RaiThunder - Breaking Storm

28th May 2012

Post reblogged from Ms. Blaspheming Bitch with 92 notes

siddharthasmama:

dank-potion:

So Pro-life Conservatives care about poor Black children up until they’re born and can no longer serve as a propaganda tool for their anti-choice, autonomy-denying political stance via emotional appeal? Because God forbid those poor Black children grow up and actually need any monetary assistance (right because they’re poor, remember?), then they’re just the useless spawns of loose, filthy welfare queen whores destined to grow up and become thugs, menaces to society and deserve the same ill fate that people such as Trayvon Martin suffered?

Right.

Basically. Also, file under: reasons why the “put it up for adoption” argument fails — POC babies are less likely to be adopted, more likely to be into abusive foster care/orphanages, and become considered parasites to the state/society on the whole.

Source: dank-potion

28th May 2012

Post reblogged from Deal With It! with 20 notes

“Korra is not Black!” , “Why are you making such a big deal out of nothing?” , and other Phrases I could Happily Live Without ever Hearing Again.

korraisnottan:

desertedreality:

Big fan of Legend of Korra here. Sometimes fandom is awesome, and sometimes fandom could be described, I suppose, as equal parts joy and frustration/stabby emotional pain.

Since I check out a lot of fanart, I see a lot of the stuff were Korra’s been, well..lightened a lot, or given pink tones to the point that someone unfamiliar with the show would never guess that that character had brown skin from looking at the fanart… not that I would want to be so extreme as to characterize such practices as whitewashing.

And sometimes, against my very best judgment, I read the, er…discussions that develop on the topic of these pictures. And as has been pointed out by others with much more brevity and clarity than you will ever get from me, there is a particular set of statements that seem to keep recurring: the spontaneous “Korra is not Black!” …even though no one said she was in the first place, often accompanied or followed by the sincerest of bafflement that the individual being replied to is upset about such trivia issues as these.

I have so many feels about this, so I wanted to comment but I keep having to re-write this post because I don’t know how to say what I need to. Plus, this is me we’re talking about, so this is going to be like 4000 words long. You have been warned.

I want all the people who say things like that, to understand how much it hurts real people when you, yes, you personally, perpetuate that attitude by saying those things you said.

So yeah, I wanted to specifically talk about the “anything but Black” attitude that is so obvious in the reflexive and unprovoked “Korra is not Black!” denials.

How about a story?

When my father introduces me to new people, he always outright tells them that “[I’m] Indian.(1)” It didn’t register with me as a kid, but I started thinking about it as I got older and I realized that he’s never not done that. He does it Every. Single. Time. Why? If he really didn’t care about what race I was, why bring it up all the time? It bothered me.

Over time, I’ve concluded that it’s because he doesn’t want people to mistake me for that ‘bad’ kind of brown person. You know. *whispers* Black people. I don’t think this is something conscious, or that he’s ever articulated the issue to himself that clearly, but it has become obvious to me that while my parents don’t care that I’m not-White, at the very least it’s important to them that I be not-Black.

There was one particular incident that also sticks with me, one with my mother, when I made the mistake of trying to talk explicitly about my race. We were talking about it and I was just kind like, “Mom, what if I was Bl—” and I remember she cut me off. “You’re not Black.” And that was just… wow, the way she said it. I never brought it up again.

…and I won’t bring it up with my father either. There’s just no way a conversation like that is going to go well. And I don’t have the heart to burn any bridges over this. I love my parents. I want to stay close to my father, especially after my mother has passed away. On this point I’ll make a personal decision to suffer in silence.

So when you say things like that, especially when you’re refuting something that nobody claimed in the first place… if you can’t understand why it hurts…Just think a little and put yourself in my place, and the places of people like me.

I want…wanted… to believe that my parents completely loved me for me and that it really, really, really didn’t matter to them that I was a different race, that it really wouldn’t have mattered to them if I was black. And I can’t. I can’t believe that because I don’t think it’s true.

If I had been a little darker, if my hair had been tighter curled or god forbid, Black hair, would they still have wanted me? Would they still have looked at that baby and though she was beautiful, and taken her home with them? I honestly don’t know, and that hurts. It hurts to think about and I’m crying as I write this because it’s just a little too much.

So when people pull that “Korra’s not Black!” reflex, that’s all I think about, is my father telling every new person we meet that his daughter is Indian(1) so they won’t think she’s Black, because how terrible would that be? And it fucking hurts.

And yeah, you couldn’t be expected to know about my unique special snowflake trigger, and I don’t expect people to bend over backwards whatever to protect me or my feelings, but here’s the thing-I’m not unique in this. So many people have been through so many different crappy situations because of this, all leading them to the same horribly familiar places… Colorism, the results of the Doll Test, people bleaching their skin because they hate it so much.

Because this shit is everywhere. In the media, and in society, and we get this stuff from everywhere. It is not a small issue, it has serious effects on real people. A lot of them.

And all people are asking is that you think for two seconds before you add to it. Is that really so much to ask?

Is it really so hard to understand how bad this can hurt others, even if it’s ‘not a big deal’ to you?

Is it really?

(2)A detailed account of my parent’s attitudes towards race and incidents associated with it is not the purpose of this article, and I hope the omission of such a litany doesn’t weaken my descriptions of our family dynamic too much, but that is a topic for another post if ever.

(1) To explain the use of quotes around Indian, along with some other related thoughts, here is another post, because it’s a massive digression and deserves its’ own post anyway.

Deedee:

Thank you for telling your story. I don’t think people get how screaming to the heavens that Korra is not black is hurtful to actual real people. 

Source: desertedreality

27th May 2012

Post reblogged from representation, motherfucker. --can you speak it? with 11,820 notes

goretrait:

can we all just take a second to appreciate the fact spiders can’t fly

Source: goretrait

27th May 2012

Post reblogged from Ms. Blaspheming Bitch with 207 notes

White People Study: Some Analysis

ladyatheist:

Something I’m noticing while reviewing my data is the misunderstanding of what racism is. It feels like a lot of the test subjects seem to think that in order for a white person to be considered racist, they have to burn crosses, wear white robes, scream “white power” while doing the Nazi salute and/or call every black person they meet a n*gger. That line of logic doesn’t seem to hold true for PoC though. In order for them to consider us racist, all we have to do is say something they don’t like in a manner they deem “inappropriate.” That seems to be very hypocritical and, for the test subject, very advantageous. Using this extremely convoluted form of logic, the test subject can never be considered “racist” because they haven’t done any of those things but anyone who disagrees with them can be and probably is.

They also avoid the definition of racism that says it is a system of power put in place to discriminate against a group of people based on race. If they were to acknowledge that this was the definition of racism, they would then have to acknowledge that American society runs off a system of white supremacy that puts everyone who is not white at a distinct disadvantage. Since most of the test subjects are white, that means they would have to come to the realization that the benefit from a racist system and may have, at some point, participated in it. Unfortunately, this seems to be too much for them to handle. They would rather take the easier path they have set up for themselves where they’re not racist but everyone else is.

Source: ladyatheist

27th May 2012

Post reblogged from representation, motherfucker. --can you speak it? with 78 notes

You know what’s a great treatment for PTSD?

liquornspice:

Demilitarizing the hood. 

Not using fucking flash grenades and paramilitary tactics in our neighborhoods.  Not fucking RAIDING people’s neighborhoods because they’re here w/o bullshit paperwork.  Not RAIDING people’s neighborhoods because the only jobs left are selling drugs to white suburbanites. Stop DUMPING TOXINS in our gulf, air, food, all over the reservations you stuck people on.  Let Indians prosecute non-Indians for rape committed on their land against their communities.    

Other great preventative treatments:  Not doing strip searches. Not doing cavity searches. Not stopping and frisking. 

You could pay to train more mental health professionals to provide assembly-line therapy… or you could fucking get rid of people’s debt so we can LIVE and heal ourselves. 

We need rest. We need sleep. We need food. We need our families.

We need time between the violence inflicted on us. Right now there’s none. It’s constant. A cop is always ready to shoot. People are always hungry.  Constant exposure to violence and nothing but work work work workworkwork just to die sooner after living with a broken mind, body, spirit…

And y’all still wonder why we’re angry?

Source: liquornspice