Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Literary Racism


This article appeared in the Washington Post. It was results of a new poll among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. It also added thoughts on how people of color see each other. I found it interesting because it reinforces themes that I try to develop in my work. People have actually said that stories around race is a "Post" issue. We are post-racism, post-multiculturalism. I would love for this to be the case. However, I work in AIDS, a disease that strikes some of the most vulnerable populations in our country and the world. Let's face it: I don't think we'd be here--millions of people dead of AIDS--if we listened and respected one minority--gays.
Something that the article did mention is that these groups believed that we should be willing to put aside our prejudices and work together.

Read it here.

3 comments:

Peter Varvel said...

As a kid, when our family lived in Japan, I had wondered if Japanese people were even aware of the existence of African American people.

When I returned to Japan as an adult, many Japanese thought Black men were frightening and dangerous, based on what they had learned from American media--not my proudest moment as a U.S. citizen.

Anonymous said...

Isn't the gay=aids a myth ? I can't believe that myth is still around ...

did you know that some people still think that discussing aids or homosexuality will encourage either of them ?

I found this in wikipedia by the way .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aids

Cheryl said...

L.A. Weekly had some seriously depressing (yet interesting) articles on race in L.A. last week: http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/la-gangs-nine-miles-and-spreading/17861/ and http://www.laweekly.com/la-vida/a-considerable-town/the-slow-death-of-a-chocolate-city/17888/.