May232013

Whenever I issue ultimatums to folks I know, demanding that they stop their racist/misogynist/whateverist problematic behavior, I get this sick clench in my stomach. And I know that’s just my socially-ingrained fear of going too far. But I’ll get over it.

I'm gonna go apply at an ice cream store now deal wit it stupidz Thoughts Portland anxiety society racism sexism islamophobia 

May222013

"She said I probably don’t use soap which is why my skin is so dirty, Brown. Why can’t I just wash my genes clean, wear my face, arms, back, legs in the shade like forsha girls. I learned to hate the sun at a young age, and my skin long before then. No amount of scrubbing and bleach could fade this dirt, this hurt, when I would scrub my hands until hot water scalded and fingers turned red like sunburn— if i could sunburn, and not turn brown instead. I discerned confusion. But you live in America, you should be white! Sorry to disappoint. That my straight A’s don’t stand for “Anglophile” and I don’t fit your fair-complexioned profile. California sunkissed skin translates to it’ll be harder for you to find a man. There was an uncle whom I had never met, What was he like? I asked. Kalo. Dark. Not dark like he was broody, or found morbid humor amusing. Not even tall, dark, and handsome because that word doesn’t belong with the others—dark. They say dark chocolate’s an acquired taste. How long will it be before my bitter flesh turns sweet? Then one day, You look lighter than before! and so I’m loved a little more. The dark shadow crossing my dark eyes, pales next to a paled cheek. I can’t remember the color of my skin. It grows dim, brown paper bag, paper thin, for you to wash me with color or wash me clean. Bleaches and creams, I tried them all, not eight years old, but old enough to hate this shamla chamra, ki nongra. In my land of brown bodies, I must be fair of skin to be lovely."

faeriehana.blogspot.com faeriehana poetry Brown Farhana J. shadeism racism white privilege 

1AM

(Source: clintisiceman, via iamrealindsey)

Gloria Richardson Riot Grrrl Revolution Girl Style NOW! world history 1963 Maryland civil rights human rights racial descrimination racism protest National Guard just following orders abuse of power America United States 

May182013

mixed-impurities:

thugplant:

its hard to be brown and be punk

you’re like the only brown person in the whole goddamn concert venue in a sea of white and ppl give you stares like “wut u doin here” and if punk is supposed to be about ppl on the fringes then dont give me those stares cause you tell me who is more marginalized than the woman of colour.

(via faineemae)

brown grrrl Riot Grrrl WoC subcultures Thoughts high school racism white privilege 

April272013
ianthe: Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test Hundreds of Chicago students are taking up the mantle in the fight against the role of standardized tests in public school closures as they walked out of a state exam Wednesday. Their message: “We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up!” Over 300 students from over 25 different Chicago public schools boycotted the second day of a state-wide standardized test. Ahead of a school board meeting, at which the demonstrators were banned from speaking, the students rallied outside the district headquarters carrying placards and forming a human chain. “We’re just trying to make a statement that tests should not determine our future or the future of our schools,” said student organizer Alexssa Moore, a senior at Lindblom High School. Brian Sturgis, senior at Paul Robesan High School and boycott organizer with the group Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS), declared in an op-ed “We are Chicago students and we are here to save our schools!” He writes: Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist. These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous. Sturgis explains that Mayor Emanuel and the Board of Education are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don’t have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported. This is what happened when 68 low-scoring juniors were demoted to sophomore status at a southwest side high school in Chicago last month, right before the state test. The student boycott follows a protest earlier this month, Occupy the Department of Education, during which teachers and education activists descended on the Capitol to draw attention to the rampant privatization of public schools and the rash of recent school closures. In February, a nationwide day of action led by the Seattle school teachers’ boycott of a standardized test brought this issue to national attention.

ianthe:

Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test


Hundreds of Chicago students are taking up the mantle in the fight against the role of standardized tests in public school closures as they walked out of a state exam Wednesday. Their message: “We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up!”

Over 300 students from over 25 different Chicago public schools boycotted the second day of a state-wide standardized test.

Ahead of a school board meeting, at which the demonstrators were banned from speaking, the students rallied outside the district headquarters carrying placards and forming a human chain.

“We’re just trying to make a statement that tests should not determine our future or the future of our schools,” said student organizer Alexssa Moore, a senior at Lindblom High School.

Brian Sturgis, senior at Paul Robesan High School and boycott organizer with the group Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS), declared in an op-ed “We are Chicago students and we are here to save our schools!”

He writes:

Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist. These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous.

Sturgis explains that Mayor Emanuel and the Board of Education

are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don’t have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported. This is what happened when 68 low-scoring juniors were demoted to sophomore status at a southwest side high school in Chicago last month, right before the state test.

The student boycott follows a protest earlier this month, Occupy the Department of Education, during which teachers and education activists descended on the Capitol to draw attention to the rampant privatization of public schools and the rash of recent school closures.

In February, a nationwide day of action led by the Seattle school teachers’ boycott of a standardized test brought this issue to national attention.

(via faineemae)

standardized tests society America United States world news public education education standardized testing students Seattle Washington Chicago Illinois high school grammar schools Department Of Education racism 

March72013

(Source: mzaipa, via faineemae)

Hawaii Kingdom Of Hawaii world history imperialism colonialism white privilege racism society 1893 January 17th Lili'uokalani Queen Lili'uokalani United States American History 

February202013

(Source: artismyhustle, via westindians)

racism white privilege society world history 

3PM

mohandasgandhi:

theneighbourhoodsuperhero:

Just saw these photos of Ramadhaan 2012 in Guantanamo, made me tear up crazy ways man, most of these men are about to spend their 20th -24th Eid in captivity.

Keep them and their families in your du’aas iA.

This is extremely touching whether you’re a Muslim or not. GITMO is one of the United States’ greatest failures in recent history and it’s something we should become more ashamed of as each day that it remains open passes. Here are a few reasons why to refresh everyone’s memory:

  • About 780 people have been held at Guantanamo. At least 158 have been determined to be completely innocent thus far. Only 220 were ever considered dangerous threats and 380 were deemed to be “low-ranking guerrillas.”
  • At least 15 children have been detained.
  • Of the 166 people still being detained, at least 55 have been cleared for release.
  • Of the nearly 800 people detained at Guantanamo Bay, only 3 have been formally charged by a military court with a crime: David Hicks, Salim Hamdan, and Ali al-Bahlul. 
  • We even detained an Al Jazeera cameraman for 6 years, partially so we could interrogate him about the network. 
  • Other detainees have included an Afghan taxi driver, captured “because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver,” an Afghan gentleman because he was a Mullah in a city where some members of the Taliban were suspected of living, and a British man who was detained because U.S. officials assumed he had knowledge of the Taliban because he was once imprisoned by them. 
  • The Bush administration knew early on that innocent people were being detained and were of little to no intelligence value but higher up officials, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, refused to release prisoners because doing so would have left a “black mark” on their leadership and been “politically difficult.” 
  • 6 detainees are reported to have committed suicide. However, strong allegations exist that the designation of at least 3 of the deaths as suicides were attempts to cover up homicides. In addition, hundreds of suicide attempts and rampant self-harm among prisoners has been documented. In fact, during the first year and a half after the prison was opened alone, 18 detainees carried out 28 suicide attempts. 
  • Detainees have been widely subjected to physical and psychological torture during interrogations and as a form of discipline. Some of these alleged techniques include waterboarding, sexual assault/rape/harassment and humiliation by both male and female interrogators, severe sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement, mock executions, medical experimentation, forced medical treatments and procedures (some detainees reported doctors forced, or attempted to force, unnecessary amputations), withholding medical treatment, threats of dog attacks, subjecting detainees to temperature extremes, sometimes to temperatures bellow freezing or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, prolonged sensory bombardment, such as exposure to loud, irritating sounds and bright lights, often permanently damaging eyes and ears, threats of transfer for torture in other countries, exposure to irritating chemicals and substances, physical beatings, some of which have resulted in permanent injuries such as confinement to a wheelchair, shackling prisoners and putting them in painful stress positions for hours at a time, refusal to allow detainees to use the bathroom, the repeated use of tear gas and pepper spray, oxygen deprivation, the removal of everything but underwear and the Qur’an from cells, desecration of the Qur’an, religious humiliation, interference with religious practices (famous examples include female interrogators sexually assaulting detainees during prayers, guards forcing detainees to strip before prayers, withholding food when fasting breaks during Ramadan), force-feeding detainees during hunger strikes, causing detainees to bleed from the nose and throat, vomit, and go to the bathroom on themselves, etc.
  • The Obama administration has decided not to investigate or prosecute any U.S. officials for torture or abuse. 
  • Guantanamo Bay isn’t going to be closed any time soon.

(via iamrealindsey)

world news world history society human rights dehumanized Guantanamo Bay United States Islamophobia racism Ramadhaan Ramadan Eid child abuse rape sexual assault sexual violence torture sleep deprivation solitary confinement malpractice physical abuse Obama Administration Bush Administation abuse of power 

February142013

“Motherfuckers will read a book that is 1/3 Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they think we’re taking over.” — Junot Diaz, to the interview question: “Do you think using Spanish in your writing alienates some of your readers?”

Junot Diaz society world history racism white privilege literature English Spanish assimilation colonialism xenophobia 

January312013

“Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms for the word, “black”. It’s always something degrading, low, and sinister. Look at the word, “white”. It’s always something pure, high, clean.”

Martin Luther King Jr. world history racism etymology society language white privilege 

January302013

faineemae:

I just laugh at white people who say that they get stared at and discriminated because of their tribal tattoos, ear gauges and their dreadlocs. You appropriating assholes choose to dress this way when PoC have these things in their cultures but they get called barbaric and savage for doing so.

(Source: faineemae)

white privilege hipsters hipster racism racism culture appropriation tribal tattoos ear gauges dreadlocks society Faineemae 

January252013

(Source: i---i, via lioneater)

society patches Riot Grrrl sexism racism smash the patriarchy Revolution Girl Style NOW! 

January62013

“They choke cities like snowstorms on the morning train, I flip through my Ebony, marveling at the bargain basement prices for reams of straightened hair and bleaches for the skin. Next to me, skinny pink fingers rest upon a briefcase shiver a bit under my scrutiny. Leaving the tunnel, we hurtle into hurting sun. An icy brush paints the buildings with shine, fat spirals of snow become blankets, and Boston stops breathing. It is my habit to count them. So I search the damp, chilled length of the train car and look for their candle flames of hair, the circles of blood at their cheeks, that curt dismissing glare reserved for the common, the wrinkled, the black. I remember striving for that breathlessness, toddling my five-year-old black butt around with a dull gray mophead covering my nappy hair, wishing myself golden. Pressing down hard with my carnation pink Crayola, I filled faces in coloring books, rubbed the waxy stick across the back of my hand until the skin broke. When my mop hair became an annoyance to my mother, who always seemed to be mopping, I hid beneath my father’s white shirt, the sleeves hanging down on either side of my head, the coolest white light pigtails. I practiced kissing, because to be blonde and white meant to be kissed, and my fat lips slimmed around words like “delightful” and “darling.” I hurt myself with my own beauty. When I was white, my name was Donna. My teeth were perfect; I was always out of breath. In first grade, my blonde teacher hugged me to her because I was the first in my class to read, and I thought the rush would kill me. I wanted her to swallow me, to be my mother, to be the first fire moving in my breast. But when she pried me away, her cool blue eyes shining with righteousness and too much touch, I saw how much she wanted to wash. She was not my mother, the singing Alabama woman who shook me to sleep and fed me from her fingers. I could not have been blacker than I was at that moment. My name is Patricia Ann. Even crayons fail me now — I can find no color darker, more beautiful, than I am. This train car grows tense with me. I pulse, steady my eyes, shake the snow from my short black hair, and suddenly I am surrounded by snarling madonnas demanding that I explain my treachery.”

poetry black-poetry Patricia Smith Blonde White Women racism internalized racism white privilege society 

December222012

(Source: majorblackgirlproblems, via girlsgetbusyzine)

majorblackgirlproblems racism white privilege cosmetics intersectionality Riot Grrrl Thoughts 

3PM

“I was born in Elgin, Texas. My daddy taught himself the carpenter trade doing for the black folk there. I tell you, anything that man put his hand to - table, chair, wedding chest - he make that wood sang. Now one day, a man, Mr. T. O. Persall come ‘round. He a white man, own his own store, stable, hotel. He say to my daddy: “I hears you the finest carpenter in Elgin.” My daddy tell him: “well I can’t say one way or the other, but I knows a bit about somethin’.” So Mr. T. O. Persall take my daddy to this house he was building. Biggest house in town. They walk in there, say: “this here gon’ be the library. What you think ‘bout that?” My daddy say: “Well I think you need some bookcases.” “Well then, that’s what I want you to make me.” Ten months my daddy worked there. And when he finished, he bring me ‘round. “Mr. Persall, this here my boy. I’d like to show him what I done.” “Well, come on in! Through the front door!” Just like that! And we did. When I see them bookcases, all covered with scroll and flowers, baskets of fruit, little angels floatin’ in the corner… that was the most beautiful thing I ever seen. About a month later, another man come ‘round. “I see what you did for T. O. Can’t let that old dog top me. You come ‘round my house, I’ll show you what I need. My daddy go with him to the edge of town. Wasn’t nothin’ there but six white men, twelve foot of rope, and the pepper tree they hung him from.”

Boardwalk Empire lynching Chalky White racism hate crimes 

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