So I admitted in an earlier post that I really don’t follow politics, right? Well, this is largely due to the fact that I am an avid practitioner of selective ignorance – I purposely block or filter the glut of information pumped out by most mass media outlets. I don’t read the newspaper or any news magazines, and I very rarely watch television (and I can be pretty horrible w/email and voicemail too, but that’s another story). My primary news sources are NPR and the few Internet news headlines I subscribe to on my home page. Under normal conditions, these sources are sufficient for me, but given that it’s an election year, I’ve been feeling a little under-informed lately.

I don’t want to be the person that supports a particular candidate solely on the basis of race or gender, but I also don’t have the time (or frankly, the desire) to try and catch every debate or news show featuring one or more of the candidates. So what’s a girl to do?

Thankfully one of my internet buddies posted this link from the Washington Post yesterday. It features very in-depth profiles of each of the frontrunners, but my favorite was the ‘Choose Your Candidate’ quiz that presents you with candidates’ positions on crucial issues. During the quiz, you select the stance you most agree with, without having any idea which candidate said stance belongs to. Once you’ve selected, then you can see which horse you backed.

So, while I may not have time for news, I certainly have time for surfing and playing games on the internet….

That was a joke.

Well, kinda.

cheers,
k

I’m admittedly not a huge follower of politics on either a domestic or international scale. I stay just informed enough to be able to follow a political conversation, but certainly not enough to contribute significantly to it in the way of detailed information about any one individual or situation.

But about a month ago, I heard the story of a political figure that both intrigued and inspired me. Her name: Benazir Bhutto, and at the time she was the subject of a piece on NPR’s Morning Edition. The correspondent was speaking to her by phone, the only means possible because she had been sequestered inside of her own home, placed under house arrest after announcing that she would lead a protest rally against the ’self-elected’ Pakistani leader, Pervez Musharraf. My mind reeled at the idea that a major political figure – a former Prime Minister of her country – could be so openly and unabashedly intimidated with very little backlash from the international community.

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“Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line. “
~W.E.B. Du Bois

I was browsing the discount stacks at a local Barnes and Noble a couple of days ago and scored a low-priced hardback version of W.E.B Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk”. Being a grad of CAU, this was a book I had often heard about from many of my professors and fellow students, but never took or found the time to actually read. One of the best known quotes from the book is Dubois’ rather accurate assertion that: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line”. Indeed a major theme of American culture from the Reconstruction era through the ‘80s and ‘90s was that of black people fighting to establish their identity as a race and to achieve equality in the political, educational, and economic arenas of this country. But now we’re well into the first decade of the 21st century, and while Don Imus and Jena are the most recent reminders that the American system is still far from perfect when it comes to treating its darker citizens as equal, it can no longer be argued that blacks don’t have access to almost all of the same opportunities as whites and other racial and ethnic groups.

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