· August, 2006

Stories about Ethnicity & Race from August, 2006

Jamaica: White martyrs, Black savages

  31 August 2006

Having watched the trailer for a newly released film set in Uganda, Jamaican novelist Marlon James announces that he's sick and tired of “stories of a white man trapped in black (and sometimes yellow) hell where in the midst of all this inhumanity he discovers what it means to be...

Kurdistance…

The most horrible of things has just happened to me….my RSS feed for the Kurdish blogs, well for lack of a better term..hiccupped…and all of my feeds are gone. So in dealing with this crisis, today's post probably will leave a few people out. Thankfully all of my work is...

Poland: On Migrant Labor, Again

  30 August 2006

The beatroot writes about “free movement of labour” and responds to a “deranged” commenter who, among other things, is “favorably comparing the Nazi invasion and the Holocaust to the influx of a few hundred thousand Poles and others to the UK.”

South Africa: Cape Town's Somali Genocide

  30 August 2006

Mike Golby, a South African blogger, struggles to understand the situation in Cape Town, where, as cosmopolitan as it seems, refugees find it difficult if not entirely impossible to integrate fully. For the Somali refugees, as he particularly notes, it’s hell on earth. “That they might be, but it seems...

Guyana: Election watch

  29 August 2006

On Monday 28 August, an estimated 300,000 Guyanese turned out to vote in elections for the unicameral National Assembly. Elections in Guyana have historically been fraught with public anxiety and violence. The two leading parties, the People's Progressive Party (PPP/Civic) and the People's National Congress (PNC/Reform) have traditionally drawn their...

Albania: Greater, or Natural, Albania

  29 August 2006

Our Man in Tirana writes about ‘Greater Albania’ or, as it was called in a recent interview by the political adviser to the Albanian Prime Minister, the ‘Natural Albania': “Citing the example of Montenegro which chose to split from Serbia, Danaj suggested that Albanians in Macedonia and Montenegro should also...

Bosnia & Herzegovina: Karadzic Sightings

  29 August 2006

Balkan Ghost of Finding Karadzic visits Trebinje and Lastva in the Republika Srpska to investigate Radovan Karadzic sightings there: “While in the west we treat Karadzic sightings with alarm, they are commonplace around Trebinje. And even if the locals wanted to talk about it, the western press and local EUFOR...

Russian-Language Blogs: Miscellanea (3)

  29 August 2006

Israeli blogger pilka writes (RUS) about a surreal experience of eating next to three clowns at a hospital in the wartime Haifa: […] I had breakfast with clowns today. I work at the children's department, okay? So strange, a clown on the right, a clown on the left, a vegetable...

Senegal: Commemorating the Senegalese Riflemen of WWII

  29 August 2006

While Senegal commemorated the Senegalese riflemen who assisted the French in WWII, Senegalese blogger Semett remembered (Fr) their forced labor, involuntary conscription and drew comparisons with the triangular slave trade. He seemed unconvinced with President Wade's sincerity in facing the realities of the riflemen but also that of the youth...

Lebanon: Blogging Back to Normality

This week the Lebanese blogosphere witnessed a sluggish move away from posts about destruction and death caused by the war to posts that reflect patriotic passions, politics and personal accounts. Photos of how ads, weddings and cartoons were affected by the war can also be found. Life in the blogosphere seems to be trying hard to go back to the way it was.

India: Flights and racial profiling

  28 August 2006

While racial profiling of some passengers may have contributed to their being detained in Amsterdam has bothered quite a few people. Dhoomketu writes about insensitive travellers and Govindraj remembers another flight journey where some passengers created quite a commotion.

South Africa: Racism ruins national debates

  28 August 2006

“South African whites either just assume you share their unashamedly racist views or hate you immediately for being one of those dreadful foreign liberals who ruined their sybaritic idyll” writes white Johannesburg-based journalist Jonathan Clayton on African Safari. He goes on to examine how racism is undermining key debates over...

African Women This Month

  27 August 2006

Literature, music and blog redesigns are three of the themes in the African women's blogosphere this month. Molara Wood and Mama's Junkyard have both redesigned their blogs. Molara has chosen to stick with blogger.com but takes on a new name, Wordsbody. Mama's Junkyard ungrades to WordPress with a new colour...

South Asia: Travelling while Asian

  25 August 2006

Pickled Politics on TWA (or Travelling While Asian) as an India bound flight was diverted to Amsterdam because of what appears to be racial profiling or paranoia.