Rare picture of young Amitabh Bachchan with his mother Teji Bachchan
WOAH
We talked with Kalpona Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, about how American consumers can best pressure US corporations to protect workers abroad. Read the full interview here.
One way that whites can be accountable is to stop being enablers to white supremacy by supplanting the voice of people of color with their own. We do not need white people speaking for people of color. Such talk is crass paternalism. My words do not need to be placed through a white filter in order for them to be understandable.
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| — | Ewuare X. Osayande (via cielito-lindo) |
Filmmaker Brings Attention To A Latina Soldier Who Fought In The U.S. Civil War
The U.S. military may have recently lifted the ban on women in combat, but Loreta Velazquez, a wealthy Cuban planter’s daughter who immigrated to New Orleans in 1849, secretly fought in the U.S. Civil War 150 years ago — first as a soldier in the Confederate Army, and later as a Union Army spy.
I wrote a post about this woman last year! PBS will be airing a documentary on her life today (May 24).
QPoC Summer Spotlight #1: Project Fierce Chicago!
Hello! My name is March of Tigers and to help get the word out on projects and initiatives done by Queer People of Color(QPoC), I’m doing a series of Summer Spotlights. Summer Spotlights are exactly that: Spotlights on several QPoC projects over the course of this summer! Hopefully my attempts at raising awareness will help these projects get along faster!
The first Project being talked about today is Project Fierce Chicago! Their goal is “Putting the community back in community housing”.
Project Fierce Chicago is a grassroots group of youth service providers, housing advocates and radical social workers. Motivated by the need for additional housing resources available for LGBTQ young folks, we came together and decided that instead of waiting for institutional support from the city or state, we will work to address this issue ourselves through a community-driven project!
That being said, I wanted to do my part to help, so I decided to interview them in order in ask “what do you need” in detail. They were happy to respond, and they’ve got a lot of detailed, resourceful responses for all of us to read and share!What got you started on this idea for a shelter?This shelter was actually the brain child of one of our Leadership Team, Cassandra Avenatti. Her experiences working with many of the LGBTQ homeless youth in Chicago made her realize how much of a need there was. She then contacted several other youth service providers and housing advocates who were frustrated by the lack of housing resources available for the LGBTQ young folks.
We came together and decided that we didn’t need to wait for institutional support from the city or state, but could utilize our skills and resources to address this issue ourselves! And then Project Fierce Chicago was born!
Black women do not fare well in the porn industry because the “plum” jobs for porn performers-the contract employment with the two major porn-feature studios, Vivid and Wicked-are reserved mainly for white women. These studios, with their chic image, sophisticated marketing practices, and guarantee of regular work, afford their contract women an income and level of visibility that makes them the envy of the industry. (Jenna Jameson, of course, is held up as the quintessential example of just how far a contract porn star can go.) With surgically enhanced bodies, perfectly coiffed hair, and glamorous makeup, these women act as PR agents for the porn industry, showing up regularly on Howard Stern, E! Entertainment, or in the pages of Maxim. As the porn industry increasingly wiggles its way into pop culture, it is no surprise that it uses mainly white women as the “acceptable” face of porn; their all-American-girl looks seamlessly mesh with the blonde, blue-eyed images that grace screens, celebrity magazines, and billboards across North America.
In porn, women of color are generally relegated to gonzo, a genre that has little glamour, security, or chic status. Here women have few fan club Web sites, do not make it to pop culture, and have to endure body-punishing sex. But while the sex acts are typical gonzo, the way the written text frames the sex is unique as it racializes the bodies and sexual behavior of the performer. In all-white porn, no one ever refers to the man’s penis as “a white cock” or the woman’s vagina as “white pussy,” but introduce a person of color, and suddenly all players have a racialized sexuality, where the race of the performer(s) is described in ways that make women a little “sluttier” and the men more hypermasculinized.
It is this harnessing of gender to race that makes women of color a particularly useful group to exploit in gonzo porn, since gonzo porn works only to the degree that the women in it are debased and dehumanized. As a woman of color, the porn performer embodies two subordinate categories, such as Asian fuckbucket, black ho, or Latina slut. All past and present racist stereotypes are dredged up and thrown in her face while she is being orally, anally, and vaginally penetrated by any number of men. When men (irrespective of race) ejaculate on her face and body, they often make reference to her skin color, and her debased status as a woman is seamlessly melded with, and reinforced by, her supposed debased status as a person of color. In the process, her race and gender become inseparable and her body carries the status of dual subordination.
In porn, women of color are generally relegated to gonzo, a genre that has little glamour, security, or chic status. Here women have few fan club Web sites, do not make it to pop culture, and have to endure body-punishing sex. But while the sex acts are typical gonzo, the way the written text frames the sex is unique as it racializes the bodies and sexual behavior of the performer. In all-white porn, no one ever refers to the man’s penis as “a white cock” or the woman’s vagina as “white pussy,” but introduce a person of color, and suddenly all players have a racialized sexuality, where the race of the performer(s) is described in ways that make women a little “sluttier” and the men more hypermasculinized.
It is this harnessing of gender to race that makes women of color a particularly useful group to exploit in gonzo porn, since gonzo porn works only to the degree that the women in it are debased and dehumanized. As a woman of color, the porn performer embodies two subordinate categories, such as Asian fuckbucket, black ho, or Latina slut. All past and present racist stereotypes are dredged up and thrown in her face while she is being orally, anally, and vaginally penetrated by any number of men. When men (irrespective of race) ejaculate on her face and body, they often make reference to her skin color, and her debased status as a woman is seamlessly melded with, and reinforced by, her supposed debased status as a person of color. In the process, her race and gender become inseparable and her body carries the status of dual subordination.
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| — | Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (via wretchedoftheearth) |
When I tell you white folks are trying to take over ALL our shit,
Including the language that they call us ‘ghetto’ and ‘ignorant’ for using?
And they sellin it on teeshirts like a white woman would come up with that phrasing.
AAVE is the same language they penalize us for using, denying us opportunities and resources, calling us ignorant,
But they put it on a shirt with a BLONDE bitch and SELL IT?
I feel kicked in the chest.WHITE PPL YOU NEED TO STOP
This is why don’t no body fucking like you white people
but remember it is only really cultural appropriation if u wear ~ blue jeanz ~.
I have to fucking agree.. Do you know how many white people were butt booty SHITTING on Sweet Brown when this story broke..?!?! Fuck outta here, Wet Seal.. I’ve spent my last dollar on your shit.. Smfh..
The classic doll color test performed with a white child, complete with the parent’s
excusesreactionsThe little girl even says she picked the white figures as the good child because it “looks like me” and the dark girl as bad because “she’s dark”. When Soledad O’Brien asks the girl’s mother about it, we’re met with quite a few colorblind based excuses and “well, we just don’t talk about race”.
“We don’t talk about race!!”
And your kid is saying racist shit regardless.
That should fucking tell you something, lady.
But of course, it won’t. I bet you cash money she won’t change a thing, continuing to use that color blind bullshit.
This is why the whole idea of not discussing race with white children is bullshit. No, it won’t “taint” them. When you don’t talk about it, they still form opinions — racist ones — because they don’t know any better, so to speak. Then one day they grow up into adults that are, guess what, still racist. As Black folks, we pretty much all had “the talk” as kids/young people; our existence in this society dictates that we do, because racism is a part of our lives at an incredibly young age. Colorblind ideology has been proven to be toxic as blatant racism. And little white kids can be just as racist as their parents.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOP..!!
we dont talk about race with kids but a small child ran up to my professor’s wife and said she had a terrorist baby.
we dont talk about race with kids but white children were encouraged to go to lynchings to see white supremacy. because (trigger warning: graphic details) jesse washington, whose charred body is floating around on tumblr posts, had his teeth yanked out by white children so they could sell them as lynching souvenirs.
we dont talk about race with kids but kids clearly PICK UP ON RACE. many POC parents dont explicitly discuss race but clearly, white ppl, kids pick up on it!!
Blah blah choice blah
“Wearing a hijab isn’t inherently liberating – but neither is baring one’s breasts. What is liberating is being able to choose either of these things. It’s pretty ludicrous to think that oppression is somehow proportional to how covered or uncovered someone’s body is. Both sides of this argument present a shallow understanding of women’s empowerment, which only drowns out the substantive challenges facing all women – issues that cannot be encapsulated in a debate about a piece of fabric.”—
Sara Yasin, Is the Hijab Worth Fighting Over?
Actually, I am sympathetic to the “it’s my choice” point of view, but for the choice to be valid, it really does have to be a choice of that woman, not of some oppressive cultural standard that the woman has internalized and has convinced herself that she has chosen.
You know what, fair enough. But here’s my question: do Muslim women get the benefit of the doubt for having made this decision of their own accord, or is that a privilege reserved for others? Because I seriously doubt you extend the same logic to both sides of the spectrum. I doubt that when a woman walks down the street in booty shorts, you analyze the circumstances of her “choice” because it really does have to be that to be “valid” and not some oppressive cultural standard that she’s internalized, right?
It’s hypocritical, racist, and stupid to imply that Muslim women lack the capacity to make their own conscious decisions about what they wear, as if that ability lies solely in the domain of white Western women who, funnily enough, also make decisions about their appearance within the context of a patriarchal society. But apparently when Western women do that, it’s their own progressive, liberated thinking making the choice.
It’s been said so much but obviously needs repeating — the hypersexualization of women and enforced modesty are the same thing. Both define the value of women in relation to the male gaze. Both present a shallow understanding of women’s empowerment.
You know what is ridiculous about people like this? That they believe that they know more than the women who wear the hijab themselves. They, an outsider, has the audacity to figure out exactly why women wear hijab and then suddenly they have more knowledge about the hijab than Muslim women do.
