ENTERTAINMENT RE-ORIENTED: TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK: People of Color Dancing at the Box Office This Winter

This holiday season’s top box office earners include a surprisingly large number of films about people of color. The controversial “Precious,” a gritty story about an obese, pregnant black teen, cracked the top 10 and “The Blind Side,” an “inspirational” story about a rich white lady who takes in a troubled, black teen, and turns […]

ENTERTAINMENT RE-ORIENTED: Stereotypes Can Save the Balloon Boy’s Japanese Mom

In last week’s column, I wrote about the refreshing lack of a racial angle in the media coverage of the so-called “balloon boy” incident. Just as we were going to press though, I came across an article on the ABC News Website that places a large amount of the blame for the incident on Japanese […]

ENTERTAINMENT RE-ORIENTED: Race and Reality: The ‘Balloon Boy,’ Jon & Kate

On Wednesday last week, a six-year-old hapa boy captured the attention of the world when it was reported that he was trapped in a homemade helium balloon floating 15,000 feet in the air. Falcon Heene, dubbed “the balloon boy,” replaced President Obama’s New Orleans town hall meeting as the day’s big story on cable news. […]