whenever i see pictures reblogged of the president and his family as if all is well and he isn’t basically destroying the lives of his people and other POC all around the world, i feel angry and and sick to my stomach. i feel absolutely nothing but moral disgust and ethical recoil from obama and our media and our government. there is no fucking justification for upholding their lies, or admiring what pretty buppie photo opportunities they create; if that is a part of your dream then live in your ignorance and die in that lack.
If people are interested in building radical liberatory communities, they must first be open to the concept of sharing. Sharing friends, sharing connections, events, information, power :all the necessary resources for the creation of community. It is reactionary and oppressive to engage with one another in the commodity mindset, where you feel like you’ve ‘earned’ your social connections and the resources and power that come with it and so you get to put up hurdles and outright or passive-aggressively undermine those who are reaching out to engage with those social networks. This might be more of a problem in the Pacific Northwest, and specifically PDX, because POC mimic the way in which white people here turn every social interaction into an opportunity to try and prove how much more they know than you or how much more connected they are than you, etc.Everything is a secret club that you ‘obviously’ aren’t good enough to be in; this sort of social interaction is oppressive and inherently toxic. QPOC and Rad POC here often like to form tiny cliques and make loud pronouncements about them being awesome inclusive spaces while acting out multiple problematic exclusionary social behaviors. People are loathe to relinquish the oppressive patterns of relationship network building that reflect the ‘in-group’ versus ‘out-group/scapegoat’ dynamic we all internalized by the time we were in high school.
If someone is a writer or a creative RadPOC or QPOC, they should not have to prove their ‘social worthiness’ in order to be included in planning and engaging with social events. It is abelist and oppressive to expect people to be able to all socialize in the same way or to even be able to engage in certain kinds of social banter & interaction. For many, this is impossible. It is important, it is radical and liberatory to be open to this fact. It is ethically unsound to require that people display social behaviors that make them passively nonthreatening to you, either by conforming to the set behaviors within one of your social cliques or by being so completely in thrall to you that you can control and facilitate their interaction. This is a violation of interpersonal respect and psychological autonomy.
Building radical liberatory communities of color involves having an open hand and a conscious sense of purpose that is willing to interrogate all the ways in which we have been colonized, all the ways in which we oppress one another. It is taking accountability for oppressive interpersonal behaviors in a radical way and refusing to write things off as “well, people aren’t perfect” (as if asking for interpersonal ethical accountability is asking for perfection) or “you have to accept people where they are at” ( which usually means a similar level of unaccountability that you or the clique in question are at). We are all inherently interdependent, no one ‘owns’ one form of creativity or engagement, and there is nothing to gain by playing the game of being THE writer/activist/poet/artist/etc of Color and acting as if everyone else is an imposter or interloper. That is simply doing what white people want you to do: wallow and glory in your tokenization while amongst them and use that headspace to oppress and marginalize and exclude other POC when you go to engage and build with other RadPOC and QPOC. Understand yourself to be worthy, and also other POC to be Just As Worthy.
my thing with white cis men is this: i only interact or get involved with them at any depth if i am attracted to them. i have white cis male ‘acquaintances’, but if i let them know anything about me at all or bother to have any conversations in depth with them, i am usually attracted to them. the reason for this is the level of stress interacting with whiteness, in particular the white privilege and blindness of white cis males (even those who think they are radical or progressive or ‘concious’) is extremely intense. it requires a lot more from me than it does from them; that is the nature of our white supremacist kyriarchal culture. so if i am opening to them at all, the effort is inspired by attraction and if it isn’t reciprocal then i am not able/willing to expend the effort to open myself. i am not an interesting desexualized doorway into another way of being; that is this role that black womyn get thrust into by white cis males waaaaaaaaaay too often and is pretty dehumanizing and humiliating. there are also the erotic aspects of racism; our desires emanate from our libidinal economies and so finding a black womyn attractive often requires a lot of ontological acrobatics from white cis men and their willingness to even approach that is based on whether the black womyn has enough proximity to whiteness in her appearance and if she is embedded enough in social contexts that involve a lot of class privilege and proximity to whiteness that are familiar to the white cis man. otherwise, they aren’t willing to make half the effort to open themselves; they aren’t willing to do anything that barely approaches the amount of effort a black womyn has to put in to make herself legible to a white cis-male.
in fact, being a black womyn’s lover is this massive undertaking, to the point where most white cis-males basically feel like it is taking on a wife or a heavy ‘relationship’ if they don’t get to treat you like an exotic sexual experience that has the added benefit of black womyn’s lauded ‘strength and practicality’, ie: won’t be hurt by what you do or say and won’t care if you disappear. or if you won’t be their ‘interesting super-buddy’. all of this is just disheartening, because as a black womyn, you can want a simple thing, but it gets magnified and twisted into a burden or objectification. i’m just tired of both things.
and i am tired about people not caring what i want, and i am tired of even the tiniest request being too much, and i am tired of black men who don’t know how to be lovers & who expect my eternal patience and eternal lesson-giving in reciprocity and i am tired of people conflating monogamy and romance or being someone’s lover and romance or not understanding that ‘romantic relationships’ are this inherently oppressive construct that we should fight to unpack & unravel and comrade lovers is what we all are.
i live in this liminal space that is a new way and wish people could be able to comprehend this.my queer radical folks seem to get this; we are on the same page often. but even that has its limits. i am a little sick of being an experiment or a teacher and i am not a very good doorway or bridge.
i get really bored with white people who blithely erase people of color who say something they don’t want to hear by citing the opinion of a poc who does tell them what they want to hear and then going ‘some people are just offended by everything, and there’s nothing you can do about it…’
it is lazy, and ignorant to do this. people who do this though will probably live in their ignorance and die in that lack.
i am very depressed and tired about the power white people have to repeatedly make you life hell if you are a black person. they own most properties and so their decision to rent to you depends on if they have taken the giant leap of getting past their own racism and classism.
if you date them, as a black woman, you are often an object, idealized or not, and generally disposable. you’re never anyone’s ideal, not even other black people’s ideal. we have a culture that says love is for your ‘soulmate’, that glorifies finding a perfect lover and that perfect lover is never black. when you have romantic/sexual relationships with white people, no matter how radical or ‘left-leaning’ their politics, they feel like they deserve a bunch of credit for being with you. if they abuse and mistreat you emotionally and/or physically (oh, and they will abuse you emotionally. the ontological violence, the defensive process of acknowledging and unpacking their whiteness is usually too much for them to remain responsible and responsive to another human being, because it is the process of understanding that black people exist as individuals in ways far more diverse than any of our cultural narratives allow, and also that the oppression they face is far more complex than the simplistic answers our culture presents, and the tension between this process and your humanity as a black person is usually too much for them to act empathetic or in the end even civil…) they will expect to get a pass because hey! at least they tried it with a black person, which is more than most people will do.
if you are a part of any artistic milieu, you will be tokenized, and the white artists, writers, musicians, etc will respond with all kinds of defensive hysteria if you mention the erasure people of color face in that scene. oh, the best you can hope for is white guilt, someone trotting out their weak class analysis as an excuse as to why they aren’t racist or how white privilege & racism is very very sad but what can they do? (continue to wallow in their privilege. or….they could actively recruit and engage with black people. OHHH but that wouldn’t be ‘fair’, you know? because despite the incredibly oppressive and unjust advantages white privilege give white writers & artists, it would just be too much for them to facilitate the engagement and advancement of more than two POC in their scene. let alone black POC. oh and as a reminder, your black buddies/ex-lover/professor don’t count. if class privilege is what makes you comfortable with black people then you are still a fucking racist.)
most of the time, if you talk about the way in which racism affects your life, white people either act as if you are telling them some kind of much-too-personal information that they would rather not hear, or make a ‘listening face’ as tight as the wall their white privilege represents while you speak, then offer either their credentials as an ‘ally’ or a bunch of anecdotal nonsense that you are supposed to take as a sincere sign they ‘heard’ you or that they ‘get it’. after this they usually try to change the subject (or soon you hope they will b/c if not they’ll spend an hour sucking you into a narrative about them, what they ‘know’ about black people, and then some kind of ‘disadvantage’ or vulnerability they have that they think approximates the ontological violence that is the centering of whiteness.or maybe they’ll spend as long as you’ll let them trying to convince you that anti-blackness is this hallucination and you should focus on something else.anything to center whiteness, anything to regain narrative control against the voice of the Other.). empathy and radical vulnerability and engagement are usually never where this confrontation (and even mentioning race to white people is a ‘confrontation’, is to ‘antagonize’ them, because of how thorough the erasure of black subjectivity is.) goes.
there are white people who this applies to who follow my tumblr; i sometimes wonder if they ever think about this and get together any sort of response besides white guilt or resentment or fearful confused (but ‘supportive’) silence. to be anti-kyriarchal, to be anti-whiteness is an active process. it requires complete lived engagement with POC, with black people in particular (because of the unique oppression members of the african diaspora face; anti-blackness is at the root of our culture.), and for white people to use their privilege to create more space and designate more resources for black people. it is more than just writing papers and dating/fucking black people, having black friends, doing ‘organizing’ with black people. it is a commitment to the abolishment of whiteness and its attendant privileges, whatever it ‘costs’ the white person.
♥ 13
→ 23 Apr 12 at 12 pm
→ 23 Apr 12 at 12 pm
first off, i would like to say that i really like following you on tumblr, i like your writing, and you seem very cool, like someone i would want to know offline. that said…..so….i can understand where you are coming from, but i do not think the other woman was being rude. in fact, she said exactly what i would have said, and i would’ve been more triggered than her; when someone points out your privilege that does not mean they are erasing your struggle. it is simply a call to awareness, to struggle with the contrasts and the systemic nature of all of our oppressions. i mean, honestly, intraracial privilege is an issue in many of the radical groups of POC i work with, and those who have it seem to resort to the types of behaviors white people & white women in particular display when called on their privilege. i know that you understand that POC can have white privilege, and that privilege is based on their proximity to whiteness and that the more you fufill the ideal of acceptable blackness the more privilege you receive in society. i can make the point that a lot of prominent black women who are in academia or whose voices are listened to have a lot of privilege in one way or another that gives them that access. you also know that one of the main elements of privilege is its invisibility to those who have it.
there is also an element of wounding/triggering for me here; i am a light-skinned black woman, of black and NDN heritage, from the south, with hair that is tightly coiled and not anywhere close to the ideal of acceptable blackness, and i have been shamed/mistreated/denigrated for not fully embodying the construction of ideal black female appearance from everyone to my mother to nearly ALL of my lovers and people that i know, white and black, to this day…
( for example, a week or two ago a WOC who is biracial,with one black parent and who could pass for white was talking to me about my dating woes. when i mentioned the many times i have been rejected b/c of my blackness, b/c of someone’s inability to deal with my hair or my skin, etc, she decided to push back against that with some bullshit about ‘oh, well are you sure it is that? i always just feel like things don’t work out, i don’t really feel that people reject me or even you just because of being black, are you sure that’s what it’s about? and i felt erased, again. like the constant rejection and othering i experience is some kind of hallucination i can escape somehow.as if she didn’t have an incredible amount of privilege. she was using that power and privilege to erase me, in some ways more thoroughly than a white woman could, because she is our culture’s ideal of who i am, and therefore i am illegible. this is so painful.)
we are a society that privileges and polices people who fall outside of norms of appearance that are based on whiteness and POC, especially black people, attack one another viciously within that cage. sometimes it makes me want to weep tears of fustration and shame when black women who have so much more privilege than me complain about when people didn’t think they were ‘black’ enough, because i have had that too, but it was layered over with the idea that b/c i didn’t have good enough hair/more european features i was somehow getting above myself for being who i was. in my experience, people from africa who look close to the ideal for black women in america get so much more support and space to exist;even in radical POC spaces, they have less to prove than someone like me, are considered more ‘authentic’ for some reason, etc…the privilege is there, is real, and i know it is invisible to you and women who are like you. but you are still responsible for unpacking it, you know? and for actively working to understand and mitigate the effects your privilege has on other marginalized people within POC safe spaces. what appears to you to be a rather insignificant bit of privilege is like the massive mountain that i have always stood at the foot of that rains boulders down upon me and gets hurt when i start screaming about being unable to ever climb, not wanting to climb and just wanting the rocks to stop.
it is important for us to struggle together with one another through our defenses; decolonization is a confusing and painful process.
peace and be well…
I posted something yesterday that a lot of black American/Canadian women AND East African American alike read as very “woe-is-me” in a group I contribute to called The Africana. So I was told to check my privilege. I did. The fact still remains that this is a nuanced discussion and while I may fit into the black beauty ideal (barely, but I will say I do because it’s the truth), many East African women don’t. Some Black American/Canadian/etc. women do fit into this ideal and are rewarded. These women who do fit the bill have little hierarchical advantage, as black still isn’t a “beautiful” aesthetic in this white supremacist world we live in.
The feedback on Tumblr was different. A lot of women of color on Tumblr weren’t as critical of the piece. Maybe that’s because they know me/like me or maybe that was because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. At any rate, this girl’s comments only started to hurt when got progressively more passive-aggressive. I did not feel like she addressed me with dignity.
These are all her comments. Some of them are addressed to me, other parts are addressed to a friend named Muna, who is also in a position of privilege.
To be honest, I think this is a tad problematic and reminiscent of the “light skinned girl (or white girl) woe-is-me complex.”
I don’t think it was a breath of fresh air. I think it is a reasonable topic of discussion but I think it is problematic in not recognising the aesthetic mainstream privilege East African woman of that particular aesthetic fair in this discussion. A privilege I have come to see time and time again that is unrecognised and unacknowledged by women of this aesthetic but rather diverted to this particular area of topic that too me seems again exemplary of the woe-is-me complex.
The systemic privilege women of colour who are “more appealing” to white society fair as can be seen in job attainment, earlier prison release and the like are all larger issues that stem from this very topic and yet this post is projecting a “why are we the acceptable image of a white man’s desire.” Uhm…yeah.
Yes. Is that not the recognition disenfranchised bodies seek from privileged bodies? But not solely profit but privilege, benefit in so many (and I mean so many ways).
This rhetoric is really saddening because what we are failing to see is how this post is an example of the many ways in which we do not acknowledge the several forms of intra-racial disenfranchisement experienced by particular bodies and women of colour within black spaces and seems like a diversion of energies in terms of its critical discussion because the fact still remains East African women of this aesthetic are deemed socially as aesthetically superior bodies of colour and yet, here we have a post complaining about that.
Really?
Of course, these lines are highly nuanced and without question I do not deny its reason for being explore. However, I do disagree with its need for exploration. One can theorise why women of this aesthetic are upheld. I’m sure we all can see the myraid of reason that, do not get wrong, are extremely problematic and proof of the existence of white supremacy and racism and white standards/ideals of beauty, no doubt.
But that doesn’t change the fact that privilege in this respect exists and this post, to me, seems like a diversion and unacknowledgment of this very privilege. But hey, that’s just me.
My reply to her:
I agree with the points you’ve made. I was talking about this with my sister earlier, how even the position I’m in and how I approach this topic is incredibly privileged. I think my ultimate point is that the white standard of beauty, as re-inscribed through the modeling industry’s black ideal of beauty oppresses all of us. However, I get your point that I am significantly less oppressed by this ideal, as I do fit into the ideal. My sister read the comments and said, “You’re sorta doing what white women do when they lament the white standard of beauty. You still benefit from this ideal and lamenting the absurdity and coloniality of this mindset doesn’t change that.” I apologize for making this about my plight as a Somali woman but I hope you realize this affects me, too, even if I benefit from it.
Her reply:
But I think that’s the difficult about privilege that is seemingly a hard pill to swallow. I think however this “I hope you realise this affects me too, even if I benefit from it” seems to embody the very problem I have with the nature of this. It does affect you and you do benefit from it, hence the privilege. But then to go as far as to say that it “oppresses all of us” is where it makes me incredibly weary. This is too reminscent of rhetoric made by lighter skinned women who are also aesthetically privileged in similar ways, not unlike yourselves with this whole, “I’m oppressed too” or white women who shout the same phrases. The fact still remains that this self-oppression as a privileged (in this area, of course) undermines the oppression of women who do not have this privilege and denigrated on account of this very privilege you have. That statement undermines the oppression of these women.
Also, the statement made above by Muna: “I did not ask to be made a standard, after all” was probably one of the most gut wrenching statements. No disrespect to you Muna, not at all. But that statement. “I did not ask to be made white, after all.” “I did not ask to be made lighter skinned, after all.” That was really hurtful (disgusting) for lack of a better term. “I did not ask to be made privileged, after all.” The reality is, you were born as such, so address it and deal with. No one chooses the life they are given or the identities they are bestowed with, but the reality is, the privilege embedded within them exists. Again though, this was no disrespect to you, Muna, it was just something I had to say.
Sorry, but I just really have to excuse myself from this conversation. Something in my heart just isn’t sitting right with me and the nature of this discussion. I apologise. I too wish not to take up anymore space or feel disheartened by the discussion. Thanks for listening to my views though and do continue with the conversation in the desired route I imagine you all wished this conversation to have taken.
And then I lost my shit:
I know [name redacted] has exited the conversation but I’m curious to know what she thinks about that Suheir Hammad poem [“I’m Not Your Exotic”]. Is Suheir Hammad co-opting oppression with the mention of Venus Hottentot? Does Suheir Hammad display a “woe-is-me” complex?
Did she acknowledge that she was significantly LESS oppressed though? In many ways, she conflated her oppression with other oppressions.
I am going to be honest here, [name redacted], you were more than a little passive-aggressive. You must think so little of members of this group if you can say something like, “Thanks for listening to my views though and do continue with the conversation in the desired route I imagine you all wished this conversation to have taken.” You said your piece, everyone more than entertained your ideas— they/I agreed. Your contributions are valuable to these discussions. They’re not only valuable, they’re valid. We have not given you any reason NOT to trust us, as this is a safe space. You don’t respect your opponents. You created a hostile environment and abruptly left the discussion as if we disrespected you in our replies.
I am interested in getting feedback on Tumblr. Yes, I was very out of line. I think I was awful, actually, but I also think she wasn’t polite. I kept imagining how the conversation would look if it wasn’t on the Internet. I came to the conclusion that she was incredibly uncouth, so doing what I do best, I was 100% worse. Because I’m petty and also because I do not like it when my efforts to not be the bitch that I am are rebuffed, when the person just does not care about me as a person in a supposedly “safe space.” I pretty much lit the space on fire, though, in my last comment. I do realize now that while she was rude (and others have messaged me to say so), it probably just felt ten times worse because I’m a depressed, insecure person and because the piece in question that she disliked so much was my piece.
Anyhow, this brings me to another thing that is absolutely real: a lot of black women do not a) see me as black (even though I’m from Africa), and b) there is tension because of that, and c) some of that tension manifests in resentment. We can’t pretend it isn’t there. It’s a fact. As someone who has been in predominantly black American spaces since the fourth grade, I have been told to my face that I wasn’t ever going to be black enough. I have been told that I am, in fact, more resented than white women. Mind you, I am not light-skinned or anything. I just have so-called “good hair” and facial features that are seen as not very African (as if Africa is a monolithic entity).
This is a photo of me and a good friend who is getting married soon. Both of us are Somali. She has lighter skin but my hair is less kinky— and we both have some of the features that make us look slightly different.
And I know I sound like a brat. I know I am ultimately upset because my sensibilities were harassed. I am upset, also, because it’s hard to process a privilege that I do not fully have. I am upset because I feel like she could have been nicer. I am upset because this flares up all of the anti-Somali experiences I’ve ever had I am upset because last night I wanted to show Sara (the girl pictured above with me) the thread but I haven’t talked to her in six months. She used to be the person I would cry to when someone hurt my feelings (especially when I felt attacked for being Somali). I am going to think about my privilege. I acknowledge that I do have privilege in MANY WAYS (not just pertaining to looks).
I am a huge brat and I would understand if you unfollowed me but please don’t.
(Source: fatwasandfanboys)
♥ 192
→ 20 Apr 12 at 6 pm
→ 20 Apr 12 at 6 pm
East Asians love perpetuating anti-blackness.
Go on, admit it.
You drink the white kool-aid, and you don’t particularly feel like stopping. I’m patient; I’ll wait. I was chugging the stuff for twenty years until I got abruptly cut off. I have a family who would raise hell if I ever bring a black person (hell, anyone darker than a light tan) home to meet the parents. I used to listen to K-pop that insert the n-word into their songs every thirty seconds. I have Asian friends who look at my Inner Best Friend Circle and ask me if I have a “black fetish.” So don’t tell me that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
It’d be so much easier if you just maintained your little spot at the white man’s feet while Everyone Else is stuck at the bottom of the stairs because hey, look at you, you made it in life by working hard and working the system, right? If you can do it, everyone else can right? Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, right? Why are black people so shiftless and lazy—right?
Why are YOU so complacent and satisfied to live with a system that holds you down too and encourages us to throw our fellow PoC under the bus just to keep that stupid “model minority” label? Trust me, it’s not doing us any favors because—guess what? We’ll still be The Other to Mr. White Man. We’re never going to get full membership to The WASP Club no matter how hard we try. Stop dancing to their tune and throw that cup of kool-aid away.
I’m tired of this shit. Shape up, people, because every time you claim that saying the n-word is alright because you were called it once or you’re a PoC too; for every person you date who’s PoC but not Black PoC; every complaint you make about how “anti-racism only focuses on Black people”; every slip-up and screw-up you pull only exposes the nasty, sick whiteness underneath.
Take that first step and just, admit it.
Yes, this.
what i want to ask these antiblack asian racists is: (1) do they think that this is really going to make them white, when push comes to shove and (2) do they really think that black folks dont know they are trying to clutch on to whiteness like its going to make them white when it really wont?
The idea isn’t necessarily to become white. The idea is NOT be black.
I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I don’t think that the Asian-American community as a whole fails to support anti-racism solely because of “buying into” whiteness. It also has to do with the fact that Asian cultures generally focus on collective consensus and social harmony, as opposed to Western cultures which focus on individual rights and freedoms.
Because of this point of view, the Asian response to bigotry and discrimination tends to fall along the same general lines as the accomodationist approach of Booker T. Washington, as opposed to the activist approach advocated by W.E.B. DuBois. There’s a focus on not confronting injustice head-on, but instead taking the limited opportunities available to us, making the best of them, and letting our work speak for itself in shaming those who are biased against us.
That’s really where the “model minority” stuff comes in. It’s the white system rewarding Asians for being a “tame” and “manageable” minority, coupled with a hell of a lot of historical revisionism focused on erasing past anti-Asian oppression. What that does is allow whites to convince Asians that racism “wasn’t really that bad” and “is mostly over now”, playing into the cultural bias for quiet evolutionary reform rather than loud revolutionary change.
In other words, the willingness of whites to treat Asian-Americans as “the good minority” has largely convinced most of my people that the patient assimilationist approach really works (bullshit!), that their cultural bias against “noisy troublemaking” is justified (double bullshit!), and that things will just get better if we all play nice and cooperate (triple bullshit!)
^^ Commentary.
(via commanderbishoujo)
♥ 162
→ 16 Apr 12 at 3 pm
→ 16 Apr 12 at 3 pm
Hopefully this will be the first of a series or something.
whidavrho replied to your post: I honestly would love to have a conversation on interracial dating for the aware black person.Red flags when I was talking to this white guy were: 1) he wished he lived back in the 50s, 2) he thought gay people weren’t normal 3) he was a george zimmerman supporter.1) Wishing they lived back in time
2) Shows non-racial based bigotry.
3) …supports murderers of black people.
I’m gonna add:4) Has an issue accepting people who believe in religion in a non-oppressive manner, or has an issue accepting faith in general.
5) Discusses issues such as FGM from a white view with little to no knowledge of the perspectives of the people who actually undergo it.
6) Repeatedly fail to fact check and then claim it as a mistake.
7) Repeatedly show failure to understand context and nuance.
8) Asks invasive questions and make their lack of understanding YOUR problem.carlsaganisgayporn replied to your post: So let’s start the list of warnings for conscious black people in interracial relationships.If you are complaining about something race related that happened in your day and they say something to the effect of, “Can we not talk about stuff like that today.” One thing that bothered me in that movie Something NewThis is a big one.
- tells you to leave your culture where it belongs
- tells you youre too sensitive when their friends or family say/do racist offensive shit to you
- tries to speak for people in developing countries or POC even while not having the slightest clue what that could ever be like
- brushes off, minimizes or denies their white privilege
- tells you youre “not like other blacks”
- shows you off as their “hot black gf”
- shows you off to friends and family like you are a new shiny toy, and enjoys and takes pride watching his fellow whites ohh and ahh at your exotical efnicness
- says “mixed kids are better looking than monoracial ones so lets make babies!”
- thinks stereotypes about POC are true and its totes ok to be scared of them (but not you, youre different!), but thats “not racist”
- puts on their lone black people music cd when you get in the car
- brushes off, minimizes or denies your own personal lived experiences w racism
- uses their ties w you as street cred
I’ll add a corollary to the bolded, if they don’t want to introduce you to friends and family at all that is also a red flag
(Source: crackerhell, via commanderbishoujo)
♥ 219
→ 09 Apr 12 at 1 pm
→ 09 Apr 12 at 1 pm
The New Masculinity- Defining ourselves,semerging from our cocoons (via biyuti)
A LOT of white trans people and LGB call PoC cowards for not screaming about our queerness from the rooftops and those white people can quite frankly eat my ENTIRE nutsack with some rancid egg and lukewarm 10 year old heavy cream sauce.
(via dumbthingswhitepplsay)
another question here though, is why aren’t we pushing cissexist/heterosexist POC to get beyond their essentialism and bigotry?it is a vital part of the struggle for liberation, a vital part of decolonization. tolerance is always a fucked up, oppressive thing, wherever it is coming from. what QPOC deserve is acceptance, and openness. we should not have to hide at all, from racism or from cissexism and heterosexism within communitites of POC. i really am not in solidarity with POC who would in any way denigrate or question my gender or sexuality. i really am not in solidarity with POC who are not down for integrating the complex identities that are as much a part of me as my blackness, that are essential to how i experience oppression, how i experience my world.white privilege& classism often makes it seemingly impossible for there to be actual solidarity between queer people of color and white queer people; we need to make safe, nuturing spaces of our own as qpoc, but to do that we need to fight against our own internalized cissexism, heterosexism and classism and the cissexism, heterosexism & classism that is present in communities of color.
(via so-treu)
"Also, the white trans experience has trumped trans people of color’s experience. This is another factor that arrests development for some trans people of color. We go online and do research on transfolks and only get the white trans experience, which isn’t ours- so there’s no way that we could be trans, right? Also there are other issues in being out and trans which seems to be what white transmen push for. As they become visible as trans, there may be backlash…but they are still a white man with privilege. As soon as we transition to be black men, our lives get much more difficult- especially if we are trans organizers. There is a lot of pressure to stay “stealth” and invisible within communities of color, because who really wants the added marginalization and discrimination? It is hard enough to be a black man. Now you’ve got to worry about being accepted within your community, church, schools and jobs? Many say- No, thank you. And you know …some white transmen call us cowards for that. Cowards. Because they have no idea the experience of intersecting identities of being a person of color and queer among other identities."
♥ 793
→ 28 Mar 12 at 12 pm
→ 28 Mar 12 at 12 pm
bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation, “Loving Blackness as Political Resistance”, pp. 16, 18-21 (via urshermaleek)
pardon me, just gonna read this over and over.
(via cupcakesnotbombs)
(via strugglingtobeheard)