Technology Assisted Racism: Make Me Asian App

Taking the work out of altering photos by hand to add stereotypical racist features, there is now a Make Me Asian App.

According the promotional material:

“Have you ever wondered to present himself as a person of another nationality? You can imagine, for example, Chinese or Japanese? No? Then immediately take your phone and download it amazing Android-application called «Make me Asian».

This is just a fun app lets you indulge you and your friends! You can for a few seconds to make himself a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or any other Asians!”

Here is an example of what it does:

 

I would just say that this seems like a bad idea put together by someone with too much time on their hands and just enough tech savvy to be dangerous, but I am afraid that somewhere in the world there are some impressionable youth using this app to modify photos, laughing uproariously and not at all understanding the actual import of their actions.

 

(Also available from the same brain trust the Make Me Indian App.)

Diversity Related Facebook Educational Game

Looking at Teaching Tolerance (Tolerance.org) I saw a link to a Facebook game one can use to evaluate how diverse their friends are.  I am not sure about the accuracy of the assessment.  Somehow it gave me a diversity rating of 86 or so, but I really don’t think it was randomly spinning through all my Facebook friends.

Here are the details:

This Teaching Tolerance story underscores the value of diversity within all of the communities we are part of—our cities and towns, neighborhoods, schools and groups of friends and acquaintances.

Facebook might be another community to which you belong. The USA Network recently developed a Facebook game called Social Circle. It tests your knowledge of your Facebook friends using different criteria, such as race and ethnicity, geographic location, religious faith, sexual orientation. It also helps you understand, in a visual way, how diverse your social circle is and how you might broaden that diversity. (Note: The USA Networks FB game is not violating anyone’s privacy. That is, it’s not “checking” back to see if the friend you identified as Jewish really is Jewish, or the one you said was gay really was gay.)

1. Before you play the game, either on your own or in the classroom, think about what you’re willing to share online. If you do not want to allow Social Circle to post updates or photos on your behalf, skip the first part of the game.

2. Follow the directions for playing “Characters Unite—Social Circle.” (With this game, the USA Network is promoting the variety of characters in its programming. It also wants you to see that people with a huge variety of characteristics can add a lot to your life.) As you answer each of eight questions, you will see photos of your friends pop up. If none of them apply to the question, spin again. If one of them applies, press “hold” under the photo. Your answers to the questions will be timed. The longer it takes to finish the game, the less diverse is your group of friends.

3. When you finish the game, it will assess your social circle for its diversity. What is your score? Is it what you expected? Why or why not?

4. Write a journal entry that sums up your experience with Social Circle. In what ways do you think you could make your circle of friends and acquaintances more diverse?

Theoretical Question on Online Schooling

Does it matter if an online school has a diverse faculty?

I was looking at the teachers page for one online school and noticed that all the teachers seem to be white or Asian based on my quick visual appraisal.  However, there is no classroom, so there is not the daily interaction.  Whether or not the person looks like me,  and thus I can do this, be an expert at this like s/he is would might not be as much as an issue.  Flipping things around, if the teacher cannot see the students, that factor might eliminate bias in terms of who is called on, who receives more guidance, etc. Even better, what if the students and faculty could use pseudonyms and avatars so they could choose what race, gender or other identifiers they wished to present?  This seems like a fascinating topic to ponder and to research.

An online teacher of indeterminate race. (Image from literacynews.com)

Having it All: The Robot Kiss Transmitter

The question as to whether women (and men) can have it all–job, family, happiness– has been debated frequently.  Here is one little solution to one little part of the problem.  Going to be away from a loved one due to work commitments, no problem, use the Kissenger an electronic kiss transmission device.

Sure, it’s creepy, but once the family gets used to it, remote affection will allow one to be absent without any guilt.

The only problem is that the name reminds me of Henry Kissinger–not a visage considered eminently kissable.

Photo of Boy in Housing Project with iPad Spurs Reactions

This photo inspired a lot of reaction when it ran in the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

 

The piece was actually on the potential environmental impact of the demolition of a building near the project; however, a lot of the reaction came from readers who decried the fact that a boy in public housing would have an iPad.  Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry wrote about the controversy and the idea that there are certain things that are thought to be appropriate for those seen as poor (particularly those benefiting from government programming) to have and certain things like an iPad that are seen as inappropriate.

DeBerry lists a range of items judged to be expensive or otherwise inappropriate for the poor:

“Fancy rims have been known to set me off. Maybe for you it’s gold teeth, Air Jordans, the latest mobile phone. City Councilwoman Stacy Head used her taxpayer-funded phone to send an outraged email when she saw a woman using food stamps to buy Rice Krispies treats.”

He then goes on to look at the vindictive, unkind tone of many of the responses to the photo and take the writers to task.  However, the larger question remains, what right do observers particularly taxpayers have to criticize?   I could look at the photo and say that the iPod shows the availability of hundreds of dollars that should have gone toward rent thus perhaps enabling the family to move out of the projects.   But that would be a huge stretch based on a large basket of assumptions.  Who can get out of the projects for the cost of an iPad?  Where did the iPad come from?  Was it a gift? The questions can go on and they are really none of my business. Who am I to invent a hypothetical family situation and then use that hypothetical situation as a launching point for ill-informed opinions?

I know it is easy to project value judgments and assumptions, I think this photo and the subsequent discussion show the virtue of knowing what one does not know and thus knowing when not to judge.

 

Colonization Pac-Man Graphic

 

Great graphic posted by 1491s.  The details are telling like the year 1628 (founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony)  as the score and the creation of Oklahoma in the middle, but the greatest part is the use of a modern metaphor to graphically illustrate a historical issue from one point of view.  Great pun in the comments referred to this as “pac-manifest destiny.”

Feminist Frequency Fundraising: Troll Army Crawls Forth is Vanquished

Anita Sarkeesian the force behind the Feminist Frequency website went on Kickstarter to raise money for a series of videos on the portrayal of women in video games.  This quest inspired a horrific barrage of sexist, misogynistic antagonism.  Organized attacks were launched on her Wikipedia page, her YouTube, and the Kickstarter campaign itself.  She writes about the attacks and results here.   On the positive, side she far exceeded her fundraising goals.  On the negative side the amazing vitriol, racism, sexism, homophobia, and antisemitism of the attacks reveal a truly sick side of Internet discourse.  By the way, these are not remarks that take interpretation to see as biased.  They are blunt, vicious, and without nuance of any kind.

I think Jay Smooth says it all:

To see what the fundraising is for and get a sense of the great work done at Feminist frequency I suggest checking out this video from the Tropes vs. Women series on the Smurfett principle.

Harder to Animate Female Characters?

“Animating female characters is actually harder than animating male characters,” said Steve  May, Pixar’s Chief Technology Officer, “Maybe we’ve just caricatured the male characters a little more.”   I wonder why this is the case?  I do not know much about computer animation, so I would be curious.

This quotation came in an interview on Cleveland.com where much of the attention was directed to the difficulty of animating Merida’s bouncing, ample red locks in the movie “Brave.”  The other comment that suck with me was the authors line about the movie being “a burst of feminism for Pixar” with two strong female protagonists.  Now I may actually have to go see the film to evaluate that claim.

Who Needs Feminism? Tumbler Project

I am currently reading my way though the “Who Needs Feminism?”  tumbler put together by a group of Duke undergrads.  The various answers to the question posted by hundreds  of women come together to make a powerful mosaic of ideas.

The prompt:

 

There are many, many great responses, but the one that sticks with me at the moment:

(Perhaps it resonates because I teach and spend a lot of time observing gender dynamics in extracurricular activities.)

Black Parents Using Humiliation as Punishment: Media Coverage Trend?

Daughter holding sign after misusing social media. Mother took photo and posted it to Facebook and Instagram.

I know two cases do not make a pattern, but I posted a while back on a black father resorting to humiliation to punish his son; he made him wear a sign announcing his bad grades and stand on a street corner. Now I see a piece on CNN where a black mother had her daughter pose for a photo holding a humiliating sign about social media use, and then posted that photo to Instagram and Facebook.   I know there are stories about outrageous white parent behavior, but it seems the genre of humiliation as a strategy is particularly presented as a black thing, or perhaps that is media bias as to what is covered.  This piece especially struck me as the parent is a black woman while the expert psychology professor brought in to talk about there being a better way is white.

Psychologist quoted criticizing this parenting technique.