Stories we spotted this week and found interesting enough to share…
What It Means for Sherri Shepherd to Be Forced to Be a Mother
Marcie Bianco for Indentities.Mic
While media outlets squeal with headlines decrying Sherri Shepherd as the “baby mama!,” what is significant is that the entire identity of being a mother is out of the woman’s hands in Shepherd’s case. Much like debates around abortion, what appears to have happened here is a disregard of the woman’s request in favor of the child’s perceived well-being. In Shepherd’s case, the child is not biologically hers at all. Here, then, the value of “mother” trumps that of “woman.”
6 Ways Standardized Testing Disproportionately Harms Black Students
Taylor Gordon for AtlantaBlackstar
Because standardized test results are often used to determine how funding will be allocated to schools, low-income districts face even more pressure to have their students earn high scores on such tests. According to a report titled “Racial Justice and Standardized Educational Testing,” “The law promotes teaching to the mostly multiple-choice state tests, focusing one-sidedly on rote skills and ignoring higher-level thinking. The impact is greater in schools that serve low-income youth, particularly students of color.”
Why America Hates Its Poor
Nico Lang for Salon
It’s easy to “expose” the poor for their own failures and much harder to look behind that mask to see the person gasping for breath inside it. Why would someone living in poverty want to go to the movies or a theme park? For the same reasons that everyone else does: to enjoy a momentary escape from real life.
White Women Teachers Who Rape Students Get Off Easy
Stacey Patton for DAME magazine
The spectacle of White women teachers sexually abusing their students reveals the stark differences and racist disparities in how White and Black suspects are routinely viewed and described in the media. So it’s no wonder that almost none of these news reports or social media commentaries call these women what they are: rapists and sexual predators of minors. Those terms are more commonly used when male teachers are doing the exploiting. But White women are generally viewed, even in these situations, as “pure,” as “innocent,” with an undercurrent of the message that their beauty and allure are so powerful that it’s only natural to expect hormone-addled teens to not only succumb, but to welcome the twisted experience. In the end, they are the victims.
My Kid Can’t Eat This
spotted on Instagram
Check out the new Instagram, “My Kid Can’t Eat This,” which shows pics of food kids deem inedible for the most ridiculous of reasons. If you can get past the idea of kids wasting all this food, it’s actually pretty doggone hysterical.
didn’t sherri and her then-hubby seek out a woman to be their surrogate? now that their marriage is over, sherri doesn’t want to be the child’s mom? you can’t just decide to change directions mid-process just because your marriage fell apart. or, i guess, you can–but you might end up being forced to parent the child you helped bring about, as has been ruled in this case. this isn’t a “choice” issue, as i see it.
Yea if you don’t want a child then you keep your legs closed or maintain birth control;
in Sherri’s case you don’t sign all the papers or hire a surrogate! What she did was incredibly irresponsible and I have no sympathy for her!