Wednesday, August 31, 2005

TNH's Particles

Everyone should always click on all of the links Theresa Nielsen-Hayden puts under particles. For your convenience, here are the most recent four, all good.

The invisibility of white riots
English is essentially...
Praying Mantis Eats Hummingbird
New Primate Exhibit at the London Zoo. (Do they get to masturbate and throw feces at the visitors?)

Update: Actually, a lot of the White Riot article is about life on campuses like SLU, so it is worth quoting at length

More recently, there were the Cleveland beer riots of 1974, as well as the multiple campus beer riots at places like Colorado, the University of Oregon, Washington State University, Southern Illinois University, and Penn State among others in the last few years. While people of color have been keeping things relatively calm, with flare-ups only in a few cities like Cincinnati, St. Petersburg, or Los Angeles, whites are rioting somewhere in America every three to four months. But of course no one notices, as we become conveniently color-blind in the face of dysfunctional behavior by members of the dominant group.

Or more to the point, we are quick to downplay its significance or even excuse it. In the wake of riots at Michigan State and Colorado University, neighbors in the riot zone and local police sought to "reach out," to attempt to "understand their frustrations," referring to the students who had just trashed their streets.

Students at the University of Oregon claim that the "iron fist" of campus police (presumably being applied to them in a fashion no different from that experienced by Blacks and Latinos in South Central L.A.) is the main cause of the riots. Sharing a level of frustration that must rival that experienced by Rodney King, one white male victim of police abuse exclaimed, "The police just roll around in their squad cars looking for parties to break up." One female student there recently called campus police "a box of shit," which one supposes is just the white middle class version of rap group NWA's "Fuck Tha' Police." Make way for KWA: Kappa Kappa Gammas With Attitude.

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