When white liberals don’t wanna talk about race, so they say that someone’s fucked up actions couldn’t possibly be racist because they’re part latino/part indian/etc. (such as George Zimmerman). And you’re like, okay so you’re accidentally saying that only white people actively uphold white supremacy? Not as nuanced as I’d like to get, but I’ll take it over the usual shit about how everyone’s “racist” against white people. I know in a different context, those same liberals wouldn’t be admitting that white people have a specific relationship to racism; in that moment they’re just trying to keep from having to talk about race.

• When you say something against police brutality and a liberal gets upset and says, “But not all cops are like that! Why do you have to insult the cops like that?” or some shit about how we’re all the 99%. But you just laugh because you never equated police with violence,theydid by being offended for all cops.
• When you talk about white supremacy as an everyday thing and a liberal starts defending white people, and you never once said anything about all white people—again, they’rethe ones who equated white people with racism.

I demand that people do some research before they start picking which countries of black people the US military should invade. I crack jokes about how easily they feel they should decide who’s worthy of autonomy and survival while not knowing where those places are on a map. I give examples of history but don’t spend time holding white people’s hands through it, especially if they’re saying “sure colonialism, but who cares.”

And now I’m being told I’m too aggressive? I’m a bully? I’m talking about black people’s lives. I’m not talking hypotheticals. I’m not talking fantasy worlds where everyone is on an even playing field. I’m saying do your fucking research before you decide who your country should bomb.

Why is this a problem? Why should we have to fight so hard?

Why in a conversation about colonialism and US imperialism and things white people have destroyed in Africa and are hellbent on continuing to destroy and willful ignorance, why is my insistence that people educate themselves before gambling away black lives the thing that’s too aggressive? That’s not nice? The barrel of a gun is aggressive; a fighter pilot is aggressive; the CIA is aggressive; a foreign coup is aggressive; the prison industry is aggressive; economic institutions are aggressive; the whims of masses of white people with no knowledge of their subject being listened to and acted upon by government are aggressive. How am I the bully here?

(via jadedfucker-deactivated20120302)

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Only MLK quote I’m entertaining for the day. If you can’t get down with this MLK, the forgotten, less cheery-hand-holding MLK, then don’t come at me about what my relationship to his legacy should be and why I should be a pacifist.

troubledsigh:

several coworkers invited me to come with them to the casino tomorrow, if I didn’t already have plans.

I really, really had to try not to laugh in their faces because

the irony of white folks going to a Native casino on THIS holiday, loaded as it is, expecting to win shit - it was just straight up too much to bear.

so I had some lols today.

Oh wowww. I’m actually near the casinos right now coincidentally; we’re gonna have a family trip to the Mashantucket Pequot museum which is near one of the casinos.

I hope those coworkers lose all their money and we can consider it the first installment of their reparations.

By request to be rebloggable:

i totally understand your indignation that privileged white people only care about the violation of constitutional rights now that they feel like theirs are being violated (and in such a profoundly less egregious way than the constitutional rights of people of color and the poor have been violated for decades), but what i don’t quite get is what you THINK their reaction should be - should they just quietly accept it? what do you think?

Anonymous

readnfight says:

I’ll put it this way: I am generally really patient, like really really absurdly patient, because the bulk of my socializing is now done with 15 year old boys who get in trouble a lot at school so that patience has carried over into the rest of my life. But at some point, it runs out. My freshmen have a far better sense of what that point is than most of the white liberals/progressives/anarchists I encounter.

I feel for people who are being attacked by the police; I expect it. The main focus of my organizing for the past year has been around local police brutality cases. So, yeah, it makes me furious that the cops would respond that way, but it doesn’t surprise me.

I can’t tell anyone how to respond to something like that. Being faced with violence is fucked, regardless of who you are, and I will be patient with people who maybe respond to violence in ways that aren’t the best, because that is stressful and your emotions will be raw at that point.

But where my patience has run out is this: people of color have been saying as long as this movement has been going on that this sort of shit is nothing new. I have put way more energy than I should into trying to educate white people, only to be ignored, belittled, and to drop off what little work I was willing to put into what they’re doing. Plenty of other POC, also, have put way way more energy into educating white people right now than they really deserve, and way more than is being appreciated. Our work and knowledge are being taken totally for granted. It is at that point that I no longer want to hear people upset about the sorts of things that happen daily in a lot of our communities. (Gratuitous use of SWAT-gear cops? Happens in drug raids near my house.)

I can’t tell anyone how to respond to something emotional. Respond with empathy and with listening. Respond by seeing if the people who have been trying to teach you about this all along will still support you as you deal—and at this point, not a lot of us will. We only get shit on for so long by people claiming to be our allies, before we go back to actually fixing shit that’s going on for ourselves.

note-a-bear:

so-treu:

nezua:

As it turns out…

As it turns out, Roots drummer—and active Twitter expert—Questlove was one of the first people to warn the protesters. Before midnight, the drummer—who lives in downtown New York—tweeted at Occupy Wall Street, “Omg, drivin down south st near #ows. Somethin bout to go down yo, swear I counted 1000 riot gear cops bout to pull sneak attack #carefulyall” He then reiterated, “im the only one talking cause sneak attacks aren’t planned. i drove past a soul train line of riot cops” and persisted by saying, “ok once again. South St in NYC. blocks from #OWS. saw a GANG (like at least 500+ geared up) standing in line gettin ready for somethin.”

Occupy Wall Street’s twitter team seemed to shrug off Questlove’s warnings by writing back, “Shift change as per usual? RT DiceyTroop:mcduh @questlove all quiet at the Park. What did you see questo? Maybe Batman stuff?” Less than an hour later, the park was raided and several protesters and journalists were arrested. Occupy Wall Street has since moved its headquarters to nearby Foley Square nearby Zuccotti Park.

Whoops. 

……..and when you place it into context, i.e. OWS having a really hard time *listening* to POC……….yeah.

You so silly, pretending like POC have experience with police and organizing, or like they have anything to say, period. (/sarcasm)

Yeah, if you get a chance, jalwhite posted a story about the lack of listening/paying attention to POC voices. It’s beyond disgusting how far they’ve gone with the whole not listening.

I mean, to be expected, honestly, but….*sigh* considering how long POC have been organizing like this, you’d think someone would actually step up and like “Hey, we should listen here” instead of pretending like this is the first time anyone has ever thought to protest.

(via modernistwitch-deactivated20120)

readnfight:

ok

Who’s with me?

“Damn, Yale professor who doesn’t walk down my block, you got a nice house…lemme get that!”

“White dude, you get listened to real hard with that pale skin of yours…lemme get that!”

“Lady, you got health insurance?…lemme get that!”

“You mean to tell me you set up tents in the same park where I’ve been seeing homeless people get kicked around and harassed for years, and you’re also telling me the cops are “our” friends and in the 99% too?…LEMME GET THAT!”

and so on.

liquornspice:

Oh. Let’s try:

• prisons/private prisons/prison labor
• immigrant detention centers
• juvenile detention centers
• slavery/slave trade
• the entire placement of the US-Mexico border
• Patriot Act
• segregated schools/the continued extralegal segregation of schools
• sterilization of women of color and immigrant women
• eugenics
• George Bush declaring war on an idea
• COINTELPRO
• McCarthyism
• the three-fifths clause
• the fact that raping a black woman during slavery was trespassing, not sexual assault
• lack of universal health care
• stop-and-frisks
• racial profiling/racial checkpoints/religious profiling
• the failed Sensenbrenner Bill/Arizona’s SB 1070/banning ethnic studies
• Japanese-American internment camps
• Chinese Exclusion Act/Alien & Sedition Acts
• Brasero Program
• US’s continued existence occupying indigenous land

but maybe you haven’t experienced those things or their legacies. Trust me, there’s more; that was off the top of my head in five minutes, but now I need to go to work.

This doesn’t scare me. I’ve BEEN scared. I’ve also been angry. This shit has been around my whole life.