Short notice, but if you're in New York, I wanted to help get the word out about this cool five-part series the Asian American Writers' Workshop is doing, starting tonight: AFTER 1989: Race After Multiculturalism.
Things kick off this evening with What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Race? Participants will include Ego Trip Magazine, Das Racist, Harold Augenbraum of the Natioanl Book Foundation, Roberto Bedoya of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, NYU Professor Thuy Linh Tu and Lataoya Peterson or Racialicious. Here are some more details about the program:
WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT RACE?It sounds like it's going to be an interesting evening. For further information about the event, and the rest of the AFTER 1989 series, go here. And for more on the Asian American Writers' Workshop, go here.
Monday, March 5, 2012, 7PM
powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street Brooklyn, NY
Free to the public
THE CANON, PC AND RACIST SHOW-AND-TELL
Featuring: HAROLD AUGENBRAUM (National Book Foundation), ROBERTO BEDOYA (Tucson Pima Arts Council), SACHA JENKINS (Ego Trip Magazine), ASHOK KONDABOLU (Das Racist), JEFFERSON MAO (Ego Trip Magazine), LATOYA PETERSON (Racialicious), HIMANSHU SURI (Das Racist), THUY LINH TU (NYU), VICTOR VAZQUEZ (Das Racist)
Exhibits: The Canon, NEA Litigation
Much of ‘90s multiculturalism was less about race than inventing polite ways to talk about racial taboos. Terms like "diversity" and "political correctness" blunted the unsavory aspects of dealing with racism, even as the right struggled to make English the national language and tamp down transgressive art, multicultural threats to the canon, and Ebonics. To kick off AFTER 1989, Ego Trip Magazine, the folks who gave us The Big Book of Racism, curates a slideshow of racialized advertisements—with call and response by hip hop trio Das Racist, who will judges the caliber of the images from quirky, race-conscious to downright, "Yo, that's racist!" National Book Foundation Executive Director Harold Augenbraum, early proponent of Latino and Asian American literature, discusses the canon. Roberto Bedoya discusses the litigation between artist Karen Finley and the National Endowment for the Arts at the height of the Culture Wars—for which he was co-plaintiff. NYU Professor Thuy Linh Tu interviews Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious—the preeminent blog at the intersection of race and pop culture—to break down how the Internet has unleashed the Pandora's Box of racial discourse.
A project of The Asian American Writers' Workshop, where we're inventing the future of Asian American intellectual culture.