why anti-semitism is ‘racism’ 

mohandasgandhi:

of-praxis:

therapsida:

I would argue that this conception of [Ashkenazi] Jews is mostly anachronistic at this point. 60 years ago I think the construction of race included Jews as belonging to a non-white race, at least in Europe [important point!] but at this point most antisemitism is cultural and not racial. In America Jews aren’t seen as a distinct race, though I think a touch of it is there, and we’re mostly thought of as white people who are Jews. Europe probably has more racial antisemitism than over here, but I don’t have any statistics to back that hunch up.

But yeah when people [goyim] say “Jews aren’t a race, they’re a religion, that doesn’t make any sense” it’s just like omg all race is a social construct and this is a bygone social construct omg.

Anyway, I think it’s fair to say that Ashkenazi Jews have white privilege but are still subjected to non-racial antisemitism. I sure as hell have privilege for being white in America.

right, and i think those two claims can be made together. the problem i see rn is that our current theoretical framework re: ‘how to talk about white people and race’ posits privilege as a completely mutually exclusive force as any kind of oppression.

i have a lot of relative privilege as an asian person, and you have a lot of concrete and relative privilege as a white person. but that doesnt mean white jews being told that they dont experience racism/that we talk about them too much in relation to the holocaust/blahblahblah everything else on tumblr, isnt racism.

i dont think that there is a such thing as a non-racial anti-semitism because such a statement ignores how anti-semitism renders race. would you argue that muslims dont really experience racism, they experience a non-racial islamophobia, because they have relative privilege insofar a lot of things? 

muslims and jews offer an interesting case study because their discrimination signals new types of racial production. but at the end of the day, any attempts to naturalize ‘clean’ dichotomous rendering of races will end up biting us in the ass.

not to mention that most religious hate crimes in the US are still against jews.

idk i’m not okay with relative tradeoffs of being ok with discrimination against some people just because they have relative privileges. no one is making posts that say jews have it worse than black people or s/t but we are constantly seeing an oppression olympics style ploy to silence jews because its not like anything bad happens to them.

of-praxis always nails it.

feministmedia:

siddman:

Feminist Frequency on race and casting for The Hunger Games 

upperclass-kitkat: erosum:

where race and gender intersect

"

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)

Holy fucking shit.

(via amaevis)

listen up:

if you are a feminist who thinks we should just focus on “all women” and not get caught up in the nitty-gritty of intersectionality because it “fragments” the cause -

you sound exactly like the ~humanist~ liberals who spend their time hating on feminists for promoting women’s issues above the issues of men.

Just like women get the shittier bargain in life at large, so do marginalized women even among other women.

Squawking for the cause of “all women” is EXACTLY the same as so-called egalitarians whining about how we should focus on how bad stuff effects us all, la dee da. But you can’t sacrifice the part - especially if it is a marginalized part - in favor of the whole. No one wins, especially the marginalized, because LOL that happens to them every day everywhere else ever anyway.

Why is this so hard

Some thoughts on social justice, privilege, and academia 

shannonsunrise:

So finally getting the chance to talk about feminism/social justice in an academic setting was really exciting - and still is - but it gets me almost uncomfortably emotional. In class today we were talking about an article in which some white woman is complaining about identity politics, re: people of color have the “final authority” over racism. 

Like, yes???? Pretty much all the time they do????

This all apparently stems from this time she was called racist for doing something at her university involving a Native American class that was probably actually racist - and none of her white friends would stand up for her even though they apparently “agreed with her.” And the article is all about how white people being afraid of seeming racist is harming “the cause” and damaging discussion.

You’re really complaining about white people stopping to CHECK THEMSELVES and not just carelessly brushing charges and implications of racism off their shoulders like it’s no big thing????

Read More

Some thoughts on social justice, privilege, and academia 

So finally getting the chance to talk about feminism/social justice in an academic setting was really exciting - and still is - but it gets me almost uncomfortably emotional. In class today we were talking about an article in which some white woman is complaining about identity politics, re: people of color have the “final authority” over racism. 

Like, yes???? Pretty much all the time they do????

This all apparently stems from this time she was called racist for doing something at her university involving a Native American class that was probably actually racist - and none of her white friends would stand up for her even though they apparently “agreed with her.” And the article is all about how white people being afraid of seeming racist is harming “the cause” and damaging discussion.

You’re really complaining about white people stopping to CHECK THEMSELVES and not just carelessly brushing charges and implications of racism off their shoulders like it’s no big thing????

Read More

velocicrafter:

queerandpresentdanger:

mollypockette:

thedailywhat:

This Seems Kind Of Wrong of the Day: Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling issued by a lower court ordering the removal of a San Luis city council candidate’s name from the ballot because she wasn’t sufficiently fluent in English.

Alejandrina Cabrera is an American citizen who was born in Yuma, but raised in Mexico for a number of years before returning to Arizona at 17. She admits that her Spanish is much stronger than her English, but says can speak as well as she needs to.

But how much does she really need to? According to the most recent census data, 98.7% of San Luis residents are of Hispanic descent, and 87% speak a foreign language at home.

San Luis’s mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla disagreed with Cabrera’s assessment that her English “is good enough to hold public office in San Luis.” It was he who filed a lawsuit with Yuma County Superior Court, alleging Cabrera’s poor grasp of the English language precluded her from running.

The court sided with the mayor after she failed to pass a test administered by a sociolinguistics expert.

“When [the judge] took my right to be on the ballot, he took away the right of the people who want to vote for me,” Cabrera said in reaction to the ruling. The executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Arturo Vargas, agrees.

“I think it should be up to the voters to decide what kind of representative they want,” he told CNN. “I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to not be able, to not allow someone to present themselves to the voters as a candidate because of their language abilities.”

English has been the official language of Arizona since 2006.

[yumasun / cnn.]

Wtf

“English has been the official language of Arizona since 2006.”

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, ARIZONA???

when are they gonna just make “WHITES ONLY” their state motto & be done with it?

katelynowens:

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

[TW for accounts of punishments slave owners did to enslaved peoples, including rape and other truly disgusting things. This is a serious warning. This post is disgusting and disturbing.]

The fact that you are attempting to equate a slave owner owning an enslaved person to a person claiming rights to their own body is so infuriating I can barely stand it.

You are belittling the reality that was slavery, an institution that took away BODILY AUTONOMY and replaced it with the kinds of horrors that you probably can’t even imagine in your own damn mind. There were actual living, breathing people who were enslaved for the entirety of their lives, which could mean MANY decades. They were subjected to the threat of whipping and rape at any moment. They could be sold and moved without any recourse to fight back. Some slave owners, to punish enslaved people who didn’t do what they were told, would CUT OFF the enslaved person’s EARS, ROAST THEM, AND FEED THEM BACK TO THEM. Some slave owners, like Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica, would punish a slave by having another slave SHIT IN HIS MOUTH and then would use a mask to force that slave to keep his mouth closed until he swallowed. They would burn their skin, hang them in cages in trees and let them slowly rot to death, cut off fingers and hands, brand them, and beat them. And they killed them. So many of them. They would toss their still living but diseased bodies over board into the Atlantic. They would use them up and then toss them into graves, merely buying another person and replacing their monetary loss. 

AND THAT is what you have the fucking audacity to compare to a person removing a lump of cells from their body?

Anyone who makes this argument is a total fucking asshole. You want to be against abortion? Fine. But you need to find a way to do it that doesn’t ahistorically remove the horrors of slavery in order to make your tidy little analogy. Because all you are doing with posters like this is showing how LITTLE you care about what ACTUALLY happened to enslaved people, even if what you think you are doing is showing how much you care about fetuses. There is NO comparison here. NONE.

This doesn’t even begin to get at the fact that this poster and this analogy deny the reality of enslaved women. As your bottom picture makes clear, no one ever seems to want to talk about women who were enslaved - who were forced to both labor in the fields and labor through reproduction. They produced and they reproduced. And they sure as hell aborted fetuses. When you act as if abortion and slavery are somehow standing in apposition to one another, you deny that reality. 

As I’ve written elsewhere:

If you do take the time to understand the intertwined history of abortion and slavery, it becomes painfully difficult to assert that abortion is wrong.  Because then you must defend the slaveholder who wanted the enslaved woman to birth that child so that he could enslave them both (even as he probably used religion and morality, rather than economics and labor, as his excuse and defense for why one shouldn’t turn to abortion).  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she didn’t want that child to be a slave?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus because she physically could not bear the burden of labor and pregnancy?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus as a punishment to the man who raped her, barely fed her, barely clothed her, denied her religion, denied her liberty, and whipped her when she worked too slowly, made a mistake, or attempted to flee?  Who would be willing to fault the enslaved woman who aborted her fetus to protect her life and to save the evils of her life from those of her child?  To include the history of enslaved women in the history of slavery and then compare that history to abortion is not easy.

This poster is disgusting. You are disgusting for propagating such inaccuracies about the past AND about the lived experiences of both enslaved peoples and pregnant people today.

[Also, this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that there are millions of people RIGHT NOW who are enslaved on this planet. GO HELP THEM if you fucking care so much about the horrors of slavery.]

I looked at this fucking picture for half of a second before I knew there would be commentary out the ass on it. I love it when people explicate all of the fuckery so that I can just sit there and be like, “mhm. YEAH. FUCKERS.”

No, but seriously, I’ve never seen this fucking connection made before. Why? Because not only is it SO fucked up, but it also makes no fucking sense. The only thing it proves is that being anti-choice is just one manifestation of the hatred that some people harbor in their rotting minds.

velocicrafter:

queernonymoose:

gaypocalypse:

First gif set.

From The Angry Eye. Relevant transcript.

I am keeping this mostly in part to get Jane Elliot gif saying out.

the more I think about this scene, the more I think how fucked it is that this young woman willingly came to this workshop, presumably to learn something. Here she is, crumpling under the weight of her own bruised privilege & trying to tell the instructor something, like she knows more than this woman who has been doing these workshops for literally decades.

I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, because 99.9998% of the time when I’ve tried to comment on racism in real life, a white person (& the occasional POC) has tried to tell me that race wasn’t really the issue & racism couldn’t have been happening.

motherfuckingoj:

davyjonesing:

leatherpumpkin:

i’m crying??????

the fact that they’re talking about this, actually attempting to address the issue instead of staying silent and cowardly like the industry tools in the directors video, is giving me so. much. liiiiife.

Asshole studio exec: “Well, I wouldn’t fuck her.”

George Clooney: “Well, she wouldn’t fuck you!”

~ 

deputyandybrennan:

leatherpumpkin:

femmenoire:

tokenblkgirl:

Exactly when did George Lucas become the savior of black cinema? 

#I don’t think a late January release will alter hollywood as we know it #No one cares about his films outside of those big two franchises #and while i love the Tuskegee story #how about we do some stories folks haven’t seen or heard of 50+ times #How about some non-period quality black films? #that aren’t just about convincing white folks they’re important #nothing against red tails #but i hate the press for this movie #and i’ve never been a george lucas fan

#not all black movies have to be biopics or tyler perry hot messes #they could just be about black people falling in love or being spies or superheroes or ladygrifters

#yes #except i do have something against red tails #because i can’t deal with another movie abour tuskeegee airmen#or another pride #or another great debaters #or another anything that is about soley black men overcoming discrimination #sorry nope nada not when my only options are to be a stereotype or ”supportive of my man” #lol okay #you are not doing anything for anyone in this industry when yo are only employing your token black men so#give me my ladiez thnx holywood #and don’t restrict them to stereotypes and tyler perry #or secondary characters that barely get recognition #we deserve better

Can’t we just do a Frozone movie since The Incredibles 2 seems to never be happening? I just want a Frozone spin-off movie. BLACK SUPERHEROES. That’s all.

All great points, but I am specifically interested in a Frozone movie.

I’m getting infernally SICK of the white whiners saying Jane Elliot was being overtly cruel to the kids in that documentary. 

thegoddamazon:

Look, I’m going to explain this as clearly as possible.

The exercise was to teach white people/white passing people about the daily racism that POC face by putting them in a position to be discriminated against constantly. This was the point of the “A Class Divided” exercise.

Now, these students were all required to sign waivers saying that they would undergo high emotional stress from the exercise. They signed knowing that they were going into a situation that would stress them out.

As the exercise continues, after barely thirty minutes of being discriminated against, two white women have burst into tears, one of which stormed out and never came back. Elliot goes on to make the point that when people of color are in these situations where they’re fed up…WE DON’T HAVE THE OPTION TO STORM OUT AND NEVER COME BACK. For most of us, leaving could mean the difference between having a job or keeping a job and continuously facing racism/sexism/homophobia. Since the discrimination this exercise is dealing with race, I’m going to focus on that. For most of us, leaving could mean federal prison—I’m in the military, one of the biggest cesspools for all kinds of discrimination in human history. I face sexism and racism everyday, and you know what? After 23 years of facing racism and sexism, you learn to swallow the poison.

You become immune to most of the microaggressions, but sometimes, the armor wears down and you have to repair it.

The purpose of this exercise was to show you white folks that we (POC) don’t have a choice. I can’t go outside right now and be secure in the knowledge that I won’t be met with some level of discrimination based on my appearance. I can’t turn on the TV and be secure in the knowledge that representations of my race won’t be overblown caricatures or typecasted roles.

People of color don’t have the option of bursting into tears and storming off, because you—white folks—have the power to take away from us what we have. Our rights, our freedoms, our livelihood. You getting your feelings hurt by some person of color is not the equivalent to me having to swallow the poisonous racism of my teachers from middle school to college. To fucking college. That’s over twenty years of racism from people who are supposed to be responsible for my education.

You’ve probably seen on your dash all of us sharing personal experiences about the mistreatment we’ve received from our teachers, the constant judging, the fact that there is no safe place for us to go and simply be ourselves without fear of being judged and ridiculed or put under the microscope.

The point of this video was to hurt your feelings. To hurt your feelings so you can have some fucking perspective. And you know what? Your. Feelings. Don’t. Matter. It is the number one thing you should take away from this. Your feelings regarding racism against POC do not matter because it isn’t about you. You’re not losing anything having these discussions. You still get to go outside and be as white and carefree as ever. You get no sympathy from me just because a Black girl made fun of you in school one time, and suddenly you think you’ve gleaned what it means to be oppressed because of your race. Calling you a “Ginger” because of your red hair and freckles isn’t oppression. It’s mean, but in the end you still come out as privileged and white as ever. We don’t have that option. We’ve been picked on, beaten, mistreated, killed, and even if we come away from it alive, we’re not unscathed, and we know we’re just going to have to face it elsewhere from someone else.

We have to fight this battle everyday until we die.

I am appalled and disgusted that there are white people actually complaining about this. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you.

dank-potion:

faineemae:

Dear Nicki Minaj,

Next time you dress yourself in animal print clothing and dance around in a cage while being a colored woman, you should realize that you the result of years and years of male-dominated media stereotyping colored women as exotic, hypersexual, promiscuous, animal-like things. Not even human, just things, objects. Hope you’re proud of yourself and how you make colored women look. So, next time…just don’t.

Sincerely,
a disappointed young woman. 

Agreed. Horrendous video. I cringe at the white, male record executives who probably jumped at the idea of this madness.

For awhile I’ve been going through the notes on this post and encourage everyone else to do the same; I didn’t want to reblog any one particular response over another.

I’ve been thinking about OP’s particular condemnation: “Hope you’re proud of yourself and how you make colored women look.” It reminds me of all the shit that Rihanna got for “failing” to stand up vocally against domestic violence - instead she performed songs like S&M - and was therefore, as a victim, implicated on a larger scale, held personally responsible for her own abuse, which was a byproduct of misogyny and the patriarchy. 

It also reminds me, in a much more distant way, of how feminism used to - and sometimes still does - rip women apart for doing patriarchy-approved things like wearing high heels and getting plastic surgery. These women make other women look bad. These women are catering to the male gaze, which is badevilwrong. 

This is a really complex issue, as evidenced by all the arguments going on in the notes… I just always feel disappointed when we point fingers at the oppressed for perpetuating certain stereotypes, even though that is simply who they are, and who they want to be. Is it not enough to try and dismantle the systems and groups which actually put the harmful stereotypes in place?

blackndns:

The love story that changed history: Fascinating photographs of interracial marriage at a time when it was banned in 16 states

Just 45 years ago, 16 states deemed marriages between two people of different races illegal.

But in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.

The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.

Twenty images show the tenderness and family support enjoyed by Mildred and Richard and their three children, Peggy, Sidney and Donald.

The children, unaware of the struggles their parents face, are captured by Villet as blissfully happy as they play in the fields near their Virginia home or share secrets with their parents on the couch.

Their parents, caught sharing a kiss on their front porch, appear more worry-stricken.

And it is no wonder - eight years prior, the pair had married in the District of Columbia to evade the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which banned any white person marrying any non-white person.

But when they returned to Virginia, police stormed into their room in the middle of the night and they were arrested.

The pair were found guilty of miscegenation in 1959 and were each sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years if they left Virginia.

They moved back to the District of Columbia, where they began the long legal battle to erase their criminal records - and justify their relationship.

Following vocal support from the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches, the Lovings won the fight - with the Supreme Court branding Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional in 1967.

It wrote in its decision: ‘Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.

‘To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.’ [Read more] 

"There are just so many special privileges I have purely for being white. I get good grades not because I work hard to, but because I’m white. I haven’t recieved any college scholarships but I’m sure it’s because the people distributing them haven’t realized I’m white yet. I don’t have a job, but I’m sure it’s because I didn’t take advantage of the numerous “whites only” job opportunities. In fact, I could walk into any store I want right now and because I’m white, I don’t have to pay for anything, I just take whatever I want. I mean, on my 16th birthday, I passed a car dealership and they said “HEY, WHITE PERSON! COME IN HERE AND GET A FREE CAR!” Did I mention I live in a palace, because I am white? You see, when you’re a white person, you don’t have to work for anything. Every thing you will ever need just falls out of the sky."

—

Ashvengenz (via statehate)

She’s the best. This is the reason I followed her.

(via haereticum)

Typical white nonsense.

(via zorascreation)

lol go fuck yourself