Silence Isn't Always Golden

yearsofmagicalthinking: “Team Lightskinned” by Kai Davis, Hiwot...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:18:05 -0500

“Team Lightskinned” by Kai Davis, Hiwot Adilow and Telia Allmond

CNN: “Who is Black in America?” explores how color affects identity. In this video, slam poets Kai Davis, Hiwot Adilow and Telia Allmond from the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement perform a poem, ”Team Lightskin,” about their experiences growing up as light-skinned black women.

jakeenglish: if we used to talk and don’t really anymore chances are i miss the hell out of you but...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:40:50 -0500

jakeenglish:

if we used to talk and don’t really anymore

chances are i miss the hell out of you

but i’ve assumed that you dislike me and that’s why we stopped talking

UPDATE: Gabby Douglas leads Team USA to the Gold.

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:09:04 -0400

UPDATE: Gabby Douglas leads Team USA to the Gold.:

crunkfeministcollective:

I purposely titled this essay to highlight Gabby Douglas’ leadership of the USA Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Team, which she led to victory yesterday, by capturing 33% or 1/3 of the total points the team received.

You heard right. This kid, who commentators continue to suggest is “unable to handle the pressure,” was the only member to compete in all four events — vault, bars, beam, and floor.

So though she’s only 1/5 of the team, she did 100% of the events, and captured 1/3 of the points.

Of course she didn’t get 33% of the coverage, or even a quarter of the love her teammates got.

During the medal ceremony the camera panned to and stayed with Jordyn, ofttimes obscuring Gabby’s face. Commentators were exultant about Jordyn’s gold medal. “Jordyn’s gold.” As though there were a medal with her name already engraved on it or something.

But um…

The Olympics trades in Gold Medals, not Gold Stars! Put another way, there are no “A’s for effort.”

I want to be clear. I have nothing but love for Jordyn. She’s the reigning world champ. She’s mega talented, and she showed up for Team USA in a major way yesterday. I do not want to diminish her accomplishments in any way in this post.

But I take serious issue with the media’s coverage of her accomplishments and the sense of white entitlement that permeates that coverage. The coverage magnifies Jordyn’s victories, while minimizing Gabby’s. And it isn’t right. Not to mention that it is classic passive aggressive white racism. (Yeah, I said it.) The kind that injures not by heaping insults but by failing to grant recognition, when it has power to do so.

Gabby didn’t receive the low score in any of her four events, and she received the highest score in two of them (beam and bars). (See all scores here. Click on the plus out to the side for individual scores in each event.) Gabby outscored Jordyn on each of the three events they competed in yesterday, and she outscored Aly in one of two events. She didn’t put up one score less than a 15.066 in any event.

The first to do floor, Gabby’s performance received a score of 15.066. Solid. I literally waited on the commentators to find anything good to say about the routine. *Crickets* They said virtually nothing. And then Jordyn performed. They were glowing with accolades and affirmations for her, in a routine that was technically less difficult than Gabby’s. When the scores came back, Jordyn had a 15.000. And you could almost hear the disappointment, not at Jordyn’s solid score, but that it was lower than Gabby’s.

I guess I should be happy that at least this time, the media found it appropriate to actually pan to some shots of Gabby’s family watching in the audience. But unlike her counterparts, they never said who those three Black people were. I guess we could just Match them up based on skin tone. Contrast that with the fact that every time they panned to Aly’s or Jordyn’s parents, there would be some commentary about their reactions.

I am extremely proud of team USA. I hope that is clear. I watched the Magnificent 7 win Gold in 1996. Most of these girls were barely toddlers then! After the interview, they talked about the 2004 Olympics as their most memorable one. Made me feel O.L.D. So it was truly awesome to watch us return to that former glory. And these girls deserve every bit of shine they get.

And I am determined at least in this space that Gabby will get her just due.

Because let’s be clear.

Gabby showed up for her team in each and every event, and in Black vernacular, she showed out! But that reminds me of some more ol’ school Black wisdom, too– “you have to be twice as good, to get half as far.” Every Black kid hears this at some point in her lifetime. It still rings true. And what our parents don’t say is that even then, you still might be invisible. Invisible, that is, in your accomplishments. Your flaws won’t be treated half so graciously.

Anyway, brush your shoulders off, Gabby. (Check her doing just that at the 1:02 mark!)

bob-costas-talks-to-the-fabulous-five-after-gold.html

They may not see you coming, Gabby. But know this. We see you! We SEE you! And we are cheering you on! #yougotthis

Just a matter of time...: mothership-down: glamaphonic: amazonziti: ileliberte: grawpy:...

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:48:59 -0400

Just a matter of time...: mothership-down: glamaphonic: amazonziti: ileliberte: grawpy:...:

mothership-down:

glamaphonic:

amazonziti:

ileliberte:

grawpy:

movesliketrombley:

derekhale:

furgoat:

guilty-by-suspicion:

how in the FUCK is Jensen Ackles losing to Amber Riley???

they’re totally only voting for her ‘cause she’s…

I love Jensen but I’m going to vote for Amber every single day until the poll closes.

occupyiowa: The YouTube corporation and CBS have now censored...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:03:33 -0400

occupyiowa:

The YouTube corporation and CBS have now censored the original video of Anaheim cops shooting at children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MST4RhWdlMQ

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by CBS.”

Spread links to the mirrors. Keep firing.

miktophead: Spiderman cock blocking…

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:37:22 -0400

miktophead:

Spiderman cock blocking…

idratherbeloislane: [image description: Storm and Thor are...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:37:09 -0400

idratherbeloislane:

[image description: Storm and Thor are sitting at a table. Panel One: Thor is pushing a box across the table with “Ororo” inscribed on its cover. Ororo asks: “What’s this?” Thor replies: “A Box with your name on it, t’would seem.” Panel Two: Storm smiles widely at Thor and says: “I didn’t know you had a mischievous side…” Thor says: “Or a sense of humor, methinks.” Ororo replies: “Or that.”]

Canon Thor/Storm flirting? Be still my heart.

three-first-names: Thorm OTP.

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:36:49 -0400

three-first-names:

Thorm OTP.

welp.com: Author Cassandra Clare addresses the importance of not whitewashing in the film adaptation of her book series

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:30:28 -0400

welp.com: Author Cassandra Clare addresses the importance of not whitewashing in the film adaptation of her book series:

raveyrai:

jhenne-bean:

cassandraclare:

“vanillanightt asked you:

It’s not really a question, but an observation. I understand the reasons, but on Facebook after the recent post about TMI casting information a lot of fans are confused as to why they would want an Asian…

I’ve never even read the books but this pleases me.

the-wolfbats: “Can I sing it in a song?” “Fool, shut up, it’s...

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 01:59:28 -0400

the-wolfbats:

“Can I sing it in a song?”

“Fool, shut up, it’s always wrong.”

Electric Gallimaufry: Knocking on the Bonnie Sky

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:14:36 -0400

Electric Gallimaufry: Knocking on the Bonnie Sky:

I have never even watched the show b/c of all the hate Bonnie gets. I have enough race rage about television shows. I don’t need more stress. But this needs to be read and said repeatedly.

fellowadventurers: Sombre Queen songs coined to a ‘Team Free...

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:16:52 -0400

fellowadventurers:

Sombre Queen songs coined to a ‘Team Free Will’ series

Bobby- Bohemian Rhapsody

Sam-Save Me

Castiel- The Show Must Go On

Dean- Somebody To Love

"I need white people to stop pretending consent was possible during slavery. Stop lying to..."

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 23:52:02 -0400

“

I need white people to stop pretending consent was possible during slavery.

Stop lying to yourselves that those black cousins are the result of illicit love affairs & grasp that slaves could not say no.

When consent is not an option, when you’re only seen as 3/5ths of a human being & you have no legal standing? You can’t say yes.

I need white America to sit down for a sec. Look into the faces of black Americans with the same last names & figure it the fuck out.

Our ancestors were raped by your ancestors. Regularly. Some of the kids were treated kindly. Most were not. They were sold.

White mistresses punished the slaves for “tempting” master & congratulated themselves on that bloody work. Read the narratives.

Not the cleaned up ones either. Read Incidents in The Life of A Slave Girl & understand that Mammy was a victim, not the one who loved you.

She couldn’t care for her kids, couldn’t choose her husband or their father most of the time. She was a slave.

Millions of people died on the Middle Passage. Millions more died here at the hands of your ancestors. Own that.

Now you want to sing Kumbaya & keep oppressing our communities & erasing our contributions. Spare me the tired bullshit.

Male slaves fared no better. There’s a long history of them being raped, tortured & killed too. That was slavery. Stop romanticizing it.

Our children were fed to alligators as bait (feel free to look that up) died of starvation or exposure & that was slavery too. Yep, we were livestock & you use sickly livestock as bait.

Stop watching Gone With The Wind & fantasizing about beautiful plantations if you can’t accept what happened on those plantations.

House slaves had it better in the sense of access to food & possibly better treatment, but they were still slaves.

14 year old slave girls weren’t falling in love with the men who could beat them & everyone they loved to death.

Read the tales of enslaved women who killed their children to spare them. Read about people beaten to death as an example.

Sally Hemings could have left Jefferson in Paris. Of course her entire family was still in his power. And his “love”? Didn’t free her. Ever.

Go look at the pictures of former slaves backs. Whipped until they bled & left to scar so they were maimed for life & couldn’t run.

Also before you talk about the cleaned up narratives, remember that the people relating their stories knew lynching was always possible.

Records of slavery were deliberately destroyed so that former owners wouldn’t have to pay anyone.

That “peculiar institution” was generations of blood, pain, & terror. That’s what built America. Never forget that.

Now stop talking about anyone’s white ancestors like they deserve the fucking credit for the success of people descended from slaves.

American slavery began in 1619. June 19, 1865 was the last official day of slavery. Do the math on how long it takes to heal that wound.

After slavery was officially over? Black codes & Jim Crow laws followed. America’s history of oppression is longer than that of freedom.

Also before any dumb motherfuckers land in my mentions. I have a degree in history. I will read you to filth & bury you in sources.

Trust & believe there is no country here for people who want to romanticize a system that is still grinding away at my community.

All this fluffy fucking talk about American history to coddle white kids feelings & engender patriotism? You won’t get it here.

My ancestors built this country, I served this country & I will tell the damned truth about this country. Don’t like it? Fuck you.

Now let me get in my feelings about slavery before Africans were brought here. Because we weren’t the first people enslaved.

We were deliberately sought out for our skill sets & resistance to disease. Know why we were resistant? We’d had contact for years.

All of that “My ancestors never owned slaves so it has nothing to do with me?” Go look at those NDN ancestors again. See how many were free.

While you’re in there checking that out? Look up those old country ancestors & see how many benefited from slavery indirectly.

Also while we’re talking about NDN relatives? Yo, learn a name besides Cherokee. Better yet, learn about the genocidal tactics they faced.

Look up immigrant groups becoming white in America. Find out who had to bleed so they could gain access to white privilege.

Let’s really talk about the Red Summer of 1919 & how it wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Tulsa, Rosewood? They were just famous.

Let’s talk about welfare & who could access it. Hell let’s talk about who is collecting more of it right now.

Let’s talk about the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action (spoiler! White women!) & what it means to attack black people instead.

Shit, let’s get into the Great Depression & the Great Recession & who is hurting the most financially through both.

Let’s talk about conditions on reservations, in the inner city, & the violence faced by POC who try to leave those areas.

Hell, let’s talk about why we don’t see shows that reflect the American population set in the past, present, or future.

Go read Columbus’ diaries & see what “civilization” really meant to the people he encountered.

For that matter go read up on King Leopold & the Congo. I’ll wait while you cry.

That’s the thing about whiteness as a social construct in America. It’s not about white people, it’s about white power over others.

When we’re talking about white privilege? We’re talking about what it takes to shape this society based on oppression.

America is a young country with a lot of power because of genocide, slavery, & continuing oppression. Individuals build institutions.

All of these conversations aren’t about bringing out white guilt, they’re about ending this institution developed over the generations.

Also let’s be clear that America is sick with this ish across the political spectrum. It may manifest differently but it exists everywhere.

Before I go, let me also suggest that people who are curious about anything I tweeted about take a tour through Google with terms.

It’s not that I won’t answer questions, but there are books out there that I think everyone should read on slavery, whiteness, & America.

”

- Karnythia, laying it down with righteousness on Juneteenth — the truth about slavery and its lingering effects on America. (via paradiscacorbasi)

Particularly pertinant to the first half of this commentary is the Missouri case of Celia, a slave woman hanged for murder in 1855. Her “master”, Robert Newsom, bought her at a slave market when she was 14, and he raped her before they even arrived back at his farm. He continued to do so in the years to come, and she gave birth to two children, presumably his.

Celia, pregnant again, begged Newsom’s daughters (he had two by his deceased his white wife) to protect her from their father during her last preganancy, and said that if came to her again she would defend herself and kill him. There is no evidence either ever intervened.

When Newsom attacked her in her cabin on the night of June 23, 1855, she beat him to death with a stick (given that she was pregnant and ill and beating him to death and then dismembering the body would have taken some physical strength, there is a possibility that her lover, a fellow slave called George who had been the one to urge her to seek Newsom’s daughters to intervene, may have been involved).

At her trial, her lawyer argued that she was legally entitled to defend herself. There was an 1845 law on the statue books that stated that any attempt “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defiled” was a felony, and he asked that ‘The words “any woman” in the first clause of the 29th section, of second article of laws of Missouri for 1845, concerning crimes & punishments, embrace slave women, as well as free white women.’

The judge presiding refused the motion, and concluded that a slave woman had no right to resist her master, even in a case of sexual assault.

Celia was hanged.

Executed Today has a write up on her story:

http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/12/21/1855-the-slave-celia-who-had-no-right-to-resist/

(via edwarddespard)

This is why I nearly slapped the shit out of my roommate when she told me that she believed that Sally Hemings was in “love” with Thomas Jefferson.

No.

That’s called Stockholm Syndrome.

That was rape.

100% pure grade RAPE that happened to that woman, along with thousands upon thousands of other Black women and Indigenous women.

All at the hands of whiteness.

It was whiteness that created and perpetuated the horrid sexual stereotypes that Black people deal with today.

(via sourcedumal)

obsessedwithchordshands: blackandmissing: It is VERY important...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:26:59 -0400

obsessedwithchordshands:

blackandmissing:

It is VERY important that you SHARE this! Her organs will shutdown if she does not take her medication for several days! Isis has been missing from Flint, Michigan since 6/14/12. PLEASE SHARE!!!

Police are searching for a 17-year-old teen missing since Thursday, according to an ABC12 report.

Isis Dickson went for a walk from her home in the area of Sherman St. and Saginaw St. and did not come back, the report states. She also suffers from a serious medical condition that can cause her organs to shutdown and she has not taken her medication in several days.

The report says she is 5 feet 2 inches with black hair and brown eyes.

She was last seen wearing blue jeans with a picture of Tweety Bird on them, an aqua tank and gray tennis shoes.

Anyone with information is asked to call Flint police at 237-6801.

When contacted by the Flint Journal, Flint police said they had no information.

OH MY GOD. THIS IS MY HOME TOWN.

Tumblr just emailed me to let me know I might get suspended for "hate speech," literally the weekend after they emailed me to say that people calling me a nigger doesn't technically violate any of their rules.

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:38:04 -0400

withrevolutionarycries:

thelittlekneesofbees:

I hate tumblr. So much. But I love all of you. What do I do?

going to keep reblogging this bullshit.

(original reimonte)

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:40:55 -0400

(original reimonte)

so you've all probably seen this picture

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 15:16:49 -0400

4bbie:

well, i don’t know the girl in the “don’t support fag marriages” picture, but i did come across this:

and i feel really bad that she’s getting so much hate for a simple misunderstanding. i’m not tumblr famous or anything, so this probably won’t go too well, but i’m trying to get the word out because i feel bad for this girl. thanks

weirdolovespenguins: Her name is Naomie. She’s 6. She...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:35:21 -0400

weirdolovespenguins:

Her name is Naomie. She’s 6. She disappeared yesterday in Montreal. Please REBLOG and tell us if you saw her.

Why is being able to say a single word more important to you than the thousands of people that will be hurt by you saying that single word?

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:53:26 -0400

"In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they..."

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:20:44 -0400

“In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they aren’t saying ‘Oh I think they are inferior, I want to humiliate them, abuse them, enslave them and wipe out their people!’, they’re saying ‘Damn, after a couple hundred years of white people thinking I’m inferior, humiliating me, abusing me, enslaving me, and trying to wipe out my people, I don’t wanna deal with them.’ The context is completely different.”

- Briana (via absinthedisco)

Reblogging every time I see it.

(via dr—grumbles)

Thank you.

(via mehreenkasana)

Silence Isn't Always Golden

yearsofmagicalthinking: “Team Lightskinned” by Kai Davis, Hiwot...

jakeenglish: if we used to talk and don’t really anymore chances are i miss the hell out of you but...

UPDATE: Gabby Douglas leads Team USA to the Gold.

Just a matter of time...: mothership-down: glamaphonic: amazonziti: ileliberte: grawpy:...

occupyiowa: The YouTube corporation and CBS have now censored...

The YouTube corporation and CBS have now censored the original video of Anaheim cops shooting at children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MST4RhWdlMQ “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by CBS.” Spread links to the mirrors. Keep firing.

miktophead: Spiderman cock blocking…

idratherbeloislane: [image description: Storm and Thor are...

three-first-names: Thorm OTP.

welp.com: Author Cassandra Clare addresses the importance of not whitewashing in the film adaptation of her book series

the-wolfbats: “Can I sing it in a song?” “Fool, shut up, it’s...

Electric Gallimaufry: Knocking on the Bonnie Sky

fellowadventurers: Sombre Queen songs coined to a ‘Team Free...

"I need white people to stop pretending consent was possible during slavery. Stop lying to..."

obsessedwithchordshands: blackandmissing: It is VERY important...

Tumblr just emailed me to let me know I might get suspended for "hate speech," literally the weekend after they emailed me to say that people calling me a nigger doesn't technically violate any of their rules.

(original reimonte)

so you've all probably seen this picture

weirdolovespenguins: Her name is Naomie. She’s 6. She...

Why is being able to say a single word more important to you than the thousands of people that will be hurt by you saying that single word?

"In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they..."

The YouTube corporation and CBS have now censored the original video of Anaheim cops shooting at children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MST4RhWdlMQ

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by CBS.”

Spread links to the mirrors. Keep firing.