"I have come to understand liberal white guilt as a particularly worrisome kind of racism, the foundation of tokenism, and an incredible denial of the agency of folks of colour. I think it can offer an extremely attractive psychic loop for us white folk, where we can flagellate ourselves for our individual privilege, watch the folks of color be angry, imagine that feeling guilty does something (beyond reifying feelings of superiority) to mitigate that privilege, and go right back to doing things pretty much the way we always did. “I’m not racist, how can I be when I feel so damn bad about the effects of racism?” “I’m not racist, look at me standing here beside my brown buddy, cleansed by association.” “We’re not racist, look–our meetings always include an ethnic guest, and we try to keep at least one person of colour on staff.” While really, we are so guilty of racism, that we can’t imagine those who we see as the victims of it as anything but, daren’t complicate our analyses of privilege, and fail to work with members of other racialized communities as equal partners."
-
I Married a Marxist Monster, Ziggy Ponting
(from The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence In Activist Communities, co-edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. check our their tumblr!)
(Source: sukoon)
"Trayvon’s blackness wasn’t something he could hide, so it wouldn’t have mattered whether he’d worn a hoodie or a t-shirt that fateful night. It mattered that he was black, and it mattered that the person who shot him had a vendetta out for black men before Trayvon ever set foot in the neighborhood.
It matters that in 2012, there are more black men in prison today than those who were enslaved in 1850. It matters that blacks, in particular black men, are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and underrepresented in colleges. It matters that the black unemployment rate is nearly double that of unemployment for the general population. It matters that blacks are less likely to be screened, diagnosed, and treated for preventable diseases, less likely to own homes, less likely to receive research grants, and more likely to retire in poverty than their white counterparts. It matters that blacks are less likely than whites to abuse drugs, but more likely to be convicted of drug crimes.
None of these statistics are due to a genetic predisposition to violence, poor health and underachievement, instead as a direct result of the disenfranchisement of blacks that has occurred in this country for more than 200 years at the hands of slavery, Jim Crow Laws, discrimination, and the institutionalized racism in our schools, banks, businesses, courts, and prisons that has torn apart our families and fractured our community. Just like Trayvon Martin, race mattered for Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Emmett Till, and hundreds more we will never know the name of who died because of their skin color"
- Angela Marie Davis (via the-lovebelow)
This is Angela Davis yall. (via luvyourselfsomeesteem)
(Source: zorascreation)
"The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower."
- Audre Lorde (via julinkah)
thatneedstogo:
Stopped, Frisked and Speaking Out
The Police Department stopped and questioned more than 684,000 people last year. Close to 90 percent were black and Latino. Civil liberties groups have protested, but rarely do we hear from the men who are so frequently stopped. Filmmakers Lindsey Groot and Robin Antonisse provide us with four such stories in this exclusive video.
"Appoint yourself captain of the neighborhood watch. Don’t set it up with the national program. The national program won’t let you carry a gun or pursue suspects. Do it in a gated development where your black neighbors — 20 percent of the community — are targets of suspicion afraid of leaving their homes. Drive around in an SUV and keep an eye out for suspicious individuals. Look for young black men, the kind you’ve warned people about, the kind you think “always get away.” Monitor the 7-11. Find someone who “looks like he’s up to no good, or [is] on drugs, or something,” someone “carrying something,” someone “looking about.” Call 911."
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How to Get Away With Murder and Other Things the Killing of Unarmed Black Teen Trayvon Martin Teaches Us.
If you want to kill someone and get away with it, tell the police that he attacked you. Tell them you stepped out of your SUV, because you wanted to look at the name of the street you were on. Tell them the kid jumped you from behind. Even if he didn’t have a criminal record. Even if he was an A and B student. Even if you have 110 pounds on him. Even if he was staying at his father’s fiancé’s house, and carrying Skittles and iced tea he’d bought during half time at the local 7-11.
Don’t worry if you sound drunk or high; the police won’t test you for drugs. Don’t worry about your gun; it’s licensed. Don’t worry about your seven-year-old arrest for “resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer”; the charges were dropped. Don’t worry about the cell phone that the kid was on, calling his girlfriend, as he fled from you. No one knows where it is, and no one’s going to investigate it.
Do it in Sanford, Fla., and there’s a good chance the lead investigative officer will be the same guy who didn’t arrest a lieutenant’s son who’d been videotaped attacking a black homeless man. Do it in Sanford, where seven years ago two security guards — one a cop’s son —shot and killed another black teenagerwhom they claimed was trying to run them down after dropping his friends off at an apartment complex.
Do it in a town where the police chief will say without any trace of ironythat his “investigation is color blind and based on the facts and circumstances, not color,” and that he “can say that until I am blue in the face, but, as a white man in a uniform, I know it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.” Kill someone under the jurisdiction of a police chief who’d say that both you and your victim would “probably do things differently” if you both relived that night.
If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it in a country where two of the three major news networks will barely cover your crime, and where it takes three weeks to become a national story. Do it in a country where the only possibility that you might get prosecuted is when the federal government steps in.
You know why this hurts so much? Because it’s true.
(via mehreenkasana)
STOP THE FUCKIN’ PRESSES
I just met (virtually) another queer Latino who goes to school at Columbia from Perris, California.
YEAH. He’s from PERRIS, TOO!
I feel like I just met my twin.
proudcolors:
Proud Colors, Chicano Caucus, and Make the Road New York of Jackson Heights will be having an interactive workshop on queer immigration. We will be discussing immigration and LGBT movements and see how we can make a queer immigration movement that targets this usually ign
ored population, and we will learn why it is important that we don’t ignore the needs of queer immigrants in the United States.
http://www.facebook.com/events/177329039051215/
Snacks and refreshments will be provided.
This event is a precursor to our queer Latin@ art exhibition this Friday, “I am Undocu-Queer!” at Lerner 555. Found here: http://www.facebook.com/events/186058794834365/
Co-Sponsored by: Columbia Office of Multicultural Affairs, Live at Lerner, Columbia Queer Alliance, Everyone Allied Against Homophobia, Lucha, Student Organization of Latin@s
theotherblack:
Artist Kerry James Marshall (acrylic on canvas)
(Source: maschtic)
ladyurduja:
Native Filipina women, circa 1890s.
