Everything is Wrong with Vanessa Grigoriadis's Interview and Profile of Nicki Minaj – "There are so many problems with the tone and language of this piece that it's hard to focus on just one aspect of it, instead I'll be addressing several of my major concerns: her problematic framing of the Minaj/Swift/Cyrus beef, her lackadaisical engagement with feminism, and her trivializing of Nicki Minaj's personal experiences." From Courtney.
No, Scientists Have Not Found the 'Gay Gene' – "The problems begin with the size of the study, which is tiny. The field of epigenetics is littered with the corpses of statistically underpowered studies like these, which simply lack the numbers to produce reliable, reproducible results." From Will.
Here are some really good videos on how horrible Columbus really was.
Warning, the first one is especially disturbing.
While you can read Hermione Granger as a person of color, you can't give Rowling any credit for diversity if you so choose. As mentioned, white's the default; you need to make it clear somehow. With Su Li and Cho Chang, it's the name that's a giveaway. With Kingsley Shacklebolt, his race is explicitly mentioned.
Similarly, since nobody actually mentions Dumbledore's sexuality and it's only referenced via extremely oblique and opaque means, Rowling gets less credit for homosexual representation than a queerbaiting sitcom.
There's an evil flip side to the assumed whiteness as well. I remember a blog commenter, after the first Lord of the Rings movie was released, who said that Samwise Gamgee had been horribly miscast. The poster felt that since he was Frodo's gardener and footman, and he spoke very simply, he was supposed to be black.
So someone was actually idiotic enough, and racist enough to assume that servants and the uneducated always have to be black, and their wealthy employer always have to be white, even in a fantasy realm?
We want our pirates to be positive role models? Piracy was a capital offence, and routinely involved slave-taking and mass murder.
Can we whip up some outrage on that point?
We don't have conquistador play sets, and people don't support the weird, ahistorical notion of 'cowboys and indians' anymore either.