daveholmes:

We should all turn off our televisions and close our laptops and go outside and move our limbs and play with each other and laugh and smooch and wrestle, because we are all going to be dead in what will seem like 45 minutes and we are going to stay that way until the end of an infinite number of forevers. 

Have a great weekend!

WOW OK LET’S ALL JUST SUCK THE WHITE DUDE’S DICK OKAY I SEE

BECAUSE GOING OUTSIDE AND PLAYING WITH EACH OTHER AND KISSING WILL SOLVE ERASURE OF POC IN MEDIA

AND YEAH YOU KNOW WHAT, YOU’RE RIGHT, “GIRLS” REALLY IS JUST ANOTHER TV SHOW, IT’S JUST ANOTHER FUCKING TV SHOW WHERE THE MAIN CAST IS MADE UP OF WHITE PEOPLE WHO HANG OUT WITH OTHER WHITE PEOPLE AND LIVE IN PURPORTEDLY THE MOST DIVERSE CITY IN THE WORLD AND YET ONLY EVER HAVE SIGNIFICANT INTERACTIONS WITH WHITE PEOPLE

GOD I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT FUCKING WHITE PEOPLE TRYING TO STAND UP FOR THIS SHOW EVEN IN THE LIGHT OF POC TRYING TO EXPLAIN WHY IT’S PROBLEMATIC, WHY IT IS SIGNIFICANT, I AM SO ANGRY OF WHITE PEOPLE HAVING IT SO EASY ALL THE TIME AND NOT UNDERSTANDING HOW FUCKED UP IT IS TO BE A WOC IN AMERICA AND NEVER, NEVER, TO HAVE HAD A BELIEVABLE TV HEROINE GROWING UP WHO LOOKED LIKE ME AND DID THINGS I DID AND WASN’T A FUCKING CARTOON CHARACTER

I AM SO. SO. TIRED OF FEELING LIKE I HAVE TO APOLOGIZE OR FOR HAVING TO DEFEND MYSELF OR SEEING WOC HAVING TO PARE DOWN THEIR ANGER SO WHITE PEOPLE CAN MAYBE SWALLOW IT OR HAVING WHITE PEOPLE TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD DO WHEN THEY HAVE NEVER EVER EVER CARED TO LISTEN TO ME AND DEFENDING SHITTY, RACIST THINGS THAT ERASE POC AS IF THEIR BULLSHIT REASONS (“‘girls’ is so funny! so good! so believable! so ~*feminist*~!” you’ve gotta be fucking KIDDING me) MEAN ANYTHING

(via gingersmaps)

she-hulk-smash:

You’re smart people. I appreciate you. I’m glad you’re attempting to fight the good fight. But, for the love of all that is holy:

CHECK. YOUR. PRIVILEGE.

Acknowledge that as a white person, you have A LOT of it. Race will always be just a “race issue” to you that you can - and do, on WAY TOO MANY occasions - ignore on a daily basis. For women of color and for ALL people of color, race is not an issue; it is our constant state of being. Women of color are oppressed daily, hourly, by the minute because of it. Being told we must fit a certain stereotype, being told we are inferior, being shown that we are not fit to be seen by the masses on TV and in movies, being fetishized and marginalized and beaten and killed because of who we are.

I refuse to just be a woman for the sake of the feminist movement because I am not just a woman. I am a woman of color. I will not put being just a woman first and foremost above everything else that I am. I refuse to put my race aside because women as a whole have “bigger problems to deal with.” I will not shut up about the lack of racial diversity in The Hunger Games, Girls, and all the other TV shows and movies and books out there that erase me just because you like them. I will not stop including race in the discussion of gender based violence and sexual violence against women of color because race deserves to be included in that dialogue. My identity is intersectional and my feminism is intersectional. If yours is not, it is bullshit. White feminists are not exempt from criticism. 

When women of color talk about racism- real oppression with real consequences and feelings attached to them, and you feel the need to raise your hand and tell us about how we’re making a big deal out of nothing, here is what you need to do:

1. Put your hand down.

2. Shut up.

3. LISTEN. 

Because you will never know or understand what being a woman of color feels like. We are slowly dying from a thousand little papercuts from people who are supposed to be on our team. We have to hear things like “Why are you being so sensitive?” “This isn’t a race issue.” “Making a big deal about racial diversity self sabotages the entire feminist movement.” You know what self sabotages the movement? Refusing to include or even ACKNOWLEDGE the struggles of women of color. Refusing to prioritize us alongside you at the forefront of the movement. You treat us the way that patriarchy treats you, and you are trying my patience. 

With friends like you, we don’t need enemies. 

But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Listen to us, learn from us, acknowledge our existence. Pick up a book. Follow a blog. Stop being an asshole. Don’t shout us down when we talk about our oppression. Quit trying to equate white women’s struggles with WOC struggles because they are not and never will be the same. Understand that this movement is not solely about you. It is equally about us. Our arguments and experiences are just as real and valid as yours. 

White women do not get to be put first. White women are not the default omni-feminist representatives for all women. Progress for white women alone is not progress for the entire movement. It is not “a step in the right direction.” It is a step forward for you and a step backward for us. 

And, while we’re on the topic of intersectionality, when it comes to other “issues” that don’t apply to you including but not limited to ableism, heterosexism, cissexism, and sizeism?

Same shit goes- put your hand down, shut up, and listen. 

All oppressed people have things to say and you do not get to dominate the floor. 

Love, Lauren

calloutqueen:

For what reason I need to give a shit about white people?

Sometimes I don’t even say anything about white people, except that I don’t give a shit. I don’t have to pay attention to anybody I don’t feel like paying attention to.

Also, to say that white people can feel the effects of racism based on being white is a fallacy, within a white supremacist framework (which Western cultures function within) white people cannot be systematically disadvantaged based on their whiteness. There’s a whole host of other ways in which white people can be disempowered within Western culture, their being white is not one of them. 

And I reiterate, I don’t give a shit.

White people should feel bad about being in a racist world. There’s a very precise difference between what I try to do (disregard) and what a racist world does to non-white bodies (destroy). I’m not out to “hurt” people, my attention just doesn’t need to go there, and I don’t need to expend energy to further white supremacist agendas, and I WILL put my energy into improving and promoting the lives and work of POCs. Racism is harmful to everyone, and what I do is not racist, it is focusing my energy in a different direction. I don’t need to apologize for not expending my energy on making white people feel good about being white. If they want to feel good about being white they can look everywhere else in the world and feel validated and empowered. Why should I waste my beautiful brown energy making them feel good. 

It’s not my business if people want to think I’m some arbiter of cool and me not caring hurts them. Because I. Don’t. Care. and that’s not really saying shit except I don’t see you.

(via kynodontas)

quaintrellle:

from 1-2-3 Punch: How Misogyny Hurts Queer Communities

(via sylviaandherfigtree)

deafmuslimpunk:

a very, very good article worthwhile reading. Here’s my favourite part:

Another white privilege Tim Wise and other white anti-racists carry is the ability to emotionally express their views about racism without having that expression dismissed as “angry” or “too emotional”. When Wise speaks passionately and fervently about racism, his expression is understood as a sign of a person standing up for what he believes. As such, it is championed even when he is derisive or sardonic in his remarks. When we, people of color activists, speak passionately about racism, we are maligned and ridiculed as being angry, militant, even hateful and dangerous. If we wish to be heard (let alone understood), we are expected to speak calmly and politely about our experience and analysis regarding racism. Otherwise we are demonized. White moral indignation is justified. Black moral indignation is vilified. This has long been the case.

The third white privilege that Tim Wise and other so-called white anti-racists enjoy is the privilege of being honored for their anti-racist work as their Black activist counterparts and other activists of color are denounced and derided. Case in point: Several years back I spoke at a school in Massachusetts for their annual Dr. King Day commemoration. As I spoke about King’s legacy and the ongoing struggle for racial justice, I was met with outright hostility from the students gathered in the auditorium. The following year I would be contacted by an Arab faculty member at the school. She would inform me that for that year’s King Day event, the school decided to invite Tim Wise to address the student body. She went on to inform me that Wise was received with profound admiration by the very same students that heckled me the year before. Isolated incident? Chance circumstance? To my knowledge, similar events like this have at occurred on two more occasions since.

On one of the other occasions, I was contacted by a Black student organization that had to petition a reluctant administration to gain the necessary approval to invite me to speak. Just one semester following my presentation they would inform me that Tim Wise had just spoken at their school, where he received the red carpet of administrative respect and welcome. When this occurred at a third school, a Vietnamese student emailed me and rhetorically but sincerely asked, “Isn’t this what Tim Wise is supposed to be against?”. In all three cases, persons and groups that reached out to me expressed a level of frustration at witnessing the hypocrisy of the institutions they were working at or attending.

(via fuckyeahethnicwomen)

queennubian:

mzcigz:

 

that-cherokee-bitch:

deanpaints:

On January 12, 2010, one day after his 18th birthday, CAPA High School honors student Jordan Trent Miles was ambushed by three plain clothes Pittsburgh police officers, who failed to identify themselves and approached him aggressively. The officers did not say “Stop! Police!”, they jumped out of an unmarked vehicle, one of them yelling “Where’s your money? Where’s the drugs? Where’s the gun?” Miles, never before in trouble with the police and thinking he was being robbed, began to run, and slipped on the icy sidewalk. The officers overtook Miles and administered a brutal beating that left him unrecognizable, ripping dreadlocks out of his head, and continuing to beat him as he lay on the ground after their initial assault, stammering the Lord’s Prayer. There can be no explaining away or excusing what was done to Miles.

The police officers lied about what happened, claiming there was a bulge in his pocket they assumed was a gun but “turned out to be a Mountain Dew bottle”. No bottle was ever entered into evidence, and Jordan and his friends will tell you he doesn’t even drink the soda. The officers also attempted to claim a neighbor reported him as a prowler and attempted to bring assault charges against Miles, which were tossed out of court when the neighbor said she did no such thing. Despite all this, the City of Pittsburgh went on to reward these violent officers with a commendation and, during their suspension, paid them more than they earned while working. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh DA has not brought charges and the Justice Department announced on May 4th, 2011 that it would not prosecute the three officers. The mayor and police chief announced on May 5th that the three officers would be returning to work.

“I feel that my son was racially profiled,” Terez Miles said. “It’s a rough neighborhood; it was after dark. … They assumed he was up to no good because he’s black. My son, he knows nothing about the streets at all. He’s had a very sheltered life, he’s very quiet, he doesn’t know police officers sit in cars and stalk people like that.” 

http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/

this is exactly what i’m talking about.

look at the pathetic amount of notes on this. why can’t this get coverage? i don’t give a shit about another missing white girl.

Omg :-/

Added edit.

 This happend in my home town in a black neighborhood and while there are tons of blacks in Pittsburgh and the turn out for protests for him are good, they aren’t as good as they could be. 

People just don’t care about us.

(Source: kushite, via queen)

colorfulove:

complex-brown:

 BLACK OUT! At Occupy Philadelphia

We had a Black Out! at Occupy Philadelphia. Why?

Saturday,  two sisters were called Niggers by two of the volunteers at Occupy Philadelphia at the cell-phone charging stations.  They were also told to go back to Africa, and that each white man should own a slave. When the sista’s called security, security asked them to leave the premises because they thought they were apart of the UHURU movement.  Even if they were a part of that movement, they should not have been asked to leave. Especially  without any mention of their verbal and spiritual abuse.

So a small collective formed a drummer’s circle and started a rally, only to be met with on-lookers who didn’t understand why there was a Pan-African flag at an “American” event.  We were called racist.  Many of the people there to support Occupy Philadelphia came to us to tell us that all of us are people and that race is behind us! They told us that we were being divisive.

Bullshit.

When we circled up to come up with a constructive way to address the people, we were constantly interrupted by white people who could not respect our safe space. These people said that it was a public space, and we couldn’t have a group that excuded them. Why is it when black people want to get together to work out our issues in our community we are called out? Sadly, one of the black women who came up to our group suggested we move to another location away from city hall. What?!!

When we wanted to address the people at the people’s assembly, we had to beg to get a spot on the program.  They wanted us to wait until afterwards and get on the open mic.  Also, we had  two people come up to the group and ask if we were going to be violent.  Why would be violent?? Because we are black? We eventually told the gate-keepers that we were going to be given the mic, or we were going to take the mic. We eventually got our spot.

As the sister was talking about her experience, there were some members in support, and there were even members who came up to us afterwards to show support. But many of the people were asking us to hurry up, calm down and finish. One white guy used signals to get us to hurry up.

We spoke out about RACISM IN THE 99 percent.

We spoke out about how nobody was talking about the racist foundation of corporate greed.

How do we talk about classim without taking about racism?

We were called racist because we empowered ourselves and stood up for what was right.

That’s philly for you. Racial divide (not to mention redlining) at its “best”….

glossylalia:

My grandmothers and great-grandmothers were “The Help”, I have aunts who couldn’t finish the book or see the movie because it upset them so much. 

If you’re going to do it, do right by it. Same goes for advertisers. That film shouldn’t have been promoted the way it was. The book and film are both about a young White girl coming into her own, the rest was all just setting. I do not have time for this sugar coated Civil Rights Mickey Mouse bullshit. You want to make a movie about Black women, fucking, make one. If you want it to serve as a vehicle for a young White star because your head is so far up your ass your eyes are shit stained, you can do that too. But you don’t get to co-opt me and my image and my family, just to turn us into cellophane people and then turn around and tell me I should be grateful. Fabulous Black actors have had to come behind sub-par production for years and lift it up on their own, because for some reason they aren’t allowed to have the material or opportunities their training should afford them, and that mess needs to end. Over 30% of the population of the United States in non-White, the fact that even this breakdown isn’t illustrated in media representation should be criminal.

(via gingersmaps)