5 black people are shot by a white guy in Tulsa OK, the news is willing to say that black people are on edge, but are unwilling to situate it in history. Instead it just looks like black people are “playing the race card” by assuming that the shootings are racially motivated, and are being paranoid and jumping to conclusions.

So does it make sense that if there’s a string of shootings by a white man of several black people you would just fail to mention that people are collectively scared because of that one time that white people firebombed the Black Wall Street in the same exact city, just a few generations ago, and killed 300 people? Cause if you mention that incident and its consequences, you’d have people asking why they’ve never heard about the Tulsa Race Riots, even if they live in Tulsa. You’d have people wondering why there was a cover-up then and a cover-up now.

But the news doesn’t want to get into that. They don’t want to admit that those race riots weren’t that long ago or didn’t affect communities that still exist right now. They don’t want to talk about how black people were making money in that section of Tulsa, how that was the wealthiest black community in the US at the time and people were self- and community-made, and that that success (and even just existence) was enough of a threat to white people that they had to be put down. That’s all, just being successful. Winning at white people’s rules.

Without context, black people are paranoid and overly sensitive, and it’s easy enough to think that if you never learned about WWI fighter planes being used to bomb black people’s houses.

Always know what History is hiding from you.

squishysound:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

readnfight:

Every time I mention that queer spaces are not automatically anti-racist spaces, someone unfollows me.

But also, somewhere, a queer black angel gets hir wings, so…

Sayin it again for the haters.

Question, are they more or less likely to be racist compared to the real world?

No.

As in, I would say that no, they are neither more nor less likely to be racist. Does the annihilation of racism happen just by chance? No, so why would a space or project or whatever stand a better chance of being anti-racist without putting in any work toward it, just because it analyzes something else?

I had a gruelling conversation with a white cis dude anarchist a while back where I was trying to convince him that in my experience, white anarchists and white non-anarchists end up being just about equally racist, at least til the anarchists decide to work really really really really fucking hard not to be, and even then probably still are. You can’t say “I’m radical” or “I’m queer” and suddenly that work is done. The difference is in the vocab people use though; this anarchist dude, and many others that I know, wasn’t putting in any real work on undoing his own racism or supporting people of color, but knew the right vocab to use to sound totally nonracist.

So that’s my long answer; my short answer is nope.

douglasmartini:

note: ‘everybody’s a little racist’ is not a sufficient rebuttal to charges of racism

I’ll be the first to admit to (internalized) racism on my part. I admit it easily; it is, for me, an obvious part of being black and lighter-skinned in a white supremacist society. What’s absurd is the conversations in which I am 1) the only person of color, and 2) the only person who is willing to admit to racism. Is being a Good White Person so dear to people that I can admit to being a part of their system long before they themselves can? That’s just absurd. And not worth my time.

When I say that, yes, I have been and am complicit in racism just like everyone else, despite being a person of color who loses from it in the long run, I do not mean that as an excuse. I mean that as saying that I care about annihilating white supremacy so completely that I will be very very very uncomfortably honest with myself and other people in order to make that happen.

But when I hear people excuse racism by saying that everyone is complicit in it—after I’ve been the one to step up and admit where I am and where I’m allowed to be in that—my only response it to wonder what that person is doing about it. Generally the answer is not much.

(via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)

custerdiedforyoursins:

readnfight:

[Bunch of stuff is cut out, from this thread about indigenous people being compared to nature/animals]

Again, when white human culture tries to dominate both people of color and nature by linking them and insulting them alongside each other, we are not further insulting nature by refusing to be insulted so. And we absolutely do not need other people telling us how to respond.

In conclusion: since when was it in any ways decent for white people to tell people of color how to respond to racism, and to skew our refusal to be dominated in order to have some way to chime in on it? I’m (not) sorry when white people feel left out of conversations on how we deal with white supremacy. Cause this shit’s racist.

Oh, it makes me really sad when white people feel left out, because I’m speaking to them. It’s those people up there who are the people that need to read and take to heart what we’re all saying. They’re the ones who go around saying this shit (obviously).

Yeah, I guess I should clarify. White people should participate in a conversation like this, especially to listen and act in good faith (those two things are KEY!). But, they are showing they are not listening, acting in good faith, or thinking critically if they are telling people of color how to deal with racism—in this case saying it’s wrong and oppressive for indigenous people to be offended.

So, sit back and listen and do your homework and ask some questions that you’ve thought about, but please do not act like you know how people deal, especially if you’re not basing yourself on any kind of understanding of history.

cynicallyabsurd:

Fuck yeah, feminists!: DO NOT COMPARE NATIVE AMERICANS TO NATURE

dianamcqueen:

custerdiedforyoursins:

REPEAT: DO NOT COMPARE NATIVE AMERICANS TO NATURE. DO NOT ASSOCIATE US WITH NATURE. DO NOT SAY WE ARE CLOSE TO NATURE. DO NOT SAY WE UNDERSTAND NATURE. DO NOT MAKE ANY FUCKING CLAIM ABOUT NATIVE AMERICANS AND NATURE.

That is racist. Equating Native Americans to nature…

Actually no. I don’t think that when I think native Americans are close to nature. Not all of them are really the ones that protect the old ways I would view that way.

Honestly, you seem to view animals as less than human. I don’t. So please don’t assume that being close to nature is an insult. I think of all life equally. I also don’t think someone assuming all people who say one thing are all thinking the sane thing needs to examine so of their own prejudices.

^^^ Agreed. The original argument is extremely speciest and offensive.  If I call anyone (regardless of race or ethnicity) “close to nature” you may view that as an extreme complement. I do not view many Native Americans any “closer” to nature today than someone of English descent. Even so, there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING wrong with being “close to nature” or “like an animal.”  You, like me, ARE an animal and if you think that offensive, again, examine your own prejudices, please.

Okay. I think folks can agree on some things. Structurally white-human-centric culture sees its members (white people) as superior to indigenous people just as structurally white-human-centric culture sees its members as superior to nature and nonhuman animals. The issue isn’t how much you, as an individual, like animals and therefore don’t take it as an insult. The issue is the intent, the way it stands within that culture, and the history of that categorization as inferior. If you wouldn’t be insulted, good for you! If you don’t have to worry about racism against indigenous people, lucky! It’s not as much what the insult is, as the fact that an insult is being hurled.

For example, when my siblings and I were kids, we would make up mean names to call each other, that often weren’t even real words. On the one hand, someone else could come in and say we shouldn’t be mad at each other if the names we were calling each other didn’t mean anything; on the other hand, they did mean something, because we intended to hurt each other’s feelings. It didn’t matter what words we were using.

White supremacy will make up infinite ways to put people of color down. Many times it is by comparing people of color to people or beings that they are not. If I don’t want to be called a mudbaby, does that mean I don’t like mud? If I don’t like being portrayed as hypersexual because I am a black woman, does that mean I’m anti-sex? If I don’t want to be called a fox by someone who thinks I’m cute, does that mean I hate foxes? No! In all these cases, I don’t want to be characterized as something I’m not, based on my race or gender or whatever. It’s not the word itself, but the meaning behind it.

Further, these are really parts of the same system. White supremacy intends to dominate people of color as well as land and animals. Do a tiny bit of research and it’s incredibly clear. Look at early colonialism, look at indigenous resistance fights, look at what’s happening to indigenous people in the Amazon and Chiapas and the Niger Delta, look at where the US mines uranium and who’s poisoned by it, look at who lives on toxic land in cities, look at who lives in areas of cities with high asthma rates, look who cheap meat-based food is marketed towards. I mean, seriously, I don’t like telling people that they’re being simple-minded, but jeeeez.

White people came to the americas and Africa, called us savages and work horses and beasts and roaches and dogs. It is ridiculous to tell us that we should allow ourselves to be called that. When a white person compares people like me to cockroaches, they are showing respect for neither me nor the cockroach; it is not then wrong of me to call them on it. Maybe I personally like roaches; that doesn’t make it okay for a white person to call us that, even if I myself am not insulted.

Again, when white human culture tries to dominate both people of color and nature by linking them and insulting them alongside each other, we are not further insulting nature by refusing to be insulted so. And we absolutely do not need other people telling us how to respond.

In conclusion: since when was it in any ways decent for white people to tell people of color how to respond to racism, and to skew our refusal to be dominated in order to have some way to chime in on it? I’m (not) sorry when white people feel left out of conversations on how we deal with white supremacy. Cause this shit’s racist.

Aside from many many other problematic issues with his work, that other people have gone into before, what might be my number one beef with him hit me at work today: He makes racism as comfortable as possible for white people…which makes it uncomfortable for me as a woman of color. If he really needs to make it comfortable for white people in order to get his work done, fine, but I’d like to a) see proof that that’s necessary and b) have faith that that work is making a real, critical difference. But so far, from what I’ve seen, it just makes me uncomfortable in the same way racism always does and is designed to do, and makes me prepare for the new vocab white liberals will use on me. As always, please read “We don’t need another anti-racism 101” from Guerrilla Mama Medicine, right-on stuff:

the problem is that fundamental to white/euro-centric culture is a break between word and action.  between theory and practice.

and so in my experience, folks can learn all the theory, all the right words, all of it and yet act fundamentally the same, live out the same patterns of thoughts, still hold the same fucked-up priorities.  and yet spout all of the anti-racist rhetoric.

field-day-for-the-sundays:

Anon asked:

What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? I mean, I know it’s bad, but I need this one kind of spelled out for me. Is it always bad? Are some cases worse than others? I want to be a good anti-racist, but I fear I’m not educated enough.

whatfreshhellisthis responded:

Cultural appropriation exists because of centuries of:

• Imperialism: more specifically, cultural imperialism which is essentially one cultural dominating another. (IE: white folks and everyone we’ve ever invaded ever. Including each other.)
• Racism: justifies the appropriation by making various cultural/racial/ethic groups marginalised, oppressed and seen as inferior by the privileged group.
• Exoticism: justifies commodification and objectification.
• Orientalism
• Colonisation
• Entitlement: thinking that oppressed people’s culture, society, and spirituality are up for grabs.
• Oppression
• Power
• Capitalism
• Unawareness of privilege: based on misunderstanding of power dynamics, entitlement, exoticism and racism

Why is cultural appropriation harmful?:

Cultural appropriation reinforces oppression because it invalidates and commodifies marginalised groups.

• Invalidates: the culture/society/the people
• Homogenizes: lets look at the white girls wearing warbonnets and mukluks. War bonnets are worn traditionally only by various Native plains tribes and mukluks are boots made of usually seal skin warn/made traditionally by Alaskan/Arctic natives. This haphazard and disrespectful throwing together different pieces of two completely different Native cultures which is portraying an image of homogeneity and reinforces the stereotype that there is just one Native American culture and they are all the same, which reinforces oppression and racism.
• Commodifies: putting a monetary value on something that should not be sold or purchased or marketed in any way, eg. spiritual practices.
• Reinforces stereotypes: which reinforce oppression and racism-a tool of colonisation.
• Distorts traditions into inaccurate and offensive caricatures
• Romanticises cultures: often this is something that results in entire groups of people being seen as ‘something that used to exist’ as opposed to people with lives and cultures that exist and flourish today. You get this a lot with Native American and Canadian culture.
• Eroticises/exoticizes people: this is incredibly dehumanising.

Here is an awesome post about the line between appropriation and appreciation. (Reboggable version).

Here are some awesome people who talk about appropriation and how it is shitty- linked is all their posts tagged appropriation. Please look through their archives, and do not just message them asking the same question, they are people not encyclopaedias.

Jaded

Karma

Thursday

Dr. Syrup

These are just the first four who lept to mind- there are doubtless many, many more.

Original post: http://whatfreshhellisthis.tumblr.com/post/5261084308/whats-wrong-with-cultural-appropriation-i-mean-i

This list is great and I want to keep it handy to toss at people. The only thing I’d add is under commodification, it’s not just that appropriation makes cultural items and practices into commodities, it’s that it makes them commodities to be bought by certain people who are outside that culture. Native kids aren’t the intended buyers of non-artisan-made mocassins or “tribal” print dresses or whatever, white kids are. American Apparel didn’t get the irony that at the same time as that memo about not wanting black women as customers got leaked, they launched their “Afrika” line of monolithic-African printed bullshit.

(via creatrixtiara)

bell hooks, “Teaching Resistance,” Killing Rage p. 109

One of the pieces I’m working on for my zine is about exactly this, about the anxiety caused by integration and being “accepted” into white communities—but of course still kept at a distance—and the role of school integration in that. So of course I gushed over this passage when I found it.

trannsexualferox:

jaded16india:

jhameia:

zuky:

I can only say with sympathy, you’re already being punished: Listen to yourself. You have inherited a racial anxiety and apparent cognitive dysfunction which distorts your perception of the world and experience of humanity, and which dehumanizes your own heart more than it can ever do to we who form the great majority.

Reblogging for wisdom.

This is the best thing I have read all day! 

I need to memorize this.

Lemme put that on a greeting card & send it all over.

(via triangularisthepie)

Kil Ja Kim, White Anti-Racist Is An Oxymoron: An Open Letter to “White Anti-Racists”.

Fascinating read.

(via thesadnessofpencils)

Not a lot of irony is more bitter than the racism of anti-racism.

Know what I do (and my brother does too and I’m outing him)? Sometimes, if a situation is gonna be pretty delicate and the white people around who want to be involved, at least in showy ways, are people whose actions I don’t fully trust to not be problematic, disrespectful and destructive? Sometimes I don’t invite white people to the stuff I’m working on. I’ll tell them about it later and they can tell me all about how it’s not radical enough for them or whatever other things they read in a Crimethinc/Derrick Jensen book—but I’m not gonna leave the chance for them to derail my work with that shit til after I’m done. Wait, that’s exclusive?

Oh.

(via jhameia)

parasaakin replied to your post: I never denied that white people in South Africa were settlers…

this is BULLSHIT. as an outsider in south africa, i saw right away that white men definitely DEFINITELY were not the most marginalized group. please. being the “minority” in terms of numbers doesn’t mean shit.

Word, okay. Yeah. I see this in the US, especially having spent all my time in 2 racially diverse but segregated cities, where white people confuse feeling white-guilty and awkward about it with being systematically persecuted. And I think the stats I posted show that the economy is bad for everyone in South Africa, but it is worse for some people—but not white people and not men. And like I have said, this is exactly my objection with being called a “minority”, since I have only lived in cities where nearly half the populations are black, and also large latin@ populations. White supremacy didn’t wane as p.o.c. populations grew—if anything, both places have had backlashes of white people who think they’re being displaced by people of color. Racial fear-mongering is really powerful.

And my original point—that it was at best clueless but more likely irresponsible and privilege-flashing for the white woman I overheard to encourage another white person to travel to South Africa simply because it’s “interesting” and fun—still stands, in fact stands even stronger now that I’ve looked at some statistics. Cause the white man she was talking to could go visit and have a nice touristy time.

Aaaah why am I not reading Jamaica Kincaid right now??

Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives — most natives in the world — cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go — so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.

It took a few minutes for it to hit me, but was the anonymous question I just answered here actually denying that white people in South Africa are settlers, or at least benefit from it being a settler state? I know that some examples are more of a hard sell, like maybe the U.S. or Canada; some examples are kinda muddy based on their history; but … South Africa? If I was explaining to someone what I meant by a settler-state, South Africa might actually be the example I’d use—it’s kinda clear-cut, at least more than a lot of places, and pretty glaring.

Pretty sure Gurl Goes to Africa, distilled into one person, was sitting behind me on a two hour flight today. Young white woman with dreadlocks talking nonstop to an older guy (more than twice as old) she met on the plane. Said a lot of things like: [anything in brackets I added cause I could read her mind]

• “I’m going to a drug policy conference, decriminalization of weed is something I really care about … cause I smoke A LOT of weed.” 
• “I can’t wait til I turn 21, it’s so hard not to be yet. I feel so old sometimes, like, I’m not even a teenager! I just love being young!” (said to a man in his mid 50s)
• “My family is really privileged, they’re really conservative. When I came home with dreads I thought they were gonna kill me!” [cause you know, only thing that would have been even more subversive would be a real live black boyfriend omg!]
• “Conservatives just don’t care about anyone. [then some vague back&forth dialogue] Well I guess I don’t really like democrats that much either, I’m kind of an anarchist” (this is the only thing in the WHOLE TWO SHITTY HOURS to which the dude didn’t respond, probably because she had made it clear she didn’t know what anarchism means.)
• “Oh my god Barcelona is sooo cool! Yeah, I just loooved Italy! (wait, wtf?) … Wait, you’ve never been abroad [to Europe]? Oh my god, you’ve done other cool things, why haven’t you been abroad [to Europe]? I just LOVE travelling!”
• “The best place you should go visit is South Africa! I mean, obviously there’s some difficulties there, but… it’s so amazing! It’s the most beautiful, interesting place! It’s totally my favorite place to travel to. … Yeah, well, my [white settler] uncle and cousins still own their land there, so you know… It’s sooo interesting!”

positivelypersistentteach:

iamlittlei:

but I’m listening to all of this education news, and teacher news, and teacher-bashing, and such, and sometimes it just makes me feel as though I’m preparing for battle or something.  I love teaching and the classroom, even when my students make me a little crazy.  But sometimes, frankly, when I’m hearing all of this negativity about teachers and their work and reading about how education is taking hits left and right, I get sort of overwhelmed.  The idea of spending my whole professional life fighting through that is already exhausting me, and I haven’t even really started yet.

All I want to do is talk about DNA with kids and be able to afford modest groceries and rent.

AAAAAAAAAAAMEN. Amen. Amen.

That’s not dramatic at all. Teaching—at least teaching that’s based on respect instead of discipline, that does more than prep kids for a lifetime of following orders—is a battle. Teachers who get their kids to question the authority of teachers, principals, standardized tests, capitalism, on and on, are fighting a battle. Being back in a public school setting for the first time in a few years sometimes is really defeating, just being there, and knowing all the ways that as a woman, as a black person, as a queer person, I’m not supposed to get through it in tact. It’s not set up for me to be successful, and it’s not set up to support me or affirm me. Some days I have to remind myself that I work there, so at some point I’m supposed to have a voice.

This is from an interview with Sal Castro in Rethinking Schools magazine, about student walkouts in LA in 1968 to get bilingual education and protest the structural racism of the school system against Chican@ students and staff:

Ochoa: What made you decide to become a teacher?

Castro: I got a job working playgrounds. From that job with LA Rec. and Parks, I was able to also get a job with the school district in youth services. Working with the kids, I started thinking: “Man, this is cool. This is fun. These kids are crazy. They keep me crazy. I like kids and they respond to me, too.” At the time, I was a junior at Cal State Los Angeles, and I changed my major to social studies.

I started teaching in ’62 in Pasadena and then continued at Belmont High in LA. They liked what I did as a student teacher at Belmont, and they called me back for the fall of ’63. They wanted me to stay in Pasadena, but I said, “My fight is down there in LA.” I was already thinking fight rather than my teaching.

In fact, I first got into hot water at Belmont in ’63. I was there three months when I started figuring out, “There ain’t no Chicano kids in the student council.” Around 67 percent of the students were Chicanos, and there were no kids on the student council of Latino descent. They were just keeping them out. I also knew that there was a program at Belmont where a bus came, picked up 25 seniors, took them to City College to get college English credit. Not one of them was a goddamn Mexican kid.

I went to the principal and I told her, “You know, Mrs. Lord, more than half the kids are Latino, Mexican kids, and we’ve got no kids in any of the leadership positions or even this program.” She said, “Mr. Castro, the Mexican kid has a charming passivity, and you tell me you want to take that away?” I said, “Oh, shit, I’ve got problems here.”

So I started finding kids who were eligible to run for student council. I said, “Let’s form a political party to run as a slate.”

Two teachers helped me: Mary Mend and Pat Martin. I said, “We’ll all get together and create a constitutional convention towork out who’s going to run for what.” It was raining cats and dogs, but this school auditorium was filled, kids wanting to get involved. They picked the name: the TMs. They started writing the initials TM on the chalkboard of every classroom. TM stood for the Tortilla Movement!

There were speeches that would be presented to the school. I told the kids, “Say a few words in Spanish—just a sentence or so for the foreign students.” What I didn’t know, there was a rule at Belmont that there was not to be foreign language spoken on the stage. When the kids started speaking a few words, boom, they stopped the assembly. They made all the kids go back, and then they started drilling the kids. I said: “You want me. I’m the one that you want, not the kids.” The next day, I found myself suspended. The next semester, I found myself at Lincoln High School, just like that. I wasn’t even a probationary teacher. I was a provisional teacher, which meant I had no rights. How I survived that, I’ll never know. But they did transfer me to Lincoln, and I began all over again.

So, hell yeah! Not dramatic at all!

ETA: Duh, the link to this interview is here. Oops. Also, the interview is entitled “Teaching is a Fight” so there ya go!