Its been awhile, friends and readers!! I’ve been bouncing around, adjusting to a summer job and detoxing my brain from school. But I haven’t stopped reading!! Here are some of the pieces that have caught my eye as of late. Happy perusing! <3

Why that Harvard/Tufts Study Isn’t Breaking News
Racialicious: “Another week, another head-scratching study result. Or so you’d think, right? The study, conducted by researchers at Tufts and Harvard Universities, concluded that white people think the prejudices blacks faced during the Civil Rights era are literally in the past. But it’s not all rosy, apparently, for the majority of the 209 white people (alongside 208 blacks) surveyed….But, setting aside questions regarding the size of the survey group and the focus on white/black relations in an increasingly diverse country, one has to wonder: is this really a surprise?”

Hotel’s and Their Pervs Revisited
Mother Jones: “Let’s revisit the issue of pervs in hotel rooms. Why not, after all? It started with a New York Times op-ed by Jacob Tomsky, in which he told us that housekeepers are flashed or otherwise sexually accosted by male guests ‘more often than you’d think.’ My off-the-cuff reaction was to suggest azero-tolerance policy for this kind of thing: ‘Do it once and you’re thrown out and blacklisted forever. What’s the justification for extending even the slightest forbearance toward this kind of behavior?’…So why don’t the big hotel chains have policies like this?”

White Privilege Diary Series #1: White Feminist Privilege in Organizations
Daily Kos: “Anyone who has done anti-racist work for more than a few years has run up against this problem:  most racists are happy being racists, and simply don’t want to change.  But at the same time they want to be protected from accusations of racism, and resent anyone who makes them “feel bad” about it.  White feminists are no different from other white people in that regard, as feminists of color well know.  A few are truly committed to diversity and anti-racist action, but the majority of us are not, and get angry and nasty when we’re driven out of our comfort zone. In my estimation, however, a racist feminist is no feminist at all.”

Exposing the Prevalence of Rape in the U.S. Prison System
Bilerico Project: “So, the fact is, our country is globally recognized as having some of the nastiest prisons and jails in the world – owing in part to the rampant sexual violence that prevails, even in juvenile detention. Steve Mason comments on this. This sexual violence is often directed against inmates who are known to be, or simply suspected of being, LGBT. But it can also be turned, like a flamethrower, against any individual or group, for any reason whatever. Violence – not law – is what runs our prisons and jails, and often the penal authorities themselves participate in it.”

Coming Out: Audio, Photos, Stories of Gay Teens – Interactive Feature
New York Times: “Bullying and suicides of gay and lesbian teenagers are in the headlines, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has been repealed, and the debate over same-sex marriage continues to divide the country. Against this backdrop, many L.G.B.T. youth wonder how accepting society will be.”

2,500 Years After Buddha, Tibetan Buddhists Acknowledge Women
The Huffington Post: “Buddhist women are celebrating a landmark victory: In April, the renowned Institute for Buddhist Dialectical Studies (IBD) in Dharamsala, India, conferred the degree of “Geshe” — the Tibetan equivalent of Ph.D. — to Venerable Kelsang Wangmo, a German nun…[I]t may come as a surprise to many that despite its peaceful and somewhat progressive image in the West, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition does not know full ordination for women. For complex historical and patriarchal reasons, the lineage did not migrate when Buddhism spread from India to Tibet, thus outclassing the Tibetan Buddhist nuns as inferior.”