bluestalkingstitches:

cosmicyoruba:

sensationnalisme:

battle-studies:

m0roccan:

mayflowrs:

*All skin colors are beautiful

^THANK YOU

A Black woman made that post empowering herself and other Black people who are deemed inferior by Euro-centric beauty ideals. Correcting her post is derailing and inappropriate.

lol, I don’t understand these ppl sometimes.

#cant have anything

OP CORRECT. All skin colors ARE beautiful, but pale skin wasn’t, for five seconds, the topic of conversation. IT’S PRETTY OKAY TO MAKE DARK SKIN THE TOPIC OF POSITIVE CONVERSATION FOR FIVE FUCKING SECONDS WITHOUT BEING TOLD TO ADD WHITE PEOPLE (or any non-white light skin tone, for that matter).

Uggggh light-skinned WOC, why must we do this! I’ll say it again—just like sometimes things aren’t all about white people (srsly, it happens), sometimes conversations about people of color are not about the lighter-skinned folks among us.

If we wanna talk about empowerment & liberation—that shit isn’t gonna get too far in a bubble. How are you gonna get there if you’re ditching your folks? How are we gonna do POC liberation but expect that light folks get to still be at the forefront? Or take offense if we aren’t mentioned for a minute?

When I go HAM for black women, I know it’s largely because I can. Because I am lighter I might get taken more seriously when I speak up. I have an academic background that means I can make my arguments as strong as they need to be and back them up. Same for the amount of cultural capital I’ve got that I can bring into what I do.

Do we really think that if we split ourselves apart from dark skinned POC enough, that we’ll become honorarily white? Hell no. So cut that shit and stick together and let’s do liberation all together.

I guess around the same time as white Occupiers were outraged about a white unemployment rate that is high but still less than half the black unemployment rate i.e. never.

I’m going through labor statistics and making posters. Ready to blow up some one dimensional bullshit.

I had an awesome time with three freshmen after school today getting a thesis statement written about the Alien & Sedition Acts. Srsly. I really like when other students step up and help their classmate understand something, or pitch in when I’m working with a student. Sometimes if one student needs to get caught up on something, I’ll ask another student to teach them and then fill in any gaps they might be missing. So I was working with one girl on an essay she had to write, but the other two students joined in and helped out too, which was awesome.

We needed to work on understanding what alien and sedition mean (apparently they didn’t get definitions of those words in class?) so we busted out the Bible (what one of my crews of reading kids named the student dictionary I carry around). All three kids had just been telling me about how much they hate school and how it’s a waste of their time, and I was hearing them out, so when we needed to define sedition I gave them that as an example, like what if they went around telling everyone else how school sucked so they should all quit going to class. Then in talking about what alien means, they got really riled up—one of them is an immigrant herself, and the other two are from immigrant families.

Then we got going talking about the kinds of racist bullshit people say about latino immigrants, like about telling Mexicans to go back to their own country. They knew that a bunch of the US was stolen from Mexico, so then I was like, “Look, that’s exactly why we study history! Since you know the history of that happening, and clearly if someone says Mexicans should go back to their own country theydon’tknow history, you have something to use against them.”

One of them had described a video on youtube of two white girls in Arizona complaining about Mexican immigrants and saying shit like this, and she said, “I’m gonna go to Arizona just to snuff them. If anyone said that to me, I’d snuff em.” So I said, “Okay, we’re gonna snuff them [kids all got excited] with words [“Awww, Miss! I wanna snuff racist white people with my fists!”]”

The example I gave them to explain the Alien & Sedition Acts was based on what they were saying about how school sucks and tying that to white teachers getting suspicious of students speaking Spanish, since many of the teachers don’t understand what they’re saying and might assume they’re saying something bad or rebellious. And how it’s messed up when teachers assume that just because the students can speak in a way they can’t.

We also talked about the language that teachers use and assume students can navigate as well, but how the students of color can usually speak in several different ways but are expected to conform to just one in class. Meanwhile the teachers don’t have to know how to speak in a way besides a “standard” middle class white approved one. So I suggested that maybe when the students have to take benchmark tests periodically, maybe the teachers should have to take similar tests written in Spanglish and Ebonics. They got really excited about the idea of giving their teachers standardized tests since they have to take so many of them.

What I had planned for us to do before I knew all this would be what we’d work on was reading this article about students in Detroit holding a walkout and being suspended in response, and going through to figure out some vocab words based on context. So it was funny that everything was all related and we were able to connect a lot of dots, and see all these things right in front of us connecting through history and talk about why it’s important to study history, especially when so much of it is written in ways that are unfair to people of color. It ruled! My kids are the bomb!

vegtablez:

therhapsodyincidents:

vegtablez:

therhapsodyincidents:

vegtablez:

thegoddamazon:

ethiopienne:

Dolphins deserve to be treated as non-human “persons” whose rights to life and liberty should be respected, scientists meeting in Canada have been told.

A small group of experts in philosophy, conservation and dolphin behaviour were canvassing support for a “Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans”.

They believe dolphins - and their whale cousins - are sufficiently intelligent and self-aware to justify the same ethical considerations given to humans.

Recognising cetaceans’ rights would mean an end to whaling and the captivity of dolphins and whales, or their use in entertainment.

The move is based on years of research that has shown dolphins and whales to have large, complex brains and a human-like level of self-awareness.

This has led the experts to conclude that although non-human, dolphins and whales are “people” in a philosophical sense, which has far-reaching implications.

and people of color are….?

Oh another case of white people putting the welfare and civil treatment of animals above marginalized human beings they treat like animals.

Must be a day that ends in ‘y’.

yeah, a big shut the hell up to the first few commentators of this post. people of color are not being chased, harpooned and round up in coves and slaughtered like dolphins and whales. i’m hate when people whine whenever a piece of legislation that enforces the protection of animal rights, giving them their fair share of a meager amount of basic dignity and respect, finds it’s way onto the mainstage. Of course POC face hardships, and protecting other sentient beings that are treated like garbage most of the time isn’t taking away attention from them.

Plus, ‘this is just those crazy white people and their animal loving asses’ is just obviously racist, and asserts the assumption that being a compassionate person who cares about the well being of animals is ‘just a white person thing.’ fuck off, you don’t fight racism with racism ya asses.

Someone hasn’t read a history book or watched the news lately….

That being said, I do love dolphins

Please. I knew this smartass comment would come up. I’m up to my urethra in civil war era american history homework right now and just a few days ago gave a shout out to Frantz Fanon and his book “The Wretched of the Earth” which honestly changed my life. I’m well aware of what’s going on in Syria right now; it kills me. But what’s happening in Syria isn’t like what non-human animals deal with on a daily basis. It just isn’t. The end result of both are horrifying, but the way and the persistence with which animals are slaughtered in modern society is unmatched because people in general could care less about animals simply because they’re not humans. Sounds like a painfully simple statement, but think about it. Do some Googling. You’ll see I’m right.

Wait a sec, I can’t believe that I missed that bolded bullshit up there before. And that bullshit you just posted.

Yes animals deserve protection, but if you’re seriously more willing to step up to the plate for an animal above a fellow human being, you forfeit your humanity in my opinion.

You are aware of the way White Supremacy works aren’t you?

People of Color are treat in the most inhumane ways across the globe but you expect me to drop everything because a dolphin ended up in a can of tuna?

I love Flipper as much as the next person, but I’ll be attending to the needs of my fellow man first and foremost.

You can miss me with that bullshit.

Seriously, if you’re more willing to go to bat for an non-human animal rather than your own kind you know, people. Then I can’t take you seriously as a person.

There are actual people who aren’t treated like people, yet you want me to stop and think about animals that actually aren’t people?

Yeah, miss me with that bs please.

And PS you can’t be racist towards white people.

No, I’m not telling you to drop everything, to stop fighting and bringing awareness to human suffering because animals are suffering. I’m not saying animal suffering is more deserving of attention and action than human suffering; not at all. I’m saying that people need to be willing to step up to the plate for both. I’m not saying animal suffering is intrinsically worse than human suffering or that I care more about animals than I do humans. I care about them both equally and people who say otherwise are speciesists. You’re placing priority with one species over another just because they’re another species. You can miss me with that bullshit.

In your defense, we all do it; if there were some weirdo scenario where a dog/cat/pig/whale whatever and a boy both were in the same danger of being ran over and killed or something, I’d do my best to save both, but if I ABSOLUTELY had to choose between the two, yeah I’d choose the boy because of the greater potential he has for positive impact. I’m guilty.

But what I’m saying is that that kind of thinking is amplified 100x in most people around the world; so much so that they’re really completely blind to just how poorly and horribly animals are treated, because they don’t care. And you’re perceiving my response to this imbalance as not caring about humans. I’m willing to step up to the bat and be vocal about how fucked up I think it is that people are getting all pissed that there’s some piece of legislation out there trying to help animals, saying “well how about POCs? What about humans?” Valid question, but not in the context of, “*ROLL MY EYES AT CRAZY ANIMAL LOVERS/WHITE PEOPLE*, let’s deal with humans first and foremost because they’re humans and human suffering is MORE important.” I say no, but while I can admit that it can be debated, I can guarantee you, as much human suffering as there is in the world, there is more animal.

6 billion POC aren’t slaughtered/raped/ripped away from their families every year (in just the U.S.) to be ground up and processed into fuckin chicken nuggets for you to eat in $9.99 50-piece boxes.

POC aren’t starved, abused and kept alone in dark boxes for weeks to be harassed, tortured, beaten, and killed for sport like bulls are in bullfighting matches in Spain.

POC aren’t being burned alive so people can clear them and their homes out so they can bottle up some oil for your Kit Kat bars, like orangutans are.

And POC aren’t being wiped out to less than 1 percent of their original numbers like whales are because of commercial whaling practices.

Yes, I know people are being treated up in a fucked up fashion, and they may face some of the atrocities I listed above, but not with the frequency or carelessness with which animals face them. And the fact that very few people know or care about the BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of animals this is happening to worldwide, is the reason I’m willing to step up to the plate for animals just as much as I do for humans. You’re perceiving this equality in my compassion as caring more about humans than animals because you can’t fathom how someone could see animals as deserving of equal respect as humans. You’re a speciesist, which in my book is no better than a misogynist, homophobe or racist.

And I’m not even going to bother explaining what’s racist about the commenter up there assuming that the passers of this law are white just because it has to deal with animal welfare, and the way it in turn invalidates POC who care about animal welfare in the eyes of POC who don’t give a shit. Pass on that.

What? Indian boarding schools & slavery, concentration/internment camps, lynchings, genocide.

It is precisely this attitude that often keeps people of color out of animal liberation work (I quit because of exactly this kind of shit), not because we don’t care.

thebrownggrrlzproject:

The Brown Grrlz Project is a collective dedicated to the advancement of “femme of centre” cis womyn, two-spirit people, intersex people and trans womyn. We want to hear our stories, love our faces, affirm our visibility. Submit images, videos, quotes for and by us.

- The Brown Grrlz

(via bettacomecorrect)

i’ve spent maybe 3 hours total in my life around groups of proclaimed punks and i couldn’t handle it! nonooo.

To be fair, there are a few places where punk can be decent, like where there’s actual diversity and community and creativity going on. I was never around punk too much in Chicago; when I was, it was mostly because of collaborations between punk and hip-hop (and not in some shitty metal-rap way). My experience was always being around really rad people of color, a ton of bilingual spanish/english music, plus stuff being based on the Southside (that’s kinda a deal-breaker for me—if you won’t come down south, we shouldn’t be hanging out).

I remember my brother telling me about how confused he was about POC pushing back against the whiteness of punk, because all he knew of punk was from the Southside of Chicago, so he thought all punks were rad women of color who wrote bilingual songs about stuff like immigration and gentrification. Very disappointing to realize it’s usually the exact opposite.

Also disappointing to tell white punks in New Haven what it was like in Chicago, and hear, “Huh, that’s interesting” but have it end in no real effort to make punk move in that direction.

So in the end, I guess I could answer in the affirmative to “Don’t you mean SOME punks?”

writinghistorywithoutapen:

Contrary to popular belief, occupations are not a new thing. In fact, Black and Brown communites have been in the foreground of taking shit over since the civil war. Here are the highlights.
 
 
 
 
Fort Monroe- Fort Monroe was a Union garrison located in Virgina. Led by General Butler, Fort Monroe was a site of a major occupation when three Africans Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory ran from their plantation to Fort Monroe to escape slavery. General Butler declared the three contraband and shielded them from their master who came to “retrieve his property.” Word spread about the men’s brave escape and within a week over 100 families came to Fort Monroe. There they established “contraband camps.”
 

I Hotel

- The International Hotel was one of the last remnants of San Francisco’s Filipino community. As a hub for working class immigrant families, it was targeted for demolition to expand San Francisco’s business district. Activists from “The Red Guards” ( a Asian group inspired by the Young Lords) and the Asian Community Center fought developers and helped rehab the aging hotel. In 1977 activists barricaded t themselves inside, but after two months of struggle, the city of San Francisco gained the upper hand and evicted the tenants from the I Hotel.

Lincoln Hospital-Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was known as the “butcher shop.” Hundreds of people died there and staff was largely burnout from an uncaring administration. In 1970, members of the Young Lords, Black Panthers and Health Revolution Union Movement took over the public hospital. Based on a 10 point health program, the organizers set up a TB clinic and later established the first acupuncture  treatment center for heroin addiction (organized and led by Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member, Dr. Mutulu Shakur.)


City College- Known as “White Rhodesia” the City College of the City University of New York with close to 95% white despite being located in Harlem. Black and Puerto Rican students led a two week long occupation and   strike at the school.The result was the establishment of Black Studies and open admission, a program guaranteeing  a free college education to any high school graduate in New York City.

Alcatraz- Native American activists occupied the famed prison, once home to Al Capone and abandoned by the federal government. The occupiers demanded the land to establish Native American institutions. During the 19 month occupation, sympathizers sent food and supplies by boat while activists slept in cells. At one point, the leadership offered to sell back Alcatraz to the government for $24, a tongue in cheek reference to Manhattan Island.


Weinstein Hall, NYU- Little know (or recognized) in the Stonewall Rebellion that launched gay liberation, was the role of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Riveria. These two transgender activists were on the leading edge of the rebellion, battling the police, and coining the term “Whose Streets, Our Streets!”.
Johnson and Rivera later lead the takeover of Weinstein Hall at New York University after the campus cancelled gay dancing there. Rivera said ““All we fought for at Weinstein Hall was lost when we left upon the request of the pigs…. You people run if you want to, but we’re tired of running. We intend to fight for our rights until we get them.”

Statue of Liberty- Watch the crown! Puerto Rican activists took over lady liberty, unfurled the national flag and demanded freedom for political prisoners. The action, 1 year after United States bicentennial, renewed focus on the colonial status of Puerto Rico. One year later, Jimmy Carter released five of the main Puerto Rican political prisoners.

Birmingham Bus-Occupation usually means a crowd but on Dec.1 1955, one was all that was needed to set off the civil rights/ Black Power movement. Rosa Parks a tireless organizer refused to give up her seat on a rush hour bus. The action lead to the Birmingham bus boycott and the rest is people’s history…

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

EXISTENTIAL ANGST GAME STRESSFUL: thegoddamazon: daniellemertina: karnythia: Ever notice how there’s no…

crankyskirt:

weexist-weresist:

thegoddamazon:

daniellemertina:

karnythia:

Ever notice how there’s no mention of the psychological damage done to communities of color by colonialism, imperialism, or slavery? No mention of any syndromes that might be created by an ongoing message of genetic & social inferiority constantly beings spoonfed to kids? Gee, I wonder why there’s no discussion of the long term harm that could be done to a community as a result of systemic dehumanization & oppression.

I was just thinking this the other day. Between the media/ educationally inflicted messages of our inferiority there has to be some psychological ramifications. I know sociology has words like “internalized stereotype threat” and “internalized racism” (although that is only discussed when a black person literally hates other black people when there is far more to that).

I find it interesting that people have theorized about the psychological ramifications of rich people who don’t get attention from their parents, or people in unfulfilling white collar jobs, but NOTHING about the dehumanizing effect of the combination of poverty & blackness. Or just blackness.

They’re afraid of what effects the inescapable truth they are destined to uncover will have on the world. Better to keep the masses ignorant than have them aware that their lives are not okay.

Here are some links to get some discussions started:

Racism and Asian Mental Health

Mental Health Problems More Common Among Kids Who Feel Racial Discrimination

Racial Battle Fatigue and Blacks

Muslims and Mental Health

Depression Among Minority Children

Racism and Mental Health of Children

Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

Model Minority Myth + Stress

Mental Toll of Racism

Asian Women and Suicide

this list is accessible articles, a quick scholarly search yields thousands of complicated studies for brainiacs who are interested

Reblogging for personal interest in psych resources for marginalized groups. This is a damn good list to begin digging.

Why Do So Many Latina Teens Attempt Suicide? A Conceptual Model For Research.

I’d also add a lot of bell hooks’ more recent work, specifically Killing Rage and Rock My Soul (both of which I read and liked a lot, much more than a lot of her writing). Other books of hers about mental health and self care are Sisters of the Yam, Salvation, and All About Love. She cites a book a lot called Black Rage, a psych study of anti-black racism published in the 1960s. I have a thrift store copy but haven’t read it yet to vouch for it.

Reblogging myself because I want these links back up for people, as they are extra pertinent after the evictions this morning, and people’s lackluster ways of responding.

readnfight:

This is a note I posted on facebook and shared with some people involved in Occupy New Haven and actions nearby. Hopefully folks here will start doing some critique (or else their shit is bound to implode).

—————————————

I have been holding on to these articles about race dynamics within Occupy Wall Street, especially in the hope that these criticisms can be applied to Occupy New Haven (where they are desperately needed), as well as to building strategic organizing in general.

Anti-racist organizing is not as simple as declaring your work to be so; it requires brutal honesty, self-reflection, and questioning. It requires research of what is going on in other communities, and it is uncomfortable. But, being on the receiving end of racism is far more brutal and uncomfortable; moving toward anti-racism is worth it.

In my experience, organizing cannot work successfully if it refuses to self-reflect and if it refuses to ask questions of people who have done similar work before. No new issues are being raised in Occupy New Haven (and that’s totally okay!), so that means everything being addressed has been addressed in some manner before. Ask questions. Find out what people need and are already doing. Be honest about things you don’t know. Deconstruct what you mean by outreach and inclusion, two words that generally hide empty gestures.

I am giving people the benefit of the doubt when I say there is some potential left for Occupy New Haven to be in some way successful. I want to believe that it can make itself relevant to marginalized communities in New Haven, that it wants to represent people of color in more than just rhetoric and forced unity. We are not all the same; thinking we are because we all “bleed red” ignores the lived realities of people of color. Lives of people of color are not allowed to be color-blind, and so we know that when people claim color-blindness, they are mistaken.

I hope folks find these links helpful; I am using their critiques in my non-“occupation” organizing. As always, I am more than willing to help people find resources or to put people in touch with work already being done in New Haven or elsewhere. But as always, people need to do their homework. There is no longer any excuse to claim ignorance of work being done by people of color, our needs, or our critiques of this movement.

Please feel free to pass this along to other people to whom it may be useful!

• Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent, Chris Hedges
• Race and Occupy Wall Street, Rinku Sen
• Seven Occupy Wall Street Racial Justice Roadblocks
• Black “Occupy” protesters start “Occupy the Hood”, SF Bay View
• People of Color Working Group at OWS
• “Act as if it Were Possible to Build a Future Which Reflects our Dreams” Angela Davis Addresses Protesters
• Latina Activist Betita Martinez’s Wisdom for Young Organizers, Yvonne Yen Liu
• Occupying, Organizing and the Movements That Demand Both
• Addressing Racism and #OccupyWallStreet
• Toward a Radical Strategy in Decolonize/Occupy Seattle, Black Orchid Collective
• Occupy to End Capitalism, Black Orchid Collective
• The Occupation Movement: On Greed, Unity & Violence, Oakland Commune

Showing 2 comments

Roger huzendubel Collapse wow,you really dislike white people.

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I got this comment in response to a post that troubledsigh and I wrote critiquing race dynamics and race ignorance within Occupy New Haven. As always, what matters most is that I wasn’t going easy enough on white people.

Fucking please. I was going easy, y’all don’t even know. At any point I could name names and get vicious; and yet I’ve consistently given people the benefit of the doubt, against my better judgement and experience, that they will eventually start working their shit out.

In that exact post, we both wrote about me and another black woman being followed up speaking by a white guy saying there were no people of color present, correcting himself awkwardly, and then saying, “But how are we going to get people of color off their couches and down here?” Raise your hand if you remember reading about either me or troubledsigh punching him in the face. No? What about talking shit on him, by name, all over town; egging his car; making fun of him; starting a fight? No, what we did instead was, after the meeting, asked our friend firesandwords to have a white dude chat with him about how fucked up that was, and bless his heart, he talked to the dude for at least 20 minutes. That is a whole lot of faith to have in an absolute stranger, someone you’ve never met or had reason to trust, someone whose work and influence in your community you’ve never once witnessed, and who just publicly said something that denied your presence and years of work.

How much more patient do I need to be for my anger to no longer be so heinous? You are so threatened by the anger displayed by black women—to you, I should add—but you haven’t seen the half of it! Y’all have no idea! I do not air our dirty laundry to white people, as a rule, and so not a single white person—not my roommates, or my partner, or my mom, or my therapist (ALL WHITE)—know fully how white people make me feel about them. The bulk of my anger hides, dissipates, or gets channeled into something productive.

But, sure, out of all that we both wrote, out of our organizing experience that we brought into our critique, of course what it all boils down to is how unfair we are for disliking white people. That’s what matters more, far more than POC’s experiences, knowledge of local organizing history, or the impact that ONH could have on New Haven if not done carefully and respectfully.

(And now is the point where we name names and get mean: what we are talking about isn’t called white people, it is white supremacy. Conflating the two shows nothing but your own pitifully low standards for what you expect white people to contribute to the world around them. Maybe white people should learn to trust themselves to achieve better than that.)

so-treu:

educationforliberation.tumblr.com

it’s still in its beta version. i’m still working on the “about” and such pages, but it looks pretty and there’s some stuff up.

so let me know if you want to contribute regularly! there were some folks who expressed interest when i first posted about it, and i will be hitting y’all up. & even if you don’t want to contribute regularly you can still submit stuff.

so yeah, think of this as a beta grand opening. i’m just too pumped to keep sitting on it.

Don’t believe in god but I’d call these sorts of conversations a Godsend.