From One Survivor to Another
It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographing “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc. … ie. the black and Hispanic and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” –
I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on.
So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards … it’s just being poor– but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something.
”comment left on the Racialious blog post “Sustainable Food & Priviledge: Why is Green always White (and Male and Upper-Class)” (via ouiominy)
i can’t echo this enough. this happened all the time in Los Angeles. I started biking to work and school (18 miles each way to work, 22 each way to school) in 2005 because I was dirt poor and couldn’t even afford a $3 day pass on the Metro. It wasn’t a fashion statement or an attempt to be green. I needed those $3 to eat.
(via panasonicyouth)
Also applicable to the ways in which race and class shape the discourse around what counts as exercise…
(via cufats)(Source: thisisom)
The precise economic principle most grossly violated by these women was, according to many, that they were getting something (ADC) for nothing (another black baby). Entering into this scam made single black mothers into chiselers, determined to cheat the public with a bad sell. The fact that it was, overwhelmingly, a buyer’s market for black babies “proved the valuelessness of these children, despite their expense to the taxpaying public. White babies, of course, entered a healthy seller’s market, with up to ten couples competing for everyone one adoptable infant.
Spokespeople for this point of view believed that black unmarried mothers should pay dearly for the bad bargain they foisted on society, especially on white taxpayers. Governor Orville Faubus complained in 1959 that ,” By taxing the good people to pay for [ADC], we are putting a premium on illegitimacy never before known to the world.” Many felt that rather than paying for their sins, black women were being paid, by the ADC grants, an exchange that could encourage further sexual and fiscal irresponsibility.”
Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade (emphasis mine)
HOLY SHIT. I have never seen this broken down so simply and concisely before. I can’t believe I never saw it.
This is it!
This is why this argument about “babies for welfare checks” is still around, why it has such weight with so many white people, and why the fact that welfare benefits don’t increase NEARLY enough to cover the additional expenses of an additional child doesn’t sway their conviction that Black women on welfare are just “popping out more babies for more money.”
It doesn’t matter HOW MUCH money it is. It doesn’t matter that more white people are on public assistance. It doesn’t matter that having babies for a welfare check defies logic on every possible level. It doesn’t matter how many times you show them the math!
What matters is that Black women who have babies while on public assistance want SOMETHING (“our tax dollars”) for NOTHING (Black babies).
What matters is that Black babies are seen as worthless, because Black life is seen as worthless. And the white outrage is that not only are Black women going around giving birth to Black babies — which is bad enough — but now they want paid (ANY AMOUNT) for this garbage (BLACK LIVES), too?
I fucking get it now. HOLY SHIT WHITE SUPREMACY.
(via thecurvature)
And Black life is worthless at the same time that it is highly valuable. But only when nonblack people own us and our production. Black people are quite valuable as enslaved products. Owning a Black baby (or Blackness itself) can buy a nonblack person status, prestige, liberalism, greater perceived humanity… Black people are luxury items. It’s why Aunt Jemima is still a profitable brand image in the year 2012.
Black women used to be prized on their baby-making ability. The more the better! But then emancipation came along and ruined all the fun for people with personhood status.
We, Black people, have no value as people. Put ‘Black’ and ‘person’ together and the concept becomes meaningless to white supremacy and nonblack society.
(via liquornspice)
Food Stamps Reduced The Poverty Rate By Nearly 8 Percent In 2009, As GOP Tries To Gut The Program →
Story found via @ljoywilliams:
Congressional Republicans have targeted the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, for budget cuts, and have attempted to paint it as a program rife with fraud and abuse that is on an unsustainable path. While their argument ignores a host of facts, including that food stamp fraud is at an all-time low, it also ignores the economic benefits that the program brings to millions of low-income families.
is it any surprise that even though food stamp fraud is at an all time low, politicians can still pass legislation and debate in a professional based off of the stereotype that food stamp users (aka black, depraved, pathological welfare queens) are harming our country and stealing money from “the hard working Americans”?
Of course not. They probably believe their own lies without even bothering to do the research because - why wouldn’t welfare queens have nothing better to do than hurt the country and steal money? It cant possibly be true that these programs are in desperate need to combat poverty - especially in the face of a recession that we ALL went through.
hate vs facts. hate always wins
The first time I ever recognized privilege
was, as a child, going to the broken down Health Department clinic that all of the poor KCHIP folks went to on the other side of town.
It wasn’t the long drive— I was used to my mom having to do that for her job. And it wasn’t the yellowed, old facilities with fluorescent lights that hurt your eyes. We were poor, but we’d always been poor, so I never noticed. I didn’t know that there were doctor’s offices with magazines from last month instead of last year, or even waiting rooms where everyone else was white instead of brown.
It was the signs. They were in English and Spanish.
“Wow,” I thought to myself, “some people don’t speak the same language i do.” I wondered for a moment, and then i realized, “So what do they do about stop signs, or field trip permission slips, or things like the labels for my medication?
Yes. That was my first ever privilege check. I never saw going to the doctor the same way ever again.
![theoceanandthesky:
[tw: racism, bombs, explosions]
witchsistah:
queennubian:
socialsociety:
BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started by The Game.
Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.
June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 3000 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.
SMH AT AMERICAN HISTORY
READ THIS. They for sure aren’t teaching this in school. Tell your babies. Share with your students.
For all those “BOOTSTRAPS” bastards.
reblogging for history that i was never taught](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx9bzn4iYn1r5d69eo1_1280.jpg)
[tw: racism, bombs, explosions]
BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started by The Game.
Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.
June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 3000 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.
SMH AT AMERICAN HISTORY
READ THIS. They for sure aren’t teaching this in school. Tell your babies. Share with your students.
For all those “BOOTSTRAPS” bastards.
reblogging for history that i was never taught
Silas House
Just thought this was kind of cool coming from a white person. When he said this, there were some people in the classroom who looked a little uncomfortable. It was neat.
On “welfare” and the language surrounding it
Today in my WGS class, my friend browngurlwfro talked about her research on the welfare system in Cincinnati, Ohio. Welfare in general is pretty messed up in this country. There’s policies in place where they only give you benefits if you undergo sterilization (eugenics for poor people, am I right?), and other policies where if you have a second kid you don’t get benefits for that kid, AND you get less benefits for the first kid, or you get more benefits if you marry the father of your children, or you get less benefits if you’re a man because of patriarchal expectations that you are the breadwinner. It’s all a big mess and it varies state by state.
What really struck me, however, was this realization I had about the language surrounding welfare. I don’t know why I’ve never thought about this before— it seems kind of obvious.
First of all, “welfare” is a very broad term that describes multiple social support programs, including:
- Medicaid/Medicare
- Head Start
- Food Stamps (WIC, EBT)
- Disability Payments
- Unemployment (in some states this is a separate program, in others it falls under the same category)
- Section 8 public housing
This is a HUGE umbrella term that describes a lot of things that people are now using with the economic downturn— especially unemployment benefits.
I’ll be honest— I’d never thought of myself as someone who was once on welfare, because I didn’t realize medicaid (KCHIP in my state) fell under that umbrella. It’s also kind of fucked up, because my family was apparently poor enough to be at the very bottom of the KCHIP sliding scale and not have to pay anything for doctors or medication, but we still didn’t qualify for food stamps, housing assistance, or Head Start. I’m assuming that this is because my mom is not a citizen and was on a visa— which is probably racist, and is just ridiculous because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of forcing poor people of color to keep on being poor.
This all makes me wonder: how many people out there are on “welfare”, but don’t actually realize it? Because it has taken me forever to just have someone flat out say that X program falls under this category— no one talks about it, which is another problem of its own. There was a post on Sociological Images a few weeks ago on this, but now it’s been taken off with no explanation. It has some pretty surprising statistics, though.
Oh, and also, apparently welfare programs are known as “entitlements” in bureaucratic/law circles, which is a whole other fucked up thing in itself. It’s not an entitlement if you need it or your family will starve to death. So ridiculous.
uncharted: BFP series : Detroit, Ruin Porn, and Rust Belt Movement →
This great, great series by the brilliant brownfemipowerhas been posted on Feministe over the last two weeks, and I urge anyone who follows me to check it out.
It tracks the history of Detroit and Michigan starting with the theft of its land from indigenous tribes, through the…
This is really really fantastic and it has made me rethink a common photography trope that I tend to overlook.
Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman (1988)
Making difference known is not a weakness. It is a strength. Ignoring difference is the problem, not being different.
The Combahee River Collective Statement (1980)
If we want to free people, we need to ask those of us who understand and deal with these systems on a daily basis. It’s not about comparing who has it worse than others, but rather, about understanding who struggles with multiple systems, yet still survives— and then asking them how they do it.
Wall Street drinks champagne while gazing down at Occupy Wall Street protestors.
Class warfare in one image:
I was able to isolate the audio and figure out what they were saying:
Rich Person one: Oh my word, the peasants are revolting!
Rich Person two: I know they’re filthy and disgusting I do so wish they’d bring out the fire hose like they used to.
All: ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
there’s an obvious racism issue here too. Come on now.
![[image description: dry erase board with messages written by two different people on it. The first reads, “Tell us… what class are you struggling with and why?”, and the response reads, “The bourgeoisie because they control the modes of production”]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp7lddffmW1qcbkjro1_500.jpg)
[image description: dry erase board with messages written by two different people on it. The first reads, “Tell us… what class are you struggling with and why?”, and the response reads, “The bourgeoisie because they control the modes of production”]
