notes from the interblags: racism, transphobia, marginalia

• via Dennis, BooMan on explicit racism in this election. An excerpt:

Anytime they poll the American people about racism, blacks say there is more of it than whites. The raw racism on display this election season is probably more educational for whites than for blacks, who have had a more accurate picture of reality all along. But, either way, it’s deeply painful to see these suspicions confirmed in such a brazen way. It’s not so much that racist attitudes are being confirmed. It’s that so many people live in microcultures where racism is so accepted that they openly profess their racism to Obama canvassers, reporters, and other perfect strangers. It’s the lack of shame that I find most disturbing.

• Viz. on ad campaign against “That’s so gay”.

• via Spinuzzi, Peter Merholz on The Paperless Office: I CALLED IT!

• via Blogging Pedagogy, Times Higher Ed: Peter Barry argues for more face to face conversations and less marginal notes in responding to student writing.

• via Feministe, The New York Times reports that Google has developed Mail Goggles in Drunk, and Dangerous, at the Keyboard. Good idea? Bad idea? Seems like it gives up on individual agency to me. I mean, I don’t send out stupid emails when I’m drinking. Yet…

• via Feministing, KCRA Sacramento reports parents are pulling their students out of a teacher’s classroom because he’s transgender. The parents are upset because the district didn’t tell them the teacher was trans. The district didn’t tell them because it’s illegal to violate the teacher’s privacy like that. Allow me to be uncharitable and ignore everything I just read in Krista Ratcliffe’s Rhetorical Listening: I don’t feel sorry at all for these bigoted parents. (A professor of mine told me that when he was in graduate school, that a fellow graduate student told the other TA’s that they should all come out as queer in order to disturb students’ expectations. I wonder if it might be more useful for all teachers to come out as possibly trans.)