Big-Wired's Highlights

Happy 4th of July!

thinkspeakstress:

homurathetimelesbian:

thinkspeakstress:

On this day 236 years ago, white people declared their independence from Great Britain because freedom is important, said the white people who held African slaves, and were murdering the Native Americans whose land they had stolen.

To celebrate this day, let us throw a big Tumblr party. A theme party! This year, the theme is—I thought it’d be appropriate….

~*~*~GENOCIDE~*~*~

Let’s go down the list!

Drones in the Middle East? Check.

Possible approval of drones in the Caribbean? Check.

Kidnapping Native American children and giving them up for adoption to white families in order to disconnect them from their heritage in the hopes that all Native culture will die out (all while other clueless crackers appropriate our shit and misrepresent us. Because crackers APPRECIATE us!)? Check.

Randomly assaulting Native Americans in attempts to murder them (usually done by the cops, but if other white folk join the party, the cops usually won’t stop them, so hey!) Check. Double check. Triple check!

Where the government allows white people to murder Black citizens with no consequence (How many of them have been given pay raises and vacations, rather than suspensions? I lost count)? Check. Oh, there’s a surplus of that! Double check!

Where the government bans us from learning about the parts of American history that don’t include white people because the shit they did was so bad that they’re afraid we’ll hate them afterwards. So instead, they just ban it, to keep themselves looking good, all while preaching about the importance of knowing our history? Check, check, and check!

Where anybody of (Edit) South Asian descent is automatically suspected of being a terrorist, even though the majority of terrorist acts in America are domestic, and committed by white men? Check.

Where Latin@s are at risk of being deported. Even ones who are, according to the government, legal citizens. Even people who aren’t actually Latin@ at all, but just Latin@ in appearance, or have a Latin@ sounding name. BONUS FUNSIES! MOTHER FUCKING CHECK!

Am I forgetting anything?

OH! And while we’re here planning this shin dig, let us also remember to commemorate 9/11 on this day. Because out of all of the things that still affect us that America tells us to get over, this shall never be one of them because white people. :D

AMERIKA. Land of the free… unless your ancestors were here before white people, quote unquote, ~*”DISCOVERED”*~ this land.

AMERIKKA. Where everyone is born equal…. but not everyone is treated as such.

AMERIKKKA. Where everyone’s life has value and meaning! ….It’s just that white people’s have more, you know?

HAPPY 4th OF JULY, EVERYBODY! :D

I’m not fond of this country, but fucking really? This is not the day to bitch, you fucking dyke.

NEWS FLASH AMERICA ISN’T THE WORST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WHEN IT COMES TO THIS SHIT

ALL THE SUPERPOWERS IN THE WORLD AND THEN SOME HAVE HAD A HAND IN MULTIPLE GENOCIDES

LIKE, IDK, BRITAIN

SPAIN

FRANCE

PORTUGAL

CHINA

GERMANY

BELGIUM

ITALY

CANADA

RUSSIA

ISRAEL

AND MORE

I did not see ANYONE on July 1st complaining that Canada is so genocidal, despite how they treat their natives, even today. 

Go get that stick out of your ass and learn real history instead of just bitching that one country has done bad things.

Protip: all countries have

Lol. Wtf is wrong with you? Do you need a map? Are you lost? Do you need a bottle and a blanket, because good god. “Today’s not the day to bitch” why not, because we’re celebrating America’s independence day? Lemme ask you something: Independence for who? Because in 1776, the only people who gained their independence were white people.

Also, if you really think that pointing out past and present genocides is the same as crying that we’re the worst country EVAR, I have two words for you: Critical Thinking.

And yes, how dare I talk about America’s faults on the day celebrating… you know. America. Shame on me. I’m embarrassed for you, bb, just stop talking, we wouldn’t want you catching the vapors because the truth upset your delicate little sensibilities. Actually, no, fuck that, cry harder. I love it.

Also, hey, way to go, calling me a homophobic slur! You do our country proud with your lack of critical thinking skills and slur flinging! Go, Glen Coco, I’m so proud of you, really. Round of applause.

What she said, all of it…

And if you’re not seeing anyone on July 1st taking Canada to task over the treatment of natives past and present, then you’re not looking hard enough or you just refuse to look. Period.

ianthe:

Shoutout to all the queer kids being turned out of their houses and fighting to stay alive. 

Shoutout to Cece McDonald, a trans woman 322 days into her 41-month imprisonment following an act of self-defense against racist transphobes who smashed glass on her face. 

Shoutout to all the queer people of color who are trying to find their space in a movement and community dominated by white voices. 

Shoutout to my friends who have been hurled slurs out of the car windows of their peers.

Shoutout to everyone for whom the right to marry doesn’t mean shit when they’re still fighting for the right to survive.

What she said. I know these are only words, but take care out there.

We literally raised generations of White People… all so they could turn around and still hate us and enslave us in all the old ways and the new

karnythia:

failedblackwoman:

This is really great. My Great Aunt was a maid/care giver for a well off White Family. She makes the best cakes, and some of them are recipes that they made her learn. She cooks them for us out of spite for them, they wanted her to work at the detriment of her own family so she quit. 

My own grandmother was once on the bus and a White Woman approached her and asked if she would be her maid. My grandmother told her no, and the lady actually got off the bus to follow her and harass her. 

My grandmother, at the end of her rope tells her “I work a full time job and find time to cook and care for my 3 kids, why don’t you figure out how to do it yourself?” 

Woman called her a bitch and wanders off. 

She knew she would care for those kids, cook them meals, sing them to sleep, while not being able to take care of her own kids, and they still wouldn’t have respected her as a person. She’d be the help, or Nanny Bernice. 

My grandmother was adamant about us not going to work in any white woman’s kitchen. To this day I can hear her going clean the fuck off about some woman trying to advertise for a maid at our church.

That’s really self-centered, not thinking that other women could have priorities outside your own needs… hell, this example here just makes me think that racism is closely associated with being a sociopath.

(Source: hamburgerjack)

ninjaruski:

ave-atque-vale:

thegoddamazon:

karnythia:

I am tired of the hyper visibility racism brings to any discussion of a black woman’s behavior. See the response to Bow Down Bitch or the reaction to Nicki Minaj & Rihanna vs the responses to Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears etc. Hell, look at the way K-pop & J-pop stars profit from Black cool while splattering racism all over the place, & how many excuses are made for them. I have this situation at work with two black women who are actually fucking up, but the complaints aren’t just about their behavior, their race (and the racist baggage of my coworkers) are also part of any discussion. It’s a mess, and I see the same thing playing out around black celebrities all the time.

Are we ever going to discuss the bolded? Seriously?

rebageling for @kasuchi, @ninjaruski - I missed a chunk of that conversation, but weren’t you guys talking about the bolded on gchat yesterday? (awesome deconstruction btw I don’t consume much Asian/East Asian media, so I’m still learning how various portrayals and problematic ideas are constructed within that context)

I can’t speak to K-pop/J-pop but was just telling Gil last night about that new Kamal Hasan film - Vishwaroopam - I hated it, and I also found it super fucking racist (among many other fuck ups)

like there was one scene with a black female FBI agent that was just…one of the stupidest caricatures of a ~sassy~ black woman that I have ever seen

my father, bless him, isn’t a particularly critical consumer of media, but even he was startled by that scene; he immediately checked with me, “you’d call that racist, right, that seemed…very racist…”

like I understand that there’s very different sociocultural forces at work in South Asian vs East Asian societies, but @karnythia’s point still applies w/r/t various South Asian artists / South Asian entertainment industries borrowing elements of black music cultures, fashion, etc, and incorporating those, while at the same time uncritically lifting some of the worst stereotypes and portrayals of black people from Hollywood, and adding to it, and perpetuating it

(and of course it’s totally not the same thing, but there are some parallels w/r/t the way Bollywood often caricatures Tamils/South Indians generally, for example)

thoughts, anybody?

Yup! We were talking about it, and how one of the primary approaches to dealing with racism in East-Asia is to approach in the same way that we approach racism in America and the west. Well, this approach has seen little progress because it assumes the same socio-political and socio-cultural forces are at work in Japan that are at work in America. Japan might be a “westernized” country, but the way in which racism manifests there has a different relational structure than the way it works in America.

Racism in Japan does not have the same institutional structures that it does in America. Exceptions can be made for Japanese racism towards other East/South-East Asains and the Ainu peoples, but there has not been a concerted project of anti-black racism in Japan. What there has been is the rearticulation of Western perspectives on black people and blackness due to Japan’s appropriation of Western culture and western modes of thinking.

Let me put this another way, Japanese anti-black racism is a cultural mirror of the institutional problems in the West. They absorb the cultural messages that Western media puts out with regards to blackness and then rearticulate them as though as it was fact. Further, Japanese media does not have any competing images of black culture against which to position the dominant narrative coming out of the West: they do not have black history month, Africana Studies Departments, Critical Race Theory (as it is done in the US), or a concerted movement to redress racial inequalities. There are no structures in Japan to deal with anti-black racism or appropriation.

Further, in so far as Japanese people express anti-black sentiments, their expression is still bounded within the overall xenophobic attitudes expressed by Japanese culture. Gaijin, Gaikokujin, as a cultural phenomena tends to denigrate all foreigners, regardless of race. It is upon this structure that the anti-black attitudes promoted by Western media is overlaid. What you have is a people who are culturally xenophobic, who demand homogeneity in their culture, who are then presented with images of blackness as inherently violent, inherently disruptive, and thus worthy of additional scrutiny.

The manifestation of Japanese anti-blackness and racism emerges out of the context of the Japanese cultural xenophobia and the imported messages from Western media, as opposed to a legacy of systemic racism towards black individuals. Granted, there are some historical mirrors in Japanese history to Western forms of racism (see the displacement of the Ainu, Rape of Nanking, Japanese Imperialsism) but the ideological basis is different as is the fact that there is largely no institutional mirror for Japanese anti-blackness as disconnected from Japanese xenophobia.

This should not be taken as a defense for the Japanese appropriation of blackness or its anti-blackness. The above should be seen as arguing for a realization that the way racism (if a prevalent attitude without an institutional mirror can be called racist) manifests in Japan depends on different cultural conditions, one of which is not the legacy of institutionalized racism at work in the U.S. Taking this to be the case we need to adjust our approaches to Japanese anti-blackness with regards to the specific way in which Japanese culture and Western ideas about blackness generate anti-black ideas.

We cannot simply assume that the methods that “work” in America, will “work” in Japan without making reference to the specific cultural conditions that give rise to the phenomena. That is, how will anti-racist activists deal with a culture that does not have an institutional mirror for its racist ideologies, whose ideologies are bootstrapped onto cultural xenophobia, and who does not have a legacy of institutionalized anti-black racism.

Reblogging for some education.