From One Survivor to Another
White People Study: New Argument Analysis
Out of a total of 39 test subjects, I can honestly say there was only one who said something I had never heard before. They were the first person to ever say white people could sue for defamation and libel. Here is the complete text:
So when people accuse us of things we didn’t do. When people call us assholes because of things that someone else does… us pointing that out to them makes us part of the problem?
Like, we’re the assholes when we could easily sue you to hell and back for defamation and libel. We’re the bad guys when you decide it’s better to accuse innocent people rather than the fucking guilty ones.
Jesus.
Now, if you notice in the original post, nowhere was it said that all white people were racist or that all white people derail posts to talk about themselves. It even specifically states that the post is directed only towards white people who “don’t get it”. Only in the test subject’s brain does this very specific sentence refer to “all white people”. In everyone else’s mind it only refers to a specific subset of white people who do not understand that derailing a post about institutional or personal racism to talk about how they feel is a very rude thing to do.
I would like to see how the court case would play out if someone did attempt to sue. I have the strong feeling that no lawyer worth their salt would take the case, and even if someone did take it, they would be laughed out of court. Nowhere did anyone say this person was a card carrying member of the KKK. Nowhere did they accuse them of racism. Nowhere was a specific person ever addressed. While this was a very interesting thing for them to say, it is still just as worthless as every other argument brought up by the other test subjects.
The argument does, however, have a very interesting edge to it. The threat of legal action is a common tactic used to attempt to silence those who offer up dissenting opinions. Unfortunately, this tactic does have a history of working. That is why it is very important everyone know what libel, slander, and defamation of character actually consist of so they can’t be bullied into silence by people who like to use big words.
So why do I expend so much effort on lifting up the oppression of black people? Because anti-black racism is the fulcrum of white supremacy.
A fulcrum is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the support about which a lever turns” or, alternatively, “one that supplies capability for action.” In other words, if you want to move something, you need a pry bar and some leverage, and what gives you leverage is the fulcrum – that thing you use so the pry bar works like a see-saw.
The racial arrangement in the U.S. is ever changing. There is no “bottom.” Different groups have more ability to affect others at different times because our roles are not fixed. But, while there’s no bottom, there is something like a binary in that white people exist on one side of these dynamics – the side with force and intention. The way they mostly assert that force and intention is through the fulcrum of anti-black racism.
”In 2011, NYPD Made More Stops Of Young Black Men Than The Total Number Of Young Black Men In New York →
I do believe I was one of these stops.
Domestic terrorism.
is it appropriative if you relate to spirituals but are not Black?
Here in Berea, our choirs frequently participate in negro spiritual songs— that is, people of all backgrounds and races together singing songs about the Black experience and resistance to slavery.
Of course I’ve never experienced anti-Black racism and I never will. But I feel like I can relate to these songs with other parts of my life and struggles. I’m wondering if this is appropriative…when we learn these songs, it is with an awareness for their historical context(s), and so that we can understand other backgrounds. But the outside world is not a school dedicated to interracial understanding and education.
(I am asking because I was thinking of a song that I’ve related to a lot lately, but I didn’t know if posting it would hurt people.)
Lying with statistics to appropriate the struggles of WoC.
These numbers are made up to prove a point.
If, based on an article that trans people as a whole are murdered about “one a month”, 40 trans people died in the last 40 months.
33 of them are trans women of color. 4 of them are trans men of color. 2 are white trans women. 1 is a white trans man.
How fair is it to say that “trans people die at a rate of one per month”?
How fair is it really? It’s misleading.
It’s used constantly to keep the face of trans issues WHITE.
Can we stop framing it like this, PLEASE?
Trans people are not a monolith. SOME OF US ARE SEVERAL TIMES MORE LIKELY TO GET MURDERED THAN OTHERS.
suddenly had this awesome song from TMNT: Turtles in Time stuck in my head
and then i remembered the whole white washing of April O’Neil thing. There’s a post here and a scan from the original comics of her here, distinctly olive-skinned and with a kinky afro.
it’s interesting how very little this is mentioned.
Natalie Portman to Zhang Ziyi (x)
sophisticated FF commentary:
O_O
(via feministfilm)
Natalie Portman, I AM SO DISAPPOINT
(Source: cheryl-tunt)
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)
Whiteness is a constructed system that upholds white supremacy.
Whiteness is:
- The Snow White Complex
- Shadeism
- Systematic
- Privilege
- Genocide, Imperialism,Militarism, and Racism
- What led to the deaths of Troy Davis and Trayvon Martin, and continue to cause deaths of young black men all over the country.
- The rape of Recy Taylor, and the murder of Shaima Al-Awadi
- Connects all white people,regardless of individual values, through their shared whiteness
anti whiteness=/= anti people who happen to be white
whiteness=/=heritage/culture
Please feel free to add examples of whiteness, I obviously haven’t caught them all
(Source: blck-grrl)
When white women flock to Jamaica for a little fun in the sun, the R&R they’re often looking for is not “Rest and Relaxation” but to “Rent a Rasta” according to director J. Michael Seyfert. His eye-opening expose’ of the same name sheds light on a barely acknowledged form of sex tourism, namely, white women who visit the Caribbean Islands to get their groove back with the help of black locals. This documentary claims that, each year, as many as 80,000 females from a variety of relatively-wealthy Western nations descend on Jamaica alone.yup. they go to the DR too. we call the guys who service em sanky pankys.
we see you white wimmins. we see you. witcho exploitative, fetishizin asses.
damn, this makes me wish i would of kept a zine someone gave me that was basically a travel diary of a white anarcho/feminist from the USA who was on vacation in Cuba - maybe she was there with a school/organization or something, but essentially it was a vacation. initially i thought it would be interesting, but after reading a couple pages i realized that it was absolute garbage and binned it. i remember she had written about being solicited (possibly for dates/sex/etc.) by cuban men in Habana- and she was upset and offended because they assumed that she was a rich tourist (which she was, although she spent a good deal of time writing about how she wasn’t rich by ‘american standards’)… watching the video above you can imagine why some cuban men would assume that this white foreigner on vacation was a sex tourist.
warning for racism, colonialism, and explicit language about sex, language about attractiveness/beauty judgments.
Second Wave Feminism
Feminist (and everyone on tumblr really) keep throwing this term around like they actually know what it means. Second Wave feminism is not a monolithic movement. It is as diverse as the feminist movement today. Second wave feminism is not just Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan (if you don’t know who they are, just shut up while you are ahead). Second wave feminism is not just a movement of white cis straight middle class women who hate everyone else. You do realize some of tumblrs favorite feminist were active in the second wave movement, right? Women like Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Gloria Anzaldúa. These women were writing and actively involved in that movement you all hate because you think it was just radical feminist. Black feminism came out of the second wave feminist movement. Chicana feminism also came out of it. Lesbian feminism did too. Did I mention second wave feminism wasn’t just a bunch of white ladies complaining they wanted jobs? I recommend checking out both Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968–1980 by Kimberly Springer and Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave by Benita Roth.
Remember how I complain that feminist[s] don’t know our history? I am convinced I give my “feminist don’t understand history” rant like once a week. This shit is starting to get old. Google is our friend. If you can use tumblr, you can use google. Ignoring that WOC, queer women, working class women, etc. were involved in the Second Wave Feminist movement makes you look like an asshole and kinda shows you are not as progressive as you think. By claiming second wave feminism is only a bunch of white elite straight cis women, you are ignoring the histories of many women and that is fucked up. History is important, learn it.
ALRIGHT. It’s time to finally critique this.
I am going to be blunt— your idea of history is fucked. No one is saying that literally, Women of Color feminists did not exist during the time of the 2nd wave. That’s ridiculous. We are saying that these women were not a part of the 2nd wave because White Woman Feminism dominated the discourse and did not allow space for them, at all. The fact of the matter is that yes, the 2nd wave was monolithic. Women of Color were outside of that wave.
If anything, people like Angela Davis, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, etc., are more like 2.5 -3rd wave feminists. They are only now just starting to be taken seriously by Feminism with a capital F. The literal historical time during which these people is not what matters— what matters is whether or not they were actually influential and listened to, which they were not during the 2nd wave. Even today, it is still questionable whether or not Women of Color are actually included in the 3rd wave (as Slutwalk fiascos and other crap have proven), or whatever we are moving into next.
Regardless, there is a huge difference between historical interpretation and historical fact. Historical fact: WoC were living during the 2nd wave. Historical interpretation (that WoC feminists and a lot of notable White feminist historians like Gerda Lerner overwhelmingly agree with): WoC were not a part of that movement because they were excluded.
Also, your post is incredibly fucked up and racist. You’re basically telling all of us Women of Color that what we think and feel is wrong. So fuck you and your racist, white woman feminist bullshit still trying to defend itself and rewrite history decades later. Do you actually know your history? Because it sure sounds like you don’t.
(Source: historicalslut)
Here is a reminder that racism happens outside of The South.
Racism is not a cultural pattern unique to southerners, rural people, or Appalachians.
Racism is not inherently “backwards”— some of the most intelligent, well-educated, and rich people in the world are incredibly racist.
Racism exists everywhere and it is not possible to put the all of the blame on one geographical area.
