28 Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors That Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn Into White Guilt, Denial or Defensiveness.
(PDF)
(PDF)
Itâs gotten so that when I ride a Citi Bike I invariably end up thinking of all the buildings with their windows shattered, gray snow falling on people trudging in rags on their way to the rat market to buy a nice rat for Thanksgiving.
I did not observe you, but my daughter was with me packing the groceries and saw it all: âEBT: Yeah, right,â you muttered, with that look of disgust that would have shattered someone feeling just a little bit of shame over needing food stamps. As we walked to the car, my daughter told me what had happened, and I sensed her resolve about having made the right decision to work for social justice as she starts her senior year in a social-work program.
Hey, guys. ESPECIALLY âguysâ⊠Watch this. It is very, VERY important that you watch this entire video. THIS is how a Man can be a Feminist. This is how WE, as Men, support the Women and Children in our society.
About halfway through, it starts talking about our obligations to not be âsilent bystandersâ to violence - and it starts with identifying and calling out emotional violence.
When I talk about embracing new Perspectives, pointing out that we are in a battle for the collective soul of our culture, and that every small gesture and change can make a tremendous, unanticipated difference⊠THIS video demonstrates Perfectly what is possible. So please take up the fight against Indifference.
Am I still going to get bookings? Is the promoter still going to book me if I say, âYeah, occasionally I have fellatio with a transsexual?â
There is no way that I could have experienced what Trayvon Martin did (and other black people do) because Iâm white and through white privilege I am immune to systemic racial profiling.
All you hear are your own crazy thoughts, like a river of SHIT, ON AND ON! See your thoughts for what they are! Stop your helping! Stop your planning! Thereâs NO WAY OUT! Not for others! Not for you!
Humans are involved, as they regretfully always are, but this is also a story about merging ideologies, about one great tentacle-laden corporate-human entity, the Hedgefox, tumefying a tentacle and spraying great blasts of life-sustaining cash all over a smaller, quivering entity, the Foxhog. Then eating it.
Hedgefox Buys Metayacht â Fordâs Sensorium â Medium
This is an essay about Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post and by God can this man write.
[gallery]
Michelle Rodriguez Made Me Cry at Comic-Con
At first, the moderator â a sweet-voiced writer from the LA Times â asked them typical, if interesting, questions. âWhatâs your favorite stunts?” âYour most challenging costumes?” âDo you have trouble leaving your character behind?” That kind of thing.
Then, she half-turned to look at them. âWhatâs the most egregious example of sexism youâve seen on set?”
"Some actor dude once said chicks couldnât drive cars," Michelle scoffed. âI was like, âMove over.â"Â
The audience laughed a little. Sexism! Girls can drive cars. Silly sexist actor boys. No one in the audience was like them.
"One time when a crew member started hitting on me when I was tied to a bed for a scene," Tatiana Maslany offered. âI was young. I was just starting out. I couldnât get away."
Less laughter now from the audience.Â
"Once a guy on set kinda beat the shit out of me during a fight scene," Katee Sackhoff said. âHe said he thought I could âhandle it.â"
No laughter now. Lots of squirming. The guy beside me was checking Twitter.Â
"Heâs lucky I wasnât there," Michelle said. âThat kind of thing makes my blood boil.â
Silence.
Onstage, though, it was like a fucking dam had broken. Michelle lectured us all, at length, on how 80% of the content written for women is by guys, and how they donât know shit. âDudes, I love dudes,” I remember her saying, âBut they donât know how to write for women.” Maggie Q talked about how, as an Asian-American actress, everyone expects her to be quiet and demure and also know how to do kung-fu in heels. Danai Gurira actually used the phrase âwhite male privilege.” In a room full of 6,000 Marvel fanboys! Male privilege.
I kept screaming, entirely spontaneously, like the sound was being ripped out of me. I couldnât help it. I think I cried a little. I felt like I was in church.
[gallery]
"Dear Steve,
Hereâs another masterpiece for you to explore â On p187, a line that runs from Shakespeare to Stephen Daedalus starts to emerge by way of Hamlet, see what you think!
With my wish for your continued joy in discovery,
Frimi Sagan
June 2001”
To talk to your private self is the way to talk to all self. Personal is universal simultaneously.
If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it.
What has struck me about the anti-war movement in America in these last few years âperhaps it is different elsewhere and perhaps it was different beforeâ is generally how polite it has been. How ironic to chant, âWhose streets! Our streets!â while politely walking into pens and free speech zones. How strange to demand an end to the war while politely conceding to the demands of the NYPD that protesters not use Central Park, that they only march on these streets and not those streets so that order can be maintained, so that things can carry on as if there were no protest at all.
I want to make one thing clear: These were not low-level employees. They were what I would describe as upper mid-level managers. They told us that they had a combined fifty-five years of experience at the NSA. Without the support and consent of people like this, the surveillance machine could not exist. I donât think that they are stupid people or evil people. I do think that they are people who have abdicated their moral agency and thus allowed for something very scary and very evil to come into existence.
There are some surprising cultural impacts of us not having minorities: people here are often condescending (you can probably read parts of that in my post as well) — though there are exceptions — but people get really condescending to: a). people they perceive as dumb and b). types of people they perceive to be dumb. The amount of jokes made about base school kids (i.e. kids who go to the schools that we would be going to if it weren’t for TJ) and judgments made about blacks or Hispanics is staggering. There are kids here who feel validated that kids at the base school are going to “working for them someday” as if someone’s high school in life was any valid indication of their work ethic, perseverance, intellect, and luck. You also hear comments about “ghetto” kids, generally meaning blacks and Hispanics, which is ironic considering we live in Northern Virginia where half the kids have pool tables in their basement and have lawyer/doctor/government-employed parents. Some people I don’t even know are comfortable regarding me as a “nigger” (but in a good way, y’know?) or telling me how I’m black, but not really because I watch avant-garde films and study philosophy. Our BSU (black student union, which no, I’m not a part of) was led by a white guy, which was partially deserved (iirc he had participated in the club all four years) and was partially indicative of how few blacks are involved in the club and how little notoriety the club has at our school versus Namaste (an Indian culture club) or the various Asian culture clubs (including the Asian Awareness club, whose irony does not escape a school whose biggest demographic is Asian). This isn’t to suggest that BSU should be a thriving community when it appeals to so little of the demographic, but I think it does show that when certain cultures are underrepresented at a school, some kids, even if they don’t don a white hat and burning crosses, let racially-inspired tendencies and beliefs get to them.
You would have thought that by now evryone with a browser and a modem would be following the online exploits of webloggers, but this is not in fact the case. Bloggers! We still have a lot of outreach work to do! There are still some people, perhaps even here tonight, maybe in the seat right next to you, who have never seen a weblog or who have never even heard of weblogs. Yes! It’s true! So I make this challenge: To all webloggers, and to our brother and sisters in the e/n, journal and webzine communities, let us join together in links of love and take back what is rightfully ours! Let us join together; for together we can take back the web!
[gallery]
starring Kiefer Sutherland
Put yourself in Martin’s shoes, based on the scenario exactly as Zimmerman described it in that interview. An adult male has been behaving strangely and following him, first in his car and then on foot. It’s dark and a heavy rain is falling, making these actions even more suspicious. He has traveled on foot away from the street to a place behind condos near his residence, and there’s Zimmerman again. Martin confronts the man to find out why he’s being followed and the man doesn’t explain. Instead, he quickly reaches for something in a waist pocket. At that point, does Martin have any way of knowing the man isn’t reaching for a gun?
America has no functioning democracy at this moment.
This brings us to the second feature: the Zimmerman trial judgeâs decision to sharply limit the explicit reference to raceâincluding denying the prosecution the ability to argue that Zimmerman engaged in racial profiling. Studies of the legal system and aversive racism show that the less explicitly race is engaged in the discourse in the courtroom, the more likely aversive racism is to influence the decisionmaking process of the jurors. Thus, the judgeâs decision also makes it more likely that race played a role in the outcome of the case.
When our children are gunned down in cold blood, I want it to be enough that they were simply ordinary as opposed to âinnocent.â In America, Black people will never be considered âinnocentâ and frankly itâs a label that we shouldnât want to claim for ourselves. None of us is âinnocent;â most of us are just ordinary and flawed people. That should be enough to have the right to live.
It’s been hammered in my DNA to not “rock the boat”—which since I wanna keep it real means not make “certain people” feel uncomfortable. I mean, that is a crazy way to live. Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people’s safety and comfort first before your own. You’re kinda programmed and taught that from the gate. It’s like the opposite of entitlement.
Itâs an appealing argument, and widespread, but simplistic and obtuse. Itâs a belief most easily held when youâve not witnessed peace rallies and makeshift memorials, when youâve turned a blind eye to grassroots organizations like the Interrupters in Chicago working valiantly to stem the tide of violence in the city. It is the thinking of people whoâve never wondered why African Americans disproportionately support strict gun control legislation. The added quotient of outrage in cases like this one stems not from the belief that a white murderer is somehow worse than a black one, but from the knowledge that race determines whether fear, history, and public sentiment offer that killer a usable alibi.
Itâs a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.