Big-Wired's Highlights

commanderbishoujo:

this is why allies ain’t shit and never will be shit

motherfuckers are always the first to jump up and pat themselves on the back for being great, whether it’s at all appropriate or deserved or not, whether they did a gotdamn thing or lifted a finger in effort to accomplish whatever it is they’re patting themselves on the back for

yet these same folks are nowhere to be seen when the time comes to hold them accountable for fucking up, they scatter like roaches when you shine a light on their ass or start fighting back like Miss Millie screaming don’t you know what we did for you people

they want the cookies and the accolades and the great PR but they don’t want the work or the struggle and they never, ever do

this is not and it never has been about marginalized people and our representation and uplifting us

this is pure unadulterated capitalism at work because they smell a change in the marketplace like sharks smell blood in the water

i do not trust any corporation in any industry when it comes to marginalized people

we are nothing more than a demographic to them and one they are constantly weighing against the needs of their shareholders, the only group they actually give a fuck about

banshee-bitch:

Daily reminder that:

• You cannot self-designate yourself as an ally
• Being an ‘ally’ (ie, not treating people like shit) is not a special accomplishment, and is in fact the bare minimum for not being a douchebag. 
• Ally Week is not necessary
• Allies do not require safe spaces solely for being allies

Reblogging for truth.

I will say this one last time.

thelittlekneesofbees:

inthoseangeleyes:

Let me clear this up for you: I look like I’m white and by blood (25% Italian) I’m white. However, my Dad’s family is Italian. 

Call me a traitor: my family who has lived in the South (except my Mom) all their lives has fought in wars for the US. Grandpa is buried in Arlington Cemetery, he is a retired naval officer who served during WWII. Grampie was in the Marines and fought in WWII. Daddy was in Vietnam and is a purple heart. I have two American flags that are going to be hung. One is for my best friend who has been in combat in Afghanistan. The other flag is for my boyfriend who has been in Afghanistan. I’m not military. But I come from a family that would slap me if I said anything bad about the USA, where my loyalty lies.

I’m proud of where I come from. For me, the flag represents Heritage not Hate. However, I completely understand that for many it is a sign of oppression. Hence why I took that down. The ‘Wherever You Fly’ is a dedication towards my man who is an airman.

Call me a racist: I was taught to never hate someone because of their skin color. I have never (put my hand on a Bible and swear) ever thought anyone was below me because of their skin color. I have the deepest respect for African Americans. They’ve had to endure hell on Earth. But I’m not to blame for the South’s past actions. I’m part of a new generation that has moved past that. 

And no, I will not shut up. Why? Because someone tried to use fear to shut me down from using my voice. And I promised myself after that happened, I’d never let it happen again.

Do you want me to show you how you lied? Here.

“I don’t have people of color, (I’m actually White).

Don’t give me any bullshit about being Italian. They can be racist ass pricks too. Do you want me to mail you a copy of the letter I got from the Italian Brotherhood saying they didn’t want me in ‘their’ township because this is a ‘good, clean neighborhood’ and they don’t want ‘niggers messing’ anything up.

I will say this one more time. 

SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU RACIST AND VIOLENT APOLOGIZING BITCH.

Don’t nobody give a fuck about your family war story bitch, I don’t have anymore tears for you.

YOUR HERITAGE IS VIOLENT, OPPRESSIVE, AND GENOCIDAL. 

I don’t give a fuck about how your white ass sees shit, you don’t have the eyes of a person of color so you don’t see our pain. It’s been almost 3 days and you STILL don’t see our pain. So stop typing.

No one is going to congratulate you for taking it down. 

But here have a cookie:

Even though you DON’T DESERVE IT.

Fuck your fear of the bible type honor. That doesn’t mean shit to people who were forced to be Christians just to stay alive. You don’t have to think about shit. It’s true. White people have always have a hard time respecting the humanity of people who aren’t white. PERIOD.

Bitch, if you had respect for me you would have taken that VIOLENT, OPPRESSIVE, KKK ADOPTED FLAG DOWN THE MINUTE I INSINUATED IT WAS TRIGGERING. SO FUCK YOU AND YOUR EXCUSES. 

YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR PERPETUATING THE ACCEPTANCE OF VIOLENT RACISM.

YOU ARE TO BLAME FOR THE DISMISSAL OF MY VOICE AS A PERSON OF COLOR AND AS AN AFRICAN AMERICAN PERSON.

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

YOU AND EVERYONE LIKE YOU.

When you show me the reparations that have been made, when lynch mobs in 2012 STOP happening. Talk to me about change, bitch. Because I don’t see. White people down south still have the nerve to call me colored. So a fuck you goes out to you and yours for that continuing to happen.

YOU WON’T SHUT UP??

After you have dismissed my voice. After you have ignored my plea. THE ONLY THING you should be doing is shutting the fuck up.

I’ve been told to shut up my whole life, bitch. 

IT

IS

YOUR

TURN

TO 

BE

SILENT

Reblogged for truth.

Since we’re in the business of misogyny today and everything a woman does is for the sole purpose of a man’s attention.

thegoddamazon:

Let’s list ALL of the things men think, say, and do for the sole purpose of getting into a woman’s pants. Better yet, I’ll give you a live example.

I’m currently stationed at the Naval Air Station here in Florida. I live in the only all-female barracks on the base. Within 24 hours of my arrival here’s what I’ve learned:

• The Delta Challenge — This is a game the male personnel of the base came up with. The rules are simple: how many females from the all-female “Delta” barracks can one sleep with before contracting an STD? The reason for this is because the STD rate for this place is so high.
• The Buttercup Challenge — New female check-ins (from bootcamp, not from another command) are called “Buttercups”. They are required to go through a one-week orientation called “Indoc” (short for indoctrination) before even beginning to train for their jobs. The game is to see how many of them can they sleep with before they complete their one-week orientation.

There are more, but I can’t remember them all.

Just yesterday after class I was in the NEX buying groceries and was propositioned by two Marines for sex. I could have had them fried by the CMC for sexual harassment, but I have enough stress on my plate, so I told them to beat feet because I’ve already got better-looking Marines to choose from that are NOT in the same command. I’m also hearing that Japan is no longer allowing Marines into the country because of the high amount of sexual assault and rape that occurs. It’s just a rumor, of course, but the fact that it’s one that exists speaks volumes.

Or let’s talk about how the indoctrination process requires the females to get a briefing on just how bad the sexual-assault from males in the military is. It goes both ways of course, but statistically, the odds are stacked against men in the service because the most reports come from women who were sexually assaulted and harassed.

If you think women are the only ones who do “slutty” things for attention, your entire life is a lie and nobody loves you, so go die in a fucking fire.

Truth Bomb. Read it and educate yourself.

Because, you know, women CAN like things just because they like it. It really is that simple.

willynillylily:

what really bewilders me (and this happens everytime whitewashing or respecting POC cultures come up) is when white people go “well I’m irish and i face stereotypes and i don’t see you talking about irish stereotypes” or some variation thereof

i hope you realize that my talking about faithful representation of POC is not mutually exclusive with fighting against ethnocentrism. i’m capable of multitasking and more importantly, if i was going to write or draw white irish people (because i know these people are never talking about irish POC when they are making their snide remarks), i’d make sure to do my research.

i have nothing against white people who want their ethnicities respected. i support that. i do, however, get really suspicious when the only time your ethnicity is brought up is when POC are talking about our representation.

because 1) if you were so concerned about your ethnicity and proper representation, you’d be talking about it like we are/work in solidarity with us, instead you want to shout us down which 2) shows to me that you are totally fine with assimilating into whiteness and 3) you conveniently conflate ethnicity with nationality by invisibilizing the POC who are also irish/scottish/etc.

for instance, ethnic Hungarians refer to themselves as Magyar; these are white Hungarians. but there are also plenty of Black Hungarians, Asian Hungarians, Romani Hungarians etc. therefore i have a hard time listening to you if it’s clear you’ve assimilated so much into whiteness that you’re completely ok with erasing major roots of your identity in order to barricade POC (aka i know you’re a fool when you say “but Romani are not Hungarians! I’m a real Hungarian!”)

and seriously it’s not like you can blame POC for ethnocentrism/creating harmful stereotypes of white ethnicities who aren’t quite white enough. we’re not the ones who divided maps into ‘light whites’ and ‘dark whites’ after all, you can blame the British Empire and other Whitest of the Whites for that.

THIS. ALL OF THIS.

On Margaret Sanger And Eugenics

freedominwickedness:

I am growing very tired of having to intervene when white feminists ignorantly lionize Margaret Sanger. Because the reality is that Sanger was an unbelievably racist piece of work — and that’s even going by the benighted standards of her era.

Sanger’s push for birth control was a calculated attempt to salvage the American eugenics movement, which had been discredited in the public eye after World War II. America had been the world leader in promoting government-sponsored eugenics programs in general and in, but it all came apart after Nazi Germany when people realized that the American eugenics movement was directly responsible for many of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. The Nazis had adopted eugenics policies specifically because of aggressive evangelization by American activists, and had carried those policies to their most extreme form.

Sanger was the leader of a group of American eugenicists who realized that the previously-successful tactic of promoting forcible sterilization of “undesirables” was no longer viable, and sought to instead promote birth control as a new form of eugenic “social hygiene” in place of government mandates. By casting free access to birth control as a civil right and simultaneously preaching the “voluntary” use of birth control as a social duty, Sanger suggested, eugenicists could create a soft-sell approach to purification.

Sanger’s American Birth Control League — a.k.a. Planned Parenthood — sought from the very start to leverage racism in pursuit of eugenics, emphasizing to white sponsors the “need” to implement birth control in order to control the reproduction of people of color. The ABCL’s first birth control clinic was built in the segregated neighborhood of Harlem specifically in order to target African-Americans, aggressively promoting the idea that “out of control” reproduction was the true cause of black poverty and that birth control was the only solution. Sanger even went so far as to seek the support of the Ku Klux Klan, personally appearing before a Klan meeting in New Jersey and subsequently going on a speaking tour of Klan groups. This logic of racist eugenics was carried forward into the so-called “Negro Project” which Sanger later masterminded.

In her open letter, “A Plan for Peace”, Sanger urges the U.S. Congress to appoint a special department of the federal government for the purpose of controlling population problems by enforcing a, “stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” Her plan also called for crackdowns on non-white immigration.

The bottom line? The birth control movement can and should be separated from its roots in the eugenics movement, but doing so involves being willing to actually acknowledge the existence of those roots and disavowing people like Sanger rather than whitewashing the past.

Stuff like this must be remembered, or else we run the risk of viewing history only through rose-coloured lenses.

the meanings of names that people would typically think are ghetto and meaningless:

hardhatpartycat:

jhenne-bean:

queerqueenofcolor:

spartanbitch:

suzy-carmichael:

• lakeisha: a swahili name meaning “favorite one”
• lateefah: a north african name meaning “gentle and pleasant”
• latonia: a latin name. latonia was the mother of diana in roman mythology
• latisha: means “happiness”
• takiya: a north african name meaning “righteous”

yes.

amen.

I was JUST thinking about the inherent White Supremacy in “baby name culture” and how PoC, specifically Black people, are penalized for giving their children “unusual” names. Names which come from a variety of African and European sources, but to which White Supremacy remains wholly ignorant because the entirety of White Supremacy is about visible credits of a cycle of what’s “in” for The White Race and what’s “out”. How many times will the name “Tyrone” be seen as a marker of “da ghetto” and impoverished slovenliness simply because it’s on a Black male body before people look into the etymologies White Supremacy tries to hide because it knows Black people are geniuses. 

oh this reference (and commentary) is perfect perfect perfect. 

RAI WE WERE JUST TEXTING ABOUT THIS <3

Tyrone is irish in origin but too many blacks have that name that they were given by masters so now it’s just “ghetto”.

Reblogged for truth and education.

karnythia:

I need to know why when we talk about bullying in schools, no one points out that children of color are often bullied for their race. Especially if they are not the majority group in that school. A whole lot of fights I got into were after someone had some slick shit to say about my hair, my color, or my body. That’s one of the things that never seems to come up when people start going on & on about kids of color getting into fights at these schools. I mean if we can have 44754747 conversations about that one time the black girls were mean in 6th grade, where are the discussions about racial slurs that get tossed at kindergarteners? Or the conversations about racist teachers who encourage the bullying & the administrators who ignore what’s happening? When we’re talking about low test scores & drop out rates why don’t we talk about school environments & what kids have to face from their peers & the authority figures just to try to succeed? Oh right, those are hard conversations & they require listening skills & for people to believe children of color when they talk about their experiences and their feelings. They require a willingness to confront others (yes, even people you think are nice) when they do fucked up things to children of color under the guise of helping them. And no one really wants to do that work. My bad.

Bam! Truth bomb here, folks.

An Important Reminder

rapeculturerealities:

You don’t owe anybody anything.  You are responsible for yourself first, last, and always.  You do NOT have to do something just because someone else wants you to.  If someone wants you to do something and you don’t want to that’s ok, that’s fine, that’s great, because it’s all about what you want.  It’s not selfish or self-centered to admit that you don’t want to do something and you are NOT obligated to do ANYTHING under ANY circumstances NO MATTER WHAT unless you want to.  You do what works best for you and if other people have a problem with it that’s their problem, NOT yours. 

I often forget this myself and I find that I have to keep telling myself this over and over again and if I have that problem I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in it so just in case you need a reminder here it is.

Truth, right here.