I've been in a little of a kerfuffle with Nubian of BlackAcademic. I honestly get a knee-jerk reaction when I read or listen to people using racism to reduce every single negative aspect of American politics and culture. The knee-jerk reaction gets bigger when it comes from scholars and academics because it raises up a lot of issues I had with the part of US universities that fosters what I believe is a rhetorical posing that passes for a empirical analysis.

The problem though is that, not only are my biases strong but my articulation of them is weak, short-tempered, and unfocused. Which is why I haven't been too successful in engaging in a discussion about why reducing everything to racism is counterproductive to those trying to overcome racism in the first place.

I guess I am more into the grayish nuances of capitalist exploitation, the one's that can better explain why a Condoleeza Rice is Secretary of State or why there the genocidal war that rages across central Africa is all about slavery, human trading as capital, and not about race.

Yet ... and yet ... this image raises its ugly head at Feministing via Tennessee Guerilla Women: The Red Burka for A Red America

Get your Red Burka T-Shirt here, and tell the world what you think about the relentless, never-ending, Republican-led and State-financed War on Women.

I plan to wear a Red Burka Shirt when I go downtown to watch my elected representatives vote on whether or not women should be returned to the 19th century when the male-dominated state had the unmitigated audacity to rob women of their personhood.

I can't even begin to describe how culturally insensitive and narrow-minded this little campaign is.

In trying to equate American Christian fundamentalists with Islamic fundamentalists, Tennessee Guerrilla Women they probably thought they were being cute. The problem is, there are islamic feminist theologists who are trying to make a difference within their religion. If using the burqa is necessary, they use it because they must.

Not everybody has to look like a white 'liberated' woman in order to be called a feminist. In this case, I would not call this racism, since being a muslim is not about race. A moment of cultural imperialism? That's closer to the truth.

The best essay on this matter is at Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 2, No. 3 | ISLAM & FFEMINISM: Are the barriers coming down? by Caryle Murphy :

Feminism is the principle that women have an equal right to the same opportunities as men in all spheres of life. But feminism’s content depends on the circumstances of individual women. The word means one thing to a female executive in New York frustrated that the “old boys network