Yeah exactly. People need to realise they're gonna have racial biases and that just because they don't think of themselves as a racist doesn't mean they can't have said anything that is racist. I used to have homophobic biases despite being gay, for example. People need to be so much more self critical to realise that they might say things that don't fit with how they see themselves and that they need to change.
<3
Every time I read a reply/ask someone has sent you I feel so embarrassed for how ignorant they are. As in their ignorance and self-assurance is a testament to institutionalised racism. Whitey McWhiteMan really doesn't get it. As someone put it their view is basically: "Yeah, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice are bad, but the worst crime of all it to accuse a white person of any of them." Eurgh.
Yeah, they really need to realize that if they get called that, they need to stop, think about what they’re doing, apologize, fix the behavior learn from the whole thing and move on. That’s probably one of the most insidious things about the race issue here in the states, is that white people think only really awful people can be racist so obviously nothing they do could be aligned with the things horrible people do. It makes me really really glad my partner understands their white privilege and they actively work to off-set that. and they still slip up here and there, and instead of sitting in a pool of their own tears, they say “sorry” and they don’t do it again.
-edit-
fuck, I mean, even being white-passing means I benefit from that shit too on occasion (like, with job opportunities and stuff), and if a more visible PoC called me out on something, I’d say “sorry” and fix it.
I was hoping he wouldn’t have it… hopefully not as bad as some white dude right?
The intro is probably worse, it’s not written by him:
“Andrew J. Blackbird, the author of this little book, is an educated Indian, son of the Ottawa Chief. His Indian name is Mack-aw-de-be-nessy (Black Hawk), but he generally goes by the name of “Blackbird,” taken from the interpretation of the French “L’Oiseau noir.” Mr. Blackbird’s wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. Brought up as an Indian, with no opportunity for learning during his boyhood, when he came to think for himself, he started out blindly for an education, without any mean but his brains and his hands.”
Reading that made me feel very irritated and ill.
This isn't a rap battle, making a bingo zinger doesn't make you right. Just work with me for a sec; never mind who comes whining to your inbox; it doesn't change that 'ya'll white people continue to do this" isn't a qualified thing to say. It's true that forced cultural change is wrong, your heart's not in the wrong place. But, the blame game isn't the solution, generalizing the acts of a race is innately racist itself, and it would advantage you in a battle against racists to not generalize.
lol sit down
I’m reading “history of the ottawa and chippewa indians of michigan” which is public domain and you can get from project gutenburg. it’s writtend by an Odawa gentleman from the 1880s and I know it will be an invaluable read, but getting past his internalized colonialism here at the beginning is really really hard
cultural genocide in North America
This, this right here, this is why “white people” cannot wear our things, cannot appropriate our customs or languages. Because y’all did this. y’all continue to do this too.
I want to point out something: Who made this poster? Was it a white man or a person of native american descent? And does it matter?
Data is data and the people who present it are arbitrary. The messenger is and will always be irrelevant. Humans are merely vehicles for information relay.
And listen to that quote by Richard Pratt: “Kill the indian in him, and save the man.” You need to understand where these attitudes come from. When the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was conceived they were literally committing genocide. So in that man’s mind the only way to save life was to adjust them to the culture.
Does that make it right? No, of course not! But until we understand the social forces at play we shouldn’t demonize each other.
Frankly, it is nothing but biased and racist for there to be “puerto rican day parades” or “Italian American day” It is nothing but biased and racist for there to be “black awareness month” It is nothing but biased and sexist for the idea of the “feminist” to exist in the arrogance it often does today. Aren’t we interested in equality? If so- it means that you do not promote your “institution” of gender/race/ideology above others- it means you recognize the historical bias against you and work for it to be “neutralized” – not elevated in a vindictive/ego sense.
I remember reading about Martin Luther King Jr.’s apprehension to the idea of “Black Power”. He knew. He understood that to try to make your race/sex or the like “outstanding” is equality as biased as the oppressive forces that started the sad trend of inequality in the first place..
Is there a dire need to generate more equality across race, gender and class lines? Yes! But that doesn’t mean your race/gender/class happens to be “special”. We are human. Period.
Did you really just write a wall of text justifying and minimizing genocide and opression? really? fuck off, for real.
Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom
May 21, 2013Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”
Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.
In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”
Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)
On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
Hmmm….under these circumstances, having a large slave, oops I mean prison population is advantageous. What an “original” idea!
Damn, it is one thing if this was about rehabilitation and helping people gain skills and get jobs when they leave prison. Maybe pocket away some money in an account for use when a man or woman gets out of prison. At least you could argue some type of “win/win” scenario. Investment firms like Fidelity Investments fund companies and organizations that administrate these types of “programs. I do not think that is what is going on here.
It is not clear to me, at all, that rehab and helping people get back into the workforce is what is intended or going on. I have a hard time believing that inmates net any money or receive developmental assistance that translates to smoother re-entry into non-prison life. My mind is open and I will keep researching, but this just sounds like re-legalized slavery to me.
Yes, and the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution clearly spells out the intention. It’s absolutely disgusting how comfortable our society has become with this. It’s sickening.
I fucking hate this country
Come now, how is it right to blame ALL white people for the acts of SOME? By nature, that is a fallacy of sweeping generalization. Consider this.
lol wut.
Protip: the “white people” who “aren’t like that” don’t come whining in my inbox. I could play bingo with how predictable y’all are. sit the fuck down.
This e-cig is literally the best thing I’ve bought this year. Cappuccino flavored nicotine? Don’t mind if I do.
stahp, sis, you’re making me want to pick up smoking again. I can only justify an e-cig if I smoke more than when I get drunk with people/am about to have a panic attack which right now, is the only time I smoke
they make nicotine free ones too, my sis has one just cause she likes toffee flavored air, lol.
Fringe
Rebecca Belmore (Anishnaabe)
Rebecca Belmore often uses the body to address violence against First Nations people, especially women. The woman in Fringe assumes the same reclining pose as the beautiful odalisques depicted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century European artists, but bears an ugly slash from shoulder to hip. The thin rivulets of blood that run from the gash are composed of small red beads, a detail that evokes both Belmore’s Anishinabe heritage and the trauma inflicted on indigenous peoples. Despite the graveness of the woman’s injury, Belmore’s Fringe is also about healing. The wound is not fatal; she has the strength to recover. But the scar will never disappear.
