their website at: http://aboriginalrightscoalition.wordpress.com/). Since then, the Sydney ARC held a "Black and White: Unite to Fight conference” on May 23-25 about the Northern Territory (NT) Intervention.

April, 2008