Strategically Essential.

"I’ve told the kids in the ghettos that violence won’t solve their problems, but then they ask me,..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:52:32 -0400

“I’ve told the kids in the ghettos that violence won’t solve their problems, but then they ask me, and rightly so; “Why does the government use massive doses of violence to bring about the change it wants in the world?” After this I knew that I could no longer speak against the violence in the ghettos without also speaking against the violence of my government”

- Martin Luther King Jr. (via loveinfamine)

The Martin Luther King Jr. White people never quote

(via youngblackandvegan)

Colleges Soak Poor Students to Funnel Aid to Rich

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:49:56 -0400

Colleges Soak Poor Students to Funnel Aid to Rich:

art-is-the-word:

U.S. colleges such as Boston University are using financial aid to lure rich students while shortchanging the poor, forcing those most in need to take on heavy debt, a report found.

Doesn’t surprise me BUT IT STILL MAKES ME ANGRY AS FUCK

"Do you know how many of my students can’t even say the word white? You all will talk about..."

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:01:27 -0400

“

Do you know how many of my students can’t even say the word white? You all will talk about African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans all day long but at soon as it comes time to say white peoples’ voices drop. You ain’t have seen that? Come on man, people come up with crazy terms you have never seen before, they would be like: “And that Caucasoid…” You can always tell, you could always tell where the supreme power rests in the society because of the reluctance people have in naming that power.

Part of what privilege requires, guys privilege cannot operate without silence. It cannot operate without silence, and this tremendous silence around whiteness, if you are foolish enough to post a blog on your Facebook that mentions whiteness the amount of attacks that you will get, because privilege defends itself viciously, to maintain the silence that is required for its operation.

So, given this I would argue that the other thing that we need to do is coming off of James Scott’s idea of “anarchist calisthenics,” we need to practice racial anarchist calisthenics. What he, what Scott meant by anarchist calisthenics is that this society has ton of little rules that we all practice without thinking. And he argues that we need to practice breaking little rules consistently because one day this society is going to ask you to prosecute a horrifying rule, that I think we will long live to regret, and the muscles of resistance needs to be exercised, they need to be prepared for the time we need to make that big, big, big, big stand.

And so racial anarchist calisthenics, I would say, begins with all of us getting that tongue muscle back in to place and saying Saurons name. I challenge people; I challenge people every time you say African-American, Asian-American, whatever the group count it and say white just as much. And say white just as much. We don’t do it you guys, we don’t do it, we don’t do it. And yet if we were ever going to confront in a real way white supremacy, which is not only linked to white folks you guys. White supremacy is the racial order in all of us, but if we are not able to discuss whiteness as a category, as a critical way of looking at the world and even simply as just the racial group, we are in some serious trouble. The reality is even if we took every white person on Earth and put them on a space ship and sent them to outer space white supremacy wouldn’t miss a beat.

”

- Junot Díaz - Facing Race (2012)

I once posted a link on my fb about white privilege, explaining what it is. And I got responses from white people about how natives are the ones who have privilege and take away from them. The link never even mentioned Natives!

(via pipud)

"For women who are tied to the moon, love alone is not enough. We insist each day wrap it’s knuckles..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:06:53 -0400

“

For women who are tied to the moon, love alone is not enough. We insist each day wrap it’s knuckles through our heart strings and pull. The lows. The joy. The poetry. We dance at the edge of a cliff, you have fallen off. So it goes. You will climb up again.

You rare girl, once again, you have a body that belongs to no lover, to no father, belongs to no one but you. Wear your sorrow like the lines on your palm. Like a shawl to keep you warm at night. Don’t mourn the love that is lost to you now. It is a book of poems whose meters worked their way into your pulse. Even if it has slipped from your hands, it will stay in your body.

You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god. He tried to sweeten you, to water you down. So you left. And now you have your heart all to yourself again. A heart like a stone cottage. Heart like a lover’s diary. Hope like an ocean.

”

- Letter From Anais Nin to Clementine von Radics (After Marty McConnel)

Why the word “stupid” is considered ableist

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:14:47 -0400

Why the word “stupid” is considered ableist:

queeroctopus:

neoptolemos:

Will someone explain to me why the word “stupid” is considered ableist? Because this seriously baffles me.

“Stupid” has been used by the medical community and the community at large to describe people with developmental disorders. My boyfriend was mocked by teachers and called “stupid” because he’s dyslexic. My doctor told my mother I was “stupid” because of various aspects of my autism. “Stupid” has been used to justify locking people like me in asylums, in basements. “Stupid” has been used to disavow testimony given by people like me. My grandmother is what is still medically classified in some places as “retarded” and as a child, was abused by various people in various ways, and when she spoke about it, nobody believed her because she was “stupid”. The eugenics movement is against us “stupid” people even existing, and I consider anyone who believes in always aborting Down Syndrome fetuses as part of this, by the way.

Intelligence is not a measure of character. Intelligence, in many ways, is also subjective. I cannot remember names or act in the usual social way. I cannot hold a pen My boyfriend cannot spell or pronounce things well. My autistic cousin Joe has been taught most of his life how to tie his shoes and he still cannot. Yet, we are all smart in various ways. My partner has a wide array of knowledge, as do I. And Joe is bloody smart for his age.

Insult someone by calling them ignorant, deliberately ill-informed, pig-headed, stubborn. Do not insult intelligence levels. Ignorance is a choice, intelligence… well, it just isn’t. Your capacity to learn, and your access to learning materials, aren’t always under your control, and have nothing to do with your character.

"Until eating can be divorced from value judgments, it’s going to be difficult to repair a broken..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:06:29 -0400

“Until eating can be divorced from value judgments, it’s going to be difficult to repair a broken food system. Individual dietary choices are not made in a vacuum, but a world filled with pressures, and those pressures must be acknowledged in a discussion of what people eat, how, and why. There’s nothing morally superior about eating one thing and not another, and people need to stop acting like their fridges contain proof of sanctification.”

- Eating as Performance of Moral Superiority – this ain’t livin’ (via brute-reason)

"For journalists with only passing familiarity with Turkey’s internal workings, noting that the..."

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:14:07 -0400

“For journalists with only passing familiarity with Turkey’s internal workings, noting that the country is deeply divided by the debate of religion versus secularism has become as tired and worn-out as travel writers noting that Istanbul sits at the “crossroad of cultures” between Europe and Asia. But “the Taksim excursion park protests cut across the clichéd secularist-Islamist divide that dominates the Western image of Turkish politics,” said Asli Bali, an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Law, in a statement released June 3. “They give voice to widespread frustrations with the prime minister’s arrogant and dismissive treatment of all forms of dissent.””

- Jay Cassano, Turkish Protests Are About Democracy, Not Religion, The Nation. (via futurejournalismproject)

"I cannot affirm my own life without critically evaluating those structures that differentially value..."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 20:00:04 -0400

““I cannot affirm my own life without critically evaluating those structures that differentially value life itself. This practice of critique is one in which my own life is bound up with the objects that I think about. My life is this life, lived here, in the spatio-temporal horizon established by my body, but it is also out there, implicated in other living processes of which I am but one. Further, it is implicated in the power differentials that decide whose life matters more, and whose life matters less, whose life becomes a paradigm for all living things, and whose life is a non-life within the contemporary terms that govern the value of living beings…
So though I must and do ask, how shall I live a good life, and this aspiration is an important one, I have to think carefully about this life that is mine, that is also a broader social life, that is connected with other living beings in ways that engage me in a critical relation to the discursive orders of life and value in which I live, or, rather, in which I endeavour to live. What gives them their authority? And is that authority legitimate? Since my own life is at stake in such an inquiry, the critique of the biopolitical order is a living issue for me, and as much as the potential for living a good life is at stake, so too is the struggle to live and the struggle to live within a just world. Whether or not I can live a life that has value is not something that I can decide on my own, since it turns out that this life is and is not my own, and that this is what makes me a social creature, and a living one. The question of how to live the good life, then, is already, and from the start, bound up with this ambiguity, and is bound up with a living practice of critique.””

- Judith Butler, “Can one lead a good life in a bad life?”

"immigrants, poor people, queer people of color, disabled folks, women (esp trans women of color) and..."

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 14:09:31 -0400

“

immigrants, poor people, queer people of color, disabled folks, women (esp trans women of color) and gender-nonconforming folks if you are in academia and you don’t feel smart enough, remember that you are in the playground and training grounds of the elite. academia was not designed to include you. you are surviving something that has been systemically designed to exclude you in order to keep power in the hands of white, middle class, able bodied cis-men.

knowing this, don’t let academia train you to believe that elitism is the right way to make it through school. you can learn shit, hold the knowledge of your people in your heart, discard shame for your humble beginnings and/or marginalized identities. move through this experience knowing that the changes it offers you don’t have to include accepting academic elitism, inaccessible language or superiority. you can can simultaneously own the privilege that comes with being college educated and connections to your roots. academia does not have to kill your spirit.

”

- fabian romero- indigenous immigrant queer boi writer, facilitator and community organizer (via jatigi)

tranqualizer: I need to be uncomfortable in my privilege because in discomfort there is learning.

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 10:57:40 -0400

tranqualizer:

I need to be uncomfortable in my privilege because in discomfort there is learning.

soulbrotherv2: On this date [June 4] in 1972, Angela Davis was...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:07:38 -0400

soulbrotherv2:

On this date [June 4] in 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted of all charges stemming from a failed escape and kidnap attempt in the Marin County, CA’s Hall of Justice two years earlier.

In the escape, kidnap attempt, and shooting, the trial judge and three others were killed. Though not at the crime scene, Davis was implicated when police claimed that the guns used had been registered in her name. Davis fled via underground and was consequently listed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted Criminals list, setting off one of the most intensive manhunts in recent American history. [Continue reading at the African American Registry.]

For further research, see also:

The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis by Bettina Aptheker.

Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Y. Davis

BRUJAxCORE: womanhouse: Alice Walker said it best: “Some periods of our growth are...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:05:15 -0400

BRUJAxCORE: womanhouse: Alice Walker said it best: “Some periods of our growth are...:

womanhouse:

Alice Walker said it best:

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or…

think-progress: It’s the second time ever the Department of...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 12:07:13 -0400

think-progress:

It’s the second time ever the Department of Defense honored LGBT Pride Month.

Damn, look at that homonationalism go…

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:53:45 -0400

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years:

govtoversight:

LANGLEY, VAThe most crucial passages of U.S. intelligence have been emphasized with indelible black highlighters.

So that was the problem!

"American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist."

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:42:32 -0400

“American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist.”

-
Every day, workers are forced to minimize safety in order to keep their jobs. The vast majority of American workers have no unions to defend their right to workplace safety. The U.S. Department of Labor and other federal agencies do not protect workers from being killed on the job.

The explosion in West, Texas was as big as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, yet there will be no war on this kind of terrorism. This is because the prevailing philosophy is profit before people.

American workers are more likely to be killed by their boss than a terrorist. Last year, approximately 5,000 workers were killed at work by unsafe conditions.

Kevin Harrington, New York City

(via socialismartnature)

thepeoplesrecord: formerlyknownasprincessjacob: thepeoplesrecor...

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:14:57 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

formerlyknownasprincessjacob:

thepeoplesrecord:

The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.

Source

Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.

Look I understand the whole racism thing, but can I ask a serious question?

Why does it always have to be about race? I mean seriously! The guy was funny, even if the situation was not. He gave a humorous retelling of his story of their rescue. And really a lot of people, I’d go so far as to say most people, try to find humor in situations like this, and he did and so have we.

And all the people listed in the post above from Antoine Dodson to Sweet Brown were on CAMERA. So yeah they were probably actually performing a bit themselves.

I prescribe you two doses of chill the fuck out, and you can call me in the morning.

Thank you Jacob, for your absolutely thoughtless contribution to this post. Certainly what we need more of in conversations about racism, is more white people who find ways to dismiss, diminish & silence reports of racism. Way to continue the slave-masters’ legacy, Jacob!

“The colorblindness ideal is premised on the notion that we, as a society, can never be trusted to see race and treat each other fairly or with genuine compassion. A commitment to color consciousness, by contrast, places faith in our capacity as humans to show care and concern for others, even as we are fully cognizant of race and possible racial differences.” — Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

“..because these story lines are social products, the media play an important role in reinforcing them. News reports on affirmative action seldom address the whiteness of academia or the workplace and its implications; sensational reports on welfare cheats never address the reality of welfare, that people on welfare live below the poverty line; stories of ‘bad’ behavior by Black and Latino youths are presented as ‘normal,’ whereas stories depicting ‘bad’ behavior by white youths are not. New reports on minorities thus tend to be presented as morality tales that support the various racial stories of the color-blind era. These reports are then recycled by the white audience as absolute truths… Therefore, the media uses the racials stories we create and makes them as if they were independent creations that validate our racial angst.”— Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists

“ ‘I’m white and I make it a point in my life to never see skin color’

Translation: ‘I’m white and I make it a point in my life to not acknowledge the fact that our institutionally racist society makes having skin any tone darker than white an absolute living hell, because it makes me uncomfortable. I also would like to erase your experiences as a POC by ‘not seeing’ skin color, while simultaneously upholding white supremacist ideals’ ” - awfullydistracted

“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem… We should hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see each other fully, learn from each other, and do what we can to respond to each other with love.” — Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, page 244

“I’ve spent nearly a decade studying sociology and race, I’ve read boatloads of books and written countless papers on race, taught Race & Ethnicity as a class to hundreds of students, and yet somehow I’m not cured of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. So I ask anyone who says they’re colorblind, how on earth have you cured yourself of racism without putting in nearly the same level of effort?” -Stuff Students Say About Racism

Generation after generation, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to today’s mass-incarceration/New Jim Crow, people of color have sounded the alarm on racism, reporting their horrific experiences in this racist society. And generation after generation, racist white people have stood up to dismiss racism, even when it is as overt, extreme and systemic as it IS. Don’t be that white person. Don’t be the racist fuck holding the rest of us back. Particularly if you are a white man, be extra vigilant, because historically, it’s always been you. Please & thanks.

"Both race and racism are profoundly historical. Thus if we discard biological and thus essentialist..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 22:24:12 -0400

“Both race and racism are profoundly historical. Thus if we discard biological and thus essentialist notions of “race” as fallacious, it would be erroneous to assume that we can also willfully extricate ourselves from histories of race and racism. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we continue to inhabit these histories, which help to constitute our social and psychic worlds.”

- Angela Davis (via theraceproblem)

"The food movement has been slow to recognise the fact that worker rights and working conditions..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:07:23 -0400

“The food movement has been slow to recognise the fact that worker rights and working conditions should be a key part of any discussion about the ethics of food. Reforms to the food system need to incorporate workers and their welfare, not just better farming practices, more humane treatment of animals, and other measures focusing on food as an end product. Food is also a process, and the people involved in that process have a right to fair treatment, something they don’t have currently. The continued marginalisation of farmworkers and the focus on other issues in the food movement speaks poorly of the movement overall, and reveals some telling attitudes about labour, race, and entitlement.”

- Know Your Food System: Indigenous Farmworkers in California – this ain’t livin’ (via sinshine)

"An honorable human relationship - that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:30:38 -0400

“

An honorable human relationship - that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word ‘love’ - is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in so doing we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

”

- Adrienne Rich (via mypropheticsoul)

Fabian Romero: tranqualizer: oh you know fuck arizona for this SB 1432 shit about...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:17:03 -0400

Fabian Romero: tranqualizer: oh you know fuck arizona for this SB 1432 shit about...:

tranqualizer:

oh you know fuck arizona for this SB 1432 shit about “showing papers” before you pee

but yo i am looking up all of the posts that have been mentioning sb 1432 and have only found one where folks are talking about how this will be most urgently impacting undocumented gender…