i am shaking a lot right now and my heart is in my mouth and i’ve been crying on and off and on and off for the past two weeks, and i know that none of you give a fuck about brazil, and that none of you care about politics outside of the ones that directly affect you, but i am terrified. as a bissexual, socialist, umbandista, brazilian woman, i am terrified. and i am begging you to care.
in this year, we hold presidential elections. these elections are the most important in the history of brazil, for a very simple reason: now, that we are on the second round, we either elect a far-right candidate with authoritarian tendencies who flirts with fascism, or we elect a center-left candidate who belongs to the party that was in power for from 2002-2016, before a coup occurred mid 2016.
one of the candidates is fernando haddad, the man seen on this gif:
he was the mayor of são paulo, has been called by the new york times a ‘visionary’, was considered the greatest mayor of latin america, as his time as minister of education made over 100 federal, free institutes, ensured that the history of africa was taught in schools. he has a bacharel degree in law, a masters in economy and a phd in philosophy. he is currently a professor at an university. he gave free buses to children in public education, who could not afford it otherwise, lowered the corruption in the state of são paulo, created a better system for women to denounce harrassment and assault, and overall did a lot of good. i’m not going to spend 3 hours finding different sources for this, because you all don’t actually care.
the other candidate, is jair bolsonaro, and he is not the “tropical trump”, he is not our version of berlusconi. he is worse.
he has praised general carlos alberto brilhante ustra, who is known as the mastermind behind the tortures that occurred during the dictatorship. when he praised him, he did so when voting to impeach our former president dilma rouseff, who was tortured during the dictatorship, and fought for freedom. he has said that “if the crisis gets worse, we’ll shut down the congress” and install a dictatorship. he has said that the dictatorship should have killed more people, and tortured less. that it should have killed 30.000 people. that it should have killed our then president fernando henrique cardoso. he has said that his son would never marry a black woman because he gave him education. he has said that gay people are only gay because they were not beaten as children. he has said that indigenous people are lazy and greedy, that immigrants are the scum of the earth. he has said that women should earn less because they get pregnant. he has said that he would not rape a congresswoman, maria do rosário, because she is not worthy of it. he has said that his daughter is a woman because he got weak and could not produce another man. are you horrified yet? do you understand the problem yet? do you care yet?
in the beginning of the year, marielle franco, a poor, black, bissexual politician was executed. a street was named after her. here’s what people in his party did:
he is leading the polls currently, around 54-58% against 42-46%. ever since the first round of elections, last sunday (07/10), over 50 cases of assaults to people against bolsonaro have been reported.
here are some of them:
a black man was stabbed to death 12 times for saying he voted for haddad.
a woman had a swastika carved onto her belly for walking around with a shirt that said “ele não”, not him, the name of a campaign against bolsonaro.
a swastika was painted in front of a university, alongside the saying “get out blacks”
in different stadiums, football crowds sing “hey, fruit, beware, bolsonaro is going to kill f*gs”
to make things more worrying, the united states, who has knowingly backed up a military coup in 1964, has donated 96 BULLETPROOF MOBILS TO THE BRAZILIAN ARMY.
here are some cartoons on american newspapers:
if you want to get informed, if you care enough to do so, here are some sources in english:
According the article it was the dude’s wife who got him out of bed, saying Brennan was trying to break in. (That’s… that’s not how a break-in works…) Yet again, white woman lies, white man is all too happy to kill.
Thank God the kid got away and there was video. If it weren’t for the footage they’d have tried to frame him to high hell.
I don’t think Finn fans should put any trust in IX. It will
treat him better than TLJ but that’s only because TLJ buried the bar
under the ground. JJ was the one who pulled the rug and left him in the
dirt giving Rian the option to safely ignore him. JJ was the one who
forced Rey into Kylo’s path and made her his foil, so that Finn could be
sidelined when there was the natural choice. I don’t think we’ll see
Bendemtion, but Rey will be the one who shines in IX and Finn is
sidelined completely.
Why do I think this? Because it’s what JJ, the man you all put
your faith in, set him up for. Look at the end of TFA, there’s nothing
else there for Finn. his story has no clear progression but is left
hanging like some appendix they can deal with in whatever way, there is
no clear progression. Rey is set up on Kylo’s path and she’ll be the one
to ultimately take him down. Finn might get to be a bit of a hero in
the Resistance part but he’ll still be secondary to Rey.
JJ set up Finn to be A Leia in the ST. He’s plot relevant in the
first movie and drives it forward and then he’s dumped because the real
hero, Rey, has stepped up. So if you ask me Finn fans should get out
while they can and before it hurt to much. If they’re looking for
another major scifi franchise with a Black lead Discovery season 2 looks
promising after they showed the latest trailer and there’s a lot of
others out there. But don’t bother with Star Wars, it won’t treat Finn
well.
Finn being sidelined is a possibility every fan should be prepared for, obviously. I don’t want to tell anyone to get their hopes up for JJ or IX, and I encourage people to disengage from SW if that’s what they need to do.
That said, I disagree with the arguments there. For one thing, I don’t think Rey was made to be Kylo’s foil–it’s clearly Finn who’s been set up as Kylo’s opposite in every way. Foil does not mean simply an enemy, it’s a specific literary term for a character that contrasts with another character. The foil relationship between Finn and Kylo continued even in TLJ. If Rey was set up to be anyone’s foil it was Luke in TLJ far more than Kylo.
For another, Finn’s story was not directionless at the end of TFA. You might as well say Luke’s story had nowhere to go at the end of ANH because his arc was complete. Comparing him to Leia is plain inaccurate when Leia did not have a protagonist’s arc or hero’s journey in ANH like Finn had in TFA. Luke had the hero’s journey in ANH, and Leia was in charge of his call to action. It wasn’t a case of Leia stepping aside for Luke, it was Luke’s story from the start that Leia had a role in.
It’s also disingenuous to validate RJ’s writing choices as flowing organically from JJ’s when multiple people involved with TFA and the franchise–Mark Hamill, Alan Dean Foster, John Williams, and Simon Pegg just off the top of my head–have publicly voiced doubts and disagreements with different aspects of what RJ did.
As a black fan myself, I also disagree.
Saying Finn’s storyline could go nowhere after TFA, is like saying Rey’s storyline could go nowhere after meeting look. A lack of imagination is all to blame for Finn’s role in TLJ and certain fans not caring about a character who doesn’t look the way Hollywood has taught them to care about. I’m not going to just re-write what @lj-writes just said, but I can think of a million of ways Finn’s story could have gone after TFA, hell I can still think of ways his story could go after TLJ.
The fact is, some people have no imagination on what to do. Johnson being one of them.
For example, the valid concern that diversity quotas value color
over merit is valid, but can skip into the bias that white people are
the most qualified. And the concern that racism against white people is
culturally acceptable is a rational concern, but then there are white
supremacists who equate it with genocide.
In conclusion, it is my personal conviction that untainted
individualism is they key to being unracist. Everybody respect Muslims
and people of Middle Eastern descent, ship Finnrey, and recognize that
Rogue One is not anti-white because it only has one white male hero
(Galen.)
So there’s a lot to unpack here, but first of all, it’s a false dichotomy that the right believes in individual merit and the left doesn’t. What many on the left do is acknowledge the reality that bigotry against certain groups cuts against the merits and achievements of individuals from these marginalized groups. I’m not sure how that translates into the kind of collectivism that is apparently opposed to individualism. Also if you think the only problem with the American dream lies in the distant past… well. Let’s just say it’s very much an ongoing problem.
At least you recognize the gap between theory and practice when it comes to individualism. In fact, talent and work ethic leading to success is far from the reality for many groups, to the extent that believing that individual merit will prevail in every case has been found to be detrimental to the long-term well-being of marginalized youth (link).
Colorblindness is the ultimate aspiration, yes, but it is not the reality we currently inhabit. We can’t just decide to be colorblind, we have to acknowledge and correct the systemic racism that both leads to large-scale inequalities and infects our own individual perceptions with bias and bigotry. Insisting that you are colorblind without realizing all the ways you are not amounts to self-deception and, in interactions with marginalized people, gaslighting. We don’t get to the mountaintop by pretending we are already there. First we have to realize where we actually are, which is a pretty deep pit in many ways. Only then can we start climbing upward.
Individualism vs collectivism is a very valid aspect of race studies (and it really has little to do with right vs left – white people across the political spectrum are individualists when it comes to things like education).
The main reason the US education system is so segregated is because the vast majority of white people see it as a way to get the most for their children and themselves. The Black community doesn’t see it that way – education is something has the potential to lift the entire community. (For more on this, check out the Speak Out with Tim Wise podcast Episode 48: “Educational Inequality is a Feature not a Glitch: Racism and Schooling in America”). White parents generally aren’t interested in improving the community as a whole through their children’s education, especially when they isolate themselves in “safe” suburbs (but not always – see Brooklyn NY).
Black communities, especially poor communities, know that the better their children do collectively, the better off the community will be. That is not the goal of the school system, which, historically has worked to sustain the inequity. It’s no surprise that white parents don’t want their kids in Black schools. They understand that Black schools aren’t meant for success. The whiter the school, the higher the chance that their kid will get theirs. Even some of the most liberal parents buy into this and are unwilling to challenge the status quo out of fear of disadvantaging their kids by not giving them every advantage.
In fandom, this dichotomy plays out like this:
Someone makes an observation about how measurable fandom patterns show that fans will choose an alternate all white ship if the canon has an interracial pairing.
Immediate reaction: I’m not racist! I love CoC actually! You can’t make assumptions about a person you don’t know just because they ship my OTP!
It wasn’t about individuals, but that will be the reaction every time. Who cares if there’s a cycle of racism? I’M not racist, and a lot of people I know who participate in that thing are nice, so it’s probably not racism at all.
I didn’t realize that collectivist aspect! I’m mostly used to “collectivism” being used as a pejorative by right-leaning people as meaning entitled, expects to free ride on others’ effort etc. I really wish more groups of people would see community improvement as a worthwhile goal because there is only so much individualism can do.
On the other hand, doesn’t white America’s individualism also result in a kind of communal uplifting, albeit at the expense of other groups? It looks like, in seeking individual advantage, white parents as a whole have used segregation as a group strategy.
And YES on this allaboutmeism spilling over into fandom racism defenses, I hadn’t even thought about that! It seems to be mainly a white people thing even among people who deny or minimize the existence of fandom racism, because in my experience fans of color who deny fandom racism at least engage at the same level and try to present community-level arguments, even if they’re wrong. It is by and large white fans who turn discussions about large scale phenomena into a trial of their own individual virtue.
It’s just cause there is a large margin of people who just don’t want John to succeed period. John Boyega’s net worth is literally just the same as Daisy Ridley’s, 6 million, so it’s not about money. He’s gotten just as many big name acting gigs, so it’s about acting chops, and John has proved that he’s one of the most talented up and coming actors there is. It’s honestly just cause he’s black that he goes through this type of rubbish. Black folk will always be under the microscope when it comes to being in a mostly white fan community that has never had a black protagonist.
Sadly Rosewood was not the only black town that was destroyed something similar happened in Tulsa
[CW: antiblack racism, antiblack violence, slurs and depictions of violence in linked articles]
I can’t speak about Tulsa, but Rosewood is local to me, and I can share some information I’ve collected for those who want to know more about it.
(Disclaimer: I’m not an expert; I’m just a local hobbyist historian who’s made a point to track down links and share them.)
Rosewood is almost nonexistent in the community memory. I learned about it in passing in school when I was younger because I had a teacher who cared, but most people have absolutely no clue. The town was completely forgotten for a long time, before the history was rediscovered a few decades ago and there came some interest in preserving what was left of the site. Local Black organizing has done quite a bit to get the history more recognized, but it’s still an uphill battle.
As the above tweets say, Rosewood was a predominately Black town that was destroyed over a weeklong period in January of 1923, after a white woman falsely accused a Black man of rape. There’s a fairly comprehensive article about the town and its history on Wikipedia here. Here’s a link to the Rosewood page on BlackPast.org, as well.
The last remaining original building is for sale as of May 2018 for
$500,000. There have been threats made by locals against any Black people who may be interested in purchasing the site, though the current owner of the building, a Japanese woman who was unaware of the history when she first moved in, has been firm in saying she hopes to sell to someone who understands and values the history of the town.
Locals have also been known to threaten and harass school trips to the area, and the sole historical marker for the town has been repeatedly vandalized.
People are actively, to this day, trying to erase the history of what happened there. Fortunately, there are local archaeologists and historians working on uncovering and preserving more of the town. There has been discussion of purchasing the house to turn into a museum, though interested parties haven’t been able to raise the money. I’ve had my ear to the ground in case any crowdfunding efforts crop up, but I haven’t heard anything yet–I’ll be sure to share if anything does go up.
If you can stomach reading more, here are some links from local news sources and historical orgs about the town, what happened, and the current status of the site. I’ve also included a link to the book mentioned in one of the articles:
Osaka’s biracial identity is inconvenient in a racist narrative that turns Williams into a stereotype. It’s more expedient to focus on all the things about her that aren’t stereotypically black: her light skin, her soft-spoken nature, her tear-filled apology after winning the match. In this way, Osaka is framed if not as a white woman, then as a more acceptable and palatable version of blackness ― as the type of black person that doesn’t make you acknowledge their blackness.
I SO noticed this on Twitter. White people were like, “Serena stole this nice girl’s moment with her bad behaviour!” while Black people were like “Naomi is a Black queen too, thank you very much! Black Girl Magic!! We ❤ you Naomi and also Serena was treated like shit, because we can support both our sisters!” It’s possible to support them both, but so many white people are so excited to be able to bash “angry Black woman” Serena that they’ll pretend Naomi isn’t proudly Black, too.
And when I say “whiteness,” I include concepts such as white-passing, conditional whiteness and functional whiteness. I am no longer going to discuss Jews in terms of whiteness.
First of all, confident assertions about the whiteness of Jews as a whole, certain kinds of Jews and/or a particular Jewish person relies on treating race as biology and geography, which is diametrically opposed to the purpose of using the phrase “people of color.”
Secondly, a lot of those “white Jews” live under a particular set of circumstances that only applies to a narrow segment of Jewish people, a segment that is deeply assimilated into mainstream American culture, all the way down to internalizing its most toxic attitudes and behaviors. The issue of Jews and assimilation beyond stringent halachic observance is a conversation worth having, but not like that.
Calling most Jews white because they’re lighter than a brown paper bag relies on an understanding of racial oppression that uses the Black American experience as a control group or a measuring stick, which I’ve repeatedly expressed my frustration with. If we go by that, every non-Black and non-Native group who willingly came to the United States is white. That sounds really ignorant when said out loud, doesn’t it? Ignores a lot of history, a lot of struggle, a lot of intergenerational trauma, doesn’t it? Yeah, exactly.
If I can be real for a second, I notice strong parallels between antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Asian ones, and I don’t believe that’s an accident. I remember when there was real, earnest discussion about whether East Asian people should be considered honorary whites and therefore exempt from anti-discrimination policies, particularly college admission. (And, when I’m feeling cynical, it comes with an added dose of, “See? They hate, fear, and exploit Black people too!”) No, this was not on Tumblr. This was in reputable media sources.
Thirdly, my experience with gentiles who are convinced of the whiteness of Jews is similar to Eric K. Ward’s. There’s something distinctly regional about it because most of the people I’ve encountered who are intractable about the whiteness of Jews are from New York and Chicago. I wasn’t particularly surprised by what happened at Chicago Dyke March, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar thing happens in New York, Los Angeles or DC. I’d be more shocked if it happened at the Albuquerque Dyke March. Not saying that they love Jews in Albuquerque, but places like NYC and Chicago maintain a certain brand of antisemitism that masks itself as resisting injustice. Not saying that these places are more antisemitic, just that the expression of it is different and often unacknowledged and unexamined. In my neck of the woods, antisemitism is more like–well, you remember Charlottesville.
Fourth, the majority of concepts and frameworks that dominate how we talk about racial justice are by and for people who are insiders to US history and culture, even if their experience of it is a horror show. Make no mistake, lots of folks on this website decry US-centrism as a way to shut Black Americans up when we talk about our experiences with antiblackness. Even so, there is an awful lot of projecting US racial dynamics onto non-US contexts, ignoring the historical, political and cultural distinctions of US racism. Don’t get it twisted. This doesn’t make other countries into some post-racial utopia. It just means that the how it functions and who it targets does not neatly map onto the US context. (Though everybody seems to have it out for Black folks, including other Black folks.)
Fifth, and this is where I’m gonna lose you if I haven’t already, I honestly believe that whiteness and Jewishness are antithetical to one another.
To be white is to own every place you go to. To be a Jew is to wander in search of home. To be white is to always be on the VIP list. To be a Jew is to never forget that we were strangers. To be white is to ignore the past. To be a Jew is to remember, remember, remember. To be white is to be a god to be obeyed. To be Jewish is to struggle with God.
Take whiteness away, and what is left? Whiteness is a blank sheet of paper. Whiteness has no center. It has neither roots nor wings. Whiteness rules the world (for now), but it sold its soul.
If (when) whiteness goes away, there will still be Jews.
For those who don’t want to watch the video: the footage clearly shows that he was lying his ass off about keeping order in the court and only touching her shoulder. The woman was arguing at first in the hallway, yes, but she was walking AWAY and whatever disruption she caused was long over. This was when the now former magistrate CHASED HER a considerable distance down the halls, to the elevators it looked like, and brought her BACK with his hand gripping the back of her neck. The whole thing was humiliating and utterly unnecessary.
Hair bias is a real problem. It’s rarely talked about, but it affects millions globally.
This World Afro Day, we’re calling time on this.
Whatever your hair type, join the movement to Change the Facts, Not the Fro. In celebrating our Afro hair this weekend in all of its versatility, help us continue the conversation by tagging us in your pics @worldafroday.
L.J.'s Obsessions 