On Saturday ESPN apologized for comments made by two employees who referred to Jeremy Lin as a “chink in armor.” The following day Lin said he doesn’t think the offensive comments made about him on the sports network were intentional.

“I don’t think it was on purpose or whatever, but they have apologized and so from my end I don’t care anymore,” Lin said in a televised interview after leading the Knicks to a 104- 97 win over Dallas yesterday. “Have to learn to forgive and I don’t even think that was intentional. Or hopefully not.”

On Saturday ESPN published a short apology online that referred to the statements as offensive:

“We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin. His accomplishments are a source of great pride to the Asian-American community, including the Asian-American employees at ESPN. Through self-examination, improved editorial practices and controls, and response to constructive criticism, we will be better in the future.”

“Although ESPN issued a statement apologizing for its lapse in editorial judgment, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) asks that this apology be aired prominently on ESPN’s television programs, so that it is clear to all viewers that this racist language is unacceptable,” read a statement sent Saturday by AALDEF.

The ESPN headline followed one day after Madison Square Garden, owner of the Knicks, aired a controversial fan sign of Jeremy Lin popping out of a fortune cookie, and after Fox Sports Columnist Jason Whitlock apologized for his offensive tweet about Jeremy Lin. It appeared three days after an ESPN anchor used the exact same phrase “Chink in the Armor” on air in an interview about Jeremy Lin.

“The time for apologies is over. The media and the general public must understand that racist language and stereotypes used to describe Jeremy Lin are an insult to all Asian Americans, and no one should tolerate their use,” the AALDEF statement went on to say.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that votes for the Oscars, is nearly 94 percent white and 77 percent male, according to a Los Angeles Times study published Sunday. Blacks are about 2 percent of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2 percent.

In some sub-branches the racial disparities are even higher. The executives and writers groups, for example, are 98 percent white. And all of this year’s five nominated directors are white men, and none of the 21 producers of the nine best picture nominees is a person of color.

The Times spent several months investigating who was part of the closely guarded and secret roster list of academy voters. Times reporters confirmed the identities of more than 5,100 Oscar voters — more than 89 percent of all active voting members — and found that they are mostly white, male and have a median age of 62.

More from the L.A. Times:

To conduct the study, Times reporters spoke with thousands of academy members and their representatives — and reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies — to confirm the identities of more than 5,100 voters — more than 89% of the voting members. Those interviews revealed varying opinions about the academy’s race, sex and age breakdown: Some members see it simply as a mirror of hiring patterns in Hollywood, while others say it reflects the group’s mission to recognize achievement rather than promote diversity. Many said the academy should be much more representative.

The Times found that some of the academy’s 15 branches are almost exclusively white and male. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of every academy branch except actors, whose roster is 88% white. The academy’s executive branch is 98% white, as is its writers branch.

Men compose more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Of the academy’s 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.

There are three ways to become a candidate for membership in the academy: land an Oscar nomination; apply and receive a recommendation from two members of a branch; or earn an endorsement from the branch’s membership committee or the academy staff.

The membership committees then vote on the candidates and those who get a majority are invited to join.

(If the academy wanted to, they could endorse people like “Pariah” director Dee Rees—even though she’s never been nominated for an Oscar and has only directed one film—her work has been honored at dozens of film festivals, awards ceremonies and has been financially successful.)

“I don’t see any reason why the academy should represent the entire American population. That’s what the People’s Choice Awards are for,” Frank Pierson, a former academy president who won an Oscar for original screenplay for “Dog Day Afternoon” in 1976, and who still serves on the board of governors, told the Times.

“We represent the professional filmmakers, and if that doesn’t reflect the general population, so be it,” Pierson said.

“If the country is 12% black, make the academy 12% black,” Denzel Washington told the Times. “If the nation is 15% Hispanic, make the academy 15% Hispanic. Why not?”

Academy member Bill Duke, a black actor and director, told the Times he sees little being done to change things: “The black community sees the academy as an entity that ignores the needs, wants, desires and representation of black directors, producers, actors and writers. Whether it is true or not, that is how it’s perceived — as an elitist group with no concern or regard for the minority community and industry. And there doesn’t seem to be any desire to change that perception.”

The academy blames the industry for their lack of diversity.

“We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job,” writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, a longtime academy governor, told the Times. But “we start off with one hand tied behind our back…. If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.”

The academy organizes a program called Streetlights, a job training and placement group that works to promote ethnic diversity in Hollywood. While the program can financially propel those individuals who complete the program it will would take years if not decades for those individuals to be invited or even qualify to apply to be part of the academy.

New Mexico Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s third attempt to repeal a 2003 law that allows undocumented immigrants to apply for drivers licenses failed Thursday when the Democratic controlled legislature voted it down. The tea party-backed governor is trying to make good on her campaign promise to not just eliminate access to driver’s licenses but also revoke licenses that have already been given to non-citizens.

ImmigrationImpact.com’s Joan Friedland with more details:

HB103, the bill backed by Martinez, passed the House earlier this month but failed to make it through the Senate. An alternative Senate bill, SB235, which would have tightened residency requirements but not repealed the 2003 law, passed the Senate. Governor Martinez, however, vowed to veto that Senate bill. New Mexico and Washington are the only states that issue driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status (Utah issues a driving certificate that can’t be used for identification).

Republican Governor Susana Martinez has repeatedly tried (and failed) to repeal the state’s nearly decade old driver’s license law. Last year, a state district judge halted on constitutional grounds Gov. Martinez’s costly campaign to “certify” the driver’s licenses of foreign nationals. A spokesman for Gov. Martinez claims the current law “leads to fraud, human trafficking, organized crime and significant security concerns.” Supporters of the law, however, say the current policy aids cooperation between immigrant communities and local police as well as reduces the number of unlicensed drivers.

In fact, an immigrant rights group, Somos un Pueblo Unido, recently reported that in a recent survey, 64% of New Mexicans support improving, not repealing, the current law—which is what the alternative Senate bill (SB235) sought to do. Senate bill (SB235) would have strengthened identity and residency requirements, required re-verification of documents, annual renewals, imposed fingerprint requirements and increased penalties for fraud. HB103 would have repealed the current law by requiring applicants to provide a Social Security number in order to receive a license.

Utah, Washington and New Mexico are the only states that allow residents to access driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status.

On Wednesday Oprah Winfrey aired her Oscar primetime special with three of this year’s nominees: Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Jonah Hill. This marks the first time the Oscar special airs on Winfrey’s OWN network she’s also distancing away from her annual post-Oscar show.

Winfrey spent a large chunk of the two-hour show interviewing Viola Davis. Some of the highlights are below… but really, if you want to see a side of Davis and Winfrey that you’ve never seen before then start with the video above.

On Friday, KFI radio hosts John & Ken apologized for referring to Whitney Houston as a “crack hoe.” John Chester Kobylt and Kenneth Robertson Chiampou host “The John and Ken Show,” on KFI AM 640 in Southern California. Their show is the nation’s most listened to local talk radio program.

“It’s like, ‘Ah Jesus … here comes the crack ho again, what’s she gonna do?” the radio DJs said on Saturday’s show. They went on to say Houston was “cracked out for 20 years.”

“We made a mistake, and we accept the station’s decision. We used language that was inappropriate, and we sincerely apologize to our listeners and to the family of Ms. Houston,” John Kobylt said in a statement published on their website.

KFI AM 640, a Clear Channel Communications radio station, has suspended the hosts until February 27, 2012.

John & Ken, as the duo are recognized professionally, have a long history of controversial comments.

“They blame us [immigrants] for all that is wrong in education, all that is wrong in the economy, all that is wrong with security in this country,” Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition told Univision last year after John & Ken broadcasted the cell phone number of a communications associate working with CHIRLA, an immigrants rights coalition.

In 2006, John & Ken started a campaign that resulted in hundreds of toilet brushes in Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office after the mayor said immigrants “come here to work: We clean your toilets. We clean your hotels. We build your houses.”

Most recently, on a show broadcasted on January 5th, John & Ken discussed unethical business practices which included statements about Korean American painters as “scam guys” who seek to “rip people off.”

CHIRLA and the communications associate who’s contact information was shared by John & Ken issued a statement this morning. It’s published in it’s entirety below:

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles applauds KFI’s decision to temporarily suspend John & Ken for, once again, spreading insults and hate. Their distasteful, inappropriate and offensive diatribes know no bounds. We call on KFI to consider suspending these two traffickers of hate indefinitely. We also call on KTLA TV 5 to remove this objectionable pair from the station’s daily programming. Multicultural Los Angeles deserves better than John and Ken.

A Snapple commercial advertising a new “half & half” lemonade and tea drink is sparking controversy online. On both YouTube and Snapple’s Facebook page, commenters say the commercial has racial overtones and is politically incorrect.

An Asian actor dressed in yellow throughout the commercial says the best part of the “half & half” drink is the lemonade. He ends up fighting with a black actor who says he prefers the tea half of the drink. At the end of the commercial two white guys standing on an elevated platform say they don’t care what half of the drink is better as they watch the Asian and black actors fighting below them.

“LOL Snapple, i usually tend to think look too much into things, but yea the racial overtones of this commercial is pretty apparent,” writes one commenter on the commercial uploaded to YouTube a week ago.

“Is it just me or is this commerical slightly politicaly incorrect???” asked another user on Snapple’s Facebook page when they shared the commercial. The comment has gone unanswered.

“How strange!! what a way for the Man to get us to talk about the damn product. game on. The white man driketh [sic] and consume us! EAT THE OTHER as bell hooks so lovingly pointed out as White Man’s perogative [sic]”, another user commented.

What do you think? Do you see something?

Take the poll below and maybe a Snapple executive will find our results when he googles “is Snapple’s “half & half” commercial racist?”

Pat Buchanan, the conservative political commentator, announced Thursday his “days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.” In an essay, he cited “an incessant clamor from the left” as the reason for his departure.

It’s unclear if Buchanan was fired or if the final decision to leave was his own but MSNBC suspended him last October and he has not appeared on the network since. MSNBC President Phil Griffin said last month that he didn’t think Buchanan’s latest book “Suicide of a Superpower” that contains chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America.” “should be part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.”

A spokesman for MSNBC told the NY Times, “After 10 years, we’ve parted ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.”

“A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a ‘white supremacist ideology.’ Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America,” Buchanan wrote on his syndicated column.

ColorOfChange.org launched their campaign calling on MSNBC to fire Buchanan after his appearance on a show they say has a history of being a white nationalist radio program. More from ColorOfChange.org:

ColorOfChange.org launched their campaign calling on MSNBC to fire Buchanan after his appearance on white nationalist radio program The Political Cesspool, where he promoted his latest book. The Political Cesspool describes itself as representing “a philosophy that is pro-White … We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.” The show has a reputation for being racist, sexist, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic. In calling for his firing, the group also cited a long history of bigoted rhetoric from Buchanan.

ColorOfChange.org was joined in their campaign by CREDO Action.The two groups collected over 275,000 petition signatures calling on Buchanan’s firing. In addition, members made calls to MSNBC demanding that the network cut ties with Buchanan.

The number of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, and the share of all current marriages that are either interracial or interethnic has reached an all-time high of 8.4 percent, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project.

Of the 275,500 new interracial or interethnic marriages in 2010, 43 percent are white/Latino couples, the most common type of intermarriage couple.

According to the report, intermarriage rates are highest among Latinos and Asians. In 2010, more than a quarter (26 percent) of Latino newlyweds, and 28 percent of Asian newlyweds, married someone of a different race or ethnicity, or “married out.” By contrast, about one-in-six (17 percent) newlywed black non-Latinos married non-blacks, and less than one-in-ten white non-Latinos (9 percent) married someone who is not white, the lowest among all groups.

Whites are by far the largest racial group in the United States, meaning that marriages between whites and people of color are the most common types of intermarriage.

Among the report’s findings:

• Of the 275,500 new interracial or interethnic marriages in 2010, 43 percent are white/Latino couples, the most common type of intermarriage couple.
  
• Native-born Latino newlyweds are more than twice as likely as foreign-born Latino newlyweds to marry out——36 percent versus 14 percent.
  
• About one-in-five (19 percent) of all newlyweds in New Mexico between 2008 and 2010 were white/Latino couples, a share higher than any other state. States with the next highest shares of newlywed white/Latino couples were Arizona (12 percent) and Nevada (11 percent).
  
• Between 2008-2010 white male newlyweds who married Asian, Latino or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse.
  
• Just as intermarriage has become more common, public attitudes have become more accepting. Nearly half (48 percent) of Latino, and 43 percent of Americans overall, say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while only about one-in-ten of both groups think it is a change for the worse.

Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in, according to the report.

The report, “The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender,” authored by Wendy Wang, Research Associate, Pew Social & Demographic Trends, is available at the Pew Social & Demographic Trend’s website, www.pewsocialtrends.org.

A confrontation between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Thursday evening in Long Beach has one dead and another seriously injured, according to the LA Times. Several sources tell the Times the shootout began with an agent shot his supervisor several times.

“With the supervisor wounded, a third agent intervened and opened fire on the gunman, who was pronounced dead at the scene, according to law enforcement authorities. The male agent who killed the gunman was uninjured,” the LA Times reports.

The incident occured in the Glenn M. Anderson Federal Building in Long Beach, Calif., according to law enforcement authorities.

On Thursday morning First Lady Michelle Obama surprised White House visitors taking a tour with a quick ‘meet and greet.’

The surprise event with the Mrs. O was broadcasted live on WhiteHouse.org and it offered a glimpse of what the First Lady is like when she’s not in front of studio cameras. (For example, who knew Mrs. O knows what Ugg boots are!? And that she’ll compliment you for wearing them!)

There were a dozen or two people who met the First lady and it was mostly quick 30-second small-talk chats. However, the last three visitors included a teen girl who got a special White House lesson from the Mrs. Obama:

“Do well in school, eat your vegetables, listen to your teachers, stay out of trouble, read, listen to your parents.”

Let that be your mantra for 2012. 

We’re ending the day as often as possible by celebrating love. We welcome your ideas for posts. Send suggestions to submissions@colorlines.com, and be sure to put Celebrate Love in the subject line. You can send links to videos, graphics, photos, quotes, whatever. Or just chime in to the comments below and we’ll find you. Be sure to let us know you’ve got the rights to share any media you send.

To see other Love posts visit our Celebrate Love page.

House and Senate negotiators yesterday said they’d come to an agreement on a deal to extend the payroll tax cut and extend expanded unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed for the rest of the year. The agreement proposes to avoid a painful repeat of December’s fight over the programs and suggests that Republican obstructionism may be in a moment of retreat. But the plan, which could still be derailed when it comes up for a vote, also includes a set of important attacks on the programs integrity.

The agreement would begin a process of retracting the extended benefit program for the jobless and allow states to test applicants to the program for drug use.

One provision would allow states to refuse unemployment benefits to applicants who fail drug tests when applying for jobs in fields that already require drug tests. The drug testing provision is a scaled back version of a more draconian plan that was included in earlier iterations of the bill that would have required drug testing for all benefit applicants. But, while the provision is weaker and may be primarily a face saving maneuver by Republicans who were unable to get agreement on a number of their most significant cuts, it’s nonetheless a significant victory for conservatives who seek to chop away at the reach of the safety net.

The provision will disproportionately impact low-wage workers who are both more likely to be unemployed and more likely to apply for jobs that require drug testing. It may be vulnerable to constitutional challenges if states actually implement these sorts of policies: many advocates argue that the imposing drug tests on the benefit program violates the 4th amendment protection against unreasonable search ans seizure. As I wrote earlier this week:

In May, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill requiring applicants to the state’s welfare program to urinate in a cup before being approved for the program. Just five months after the bill’s passage, a court blocked the law, finding it a violation of the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. If other states succeed in passing legislation they’re likely to face similar constitutional challenges, though state legislators may craft their bills to avoid the Fourth Amendment pitfalls.

In addition to restricting unemployed folk’s access to the program, the provision also significantly stigmatizes the unemployed. Though there are no signs that benefit applicants are likely to be drug users—indeed there are plenty of indications that that idea is an ideological fallacy—its inclusion will no doubt be followed by a growing number of state-based efforts to pass bills restricting access to the jobless program. It’s not clear if applicants will be responsible paying for their own drug tests. If that is the case, applying for benefits could become prohibitive for many.

The other significant piece of the agreement announced yesterday is that after 10 extensions of the expanded unemployment insurance program, this begins a process of the program’s retraction. If passed, the duration of jobless benefit receipt would fall from a maximum of 99 weeks to a maximum of 73 weeks in the next year. This would hit the long term unemployed as soon at it begins taking effect in the Spring and as time goes on, more and more will fall off the end of benefits.

The implication of the retraction is clear: Congress believes that economic suffering is now on it’s way to an end. Of course, suffering is not over. Unemployment is still high and folks who have been unemployed for long periods are even less likely to find new jobs than the recently jobless. This is especially true for black workers who face disproportionate long term unemployment.

The Grammys live telecast on Sunday set Twitter records for the number of tweets the show—except during Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to Whitney Houston.

At the height of the live broadcast there were 10,901 tweets per second, according to Twitter, just a few thousand below the Super Bowl’s new record of 12,233 tweets per second during the big game.

But Hudson’s tribute was so moving that the tweets stopped immediately when she took the stage.

“Once Jennifer hit the stage, all traffic came to a complete stop. People stopped talking and they listened,” said Beverly Jackson, director of marketing and social media for the Recording Academy, at a Social Media Week panel Wednesday in New York. Talk around the tribute, she added, while diverse, was mostly positive, with 81% favorable sentiment. Social-marketing company Mass Relevance helped tally the numbers.

Following Ms. Hudson’s performance, engagement ramped back up and capped at 3.9 million explicit #Grammy mentions. The broadcast probably got a viewer boost because of Ms. Houston’s untimely death, but the night belonged to Adele, who dominated Grammy wins (six) and the conversation with 2.5 million mentions — 500% more than any other artist, said Ms. Jackson. (Rihanna, Chris Brown, Nicki Minaj and Ms. Houston round out the top five.)

The enormously popular and yet controversial parent trigger law is on the move in Florida. The House Education Committee approved the state’s Parent Empowerment Act with an 11-6 vote today, the Miami Herald reported. The bill’s next stop is the House floor.

The bill would allow parents with kids enrolled in a school with poor test scores to file a petition to restructure their children’s school. Rep. Michael Bileca, a Republican from Miami, was unable to win Democratic support; the vote fell along party lines. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has already expressed his support for the bill.

Parent trigger laws are relatively new, but are quickly being adopted by school reformers across the country. Since California passed its parent trigger in 2010, three other states—Mississippi, Texas and Connecticut passed their own versions of the law. New York, Pennsylvania and Indiana are also debating their own parent trigger laws this year.

Despite its rapid explosion onto the state policy scene, it remains an intensely heated topic of debate among parents, teachers, and school reformers.

In Adelanto, California, a group of parents is exercising the law for just the second time in its history. Read more about the controversy as its unfolding in the small desert town by clicking here.

The federal government has agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by 11 Latino immigrants who were arrested in 2007 in a series of immigration raids at their homes in New Haven, Conn., the New York Times reports.

The plaintiffs, all men, argued immigration agents violated their rights when armed federal agents entered their homes without their consent, drew their weapons, forced them out of bed and frightened young children.

“I remember everything that happened to me that morning as if it were yesterday,” plaintiff Edinson Yangua Calva told the AP. “There are things I haven’t been able to get over, it is something that stays with you forever.”

The New York Times with more details on the lawsuits:

The lawsuit claimed that during the raids, armed federal officers violated the constitutional rights of the 11 men by arresting them in their homes without warrants and without inquiring about their immigration status, informing them of their rights or explaining why they were being detained. In all, 29 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested during the raids, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

The operation began two days after the city approved a plan to offer identification cards to all city residents, including illegal immigrants. The lawsuit claimed that the operation began in retaliation for the plan, a charge the federal government denied.

Court records from an earlier related case say the ICE agents entered immigrants’ homes in New Haven without warrants, probable cause or their consent.

The settlement “shows what can happen when people have the courage to stand together to defend their basic human rights,” Michael J. Wishnie, co-director of the Yale group, the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, told the Times. “This settlement establishes that no one is above the law, including immigration agents.”

The settlement is believed to be the largest ever paid by the United States government in a lawsuit over residential immigration raids.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on the White House mandate requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage after Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) refused to allow women to testify as witnesses on Thursday morning.

“What I want to know is, where are the women?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Issa before walking out of the hearing after the first panel. “I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?”

Thing Progress’ Igor Volsky reports:

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.”

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

“I’d like to address the ongoing controversy surrounding the Too $hort video and try to set the record straight,” XXL Magazine’s editor-in-chief Vanessa Satten wrote in a statement published on XXLmag.com late Wednesday night. “As soon as I learned about the video, I had it taken down,” Satten continued.

And that’s her line and she’s sticking to it. “As soon as I learned about the video, I had it taken down.”

No mention of the word “sorry” or “apology” and no clear mention of what XXL is doing to prevent this from the future.

Below is a snippet from Satten’s statement published on XXLmag.com:

As a woman, I in no way find the content of the video acceptable. To think I would ever approve anything that would harm women or endanger children is absurd. Under no terms should sexual assault be tolerated, nor do I endorse making light of it.

The staffers responsible for producing and posting this video have since been suspended. We are currently implementing changes in our posting process to ensure something like this never happens again. I am not trying to pass this off on my staff but unfortunately an awful judgment call was made.

Satten ended her letter by attempting to shut down the conversation. “To the people who are offended by the video, I agree with you. That’s why I had it immediately taken down.”

“While this statement actually mentions the central issue—which is that XXL.com gave an aging rapper an international platform to instruct middle school boys to push girls against walls and stick their fingers in their vaginas without explicit consent—it’s still a reaction to community pressure for the editor in chief to be fired or to resign,” said Akiba Solomon, Colorlines.com’s gender matters blogger.

“Folks need to get out of PR mode and get serious.”

A petition calling on Harris Publications to fire Satten surpassed its goal of getting 1,000 signatures on Wednesday. At the time this story was published the petition had close to 1,800 signatures.

Visit Ebony.com to read Akiba Solomon’s “Too $hort and the Anatomy of a weak apology.”

Viola Davis revealed Wednesday on CBS’ “This Morning” that she believes her mother is part of a generation of women who would rather forget some of the racial themes in “The Help.”

“My mother has yet to see the movie… I think it’s just because — I think it’s painful. You have a whole generation of women who don’t want to be reminded of the past,” Davis said.

“I think it’s a generation that’s used to sucking it in, which is why I loved Aibileen (her character). She represented most people in that time period who just had to suck it in — and their whole lives, dreams, hopes, everything, just took place in their spirit.”

Davis also briefly discussed the decision to be photographed with her natural hair for her LA Times Magazine. “It was not hard to make that decision, I felt like I was channeling another character in that picture, which was me.”

Chan published her apology on what looks like a new public figure Facebook page. Her apology is published below in it’s entirety:

“I am deeply sorry for any pain that the character I portrayed brought to my communities. As a recent college grad who has spent time working to improve communities and empower those without a voice, this role is not in any way representative of who I am. It was absolutely a mistake on my part and one that, over time, I hope can be forgiven. I feel horrible about my participation and I am determined to resolve my actions.”

—Lisa Chan
CEO/ President, The Strive Vice President, Sparxo Inc.

Angryasianman.com reports support for Pete Hoekstra has taken a big dip in the wake of his controversial ad.

“Like it or not, this is how I process emotion,” wrote radio DJ Jeremy Sole when he shared the song below on Facebook. Sole is the host of an Afrobeat, Salsa and Dub music Wednesday night show on Los Angeles’ public-radio station KCRW.

And lucky for us, he’s also a DJ that remixed a classic Whitney Houston hit with beats that originate from Colombia’s Caribbean coastal regions.

The staunchly conservative Westboro Baptist Church plans to protest Whitney Houston’s funeral on Saturday. The Topeka, Kansas church is known for protesting funerals of celebrities, soldiers, gays and now Whitney Houston.

“Yay! 2 pickets in NJ-Whitney Houston funeral & [legislature],” Margie Phelps, daughter of the church’s pastor Fred Phelps, tweeted Tuesday morning.

Phelps, a serial tweeter, has made other comments about Houston that may offer some insight on why the Westboro Baptist plans to protest.

On February 11th Phelps tweeted, “No R.I.P. Whitney Houston. You don’t live your life serving self &sin, stealing God’s glory, & get peace.”

She later went on to tweet, “Stand by for Westboro parody, ‘God Will Always Hate You, Whitney,’” and “F—- call her ‘gay icon.’ Yeah, WBC is picketing that funeral.”

(h/t Christian Post)