"I will no longer apologize, either for my faith or my complexion. It is not my job to convince you to distinguish me from the violent sociopaths that claim to be Muslims, whose terrorism I neither support, nor condone. It is your job. Just like when a disturbed young white man shoots up a movie theatre or a school, it is my job, as someone with a conscience, to distinguish them from others. It’s not my job to plead with you to shake my hand without cringing, nor am I going to applaud you when you treat me with common decency; it’s not an accomplishment. It’s simply the right thing to do. Honestly, it’s not that hard."

— Seema Jilani, Huffington Post (via thepeacefulterrorist)

Truth

"Charles Ramsey is a hero because he called the police and helped them save three women from reportedly being raped and impregnated in a basement for a decade. But he’s a meme because he’s black and on TV, and because so many choose to ignore the horrible realities of the crime."

—

Charles Ramsey Is an Internet Hero for All the Wrong Reasons (via kelsium & theraceproblem)

click through but this is the essence of it

I saw his interview for the first time this morning and realized pretty much simultaneously that he was a genuinely amazing man and that this was going to end badly in yet another racist meme.

(via thecurvature)

i think it’s SUPER important to make clear that this is happening cuz he is *poor* too (or working class)—i’ve seen PLeeeeenty of middle class people of color saying shit like “omg, why did he have to be eating mc donalds…”

boo fucking hoo, you assholes. so sorry that a poor black man was fucking hungry right before he decided to help fucking humanity be a little less horrific.

(via iinventedeverything)

(via blackgirlinrussia)

meme

Chocolate & Water: WTH is "Africa Skin"? and Why is it bad?

chocolateandwater:

I’m wearing my hair big today! Bold! Beautiful??? When the students caught sight of my wild do some of them laughed and called me “Ajjuma perma”—kids can be so mean :0) I just roll with the punches. Most of the students said that my hair was pretty; a few students said it was ugly-one in…

chocolateandwater:

fyeahannelisa:

“A festive graduation party in Los Angeles spun into a nightmare for students at the University of Southern California over the weekend when a noise complaint was ultimately met with the force of more than 75 police officers who arrested six students.

For the students at the university, the incident has become a case study in police overreaction to complaints against African-American residents as well as how race can be a determining factor in how laws are enforced and how people are treated.” (via BET)

A good friend of mine, Nate Howard, was among nine students that were handcuffed this past Friday, May 3rd. What was meant to be a graduation celebration hosted by Nate himself (formally REGISTERED with USC’s Department of Public Safety), resulted in yet another blatant widespread act of racial-profiling by the LAPD. Responding to a supposed “noise complaint”, 79 LAPD Officers showed up in riot gear, equipped with taser guns and batons, using overwhelmingly excessive force against STUDENTS to shut down the party. While the majority of the party-goers in attendance that night were Black and Latino, another party (of the same size and ‘volume-level’) being held across the street at the exact same time, which consisted of predominately-white students, was NOT confronted or shut-down by the LAPD.

The LAPD is claiming that the student party-attendants reacted violently and were supposedly throwing objects at the officers that were responding to the “complaint”. According to nearly ALL witnesses (including the party-attendees from across the street), absolutely NO such violent resistance had occurred.

When I first heard the news, I was not shocked or surprised at all. The LAPD has never really “changed” since Rodney King and ‘92 riots, they’ve just gotten better at disguising their blatant racist demeanor. To say that racism is no longer an existing “issue” is extremely ignorant and naïve. Not to mention, the fact that some of my close friends (including my best friend, Frances Wang) were personally victimized in such a discriminatory manner makes me sick to my stomach.

But the LAPD messed with the WRONG group of students. With the help of social media and local LA news exposure, we’ve got ourselves a case. I couldn’t be more proud of my friends for leading this movement for social CHANGE. Stay tuned.

I am reblogging this on all four of my blogs! Spreading this like an eagle! Sorry if you see this on your dash multiple times! Tired of this shit!

A readers dumb ass response to the article written in The Atlantic Wire:

Charles Ramsey Is an Internet Hero for All the Wrong Reasons

Tamar Lalenya • 2 hours ago

“But he’s a meme because he’s black and on TV, and because so many choose to ignore the horrible realities of the crime.”

Simply untrue. A fallacy. He’s a meme because people are just so goddamned grateful those women are alive and that he got up and did something. People are delighting in an everyday person, acting as they all hope they would in a similar situation, just being himself. I find it hard to believe that anyone is reading this story and not thinking about what those women were put through.”

And exactly when did becoming a meme become a good thing?

native-detroiter:

socialismartnature:

“Lauryn Hill just got jail time for tax dodging. Looks like she just didn’t have access to all the tax loopholes that GE exploits.”

but they dont hear you

(via mrjones91)

Body of student falsely accused of Boston attacks possibly found

mehreenkasana:

Hoping from the bottom of my heart that this isn’t true.

call-of-cthulhu:

sinidentidades:

Australia’s history of racism towards Aboriginals is absolutely disgusting.

Until the mid-60s, indigenous Australians came under the Flora And Fauna Act, which classified them as animals, not human beings. This also meant that killing an indigenous Australian meant you weren’t killing a human being, but an animal.

To this day, Australia breaks every code of the Geneva Convention when it comes to indigenous Australians and their human rights. The “public housing” that the government has given them are one-bedroom shacks with no running water, no electricity and no gas, that entire families are forced to live in. These shacks are in communities in the outback, as far away from “civilised” society as possible. Out of sight, out of mind.

Indigenous Australians that live in the city are commonly forced to live in very dangerous and derelict areas that the government gives very little funding towards. Redfern in Sydney is a highly indigenous Australian populated suburb that is rife with crime, unemployment and horrendous living conditions. The government does next to nothing to help these people, either.

Whenever riots have broken out as a result of incredibly low morale, the police and the government are very quick to point all the blame at the indigenous Australians and say that they are the cause of their own problems, rather than looking at what the actual cause is.

Unemployment rates amongst indigenous Australians is astronomical. Crime rates are astronomical. Suicide rates are extremely high within the indigenous Australian community. Death from inadequate living conditions and inadequate health care is common. Brutality towards indigenous Australians is common.

The way many indigenous Australians are forced to live is equivalent to that of what one would expect from a third-world country. Indigenous Australians are considered by the UN to be one of the most horrendously marginalised groups in the world.

And how does the government amend all of this? With a national “Sorry Day”, where white people plant a hand in some designated area of soil as a token of their white guilt, and then continue going about their white privileged day.

On top of that, white people here commonly bitch and complain about how “good” indigenous Australians have it and how “thankful” they ought to be to the white man for improving their quality of life. Meanwhile, indigenous Australians have lost almost all sense of identity and culture because of white colonisation.

What is left of Aboriginal identity and culture has been nearly completely destroyed. And most people in this disgustingly privileged country do not give a single god damn fuck.

Australia is a disgusting country when it comes to racism. I am disgusted by my own country.

I

(Source: artsofpolitika, via knowledgeequalsblackpower)

(Source: anukkinearthwalker)

Lao Tzu

BigBang

yourfaveisproblematic:

Appropriation of Black and Hip Hop culture

Numerous instances of appropriation

GDragon

Use of the N Word

Use of blackface

Appropriation of cornrows

Appropriation of the afro (also here)

Wore a straight jacket and pretended to be a mental patient in video “Oh My Friend”

Taeyang

Brownface and appropriation of cornrows

Use of Black caricature’s as Twitter icons

(via knowledgeequalsblackpower)

did-you-kno:

Source

youngblackandvegan:

peaceofmind-03:

cuntofdoom:

Because this always bears reblogging. Illustrates how cartography—specifically the ways in which cartographers shrink and expand land masses in order to depict a “flat” earth— distorts our perception of the world.

Whoa

i need people to know that the fact that Africa is often portrayed so extremely out of scale is not just because the map is a flat version of the round earth

(Source: visualamor)

Africa

lightskinneded:

freereeves:

Representation matters.

Yes. It does.

(Source: omgblackgirls)

"Rap music is so diverse in its themes, its style, its content but when it becomes a vehicle to be talked about in mainstream news, the rap that gets in national news is always the rap music that perpetuates misogyny that is most obscene in its lyrics and then this comes to stand for what rap is. Really its for me the perfect paradigm of colonialism, that is to say, we think of rap music as a little third-world country, that young white consumers are able to go to and take out of it whatever they want. We would have to acknowledge that what young white consumers, primarily male, oftentimes suburban, most got energized by in rap music was misogyny, obscenity, pugilistic eroticism and therefore that form of rap began to make the largest sums of money."

— bell hooks (via unapologetically-yellow)

(Source: pushinghoopswithsticks, via unapologetically-yellow)

The kind of ish that pisses me off while teaching…

This morning my co-teacher played a warm-up video for the students. The video starts off with a white dude wearing dreads, a gold chain, and baggy clothes. Rap music is blaring in the background. He swaggers over to an innocent girl. He tells her that she is pretty and as she is caught up in the air of his compliment he is making off with her gold necklace. The students burst into a riot of laughter. Tashi! Tashi! (Again! Again!) they scream. The teacher hits replay and their little minds are directed back to the world of subtly convincing stereotypes. By the time they reach 18 they won’t even realize how they have been conditioned to view blacks.

The funny thing about the whole thing is that the skit was actually funny-the look on her face after being conned and the look on his face after being arrested—comedic! But wouldn’t it have been just as funny if the actor dressed up as a Boy Scout? Or what about an old man? How about an alien? Is it not foreseeable that any of these characters could also be thieves?

No, it is much easier to dress “hip hop style” or urban street and perpetuate stereotypes for an easy laugh. Now, before anyone labels me as being overly sensitive or not being able to take a joke, I want to point out why these images are harmful to young children (yes! even all the way over here in South Korea where there are only a handful of blacks).

Children begin to identify gender, culture, and racial patterns at an early age. They can easily make these connections through the anthropomorphic world. For example—if children were to regularly watch a cartoon that featured, let’s say, fruits and vegetables as heroes and villains, they would be able to tell which apple was good and which apple was bad. Add a pair of eyelashes, and plump lips to the apple and now they can make a gender connection as well. So what happens when an avocado is given a mustache, a sombrero, and a particular accent?

You guessed it? The same thing that happens when a white dude dresses as a person of color and makes off with a necklace; children start to make associations. Of course this isn’t something that happens overnight. It has to be reinforced over and over again before children start to connect the dots. Oh, rap music, dread locks, gold chains, and baggy clothes are synonymous with blacks and blacks are synonymous with thieves. The real surprise ending is that they won’t even remember the white guy because how many white men do you see walking around with dreads and gold chains?

Exactly.