tdaxp

Malaysia is a country in the Gap, one of the regions that Tom Barnett describes as "largely disconnected from the global economy and the rule sets that define its stability" (that is, the country is Muslim and/or African). Gap countries tend to be pretty bad places -- bad governments, crazy laws, and all the violent bigotry that characterizes the bottom fifth of the world, it's perhaps not surprising that the racist Malaysian government has decided to free her citiznes from the like of Mark-Paul Gosselaar

and Sara Brinsfield



Both Sara and Mark-Paul are "pan-asian," the current term for miscegenated East-, Southeast- or South- Asian, often with Caucasian ancestry thrown in. Panasians are particularly attractive for advertisers, because they are recognizably Far-Eastern without being particular to any one group.

In the words of the Asia Sentinel:

Beauty now has joined that parade, particularly as a rising tide of mixed marriages, not only in Malaysia but across much of Asia, seems to be creating a new super race of beautiful women. Over the past couple of decades they have taken Asia’s modeling world by storm and changed the very definition of international beauty. They largely dominate magazine advertisements, fashion shows and catwalks from Singapore to Manila to Hong Kong. Some modeling agencies, like Elite Model Management of Hong Kong, have built their business on the faces of mixed-blood models.

But the racist and Gap Malaysian government is dedicated to putting a stop to this glorification of miscegenation:

The Malaysian modeling and advertising industries are in shock after the government announced it was reviving a ban on the multiracial Asian faces that dominate billboards and magazines.

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said yesterday that models with so-called "pan-Asian" features were not representative of Malaysian demographics.

"Using pan-Asian faces means downgrading local faces," he said. "We have to give priority to models with local looks."

Pan-Asians are popular in ethnically diverse Malaysia, where advertisers tend to use their neutral features to avoid alienating any customers. A prime example is model and actress Maya Karim, 27, who is of Malay-Chinese-German parentage and is the latest poster girl for L'Oreal Malaysia.

A ban on pan-Asian faces is already in force at two government-owned television stations that cater mainly for majority Malays, who form 60 per cent of the population.

The announcement on Sunday extended the ban to advertising carried by private television stations, the print media and billboards.

The minister said the ban would eventually cover all media, but it was unclear when it would take effect.

However, love triumphs over hate, and beauty triumphs over bias.

Joshua over at One Free Korea already has placed his bet on the eventual victor:

I, for one, welcome our new fembot overlords, and I’d like to remind them that as a trusted blogger, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

Pan-Asian Beauties: work with them now, or for them later.

My good friend Aaron wrote this for a post on 5th Generation War. However, the question is broad enough, and well thought out enough, to demand a thread of its own (emphasis mine)"

"I'm afraid I don't find patriotism some quality to aspire to. It's racism minus the pigmentary convenience. If anything, I'd say the Democratic Party is currently beholden to their electorate, who inarguably saw this election as a referendum on the war. I guess I'm curious why Herb and his type think what the Democrats are trying to do (the will of the people) is counter-intuitive to our country's goals. If terrorism had stopped on the eve Iraq fell, I'd have to eat my words. Alas, it has not."

Thoughts?

With Mike Nifong's and Crystal Gail Mangum's attempted lynching of the Duke University students continuing to unravel, a mob of activist University professors accidentally becomes right. Ann Althouse, Durham in Wonderland, Instapundit, and La Shawn Barber are on the case.

The Group of 88 faculty's original letter began as follows:

Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism, who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with everyday. They know that it isn’t just Duke, it isn’t everybody, and it isn’t just individuals making this disaster.

But it is a disaster nonetheless

Indeed. While the Group of 88 was focused on joining the lynching party, their words are ironic now. They can be used to describe the racist and sexist attitude of the administration of Duke University and Durham County.



Dennis Mangan writes bluntly:

Anyone white and male would have to be a fool to attend Duke. There's some sign, as outlined in the article, that the president of Duke is coming to realize his gigantic fuckup - a criminal fuckup. No one in his right mind should go there, nor should his parents send him.

The situation may not be quite bad, but it certainly isn't good. Perhaps Durham is in the Gap, after all.

With the determination of a naked emperor walking down the street, Graves continues his confused attack on the concept of race (a largely factual division of humanity into localized breeding population) and the concept of racism (a normative argument that membership in a certain historical breeding population should determine one's lot in life). The third section of his presentation of Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium, entitled “Applications and Misapplications of Darwinism,” runs from page 105 to page 154.

However, I wish to begin by stepping up from Graves-style rhetoric and present a testable hypothesis. Describing an early racist named Fritz Lenz, Graves writes that “Lenz considered liberal politics, money-making, and sexual proclivities as racial and genetic characteristics of the Jews” (132). Stripping down this statement to that which most interests me, Lenz is saying there is some Jewish genotype whose presence correlates with support for liberal policies. Both of these can be measured. One might measure Jewish blood through mitochondrial (female-line) allelles that tend to predominate in self-reported Jews, Y-chromosome (male-line) allelles that tend to predominate in the send, or perhaps some combination thereof. If you wanted sacrifice some scope for precision, you could measure the genetic Cohenim population that is spread throughout the world (Behar, et al., 2003, etc.). Then measure political persuasion through standard scales. Once you've defined your independent and dependent variables, such a statement becomes factually testable and loses much of its emotionality. It is known that politics that genetic background explains much of the variation in political persuasion (Alford, Funk, & Hibbing 2005; Alford & Hibbing 2006), so I would not be surprised if it is true. And if it is false, it is false.

Graves's The Emperor's New Clothes has so many things wrong with it, so many untruths, half-truths, and examples of naivety, that it is difficult to know how to begin critiquing it. Nonetheless, such must be done, so I will begin at the beginning (page 1) and continue until the end of the first section (page 52).

First, Graves dances around with the definition of race. His first approximation seems reasonable, “The term 'race' implies the existence of some nontrivial underlying hereditary features shared by a group of people and not present in other groups” (5) but his thoughts go down-hill from there. Latter in the page he notes that “None of the physical features by which we have historically defined human races... unambiguously corresponds to the racial groups we have constructed.” First, Graves' look for unambiguous markers is misguided. Not all human beings are born with a brain, but possession of the brain is nonetheless typical for the human race. Secondly, Graves attempts to jump between a physical definition of race and a socially constructed definition. Our concepts of race imprecisely but accurately describe real genetic populations (Parra, et al., 2003; Pimenta, et al., 2006) in spite of what graves later claims (36).. Ultimately, the definition Graves takes from the dictionary may be best: “A population of organisms differing from others of the same species in the frequency of hereditary traits; a subspecies” (6). Graves' question, “How much genetic difference must there be before a subspecies can be said to exist?” is best answered with “a statistically significant amount.” If this implies races and sub-races, and sub races within those, so be it. In some cases, it may be that it is easiest to speak about those who left Africa and those who stayed (Underhill, P.A., et al., 2000), as Africans, Asians, and Europeans (Bamshad, et al., 2003), or even smaller groups. (Lindh, Andersson, & Gusdal, 1997).

Michigan Votes to Ban Affirmative Action," Feminist Daily News Wire, 9 November 2006, http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9999.

In one of the few pieces of unambiguously good news, the people of Michigan voted to end Affirmative Action in state government.

Michigan voters approved a state-wide ban on affirmative action in public education, public employment, and state contracts on Tuesday

The vote was a symptom fo wider problems, as the Republican candidate opposed the measure and was on the side of racism

The referendum was opposed by many prominent leaders in the political, business, and academic worlds, including both major gubernatorial candidates, Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) – who was reelected on Tuesday – and Dick DeVos (R).

This is why the Republicans had to lose and the Democrats had to win. The GOP had abandoned the Right, and abandoned the People:

Roughly 58 percent of voters across the state, however, came out in favor of the ban

Predictably, the Left seeks to overturn democracy through the courts:

Hours after Michigan voters eliminated affirmative action in college admissions and government hiring, the lawsuits hit the courts. While most educators remain unsure what the ban will do, some students are worried.

The measure does little to stop informal affirmative racism and its quiet racism by hiring boards, tenure boards, etc., but is a good step forward.

Thank you Michigan!

I'm in the middle of a mind-melting project, so no time for a coherent blog post. Instead, I'll vaguely fulminate against Jessee Jackson, Gap sex caboose breaking, and sexism. If you want a coherent application of PNM Theory to domestic politics, read Chirol. If you want a good summary of the Lacrosse incident, read . Else, read on.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Founder and President Rainbow/Push Coalition, has announced his organization will pay the Duke scandal accuser's tuition regardless of whether she's telling the truth or not about being raped.

Too bad Elisabet Sunde wasn't black. Then she would at least have
help paying for her lawyer.

Of course, if Elisabet Sunde was black, her name might have been Crystal Gale Mangum.

Over at Phatic Communion, CGW discussed his reaction to Muslim anti-cartoon protests. Because Curtis's opinion was so different from Adam's, who he is normally quite similar to, I entered a conversation. Specifically, I mentioned that while many Christians were upset by a Rolling Stone cover.

Of course, the reason many Christians were bothered is simple: Racism.

Dan, please tell me how the Rolling Stone cover has lampooned Jesus. By offering a — gasp! — black Jesus?

Who woulda thunk it?



Well, that guy, obviously.

"Split in Martin Luther King's own family reflects larger debate over gay marriage," by Louise Chu, The Press-Enterprise, http://www.pe.com/ap_news/California2/Gay_Marriage_King_170060CA.shtml, 16 January 2005 (from The Corner).

Racism and homosexuality were invented at roughly the same time in roughly the same place -- the middle-Modern Era in western Europe. It is wonderful that they have the same enemies

Martin Luther King Jr.'s youngest child lit a torch at her father's tomb last month to kick off a march advocating a ban on gay marriage, creating a strong image linking the slain civil rights icon to today's heated social debate.

...

The Kings' youngest child, Bernice King, helped lead thousands of people in an Atlanta march last month that had an anti-gay agenda.

The march, organized by Bishop Eddie Long and his 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, also advocated issues such as education reform and affordable health care, but its listed first goal was an amendment to "fully protect marriage between one man and one woman."

Will we end both problems in this generation? I doubt it. Can they both fester and grow worse? Yes. But can we make progress toward a happier world? Absolutely.

I am thankful we have civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King III. I do not agree with everything he has said, but he sees clearly.