Colorlines Magazine articles from March 2002

Colorlines Magazine archives from March 2002

Meet the editor and publisher 2002 brings new leadership to ColorLines.
March 22, 2002... Tram Nguyen, Editor Lately, it's been important for me to prove that I'm tough. There are just so many fronts to fight on, and that's a fact that gets depressingly clearer every day. The American Way of War, as Walden Bello called it,...

Whites overcounted in prison. (Racefile).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 22, 2002... Nearly all the growth in the nation's prison population over the past 12 years comes from black and Latino communities, according to a recent study from the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA). The study is the first to...

Native Tribes Sue Alaska. (Racefile).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) is representing 10 villages, the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, and the Alaska Native Justice Center in a lawsuit calling for adequate police protection in Alaska Native communities. The plaintiffs in the...

Stolen generations. (Racefile).(Aborigines protest Canberra monument, Australia)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... A monument-in-construction has become the center of debate among Aboriginal communities and has thrust the issue of Aboriginal recognition into the Australian spotlight. Plans for the "Reconciliation Memorial" in Canberra, Australia, have...

Devil's in the details: Andrea Smith Scrutinizes the Christian right's "race reconciliation" movement. (To the Point).(Statistical Data Included)
March 22, 2002... In the past decade, "race reconciliation" has been a growing trend in Christian Right circles. A profusion of books has been published on the topic, and an increasing number of articles in conservative Christian periodicals have focused on...

Reflections on Durban and the war: Rinku Sen compares U.S. behavior at the World Conference Against Racism and after 9/11.
March 22, 2002... Before September 11, the big news among people who cared about race was the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa. Although that conference has been largely overlooked...

Anti-Racism as law: Joel Pollak reports on challenges facing South Africa's ambitious efforts to legislate against racism. (South Africa in Focus).
March 22, 2002... The legacy of the apartheid legal structure is literally stamped on the South African landscape. In Cape Town, its somber monument is a great grassy swath of land stretching east of the downtown area along the seaward slopes of Devil's Peak....

Who's got the power? (South Africa in Focus).(South Africa's leading political parties)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... The Tripartite Alliance, a political bloc consisting of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), was the main political force in bringing apartheid...

Living in townships. (South Africa in Focus).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... town*ship ("taun-"ship)n. 15th century. (1) an ancient unit of administration in England identical in area with or a division of a parish. (2) a division or territory in surveys of U.S. public land containing 36 sections or 36 square miles. (3)...

Invisible women: Therese Saliba says Arab and Muslim women are still left out of feminist and racial consciousness. (A New Era).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... In 1995, I attended the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) conference just a few miles from the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. At the keynote address, the white moderator and representatives from the four major ethnic...

A New Era: Race after 9/11. (Special Section).(Poem)
March 22, 2002... America has been shopping. Price cuts, slashes, blow out sales. Resilient, our economy--our nation. Terror cannot stop us from practicing our rights as the most powerful nation ever known. We shop, we are. Our things, they represent us. Those...

Tolerance Arabia: Vijay Prashad unravels the tangled role of Saudi Arabia in the region's volatile mix of neocolonialism, oil, and theocracy. (A new Era).
March 22, 2002... Just before 10 a.m. on the 11th of September, the clocks in the World Trade Center stopped. Tons of inflamed jet-fuel melted the steel girders of the mammoth towers and sent five thousand people to their death. It was the handiwork of a...

No safe haven: Refugee policy is dictated by political objectives, not humanitarian principles. (A New Era).(U.S. reduces number of permitted refugees)
March 22, 2002... A million Afghans joined the ranks of one of the world's largest and most desperate refugee populations as a result of U.S. retaliation against their country. Despite the urgency of this humanitarian crisis and the U.S. role in it, President...

For every drop of oil, a refugee. (A New Era).(how conflict in Middle East serves U.S. interests)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... After September 11, more than a million Afghan refugees fled to Iran, Pakistan, or other bordering nations to escape U.S. retaliation. This refugee flow has deepened an already desperate humanitarian crisis, one that teaches far beyond...

Changing the terms of debate: Hunter Cutting discusses strategies to influence public opinion of the war on terrorism. (A New Era).
March 22, 2002... "Be inquisitive. Remember, asking questions about government policies isn't disloyal. It's your duty." Janis Besler Heaphy, president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee, never got to say these words at a commencement address in front of 18,000...

The war at home: National targeting of noncitizens takes on new dimensions. (A New Era).(immigrants in U.S. after 9/11)
March 22, 2002... Within hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center, President Bush appeared on national television to offer his first promise to the American public: "We will smoke these barbarians out of their caves." A cleansing was in order. The world...

For war and workers? Julie Quiroz-Martinez finds labor unions and grassroots organizers struggling to define immigrant rights post-9/11. (A New Era).
March 22, 2002... By the time you read this, an estimated 5,000 airport baggage screeners will have lost their jobs. The reason: they were guilty of being immigrants. Welcome to post-9/11 America, where birth in another country can and will be used against...

A Woman's Place: Mary Romero argues that fundamentalist misogyny is not the only thing oppressing women globally. (Books).('Women's Education in the Global Economy')
March 22, 2002... While the U.S. bombarded Afghanistan, its campaign for continued support at home increasingly framed the aggression as countering "the Taliban's war against women." Carefully disguised as the universal voice of feminism, Laura Bush appropriated...

"Agh,a Negro!": Denzel Washington avoids the racial pitfalls of Hollywood and redefines the black antihero. (Culture).(Critical Essay)
March 22, 2002... Black antiheroes are not new to cinema. D.W. Griffith's The Birth of A Nation, literally the birth of modern film, placed black antiheroes--including an evil-causing mulatto woman--square in the middle of its story line. Meant to be a post...

Locas rule: Los Bros Hernandez, Love and Rockets is back, and the timing has never been better. (Culture).
March 22, 2002... Back in the '70s, it was hard to find a good man--let alone a woman--of color in the comics. Black Panther, you were gone so fast we barely knew you. Luke Cage too. Iron Fist? Blonde. Conan? Brunette, but a barbarian. There was Shang-Chi...

Panoptic modes (Red Giant). (Vijay Iyer).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... South Asian pianist lyer delivers his satisfying third disc of virtuoso playing, angular melodies and views from the diasporic hinterland. Thoughtfully arranged and bearing the conjoined weights of history and memory, Iyer's work is a beautiful...

The Olutanji concert (Impulse!). (John Coltrane).(Babatunde Olutanji)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Recorded in New York in April 1967, Olutanji was Trane's legendary last recorded performance before his untimely death three months later. Fiery, noisy and exhausting, witness the sax master's relentless search for a truly universal sound.

B-Boys in Occupied Mexico (Mean Street). (2MEX).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Lost Angels 2Mex and partner Xololanxinxo give love to their hometown on this meticulous and surprisingly upbeat offering from the lowlands' finest. 2Mex-generally known for his grim outlook and firebrand politicking-finally sounds like he's...

Fight to win (MCA). (Femi Kuti).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Femi "Son of Fela" Kuti is the human bridge between African America's neo-"conscious" diaspora and the original "cradle of civilization." His second American album features a spate of stateside guests (Common, Mos Def,Jaguar) but enough thick,...

In search of... (Virgin). (N.E.R.D.).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Oft-delayed side project by hip-hop super-producers the Neptunes (Britney Spears, Jay-Z, No Doubt, Janet), the genius behind In Search Of... is the way it avoids the easy categorization of their gimmicky, high-profile collaborators. Straddling...

Love and theft (Columbia). (Bob Dylan).(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... Few singers have ever endeavored to tell truths and sort lies like the wily, aging Dylan. On his masterfully sly new album, he sets his sights on the dustbowl of American dreams and comes up with a new set of heroes, villains and passers-by...

Activist web.(DataCenter)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... When it comes to research, activists often don't have enough. Activism is fast-paced and under-resourced. Research, on the other hand, can feel slow and expensive, so it often gets second priority. But when critical information emerges too...

Tim Sampson, onzanizer for justice. (Tim Sampson 1935-2001).(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 22, 2002... TIM SAMPSON, organizer and fighter for justice, cancer at his Oakland home on December 24, 2001. A 30-year member of the faculty at San Francisco State University (SFSU), Sampson was deeply involved in many of the important progressive...