The Rabbit-Hole of ‘Relevant’ - Javier Jaén)

historicaltimes:

A colorized photo of Madam C. J. Walker with her friends and her Ford, the first of her family born free and the first self-made female millionaire in America. She made cosmetics for other black women, and in her will, dedicated 2/3 of her company’s future net profits to charity. c. 1910s

via reddit

“An algorithm that scans resumes might say for example, ‘Oh, I notice when people use this kind of font, it has a high correlation with being productive, so this is the important feature.’ Is it? I don’t know, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but [the algorithm] could do things like that and it’s hard to understand why,” Venkatasubramanian says.

Letting an algorithm make hiring decisions leads to strange biases.

“You are being judged for things that you’re probably not even thinking about in your resume, like for example your address. There was one HR department that has been using an algorithmically driven system that gives people extra credit if they live within a close radius of the workplace because the data showed that if you had a longer commute, you were more likely to to quit or to be fired within a year,” says Crawford. “So what that also means is that they’re just starting to hire people who live nearby, behind which there is a whole range of other discriminatory functions.”

Many are just now beginning to wake up to the discriminatory problems associated with algorithms. Experts like Crawford and Venkatasubramanian are starting to look for solutions.

“I’m really interested in what we do about it because I’m concerned about the kind of discrimination we’re seeing against entire groups, be they African-American, be they women, be they people who live in rural areas — you name it. And we’re seeing a form of group discrimination often occur in these kinds of systems. But there are things we can do about it,” Crawford says. “How do you have sort of internal systems that are checking for discriminatory outcomes? A lot of technology companies are looking into that. Another thing you can do is external audits.”

“Education is incredibly important. I’ve been educated myself just by looking at this,” says Venkatasubramanian. “Essentially we’re trying to formulate a mathematical way of of describing bias and describing how to be fair - how algorithms could be fair, and trying to implement that into the algorithms. So there are lots of things we can do. And I think we need a lot more study of this and there is more of a growing interest in the technical side of things and how to do this.”

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-06/are-algorithms-racist-and-can-we-fix (via kenyatta)

Initially, I thought migrant deaths were unintended consequences. But when I got deeper into the origins of the policy, I discovered that federal documents plainly stated that fatalities were going to increase because of this policy. One document I cite contains a table using migrant deaths as a metric for demonstrating the policy is working. Realizing that some government official was typing this up and recognizing these things, was when I thought: This is a machine that kills people. It isn’t collateral damage. These aren’t unintended consequences. These are direct consequences that, in the initial stages of design, people were thinking about.

Jason De León in interview with Simon Worrall at National Geographic. An Anthropologist Unravels the Mysteries of Mexican Migration Undocumented immigrants risk scorching temperatures, venomous creatures, and military surveillance to get into the U.S.

The Land of Open Graves by Jason De León

(via protoslacker)

new-aesthetic:

“A warning is being broadcast on the side of the national gallery with a laser #MillionMaskMarch” - Damian Gayle (via Tom T)

Metropolitan Police laser show, London, 5th November 2015.

ovisdraconae:

ghost-buddha:

waltdisneyconfessionsrage:

It’s so normalized, they teach it to us from birth. Some people live their entire lives never seeing an issue with the images above.

-ren

:))))))

It’s actually a pretty good highlight of how generally people don’t notice they’re being racist, since the diversity in the various characters depicted leads me to believe they thought they were including everyone.

culturenlifestyle:

Generative Artwork by Janusz Jurek

Polish designer and illustration Janusz Jurek explores the different shapes of generative illustration through the human body. Generative art is computer generated artwork based on algorithm. It can also be achieved through chemistry, biology, robotics, smart materials, manual randomization, mathematics, data mapping, symmetry, tiling, and other compounds.

In Jurek’s Papilarnie series, a bundle of electric lines resemble a 3D figure of the human form. The piece delivers high energy and stunning results, which depict the multiple layers and complexity of human biology.

The create-a-character options in games like Mass Effect, Skyrim or Destiny can be marvelous things. They have on-screen tools and visual effects options that let you control how far apart your avatar’s eyes are or the length of the bridge of a nose. I can reproduce my thick lips or wide nose sometimes. A goatee? No problem. But when it comes to head hair—specifically locks that look like what grows from my scalp—I’m generally out of luck.

The Natural: The Trouble Portraying Blackness in Video Games

prostheticknowledge:

Eternal Portraits

Art project by Brian House are framed pieces of Facebook Facial Recognition data of users (thus, a portrait of users characteristics):

Facebook uses face recognition software to identify its users in photos. This works via a ‘template’ of your facial features that is created from your profile images. These features — the distance between your eyes, the symmetry of your mouth — generally do not change over time. Unlike a photograph, which captures some ephemeral expression of who you are at a particular moment, a face recognition template forever remains your portrait. It is all possible photos, taken and untaken, by which you, or someone else, might document your life.

These templates are Facebook’s proprietary data. For a brief period in 2013, users could access their template using the “Download a copy of your Facebook data” option in the settings (it is no longer included in the download). The information is unusable in its raw form without knowing the specifics of Facebook’s algorithm. But as an irrevocable corporate byproduct, the future implications of such data remain unclear.

Eternal Portraits is a series of printed and framed face recognition template data from our friends and ourselves.

More at Brian’s website here

i tried to share a hilarious pun with my kids but they had turned on dadblock plus

— Fall Gourd (@ftrain) October 3, 2015

Onondaga Nation members felt disrespected during Pope Francis visit in NYC

thisiswhiteprivilege:

turtleislandmohawk:

Onondaga Nation Tadodaho Sid Hill speaks on the banks of the Hudson River, holding the Two Row Wampum, wearing his Gustoweh in this 2013 file photo. (Mike Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com, 2013)

NEW YORK CITY – Onondaga Nation Tadodaho Sid Hill, the spiritual leader of the Haudenosaunee, and other members of the Onondaga Nation were in New York City this morning for a multi-religious service with Pope Francis at the September 11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero.

When Hill entered the site of the service he was forced by security to remove his Gustoweh, a sacred Haudenosaunee feathered hat or headdress, said Betty Lyons, a member of the Snipe Clan of the Onondaga Nation.

“He was forced to remove his Gustoweh because they said it could be used as a weapon,” Lyons said.

Lyons said they tried to explain to security that it was a sacred item, but Hill was forced to leave it with security along with his ceremonial tobacco and package for Pope Francis that contained a wampum.

During the service, Hill was not allowed to sit on stage with other religious leaders.

“It felt more than disrespectful,” Lyons said. “We assumed when we were invited that we would be treated as equals. That we would be treated with the same respect as other religious leaders.”

Lyons said when the service was over, Hill went back to security to claim his items and they were left unattended on a table.

“We were lucky they were still there,” Lyons said. “It was upsetting to see them left there like that.”

Lyons, who is also the president of the American Indian Law Alliance, said the Onondaga Nation leaders went to New York City with the assumption that they would be able to address Pope Francis.

The group, which also included Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, went to New York City with the goal to ask Pope Francis to rescind and renounce the Doctrine of Discovery.

Betty Lyons described the doctrine in a recent editorial in the New York Daily News:

“That doctrine derives from a series of 15th century papal bulls issued as Europeans began their campaigns of conquest and colonization, first in Africa and later, after Christopher Columbus’ voyages, in the Americas. It declared that any European powers that ‘discovered’ lands unoccupied by Christians could consider them empty, and seize the land of the ‘barbarous nations’ in the name of their sovereign,” Betty Lyons wrote.

“The doctrine remains the basis of Indian land law in the United States to this day. So, despite protestations from the papal nuncio at the United Nations that it is ancient history, it remains a living pathogen infecting indigenous peoples’ rights of self-determination and justice,” she added.

Betty Lyons said she was prepared to start the conversation with Pope Francis during his visit, but the group from the Onondaga Nation was never given the chance.

“It felt, again, like we didn’t exist,” Lyons said.

Lyons said the group is disappointed, but not discouraged. They are currently headed back to the Onondaga Nation for the remainder of the World Indoor Lacrosse Championship.

yikes

There’s no escape. Even if I close my Facebook account, and I wipe my laptop every month to make sure no one is tracking me, I still have my credit card, and my smartphone records my whereabouts. I think we have to accept that we are living in a world where much more is known about us than previously.

Facebook ‘Likes’ Mean a Computer Knows You Better Than Your Mother - Digits - WSJ

How is it that two mentally ill Black men targeting police officers constitutes a pattern, but the killing of Walter Scott, the killing of Samuel Dubose, and the killing of Jonathan Ferrell, all by police while they were clearly unarmed and committing no crimes, add up to a collection of unrelated, isolated incidents?

Brittney Cooper: Black America’s “gaslight” nightmare: The psychological warfare being waged against Black Lives Matter - Salon.com

Anti-Racist Rednecks with Guns: An Interview With Dave Strano I The Hampton Institute

sonofbaldwin:

“We’re very upfront about our position of being not only opposed to white supremacy, but to the shared culture of whiteness being one that has only been defined by being an oppressor race. What unites white skinned people currently is a shared history of being the footsoldiers of oppression. We want to ensure that as many whites as possible reject this commonly understood idea of whiteness and instead join in a common struggle with workers of all skin colors in a struggle for total and real liberation.

---

We feel like it’s important to understand our backgrounds and roots, to understand where we come from and organize within those communities. It has been stated over and over again from our comrades and allies within black and brown liberation struggles that only whites can help organize within white communities. We wish to step up and start to build a white, anti-racist working class element of the broader working class movements active in the U.S.***

*** The call ourselves rednecks then, to celebrate the history of treason to whiteness and allegiance to the working class that this term once embodied.”***

Pretend it was a coincidence we had to watch black officers to re-raise the Confederate Flag after a Black American woman bravely, but illegally removed it. Later, white officers took it down and treated it like it was some heavenly artifact during a religious ceremony. Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.

The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy — Medium

Polite White Supremacy is the notion that whites should remain the ruling class while denying that they are the ruling class, politely. Affectionately, it’s called #PWS for short. It has been referred to as the Casual American Caste System, Delicate Apartheid, Gentle Oppression, or what I like to call it after a few drinks: Chad Crow, the super chill grandson of Jim Crow.

Yawo Brow at Medium. What is Polite White Supremacy?

TheMagicalNegro.net  Practical Methods for Identifying & Dismantling Polite White Supremacy - #PWS -

(via protoslacker)

mizoguchi:

Soleil O/Oh Sun (Med Hondo - 1967)

The first problem, as any transplant to the Bay Area knows, was housing. Kurnia rapidly booked a stop-gap Airbnb. The place was far from ideal: a dorm-like flophouse outside Mountain View, whose rooms of clustered bunkbeds were mostly filled by young would-be entrepreneurs. The place was miles from Y Combinator, a tough walk with Adam in tow (Uber was out of the question, financially).

Kurnia scoured Airbnb and Craigslist for something better, but at the rare places she could afford, she was rejected by people who didn’t want to live with a mother and her two-year-old. The flophouse, then, it would be: Kurnia and Adam wound up sharing a single bunk for the full three months of YC, with as many as 15 other roommates at once.

Sometimes, when Kurnia became absorbed in her work, the naturally curious Adam might wander over to another resident to ask what he (the residents were mostly male) was doing on his computer. Some found this cute; most didn’t. Finally, someone complained to the landlord, who threatened to throw Kurnia and Adam out unless she agreed to clean the bathrooms. Scrubbing toilets for 15 people seemed too time-consuming, so Kurnia negotiated: she would pay a higher rent, take out the trash, and keep closer watch over Adam. The landlord granted a reprieve.

The Toddler At Y Combinator (via iamdanw)

When I see the Confederate flag I see the attempt to raise an empire in slavery. It really, really is that simple. I don’t understand how anybody with any sort of education on the Civil War can see anything else.

Ta-Nehisi Coates On Police Brutality, The Confederate Flag And Forgiveness : NPR

npr:

Around the world, about 1.4 billion people use Facebook to keep up with news and information about friends and family – but that diversity isn’t reflected in the people that work there. According to Facebook’s own figures, nearly 70 percent of the company’s workers are men and more than 90 percent are white or Asian.

How do we know that? One big reason is Tracy Chou. She is an engineer at the wildly popular visual bookmarking site Pinterest and she is one of the people who pushed Silicon Valley’s tech leaders to release previously closely-held demographic data.

Chou is one of the people NPR decided to feature on our #RaceOnTech series. All this week, NPR’s All Tech Considered is connecting with diverse innovators in technology and science on air and through real-time storytelling on Twitter. We’ll be featuring a few of these finalists here on Tumblr ahead of a four-day-long Twitter conversation with 12 of the innovators. Follow #RaceOnTech to be a part of the conversation.

NPR: Share your personal journey to engineering.

Tracy Chou: I grew up in Silicon Valley, the daughter of two software engineers, so I was exposed to engineering early—but I took a bit of a meandering path to my own career in software engineering. Engineering was a natural choice for me in college since I’ve always been inclined towards math and science in school, but I was intimidated by my early computer science courses and decided against majoring in it. I thought I might pursue something more business-oriented instead. More on a challenge from a close friend than anything else, I eventually got a master’s degree in computer science. Even after that I still wasn’t sure if software engineering was the path for me, but with deferred Ph.D. admission in my back pocket, I joined a four-person startup to try it out. Though I’d been living in Silicon Valley all along, it wasn’t until then that I discovered I loved both the frenetic startup environment and the excitement of building software, exactly those things that Silicon Valley is known for. I’ve been doing software engineering ever since.

What impact do you hope to have on the tech industry?

I kickstarted the recent tech company diversity data disclosures when I set up an online repository to crowdsource numbers on women in engineering; the effect of that industry-wide data transparency was to catapult the conversation around tech diversity into prominence nationally and urgency locally. Even President Obama has seen Google’s numbers, for example, and pressed the White House to do something to address the lack of diversity in tech. Meanwhile, tech companies themselves are scrambling to move the numbers now that the spotlight has caught them in such an unflattering way. Beyond the advocacy and activism and what I do, the mere fact of what I am—a software engineer, successful at my job, and female—has been surprisingly significant. It turns out that the industry doesn’t have a lot of role models of women in engineering, and so as much as I can, I try to be present in the community; both for the girls and women considering or already in the field, and for the men to understand that women can be engineers too.

What’s missing in the diversity-in-tech conversation?

Companies need to start setting diversity goals, ambitious ones; ambitious enough that they’re forced to explore radically different tactics and strategies to improve diversity. It’s not that companies haven’t had people working on these issues in the past, but diversity efforts have largely been ghettoized within HR and segregated minority groups, which lack the leverage to effect structural change. The dismal numbers today show that existing initiatives are ineffective. Diversity needs to be everyone’s responsibility. In an industry whose whole raison d’être is innovation and solving hard problems to build the future, companies will find ways to achieve diversity goals, if only they are willing to set them and commit to them. It will take creativity and conviction and a willingness to toss out established processes and experiment with new ones, some of which will work and some of which won’t, but it’s time to get started.

Chou will also be tweeting from @triketora on Monday, July 13th as part of the #RaceOnTech conversation on Twitter.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Pinterest

prokopetz:

silkktheshocka:

texasuberalles:

freyjapup:

Its been NINE YEARS and i still dont think anyone knows exactly why teen titans was cancelled

Same reason Young Justice and Green Lantern The Animated Series were canceled: Girls liked it. Bruce Timm finally up an’ said it out loud in an interview a while back when he was asked why in the hell GL:TAS had been canceled when it was doing so well on every front; DC’s animation department has institutionally decided that feee-males don’t/can’t/shouldn’t like superheroes, so even if a show is drawing in great viewership numbers and has great toy sales, once they find out that it’s popular with women and girls, they pull the plug on it. Cartoon Network loved Teen Titans— two million viewers for new episodes will do that— and wanted a Season Six, and the production staff was already in the planning stages for it; they were going to have a big arc about Terra and why she was Living Normal, and do a lot more with the extended Titans team members.

This is so fucked up.

To elaborate on this point a bit, the reason this happens is that modern television merchandising aims for total market segregation.

In a nutshell, it’s much more efficient to sell things to people if you can divide them up into tightly defined subcategories that have no interests in common; that way, you never risk accidentally competing with yourself.

This is why children’s toys (and toy sales channels) are actually much more strongly gendered these days than they were forty, thirty, even twenty years ago: one of the basic market segregation splits they’ve decided to use is “boys versus girls”.

Ever wonder why you see Avengers t-shirts that leave Black Widow out of the group shot, or Guardians of the Galaxy action figure lines with no Gamora? That’s market segregation in action.

The upshot is that shows with crossover appeal can actually be cancelled for being too popular with girls; they’re viewed as “stealing” the female market from the specifically girl-targeted media that rightfully “owns” it.

This is the sort of thing folks are talking about when they say gender roles are socially constructed, by the way. The gender split in media merchandising? It’s not just artificial, it’s deliberately imposed as a top-down marketing strategy. When folks try to justify it by saying “this is the ways it’s always been” or “this is just what the market wants”, they’re lying through their teeth - this is, in fact, the merchandisers dictating to the market what it wants in order to sell stuff more efficiently.

(Interestingly, the reverse isn’t always true: if a specifically girl-targeted show unexpectedly becomes popular with boys, sometimes rather than being cancelled, its merchandising will shift to court the male collector’s market. TV execs are so sexist, even their sexism is sexist.)

In particular, 1865 was a moment when reparations and land reform were actually feasible. Late in the war, some of Lincoln’s generals — notably Sherman — had mitigated their slave-refugee problem by letting emancipated slaves farm small plots on the plantations that had been abandoned by their Confederate owners. Sick or injured animals unable to advance with the Army were left behind for the slaves to nurse back to health and use. (Hence “forty acres and a mule”.) Sherman’s example might have become a land-reform model for the entire Confederacy, dispossessing the slave-owning aristocrats in favor of the people whose unpaid labor had created their wealth.

Instead, President Johnson (himself a former slave-owner from Tennessee) was quick to pardon the aristocrats and restore their lands. [3] That created a dynamic that has been with us ever since: Early in Reconstruction, white and black working people sometimes made common cause against their common enemies in the aristocracy. But once it became clear that the upper classes were going to keep their ill-gotten holdings, freedmen and working-class whites were left to wrestle over the remaining slivers of the pie. Before long, whites who owned little land and had never owned slaves had become the shock troops of the planters’ bid to restore white supremacy.

Along the way, the planters created rhetoric you still hear today: The blacks were lazy and would rather wait for gifts from the government than work (in conditions very similar to slavery). In this way, the idle planters were able to paint the freedmen as parasites who wanted to live off the hard work of others.

Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party | The Weekly Sift

I grew up in the south, in a rural community where slave-holding plantations were the center of the economy for most of the 19th century, and reading this was like puzzle pieces snapping (loudly) into place. This so accurately describes the community and mentality even now.

And it reinforces what I’ve always believed and told others: for many in the south, the Civil War never ended. If you want to see how little time changes anything, go live in one of these small, Southern communities. 150 years ago is a blink. It’s nothing. And it doesn’t change nearly as much as you would think or hope, cell phones and flush toilets notwithstanding.

(via rhpolitics)

south carolina at war

harlembookshelf:

And just Because we have a right, my grandfather tells us–

we are sitting at his feet and the story tonight is

why people are marching all over the South–

to walk and sit and dream wherever we want.

First they brought us here.

Then we worked for free. Then it was 1863,

and we were…

breenewsome:

Hundreds of protesters in #McKinney, TX neighborhood, site of police brutality incident at pool party #BlackLivesMatter

theothergermantown:

Dear White People: The Photos.

Photographed June 8, 2015 in Philadelphia, PA.

It’s amazing how an idea can blossom into action.  Today was one of those days, where, I needed to channel my anger and frustration about went down in McKinney, Texas into something productive. Turns out, today ended up being a fascinating social experiment that confirmed what I didn’t want to acknowledge, but already knew.

This morning, I was sitting at my desk, furious about the video I had seen on YouTube, and I yelled down to my friend YahNe Ndgo.  She ran upstairs, thinking I had seen an animal (haha).  Anytime either of us has a good idea, the other will give it a go, just to see it to its logical conclusion.  Well, this was a good idea that gave us both the opportunity to be creative, while working out and working through some very complex emotions about what we saw in the video.

When we finished hanging the banners, I sat back and watched.  Some people on foot or either in their cars stopped to look, react, talk, sign, and to be photographed.   Others, on foot, or in their cars, just kept it moving. All of it was a moving experience for me, because it confirmed for me how powerful words are, and how they can bring us together or divide us in an instant.

I sat on the porch all afternoon, in the hot, heavy and hazy sunlight, chatting with old people, young people, black people, white people, men, women, children.  We talked about power, black on black crime, how seeing so much violence leaves us numb and unable to feel sometimes.  One young lady, in particular, was so angered by the police that she admitted that her feelings were on the verge of turning into pure hatred.  She despited how she, an educated black woman, could be so easily disrespected by the very people that swear to serve and protect her.

White people (and some black people, too, like the older gentleman who stated calmly that “police brutality is part of American’s past,” to which I replied, “that doesn’t mean it has to be part of our future.”) need to understand that feelings are raw and volatile and running red hot like an iron poker, emerging from fire, unshaped and unformed and completely unpredictable

As I stated in the FB post I wrote today, time is running out.  What are we going to do?  We can’t continue to wait and allow incidences of police brutality to run rampant in our communities.  We can’t continue to turn a blind eye, thinking that it can’t ever happen in our own communities because we live in a gated subdivision or whatever.

Time is running out.

asylum-art:

Famous paintings views closely

Zoom on famous paintings, parts of tables in close-up.

Via: wikilinks

ithinkshetookmysoul:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

breenewsome:

THIS. 👏 via @dreamhampton #BlackLivesMatter #BlackSpring #FreddieGray #Baltimore #BaltimoreUprising #Ferguson #WalterScott #RekiaBoyd #AiyanaJones #EricGarner #MikeBrown #TamirRice #NatashaMcKenna #AkaiGurley #JonathanFerrell #JohnCrawford #FloydDent #JesusHuerta #IsraelHernandez #Every28Hours

revolutionarykoolaid:

***No Justice, No Peace (5/3/15): ***The police cracked down on late night protesters, imposing a curfew that only seemed to be in place in black communities across Baltimore. With dozens arrested, even more pepper-sprayed, the mayor buckled to the pressure and finally ended the curfew, effective immediately. #staywoke #farfromover

everythingistemporaryanyway:

babylonian:

before today, i hadn’t heard of “rough rides,” and there’s a good chance you haven’t either. basically, a “rough ride” is a horrifying process in which ‘a handcuffed man or woman is put into the back of a police van or paddy wagon, without being buckled in or secured. The vehicle then drives recklessly, making sharp, dangerous turns and sudden movements in ways that throw the passenger violently around the vehicle.’

as of today, we now know that this is exactly what happened to Freddie Gray before he died. 

here’s the evidence: rather than take Freddie Gray the short 2 minute drive from the arrest site to the police station (see left), he was deliberately driven recklessly for over 40 minutes (see right) around Baltimore, handcuffed and in the back of a police van, with no seatbelt, until his spine broke.

the terrifying thing is that this seems to happen a lot. earlier today, two more people came forward to testify that they were put through rough rides at the hands of the Baltimore PD. a 43-year-old man was charged with ‘public urination’ and given a rough ride that resulted in a spine fracture that rendered him quadriplegic for the rest of his life. five years ago, a former Baltimore police officer admitted that rough rides are an “unsanctioned technique” in which police vans are driven to cause “injury or pain” to unbuckled, handcuffed detainees. rough rides are very much a Real Thing.

in case it needs repeating: Baltimore police deliberately drove recklessly with a cuffed, injured Freddie Gray in the back of a van with no belt – a 40 minute ride for a destination 2 minutes away. his spine was severed, and it killed him.

When I was arrested during the RNC in 2000, this also happened to me though I was cuffed at both my wrists and my ankles. It’s more common than you think…

welcome-to-the-creep-show:

funkybug:

theslayprint:

ricki-minaj:

“I feared for my life…”
1st video
2nd video

IS HE OKAY???????

He left on a stretcher, no word if he’s still going to be arrested or not.

if this isnt the most obvious example of white privilege and whats going on in baltimore right now then i dont know what is

THE SMILE ON THAT COPS FACE PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF HES HAVING FUN HURTING THIS MAN… That’s disgusting I’m going to throw up. I really hope this guy is ok.

micdotcom:

Watch: This brilliant protester completely shut down Geraldo Rivera by explaining the real Baltimore

krxs10:

IMMIGRATION OFFICER FATALLY SHOOTS UNARMED 19 YR OLD BLACK MAN 10 TIMES DURING BALTIMORE RIOTS.An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed 20-year-old Terrence Kellum, Monday afternoon on Detroit’s northwest side.

Police say the agent — part of a fugitive task force involving ICE and officers with the Detroit Police Department — was attempting to serve an armed robbery warrant at a home in the 9500 block of Evergreen near W. Chicago when the shooting occurred.

“I am told there was no forced entry into the residence, that they were allowed inside,” said Detroit Police Chief James Craig. “And I’m also told that the agent may have been faced with a threat, and it was at that point when he decided to use deadly force.” Craig would not talk more specifically about that alleged threat.

One of the eyewitnesses, a woman, shouted at the chief as she described what she claims happened. “It was 10 bullets…and did it take 10 bullets? When he came out, they didn’t have the handcuffs on him!” she said. “They shot him! He was not able to run to do nothin’. Y’all didn’t give him a chance!”

An Investigation has been promised but we all know how that goes….

Source / Source

#STAYWOKE

medievalpoc:

1800s Week!

Oswald Achenbach

Im Park der Villa Borghese

Germany (1886)

Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

photo via supernaut.info

The problem of restoring police authority is not really a problem of police authority, but a problem of democratic authority. It is what happens when you decide to solve all your problems with a hammer.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic. The Myth of Police Reform The real problem is the belief that all our social problems can be solved with force. (via protoslacker)

Q: Are you white

medievalpoc:

Let’s pretend for a second that this “question” doesn’t come off as vaguely hostile, that I didn’t have to make several police reports last year about people stalking me in person to “see if I looked white”, and that I haven’t received harassment or death threats based entirely on what people assume is my racial identity, as well my actual racial identity. Let’s also pretend that what I look like is some kind of secret, that I haven’t posted about my racial identity openly on this blog and associated media, that I haven’t spoken at events in person as MedievalPoC, and that hundreds of people who’ve read this blog haven’t also witnessed my physical manifestation in the flesh, demonstrating that I am neither a ghost, nor a sophisticated Turing machine barfing out posts into the great void of the internets.

The thing about genocide, both cultural and physical, is that it erases human histories. I’m mostly Native American, I have non-white European ancestry, and I’m something like ¼ white. And since we’re getting personal, I’ll let you in on something: I can never really know my history for sure, not in the way that many other people are able to. That disconnect is a source of constant grief and loss to me, every day that I am alive.

People of Color in the United States have been systematically disenfranchised for centuries. We are told explicitly and implicitly that we don’t have histories, and/or that they aren’t important. We are shown in many ways, through many vehicles, that even now we don’t exist. And in turn, this deliberate destruction of history and identity is used to delegitimize us as human beings.

And if you can’t parse that sentence, let me put it another way: the first time I was asked the question, “What are you?” I was in kindergarten, and the only answer I had then was “I don’t know.”

The great thing about Medievalpoc is that my personal ideologies can be utterly ignored or removed from the content here, since it mostly consists of images, research, and text sources. I do my best to summarize or explain it in order to be accessible to anyone, not just academics. It is meant to be disseminated as widely as possible, adapted for use in classrooms, read for fun, or shared with friends and family. Additionally, I try to show others how they can do their own research, and make better creative choices.

Removing a person’s history and context drastically affects the formation of their sense of self, their sense of identity. It is an injury to their humanity. Connecting other people to this information is, for me, like replacing something that has been stolen or kept away from someone who is entitled to it. For multiple reasons, I most likely will never be able to reconnect with my own history in that way, but trying to help others feel empowered to seize their own does a little bit towards ameliorating that hurt.

These ideas aren’t new, and they aren’t particularly unique.

My father’s father was Filipino-Chinese… My father’s mother was African American-Native American… My mother’s father was German-Danish… My mother’s mother was German… I was born in Brooklyn, New York, but I grew up in Japan…

For once it’s not just black and white. In this compelling chronicle of his journey through life as a multicultural and multiethnic American, Teja Arboleda uniquely and personally challenges institutionalized notions of race, culture, ethnicity, and class. Now, in this book, he fleshes out the depth of his experience as a culturally and racially mixed American, illustrating throughout the enigma of cultural and racial identity and the American identity crisis.

-From the description for Teja Arboleda’s In the Shadow of Race: Growing Up as a Multiethnic, Multicultural, and “Multiracial” American (1998).

I am perfectly capable of seeing that the general idea behind this kind of personal attack is to delegitimize the content here by implying that I have lied at some point about who I am, and therefore am untrustworthy and must surely be capable of all manner of nefarious deeds.

And here’s the thing. None of that holds any water whatsoever. In the end, it’s irrelevant to what this whole project is about. People will quite literally make up anything, say anything, repeat rumors and generally foment drama for its own sake. Or as a scaremongering tactic, a silencing tactic, and an attempt to derail discussions. Or just because they feel entitled to increasingly invasive personal information about me.

They’re not, and you’re not. So then, you might wonder, why did I bother to write this? Simply because while I know all of this is out there, you in particular decided that you just couldn’t allow me to continue ignoring the frankly ridiculous wastes of time time I could indulge in if I were to seek them out. You ignored my repeated requests to respect that, came into my inbox and tried to make THEIR problem into MY problem. Also, sending someone a message like this is rude.

And incidentally, I saw a teaching moment.

Holy shit.

sourcedumal:

vibraniumbabe:

When you love musicals but you still gangsta af.

definedmelanin

poetsw-thickhairthickthighs

shedont-lye

Too trill musicals

Human screentime of Disney PoC characters in 3 of the last 6 PoC-lead WDAS films

cleophatracominatya:

krxs10:

UNARMED BLACK MAN FATALLY SHOT BY VOLUNTEER COP

Eric Harris, who was unarmed, died an hour later after what Tulsa, Oklahoma police officials called a “mistake.” According to several news sources, On April 2nd, the victim had reportedly tried to sell a gun to undercover cops and fled on foot as they attempted to arrest him. A video camera captured him, wearing dark shorts and a t-shirt, running up a sidewalk. Harris was quickly caught and subdued. That’s when a 73-year-old volunteer patrolman, Robert Bates, “allegedly” reached for his Taser, but grabbed “accidentally” grabbed his gun instead. According to Tulsa World, Bates, who has donated thousands of dollars worth of items to the Sheriff’s Office since becoming a reserve deputy in 2008, is a Tulsa insurance company executive. He was working undercover as a member of the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office Violent Crimes Task Force. The World reported that “Bates is classified as an ‘advanced reserve,’ which means he ‘can do anything a full-time deputy can do.’” 

Rather than immediately render aid, the officers held Harris down by his neck as a deputy screamed, “Fuck You! You shouldn’t have f*cking ran!”

As Eric Harris lay mortally wounded, face down on the pavement, he begged for his life. “He shot me!” Harris shouted. “He shot me, man. Oh, my god. I’m losing my breath.” 

“F*ck your breath!” the officer yelled.

Capt. Billy McKelvey said the officers were not aware the suspect had been shot, despite the unmistakable sound of the gunshot noise. Bates “made an inadvertent mistake,” he said.

The New York Daily News reported that no further investigation is planned, unless requested by the sheriff’s office.

Source/ Source / Video

#StayWoke

BUT CAN WE GET INTO THE FACT THAT THIS PIECE OF SHIT WAS A FUCKING VOLUNTEER COP! Wow…just wow. Another George Zimmerman.

Police officers routinely act with excessive force and callous disregard toward Black people. But Black people’s witness of racial atrocity is never believed on its own merits. Instead, white people need to be able to pull up a chair and watch the lynchings take place over and over again, to DVR them, fast forward and rewind through them, to smother Black pain and outrage and fear in an avalanche of cold, “rational” analysis. Meanwhile, minds rarely change.

Black death has become a cultural spectacle: Why the Walter Scott tragedy won’t change White America’s mind - Salon.com

Q: hellooo, i saw your post where you said “historical accuracy = no creator accountability” and it was smthg you said you always referred to–can you please expand or point me to your other posts? i’d like to understand more about this! thanks :D

medievalpoc:

So, say someone makes a show set in Victorian London. There are no characters of color on the show.

Someone watches the show and says, “Hey, why is everyone on this show white?”

The creators of the show, rather than accepting responsibility for 1. choosing the setting of the show in the first place or 2. their own casting choices, say, “Hey! That’s just historically accurate, there WERE no PoC ‘back then’!!” 

Basically, it’s about trying to pass the buck onto “history” for creative choices they made. Like: “OH, I didn’t WANT to exclude anyone, but I HAVE to be loyal and accurate to the true history!”

And everyone just accepts that as if it’s true, and as if that is a good reason to make a show that consists entirely of white people. 

This is about dodging accountability in that they chose a setting they assumed would have only white people in it, and then made that true. And that has happened so many times that the myth just keeps perpetuating itself. Rather than consulting actual history or demographics, they base this idea on TV shows, books and movies that have already recreated some version of “Victorian London” that contains nothing but white citizens (in much the same way the citizens of supposed “New York City” in countless sitcoms are inexplicably white); media from ten years ago, 20 years, 50 years, and so on.

That establishes the context. Now, the facts.

London is one of the most diverse cities on Earth, and it didn’t get that way in the last ten minutes.

Black London: Life Before Emancipation by Gretchen Gerzina (1995)

A glimpse into the lives of the thousands of Africans living in eighteenth century London. 

The UCL Equiano Centre has an Interactive Map with information about various Black Londoners 1800-1900.

Photograph of John Archer, Mayor of Battersea, South London. England, 1913

When he was elected Mayor of Battersea, John replied to press speculation about where he might have come from with the remark that he had been born - “in a little obscure village in England probably never heard of until now - the city of Liverpool”. He went on to declare - “I am a Lancastrian bred and born”.

Characteristically pugnacious, but he had been stung by reports which, guessing wildly, said that he had been born in Rangoon or somewhere in India. He was actually part of the already well-established black population in Liverpool.

[more about Peter Jackson]

Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta, goddaughter to Queen Victoria herself.

London is and was a vastly multicultural and diverse city. Even before the 1800s and photography, surviving artworks depict a massively diverse populace:

[The Royal Sport, Pit Ticket]

Here’s a link to the British Library’s resources on people of Asian descent living in Britain. The history of the Chinese community in London goes back for centuries. 

You also have:

Sailors of South Asian origin (known as Lascars) based out of London, for the most part:

• http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/117212.html
• http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/148377.html
• http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/552967.html

I could keep going.

But the point I’m making here is that claiming your whitewashed media is somehow “historically accurate” is total bunk.

If someone creates something that has nothing but white characters, it is that way because they CHOSE to make it that way. There is every opportunity and every reason to create media with characters of color in it, and trying to blame history for whitewashing is about dodging accountability.

http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/115773779823/timemachineyeah-this-is-a-jar-full-of-major

timemachineyeah:

This is a jar full of major characters

Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.

We’re sharing these raisins…

savedbythe-bellhooks:

SIDESHOW: Sometimes there are other ideas that I think would be awesome. So think of these as guest blog entries from other sections of my brain.

This is from a Tumblr that doesn’t exist called RuPaul Rand Paul. All captions are quotes from drag performer RuPaul, and all pictures are of presidential hopeful Republican senator of Kentucky, Rand Paul.

breenewsome:

So we’re clear, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” has NEVER only been about #Mike Brown or #Ferguson, it’s about the entire power dynamic represented in this photo that exists throughout America, that has existed since its founding. #blacklivesmatter #peopleovermoney

kenyatta:

kateoplis:

CLUELESS in California

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

kateoplis:

ISIS Takes Over Tataouine, the Star Wars town in Tunisia | Guardian

breenewsome:

Basically #sae #ferguson #BlackLivesMatter

When your kids are watching a video in the PlayKids app on their iPad or iPhone and you want them to take a break, just use your Apple Watch to stop the video. You can also send your kids a special message with a cartoon character telling them it’s time for bed. Time to eat. Or time to brush their teeth.

I text my kids all the time but this is frankly horrific.

Apple Watch - App Store Apps

medievalpoc:

Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf: Flügelaltar, Oberrhein, vollendet 1516

via Frances d’Ath | supernaut.info

kenyatta:

rawr-is-awesome:

jimfear138:

deadjosey:

congenitalprogramming:

tumboy:

WHAT IS THIS SORCERY 

Have none of you …ever LOOKED at the world around you? Tumblr increasingly worries me in this regard. You all have warm lightbulbs in your house. You’ve all technically seen the change in color of an item close to versus far from a light source. Please… stop scaring me. You guys are reacting to this like medieval peasants being shown a flipbook…

BURN THE SORCERER  >:U

WHAT THE HELL?!?!

While most of the internet was having a fit, every person who’s ever taken a television production, theatrical lighting, or graphic design class was should have been having a laugh.

As participants adjust to the prevailing conditions of anonymity and to the potentially disconcerting experience of being reduced to a detached voice floating in an amorphous electronic void, they become adept as well at reconstituting the faceless words around them into bodies, histories, lives […] and the boundaries distinguishing “real” from “virtual” begin to fade.

David Porter, Internet Culture (1997)

25 Things That Co-Exist with White Supremacy

“a non-exhaustive list of things that co-exist with [socially defined] whites’ collective political, social and/or economic dominance in countries with histories of white supremacy, anti-blackness and racialized terror against people socially defined as non-white”

A mummy found in a Buddhist statue

Police officers in one major U.S. city are fighting back against Waze, a popular mobile app that reveals their locations to motorists.

Hundreds of officers in the Miami area have downloaded the app, which lets users provide real-time traffic information and identify areas where police are conducting speed enforcement. The local NBC affiliate says the officers are flooding Waze with false information on their activity in an attempt to make the app’s information less useful to drivers.

Disclosing the location of police officers “puts us at risk, puts the public at risk, because it’s going to cause more deadly encounters between law enforcement and suspects,” Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, tells the news outlet.

The National Sheriffs’ Association first raised concerns about the Waze app, which is used by millions of motorists. Not all police officers agree that it poses a threat, however. If a criminal wants to hurt an officer, they say, they don’t need an app to find a target. And high-visibility enforcement may ultimately reduce crime.

Police officers circumvent Waze by providing misinformation (via kenyatta)

medievalpoc:

Ancient Art Week!

Mask of a Black Man

Greece (c. 350 B.C.E.)

Terra Cotta, 22.5 cm.

British Museum, London

An intriguing artifact from the classical period of ancient Greece attests to the engagement of the black presence with the origins of Western drama. The stage served as a crucial locus for the expression of Greek culture and mores. It also affords unique insight into interrelated issues of class, race and empowerment.
There was a clear place on the Greek stage for black people in the presentation of both tragic and comic themes. How that role was played out speaks to the larger experience of blacks in ancient life and the ancient world.
The object seen here is a life-size replica of an actor’s mask from the Greek stage. Made of reddish terra-cotta pressed into a mold, the head was then brushed with a thin layer of slip, or liquid clay, to simulate a dark complexion. Though its precise origin is unknown, the mask likely originates from the island of Sicily.

Read More at TheRoot.com

Republican ideology is latently about hierarchy. Older white wealthy Protestant males were at the top of the hierarchy, followed by younger white wealthy Protestant males and then by white wealthy Protestant females. More recently wealthy Jews and Mormons have been granted honorary “Protestant” status in the party, just as the Apartheid Afrikaners decided to proclaim Japanese as “white” for business purposes. For an African-American to be president deeply violates this unstated hierarchy, which is why they treat President Obama with such lack of respect; disrespecting someone in public in primate societies is a way of putting them in their place and restoring power hierarchies. Keeping African-Americans and poor Latinos from voting is not only a partisan strategy (they don’t vote Republican on the whole) but it also underlines the hierarchy, which assumes whiteness and property as connoting ‘real’ Americans. Famously, some of the white working class is attached to the Republican elite because they are told that thereby they become better than workers of the lower (as they think of it when not in public) races.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment. Netanyahu & Boehner: How Israel went from being a Democratic to a Republican Project (via protoslacker)

sirenknights:

ugly sobbing WHY, DICE?!?!!?! WHY?!?!!?!!!

It was around 7:50 that Jeff Roorda, who’d been spotted in the crowd along with several other police officers wearing suits and “I AM DARREN WILSON” bracelets, decided he’d had enough of those in the audience heckling a police officer who had taken the microphone. He stood up and yelled at the Committee Chairperson, to take control of the meeting by saying, “C’mon, Mr. Chairman, how about some order here, huh?” Kennedy waited for the crowd response to die down and then responded by saying, “Excuse me, first of all, you do not tell me my function.” Roorda pushed his way towards the front of the room and pushed a young black woman, Cachet Currie (@scstge), out of the way and then scratched her across the forehead.

Arrest Jeff Roorda for assault.

Police Union Head Hijacks Meeting Discussing St. Louis Civilian Review Board, Assaults Young Black Woman (with images, tweets) · seanjjordan · Storify

grupaok:

Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Signs, 1975: “INSTITUTIONS ENJOY CRITICISM AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T THREATEN THEIR BASIC STRUCTURE”

breenewsome:

For those still clinging to the idea of respectability politics for some reason, NY Times best-selling author Charles Blow’s son was stopped at gunpoint by cops while walking home from the library at Yale, where he’s a 3rd year biology major. 😐 So yeah. #BlackLivesMatter #ICantBreathe

It is precisely that intersection, that double jeopardy, of blackness and womanhood that gives so many black women the exceptional ability to artfully render black life, to see it in all its fullness, to move beyond the perspectival limits of whiteness and maleness. That same intersection often becomes a liability in the quest for institutional recognition of black female genius.

Maureen Dowd’s clueless white gaze: What’s really behind the “Selma” backlash - Salon.com

fergusonresponse:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE STICKER IMAGE

Protesters have been sticking this image on items in Walmarts - to protest the killing of John Crawford.

kateohhtay:

It’s become too easy to distance yourself from what’s going on right in front of you.

There’s no way he could have carried out any kind of terrorist plot — no way,” John said, adding later that “I think Chris was coerced into a lot of this.

FBI Arrests Ohio Man Over …? The FBI’s job is basically to create islamist terrorists and then arrest them at this point huh? Oh and induce autistic adults to commit victimless crimes by pretending to be their friend.

A penitent called “Morion” checks his mobile phone in Mogpog town on Marinduque island in central Philippines on April 14, 2014. Erik De Castro/Reuters

breenewsome:

See… We have to constantly question & challenge the entire narrative/dialogue put forth by corporate-owned media. How do we define “world” when we say “the world is in danger”? For blacks, #NAACPBombing represents a “dangerous world.” Clearly the dominant media disagreed. Likewise, terrorist group Boko Haram slaughtered hundreds in Nigeria this week. That received little coverage & is not part of this “world is in danger” dialogue that’s happening on the news. Who is part of “the world”? How do we define that? Is the world limited to the racist western imperialist establishment? That seems to be the mindset, which explains the difference in how acts of terror are reported. For example, the terror certain communities experience at the hands of police forces can not in the eyes of the state qualify as terroristic acts. In this mindset, “the world is in danger” ONLY if the threat is towards the establishment. If, instead, “the world” includes ALL people, then violence itself is the threat to the world & both the oppressive establishment & the terrorist groups are perpetrators of it.

We may not be able to attend to each outrage in every corner of the world, but we should at least pause to consider how it is that mainstream opinion so quickly decides that certain violent deaths are more meaningful, and more worthy of commemoration, than others.

Teju Cole in The New Y**orker (3 art. paywall). Unmournable Bodies

I wanted to post the final paragraph, but this short essay hangs together such that it’s best to read the whole thing.

Listen up, women are telling their story now | Rebecca Solnit

Bioregionalism takes us beyond the Enlightenment beliefs about inherent rights which are guaranteed by sovereign governments. When the people of a bioregion are making decisions about the production and management of their resources, they are creating a conscious relationship with their regional water and food supplies. In essence, they are expressing the fundamental right of resource sovereignty, a freedom that is denied in liberal democracies.

James Bernard Quilligan at Kosmos Journal. Human Watershed: The Emerging Politics of Bioregional Democracy (via protoslacker)

azspot:

Jen Sorensen (via mattbors)