I’m really putting a trigger warning on something being said in the name of anti-racism? Someone’s flunking at it.

andystepanian:

Hey #tcot by “socialist” you mean “nigger” right?  Fucking racists. 

This gets an F- in anti-racism so hard. Do you have any idea what seeing the word “nigger” in big bold caps, regardless of context, might do to a black person who knows that word all too well? Do you think we might be tired of that little panicky shoulder-hunching stomach knot dizziness that is specific to the split second where we have to assess whether we will now have to argue (or physically fight) to demand that we and our families can have our humanity respected?

So now I want you, white anti-racist, to prove to me that doing that to me, manipulating my emotions and the words used against me and my family, is worth it to you. When you made this, did you even think black people would see it? Were we even on your mind? Or was it once again, white anti-racism for white people, and we’re an afterthought?

Actually think about the power of that word. Actually do some research into what it has been used for. Don’t use it so flippantly as a white person.

(And, before anyone wants to come at me about how unfair it is for me to say white people shouldn’t use that word: What was the last thing society denied you on the grounds of being white? Does it compare to what people of color are systematically denied? I’ll wait.)

Please, try to tell me this was worth adding to years of race anxiety for you to call TCOT, a group of conservative twitter users, racist.

polerin:

skirtingtheline:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

so-treu:

readnfight:

feral-femme:

“queer working class fat poly femme”
“trans queer middle class vegan punk”
“kinky, poor, young, dyke”

YOU’RE ALL WHITE

WHY DO YOU THINK IT’S NOT OKAY TO IDENTIFY YOUR WHITENESS?

Being kinky or vegan is not what people see when they decide whether or not to, say, follow you around the store where they work, but being white is. I can’t get into people giving me a laundry list of ways they’re oppressed where 1. half are phony, e.g. vegan, and 2. no one wants to talk about race (anarchists, I’m looking at y’all).

and i’m real in my feelings right now about those same white folks then using their marginalized identities to uphold white supremacy.

Lol and the people who write this are without a doubt white 9 times out of 10. I just hate when I see that and then “anti-racist”.

Screams of cookie-begging.

So now everybody has to state their race, so that the gaps between people of different races become even wider? So you can hate on their presumed ignorance even more because they’re white, so CLEARLY they’re probably racists-who-don’t-know-they’re-racist? Is that why you want people to say when they’re white?

Jesus. I don’t ask ANYone to identify their race. Why do I need to know that? A person’s character is not dependent on race. It’s not really dependent on your sexuality or food choices either, I suppose, but you get some idea of what a person may be posting that you may like (or not) when they state things like their sexuality or veg*nism. But stating your race? If you want to post about racism, then go for it. If you don’t want to post about it, fine. Not everybody wants to post about it or even talk about it. And from what I’ve seen, most of the talk doesn’t even do much to change instutitionalized racism or anything else. Even POCs will probably admit that. I see POCs on Tumblr all the time complaining about how no white person ever listens anyway, so why bother. (Which isn’t actually fully true, but I digress.)

To me, the ideal would be that nobody would ever NEED to post their race, because their race WOULDN’T FUCKING MATTER. And ideally nobody would ever have to post their sexuality or any of that stuff, either, because it WOULDN’T FUCKING MATTER. Isn’t that why we want racism to end in the first place?? So why are we ENCOURAGING a divide between people of different skin colors?

Jesus christ you didn’t read a goddamn word did you?

You really think that whiteness doesn’t matter?

Do you really think it’s divisive for me to say I’m white, when I’ve already said I’m a radical lefty pescitarian secular humanist transsexual dyke with ADHD who plays roller derby?

Because my race means that little to who I am and how other people interact with me compared to all those other things, right??  Except not.  Whiteness and white privilege still wraps me and everything I do, changing how I’m perceived and what I can do.  Saying this, acknowledging it while trying to do something about a world that is VERY far from ideal?  Not divisive.

Why I teach reading comprehension skills.

Not even gonna get into the silliness, but one place I’ve seen this (like in the real world, not people’s tumblr descriptions) is at anarchist conferences/whatevers where people only want to go to caucuses that apply to them (if any even do), but then given the chance to go to an auxiliary, they’d rather just sit around and read a Crimethinc novel or show how much cooler they are than everyone or play with their pet rat or talk about how hopping freights is the most magical thing ever. (A caucus is a space for people of an oppressed group to get together and talk, and an auxiliary is a space for people of a dominant group to get together and talk about anti-that-oppression work.)

I’ve seen this happen so badly that conference organizers have to make auxiliaries necessary. I mean, seriously, if you wanna tell me about what a great anti-racist ally you are, when I’ve never seen it, the very least you could do is go spend an hour with some other white people talking about white supremacy. But people refuse.

At Bash Back! a few years ago, there were several hundred people there, and only about 30 people of color, and yet all those damn people couldn’t get any work done in the white auxiliary to even do a reportback beyond saying, “Oops, we didn’t really get much done.” Meanwhile, the POC caucus was having maybe its second or third get-together and had written and distributed a list of race-related questions for conferencegoers.

So this does happen where white radicals will list a billion things about themselves, implying that that is how they move through the world, but then refuse to talk about the fact that they are white. And act like it’s an insult to state it as fact.

I really don’t give a shit if someone tells me on their internet about-me that they’re white (again, person a couple posts above, that was really really far from the point). It’s far more an issue of whether people are willing to actually do some work, beyond pretending to be oppressed for being punk. Like, let’s get down to facts and reality, cause that ain’t either.

Generally I don’t like identity laundry lists because I have really strong criticisms of identity politics (coming out of a lot of work I’ve done, but formulated a lot of thoughts from really uncritical black women’s organizing, actually), and because they usually move pretty quickly into phoniness. And I’d rather see actions than just words.

Or, in short:

(via karnythia)

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.

zorascreation:

Many Women of Color have called you out on your whitewashing of their issues in relation to racial injustice and how it affects things central to women’s experiences across the planet. Many of you have learned from these experiences about how to navigate your White Privilege while still being a disenfranchised gender-group. However, I don’t think much attention has been payed (despite negative attention) to how Men of Color relate to you all.

Now, I’m genderqueer, but as I’ve said before Black Man/Man of Color is my politicized identity based on how [some] people may perceive me and have in the past. Even though I was raised-as-a-boy, I’ve still always been gender-bending/genderqueer, and people have “misgendered” me as a woman as I’ve gained in age (thanks to mama’s genes! <3). But, because I am still affected by MOC issues, it’s time I spoke out a bit more.

Tip for the future: if you think to take it upon yourself to dictate to a Man of Color about how works such as “Othello” relate to him and his maleness? Do not. It is a crime against your critical thinking skills. I think that many times you all don’t realize how MOC are, like you, privileged and non-privileged in two major areas. Except for MOC it’s the reverse of WW’s experiences. For MOC it’s “of color while men” and for WW it’s “white while women”. There are levels of privilege and power in play for MOC that do not always translate to a universal experience of Patriarchy due to White Supremacy.

For instance, when speaking about how Patriarchy hurts men, I’ve noticed that MOC do not gain any sort of acknowledgement in these discussions unless the discussion is being held between WOC. This is only natural because you [White Women] do not suffer from institutional racism and thus issues relating to race have always been unseen to you. The racial-gender hierarchy in much of the Western World, and even in non-Western countries affected by Colonialism, Imperalism and Eurocentrism, pits White Women above MOC. Sometimes, as bell hooks has illustrated, MOC and White Women may share the same societal status by the factors of Maleness for MOC and Whiteness for White Women, but it’s incumbent upon White Women to holistically realize how male repression has forever been used as an oppressive tool against MOC by White Women themselves.

This is why I do my feminism for people of color first, and not just women of color but all people of color, because many genders have things we can gain from such a framework. My feminism doesn’t revolve around women’s rights or women’s equality (both concepts that I find limited anyhow), but rather around centering the needs of women and/or trans* people of color. These things are not separable for me.

(via karnythia)

unaguerrasinfondo:

back in the early 1900s american scholars said that the inclination of Puerto Ricans to socialize outdoors was proof of their cultural backwardness.

I’M SERIOUS. 

Right around when I moved out to Connecticut, the city of Danbury CT passed an ordinance against backyard volleyball games, because there were Ecuadorian immigrants getting together on weekends to play really big games of volleyball (to a lesser extent, soccer as well). The city government decided it was a nuisance and that they could regulate people having outdoor games on private property.

Danbury has a lot of racist, xenophobic bullshit going on, still does. But, this is still going on that even how people of color interact with the outdoors can be regulated and pathologized.

(via bad-dominicana)

undercoverterrorist:

There’s a really biased, one sided article floating around Facebook about a bunch of white feminists who are “uncomfortable” with Chris Brown performing at the Grammys, and the comments are full of other white feminists patting each other on the back.

You know, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry will also be at the Grammys and they write blatantly misogynistic music.  Eminem has performed at the Grammys and he also writes sexist music.

Yet I don’t see any white feminists critisizing the Grammys for that.
Nope. 

I finally just read the article in question and, yeah, it’s a pretty solid reminder of why whitecentric feminism is not how I work or what I deal with. For starters, it’s sloppy to mention that if Chris Brown had hit Taylor Swift things would be different. No shit! Let’s talk about that, cause it’s not like being famous neutralizes Rihanna still being a black woman and still being treated (and ignored) like one.

I guess one thing that bothers me about white people jumping on Chris Brown is this: What have y’all done for black women lately?? (Talking shit on black men does not count.) I will be the first to say that I wouldn’t like Chris Brown even if he could put a decent pop song together or do any of his own dance moves. But what is that alone doing for black women? Not a damn thing. Other than making this once again revolve around men, and in this case revolve around vilifying black men. Plus put down black women who still buy his music.

Most people who assault black women will not be doing something as high profile as performing at the Grammys, so if you really wanna be down for black women, go to where we more often are being assaulted. If you wanna not support people who are violent against black women, then maybe start with

• the police
• the prison industry
• the war on drugs
• violence against sex workers
• welfare cuts
• school systems that criminalize students of color
• border patrol

because all those forces have a damn lot more to do with violence in our lives than the fucking Grammys.

Also, white people mad at Chris Brown, do you actually know what Rihanna wants? Has anyone asked her? I mean, rule number 1 in supporting someone after partner violence is you do what the survivor wants, not what you want, and you don’t step on their toes. But again, what black women in general, and one black woman in particular, want and need has been forgotten about. What seems to be more important is finally having the opportunity to openly talk shit on and vilify a black man.

Even more than asking what if he had hit a white woman, I think I’d like to know about what if it had been a white man hitting a black woman, or even a white man hitting a white woman. Would he be a monster in the same way? Would there be the same pathologizing of other black women who remain a fan of his? Would y’all still be shaking your heads at how black people are too complicated to fit into your women’s studies textbook? HELL NAW. Plenty of white men in Hollywood and pop music are known to be abusive, violent, and sexist, and yeah, white feminists will call them on it, but are rarely out for blood and the end of their career the way they are with a black boogeyman.

There are two sets of careers I would like to see end: Chris Brown’s/cops’/prisons’, and racist white feminists.

Dr. Patricia Hill Collins quoting Public Allies CEO Paul Schmitz in her talk Answering the Call to Community Service. (via sexartandpolitics)

A microcosm of one of the fundamental issues with the non-profit industrial complex.

(via myflagisblackandred)

I’d never thought about it like that before.

(via hereidreamtiwasablogger2)

This is why I’m proposing that at the school where I work, maybe the teachers (almost all white & mostly suburban) are the ones who need Community Service Day more than the students (almost all latino and/or black and inner city).

(via girl-germs)

fearandwar:

Twitter is confirming this. What a crappy day.

(via leonineantiheroine)

livingwithendo:

liquornspice:

And do we even HAVE comprehensive data on American Indian poverty? Cuz unemployment on reservations is basically the rule, not the exception.  I mean, it’s why they were even created in the first place…

(Bolding mine)

If you look it up you can find it, but you won’t find it on easy-to-find statistics pages like you will for the four races listed above. So no, it’s not comprehensive. Be prepared to search and search and search. Here’s a small sampling of what I was able to find after much searching.

According to the Navajo Nation Division of Economic Development, unemployment on the Navajo Reservation was 43.3% in 1998. As reported in the 1990 Census, unemployment on the Navajo Reservation was 27.9%; in Arizona, the rate was 7.1%, and in New Mexico it was 7.9%. In Gallup, the unemployment rate for Indians was 12.0%; for all Gallup residents, it was 5.8%.

In the barren grasslands of Ziebach County, there’s almost nothing harder to find in winter than a job. This is America’s poorest county, where more than 60 percent of people live at or below the poverty line. At a time when the weak economy is squeezing communities across the nation, recently released census figures show that nowhere are the numbers as bad as here — a county with 2,500 residents, most of them Cheyenne River Sioux Indians living on a reservation. In the coldest months of the year, when seasonal construction work disappears and the South Dakota prairie freezes, unemployment among the Sioux can hit 90 percent.

In the 1990 U.S. Census, Indian residents made up 18.5 percent of the total population of Fremont County. The low income of households on the Wind River Indian Reservation meant that they contributed only 8.5 percent of the county’s total household income. In the 1990s, Fremont County has been one of Wyoming’s more economically depressed areas. Its 1989 per capita income was 80 percent of the state average. Fremont County consistently has the state’s highest rate of unemployment, much of which can be attributed to the exceedingly high unemployment of persons living on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

I’m willing to bet that with the current economy the unemployment rate has gone up. I’d actually be incredibly surprised if it hasn’t. (And please don’t try the whole ” but casinos!” argument. There are very few tribes that have an extremely successful casino.)

Thanks for finding all this! I was just copying from the data I was able to find, so there were definitely holes. Such as, yeah, none of the data included indigenous people.

Son of Baldwin

yeah, pretty much. (via tinyfist)

kinda sums up some of my concerns about Occupy Wall Street. I hope white folks realize the privilege we have in calling this a revolution and not being mislabeled due to skin color, not being questioned as much as to if this is in fact a worthy and noble cause. I see a certain amount of white privilege in confronting cops. Though they do in fact oppress all of us, the more direct violence and negative consequnces hits lower class and person’s of color far harder.

(via sexxxisbeautiful)

Oh good, so I’m not the only one who isn’t shocked that the police used pepper spray on someone. Cause I don’t know about NYC, but the cops in the places I’ve lived have used it just as easily and often as they use words. And then tell us we’re lucky it wasn’t a gun.

(via ziatroyano)