Muslim 'Hipsters' Turn A Joke Into A Serious Conversation; NPR, 12/28/13

Amarra Ghani, NPR; Muslim 'Hipsters' Turn A Joke Into A Serious Conversation: "It started off as a joke, calling themselves Mipsterz, which is short for Muslim hipsters. "It's almost like a very lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek kind of thing where we wanted a space to share ideas that in some way fuse cultures. It's like we're almost creating our own culture by being ourselves," says Abbas Rattani, a curator of the email listserv that calls itself Mipsterz. "The tag line I ended making up was, 'Wait a minute, people hate us because we're Muslim? I thought they hated us because we're hipsters.' It kind of encapsulates the vibe." Late last month, Rattani and a group of Mipsterz released a video to the tune of the Jay-Z song "Somewhere in America" (Full disclosure: I am on the listserv, and I appear in the video.) 　 The video shows diverse Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab, or head covering, and do so with individual style. The women are also seen doing quirky, random things like skateboarding, walking around a forest, and other hipster-esque escapades. The video has sparked huge amounts of commentary."

A Campus More Colorful Than Reality: Beware That College Brochure; NPR, 12/29/13

Deena Prichep, NPR; A Campus More Colorful Than Reality: Beware That College Brochure: "Even without Photoshop, colleges try to shape the picture they present to prospective students, says Tim Pippert, a sociologist at Augsburg College in Minnesota. "Diversity is something that's being marketed," Pippert says. "They're trying to sell a campus climate, they're trying to sell a future. Campuses are trying to say, 'If you come here, you'll have a good time, and you'll fit in.' " Pippert and his researchers looked at more than 10,000 images from college brochures, comparing the racial breakdown of students in the pictures to the colleges' actual demographics. They found that, overall, the whiter the school, the more diversity depicted in the brochures, especially for certain groups. "When we looked at African-Americans in those schools that were predominantly white, the actual percentage in those campuses was only about 5 percent of the student body," he says. "They were photographed at 14.5 percent.""

Boy Scouts Start Accepting Gay Youth On New Year's Day; Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com, 12/28/13

David Crary and Nomaan Merchant, Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com; Boy Scouts Start Accepting Gay Youth On New Year's Day: "The Boy Scouts of America will accept openly gay youths starting on New Year's Day, a historic change that has prompted the BSA to ponder a host of potential complications — ranging from policies on tentmates and showers to whether Scouts can march in gay pride parades... The new policy was approved in May, with support from 60 percent of the 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council. The vote followed bitter nationwide debate, and was accompanied by an announcement that the BSA would continue to exclude openly gay adults from leadership positions. Under the new membership policy, youths can no longer be barred from the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts or coed Venturers program solely on the basis of sexual orientation. However, gay Scouts will face some limitations."

Diversity Prompts Increased Racial Isolation; ABC News, 12/28/13

Martha Mendoza, ABC News; Diversity Prompts Increased Racial Isolation: "Rising immigration hasn't made Watsonville more diverse; it is a community heading toward racial isolation, a growing phenomenon in a state that offers one possible look at how the nation may change as non-Hispanic whites become a minority in the coming months... Current Mayor Lowell Hurst, who is not Hispanic, said in his 30 years in Watsonville, the community has changed a lot. "We have more people that probably lack legal status and that means more people that are really kind of living in the shadows," he said. "Certainly there's been white flight from this city as people's economic status improves and they wish to have better opportunities. He added: "But do people flee because of race or language? I don't know." Hurst said many residents appreciate the Latino influence. "I think a lot of people would like to put the differences of race on the back burners and focus more on economic opportunity and celebrate the diversity of cultures that exist," he said."

More Diversity in New York City’s Police Dept., but Blacks Lag; New York Times, 12/26/13

J. David Goodman, New York Times; More Diversity in New York City’s Police Dept., but Blacks Lag: "It is among Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s prouder legacies: A majority of the police officers in New York City are now members of minorities, and have been since roughly 2006. But as the Police Department has attracted an increasingly kaleidoscopic range of nationalities to its ranks in recent years — officers hail from Albania to Yemen — department statistics reveal a decline in new recruits among black New Yorkers. The decline comes despite aggressive recruitment efforts in places like central Harlem and the Bronx, where the department regularly assigns friendly recruitment officers to visit."

Missing From Podiums: Women; New York Times, 12/20/13

Zachary Woolfe, New York Times; Missing From Podiums: Women: "“Dinosaur, go back to your cave!” the British conductor Sian Edwards said over the phone with a laugh, her eyes audibly rolling. I had asked for her response to the bizarrely retrograde comments a few respected male musicians had made recently about female conductors. In August, the young Russian maestro Vasily Petrenko told an interviewer that players, presumably men, “react better when they have a man in front of them.” He added, “A sweet girl on the podium can make one’s thoughts drift toward something else.” Not long after, controversy erupted over comments that Bruno Mantovani, a composer and the director of the Paris Conservatory of Music and Dance made on French radio. “Sometimes women are discouraged by the very physical aspect,” he said. “Conducting, taking a plane, taking another plane, conducting again.” Then the New Yorker critic Alex Ross provided a translation of an interview that the venerable Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov, one of Mr. Petrenko’s mentors, gave last year. “The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength,” he said. “The essence of a woman is weakness.” The pace is agonizing, but things are improving. Recent conversations I’ve had with conductors at various stages of their careers, as well as administrators, artist managers and teachers, suggest that what’s preventing equity is now less overt sexism, though those comments by the Russian maestros and Mr. Mantovani have made clear it still exists, than simply time — the trickle of a younger, more heterogeneous generation as it permeates the field — and incremental societal shifts in attitudes about the face of leadership."

‘Duck Dynasty’ and Quackery; New York Times, 12/20/13

Charles Blow, New York Times; ‘Duck Dynasty’ and Quackery: "Robertson’s interview reads as a commentary almost without malice, imbued with a matter-of-fact, this-is-just-the-way-I-see-it kind of Southern folksiness. To me, that is part of the problem. You don’t have to operate with a malicious spirit to do tremendous harm. Insensitivity and ignorance are sufficient. In fact, intolerance that is disarming is the most dangerous kind. It can masquerade as morality... Let me first say that Robertson has a constitutionally protected right to voice his opinion and A&E has a corporate right to decide if his views are consistent with its corporate ethos. No one has a constitutional right to a reality show. I have no opinion on the suspension. That’s A&E’s call... Robertson’s comments conjure the insidious mythology of historical Southern fiction, that of contented slave and benevolent master, of the oppressed and the oppressors gleefully abiding the oppression, happily accepting their wildly variant social stations. This mythology posits that there were two waves of ruination for Southern culture, the Civil War and the civil rights movement, that made blacks get upset and things go downhill. Robertson’s comments also display a staggering ignorance about the place and meaning of song in African-American suffering."

‘S.N.L.’ Stops Joking About Casting Problems; New York Times, 12/20/13

Editorial Board, New York Times; ‘S.N.L.’ Stops Joking About Casting Problems: "After coming under intense criticism for its lack of onstage diversity, “Saturday Night Live” is poised to hire its first black female cast member since Maya Rudolph left the show in 2007. Lorne Michaels, the executive producer, told The New York Times that “S.N.L.” recently held special auditions and that one or two black women would most likely join the cast in January — a good thing for notions of balance, of course, but also for the show’s relevance. Over nearly four decades, “S.N.L.” has had only three black female repertory players."

3 Diversity Strategies To Help Companies Thrive; Forbes, 12/4/13

Richard Levychin, Forbes; 3 Diversity Strategies To Help Companies Thrive: "Diversity is one of the core growth principals of entrepreneurship with the concept of ROI-Based Diversity following a simple proposition: the more audiences you market your services or products to, the more opportunities you create to generate revenue. Accordingly, the more diverse potential customers that you have in your pipeline, the more opportunities you have to increase your revenue... In the most basic of terms, Diversity = Revenue. Here’s how to implement it in your company: 1. Expand Your Scope... 2. Mirror your Desired Demographic... 3. Communicate Your Diversity Plan"

Why the Dutch Love Black Pete; New York Times, 12/4/13

Arnon Grunberg, New York Times; Why the Dutch Love Black Pete: "In a debate in Parliament, Mr. Wilders’s party asked the minister of education, culture and science whether she shared the view held by some that “Dutch traditions” should be made subordinate to “multicultural drivel.” Not to be outflanked, both Prime Minister Mark Rutte and the mayor of Amsterdam recently spoke up in defense of Black Pete, albeit with reservations. Sinterklaas, Mr. Rutte said, would not be Sinterklaas without Black Pete. Of course, there were Dutch people who saw things differently, and there were many with no opinion either way. Yet the general tenor among the Dutch public was that “they” should keep their mitts off “our tradition,” an opinion you can hear in any number of variations on any street corner. By “them” people mean the United Nations and “unnatural” Dutch citizens, by both birth and naturalization, who want to put an end to this admittedly dubious tradition. The Black Pete debate underscores how deep within the Netherlands’s prosperous and safe society lies the fear of losing identity, undoubtedly fueled by globalization, migration and the notion that the European Union is gradually doing away with the European nation state."