Back To The Motor League

dionthesocialist:

Remember that time Gabby Douglass basically won a gold medal for USA and got no attention for it, but then Michael Phelps shrunk a four-length lead to win a relay race and became an American hero?

cosmopolitan-fascist:

On July 23, 2012 at approximately 11:03 a.m. the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office was notified of a possible deceased person in a wooded area around the 1400 block of Black Champ Road in the unincorporated area of Ellis County. Deputies were dispatched to the location and upon arrival located a deceased person lying in a heavily wooded area.

She is approximately 5’4 inches tall and weighing approximately 115 pounds. She is believed to be of African-American heritage. She was wearing a black or dark gray tank top, blue jean shorts and white Nike tennis shoes with purple shoe laces. It is believed she may have disappeared on or after the early afternoon of July 17, 2012.

The Sheriff’s Office is releasing an artist rendition of what the female may have looked when she was alive along with the tattoos found on her person.

The Sheriff’s Office reached out to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the Dallas area as well as members of GetEQUAL TX. This leads us to believe that there is a possibility that she was part of the LGBT community. GetEQUAL TX plans to work with police and the community to find justice for this woman and her family.

“If this was a lesbian woman, this makes a third lesbian woman of color brutally attacked in Texas within a month’s time”, said C.D Kirven, an organizer with GetEQUAL, “as a member of the LGBT community and a woman of color, this is not just an attack on this woman but on me and others in my community”

“The recent attacks towards women, especially lesbian women, is an attempt to silence and terrify the LGBT community”, Said Tiffani Bishop, Central Texas Lead Organizer for GetEQUAL TX, “Crimes based in gender and sexual orientation bias are a direct reflection of sexism and heterosupremacy within our society. We must, as a community, stand in solidarity to put an end to these violent crimes.”

“Violence against a member of a community directly effects all members of that community”, said, Michael Diviesti, Co-State Lead Organizer for GetEQUAL TX, “We begin to put ourselves in the place of our brothers and sisters who have suffered this violence. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

Any person who may have information regarding the identity of this woman is requested to contact Investigator Joe Fitzgerald at 972.825.4928.

Go here to see artist’s rendition and distinguishing marks

Activist friend posted this, please reblog especially if you live in Dallas.

karnythia:

maitsukishiro:

damnlayoffthebleach:

virginclub:

tell me about my white privilege while you get scholarships just for being a minority

SoLDN: “Caucasian students are 40% more likely to win private scholarships than minority students.  ”

[SOURCE] 

“For so long, I’ve heard this complaint about White college students finding it hard to get scholarships and how racial and ethnic minority college students are so lucky because there are “so many” scholarships out their for us. I was always intuitively distrustful of this belief, but I never really had evidence to prove the claim wrong. Until, now! Dr. Mark Kantrowitz, who is President of MK Consulting Inc., a consulting firm focused on computer science, artificial intellignece, and statistical and policy analysis, is also the publisher for Fastweb.com and FinAid.org. Last year, Kantrowitz conducted a comprehensive study of the distribution of scholarship and grant aid across the United States. His study had some findings that would probably shock and dismay non-PoC:

• While there are very few private scholarships that are explicitly targeted at Caucasian students as a category, Caucasian students receive a disproportionately greater share of private scholarships and merit-based grants.
• Caucasian students receive more than three-quarters (76%) of all institutional merit-based scholarship and grant funding, even though they represent less than two-thirds (62%) of the student population.
• Caucasian students are 40% more likely to win private scholarships than minority students.  
• These statistics demonstrate that, as a whole, private sector scholarship programs tend to perpetuate historical inequities in the distribution of scholarships according to race. This does not appear to be due to deliberate discrimination, but rather as a natural result of the personal interests of the scholarship sponsors. [In other words, there is probably an unconscious preference to help their own kind among the predominately White scholarship committees around the U.S.]

So next time, you here someone complain about not getting a scholarship because they were White, let the motherfucker know that it wasn’t because they were White, it’s because they weren’t good enough. Plain and simple.

Check out the full report here:http://www.finaid.org/scholarships/20110902racescholarships.pdf”

You’re wrong. Read a book

Or, how about they get rid of the “race” checkbox on our college applications all together? Blind admission, a novel idea? Apparently so.

Blind admissions aren’t blind. High school name & location can tell you the likely race of an applicant & their socioeconomic level.

is there a GIF of voldemort at the olympics all over my dashboard

what the hell is going on over there in london

byzantiums:

I’m going to preface this post with an apology, an apology for presumably tripping over my words as I attempt to fire them off and perhaps not getting my point across as well as I’d like. The main reason for it being that I’m angry over this bullshit, furious even, but I’ll try and say my piece as eloquently as I can, before my judgement is wholly clouded by emotion.

My biggest beef with “Save the Pearls” isn’t the atrocious subject matter or the dodgy prose or even the glib inanity with which its author has been talking about issues of race though I assure you all those separate problems make my skin crawl as well. No, my biggest problem with this book, with its writer, with the publishing house that decided to put its official stamp on this drivel is that “Saving the Pearls” is unfair.

Race and racism are topics that, by necessity, concern and touch a lot of people and yet it seems when it comes to talking about them (and being legitimately heard), racial rhetoric is monopolised by white people. Take, for example, one of the most popular books written about race in the last few years: “The Help”, penned by a white woman and translated to the screen by a white man. Or minimise this window for a sec and type ‘great POC writers’ into google and see how many valid entries come up. Try and find a list of great black authors that includes an author, other than Toni Morrison, who has written something this side of the twenty first century. It’s not that those authors don’t exist (they do) and it’s not because the Marlon Jameses and Danielle Evanses aren’t as deserving of credit or blockbuster deals as the Kathryn Stocketts of this world (they most certainly are). But apparently, for some reason, we have decided as a society that white people’s voices count for more and what white people have to say about race (an issue that, I won’t deny, affects them but not with the same staggering intimacy it affects actual people of colour) is more worthy of our consideration. Which is both unjust and dishonest and brings me back to the issue at hand, “Save the Pearls” and my number one reason why it shouldn’t have been published or written in the first instance: it’s not fair. Had a POC author written such a thing or attempted to write such a thing, I highly doubt any publishing house would have had either the audacity or ambition to position it as the next “Hunger Games”. POC literature is marginalised, “other”-ed, relegated to the sidelines even on issues which directly impact people of colour far more than white people. “Save the Pearls” is unfair because it’s not Victoria Foyt’s place to try and overturn racial stereotypes, especially when any POC counterpart of hers could only dream of doing (and receiving mainstream recognition) for the same thing. 

Now, you might say that I’m the one whose being unfair, not to mention irrational. “Save the Pearls” has yet to actually become any kind of hit and by the grace of God, hopefully it never will. But it fits in to a larger scheme of things, both in literary canon and life itself: where one white woman’s brief brush with what it means to be a person of colour carries far more weight than a POC’s person whole lifetime of dealing with the same confusion and hurt. I’m sorry for whatever pain and shame that brief scene from Victoria Hoyt’s childhood elicited from her but what she experienced is not what I would term to be racism. Racism is not just one verbal slap in the face that can be suppressed for years and then exorcised in a ridiculous exercise of YA fiction, it is a dozen, maybe even hundred of such insults which needs to be approached in fiction, if not with mastery, than at least with respect and sensitivity. It’s not something that you suffer just once and it’s not something that you can turn over in your mind without ever letting it sink past your skin, it’s a lead brick you carry around in your pocket everyday of your life until you’re exhausted by the weight of it. From her comments, from the brief excerpt I have read of her book as well as its summary, it seems like Victoria Hoyt - with all due respect - knows fuck all about dealing with actual racism and I will be heartily sick if I have to pretend over the next twelve months or so, that she does.

So I suggest the only legitimate way to deal with “Save the Pearls” is treat it in the same way countless better-crafted, more powerful books about race written by POCs have been treated for decades: ignore it. 

punkcub:

panasonicyouth:

coming shortly

oh my god it is the worst book

Bernie Predicts Mark’s Face:

let me assure you it’s much worse than this

coming shortly

oh my god it is the worst book

samekh:

here’s my favourite quote from the author interviews

Is there a message to Revealing Eden that you hope readers embrace?

Unfortunately, it isn’t hard to imagine that our world may one day resemble the bleak, depleted environment depicted in Revealing Eden. If we do not take better care of the earth, and stop depleting the ozone level with pollution, the effects of solar radiation will increase. Take it one step further, and the melanin in those with dark skin may enable them to survive better, putting whites at an extreme disadvantage. Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call, and hopefully, promote better understanding between the races.

so remember, kids: protect the environment or white people will suffer!

lord

3. The world of coals, pearls, ambers, is so unique. How much fun was it world-building and how much energy went into it?

Big fun, and a little scary too. I wrestled with some of the details of Eden’s post-apocalyptic world. For example, creating racial epithets, rather than using existing ones that are already deeply ingrained in our culture, seemed the best way of turning long-standing prejudices upside down. I played with different ideas, and even used animal names at one point, but they also carried too much baggage. Then the idea of using simple, earthy things to represent the different races struck me. The words pearl, coal, tiger’s eye, amber, and cotton all represent beautiful natural things, just as all races are equally beautiful. Of course, these invented racial terms also tie into the environmental theme, and initially create mystery, too. That was a good day’s work.

source

i am just so livid over this. THAT WAS A TERRIBLE DAY’S WORK

hellmonks:

I have endeavored to raise my children with a color-free mentality. My son once mentioned that his color was white while mine was tan. This was said with no more feeling than if he’d been describing the different colors of our bedrooms.

oh

my

god

i am pretty sure this will continue to get worse

who fucking writes something like that

right

white people.

akitron:

succugeek:

So this whole “Save the Pearls” thing is already really fucking ridiculous, but I think it takes on a whole new layer when you realize the author wrote the book because she was so traumatized at being mistaken for a black girl and called ugly for it.

No, seriously.

Imagine this: a fourth grade girl with wild curly hair, huge green eyes and large bee-stung lips, her skin perpetually tanned from the Florida sun, stands alone waiting for her mother to pick her up after school. A large yellow school bus begins to pull away when a young boy sticks his head out of the window and hurls a racial slur at the girl.

Her first reaction is shame. He has slandered her with an ugly epithet — a disgusting remark about her lips. Later, she wonders how he could possibly have mistaken her race. She is white, the remark usually targeted at blacks. (The term “African American” did not exist in that day.)

Confused and hurt, she wonders why her appearance should elicit such hatred. She hides this incident in the back of her mind and never repeats it to anyone until many years later when she writes a book in which she turns racial stereotypes upside down.

Only when I began to answer interview question and answers, did I recall the incident, and wonder how it had informed the story. Writers pluck bits and pieces from their lives and weave them, often unconsciously, only hoping the seams between reality and fiction do not show.

(Source)

W O W

MY FUCKING GOD

NOPE

NOPE

NOPE

theblacksupremacist:

so-treu:

alostbird:

Official Website: http://www.SaveThePearls.com/

Youtube Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/savethepearls

http://www.sanddollarpress.com/

Victoria Foyt website: http://www.victoriafoyt.com/contact

https://www.facebook.com/SaveThePearls

Report, send email, messages to let them know this isn’t okay at all. 

FLOOD THEM. ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO DO BLACKFACE IS A FUCKING PROBLEM.

I am formulating a letter as we speak.

Can’t believe I have to, early in the morning, tell a grown ass bitch NOT to encourage BLACKFACE.

like i keep reading the book premise and watching the videos and reading the Facebook posts and i just

how

how did this leave “conceptual stage”

how did this idea leave someone’s head andmultiple people approved it and allowed it to happen.

what a HORRIFICALLY racist idea, a racist execution, and a racist disaster. IF YOU HAVE TO DO BLACKFACE TO PROMOTE YOUR BOOK, YOU ARE 100% DOING IT WRONG.

fuck this

space jam 2

danceswithdiamondthighs:

First, a few words about this FAQ. Many people much smarter and much more cohesive than me have written extensively about ‘the N word’, so if you have any questions after this etc I’d advise you seek out what’s already been written. Secondly, don’t treat this as the GOSPEL on Black people’s relationship with the N word, and I don’t at all intend to speak for all Black people. Also, this is prety brief and doesn’t cover every single frequently asked question, so if there’s anything you’d like adding, feel free to say. With that in mind…

The N Word. Why is it such a bad word?/GOSH IT’S ONLY A WORD!!!

A helpful article, N*gger and Caricatures by Dr. David Pilgrim and Dr. Phillip Middleton can be found [here]

To quote a little from the article

There is a direct and strong link between the word nigger and anti-black caricatures. Although nigger has been used to refer to any person of known African ancestry it is usually directed against blacks who supposedly have certain negative characteristics. The Coon caricature, for example, portrays black men as lazy, ignorant, and obsessively self-indulgent; these are also traits historically represented by the word nigger. The Brute caricature depicts black men as angry, physically strong, animalistic, and prone to wanton violence. This depiction is also implied in the word nigger. The Tom and Mammy caricatures are often portrayed as kind, loving “friends” of whites. They are also presented as intellectually childlike, physically unattractive, and neglectful of their biological families. These latter traits have been associated with blacks, generally, and are implied in the word nigger. The word nigger was a shorthand way of saying that blacks possessed the moral, intellectual, social, and physical characteristics of the Coon, Brute, Tom, Mammy, and other racial caricatures.

…

The word nigger carries with it much of the hatred and repulsion directed toward Africans and African Americans. Historically, nigger defined, limited, and mocked African Americans. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal justification for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it reinforced the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless parasite. No other American ethnophaulism carried so much purposeful venom.

I’m white, can I use it?

After reading the above, why would you want to? No, you can’t.

I’m a non-Black PoC, can I use it?

After reading the above, why would you want to? No, you can’t.

So why can Black people use it?

Because when used amongst Black people, it is a reclaimed slur. See this extract from Why Black People Can Use The N Word

I think that slurs are prohibited terms whose occurrences are offensive.  When enough people (or the right person or persons) say a word is not appropriate for referring to a particular group, then that word becomes a slur.  However, the prohibition is not absolute.  It does allow for some exceptions.  Among those exceptions are non-derogatory uses by members of the targeted group.  Immediately we can see why African Americans (and certain others) can use the N-word for camaraderie purposes while non-African Americans typically cannot.  It is just built into the exception clause that the former can and the latter cannot.

HEY! That’s not fair! Either everyone can use it or nobody can use it!!!

Well, no. Reclaiming slurs doesn’t really work like that. When used by non-Black PoC or white people, it still has that power to oppress and trigger, even when used in a camaraderie sense. When used amongst Black people, its power as a slur is reduced.

Words are only offensive if you let them be offensive!

I would say that Black people, and marginalised people as a whole, let a WHOLE lot of shit wash over us for an easier life. Considering how dehumanising the N word is, I don’t think it’s a case of “letting” it be offensive at all.

What if I’m quoting a song?

Don’t do it.

What can I say instead?

The best option is to just not say anything, or quote the ‘Radio Friendly’ version. If you must, there are a few options. Katy Perry said ‘ninja’. Glee said ‘jigga’. There’s also ‘knickers’. They all skirt VERY close to the line, so you could also say “brothers”. But really, saying nothing at all is the best way to avoid problems.

What if I’m just saying it for reference, not even calling anybody it e.g. telling someone “It’s not okay to call someone a nigger”?

Censor it out, or say ‘The N Word’.

I’m not Black. What if I say n*gga, rather than n*ggER? That’s not as bad, right?

It’s much of a muchness when coming from non-Black mouths, avoid BOTH if you like having an unbroken nose.

So hang on, why is it different to when PoC call me a cracker?!

Firstly, cracker is short for ‘whipcracker’, as in someone who whipped the slaves. Already this denotes a position of power over PoC, and whilst you may denounce any association with slavery, this connotation doesn’t OPPRESS you in any way. Whilst “cracker” might not be nice word, and might hurt your feelings, the N word isn’t about hurt feelings, it’s about dehumanisation and oppression. White people are not racially oppressed, so “cracker” does not have the power to do either of those things. THAT’S why it’s different.

N*gger N*gger N*gger N*gger N*gger! HA! FUCK YOU I’LL SAY WHAT I LIKE!

Well that just goes to show how insensitive and entitled you are. You get asked to not say one word in the extensive English language, and instead of thinking “Hey fair enough, I guess I don’t really want to use a word so horribly loaded anyway” you care more about your “freedom to say whatever you like without reproach”

Actually, I think n*ggers are just the bad Black people. Good Black people, like the Obamas and Morgan Freeman and my friend Chris are just Black people, not n*ggers.

Despite what a certain famous comedian has said, you can’t rewrite history like that. And if you think such a thing as “good Black people” and “bad Black people” exists, you are racist.

Hey, so my Black friend gave me a “pass”, so it’s okay for me to use it, right?

Only around your Black friend. Nobody else.

My Black friend disagrees with all of this!/I’m Black and I disagree with this!

Your Black friend/you are entitled to disagree with this, of course, but just know that many people disagree with YOU and you should respect that.

My non-Black teacher studied African American Studies and he said you’re wrong.

I’m so glad your non-Black teacher studied Af. American studies and now thinks he is entitled to speak on the oppression of Black people.

I’m gay and I think it’s okay for anyone to say the word f*g, so Black people should be okay with the N word!

Being marginalised on another axis does not give you permission to dictate how other marginalised people deal with their oppression. So, no.

Actually, I’m white and I agree with Louis CK on this one.

Louis CK is misguided. And if you’re white and look to other white people to explain racism to you, you’re doing it very very wrong.

Can I say it when there are no Black people around?

WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?!

THIS FAQ IS STUPID AND YOU’RE STUPID!!

Welp! Have fun saying the N word, and mind someone doesn’t punch you in the face.

And got perfect seats for IMAX Dark Knight Rises. YES GOOD. I have never been in a theater this early IT IS REALLY WEIRD.

omg

And the tweet is actually real.

damn, jesse williams. truth.

blahblahblather:

coldeyesthatburn:

YOU ARE NOT BLACK WOMEN

STOP SAYING YOU HAVE AN INNER BLACK WOMAN

FUCK YOU

THAT SHIT AINT CUTE

THE IDENTITY’S OF BLACK WOMEN ARE NOT YOUR FUCKING COSTUMES 

THEY ARE NOT THE BUTTS OF YOUR JOKES

Someone needs to hit these fuckers in the head, and tell them their inner white cop did it.