Boston Globe article on Bloggers of Color highlights Jack and Jill Politics site
The Boston Globe has picked up on a theme started by the Chicago Tribune, recognizing bloggers of color. One of the bloggers highlighted is Baratunde Thurston of Jack and Jill Politics . Some of the highlights from the Globe article Blog is Beautiful:
- "Ever since the assassination of [Martin Luther] King and Malcolm [X], there's been a hunt for the black guy who will speak for the other black guys and gals out there," says Baratunde Thurston, 30, who contributes under the pseudonym "Jack Turner" to Jack and Jill Politics, a site launched last year to explore political news from the perspective of black, middle-class people under the age of 50. "I think blogs can help disrupt the tendency to select a single individual as default leaders and default spokespeople."
- Jack and Jill Politics was among several blogs commenting on the story about Nobel Prize winner James Watson, who said in an interview with the London Times that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. Writing about the incident under the title " 'Tis the Season to Claim Black Inferiority," Thurston noted that Watson based his supposedly scientific argument on the experiences of "people who have to deal with black employees."
- An entry from the Jack and Jill Politics blog analyzes an Op-Ed piece that ran in an October issue of the Christian Science Monitor titled "Media Myths of Jena 6" written by an assistant editor of the Jena (La.) Times newspaper. In the piece, the blog's pseudonymous writer, dnA, finds "amusing errors and what appear to be willful fabrications" of the events that led up to and occurred after the arrest of six black high school students in Louisiana.
The article goes on to explore the influence of Asian, Latino, and other types of blogs as well. This is an excellent article highlighting the work of fellow AfroSpear member Jack and Jill Politics. Please take a moment to read the article in its entirety.
