On Jan 4, the "Shit Girls Say" meme was radically transformed. New York-based graphic designer & video blogger Franchesca Ramsey a.k.a. Chescaleigh unleashed "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls", and it blew up the Internet. In the video, Ramsey plays her blonde-haired white friend who she portrays as curiously confused, and innocently ignorant. "Why isn't there a white entertainment television? The Jews were slaves too, and you don't hear us complaining all the time," Chescaleigh-as-white-girl asks the camera. Her white friend is completely unaware of fundamental cultural and racial differences between her and her black friend. It's these awkward moments that fuel the humor in this viral video.

When Franchesca appeared on Anderson Cooper a few days after the video blew up, Cooper asked *the question* that mainstream media was dying to know: Is the video racist?

"I don't think that talking about ignorance is racist," Franchesca tells Cooper. "And like I said, I'm not labeling anyone racist because that would infer that the statements were saying someone was better than another race - and that's not what any of the statements are doing." Shortly after her Anderson Cooper appearance, Franchesca produced a sequel, "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls Part 2."

Soon, more "Shit X Says to Y" versions of the meme began to appear. "Shit White Girls Say to Brown (Desi/Indian) Girls" features an Indian woman portraying her white girlfriend, who asks questions like "Do you want to go to 7-11? Oh oops, is that racist?" It is cutting, and points to some of the underlying racism that Indian-Americans experience regularly.

In "Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls," actor/comedian Cindy Fang dresses in drag, playing a white dude and points out some of the obnoxious, arrogant statements that some white guys say to Asian women. "Sorry, I have a hard time telling Asians apart," she says, with a tone that conveys how the white guy she is portraying doesn't feel like trying to educate himself. He is blissful in his ignorance. And then, a blatantly, unapologetically racist statement: "Why do they call it Bangkok? They should call it Bang Pussy!!!"

Of course, it's just comedy - and the talented Fang masterfully exaggerates these statements to hammer home the crass, yet serious jokes. "Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls" takes swipes at sex and race relations. It's almost as upsetting as "Shit Asian Girls Say," another version of the original "Shit Girls Say" meme.

In Latoya Peterson's blog post "Exploring the Problematic and Subversive Shit People Say [Meme-ology]" on Racialicious, she notes that it isn't until "Shit Black Gays Say" (and part 2) and "Shit Southern Gay Guys Say" that the viewer starts to see the performer's subjective interpretation of themselves.

"It's notable that these videos are the principals representing themselves (as opposed to someone else's interpretation of them), perhaps since these groups are still so invisible in the public eye that no one else but them could speak to their experience," writes Peterson.

How "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls" Shifted the Conversation

"There's a way in which the meme format allows for more granular renditions of identity than you often see in mass culture," says Professor Russo.

Chescaleigh's video shifted the focus from the narrator as subject to the narrator as a vehicle for social critique. Now X is saying something to Y. Other iterations of the meme show X speaking for themselves, or portraying the stereotypical subject in drag. "Shit White Girls Say...to Arab Girls" follows the same format as Chescaleigh's video - a white girl gets to hear how she sounds to her Arab friends.

"Do you know the guy at the liquor store? I mean, I assume you guys all know each other," says the Arab girl portraying her white friend in "Shit White Girls Say...to Arab Girls". "I've never met one of you before! I mean, I've seen Arabs on TV...on the news. Was 9/11 your fault?"

"Friendly Prejuidice"

Writing for The Guardian, Thea Lim points out that the statements in all of these videos imply a sort of "friendly prejudice":

What's friendly prejudice? The most common defence of racism is: "But I didn't intend to be racist." This response relies on the idea that if we didn't intend to offend someone, then their feelings can't possibly be hurt. The Shit X Says to Y videos are delightfully validating because they show that those with the genuinely lovely intentions of being your friend and seeking commonality with you can still be rude and hurtful.

A commenter on the NPR story that questioned if Franchesca's video was "racist" tried the good ol' "role reversal" trick (that always fails), which attempts to deny the existence of white privilege. "If the roles were reversed...Jesse [Jackson] & [Al] Sharpton, would be involved, lawsuits filed, perhaps riots...". Says Lim:

The reason why relationships between white and non-white people, or straight people and gay people are fraught, is because of our history - long gone, recent or ongoing. Racist, homophobic or simply thoughtless comments are insulting not just in and of themselves, but because they are a bilious reminder of the times when straight, white people have dehumanised and denied other groups their human rights. Of course, non-white and gay people can say nasty or even prejudicial things to white and straight people, but those things don't deliver the sting that comes from decades of being on the wrong end of an unequal relationship.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I have watched my friends react to these videos with anger and sadness. I have seen other friends shout "That's me! That totally happened to me." Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The most important aspect of these videos, however, is that people are actually reacting to them, and sharing them with their friends. They're easy conversation starters, a segue into sharing painful experiences past and present.

We all have culturally biased perspectives and cultural baggage. No one comes to the table without their past experiences. The "Shit X Says to Y" iteration of the "Shit People Say" meme forces everyone to acknowledge this. At least humor helps everyone move through the initial strange moments that could lead into meaningful conversations about this meme.

But are we ready for this?

In her post on Racialicous, Peterson points out that, still, "Shit Girls Say" and "Shit Black Girls Say" received a lot more views than their "Shit X Says to Y" social commentary videos. "Maybe that's because, as a culture, we are accustomed to laughing at stereotypes," writes Peterson, "but we aren't prepared to unpack how we perpetuate them."

After a few weeks of Internet madness, the noise died down. Conversations about this meme started to feel stale. The Internet went back to its usual, easy, Twitter-rific type humor. I started seeing these videos on my Facebook news feed: "Shit New Yorkers Say" and "Shit Chicagoans Say." But it's only a matter of time before things start up again.

Image via Chescaleigh's Facebook page.

The White House announced new participation in a jobs initiative yesterday from fast-growing technical education website Codecademy, as well as some venerable social justice oriented organizations Level Playing Field Institute and College Bound Brotherhood, a group dedicated to increasing the number of young African American men prepared for college. Called Summer Jobs +, the program aims to get young poor and marginalized people into paid technical training programs over Summer vacation.

It's an ambitious effort to tackle a very complicated problem. It's going to be a lot easier said than done.

While the national unemployment rate remains high after years of recession and economic change, unemployment is even higher among African American youth (estimated at 40%) and Latino youth (estimated between 25% and 35%). "With youth unemployment nearly triple the overall rate and much higher among young Americans of color, attention to this problem is more than welcome," Roberto Viramontes, Vice President of Education Policy at the First Focus Campaign for Children, said in response to my request for comment on the Summer Jobs + program.

The decline of employment opportunities for unskilled workers in general has long lead to calls for youth training programs. Critics say the federal job training programs for young people have long been in need of modernization.

Anti-poverty advocates (none of whom I inquired with were anxious to say much on the record) emphasize that meaningful change requires more than just skill building in things like software coding. Some believe that in order to succeed such programs need to invest first in finding young people most likely to benefit from this kind of support. Then, after training is completed, programs must work directly on connecting newly trained young people with employers if they are to make a meaningful difference in people's lives. Will the Summer Jobs+ program include those kinds of steps? There was no mention of them in the program's announcement this week. It may take years of experience before a person can get a job coding, maybe this is just to get a taste of what's possible.

Other anti-poverty advocates say that technical skills like coding are not enough to provide the comprehensive preparation young people on the margins of society need in order to become meaningfully employed. Many young people need training on things like creating a good resume and dealing with difficult questions in an interview if they are to be prepared to remain in the workforce over the long term. That comprehensive set of skills is something that several organizations participating in the Summer Jobs + program are well-equipped to confer.

Can the amalgamation of organizations working to teach young poor people of color to code, pull this all off? The depth of need in the communities at issue is such that advocates say many programs in the past have seen their funding sucked dry with huge need remaining.

This is a very complicated, challenging problem.

Codecademy

Codecademy, the hip new web app that teaches its users basic coding skills and that will be an important part of this initiative, is one of many new education and personal change apps to emerge online in recent months.

Codecademy in particular has faced criticism lately concerning its ease of use. Specifically, some people have said that the site makes it difficult to know how to get back on track when a user has made a mistake in working on a lesson. I've experienced that on the site, too. Others say it still presumes too much knowledge of how computers work. The developer-centric community at Hacker News was very critical of Codecademy this week and the site's founders appeared in comments there to assure readers they were working to respond to issues raised.

In Codecademy's own announcement of the partnership with the White House and the other participants in the program, there was a conspicuous absence of any discussion regarding the race or class dynamics of the program. I raised this concern in a comment on the announcement post last night, but none of the comments posted have been responded to by Codecademy.

I'm concerned that failure to even mention that part of the program could indicate that the makers of the technical education materials aren't taking matters of race and class into much consideration. US Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra said the purpose of the program is "to provide pathways to employment for low-income and disconnected youth." Codecademy describes it simply as a program intended "to get more kids and adults learning to code."

You know what they say: those who ignore history risk repeating it. The Libertarian political leanings of so much of the tech industry puts programs like this at risk of ignoring the historic marginalization of certain segments of society and thus repeating it, as part of a faux-egalitarianism where blindness to difference effectively keeps the same people on top, in the end. I don't know any of the people involved in Codecademy, but I bet I'm not the only person who looked at its co-founders' Venture Capital backed, Ivy League educated, white boy resumes and their announcement about this program with no mention of race or class, with skepticism.

That the announcement of a White House partnership to train young poor people of color in coding shared a Codecademy blog post with an announcement of offline meetups of Codecademy users around the country and that the post called the meet-ups more important just seemed rude. ("...This will be a shorter course than Code Year that aims to teach people the basics of programming. You can find a bit more on the White House's blog. More importantly, we're pleased to announce that we're moving Codecademy from being a strictly online learning platform to something you can do offline as well.")

The politically questionable announcement of the partnership with the White House was a small paragraph surrounded by multiple paragraphs of rah-rah about Codecademy's hitting 1 million users (thanks to a year-end push and 1 hour of design work) and a list of tech industry luminaries' names getting dropped that the startup thanks for its success.

Paul Graham says that young people are often the only ones ignorant enough of how much hard boring work is involved with building a company that they are willing to do it. Simplistic youthful bravado may not be an asset though when the problem you're trying to tackle is the underemployment of poor young people of color.

It's a big initiative tackling a big, complicated problem, but it sure is important. I'm concerned about how well tech and politics will come together in this case, but we can all hope it will work out well and the world will be changed for the better.

Half the students (32 of 64) skipped the class and listened to the podcast only. The other half attended in person, where they also received a printed handout. A week later, the students were tested on the material.

Podcast Listeners Did Better

The students who downloaded the podcast alone averaged a C (71 out of 100) but those who attended class averaged a D. And those who listened to the podcast and took notes did even better - their average was 77.

Before university classrooms empty out, it's important to note that this is only preliminary research. McKinney's study involved only a single lecture. Also, motivation may have come into play as well. Her experiment didn't count for class credit, so students were encouraged to participate with iTunes gift cards. The high scorer from each group was awarded a $15 gift certificate for use in the online store.

McKinney now plans to further study podcasts in the classroom over the course of an entire semester, instead of just one class. She wonders if students might find podcasts more useful early on in a class, when the material is still new. Still, McKinney is a big believer in the power of technology and its impact on education. "I do think it's a tool," she says. "I think that these kids are programmed differently than kids 20 years ago."

How are newspapers adapting to digital syndication? Today the Associated Press announced that more than 500 newspapers are using their service called the AP Member Marketplace. To web savvy consumers, the Marketplace might look like an RSS reader that publishes selected stories to a webpage built out of Del.icio.us badges. It's a pretty interesting program.

The AP Marketplace interface looks like a sophisticated, multi-media RSS reader but with limited sources. Publishers set up a workflow that lets editors send selected media items directly from the reader out onto the paper's website.

Below, the AP newsreader, click to view full screen image.

It's very reminiscent of of the CMS built by the Crowd Fusion team, which we profiled last week. There's one huge difference though between the AP's project and things like the Crowd Fusion project, the red-hot world of cool-hunting aggregation and even the new publishing strategy of web giants like Yahoo and AOL. The AP service finds and publishes AP stories, not content from around the whole web.

There was a time when it must have been hard to imagine getting more news to choose from than what the wires brought publishers each day. That time has passed and while the small Midwestern US newspapers that the AP highlights as happy users of the Marketplace may be on board - it's hard to say how for how long readers will remain excited about AP fueled news websites. Especially once they discover a little more about how the internet works. (We don't mean to be critical of Mid Westerners, they were just the demographic of several AP demo sites.)

The online research tools used by financial professionals, for example, could probably slap this service both ways to Sunday before it knew which way was up. The AP says, though, that many local papers find their readers overjoyed with the breadth of topical AP content published to content sections or niche websites.

Left: The North West Arkansas biker scene had nothing like this news site before the AP Exchange came to town, the AP says. This kind of site does look like a good idea for everyone.

Training Component

One very interesting part of the AP Marketplace is that it's very search-centric and the wire service offers weekly 30 minute-long classes in online search skills. The AP Exchange School of Search is a great idea.

Not all parts of the program are working well, admittedly. The Exchange "blog" and community on Ning are dead, for example. Perhaps early participants learned enough to escape out into the web at large.

News Publishing Around the Web

A year ago media analyst Jeff Jarvis wrote an excellent post about what Editor 2.0 jobs are shaping up to look like. Two years ago we wrote here about some of the exciting things that AP competitor Reuters is doing. [Disclosure, the Reuters semantic web project Calais is now an RWW sponsor.] The media business blog PaidContent says that the AP Marketplace/Exchange service is pitted against new aggregation services explicitely aimed at replacing the AP, like Politico.

It's a time of deep change in the news media world and though we love the feel of a good local paper and its website - their ongoing success cannot be taken for granted. Tools like the AP Exchange look like a great step to take and we enjoy getting to see what the RSS reader equivalent is inside hundreds of local newsrooms.