I admit that I’m not the most sensitive cat when it comes to weight issues, but I had not idea that size prejudice was as prevalent as it is. According to a Yale University study, it’s about as common as racial prejudice. But then, that comparison makes me nervous; if it’s being compared to race, that seems to suggest that some of the same “solutions” to racial problems may be put into place to dissuade size prejudice.

New Haven, Conn.—Discrimination against overweight people—particularly women—is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University.

“These results show the need to treat weight discrimination as a legitimate form of prejudice, comparable to other characteristics like race or gender that already receive legal protection,” said Rebecca Puhl, research scientist and lead author.

The study documented the prevalence of self-reported weight discrimination and compared it to experiences of discrimination based on race and gender among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 25- to 74-years-old. The data was obtained from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States.

The study also revealed that women are twice as likely as men to report weight discrimination and that weight discrimination in the workplace and interpersonal mistreatment due to obesity is common.

The researchers found that men are not at serious risk for weight bias until their body mass index (BMI) reaches 35 or higher, while women begin experiencing a notable increase in weight discrimination risk at a BMI level of 27. BMI is the measure of body fat based on height and weight.

Co-author Tatiana Andreyava of Yale said weight discrimination is more prevalent than discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality/ethnicity, physical disability, and religious beliefs. “However, despite its high prevalence, it continues to remain socially acceptable,” she said.

It’s been said that teasing fat people is the last acceptable prejudice. I don’t know about all that, but I do know that there are definitely some issues that need to be parsed when it comes to weight and size. Since this is based on self-reported instances of bias, I don’t think the results can necessarily be taken as definitive, but they do seem to suggest that there is a high level of disrespect. However, I also wonder how much the degree to which people’s belief that they are being discriminated against because of their size correlates to the degree to which that person is uncomfortable with his or her own size. I also wonder what the lowest BMI was of a person who felt discriminated against. Finally, given the wide variety of body types that can occupy a given BMI, I wonder if there were certain builds that got more discrimination than others.

Jacked from Evangelical Outpost

Lookin’ For Another Pure Love - Stevie Wonder
Lovin’ It - Little Brother
On Love - David T. Walker
Know That - Mos Def, f. Talib Kweli
Clever Girl - Tower of Power
The Message - Brass Construction
Finger Popped Myself Into the Poor House - Joe Tex
Funky Song - Ripple
If You Want Me To Stay - Sly & the Family Stone
Happy Feelin’ - Earth, Wind, & Fire
Lord of the Golden Baboon - Mandrill
What It Is - The Ohio Players

Hijinx
Throw me some artists and we’ll see if I can come up with a good playlist.

From my man, DJ $ Bill:

Hoping you can do me a solid and make mention somewhere about “Record Store Day”.
It is a North American event coming up on April 19th.

www.recordstoreday.com

Also as a tie in,one of the National goverment owned radio stations up here is running a contest for “Best Indie Record Store In Canada”

We are in the running,but could really use every vote we can get.
People can vote daily up until April 18th at this link.

A painless,no registering, two click:

http://radio3.cbc.ca/polls/?pollId=10

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide

I’m bout it.

Bill Cosby was almost a jazz drummer. Almost.

The most classic commercial series of all time: Terry Tate: Office Linebacker

My favorite new commercial.

Women, Want a Healthy Marriage? Marry Man Uglier Than You, Study Says

I might still got a shot.

Ever wondered how all that pesky “once-removed” business goes? Well wonder no more.

Jacked from freepages.rootsweb.com

A self-professed “Oreo” comes clean.

It’s existential, youngblood. Black is deep enough to cover you too.

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

I thought I’ve had some ridiculous arguments. And I have. But these right here? mmmmmmMAN!

In addition to writing lesson plans today, I’m gonna be back on the Blogger’s Roundtable segment of News & Notes. This time I’m on with Carmen Dixon of All About Race and Jozen Dixon of King Magazine.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89116881

I’m pretty much as postmodern as anybody out there. I took some Womens Studies courses. I know gender is, to some extent, as much a social construct as race…to some extent… But when you tell me a transgender man (went from woman to man) is pregnant? Young. I lose all sense of reason and my vocabulary starts to fail me. I just be sittin there like, ‘is you serious?’

What’s even more astounding to me is the fact that it’s jokers who will argue the…ionwanna say ‘normalcy’…that there’s nothing wrong wit that. See, I know it can get all complicated and all that, but lemme cut through the action. If you cloned it, what would come up? That’s what I wanna know. I’m sideskirtin all that, ‘what was you born’ and all that. Eff dat. If it got cloned, then what? If it got a short chromosome, it’s a boy. If it got two long chromosomes, it’s a girl. Bam. We can save the complicated talk for xyy and whatnot.

Seven. Surprised I made it this long without mentioning this artist or this song, let alone this verse. But it’s fitting for the 7th run, since the number seven is oh-so-prominent in this verse. Sevens abound, but this was the first verse that I remember really knocking me out. I mean, I had heard other verses I liked, but this one right here? I was staggered.

I’m not a regular competitor, first rhyme editor
Melody arranger, poet, et cetera
Extra events, the grand finale like bonus
I am the man they call the microphonist
With wisdom which means wise words bein spoken
Too many at one time watch the mic start smokin
I came to express the rap I manifest
Stand in my way and I’ll lead a ??? words protest
MC’s that wanna beat this they’re gonna
Be dissed if they don’t get from in fronta
All they can go get is me a glass of Moet
A hard time, sip your juice and watch a smooth poet
I take 7 MC’s put em in a line
And add 7 more brothas who think they can rhyme
Well, it’ll take 7 more before I go for mine
And that’s 21 MC’s ate up at the same time
Easy does it, do it easy, that’s what I’m doin
No fessin, no messin around, no chewin
No robbin, no buyin, bitin, why bother
This slob’ll stop tryin fightin to follow
My unusual style will confuse you a while
If I was water, I flow in the Nile
So many rhymes you won’t have time to go for yours
Just because of a cause I have to pause
Right after tonight is when I prepare
To catch another sucka duck MC out there
Cos my strategy has to be tragedy, catastrophe
And after this you’ll call me your majesty
My melody…

My Melody - Eric B. & Rakim

I’m always ambivalent when read opinions on the “prison industrial complex.” On the one hand, given the grossly disproportionate numbers of Black folks in jail, it looks like something has to be wrong at one or more points in the system. How can such a small percentage of the population have such a large presence in prison? There must be some malfeasance afoot. On the other hand, when I think about Black folks in jail, I know that in the majority of the instances, their victims are Black, as well. Now, the second idea and the first idea are not mutually exclusive, so it’s not a matter of either/or, it’s both. Yeah, we’re disproportionately represented on the prison roles AND the majority of the people who are hurt by our criminal activities are us. But then, that makes the question a lot harder to deal with, because which takes precedence? Should we be primarily concerned with the incarceration rate or the crime (read: victimization of our families) rate?

For me, it’s the latter. While I am concerned about the fact that so many Black folks wind up in jail, I make no bones about the fact that I’m far more concerned about the Black folks who were the victims of whatever they did to go to jail in the first place. And yeah, I know that sometimes innocent people get arrested, tried, sentenced, and actually do some time. Even believing as I do, that innocent imprisonment is not an uncommon occurrence, that still represents a small, small minority of the cases - Far smaller than the number of our mothers and grandmothers who are virtually imprisoned because of the reckless abandon which knuckleheads are running the streets and making them feel unsafe. I mean to break it down, if it comes to Cuzzo, my cousin the thug, or Granny, I’m takin’ Granny every time.

Only thing is, from our Black intelligencia, there seems to be more concern for Cuzzo than Granny. And again, I’m not really arguing whether Cuzzo would get prison time faster than Chaz for committing the same crime. Statistically, he would. That’s a separate issue. That, I think, is an extremely important question, and one that deserves some deliberate, focused, attention. However, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that of the Black cats who actually commit crimes, their victims are primarily Black. I, for one, don’t wanna lose sight of that fact.

But while I’m thinking about it:

Here’s the Daryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice

Tower of Power once said that hipness is what it is - but sometimes it is what it ain’t. Substitute ‘blackness’ for ‘hipness’ (and there’s a certain extent to which I think that was kinda the unstated point in the first place), and you got somethin. I ain’t gon’ lie, I’m always kinda surprised when I hear somebody espouse some notion of values-based Blackness - ‘if you ain’t/don’t/ [insert favorite item here], you ain’t really Black.’ I mean, I jokingly do it too. Just the other day, I was ribbing a friend of mine because she went to an HBCU and doesn’t play spades. I was all like, “You do like chicken and corn bread, don’t you?” But that’s nothing, because everybody at the table knew I wasn’t the least bit serious. There are some people who make that type of value judgment and mean it. I can’t quite understand that way of thinking, though. Personally, I think Blackness is existential. I mean that in both psychological terms as well as in a more ‘playing-with-the-word-exist’ way. Basically, my premise is that whatever Blackness is, it’s not something that can be measured and defined in the way that we’re used to talking about it. There is no ’standard’ to apply, no way to measure the some degree of Blackness. It is what it is. And it is what it ain’t.

What makes existential Blackness hard for some people to see is that they’re not really used to seeing Blackness as an entity unto itself; they’re used to seeing it as the contrast to whiteness. Obviously, if you use whitness to measure Blackness, the more something seems to be similar to what white people do, the less Black it is. Only thing is, that’s a flawed concept. If Blackness is existential, as I think it is, then it’s not measurable by anything other than itself. You can’t look at white to tell what Black is. Hence, while I know what somebody means when they say “talking white,” that phrase as a reflection (rejection?) of a person’s Blackness holds no meaning. (In a way, it’s like the term “Uncle Tom.” Yeah, I know what people mean when they use that term, but I don’t get how that literary figure came to represent handkerchief-headed obsequiousness. Tom died to ensure the freedom of the sistren. If that ain’t militant, I don’t know what is.) Really, the whole concept of “acting white” in general is antithetical to the idea of self-defined Blackness.

Now in saying all that, I can’t act like there aren’t some cats who I think might be happier if they weren’t Black. Obviously there’s no real way to know, so it’s just me projecting my logic onto their actions, which is a no-no. Nevertheless, when I hear Peterson or Connerly, or somebody who’s Black but uses ‘they’ when referring to Black people, my first inclination is to cast some aspersion on their Blackness. But I hafta check myself. Cuz as much as Blackness is what it is, it sometimes is what it ain’t.