I was inclined to pick up this book based on Karen Healey’s quick review on her LiveJournal (you’ll have to scroll down to find it in the list):

It’s about the difficulty of hope, how terrible things happen for no reason, how the mechanics of poverty and oppression keep great people down, how they can be combated, and how faith – of many kinds, including in one’s God, in one’s self, and in one’s friends and allies – can be maintained, lost, regained, and blaze like a beacon for others. There’s barely any hints of romance.

Unfortunately, for me, it’s told in 1st person point-of-view, and i’ve found that with 1st person you have to actually like the narrator’s voice well enough to keep on.  And i didn’t.  Perhaps if i’d pressed on i’d have gotten past Amber’s irritating narrative stylings, but these days i don’t waste more time on a book than i have to.  Sorry, book!

From Invisible Privilege: A Memoir About Race, Glass, & Gender, by Paula Rothenberg.  (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000.)

But how is it possible to separate the impact of race, class, and gender on individual lives, and why do some people think it desirable to do so?  Perhaps there is a strong desire to deny the impact of racism because recognizing it might demand that we talk about white responsibility, white complicity, white privilege.  Many are more comfortable looking at economic inequality because in their mind it fails to imply such clear responsibility.  If racism is the issue, then white people will have to ask how they have, perhaps inadvertently, benefited from it.  If economic inequities are at fault, then many whites can point to their own humble origins as children or grandchildren of poor immigrants as proof that anyone who works hard can succeed.  In this way, they fail to understand the difference between the ethnic or religious prejudice that their families fought to overcome and the racism that pervades our society.

Many white people continue to believe that racism and sexism, like ethnic prejudice, are simply hateful attitudes toward people.  They look inside themselves and cannot find either the feelings or the beliefs they associate with prejudice and so conclude that they are not prejudiced.  Because they are committed to treating people fairly, they believe they do so.  They teach their children not to judge others by the color of their skin, and they contribute to various charities that address issues of equity and civil rights.  Because they have never been taught the difference between simple “prejudice” and the more complex and recalcitrant forms of oppression signified by the words “racism” and “sexism,” they cannot understand why some people want to talk about “racism” all the time instead of individual initiative.  They do not understand that racism and sexism are perpetuated every day by nice people who are carrying on business as usual.  They do not recognize that what passes as “business as usual” already institutionalizes white skin, male, and class privilege.  They honestly believe that what separates them [...] are intelligence and hard work.

A long quote, but as i read these 2 paragraphs in the book my brain kept punching the air and saying, “Yes.  Yes, that’s it.  That’s it exactly.”  It covers the myth of “you just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and also hits hard on what Jess/raanve and i have called the “but let me tell you about my poor Irish immigrant grandparents” problem.

Racism, sexism, and classism are problems in the institutions of society and not just prejudices held by individual people.

Because you have no right to judge that another human is trash.

The New York Times story “Militia Charged With Plotting to Murder Officers” (29 march 2010), about the arrest of individuals involved in a radical Christian militia group in rural Michigan, included the following gem at the bottom of the article:

By Monday, the Stones’ house stood empty, its front door ajar and two dogs still tied up in the muddy yard, which was littered with dilapidated furniture, a washing machine and tires.

Thanks for that, New York Times.  That truly was, without a doubt, utterly integral to the rest of the article.  Assholes.

This is kind of ranty all across new Who including “The End of Time,” so it’s pretty spoilerific.

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Paul Di Filippo writes about the ToC of “The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF”:

First, how are anthologies assembled?  By 1)  an editor’s reference to his past reading experience, for reprints; 2) “invitation only” for new stories; 3) “open call” for new stories.

The book in question was assembled by a combo of 1) and 2).  Obviously, Mike Ashley recalled only stories by men and invited stories only from males.  (Or possibly, invited women who did not respond or qualify.)  This resulted in a men-only book.  Is this sexism [...]?

YES.

It’s sexism because it’s the sort of narrow thinking produced by a culture that’s still trying to emerge from the overt sexism of the past.  If you’re not a sexist because some of your best friends are women — why, even your wife is a woman!! — and yet you still fail to think of women when you’re, for example, putting together an anthology, then you are still acting like a sexist.

Let’s say it again: If you’re not a bigot, don’t act like a bigot.