Some days you just have to say ‘fuck it, I did what I could today’ and just let go of all the stuff you wanted to do. Life is too short to be angry with yourself for being human.
(via letstalkabouted)
Tag: important
Whites Dehumanize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Into A Trope To Silence Black People
MLK is regularly evoked by Whites in a dehumanizing fashion in order to police Black vernacular (subversion/reclamation), police Black people’s response to continued State violence and anti-Blackness, and to control Black culture and life via the myth that the politics of respectability can “earn” us humanity; humanity denied us as the very foundation and current reality of this country, in fact.
It is triggering, erasure, abusive, ahistorical and violent to remind Black people practically on the hour of the coordinated State violence (abuse, arrests, physical violence, FBI intimidation, surveillance/COINTELPRO, psychological warfare and eventually assassination) on MLK and other Black activists/ordinary Black citizens, and then suggest that us behaving like a White-washed version of MLK (one erasing his work and humanly flaws and replacing it with appeasing Whiteness and empty deification) now will “protect” us from the same State violence that Black people have always faced. (MLK’s “non-violent” actions were still classified as “extremist.”) Whites, who benefit from racism, think it is acceptable to tell Black people to “behave” like MLK, when he was murdered for the same reasons that we have to fight today.
Darren Wilson has half a million dollars via donations from racists, had paid leave, a new wife, is viewed as a White hero and was not indicted (such a decision is apparently statistically rare); will not even face a trial for murdering Michael Brown, despite dehumanizing and killing him. (Not suggesting that his theoretical singular indictment or trial would be “justice” in this anti-Black country; the system itself is violence on us.) He called Michael’s expression of pain after being shot looking like a “demon” and his own strength like that of a child versus Michael as “Hulk Hogan” despite being close to the same size as Michael and had a gun while Michael did not. He claimed that he thought Michael’s punch could “kill” him though his hospital photographs are bruise-less. Clearly he is illogical because of anti-Blackness; the entire testimony is negligence, willful distortion and a racist farce. Whites benefit from violence on Black bodies yet have the audacity and cruelty to suggest how Black people should feel and respond to that violence, in which Whites use other Black people like MLK as dehumanized vessels to funnel those suggestions through.
It is basically White people so utterly willfully ahistorical and intellectually dishonest that they engage in cognitive dissonance with why MLK had to exist as he did in the first place and why we fight now. They use his body as a vessel for their own racism, since their own bodies and lies are never enough. Always the use and consumption of a Black body. Even celebration of the lack of indictment isn’t enough for them; so many of them are trolling Black people online right now because even the State’s affirmation of our dehumanization cannot satiate their appetite for harming Black people. They always want us to accept their version of reality, at the price of our humanity.
This shit also applies to non-Black people of color, and Black people who have internalized antiblackness and use that to harm other Black folks.
if your discourse is communicated regularly with scorn, anger, & opinions stated as undeniable fact with those emotions behind them, it is dangerous and inaccessible to survivors/victims of abuse.
being abused changes the way your brain works. sometimes i see arguments that i know i 100% disagree with, but if they’re stated in a way that makes it clear that i am being a bad/evil person or stupid for not agreeing, my knee jerk is to start rethinking everything i know. it takes a considerable effort to stop this and come back to being rational, and sometimes i can’t. it’s a survival mechanism i can’t turn off
it is not tone policing to acknowledge the presence of survivors/victims in every social group and state that abused people’s needs have to be recognized. when your arguments are presented in a repetitively vicious way that you never back down from, there is a huge chance that you are being directly harmful to the most vulnerable members of your radical space
Just a quick note in case y’all aren’t aware: I’m seeing a lot of these “(location) Gothic” posts going around, and they’re cool and I’m totally into this, but please be aware that Southern Gothic is not about weirdness for the sake of weirdness. Southern Gothic uses the grotesque and surreal elements of gothic literature to explore, highlight, and engage with the very real tragedies of the South, including racism, classism, poverty, religion, the decay of the antebellum way of life, the insistence on clinging to absurd and empty traditions as a way of clinging to that past, the glorification of the antebellum past, family ties and customs, military service, etc.
Which is all to say that Southern Gothic is social critique. I don’t know the rest of the country well enough to say if that’s what’s going on in all these cool posts, but I wanted to point it out in case it hadn’t been spelled out clearly yet ^^
Hey posts for people who’s mental illness negatively effects their grades are really great and important, it’s so so so necessary that kids don’t feel bad for not being able to or struggling to succeed in school due to mental illness understand that they’re still worthy of love and respect and they aren’t “"worthless”“ or ”“unintelligent”
BUT! One thing I see a lot is the phrase “you’re trying your best” and… what about those who can’t try their best and are aware of it? Those who literally are incapable of trying their best, who just can’t put all of their effort into school, be it due to depression, anxiety, self care, or any other reason. They know they could do better but their mental illness keeps them from being able to.
Can they have some love and support too? You matter even if you can’t achieve what you know you could if you weren’t mentally ill or you risked your mental health. It’s not your fault. You’re not a bad person. You deserve to be treated with respect and you are not worthless for not putting all of your effort and energy into a letter on a report card in order to take care of yourself.
ive literally waited so long to hear this thank you
Reminder that it’s ok if you don’t know exactly what kind of attraction you’re feeling. I’ve noticed within the ace and aro communities we like to split attraction up into neat categories of aesthetic/sexual/romantic/sensual/etc. But feelings are WEIRD and nebulous and fluid and sometimes impossible to define clearly. And that’s ok.
Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
I spent like 20 minutes trying to compose a tweet about how important it is for people to educate themselves on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls but i kept going over the character limit. There are families right now in Manitoba who are paying out of their own pockets to drag the Red River in hopes of finding the bodies of their loved ones who have gone missing. It’s impossible to fathom how tragic that is and how the Canadian government is refusing to help. Last year they found 7 bodies, if the Canadian government cared even the littlest bit about the Indigenous people in Canada those bodies women and girls would not have to wait for an annual drag of the river, funded by their families to be found. If the government cared even the littlest bit they would be dragging those waters after an Indigenous women or girl is reported missing, they would be working with the families to find the girls and working with communities to help them heal. The Canadian government is a complete joke as Stephen Harper argues that this isn’t a race issue and says it isn’t on his radar. As he continues to ignore the issue Stephen Harper is perpetuating and encouraging violence against Indigenous women and girls. The number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada is in the thousands, and that is blood on the government’s hands.
It’s amazing that in 1969 we as a society managed to put a man on the moon and yet we still can’t get a wheelchair user from one railway station to another nearly 50 years later… You have to come to the conclusion that it is a lack of will to create a more accessible world, NOT lack of technology or design skills.
Tony Heaton, English sculptor and wheelchair user
(via quixylvre)
THIS
I really wish every architect and transportation planner and etc. was mandated to complete a course in universal design principle. AND that ALL classes for architects would incorporate universal design principles throughout the curriculum so that no architect student could possibly design anything, even just as a student, without having some idea how to incorporate disability accessibility into the design concept right from the start. But instead there are still a ridiculous number of architects who don’t seem to know much about designing for disability access. And if someone asks them to design an inaccessible space, they just design an inaccessible space without pointing out, “Um, you realize that it’s now illegal in the U.S. for a new building, or for a new significant reconstruction of an existing building, to be designed without disability access? So, sorry, but we’re not going to cooperate with the design of an inaccessible space, we’re going to find a way to make this accessible.”
And meanwhile, if the architect designs something that isn’t fully accessible, the people contracting the building might not always think to check for that sort of thing or say something if it isn’t there.
We’re just not going to have a fully disability inclusive society until basically everyone in society takes on some level of responsibility for making it happen, and PLANNING for it to happen from the very start, and not just adding it on at the end as an afterthought when it’s too late for the cheaper, more inclusive approaches that could have been taken if accessibility planning had started eons earlier.
(via andreashettle)
Comedy isn’t being “safe” or “stifled” or “holding back” when it’s sensitive to marginalized people. They are marginalized people. They’re the underdogs already shat on by society. The easiest, safest, cheapest of all targets. The same humor enjoyed by the wealthy elite who have never had to face discrimination in their entire lives.
Don’t confuse cowardly bullying with being “edgy.”
When will people learn that you should never have the Rising Sun flag as a tattoo, on your clothing, etc.?
It is associated with Japanese colonialism, imperialism and militarism, and is considered to be very offensive in countries which suffered under Japanese rule.
So many war crimes, crimes against humanity were committed under this flag. So many people have suffered because of it, and so many people continue to suffer because of it.Don’t try the whole “but the army in Japan still uses it so why shouldn’t I” shit with me. So the navy and JSDF use it – that doesn’t help your argument. Why would you use those assholes as an excuse? Ask yourself why you’re associating yourself with the damn military and government.
You know who else uses it? Extreme right-wing groups in Japan. Basically the sort of racist, nationalistic shits you should never even go near.But no~ you people wear it because it looks ‘cool’, ignoring the blood of the people that went into it!
For people who don’t know what it is
This Is a Backup Blog 