School under fire for class that teaches white people are oppressors
legit depressed by this (not surprised but like really sad). ……..like can you imagine the possible benefits from taking such a class? but nope white tears clogging up all that potential progress
and I really dig this comment “All our lives we have been taught from a white supremacist view and no objections. Now the opposite side is presented and this is a problem? Who should be proud of a history of war, disease famine and trouble everywhere they go? Hmm White supremacists are! History show this! Columbus discovered America? Only white people made inventions and history? Why are minority contributions not shown as relates to history? Except for slavery etc. Hmmmm”
So one time my friend Ianthe made this petition.
The petition was written in an attempt to stop Illinois State University’s resident racist moron from representing ISU at KCACTF, where he’s being recognised for Naomi Iizuka’s “Anon(ymous),” which, if you can stomach the irony, focuses on racism, immigration, etc. in America. Why is this so ironic, you might ask? Because the student, Robert Hornbostel, annually celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. day by throwing a party that perpetuates racist stereotypes, in which he asks those who wish to attend to bring things like “grape drink,” watermelon, cornbread, fried chicken… you get the idea.
Aside from Ianthe being attacked for daring to create this petition, Robert Hornbostel has now threatened legal action on my friend, which aside from being so utterly ridiculous that I have to laugh about it, is so missing the point that I can’t even begin to fathom where the hell he got his brain. He would rather contact his lawyers than simply apologise for his disgusting party. He chooses to exercise his white privilege and continue to say that he’s really not doing any harm when the comments on this petition prove otherwise. When Black people are telling you that your racism is hurting them, you need to sit down, shut up, and take notes. When you’re riding the back of a racist society and perpetuating stereotypes under the guise of celebrating one of the most important Civil Rights figures in American history, you really ARE causing harm.
I don’t go to ISU. I don’t know Robert Hornbostel. My only connection to this whole thing (which has exploded into something I don’t think Ianthe expected but which I am so proud of xer for) is only through Ianthe. But we all have a choice to stand up against injustice, and that’s what Ianthe’s doing and that’s what I’m doing. Please sign this petition. Please read Ianthe’s blog where you can find updates on the situation. Please don’t let Robert Hornbostel get away with racism.
(Source: greyj0ys, via thedarkchocolatedandy)
Racism.
My last rant kind of inspired this post. I have a lot of opinions about this topic, but I will try my best to keep this short. I am not racist, in any way. But, one thing I cannot stand is hearing things like “Why wasn’t there a black person in this movie? Racist!” Like, how is that even logical? Do you know how people would react if white people were like “Why isn’t there any white people in this movie? Racist!” they would get called racist, and get a shitload of insults over it.
I know I’m going to get “Omg ur white-privilege is showing!!!” but I honestly couldn’t care less what anyone thinks, because this is my opinion. In my eyes, we should all be seen as equal people. I don’t care if you’re white, gay, straight, black, transgender, etc. I just see you as another person, and I’m not going to judge you on those type of things. I just can’t stand things like this. I’m sorry, but not everything is racist. If a person of color isn’t cast in a movie, I highly doubt it’s because of their skin color.
Another thing that bothers me is how people act like someone cannot be racist against a white person. Are you kidding me orr? Racism is disliking/harassing a person because of their skin color. It’s not listed in the dictionary as “A white person disliking/harassing a person of color because of their skin.” I’m sorry if this comes off as rude, but I’m just being honest. I honestly have experienced a lot of things because of the color of my skin, believe it or not. I grew up in a neighborhood where there weren’t that many white people. In my classes, there were maybe two other white girls. All three of us experienced a lot of cruel things, just because we were “crackers” and “white trash” now, what is that? It’s hating someone solely because of their skin color, therefore it’s racism. I didn’t complain about it, though. The other girls did, and they pulled the “White people can’t experience racism.” card.
I’m cutting this short, all I’m saying is, we’re all people, and even though we shouldn’t, we can ALL experience racism.
-Kat.
“If a person of color isn’t cast in a movie, I highly doubt it’s because of their skin color.”
Being that 69% of roles are set aside for white men while, depending on the group, less than 10%, at most, are set aside for people of color, I’d say that you can doubt all you like, but you’re only doubting reality.
(Source: thehonestopinions)
Series of Brooklyn Billboards Put Racial Inequity on Display
Billboards are everywhere in New York City. They’re on subway trains and in stations, and on top of and inside taxis. But few, if any, have been anything like a series of anonymous billboards that have popped up on bus shelters in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. They’re not selling anything but a delcaration: that racism still exists.
That’s also the name of the appropriately titled campaign. At least half a dozen billboard sites have sprung up around the neighborhood since August, with each month dedicated to highlighting racial disparities that impact black people in America. So far, the billboards have touched on topics ranging from the entertainment industry, education, fast food, smoking, policing, and black wealth. Each month’s billboard is also accompanied by an detailed post on Tumblr that provides background information, news articles, studies, charts, and statistics to back up each claim.
A brief statement on the Tumblr page says, in part, that “RISE is a proejct designed to illuminate some of the ways in which racism operates in this country.” But who’s behind the project remains a mystery.
For the time being, the project seems dedicated to its anonymity. Both the Tumblr page and the billboards themselves are devoid of any contact information. Similarly, the private advertising company that’s contracted by New York City’s transit agency to host advertisments and billboards said that it does not give out information about who paid for the advertisements.
Even local activists who spend their time dedicated to working on racial justice issues can’t figure out who’s behind the billboards. Nonetheless, they’re intrigued by the campaign. This month’s billboard is dedicated to Stop-and-Frisk, the controversial NYPD tactic that’s drawn national criticism for its disproportionate impact on black and Latino men. The billboard’s provactive text reads, “Don’t want to get stopped by the NYPD? Stop being black.” On the heels of New York City’s 2013 mayoral race and the prominent role that critics of Stop-and-Frisk have taken in city politics, the billboards have become a meaningful part of local discussion.
It’s no accident that of all of New York City’s neighborhoods, the billboards have targeted this one. A historically black neighborhood, Bed-Stuy has become one of the most contested spaces in New York City. A 2012 study from the Fordham Institute found that Brooklyn is home to 25 of the country’s most rapidly gentrifying zip codes. That’s created a stark contrast between those in the neighborhood who have more upward social and economic mobility than others. Several high profile media accounts have recently noted Bed Stuy’s so-called “hip” transformation and “resurgence”, but the borough’s medium per capita income in 2009 was just $23,000, which was $10,000 below the national average.
The content of the billboard’s messaging may not exactly be news for most residents, but the presentation has nonetheless been powerful.
(via ethiopienne)
(Source: catbushandludicrous, via lipsredasroses)
- White People: It shouldn't matter what color the characters are, the story is what's really important.
- Rich People: It shouldn't matter how much money you make, enjoying whatever you have is what's really important.
- Het People: It shouldn't matter whether or not you can get married, just being with the one you love is what's really important.
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune: Hear me out.
We need to talk about race in Homestuck.
Turn off your knee-jerk reactions, stop rolling your eyes at the people who are “over-reacting” and listen for just a moment.
I love Homestuck because it’s a safe space for me. As a queer reader, I’m surrounded in my day-to-day life…
I honestly am a bit confused. What matters most in a story is, well, the STORY. It doesn’t matter if the characters are white or black or even a dog or a cat or a rock or something…if the story is good, it shouldn’t matter what race the character is. If the only reason someone would bond with a character is because they are the same race as themselves then…that’s what seems wrong to me. If the character is a good character and you like them, does it matter what race they are?
Remember that Hussie didn’t write Homestuck with the intention of creating some ‘safe space’ where everyone is represented equally or whatever. He didn’t even create the troll’s sexual relationships to try and cater to gays/lesbians, it just ended up being responded to in a positive way.
While I can see where people are coming from in some aspects…it’s Hussie’s story and characters. And if he says they are race-less then I’m going to believe him. Any ‘mistakes’ in his comics that people are nitpicking about were probably just that, mistakes. This is a comic about internet friends and creation myths, trying to make various minorities/races feel all warm and fuzzy inside is probably not on the top of his to do list. Just sayin.White people saying “it shouldn’t matter what color the characters are, the story is what’s important” to PoC,
is like rich people saying “it shouldn’t matter how much money you have, enjoying life is what’s important” to people living in and out of shelters
It’s just basically really shitty to trivialize how important something is when you’ve never ever had to go without.
White Student Union
I like how my high school had a club for Blacks, Latinos, Indians, and Asians, but no group for white students. Because that would be “racist.”
Yes, yes it would be.
Notice your tags.
#reverse racism, #master race.
"Dr. King, Forgotten Radical"
America began perverting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message in the spring of 1963. Truthfully, you could put the date just about anywhere along the earlier timeline of his brief public life, too. But I mark it at the Birmingham movement’s climax, right about when Northern whites needed a more distant, less personally threatening change-maker to juxtapose with the black rabble rousers clambering into their own backyards. That’s when Time politely dubbed him the “Negroes’ inspirational leader,” as Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff point out in their excellent book Race Beat.
Up until then, King had been eyed as a hasty radical out to push Southern communities past their breaking point — which was a far more accurate understanding of the man’s mission. His “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is in fact a blunt rejection of letting the establishment set the terms of social change. “The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation,” he wrote, later adding, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Shame that quotation rarely makes it into the sort of King remembrances that will mark today’s 40th anniversary of his assassination. Generations after the man’s murder, our efforts to look back on his life too often say more about our own racial fantasies and avoidances than they do about his much-discussed dream. And they obscure a deeply radical worldview that remains urgently important to Americans’ lives. Today, I don’t mourn King’s death so much as I do his abandoned ideas.
We’ve all got reason to avoid the uncomfortable truths King shoved in the nation’s face. It’s a lot easier for African Americans to pine for his leadership than it is to accept our own responsibility for creating the radicalized community he urged upon us. And it’s more comfortable for white America to reduce King’s goals to an idyllic meeting of little black boys and little white girls than it is to consider his analysis of how white supremacy keeps that from becoming reality.
Take, for instance, his point that segregation’s purpose wasn’t just to keep blacks out in the streets but to keep poor whites from taking to them and demanding economic justice. There’s a concept that’s not likely to come up in, say, the speech John McCain was rumored to be planning for today. “The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow,” King lectured from the Alabama Capitol steps, following the 1965 march on Selma. “And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.”
It’s thoughts like those that made him decidedly less popular at the time of his death than today. The bloom started to wear off King’s media rose when he turned his attention to Northern racism. The central defense Southern segregationists offered when thrust on the national stage was that their Jim Crow was no more of a brute than the North’s. King agreed, and in announcing his organization’s move into Chicago, he called the North’s urban ghettos “a system of internal colonialism not unlike the exploitation of the Congo by Belgium.” And he named names, pointing to racist unions as one of a dozen institutions conspiring to strip-mine black communities. So much for “inspirational.” But then, like now, nobody wanted to hear such talk — only the black press paid any attention.
Later, when a white mob hurled bricks and cherry bombs at marchers in Chicago, King told reporters that the scene outdid anything below the Mason-Dixon Line. “I have never in my life seen such hate,” biographer Taylor Branch quotes him as saying. “Not in Mississippi or Alabama.” Today, we hear little about the ideas that experience provoked for King: His deathbed blueprint for changing America’s caste systems included a three-pronged attack on racism, poverty, and war.
It’s that last charge, to fight war-making, that got him in the most trouble during his time and that gets most readily ignored today. Despite grenades of criticism from his fellow civil-rights leaders, his erstwhile ally in the president, and the press, King declared he had no choice but to stand up against the Vietnam War. But what’s striking is the still red-hot relevance of his reasoning, a perspective also likely to be left out of the dreamy platitudes delivered on days like today.
King called the armed forces a “cruel manipulation of the poor” and likened war funding to “some demonic destructive suction tube,” siphoning off resources needed to deal with pressing domestic issues. And he warned that our zeal for the fight reflected “a far deeper malady in the American spirit,” one which drives us to consider the protection of our “overseas investments” to be a greater imperative than the preservation of life. The 1967 speech bears quoting at length:
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
It’s to our detriment that we whitewash all of these valuable ideas from our national memory of King. But the greatest tragedy may be that African Americans have morphed his belief in the power of community into a follow-the-leader obsession. Each King holiday and memorial spawns another round of “Where’s Waldo?” pondering over who our new leader is, or should be, or if one exists at all.
I suspect King’s answer would be who cares? Indeed, while the rest of the civil-rights establishment cringed when black college students launched their own, amorphous movement of sit-ins, King applauded it. He called the student movement “a revolt against Negroes in the middle class who have indulged themselves in big cars and ranch-style homes rather than joining a movement for freedom,” according to Branch. Today’s preoccupation with naming King’s successors seems similarly trivial.
Black America first anointed King its savior after he stormed onto the national scene in Montgomery, holding together the prolonged 1954 bus boycott with nightly speeches in which he exhorted everyone to stay the course. Jet magazine called him “Alabama’s Modern Moses.” We’ve been waiting for another prophet since he was gunned down on April 4, 1968. I just wish our last one would come back and remind us that our power lies not in leadership but in a collective refusal to be oppressed.
(Source: knowledgeequalsblackpower)
RASHIDA: I wouldn’t trade my family for anything. My mother shocked her Jewish parents by marrying out of her religion and race. And my father: growing up poor and black, buckling the odds and becoming so successful, having the attitude of “I love this woman! We’re going to have babies and to hell with anyone who doesn’t like it!”
KIDADA: We had a sweet, encapsulated family. We were our own little world. But there’s the warmth of love inside a family, and then there’s the outside world. When I was born in 1974, there were almost no other biracial families–or black families–in our neighborhood. I was brown-skinned with short, curly hair. Mommy would take me out in my stroller and people would say, “What a beautiful baby…whose is it?” Rashida came along in 1976. She had straight hair and lighter skin. My eyes were brown; hers were green. IN preschool, our mother enrolled us in the Buckley School, an exclusive private school. It was almost all white.
RASHIDA: In reaction to all that differentess, Kidada tried hard to define herself as a unique person by becoming a real tomboy.
KIDADA: While Rashida wore girly dresses, I loved my Mr. T dolls and my Jaws T-shirt. But seeing the straight hair like the other girls had, like my sister had…I felt: “It’s not fair! I want that hair!”
PEGGY: I was the besotted mother of two beautiful daughters I’d had with the man I loved–I saw Kidada through those eyes. I thought she had the most gorgeous hair–those curly, curly ringlets. I still think so!
KIDADA: One day a little blond classmate just out and called me “Chocolate bar.” I shot back: “Vanilla!”
QUINCY: I felt deeply for Kidada; I thought racism would be over by the eighties. My role was to put things in perspective for her, project optimism, imply that things were better than they’d been for me growing up on the south side of Chicago in the 1930s.
KIDADA: I had another hurdle as a kid: I was dyslexic. I was held back in second grade. I flunked algebra three times. The hair, the skin, the frustration with schoolwork: It was all part of the shake. I was a strong-willed, quirky child–mischievous.
RASHIDA: Kidada was cool. I was a dork. I had a serious case of worship for my big sister. She was so strong, so popular, so rebellious. Here’s the difference in our charisma: When I was 8 and Kidada was 10, we tried to get invited into the audience of our favorite TV shows. Mine was Not Necessarily the News, a mock news show, and hers was Punky Brewster, about a spunky orphan. I went by the book, writing a fan letter–and I got back a form letter. Kidada called the show, used her charm, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Within a week she was invited to the set!
KIDADA: I was kicked out of Buckley in second grade for behavior problems. I didn’t want my mother to come to my new school. If kids saw her, it would be: “your mom’s white!” I told Mom she couldn’t pick me up; she had to wait down the street in her car. Did Rashida have that problem? No! She passed for white.
RASHIDA: “Passed”?! I had no control over how I looked. This is my natural hair, these are my natural eyes! I’ve never tried to be anything that I’m not. Today I feel guilty, knowing that because of the way our genes tumbled out, Kidada had to go through pain I didn’t have to endure. Loving her so much, I’m sad that I’ll never share that experience with her.
KIDADA: Let me make this clear: My feelings about my looks were never “in comparison to” Rashida. It was the white girls in class that I compared myself to. Racial issues didn’t exist at home. Our parents weren’t black and white; they were Mommy and Daddy.
RASHIDA: But it was different with our grandparents. Our dad’s father died before we were born. We didn’t see our dad’s mother often. I felt comfortable with Mommy’s parents, who’d come to love my dad like a son. Kidada wasn’t so comfortable with them. I felt Jewish; Kidada didn’t.KIDADA: I knew Mommy’s parents were upset at first when she married a black man, and though they did the best they could, I picked up on what I thought was their subtle disapproval of me. Mommy says they loved me, but I felt estranged from them.
While Rashida stayed and excelled at Buckley, Kidada bumped from school to school; she got expelled from 10 in all because of behavior problems, which turned out to be related to her dyslexia.
KIDADA: We had a nanny, Anna, from El Salvador. I couldn’t get away with stuff with her. Mommy knew Anna could give her the backup she needed in the discipline department because she was my color. Anna was my “ethnic mama.”
PEGGY: Kidada never wanted to be white. She spoke with a little…twist in her language. She had ‘tude. Rashida spoke more primly, and her identity touched all bases. She’d announce, “I’m going to be the first female, black, Jewish president of the U.S.!”
KIDADA: When I was 11, a white girlfriend and I were going to meet up with these boys she knew. I’d told her, because I wanted to be accepted, “Tell them I’m tan.” When we met them, the one she was setting me up with said, “You didn’t tell me she was black.” That’s When I started defining myself as black, period. Why fight it? Everyone wanted to put me in a box. On passports, at doctor’s offices, when I changed schools, there were boxes to check: Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Asian. I don’t mean any dishonor to my mother–who is the most wonderful mother in the world, and we are so alike–but: I am black. Rashida answers questions about “what” she is differently. She uses all the adjectives: black, white, Jewish.
RASHIDA: Yes, I do. And I get: “But you look so white!” “You’re not black!” I want to say: “Do you know how hurtful that is to somebody who identifies so strongly with half of who she is?” Still, that’s not as bad as when people don’t know. A year ago a taxi driver said to me, That Jennifer Lopez is a beautiful woman. Thank God she left that disgusting black man, Puffy.” I said, “I’m black.” He tried to smooth it over. IF you’re obviously black, white people watch their tongues, but with me they think they can say anything. When people don’t know “what” you are, you get your heart broken daily.
KIDADA: Rashida has it harder than I do: She can feel rejection from both parties.
RASHIDA: When I audition for white roles, I’m told I’m “too exotic.” When I go up for black roles, I’m told I’m “too light.” I’ve lost a lot of jobs, looking the way I do.
PEGGY: As Kidada grew older, it became clear that she wouldn’t be comfortable unless she was around kids who looked more like her. So I searched for a private school that had a good proportion of black students, and when she was 12, I found one.
KIDADA: That changed everything. I’d go to my black girlfriends’ houses and–I wanted their life! I lived in a gated house in a gated neighborhood, where playdates were: “My security will call your security.” Going to my black friends’ houses, I saw a world that was warm and real, where families sat down for dinner together. At our house, Rashida and I often ate dinner on trays, watching TV in Anna’s room, because our dada was composing and performing at night and Mom sat in on his sessions.
RASHIDA: But any family, from any background, can have that coziness too.
KIDADA: I’m sure that’s true, but I experienced all that heart and soul in black families. I started putting pressure on Mommy to let me go to a mostly black public school. I was on her and on her and on her. I wouldn’t let up until she said yes.
PEGGY: So one day when Kidada was 14, we drove to Fairfax High, where I gave a fake address and enrolled her.
KIDADA: All those kids! A deejay in the quad at lunch! Bus passes! All those cute black boys; no offense, but I thought white boys were boring. I fit in right away; the kids had my outgoing vibe. My skin and hair had been inconveniences at my other schools–I could never get those Madonna spiked bangs that all the white girls were wearing–but my girlfriends at Fairfax thought my skin was beautiful, and they loved to put their hands in my hair and braid it. The kids knew who my dad was an my stock went up. I felt secure. I was home.
RASHIDA: Our parents divorced when I was 10; Kidada went to live with Dad in his new house in Bel Air, and I moved with Mom to a house in Brentwood. Mom was very depressed after the divorce, and I made it my business to keep her company.
KIDADA: I wanted to live with Dad not because he was the black parent, but because he traveled. I could get away with more.
RASHIDA: At this time, anyone looking at Kidada and me would have seen two very different girls. I wore my navy blue jumper and crisp white blouse; K wore baggy Adidas sweatsuits and door-knocker earrings. My life was school, school, school. I’m with Bill Cosby: It’s every bit as black as it is white to be a nerd with a book in your hand.
KIDADA: The fact that Rashida was good at school while I was dyslexic intimidated me and pushed me more into my defiant role. I was ditching classes and going to clubs.
RASHIDA: About this time, Kidada was replacing me with younger girls from Fairfax who she could lead and be friends with.
KIDADA: They were my little sisters, as far as I was concerned.
RASHIDA: When I’d go to our dad’s house on weekends, eager to see Kidada, the new “little sisters” would be there. She’d be dressing them up like dolls. It hurt! I was jealous!
KIDADA: You felt that? I always thought you’d rejected me.
RASHIDA: Still, our love for the same music–Prince, Bobby Brown, Bell Biv DeVoe–would bring us together on weekends.
Awesome story. Great journalism.
im glad they interviewed them both, instead of just rashida. I definitely relate to this hard, esp to “IF you’re obviously black, white people watch their tongues, but with me they think they can say anything. When people don’t know “what” you are, you get your heart broken daily.”
and
“Passed”?! I had no control over how I looked. This is my natural hair, these are my natural eyes! I’ve never tried to be anything that I’m not. Today I feel guilty, knowing that because of the way our genes tumbled out, Kidada had to go through pain I didn’t have to endure. Loving her so much, I’m sad that I’ll never share that experience with her.”
jfc so many feels while reading this. most of this made me cry.
#YOLO
This attitude isn’t cute or cool at all. And whats sadder is that you’re asian and you’re promoting fetishization of your own race. -first
“Oriental was a rug that everyone steps on, so we ain’t no Orientals. We were Asian American.” -Richard Aoki
Not cool
ew
Opinion: Latina Stereotypes Still Rule TV and Films
Latina stereotypes - the hot mami, the sassy spitfire, the shy maid -have been around forever. It’s time to see some smart Latinas represented.
What Latina stereotypes do you see in the media?
(via fucknofetishization)
Saw this on the Shadow & Act page:
“Things that make you go hmm… QT with actress Nichole Galicia who plays “Sheba” in “Django Unchained” from W Magazine (image courtesy of Marcia Jones).”
I just.
I cannot.
Black bodies never NOT a commodity.
This is for all those people who think I am crazy for thinking Django was commercializing Slavery…how do you feel about this?
I pretty much hate him…
seriously.
fuck tarantino
can someone just throw him in the grand canyon already?
It’s…it’s like she’s a prop. I ugh I can’t eghghghhghggh look at his gross fucking face!!
absolutely disgusting.