Hm...you guys are so tame. Chocolate covered bacon? Chili-chocolate? Those are all child's play. Obviously you've never seen:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Just search "bacon" on the front - or pretty much ANY - page of this blog and you'll see horrors enough to blast your soul. For those not bold enough to take the journey, I need only two words to give you the gyst:

"Bacon Bouquet"

Oh, and Renee - you'll notice that in all of the bacon concoctions, not a one of them is using you Canadians' silly misnamed HAM. Ahem.

Oh... Gross.

It's not the same, but it's hardly unrelated when we consider that the white beauty standard - and truly that is global - is a part of the white/color dichotomy, in devaluing black and brown bodies.

Hm, seems you are right. I was confusing Iranians with Iraqis. Iraqis are mostly Arab, and so maybe Shallal is as well.

But it should not surprise Broadsnark that Ms. Boof would not have heard of Shallal, as his efforts are mostly here in the United States, and do not intersect at all with her work in Sudan.

"For their beauty." Indeed.

I would doubt that even for their seemingly mutual plight aboard those Arab slave ships that the experience of the Scandinavians was the same as that of the Black Africans.

As you said, they were valued for their beauty; what then, was the value of the Black slaves? Let us not pretend that there was not a white/color dichotomy even there, aboard those ships.

I am wary of the "everyone struggles" argument, because almost invariably it leads to the invalidation of one struggle or another - like how white people love to bring up the farmers in Zimbabwe as evidence that black people can be racist against white people, too. Well, bully for them, but it doesn't change anything in the discussion of white racism.

Getting off track, here, but I just wanted to make sure that's not where you were going with all of this.

But I will not abandon my belief in the need for solidarity amongst people of color. I just have to recognize that that solidarity may only be possible within the temporal/geographic context of the white/color dichotomy.

Hm. I can't really argue with that. I suppose the struggle is, has been, and always will be between those with power and those without? That it fell along color lines, then, just a matter of circumstance?

Andy Shallal - just did a moment of research - is Iraqi, which makes him Persian, not Arab.

No kidding. But None of that, and none of what you said, invalidates the white/color power dynamic, any more than the white/color dynamic invalidates the Israeli/Arab, or the Arab/African, or the Japanese/Ainu. They are each local to their times and places, and each of great importance to those who suffer under them.

I resent the implication that I am some delusional Westerner.

I wouldn't say that it's a false dichotomy, only a localized one - temporally and geographically. And yes, it does make Westerners ignorant to the plights of others. But let's not pretend that such myopia is particular to Westerners.

Ms. Boof's post suggests how Palestinians may operate under an Israeli/Arab dichotomy, which is also not false, but specific to them and their circumstances and that would necessarily make them ignorant and indifferent to other struggles.

And "before our species itself existed"? Huh?