Gender and Race Determine the Worth of Your Degree

Researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce have compiled a new report on how education affects people’s earnings, based on 2007-2009 American Community Survey data. Not surprisingly, higher education significantly increases lifetime earnings of U.S. workers: But education doesn’t pay off equally for all groups. Women make less at every level of [...]

The Terrible, Awful Sweetness of The Help

If Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help was an angel food cake study of racism and segregation in the 60’s South, the new movie adaptation is even fluffier. Like a dollop of whip cream skimmed off a multi-layered cake, the film only grazes the surface of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender and geohistory. Let [...]

Why I’m Not Looking Forward To The Help

I picked up a copy of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel The Help at an airport bookstore. I figured the four-hour flight to Texas would be enough time to absorb 544 plot-driven pages, and reading the novel during one of my frequent trips south seemed appropriate. For some readers, The Help calls up memories of being [...]

After 25 Years of Paradox, A Changed Oprah Says Goodbye

When Beyonce launched into her latest faux girl-power anthem “Run the World (Girls)” to honor Oprah Winfrey on Monday afternoon, the moment crystallized what both the talk show and its hostess have been to television: 25 years of paradox. On the one hand, no one’s been a bigger proponent of real “girl power” than Oprah [...]

Empowered and Sexy

Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture by Tulane University professor Shayne Lee (Hamilton  Books, 2010) revolutionizes the politics of black female respectability. Instead of writing about how hypersexualized representations hurt black women, Lee celebrates black female pop culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited sexual agency. He defends Karinne Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor [...]

“Hands on the Freedom Plow”: A Love Song to Ella Baker

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC provides a much-needed antidote to the male-dominated history of the Civil Rights Movement. It also negates the claim – made by many a historian, citing only Stokely Carmichael’s admittedly priggish comment, “The position of women in SNCC is prone” – that the organization was particularly sexist.

Dating White or Dating Right?

I am a black woman who has only seriously dated black men. I am still single, but I am not insecure, co-dependent, stupid or a ho. I’m sure many women find themselves in similar situations, but LaShaun Williams is not talking to you in her recent post, “8 Reasons to Date a White Man.” Here [...]

Breaking News: Lindsay Lohan Benefits from White Privilege!

Last week, actress Regina King expressed chagrin in The Huffington Post at the lack of diversity at the 2010 Emmys. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair’s now-infamous all-white “young Hollywood” cover evinced that women of color are still completely marginalized in film. I thought about these events when I read yesterday that a bidding war of [...]

bell hooks week!

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood, then there is little chance for dialogue.” -bell hooks, from Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black This week at the Ms. Blog, we are running a series of essays celebrating the life and works of the extraordinary bell hooks. hooks has made a [...]

The Danger of False Divides

A review of Who Should Be First?: Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnnetta Betsch Cole, SUNY Press. The 2008 Presidential campaign not only tested our nation’s readiness for change, it catapulted feminists into a firestorm of competing priorities. Much was at stake for racial- and gender-identity politics [...]

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