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Showing posts from April, 2016

Digital Blackface Justified: When The Road to Hell is Paved With White Privilege Claiming Good Intentions

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Add caption  "PHOTO ABOVE-LEFT: Olympic Project for Human Rights button, worn  by activist athletes in the 1968 Olympic games, originally called for a boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games. PHOTO ABOVE-RIGHT: This iconic photo  appears in many U.S. history textbooks, stripped of the story of the planned  boycott and demands, creating the appearance of a solitary act of defiance".- From  "If We Knew Our History" By the Zinn Education Project    " Özrü kabahatinden beter " is a Turkish proverb meaning  the apology is worse than the error. I couldn't get that proverb out of my head after reading an article in the magazine "Good" about a German sports team's photograph in digital Blackface. The op-ed was a whitewashing justification for the incident, based on team assurances that this was done "in support" of their two African teammates. Back in November of 2014, I wrote a blog post about the responsibilities of an ally ...