The New and Old Burden of the White Man

21st Century Kashmiri Nomad reflects on “The White Man’s Burden” and what it means in todays world in the blog Islam & The West:

Throughout history the human experience has witnessed mighty empires from the Egyptians to the Assyrians to the Persians to the Macedonians to the Romans to the Sassanids to the Caliphate to the Mongols to the European colonialist. Two themes tie all of the a fore mentioned together and they are conquest and domination. Why should one expect that just because we are in 2007 human nature will have changed when it has not changed in the last 5000 years. The only difference that we have in today’s world is that we couch imperial conquest in terms more palatable to ourselves and more importantly to our peoples. Gone is the white man’s burned to civilise the savages for the sake of God and monarch now the savages are being civilised for the sake of democracy, free markets and globalisation. It seems that the white man’s burden is still with us in 2007 in all but name but it is here never the less no matter how we wish to present it.

Originally linked by Bhupinder on Blogbharti.

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Upcoming Carnival of Feminists

Belledame222 is hosting the 36th Carnival of Feminists on her blog on April 18th:

The theme, or a theme: (write the feem tune, sing the feem tune…)

Relationships between women. Including, but not limited to: erotic and/or romantic relations, friends (“Chloe liked Olivia”), enemies, sisters (blood or otherwise), mother-daughter, grandmother-granddaughter, co-workers, co-activists, classmates, flatmates, boss-employee, domme-sub…

The Commodifying of Japanese Culture

Latoya Peterson, writing for Racialicious, discusses those who try to appropriate Harjuku culture:

And it was then, that it struck me – maybe the desire to learn is what separates someone who fetishizes a culture from those who merely wish to appreciate it. As I get deeper into anime and Japanese culture, I learned what causes some of the issues I see. I read about the rampant sexism in Japan, and their colonization of other Asian nations, which explained some of the more unkind images of Chinese and Koreans in manga illustrations. I learned that a social trend I thought was cool — the ability to pick up a part-time job for a day and be paid in cash as a student — was in some ways an outgrowth of Freeter culture which is becoming a bit of a trap for youth in Japan. The anime glitter was knocked out of my eyes, and I started to understand that Japan was… just Japan. Another country, with its own struggles and issues and cool parts of its society — not perfect, not horrific, just Japan.