Rolling 2016 Thread on Race

Because a new year deserves a new thread.

I'm going to start with something positive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efttzj5VtXE

I feel like this could be handwaved as trend-hopping whatever but let's not undermine what's happening here: a woman of color does a near-flawless floor routine where the dancing bits between her tumbling runs and skill tricks are full-on hip-hop moves set to explicitly hip-hop music and she scores a 9.925 that gives her team the win. I can't imagine this happening in gymnastics even two years ago.

wow, she's incredible.

It's pretty rapid acceleration for the general public's consciousness to go from people bemoaning Gabby Douglass's hair to celebrating Sophina DeJesus dabbing and nae naeing during her floor exercise, IMO

Right on

Back to the negative; file this under "how not to appeal to blackAmericans with your message":

https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/status/693500048441606144

That's some ellipsis

idgi

"Bill Press makes the case why, long after taking the oath of office, the next president of the United States must keep rallying the people who elected him or her on behalf of progressive causes. That is the only way real change will happen. Read this book."

Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down

"Bill Press makes the case... Read this book."

Yeah. Would like to know why Sanders ok'ed that ellipsis.

sanders is morbs

*coffee cup*

(1) I know there's never been a candidate with such tight focus-grouped control of his optics as Bernie Sanders but it's possible he wasn't consulted on his blurb formatting
(2) Even with the ellipsis it doesn't come close to being mildly "problematic," "troublesome," or "I find it *interesting* that," jfc

the problem is that hillary + bernie both agree that obama did some very important things and was a great democratic president. but bernie then associates that w/ disappointment that he didn't do more, and hillary wraps herself in the obama administration. when hillary says "bernie has criticized the president" that fact shouldn't matter to us bc you can criticize the president and still think he's wonderful, but it does matter to ppl and bernie can't really just say "it's not true i'm 100% with president obama on every decision" bc he doesn't really feel that way. if presidential primaries were more sophisticated maybe this would become an argument about the specifics of the TPP or something that would underline in maybe more productive ways why you might support or criticize the president on a given issue.

it would be difficult to criticize hillary without at least indirectly criticizing obama. i can see why strategically he would be wiser to avoid criticizing obama directly

Yeah this has little to nothing to do with Bernie Sanders and everything to do with publishing a book about primarily white Americans disappointed in casting a vote for a black American under the title "Buyer's Remorse" because that evokes some very strong slavery imagery and if you don't see that, wake the fuck up

It feels a little like I'm living in bizarre production of Native Son that I'd actually have to point this incredibly obvious point

oh, d'uh, sorry

also hadn't thought of that implication but once pointed out it's egregious

this fucking asshole made me want to hurl

http://gawker.com/nevada-assemblyman-accuses-fbi-oregon-state-police-of-1759123326

JFC what a piece of shit

“That man died at the hands of the Oregon state police, and federal agents, and he did not need to. That’s why I’m here today, that’s why I came up here—to try to prevent the further loss of life,” he said. “I will travel anywhere for that purpose.”

the fuck you will, you contemptible slug

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/701589800193650688

that was so awesome

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/23/no-hate-crime-convictions-for-white-san-jose-state-students-who-clamped-black-roommate-in-bike-lock/

Alongside other first-years, the 18-year-old was assigned a dormitory suite with seven other students, including a high school friend with whom he shared a bedroom. But collegial relationships soon dissolved into a series of hijinks targeting Williams, the only African American roommate.

In early September 2013, he was standing in his hallway when one of his roommates came up behind him and placed a U-shaped bike lock around his neck. Williams struggled to be released, but the lock remained clamped shut until his roommate gave him the key five minutes later.

A week later, three of his roommates again attempted to secure him inside the lock. Williams resisted and a scuffle ensued, ending with Williams walking out.

The bike lock was never to be used again, but other dubious ploys took its place: hanging a Confederate flag in the common room, displaying a racial slur on a dry-erase board, penning a sarcastic letter quoting the “Beloved Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.”

On other occasions, the claustrophobic Williams was locked inside his room and closet. In time, he said he gained the nicknames “three-fifths” and “fraction” — a reference to how the Constitution once counted black slaves when apportioning representation in Congress by the states.

A juror in his 30s who spoke to the Mercury News after the decision said he went in thinking the actions were a hate crime but concluded that it was Williams’s word against his roommates’.

jesus christ.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/magazine/how-should-asian-americans-feel-about-the-peter-liang-protests.html?

liked this jay caspian lang piece on the asian-american backlash to the peter liang verdict

*kang obviously, autocorrect

The militia fuckwits are going to hold an event in Portland next week, with subsequent counter event being planned.

Federal government suing B&H (big NYC photo/video/electronics store) for mistreatment of minority workers, biased hiring practices

sanders is morbs

GOOO ONNNNNNNN

Ashley Williams on Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/26/whichhillary_blacklivesmatter_activist_demands_apology_from

To expand upon that:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/02/25/hillary-clinton-responds-to-activist-who-demanded-apology-for-superpredator-remarks/

https://scottwoodsmakeslists.wordpress.com/2016/02/25/gods-of-egypt-is-the-most-racist-film-ever/

hadn't seen that Kang article on the Liang protesters; feel very similarly

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/business/media/melissa-harris-perry-is-out-at-msnbc-cable-network-confirms.html

this is a bummer, MHP was pretty good

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/26/11121378/iron-fist-racism

I had missed this entire fracas and, as someone completely uninvested in Iron Fist outside of his awesomeness in Marvel Puzzle Quest, I find it super interesting and informative. I don't know if I necessarily agree but after reading it, I think I get the perspective.

cross-posting in baldwin thread too http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelkaadzighansah/the-weight-of-james-arthur-baldwin-203

Having rediscovered the defunct Roosevelt Franklin character through listening to old Sesame Street records with K, H and I were sort of puzzling over whether the character was problematic in its racial portrayal.

Turns out people had those concerns at the time too, and it's pretty interesting:

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Roosevelt_Franklin

Roosevelt Franklin was the source of criticism by some African-American intellectuals who scrutinized the character for signs that he was too black, or not black enough.

For example, in a 1973 issue of literary digest Black World, the article "Sesame Street: A Linguistic Detour for Black-Language Speakers" took Sesame to task for the way that black characters on the show spoke: "The fact that Black Language is a legitimate linguistic system is not recognized on Sesame Street... Adherents to the fallacious assumption that poor Black children are verbally destitute, the producers of Sesame Street attempt to eradicate what they perceive as a "communicative deficit" by subjecting their audience to large doses of middle-class verbiage... An analysis of the content of Sesame Street will reveal that only a token effort is made to acknowledge that some Black people speak differently than white people and that this effort, in fact, constitutes a gross misrepresentation of Black Language."

The article took issue with the language used in a sketch in which Roosevelt's mother asks Roosevelt to spell his name:

“ Even a cursory analysis of the preceding transcription reveals that Matt Robinson and Loretta Long do not employ Black Language in portraying Roosevelt and his mama. Usages such as "she says" (versus "she say"), "who was to blame" (versus "who be to blame" and "an L" (versus "a L") make it apparent that the producers of Sesame Street confuse Black Language with what William Stewart describes as a "stage Negro dialect" which "... is little more than standard English with a slightly ethnicized or southernized pronunciation, reinforced by insertion of such general nonstandardisms as ain't and the double negative, and perhaps a sprinkling of southern or inner-city Negro lexical usages like honey child or man."

The fact that Roosevelt says "po'rly" or that Mama says "right on" (a phrase whose cultural-linguistic significance has been destroyed through its co-optation by whites) or that southernized inflections are employed in portraying these characters does not make them Black Language speakers...

It becomes apparent that it is unreasonable to assume that any educational program devised by the oppressor can do anything other than serve his interests... The only effective educational program for the majority of Black children in this country must be one devised and controlled by Blacks who, although having acquired certain technical skills, continue to identify with the interests of the Black masses rather than with European interests. Language intervention programs like Sesame Street are merely deterrents or detours on the road to this goal. [4]

4.↑ Stewart, Barbara H. "Sesame Street: A Linguistic Detour for Black-Language Speakers", Black World. August 1973.

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot.

(By which I mean there is a tangible difference between identifying AAVE as a legitimate English dialect that is not inferior to standard English and formally teaching it as the primary mode of communication to a segment of the population already facing system-driven barriers of entry to the highest echelons of power in this country.)

Yeah I just found it fascinating how the character feels sort of like an attempt to meet people halfway on that, and the subtle ways in which the "stage" dialect plays out that I probably wasn't picking up on. I mean on the immediate level I agree with you, best thing anyone can do is teach their children to negotiate the world they live in. But there's still a lot there about the power dynamics around race in America.

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot...(By which I mean there is a tangible difference between identifying AAVE as a legitimate English dialect that is not inferior to standard English and formally teaching it as the primary mode of communication to a segment of the population already facing system-driven barriers of entry to the highest echelons of power in this country.)

All true. (I'm not the biggest David Foster Wallace fan, but his writing on this subject - it's included in the essay collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - was pretty amazing.) But, you know, 1973.

And also, if you're an educational show aimed mostly at urban black and latino kids (which apparently SS was when it started out), is it better to just have everyone on the show speak standard American English, or is it good to have AAVE-speaking characters for validation, and is having a character that's sort of in-between in a contrived way the worst of both worlds?

Anyone who isn't trying to teach their children fluency in the dialect of English spoken by the people who control the wealth in this country is a short-sighted idiot.

this is a righteous post

I thought about posting this on I Love Games but I don't actually love anything about this, which sucks:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cc9585gW8AEisWq.jpg

I mean come the fuck on

wow

wow

(xpost)

what is that?

Avengers Academy, a time-wasting world building freemium mobile game in the vein of Simpsons: Tapped Out only with de-aged Avengers

btw these are great:

http://the-toast.net/2016/01/05/what-goes-through-your-mind-casual-racism/
http://the-toast.net/2016/03/08/on-race-good-intentions-benefit-of-the-doubt/

Does anyone else see anything subtly wrong with this ad?

http://i.imgur.com/VEosU1B.png

I am pretty used to "black people in service to white people" imagery at this point but why is he stooping?

Meanwhile, in more blatant "what the FUCK were you THINKING" news:

https://twitter.com/evanfmoore/status/708311829739675648

xp yeah it was the posture and the way it was shot that made it a little worse for me -- stooping, smiling-yet-faceless, literally below the white woman

OMFG. They seriously need to be boycotted out of business for that.

Reminded of an article I read about Atlantic City that described how in the pre-Casino years, the highlight of the trip for its middle class visitors was to hire a black person to push you down the boardwalk in a grown-up stroller.

xp, and I assume Old Lunch's was an xp about the hanging photo

yeah I mean I have not noticed decor like this in either of the Joe's Crab Shack restaurants I've been in in Boston and I don't get why anyone would think anything about that would be a good idea

that was on facebook trends earlier except they said "the photo appears to depict an execution"

which to me felt like an unwillingness to engage with the substance of the event

judging DJP for having visited multiple Joe's Crab Shack locations right now

all other things being equal, all restaurants deserve a chance

I mean, I'd had a good meal at this place before this incident from last year (which IIRC was on the 2015 thread about race):

http://verification.blogspot.com/2015/02/strange-fruit-in-friendly-toast.html

I learned about this time that the decor in this place included a golliwog that the owners chose to paint white when they received complaints about it rather than remove it.

interesting course of action

sorry, apparently they painted it green

MUCH BETTER

I don't care if you're black, white, green...

sad lol

I've never got the "whitewashing" of racial artifacts.

"See? See everybody? I just wanted a jockey boy of any color at the end of my driveway. Just so happened the first one was black, why did you all flip out?"

Ugh, someone I know on FB a few weeks ago posted some nonsense about how we have black lawn jockeys all wrong, that they were originally used to designate houses that were on the Underground Railroad, so really they're ANTI-racist. Am I correct in assuming that this is complete bullshit?

yes

http://www.snopes.com/jocko-lawn-jockey-racist/

haha that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

that was on facebook trends earlier except they said "the photo appears to depict an execution"

which to me felt like an unwillingness to engage with the substance of the event

― 龜, Friday, March 11, 2016 12:37 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

http://i.imgur.com/JNbeS0f.png

call it for what it was

"Nooo, a burning cross in your yard is a just a friendly way of saying 'Welcome to the Neighborhood!' Like Christian fireworks!"

Joe's Crab Shack: Restaurant sorry to hear that you think photo depicts execution scene, but restaurant thinks maybe you need to ask yourself why you would think photo depicts execution scene, maybe you have some things you need to deal with before eating at Joe's Crab Shack

"execution" instead of "lynching" would be like calling a cross burning a "residency dispute"

The bigger point, regardless of whether this is an "execution" or a "lynching", is why you would think a picture of someone being killed would be appropriate decor for your chain restaurant; that alone shows massive disregard for life and is fucking racist

https://www.aclunc.org/blog/two-lawyers-walk-bar-and-get-kicked-out-being-black

I posted this on my Facebook wall and one of my friends from college, who currently lives in DC, works for NOAA, and has morphed into a conservative libertarian, responded with "Unreal. Especially as it's in California."

I feel like posting a bunch of stuff about Orange County on his wall now.

DO IT

or the new residents in San Francisco who keep calling the police on people who have lived on their block for 30 years but they view as suspicious

He clarified with "I figured this sort of thing was limited to the deep South."

He further clarified with "Rephrase: I would have hoped this was limited to the deep South."

I responded with "As long as we're hoping for things, I would have hoped that things like this didn't happen anymore."

OH btw re: the Joe's Crab Shack talk up thread, I realized very belatedly that I was thinking of Jasper White's Summer Shack. I've never been to Joe's Crab Shack.

With a name like that, I think you'd be forgiven for the mix-up.

so this thing.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2/

I clicked through that thing the other day and again today and I realized that at no point does it ask anything that could be a definite indicator of race, only economic/social class

A lot of assumptions in those questions - like, I don't drink, therefore there is neither domestic nor imported beer in my refrigerator.

i kind of think that's more of a qualification question than a disqualification

i would ignore that it's by the same guy who wrote the racist book The Bell Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve

hmm, not sure i would ignore that

lol at them qualifying him as "libertarian"

Is there a decent aggregator that aims at race domestically AND globally

It told me I was definitely not living in a bubble, which is kind of hilarious as I've spent the entirety of my post-high school life constructing the strongest, most impervious bubble I could reasonably make

Yeah despite the copy saying "if you grew up working class, it will still be reflected in your score even if you become upper-middle later in life" all my knowledge of Nascar and domestic beer didn't save me from being scored in a deep bubble, which I don't think I am THAT much. Weird questions, weird scoring.

Quiz was written by a bubble dweller who likes to think otherwise.

Quiz is aimed at white people and designed under the assumption that education makes you stupid.

I grew up upper middle-class in a middle-class/working-class environment and the test results seemed to inordinately reflect that.

I also laughed at the domestic beer question because I have a refrigerator filled with domestic expensive microbrews.

I am inordinately proud of my time in the service possibly mostly because it makes me a statistical outlier
that is all

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/30/us/black-privilege/index.html

welcome to 2016

Terrible article. Why don't white people have special institutions explicitly dedicated to their group interests [that aren't also on a SPLC list]? Because they haven't needed them historically or today. However, I do understand why this stuff is coming up - because white people in the US are becoming a minority (slowly) and there is going to be a moment when they have to understand who they are distinct from their historical representation as the hegemonic majority. Are European Americans going to be an identity group like other groups? There's a lot of stuff in there that they haven't had to work out because they've just been the default culture for so long. From the context of identity / belonging I can understand why white ppl might feel like they're lacking something. (i don't think this is separable from the reality that going from hegemony to non-total hegemony will look like a terrible loss / theft to white ppl + like more equitability to everyone else.) imho sorry if anything I said was offensive.

xp sorry, read the title and closed the tab

The concept of black privilege is still so new, though, that some of the nation's most acclaimed scholars on race didn't even know it existed.

Can't help hearing this in a Daily Show correspondent voice

is there an app that sends grenades to the author's house for this shit

Uh, maybe some of you should go back and read the article. I think the author is a bit incredulous about this mountain of "black privilege" everyone thinks they see.

And would they hear a white leader step forward at a crowded news conference to announce: "It's time to talk about reparations"?

I mean, there's the author's answer to "Why isn't there a NAAWP?"

^^^it's a click-bait headline

Are European Americans going to be an identity group like other groups?

Throughout most of the 20th Century Americans of various European backgrounds existed in ethnic enclaves. The next town over from where I live still has stuff like a Polish credit union (not to mention a whole street where all the stores have signs in Polish); there's a huge Portuguese community in Newark still, I think; there's Little Italy in NYC, though it's shrinking; the kitsch Irishness of Boston and St. Patrick's Day; before World War II there was an organization called the German-American Bund...this kind of stuff is currently seen as mostly a relic, for old people, but it could quite easily make a comeback if it's seen as necessary. Hell, I think it probably should. The contemporary pop-cultural understanding of "white culture" is ridiculous, basically synonymous with lameness when it's not just accused of stealing everything good about itself from black people; white ethnic groups should counter that message. Not in a hostile/oppositional way, but as a reminder of what they've brought to the table. "White" isn't a monolith any more than "black" or "Latin" is.

yeah I may have overstated my closing speed, I skimmed and saw the names of usual suspects and was disgusted

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/3275/bundesliga/2016/03/31/21877722/german-team-black-up-to-protest-racist-attack

at least, unlike the 2008 Spanish basketball team picture when they were making slanty-eyes in honor of Beijing*, this has a followable chain of logic to it that allows you to see why someone would think this was a good idea

* I still can't believe this happened btw

Germans.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/criticism-of-new-racism-film-journalist-goes-undercover-to-discover-life-as-a-black-man-in-germany-a-656569.html

http://i.imgur.com/u5OknzC.jpg

The use of blackface to fight racism is quite common in Northern Europe. There was a Danish artist who had a happening called 'With Other Eyes', where people could get make up on so that they would look like some other race, and could therefore experience what that is like. The artist got the idea when he forgot to remove his makeup after a play, where he apparently performed in blackface himself (I have no idea what play that would be in 2014, but it's a weird detail) It happened in Denmark a couple of times without anybody giving a fuck, but then it got moved to Malmø, and all hell broke lose.

To the artist's sorta credit, he kinda seemed to get it, when he went to a community discussion about it, and told that he wanted white people to learn what racism felt like, and a black guy stood up and said 'then why don't you have them ask me?'

http://i.imgur.com/IaHAbmX.jpg

"No one speaks and everyone stares at me because I appear as Negro."

"I am fighting ze good fight."

"zat's Jazz"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igYL5w0ZVc8

how many ppl were staring and treating him like a weirdo because he's obviously in blackface and not a black dude

probably all of them

"I wanted to experience what it was like to be black, so I painted myself like a southeast Asian and put on a loud shirt"

"Ugh! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

* leans into camera, whispering * "Obviously, another racist."

nb: I realize that "black" means different things in different countries and that it could encompass southeast Asian in Germany and a few of the people looking at dude aghast in the photo gallery could be from Sri Lanka

I also want to point out how HILARIOUS the makeup application photos in the gallery are

The men don't know, but the little girl understands...

http://i.imgur.com/u5OknzC.jpg

I have been giggling at that specific picture for about 15 minutes

help

http://i.imgur.com/H5TC3jk.jpg

"I go to ze markets, and yet, ze people have no time to speak with black man."

http://i.imgur.com/jKtegqt.jpg

omg I should not be laughing this hard

The use of blackface to fight racism is quite common in Northern Europe.

racism must really be on the ropes in northern europe sounds like

"See, I em forced to stend in ze field allein." (xxxp)

that wig is really something

can someone please make the field one into a gif where he slowly pops out of the flowers

Surely if he'd done the slightest bit of research on the subject he'd know it is not acceptable? So it's not just dodgy in racial terms it's also bad journalism. (I realising saying a guy in blackface is 'dodgy in racial terms' is an understatement, but I do believe he had good intentions about this, and Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface and blahblahblah... but STILL, he should have known.)

On the other hand, I genuinely love that shirt.

can someone please make the field one into a gif where he slowly pops out of the flowers

^^^

I remember my parents having a copy of "Black Like Me" in the house when I was growing up, why are white people into this idea

http://images3.cinema.de/imedia/6138/4396138,SSIPVzZ80UWjfKuloZv2KYcCS9VQpeUHCtfgwnIZ7Jdh_f+TjbZV41hWsbub+Kmqj92KlnytUMFuYdVnwD7_Wg==.jpg

"Now I stend on hill overlooking der stadt. Much sedness lives in mein herz. I am not being accepted as ein black man by das people."

You realize this story is from 2009? I'm sure a lot has changed since then...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWHbDTyPaeQ

white people love this idea because they really don't believe black people

"it can't just be the color of your skin, it's got to be something else!"
*puts on blackface*

"whoa wtf people treat me like garbage"

or the well-intentioned (lol) researcher is like.. "how do I make people believe racism is real. they only listen to white people! hmmm"

i'm not sure that's it. i think it's more like the disneyland oppression experience. ime when this happens it is something white liberals do to get an intimate experience of what it's like to be at the receiving end of bigotry. at least iirc that's what the context of 'black like me' was - an expose on what it's /really/ like to be black in america. xp

feel like there's maybe some crossover with this phenomenon: http://forward.com/opinion/216428/europe-s-undercover-yarmulke-journalists/ which at least makes a little more sense since once you're wearing a yarmulke it's not like it's obv that you're jewfacing just by looking at the paint on yr skin.

people only trust first-person accounts from others they see as peers

well, not even then, I have some friends-of-friends who seriously used the phrase "jewed me down on the price" in front of our shared jewish friends, not even noticing that is not a phrase to use, ever, and probably just see it as an expression

imo white ppl fetishize minority oppression. that's prob at the root of "black privilege" - that they get the authenticity of being discriminated against while white ppl just get to control the hegemony.

Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface...

No Stephen Foster banjo-playing vaudevillians in 1930s Berlin, I'll give the Germans that one.

I wonder if the "Die Soul Mann" starring Z. Thomas Howell was popular in Deautschland?

http://www.tampabay.com/resources/images/blogs-photo/rendered/2015/06/soul-man-1-1_8col.jpg

jawohl!

http://www.inpapasbasement.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Soul_Man_C_Thomas_Howell1.jpg

god I just remembered something: in the 1845 German children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" one of the stories is "Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben" (the story of the black boys), described thusly by Wikipedia - "Saint Nicholas catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips the three boys in black ink."

Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface...

This is always trotted out as a defense for Euro-Blackface, but it's a bit like saying Americans can dress up as Holocaust victims because we have a different history wrt that

Did anyone actually read my post?

just saying that I've heard that defense in a bunch of previous instances of Euro-Blackface

And, due to a recent head injury, you're unable to determine when it's not being used as such a defense?

you are reading things that I did not write

https://twitter.com/shakiraaevans/status/716700224543145985

high school kids...

everything about that tweet is incomprehensible to me

A white kid made a sign that said "I PREFER DARK MEAT… PROM?" to ask a black girl out to prom and, when she said yes, pulled out matching KFC crowns for them both to wear. "Team Swirl" I'm assuming is reference to an online posse of black women who will only date white men, apparently the more racist the better if the nonsense shown in that picture is any indication of a trend/pattern.

(The "dark meat" comment and KFC of course being references to the stereotype that all black people love fried chicken)

How is it 2016 and people are still throwing out the KFC stereotype. Wouldn't CFA be more relevant with that kind of crowd anyway?

The use of blackface to fight racism is quite common in Northern Europe.

I mean I know "ok it's high school kids" but like I'm tryin to think of any situation where anybody at my high school woulda made a joke anywhere near in that ballpark and failing. and if they had, they'd have been missing a few teeth afterward.

"I ask ze black fraulein to the prom with KFC hat. She says ja. Ze racism is over."

Do people usually ask people they don't particularly know to the prom? I know it happens all the time in movies, but I assumed that wasn't really normal practice.

a defense for Euro-Blackface

ta for this

I can't see pictures of that german guy without thinking of the it's always sunny lethal weapon sequels

very guilty lols at always sunny's lethal weapon sequels

Do people usually ask people they don't particularly know to the prom?

Do you mean, do people go to prom with people they aren't dating? Yes, absolutely.

I don't know if we can say anything about how well these two know/don't know each other beyond "he knew her well enough to know he could call her 'dark meat' and give her a KFC crown and she'd still say yes"

Yeah I figured there was more personal detail to that part because although I would never rule out social pressure & bullying in that moment, that's not the kind of invitation I would probably say yes to? I say as someone who was asked out publicly during HS math class by a popular boy and said no because I was sure it was just an opportunity for humiliation.

Paul Mason grappling with white working-class underachievement, not entirely successfully:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/the-problem-for-poor-white-kids-is-that-a-part-of-their-culture-has-been-destroyed?CMP=share_btn_tw

Yeahhhhhh, not at his best there.

Alarm bells rang at the mention of the Catholicism and, having googled, yes he is a Catholic.

Yes, beyond questions of whether white working class culture was monolithic, defined by its relationship to work and destroyed completely by Thatcher rather than a range of broader factors, this seems odd:

But the headline grabber in the paper from the liberal thinktank CentreForum concerns ethnicity: the serial losers after 28 years of marketisation, testing, a centralised curriculum and decentralised control of schools are poor white kids.

“During the early years, white British pupils are among the highest achievers,” say the authors. “By the end of secondary school however, those white British pupils are overtaken by 10 other ethnic groups to just below average, when compared with other ethnicities.”

Let’s confront squarely what this means. If the country is populated with low-achieving, inarticulate white kids it is something that happens between the year they stop being toddlers and the year they start being Neets (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

You would expect white British kids whose parents are both native English speakers to do well in comparison to others in early years education. You would expect other kids to catch up. You would also expect the default population of the UK to be around the average (in this case, marginally below) unless you are Michael Gove and committed to making every school "above the average". It doesn't show that the country is populated by low-achieving, inarticulate white kids (measuring against benchmarks and not other ethnicities is the important thing) and it doesn't show that they end up failing to capitalise on better early potential, just that most people who start with a disadvantage more or less catch up. Native English speakers perform better at GCSE and more broadly, the margins are extremely tight afaict - a couple of percentage points either way in most cases. It's a strange lens to view education problems through, though that is not Mason's fault.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/04/04/do-blacks-feel-less-pain-than-whites-their-doctors-may-think-so/

This reminds me of when someone on here brought up midwesterners who thought Jewish people grew horns.

I don't understand how someone could think that when there are so many more redheaded white people than redheaded black people.

xp: this bullshit has directly impacted my wife

Fuck, that sucks DJP.

I should try harder to curb my flippant behavior in this thread in real life.

Chait is pithy:

No community in the United States is more aware of the power of its enemies than African-Americans.

But overall comes across as a dick, as usual

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/pragmatic-tradition-of-black-voters.html

Actually until you get to the last paragraph where he takes an equally pithy massive shit on white Bernie supporters performing as if they won't vote for Hillary. I enjoyed that a lot.

https://sports.yahoo.com/news/bomani-jones-makes-statement-indians-085500948.html

holy shit at the WaPo idiot-doctors piece

"Some are saying a part of town labeled “Pflugerville Colored Addition” on city maps should not be changed, while others are calling to remove an offensive label that relates to a time of racial inequality."

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/conflicting-opinions-on-pflugerville-colored-addit/nq3tJ/

This is the same problem/issue with pulling the family crest of the slaveholders who founded Harvard Law School off of the school's shield; it's a symbol of some of the more terrible parts of our history but our goal in removing them seems to be so that we can pretend that they never happened.

hey Dan what's your take on DeBlasio and Hillary's CPTime skit?

I'm pretty sure we've talked about these things before, and while I agree with you on the Harvard Law School crest I respectfully disagree in this case. I think names like this and White Settlement (a town outside of Fort Worth) are more divisive than symbols. Its not like they'll be erased from history; maps will still show those places listed by their old names up until the change. I also think it's a false comparison to the Harvard crest. That is more like the Minnesota Seal, not a town name or official neighborhood designation. Names have a different power.

xpost

Though White Settlement will never change its name. The residents voted a few years ago to keep it by some resounding number like 2000 to 100.

it took until 2002 for Frisco, TX to lengthen their mascot name to "raccoons" despite protests that the shortened version of the name was, pretty obviously, inappropriate to be written all over water towers, signs, t-shirts, etc.

not that it needed to be said but texas is the worst

hey Dan what's your take on DeBlasio and Hillary's CPTime skit?

I think people need to calm the fuck down, basically. It was a terrible joke but terrible in a way that made me giggle a lot, and not particularly malicious especially given who DeBlasio is, who his wife is, and who his children are.

I'm pretty sure we've talked about these things before, and while I agree with you on the Harvard Law School crest I respectfully disagree in this case. I think names like this and White Settlement (a town outside of Fort Worth) are more divisive than symbols. Its not like they'll be erased from history; maps will still show those places listed by their old names up until the change. I also think it's a false comparison to the Harvard crest. That is more like the Minnesota Seal, not a town name or official neighborhood designation. Names have a different power.

I think you aren't grasping how tightly coupled the Harvard shields are to their respective schools/undergrad houses; they are literal pictoral signifiers that represent entities that make up the University and are ubiquitous across campus in practically every context you can think of. You're not going to see the Minnesota state seal very many places outside of the Capitol Building in St. Paul as you travel around Minnesota; you're going to see the Harvard Law School shield not only all over the law school campus, but on every single piece of university correspondence that references the law school, from posters for events happening there to leaflets/brochures talking about programs/lectures/extracurricular events happening there to official correspondence originating from there and sometimes, from the global university level, correspondence that mentions the law school in passing. Right now, at my cubicle, I have a coffee mug that my wife received as part of a campus green initiative that looks like this:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1636/26348507041_f39ed51467_k.jpg

The ENTIRE student body, faculty and administrative staff of Harvard Law School received at least one of these. The iconography is literally everywhere.

To carry the analogy further, if you're getting swag from Minnesota, it is most likely to have one of the following pieces of iconography on it:

- An outline of the state's shape;
- A loon;
- A sports team logo;
- Some representation of lakes
- A mosquito

No one is selling tons and tons of Minnesota merchandise with the state seal on it.

By contrast, it is difficult to find swag for Harvard Law School that has some form of iconography on it that doesn't feature the shield. The shield and the name are interchangeable, particularly in the University community.

(I do think, ultimately, that the decision is one that needs to be made by the people living there; if they don't want to change the name, I don't think you can force them to do it. Also, if the shittily-named white town gets to keep its problematic name, why shouldn't the shittily-named non-white town get to keep ITS name?)

I am within 10 feet of four objects with that seal on them, and I am not the most gung ho of alum.

thank god someone else posted, I was beginning to feel incredibly overbearing

The Harvard Law School crest is ubiquitous in a closed system of several thousands of people. It also isn't offensive to view without knowing the history of the family whose crest was adapted. I wouldn't have a clue without knowing you.

The Minnesota seal may not be on much swag, but I bet millions see it several times a year on paperwork and on the web. It's also questionable - at least it raises an eyebrow - even in its most sanitized current form.

But it's the understanding of it that matters. A name can be grasped without the information needed to understand the history behind the Harvard Law School emblem. That's why Colored Addition or White Settlement are different to me.

I also think it reaches a point where local desires are trumped by cultural change. Whether you think that's good or bad is another thing. I'm glad my high school removed the Native American mascot. They kept the name Raiders but decoupled it from any Native imagery. People were pissed for a while but figured out pretty quickly it was for the better. I think the Redskins and Indians need to move on too, despite local support.

The reason someone wants to hold onto a name is also important. "We should keep this name so that people remember what happened here" is palpably different from "I've always rooted for that team name and I don't like change. Eliding the reasons given in the article for keeping Colored Addition (which btw is a terrible name) with the presumed reasons for keeping White Settlement doesn't seem particularly fair.

tbh cracking up at your list of Minnesota signifiers, including the state bird (not the loon)

Harriet Tubman to your wallet

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/04/20/report-tubman-replacing-jackson-on-20.html

nice choice of picture, daily beast

Yeah, couldn't they have picked a shot where she was smiling? Jeez, what a bummer!

not quite what I meant

Speaking of racial insensitivity, introducing the Bob Marley Snapchat filter!

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/20/snapchat-and-kylie-jenner-in-hot-water-over-blackface-filter

please tell me this is another ridiculous cash-in licensing deal with the marley estate

omg according to Snapchat, it is

after seeing the recent offerings from the Marley Beverage Company at the store, I had no doubt

Even ClickHole is getting in on the act:

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13055420_1703145313259061_1465614224259570121_n.jpg

Twenties are for buying drugs - please leave the nasty old white guy on them!

What, they should put her on the dollar coin so commuters can use them for underground railroad tokens?

imo Franklin's portrait on the hundred looks most stoned

Jackson looks too sympathetic on the twenty, he was a harsh sumbitch

given the nationwide gouging of urban transit, we'd need to carry a bag of Tubman dollars pretty soon. xp

i am told jumping the turnstiles is the correct way to do it

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/722880185796849672

UPDATE: New $20 bill will keep an image of Andrew Jackson on the back, with Harriet Tubman on the front of the bill.

https://twitter.com/NPR/status/722886259488653312

Also, Alexander Hamilton will remain on the front of the $10 bill, with an image of women who marched for suffrage on to the back.

literally gotta hear both sides

sad lol

I guess this means they're taking the WTC off the $20 too.

I guess this means they're taking the WTC off the $20 too.

About time - I mean, that building's not even there anymore.

Well, I've got some news for you about General Jackson and Harriet Tubman.

Twenties are for buying drugs - please leave the nasty old white guy on them!

are you fucking kidding me

2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE84g6Dn1qM

http://www.wboc.com/story/31811636/racially-charged-cartoons-cause-stir-at-wesley-college

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/racists-cartoons-in-college-newspaper-spark-outrage-among-students_us_5720c649e4b0f309baef44c7

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChfqguoUUAA0HwM.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChfqgwLUkAQQEaM.jpg

ok I feel bad about it but I am giggling

The hoe cartoon is a super easy joke. The other cartoon is a full-on horror show and dude's quote explaining himself is a fucking nightmare.

doesn't even seem to be a christian school. weird.

Bryheim Muse is an abysmal name for the ages

someone has taken up our most potent form of criticism:

https://www.boldomatic.com/shop/products/orLVDQ

the absurdity and amazing bad quality of "I'm late for my abortion" cartoon is killing me

when people make political cartoons that pass the onion's fake political cartoons in absurdity

in all caps and italics

The "jokes" of those strips are offensive enough, but why someone published shitty artwork by someone who couldn't draw in the first place also gets a slot further down on the list.

"But, it's like his opinion. And you know
http://thescript.thetake.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-Big-Lebowski-White-Russian.jpeg

arts teacher gf sent me this tempest in a teapot

https://alternateroots.org/why-we-must-have-inclusion-diversity-and-equity-in-the-arts-a-response-to-the-national-association-for-music-education/

http://www.artsintegrity.org/controversy-over-equity-diversity-inclusion-in-arts-education-at-an-nea-convening/

also "ALAANA" is a new one on me; is this in common use anywhere but in the ivory tower (no pun intended)? No ILX hits on search.

There is a growing conversation around the term ‘people of color,’ with some entities advocating for the use of ‘African, Arab and Native American (ALAANA),’ in addition to white, Asian and Latin@. Because the remarks in question herein speak of ‘black’ and ‘Latino,’ and attributed quotes include the term ‘minority,’ Arts Integrity has elected to utilize the broad term ‘people of color’ for the purpose of this essay and will be taking the new language under advisement for the future.

How exactly is that a tempest in a teapot?

it's apparently confined to one small niche (arts education politics) and not being picked up on by any big media that i've seen yet.
this guy butera is obviously patently wrong if he's speaking/behaving as quoted but he is explicitly denying some of her statements and reportage as "misinterpretation". He has since been suspended pending investigation.

He has since been suspended pending investigation.

the end

...wishful thinking i know

http://gawker.com/gunbroker-com-shuts-down-george-zimmermans-auction-1776314827

From the comments: "I’m a black man who’s lived most of my life in America, and this is just pretty much how it’s always been.

If you want to really get into it, I think it stems from guilt, shame, and the logical end of the “just world” fallacy.

The average white family is worth $134,000, while the average black family is worth $11,000. There’s a huge discrepancy there. It’s pretty easy to understand if you point at a system of institutionalized racism and say, “That system there is designed to keep black people down.” Easy answer so far.

But this is America. Land of the free. Bootstraps. Work hard and make something of yourself! So you run into a problem, because the idea of an institutionalized system that disempowers some people means that other people are getting privilege. Now you’re getting into the difficult part.

If America is a country where you can make yourself to be whatever you want to be, then people who are white and relatively well-off must be harder working, smarter people who make better decisions, right? But if there’s a system that routinely disempowers people of color, then is that person who’s white REALLY as smart and hardworking as they think they are?

Now you start getting into an existential crisis. A person who is white accepting a concept like “white privilege” means accepting that they got benefits to get them where they’re at, not that they did it all themselves. And that cuts to the core of their character, their self esteem, and everything they’ve worked for.

Look at Donald Trump. He got started because his dad gave him a “modest” loan of a million dollars. Obviously ANYBODY could do what he did, he just happened to be better at it than anyone else. Trump’s entire brand is based around the idea that he’s so awesome and did all this stuff himself because he’s so great, not because he was born privileged and rich.

Agreeing that institutionalized racism is real and that white privilege is real means saying to one’s self that they got benefits and privileges they didn’t earn, and that maybe they’re not as good and smart as they think they are. That’s a come-to-Jesus moment most people aren’t willing to face up to."

On point, from the comments: "I remain in complete awe that George Zimmerman is still alive. He should be in awe as well, and stupid shit like this suggests he sure isn’t."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2016/05/17/steven-adams-oklahoma-city-thunder-golden-state-warriors-game-1/84477378/

The most amazing thing to me about all of this is the comment reaction of "he's from New Zealand, maybe he didn't know" which cements my belief that people really are willfully dim.

that is honestly kinda what i thought it was, a silly gaffe

Mr. Veg recently conveyed some interesting personal experiences with NZ racism, so yeah I'm not convinced by that excuse

I think his own admission makes it clear in the article. Dan's point is about the commenters (why Dan is reading the comments I have no idea).

Yeah no, Australians also use that "we dont know about your history" BS all the fucking time, no goddamn excuse in 2016.

I like when americans are like "well, they don't really have racism in Australia so they can't understand"

doubling down on not knowing anything about other people

Oh I'm well aware there's shitloads of racism down under too

We dont have racism? Geez do people think that? We have an underclass living in a literal 3rd world environment in this country.

Isn't there also a long and fairly recent history of Australian white supremacy politics oh hey look yes there is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

I think we're all on board with the "Australia has racism" theory.

They didn't ship other human beings en masse to be used as slaves for three centuries, but you probably don't want to get into a conversation with some of them about boats either.

Our racism is surely different than in the US: its all about "we grew here, you flew here"/"go back where you came from" BS. And it is very ugly. Anyway I'm sure I'm preaching to le choir here on this.

I was wondering if dude was going to get offered a pass for being NZ or for being in Oklahoma.

Yeah, I was referencing Americans being apologetic for Australians being dumb about race. Like, say, an American rapper who had to walk back his comments about an Australian he mentored

Our racism is surely different than in the US: its all about "we grew here, you flew here"/"go back where you came from" BS. And it is very ugly. Anyway I'm sure I'm preaching to le choir here on this.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

Surely they don't say that to the native (pre-Euro) Australians.

don't underestimate the idiocy

No, they just call all koori folk drunks and welfare cheats :(

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/05/brown-v-board-v-airbnb/483725/

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/05/five-elected-as-overseers/?link_id=0&can_id=63bc3a82f39ac828495b3b3ffa5194d3&source=email-congratulations-to-the-newly-elected-overseers&email_referrer=congratulations-to-the-newly-elected-overseers&email_subject=congratulations-to-the-newly-elected-overseers

This is really insider-baseball stuff around the Harvard Board of Overseers election but the breakdown is this:

- The admissions process takes into account both tangible and non-tangible factors when attempting to build a talented, diverse freshman class; one of those factors is race
- A group of conservatives who were opposed to the inclusion of race as a distinguishing criterion put together a slate of nominees under the name "Free Harvard, Fair Harvard" advocating for much greater financial aid across the board for all students oh and removing some the considerations that were allowing some of the black and Hispanic students in the door; they allied with a group of disgruntled Asian-Americans who felt that these considerations were artificially keeping the number of Asians at Harvard low to make space for less worthy students (side note: one does not need to be a Harvard graduate to run for Overseer)
- A good segment of the alumni base was appalled by this and put forward their own slate of nominees who were committed to the overall diversity initiatives that Harvard had committed to and was trying to improve, both in terms of admissions and on-campus support for the students who needed it once they got there; this group operated under the name Coalition for a Diverse Harvard
- A seriously contentious argument between the two factions raged across social media, with one side-effect being the discovery that one of the "Free Harvard, Fair Harvard" people was an attorney who sued UT Austin over "racial quotas" and another had spoken at an event with some white power groups
- As shown in that link, the Coalition won, thank god

oh ALSO Ralph Nader was helping lead the charge on the Free Harvard/Fair Harvard side and was one of the names on the slate

wtf Nader

never forget, Nader wondered if Obama would be "an Uncle Tom for corporations" immediately after Obama won the presidency:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/nader-defends-obama-slur/?_r=0

He then redefined his entire political brand into "racebaiting from the left" so it's really not at all surprising that he would dive headfirst into this bullshit

on the flip side, the thing Nader does best these days is lose elections so I have no idea why FHFH were so eager to partner with him

http://theundefeated.com/features/mission-impossible-african-americans-analytics/

(TW: sports) this is a really interesting topic that i wish were tackled by a better writer, and not one who's a stats-hating dinosaur

(ftr i have a lot of respect for wilbon's career, obviously, but i don't think it's a controversial opinion to say the industry's passed him by)

the second half of that article is a lot more interesting, to be sure, once i got through the groaners

Good, long Guardian piece on "the enduring whiteness of American journalism" by Howard French

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/may/25/sports-analytics-african-americans-michael-wilbon-article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/25/white-high-school-football-players-in-idaho-charged-with-raping-black-disabled-teammate-with-a-coat-hanger/?postshare=3241464184999722&tid=ss_fb

Hang onto this the next time someone says "kids are growing up less racist"

that is insanely fucked up and sad beyond words.

stuck somewhere beteewn nausea & rage myself

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/24/commencement-speaker-gets-booed-after-speaking-briefly-in-spanish-and-criticizing-trump/

Gizmodo jumps straight to the point:

http://gizmodo.com/yo-fuck-this-commercial-1778914903

Without even clicking, I'm guessing that's the Chinese detergent ad.

Anyway. I thought it was a better idea when it went the other way.

http://i.imgur.com/Y2uIS04.jpg

It wasn't a better idea

I'm really bothered by the cal state fullerton thing. how the shit do you graduate in a class that's 40% latino and then get screaming mad when part of the commencement speech is in Spanish? How fucking pathetic and stupid and tiny-dicked do you have to be to think you have any cause to act like that? Who fucking raised you? I'm from fucking Alabama. I don't understand you children. Please leave.

This Alesha Dixon thing on another thread?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/long-lost-manuscript-contains-searing-eyewitness-account-tulsa-race-massacre-1921-180959251/

Wait so this Alesha Dixon thing, the controversy is that a black woman told a bunch of black men that they were awesome black men? Is this accurate?

(also I am bookmarking that Smithsonian link for a time when I am less likely to cry while reading it)

goes w/out saying, but avoid the comments

Stop fucking avoiding the comments. Read them and understand what people are capable of.

Wait so this Alesha Dixon thing, the controversy is that a black woman told a bunch of black men that they were awesome black men? Is this accurate?

― DJP, Tuesday, 31 May 2016 16:35

She called them "sexy chocolate men" and people on social media demanded she apologize or be fired and it has been said she isn't allowed to perform her new single on the talent show (might be unconnected though).

I think it's mostly white people who were complaining.

lol at mostly

I didn't want to assume too much because I haven't trawled through enough

So... yes, then.

What a stupid controversy

Stop fucking avoiding the comments. Read them and understand what people are capable of.

― DJP, Tuesday, May 31, 2016 8:55 AM (3 hours ago)

well, i mentioned it because i didn't avoid them and learned nothing. ymmv.

re Trump's history of racism:

http://theweek.com/speedreads/569355/donald-trumps-first-quoted-words-new-york-times-42-years-ago-thats-ridiculous

Well, our (Scotland's) First Minister has said she won't meet Trump when he visits Scotland. It's for his golf resort, which was widely opposed but went ahead anyway. It's odd how much this election campaign has mentioned Britain - arguments about the mayor of London etc.

Also, I don't think Trump wants to be president - he just wants to be elected president. I.e. He wants to win, but that's all. Can you imagine how bored he would be as president? His biography doesn't show a guy who commits to jobs well. He's a quitter, really. (Not that quitter is an insult - I come from a long line of quitters, and I am proud to count myself amongst their ranks)

It's odd how much this election campaign has mentioned Britain - arguments about the mayor of London etc.l

and yet trump had not the first fucking clue what brexit was in that hollywood reporter article from the other day

I didn't know his golf resort went ahead, I thought everyone opposed it. How did he get permission?

Ask Alex Salmond.

wtf is wrong with people?

http://addictinginfo.org/2016/06/10/racist-conservatives-wish-sasha-obama-a-happy-15th-birthday-hope-u-get-raped-screenshots/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link

I have nothing to say about Alton Sterling. We've seen this so many times already, I have no idea what can be added to the conversation.

I guess I can say it's been 68 years since this happened in my family and we're still seeing it happen:

http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/mississippi/samuel-bacon/

CW: lynching, suicide

http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/piedmont-park-hanging-atlanta-georgia-stone-mountain-police-report-suicide-lynching-social-media-twitter-kkk-ku-klux-klan-closed/

things have gotten edgy at The CW since America's Next Top Model went off the air

(sorry)

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ramona-hate-crime-20160707-snap-story.html

Feel like this anecdote is bound to get swallowed up, given all of the high-profile news these days. I just attended a wedding for two of my wife's colleagues. The bride was a white American. The groom was an immigrant from Chile. His entire family traveled to Maryland for the ceremony. After everyone walked up the aisle, the pastor (from the groom's side) began the ceremony in Spanish. About 15 seconds into it, from the wife's side: "Speak English!"

At a fucking wedding.

It came from a teenage kid, and his mother hushed him down immediately. And for our part, and like most of the guests, we were very friendly to the groom's family. But what the fuck, people?

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/corey_menafee/

faces a felony charge! fuck

hopefully this link works, it's a lifetime account from a black man who grew up in the Midwest and lives around my city
https://www.facebook.com/brian.crooks/posts/10103901923530909

very good

faces a felony charge! fuck

― 龜, Monday, July 11, 2016 10:13 PM (Yesterday)

story updated that yale is not pursuing that; he seems like an awesome guy. hope someone gives him a job.

viral story going around about cops at Zaxby's in Shelby, NC who were taunted & served bad food (too much spice) repeatedly refers to the employees who prepared the food as "boys".... I'ma keep slapping my forehead even though it feels like I should be checking my watch

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/yale-worker-john-c-calhoun-window-slaves.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/us/critics-see-efforts-to-purge-minorities-from-voter-rolls-in-new-elections-rules.html

This is almost Snidely Whiplash villainy, but in real life and fucking disgusting.

When the deputy sheriff’s patrol cruiser pulled up beside him as he walked down Broad Street at sunset last August, Martee Flournoy, a 32-year-old black man, was both confused and rattled. He had reason: In this corner of rural Georgia, African-Americans are arrested at a rate far higher than that of whites.

But the deputy had not come to arrest Mr. Flournoy. Rather, he had come to challenge Mr. Flournoy’s right to vote.

The majority-white Hancock County Board of Elections and Registration was systematically questioning the registrations of more than 180 black Sparta citizens — a fifth of the city’s registered voters — by dispatching deputies with summonses commanding them to appear in person to prove their residence or lose their voting rights. “When I read that letter, I was kind of nervous,” Mr. Flournoy said in an interview. “I didn’t know what to do.”

jfc

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a61929/black-woman-journalist-at-comic-con/

there are a myriad of problems, from black women being underrepresented in most genres covered by comiccon, the inability of people to tell one black woman from another, etc

in unrelated news someone at work thought I look like the dude who plays Moriarty on the current Sherlock tv series but I think it's the forehead and the fact the coworker is indian and all white ppl look same

(putting this on fantasy/science fiction/speculative thread and the 2016 race thread)

https://medium.com/fireside-fiction-company/blackspecfic-571c00033717
https://storify.com/Charley_Locke/n-k-jemisin-on?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email

I've spent quite a lot of time this year reading about diversity and discrimination in speculative fiction, it's truly labyrinthine with all the blogs, social media, lists and semi-regular shitstorms. I've been reading these articles for a few days now and I fear all the links are going to keep me reading for days more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/28/manspreading-arrest-broken-windows-policing_n_7462944.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/10/snapchat-racist-asian-filter-yellowface

https://mediadiversified.org/2016/04/20/porn-our-colour-blind-spot-when-it-comes-to-racism/

Been horrified at the (increasing?) prevalence of this stuff, there's even a video site called Apetube. Too many dominatrix custom clips with the "racial humiliation" genre, like videos with a torrent of racist abuse for Asian viewers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/slaves-georgetown-university.html

saw mention of that, haven't read the article yet

https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2016/07/11/who-is-marvels-blaxploitation-luke-cage-comic-even-for-exactly/

yes I know I've posted this to three different threads

that's a smart write-up; i like the way he acknowledges that blaxploitation films can kind of go in either direction (or both at once) .

thought this piece by riz ahmed on racial profiling & typecasting was great & darkly funny

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/riz-ahmed-typecast-as-a-terrorist

I was trying to determine which thread to post that on and ended up forgetting entirely.

I hope he has a follow-up in another year after he's played a... freedom fighter... in a Star Wars film.

The new Swetshop Boys single, T5, is about the same thing. The album should hopefully be better than Heems' solo one.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mirajacob/questions-from-my-mixed-race-son?utm_term=.yxEVMpwX8#.tgNE5LPw0

okay I loved that and I didn't expect to

kids rule

awwww

yeah that's great

last few articles linked from this thread were all excellent

omg

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/cary-news/article106145867.html

tbf, she did use to read WORD UP magazine

The theme of the annual celebration, which will run Jan. 14 to 16, is “Healing Race Relations through Conversation and Participation.” Attendees will be able to delve into this theme through a variety of events, including an International Diversity Summit at the Cary Arts Center, featuring panel discussions with community and religious leaders.

Participation.

Participation.

Donald Trump has made it safe for flight crews to be really, really racist again.

http://distractify.com/trending/2016/10/12/racist-flight-crew

http://io9.gizmodo.com/united-airlines-kicks-passenger-off-because-of-marvel-s-1787717851

From Donald Glover's Atlanta series on FX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKSGJcYwMM

wow

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

I kind of glossed over this story until I realized:

a) this dude was the son of the guy who started St*rmfr*nt; and
b) one of his medieval history professors is a woman I sang with in college

I'm beginning to think DJP's college singing experience was spent mostly in Polyphonic Spree.

lol well I sang in two separate 60-person choirs so... kinda

Incredible story.

Off-topic, this: "X is a person I sang with in college" must be my favourite vmic-post on ilx :)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/10/25/white-high-schoolers-in-mississippi-put-a-noose-around-a-black-students-neck-and-yanked-naacp-says/

jesus fucking christ

and the comments are a horrorshow

On the lighter side (pun intended):

https://twitter.com/NifMuhammad/status/791745979875753987

https://frinkiac.com/img/S08E02/515664.jpg

@rembert
coat switching is white jason waterfalls

https://vivatiffany.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/academia-love-me-back/

http://i.imgur.com/ggV5yYx.png

do we have a race and academia thread?

This makes me furious.

yeah... it sucks. usually when we encounter this sort of thing it's more subtle and undocumented.

xp to DJP. As well it might. It's infuriating.

The only explanation (not an excuse!) is that over a period of decades many professors' minds slowly congeal into an oleaginous mass of unmerited assumptions regarding their own superiority over their students, who they reflexively dismiss as callow, ill-educated, irritating and foolish. This prof needs to be publically humiliated in the worst possible way.

it's horrible and idk how anyone could defend it
i do not believe in public humiliation though

i believe in humiliating public humiliators

you're latino so you can't use the word hence?

The only good that could come of this shameful event would be for the professor involved to feel such a strong sense of remorse that he would never again unthinkingly repeat it.

she

sorry. she.

Devil's advocate: it is possible that this prof found failures to provide appropriate attribution?

that wouldn't justify this behaviour

ah true I missed the in-front-of-class accusation on first read

what kind of idiot professor thinks "hence" is such an exotic word that surely it must be plagiarized. "hence" is such an undergrad word. what a dumbass.

anything is possible
i deal with stuff like this all the time and any professor who circles one word and writes that it's not someone's word is an unprofessional asshole -- i teach my students about academic vocab and assure them that these are their words to use. then calling it out in front of the rest of the class? also horrible asshole behavior. i do not think that escalating the cycle of public shaming is going to yield any valuable lessons taught though. it just yields and spreads more shame and anger.

Went back to reread the blog post. The author is scrupulous about not revealing the gender of the professor and the only pronoun I saw used was "they". Otherwise, it is "professor", "person" or similarly gender-neutral terms. Which is to her credit.

LL i'm not sure what your objection is, the student doesn't name the professor anywhere in the post. and it's the professor who humiliated her in front of the class...

obviously both the written comment (assuming, as quincie points out, that there was not failure to cite a source) and calling her out in front of the class are awful. that said some of the commenters on her blog are encouraging her to take the issue up with the dean, department head, etc, which sounds like...a bad idea

I am not objecting to her statement of her experience. That is hers to express and I support her right to share her experience because it does indeed need to be shared if so many people think that this is a rare experience. It's not, unfortunately.

I am objecting to perpetuating the cycle by publicly shaming the professor in retaliation. It was suggested that this was an adequate solution and I don't believe that it is. Taking it to the chair and the dean makes a lot more sense, and this has been done many times where I work. It's not uncommon. (I am not interested in getting into detail about my job here, please -- I hope by now ILX trusts that I have my heart in the right place)

oh i see that you were responding to aimless's post. i agree that public humiliation would probably not be useful

Going to the dean/department head absolutely makes sense unless this professor IS the department head (in which case I'd go to the dean).

she has reason to be upset but i'd be wary of going that route, particularly for an aspiring academic who is going to need letters of recommendation for grad school. it seems like it could easily backfire

confronting the professor directly would probably be the best option though i realize it's a lot easier for me to say that than for her to do it

she already has a situation where a professor has labeled her a plagiarist in front of an entire class; how many recommendations do you think she's going to be getting out of this department if she just meekly accepts this and talks to no one else?

http://www.kcci.com/article/police-investigating-white-heritage-posters-at-isu/7664984

At this point, officials say this is a policy violation, and they want to talk to whoever hung up the signs to find out their intent.

I will give you three guesses, officials, and the first two don't count.

Wanna see how Facebook's advertising department views you? If you go to https://m.facebook.com/ads/preferences/categories/ and click on "Lifestyle and Culture," you can see your "Ethnic Affinity" - not necessarily who they think you are, but what kind of products and services they think you might be interested in. Mine is "African-American," probably because I post about jazz a lot.

interestingly as a UK citizen i don't appear to have an "Ethnic Affinity" tag, presumably because we're such a big chill melting-pot

Yeah me neither - they do have me down as a millennial and late technology adopter tho

i am down as Generation X and Fat Maudlin Twat

a friend mentioned one of the ISU posters that was put up. haven't seen any of the ones that had much text, but the one I did see looked like a bad art project and less like a call to arms for racists, but I am guessing... just really dumb racists

With In Full Color, Rachael Doležal describes the path that led her from being a child of white evangelical parents to an NAACP chapter president and respected educator and activist who identified as black. Along the way, she’ll discuss the deep emotional bond she formed with her four adopted black siblings, the sense of belonging she felt while living in black communities in Jackson, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., and the discrimination she’s suffered while living as a black woman.

Her story is nuanced and complex, and in the process of telling it, she forces us to consider race in an entirely new light—not as a biological imperative, but as a function of the experiences we have, the culture we embrace, and, ultimately, the identity we choose.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51qiMHtdZiL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

i read ilx with colours inverted on my phone at night and i think its never provided better context

maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan fuck Dolezal str8 up

A former sports reporter and columnist for Jackson Hole News, Storms Reback writes and plays professional poker in Austin, Texas

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/10/31/a-black-autistic-teen-got-lost-running-a-5k-then-assaulted-by-a-man-who-feared-getting-mugged/

i am down as Generation X and Fat Maudlin Twat

― nom de grrrrr (Noodle Vague), Saturday, October 29, 2016 10:17 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it thinks i am gen x - I'm millennial - and that I'm into both the scottish labour and conservative parties - i'm a scottish nationalist - but at least it knows i'm an emigrant (though it uses the vile terms expat).

Facebook thinks I'm a millenial mezzo-soprano

close enough

yeah I was basically like *shrugs, sings some When Saints Go Machine falsetto stuff*

http://www.theroot.com/blog/the-grapevine/gentrigreens-neiman-marcus-is-selling-66-collard-greens/

I am dying

incredible

my father-in-law sent me the link to that and I think he basically stunned the entire family with the sheer chutzpah of charging that much money for collard greens

lol @ the dialogue at the end

every time I think I've recovered from this, I think "$66 + $15 shipping" and the giggles come back

Go on, tell me why it's called Needless Markups again?

many MANY years ago, a friend of a friend hooked me up with a caroling gig at NM; basically we had 6 ppl in old-timey gear singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and stuff wandering around the store for 45 min, after which we got a gift bag of bullshit (the most useful thing in it was travel mug that should have cost $3 but was actually $19.95 or some nonsense like that)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6begU7Ts6Y

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/30/magazine/black-male-sexuality-last-taboo.html?_r=0

Harry's girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed - so will he be dropping by for tea?

Had an ilx visual glitch where I read a caption as
"Markle's mom (who is hot)"

It's 2016, right?

Georgia Governor Refers To ‘Colored People’ In Education Speech

classic NAACP-invoking dodge

Who in the hell uses CP as shorthand for NAACP?

people who are Not African American

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-boyle-heights-20161102-story.html

mcwhorter in a sure to be controversial take:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/11/13/the-recreational-use-racism/TzxwI9Fg03ySKGYrCBv9SL/story.html

I do not have the energy to read that right now

Or ever.

These two sentences seem rather historically ignorant:

Never in the history of human society has there reigned, among such a healthy proportion of a populace, such an advanced conception of human rights. It’s easy to forget what a moral advance the American civil rights movement was.

http://fox8.com/2016/11/11/two-shaker-heights-teens-disciplined-after-exposing-students-derogatory-comments/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-student-deportation-letters-minority-classmates-article-1.2869924?utm_content=buffer11934&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw

The Martian anthropologist would recognize no difference between the way those accused of being witches were treated in 17th-century Salem, Mass., and the way many innocent people are being accused of “racism” today. Those appalled by the way people were tarred with the Communist label in the 1940s and 1950s must recognize that America has blundered into the same censorious mob mentality in assailing as “racists,” just recently, people such as Ellen DeGeneres — for Photoshopping herself riding on Jamaican gold medal sprinter Usain Bolt’s back in celebration of his win — and Hillary Clinton — for referring to the black men terrorizing poor black neighborhoods as “superpredators” in describing plans for protecting people in those neighborhoods from such crime.

This is obviously nuts, right? Did I miss the part where deGeneres and Clinton were at risk of being hanged or jailed for their un-PC comments?

Pakistani-American comedian/actor Kumail Nanjiani confronted/threatened by Trump supporters at an LA bar last night: https://twitter.com/kumailn/status/797470238614831104

Can we please push the Martian Anthropologist down the stairs? Who still uses that trope?

you are maybe thinking of the ED-209 anthrpologist?

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2016/11/12/veteran-says-chilis-took-back-free-veterans-day-meal/

Fucking hell.

I saw this on Twitter and I'm a little ashamed by how much I laughed at the person who tweeted "Shame on Chili's"

fucking DFW burbs are such total garbage

I say that in at least partial awareness that it's a reflexive desire to localize the ugliness and put it far away from me despite the fact that it is actually everywhere

The pencil-necked Chili manager seemed to be on his douchey warpath in the first place, but something inside of him probably snapped as soon as he saw the dog's name.

xp it may be everywhere but it's especially in the dfw suburbs, for sure.

I linked to this in the Mourning in America thread, but seems germane here as well:

https://www.thenation.com/article/election-night-saw-victories-in-local-criminal-justice-reform-this-should-be-the-beginning/

i fucking hate talking about race because it's such a minefield, but against my better judgment i did anyway, and against my better judgment i'll post it here.

One of the reactions I have seen to Donald Trump's election is white people being very concerned about other white people. We wanted to believe we were different than we are, or we wanted to believe that the color of our skin didn't matter.

We don't get to live in a post-racial world, because that's not the world we made. When we gave up on busing, it became a delusional fantasy. We don't get to live in a world where women are equal to men. We gave up on that when we failed to ratify the ERA.

I didn't grow up around black people or Hispanics. I've been told that when I was in preschool, I had a black friend. I don't remember him. When I was older I did have a black friend, but I didn't recognize him as black, though I was aware of the abuse he got on account of his skin and his heritage.

We don't get to decide to not be white any more than my friend got to decide not to be black (even though his dad was white).

I think a lot about Rudyard Kipling. I read a lot of him as a child, in school and out of it. One of his most notorious poems, one I definitely read, is about "The White Man's Burden". On consideration, I think that Kipling was essentially right to talk of the white man's burden, but was wrong about its nature.

The white man's burden is shame. White shame is the appropriate counterpart to black pride. Because white pride, white superiority, is what we were raised with, and Donald Trump's election give us the chance to step back and recognize how much of a fucking lie it always was.

And this is not, this is not a fucking hashtag #notallwhitemen thing. I know you didn't vote for Donald Trump. I've already said it's not your fault. This is about living in the world everybody else already lives in, a world where people get judged and blamed for stuff they have nothing to do with based on the colour of their skin. We can't challenge injustice and pretend we're immune from its consequences. If we want to be equal, we have to feel the same things. White people have to accept the collective burden of shame, or we will never be able to lift it.

i'll take my lumps now.

This is going to come across as harsh, and it's not meant to because you're coming from a good place, but more white liberal guilt is probably fairly low down on the list of priorities at the moment. Leaving aside whether white people should feel a collective burden of shame, it's not going to happen and it's not a particularly useful aim for any movement. No children from minority groups are going to get a better education because you feel bad about things. It's not going to help any parents put food on the table. Compartmentalisation also makes it perfectly possible to feel bad about things and remain entirely complicit in them - plenty of meat eaters feel bad about factory farming but aren't going to give up burgers, i'm sure Samantha Bee feels terrible about Donald Trump getting elected but it apparently hasn't stopped her family from fighting the desegregation of the school her kids go to. One of the reasons far-right polling seems to be off the mark at the moment is that some people recognise that admitting to voting for UKIP, Trump, Le Pen, etc is perceived as socially shameful but it doesn't stop them doing it. Shame isn't guaranteed to overcome self-interest.

To some extent, and again, it's not aimed at you, affluent liberals telling working class white conservatives to feel bad about white supremacy masks the fact that a lot of the former group have benefited much more from it. The latter would be perfectly entitled to turn around and say 'why should i do anything when your activism, from a position of much greater privilege, appears to be limited to trying to make me feel guilty?'.

Recognising that everyone, whether they consider themselves personally bigoted or not, is working within a system of white supremacy, and in many cases having that system work for them, is essential - but the question remains what are they going to do about it? Would this conversation have been much less necessary had a more benign face of white supremacy been elected on the 11th?

Harsh is good. My words were harsh. I was ready to take my lumps, and I think that your words were fundamentally fair and respectful, and I basically agree with what you have to say.

I'm struggling with how much to respond here. In the past when I've spoken about things where I'm not confident in my beliefs, as I'm not now, I have a tendency to dig myself deeper. At the same time, I kind of feel like it's a risk I need to take, that talking about race can't just be "I believe this", to which someone else responds "Well, I believe this," and then I say "OK" and we go no further.

What I do a lot, one of my biggest flaws as a writer as a person, is I tend to blur "I" and "we". It's deliberate. I don't only want to speak for myself. A lot of other people, all those people who voted for Trump, are trying to speak for me as a white man, claiming to possess my voice, and I don't really know what the best way to respond to that is, but I don't think that it's to claim that I stand alone.

Back to the "I". I was raised to believe that shame was always a bad thing, that I shouldn't acknowledge it or feel it or let anybody else put shame on me. And I was raised to believe the same things about fear, and about anger. And having reclaimed fear and anger for my own, I also have a desire to reclaim the mantle of shame.

And... I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but words are important to me, really important to me. So I do absolutely disavow white guilt, I absolutely disavow blame, I disavow self-hatred, I think these things are useless at best and actively harmful at worst. Shame, however, I think has its place for me.

I was raised to believe in a post-racial society, even though the society I was raised in was not post-racial. And so I have had a long struggle to accept... I don't even want to use the word "white privilege", because it's become such a loaded word, but to accept that I am a white man and understand what that means, to know that the color of my skin does make a difference and to understand all the ways in which it does.

When I say "shame", I understand that white conservatives as well as white liberals, the vast majority of white people, will understand it as, you know. Guilt, blame, self-hatred. And for me, it's just about context. If I can be proud of Lyndon Johnson for pushing through the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, I can be ashamed of Woodrow Wilson for firing all black people from government. If I can be proud of Cassius Marcellus Clay, I can be ashamed of Bull Connor.

Maybe I just need to find a different word to use. Words are important.

I am not in a position to tell other white people how to feel, but my personal belief is that denial of white shame will lead inevitably to white exceptionalism and, from there, to white supremacy. To answer your final question, yes, I believe that this conversation was, at some point, going to be necessary. That electing Hillary Clinton on the 8th only would have delayed it.

My starting point is that white supremacy is not an idea, or a risk, it's a system of social, economic and political power that has already been in place for hundreds of years. Racism / white pride are pillars used to support it but it has an independent structural character. It probably needs to be recognised to be dismantled but recognition alone is never going to be sufficient and I have a question mark over whether shame is a right tool for the job. But, ultimately, anything you can do as an individual to chip away at it is positive and the more you can do with actions as well as words, the better.

Back to the "I". Hi there, I think I have found your problem.

Cosign. Followed by, potentially, more digging. :)

I agree with what you're saying, that collective shame is not a sufficient response. I think that it may nonetheless be a necessary response. We need to better navigate what responsibility we bear as individuals, and what responsibilities we bear as a member of the system, the class construct, known as "white people".

So for instance, talking about Sam Bee. I don't know the details of what you're talking about regarding her family fighting school desegregation, but I have to ask- is she personally fighting against school desegregation? And if she's not, I don't think it's right for us to hold her responsible for what her family does. I have family members who voted for Trump, and I've declared them dead to me, and I have other family members did not vote for Trump, and have not declared those family members who did vote for Trump dead to them.

How far do I go? How much responsibility do I assign? Should I also declare the family members who did not vote for Trump dead to me as well on the grounds that they're still talking to the family members who did? We have to force people to make hard choices right now, but how hard, exactly, do the choices have to be?

I am not proposing shame as a social value. I am not proposing that we undertake to shame others. What is important for me, and I think might potentially be helpful to others (though it might not), is for us as individuals, of our own free will, to accept shame as a legitimate part of our common heritage as white people.

Back to the "I". Hi there, I think I have found your problem.

― Andrew Farrell

I'm so glad to hear it! That's a relief. Thank you.

http://www.wyff4.com/article/fire-destroys-beaufort-black-chamber-of-commerce-building/8283393

^ ugh. shouldn't that be on the WaPo or NYT site's front pages?

If you want to be harsh, I think the only thing white people will do to battle white supremacy is to die off. Young white people pretty much just as racist as old white people, in the US, in the UK, in DK. But there's fewer.

So you're off the hook as moral actors, white people! Take a break!

What hook? White people has never ever been 'on the hook' as moral actors, still aren't.

why does white people never want to hook

for my small part, now that we have people "ironically" flying Nazi flags in my neighborhood, last night I sat my daughter down had "the talk" with her about racist language, anti-semitism, etc. and how these things are used to dehumanize and disempower minorities, including us. I had to get explicit about what the n-word was, its context/history, and why she should never use it or any other ethnic slur. and if she sees/hears this kind of language directed at anybody, herself or otherwise, she needs to speak up that it is not okay and she needs to tell an adult.

tbh she was mostly bored by it (outside of the history lesson aspect, which always engages her) but it seemed like now was the time to do this.

l-r: Shakes, l'il Shakestress

https://frinkiac.com/img/S03E17/1236063.jpg

lol

always very cool when a bunch of white people compete to see who hates white people the most

always very cool when a bunch of white people compete to see who hates white people the most

Competition's not over until Whiney gets here.

I plead nolo contendre

I was going to complain about the turn this thread has taken but tbh the election pretty much showed that the most critical issue facing Western civilization right now is how white people feel about each other, so carry on

http://i.imgur.com/ChDhqVu.jpg

Uh, has anybody checked out the Showing Up for Racial Justice group?

This group: http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org

I mean

I just

even Rachel Dolezal is looking at that website and going "you guys, your heart is in the right place but this might be a bad idea"

seems very obvious that's a honeypot?

oh i guess there's an actual website behind hte landing page

SURJ is real! They're not my movement fave but I think they're all right?

http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/about

i was looking at it the other day (i believe based off of a HOOS suggestion on facebook? apologies to him if i'm remembering incorrectly) but i have no experience with them.

My side-eye is coming from the "this is a group for white people who want to fight for racial justice" rhetoric.

Because, why does there need to be a separate white-only group for this?

I don't think it's meant as a white-only thing, I think it's geared for an easy access point for really self-conscious white folks who want to get involved and learn how to talk about these things. Entry-level stuff, I guess

iirc the rw on this is that wp should be shutting up for racial justice non

SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice.

you know, out of context...

They're a response to the "it's not POC's job to educate whites about racism" point. So

There can be an impulse for White people to try to get it right- to have the right analysis, language, friends, etc. What SURJ was called upon to do at our founding in 2009 was to take action- to show up when there are racist attacks, when the police attack and murder People of Color in the street, their homes, our communities, in challenging structural racism, immigrant oppression and indigenous struggles. We maintain ongoing relationships, individually and organizationally with leaders and organizations led by People of Color. We also know it is our work to organize other White people and we are committed to moving more White people for collective action. We can't re-build the world we want alone- we must build powerful, loving movements of millions taking action for racial justice.

I mean do you really want to be in a room with 70 white ppl who just figured out that they're racist and might start crying about how bad they feel? YOU DON'T?>?! Getting people from that point to being useful to racial justice is sort of SURJ's job.

the more i think about it, the larger the scope of that job seems

Everybody go read this so you understand my metaphor: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/the-cost-of-survival

It's probably been tried and done, and done again, but to my knowledge - and I know all about the fucking Cremaster Cycle, for crying out loud, I guess the NYer felt it was good for a cultural drip like me to read about it - nobody has ever bothered to put on the 36 (or 72? or 120+?) -hour film cycle about the long, slow, sometimes stealthy, and frequently overt attempt to wipe out African-Americans from the face of this country.

The only reason we don't talk about the attempted holocaust against black people in America is because it hasn't succeeded. There has been a (thankfully) unmanaged, poorly administrated, fucked up attempt at wiping out black folks going on since before Lincoln even got shot in the head. That's what white people need to fucking understand. That's what every black person in this country already knows. Get that through your fucking head.

And everything we do as "upstanding white people" that isn't stepping in front of the bullet - putting ourselves and our families in its way - is basically a box check to feel a little less bad. What most black people go through in this country is pretty fucking terrible. And the way you fight it, as far as I can tell (on top of living with and around blacks, integrating your workforce, whatever you can while we're in "peacetime") is to scream at the top of your lungs whenever some piece of shit tries to act like it's okay to discriminate and talk shit about how darker people aren't people. In actual public. Not later on FB. Not on Twitter. Not on ILX.

I make these boasts because I hope they guilt me, later, into right action at the right time, when it's actually hard and the plurality of me wants to do nothing.

xp to DFW burbs - if California secedes they'll need to make urban Texas some kind of city-state dependencies and airlift goods to us - Dallas County went 60% Hillary last I saw, I'm sure Travis was close to that.

Yeah but it's easy to paint y'all with broad brushes when you live in DC (also a prime candidate for post-Calexit cargo cult formation)

the broad brush of suburbs is fair, they're all shitholes

After Donald Trump’s election as president, Pamela Ramsey Taylor, who was director of Clay County Development Corp. in Clay, a tiny town outside Charleston, reportedly posted about the move from Michelle Obama to Melania Trump on Facebook, saying: “It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a Ape in heels,” according to NBC affiliate WSAZ.

The news station reported that the town’s mayor, Beverly Whaling, then replied, “Just made my day Pam.”

...

The two women have apologized for their remarks.

“My comment was not intended to be racist at all,” Whaling said in a statement to The Washington Post. “I was referring to my day being made for change in the White House! I am truly sorry for any hard feeling this may have caused! Those who know me know that I’m not of any way racist!

“Again, I would like to apologize for this getting out of hand!”

hang 'em high

oh shit I didn't mean to get out of hand

My side-eye is coming from the "this is a group for white people who want to fight for racial justice" rhetoric.

Because, why does there need to be a separate white-only group for this?

― ¶ (DJP)

because america is already filled with white spaces. because to challenge white supremacy we need POC thought in white spaces. because most white americans, liberal and conservative alike, instinctively ignore and marginalize POC thought, because POC thought makes them feel uncomfortable.

when POC speak, i need to shut the fuck up and listen, and then i need to carry that message, as best i possibly can, to the many, many places where POC are not allowed.

NAACPWP

anyone who talks shit about Michelle Obama should be jailed

At Upenn a lot of the black freshman were added to a racist GroupMe thread and began receiving messages from white supremacists based in Oklahoma. Apparently one of the OK racists was accepted at the school (though never attended) and was added to the Class of 2020 FB group which he used to gather personal information on black students.

because america is already filled with white spaces. because to challenge white supremacy we need POC thought in white spaces. because most white americans, liberal and conservative alike, instinctively ignore and marginalize POC thought, because POC thought makes them feel uncomfortable.

when POC speak, i need to shut the fuck up and listen, and then i need to carry that message, as best i possibly can, to the many, many places where POC are not allowed.

I really don't know which level of irony to tackle first here. Do I start with "white person proclaims need to listen to people of color while simultaneously not listening to or understanding the question/objection being posed by the black man looking at this group for the first time" or do I ask again "how is this group listening to the voices of POC if it is for white people/by white people as the verbiage on the website led me to believe" and wonder if the more explicit framing will get you to answer the actual question I was asking (which other people on the thread DID answer, btw; the website is terrible and makes the group look like something it is not unless you are familiar with them already, so I'm not 100% sure why you non-answered my question).

Their website is terrible. And fwiw I think they operate in like small local chapters so the quality of analysis is prob variable? As are the local partnerships that each chapter organizes with POC-led orgs in their area.

I do think it's a long but maybe necessary trip from "painfully earnest might cry" dawning race consciousness to actually being ready to function in a useful way for movement efforts. If SURJ isn't the right vehicle for getting people there, maybe something with key differences would be better, but SURJ is kind of what we have? And the whole point is to keep the work out of POC spaces so Black and brown ppl don't have to witness white tears/fragility/etc.

I went to a meeting once. It was p awkward. The person who opened the meeting did the whole yoga-esque icebreaker. "Close your eyes, put your feet flat on the floor, and FEEL the energy coming out of your feet and FLOWING all the way down to the ground." (We were on the 10th floor.) I organized some admin stuff for them and then had to bow out because of scheduling. They would have wanted me to take on more responsibility and I have kind of a full plate tbh. There were Black, brown, and Asian folks there as well, and some people from local racial justice orgs as facilitators.

Ideally SURJ or something like it would get people ready to provide the labor to support Black-led organizing with extra resources and capacity. Need money? Ask your white allies to fundraise. Need 25 people to do behind-the-scenes work for an event? Ask for white volunteers who will take orders from your org. Need non-POC to make a safety barrier to protect LGBQTPOC at a protest? You see where this is going.

Yes, that all makes a lot more sense that the picture the website drew for me.

picturing a little animation of a cop throwing some tear gas and a white guy diving on top of it before it gets close to protestors

Nothing so heroic. It's better to think of it as white guy making uhhh protest puppets or something in a barn for a POC org to carry in the streets because he has the time to do so. But then him not going on the march itself because he doesn't represent the affected community.

from puppet master to puppet maker

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54183f486bb3f7d466f059ec-960/surge-movement.png

see, this is exactly why i wish and what still posted here.

The war on punctuation could have been temporarily suspended for that sentence.

(We were on the 10th floor.)

lol

I will admit that the first thing that came to mind as I read through the website was the teacher from the Kwanzaa pageant episode of The Boondocks

I really don't know which level of irony to tackle first here. Do I start with "white person proclaims need to listen to people of color while simultaneously not listening to or understanding the question/objection being posed by the black man looking at this group for the first time" or do I ask again "how is this group listening to the voices of POC if it is for white people/by white people as the verbiage on the website led me to believe" and wonder if the more explicit framing will get you to answer the actual question I was asking (which other people on the thread DID answer, btw; the website is terrible and makes the group look like something it is not unless you are familiar with them already, so I'm not 100% sure why you non-answered my question).

― ¶ (DJP)

djp, since you're directly asking me a question, i'll respond, and my response is, look, i was raised in a racist and implicitly white supremacist system and that's limited what i'm able to understand and how i'm able to act. i'm pretty slow, and i'm pretty ignorant. i'm doing my best, but i simply don't think of myself as competent to engage with POC on issues of race, and frankly i'm not sure i'll ever be.

I 100% do not know how you are expecting me to respond to that so I'll just say: thanks?

you're welcome. you keep saying what needs to be said and i'll do my best to listen and to learn, and i will probably continue to misunderstand and screw up, but the teacher is not to blame if the student is poor. :)

Ilxors, keep on ilx-ing / cos it won't be too long

it's ok, I'm still trying to self-ban myself from posting on a couple threads where my comments are worthless and just read what's there, but the post button still works

rushomancy are you an american, out of curiosity?

well i'm not a dane :)

yeah, midwestern american, smack dab in the center of "we're not racist!" country :)

sup

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/texas-rejects-mexican-american-studies-textbook-seen-racist-n684881

The Texas State Board of Education, in a preliminary, but key vote, unanimously rejected a highly-criticized Mexican-American studies textbook that contained numerous errors and material that many saw as racist.

The book, titled "Mexican American Heritage," was considered by the Texas State Board of Education for Mexican-American studies classes that the state recently allowed as elective courses. The board rejected the textbook 14-0 on Wednesday in Austin, Texas.

Since its submission, the book had been blasted for passages that painted Mexican Americans as undocumented immigrants and claimed that illegal immigration has "caused a number of economic and security problems in the United States," including "poverty, non-assimilation, drugs, crime, and exploitation." The book also said Mexican laborers "were not reared to put in a full day's work so vigorously" and that they had a culture of "mañana."

im surprised that this was so well defeated, the tx board of ed must have improved sometime recently

they probably objected to the idea that exploitation of immigrants was going on

trigger warning: violence, graphic pictures

https://www.facebook.com/DontNvME/posts/10210023513771887

Jesus Christ

people are fucking horrible

Don't know what thread to put this in, but the Board of Ed for the Portland Public School system just sent out this resolution to all parents about dealing with any INS/ICE-types who want to come snooping around for undocumented schoolchildren:

http://www.pps.net/cms/lib8/OR01913224/Centricity/Domain/219/Immigration%20Resolution%203%20FINAL.pdf

Deportation has been a fucked-up thing even during the Obama Admin, and at least the election gave enough of a shock to people to realize that plans and processes and rules need to be explicitly laid out instead of some nebulous problem they didn't have to necessarily deal with immediately.

schoolchildren bullied in NYC http://www.brooklyndaily.com/stories/2016/48/all-teachers-bullying-immigrant-students-trump-election-2016-11-25-bk.html

Story Highlights: Wednesday night's York County Advisory Council meeting was overshadowed by racial overtones.

“I’m white power, to let you know,” Marsik said. “I’m white power. I belong to the white people that fought and died to set the black people free in this country, who fought and died to keep the freedoms in this country, who work hard, who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, pay their taxes only to see them squandered, OK, by irrational types of behavior by certain communities."

http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/local/2016/11/16/racial-tensions-threaten-boil-over-human-relations-meeting/93994464/

flush em out

Is there any reason at all at this point to assume that all police departments are not infested by, or controlled by, people like this?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3953602/Alabama-police-officer-fired-racist-Facebook-post-saying-Michelle-Obama-fluent-ghetto.html

xxp the subtext is rapidly becoming text.

btw the aftermath on that Chili's story upthread:

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/restaurants/2016/11/13/man-got-free-veterans-day-meal-cedar-hill-chilis-manager-took-away

you guys

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/i-voted-for-trump-so-there-white-shopper-melts-down-after-black-workers-ask-her-to-pay-for-bag/

lol

"You standing there with your baby thinking that’s okay”

WITH YOUR BABY

LITERALLY thinking that's ok

The best I can ask of the racist dystopia my country is hell-bent on being is that it makes me laugh really fucking hard as it works its way around to oppressing me.

“You’re a liar, I don’t care, because I’m a consumer,” she shouts at an employee.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishes story about Mall of America's first black Santa, the predictable happens: https://twitter.com/stribgillespie/status/804532412613087232

Good suggestions in the replies to that tweet - only let paid subscribers comments online, but make them visible to everyone.

lol ulysses

Three years since Megyn Kelly's "And by the way, for all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white."