Tag: colonialism

diversetolkien:

What ways would all suggest changing canon to make it less racist? I’m kinda interested in seeing what steps you’d take and how you’d change certain portrayals or tropes. 

Let me know! 

I’d have liked to see the existence of Haradrim and Easterling resistance against Sauron. @johnnyclash87
had the idea of Aragorn traveling to Harad to train their brand of
Rangers and also to liaise with them, and Moth pointed out that Aragorn
canonically did travel to Harad where he met both good and bad people (link).
Sauron is likely the effective ruler of their lands, maybe by
supporting cruel warlords to exploit and enslave them. Though many
Haradrim and Easterlings were no doubt cruel and willing fighters for
Sauron, many others would have had no choice. Showing the Haradrim and
Easterling resistance and reluctance would have gone a long way to
countering the racist coding in portraying darker races of humans as
uniformly evil other than Sam’s short moment of sympathetic speculation
and like, some passage tucked deep into one of the Appendices. But of
course dealing fully with these issues would have required portraying
the ultimate evil as a force of colonialist violence against people of
color, which would have been… uncomfortable for an Englishman lmao

5779:

sauvamente:

vajussy:

tariqah:

mahakavi:

mahakavi:

wow this sentinel island news story really blew up on social media. american dude, possibly a missionary, travels to meet a community that historically has resisted contact from outsiders and ends up getting himself killed….

i mean aside from the fact that he could have wiped out the whole community by bringing them in contact with diseases that have no immunity for, he also had zero concerns for his own safety and welfare?? apparently he got shot with arrows the first time, returned to his boat, and then at night decided he would TRY AGAIN like what a fucking idiot

He deserved to die imo, people including anthropologists have died trying to make contact before…and it was made illegal to contact the people of Sentinel Island in 2006… I have no qualms

he really was lost in the colonizer sauce like he thought he could win those people over by bringing a soccer ball and scissors like the fact that he had to bribe someone to take him there in the first place should’ve told him not to do it but ¯_(ツ)_/¯

What is the point of trying to go to an unconnected people anyway and with a fucking Bible when they speak a dead language and have been chilling for thousands of years colonizers are crazy he got what he was asking for he went to see Jesus

“The British colonial occupation of the Andaman Islands decimated the tribes living there, wiping out thousands of tribespeople, and only a fraction of the original population now survive. So the Sentinelese fear of outsiders is very understandable.”

[…]

“It’s not impossible that the Sentinelese have just been infected by deadly pathogens to which they have no immunity, with the potential to wipe out the entire tribe,” said Mr Corry.

just want to highlight the history of the situation and the potential consequences for the people this man has endangered 

Remember, Remember, The Colonial Hangover

songketalliance:

image

“How do we move on from this if our education system pretends that everything was fine and dandy during the “Age of Exploration”?”

A contribution by Mu’izz Khalid

When I was younger,
I remember being in awe of white people. Their white skin, light coloured-eyes,
and bridged noses. I remember how I once got a bit tanned from swimming
practice and was told that I looked “less cute” for not maintaining my fair
skin. I remember being proud of speaking in English with my circle group of
friends, and tried my best to avoid talking in my native language, Melayu
Brunei. I remember being excited to move to the UK for further studies and was
captivated by the city of London.  I
remember wanting to fit in with my European friends while looking down on my
Asian friends. I remember learning and memorising Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, Max
Weber and the whole nine yards of Euro-American scholars. I remember returning
to Brunei and was utterly devastated to be back in my home country because I
miss London. I remember that I did not want to go out and meet my friends
because the thought of being back to this ‘backward’ country just depresses me.

I remember one day
meeting a professor from Universiti Brunei Darussalam. I told him that I wanted
to do a PhD. We set up a topic to discuss about Islam and the state. I proudly
debated him with my academic views that I gained from UK universities. He
replied with a smile:

Keep reading

sagasofsundry:

thecringeandwincefactory:

downhomesophisticate:

LOUDER

Residential schools, Indian schools, Stolen generations, Lost children of Francoism, Germanization, q.v.

[image description: a tweet by @jessewente that says, “colonial states separate children from parents because they know it works. it destroys and traumatizes for generations. it’s an attack on the future as well as the present. it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a colonial one.” end id]

Separation of enslaved Black families in the United States, the Catholic Church’s refusal to return Jewish children after baptizing them during WWII*

* Hiding the children with Christian families, to be fair, helped save their lives but the intent to erase the children’s Jewishness after the danger had passed is also clear–the Vatican literally said baptism “cancels the Jew,” holy shit

You said in this post [post(/)159372024430(/)f-i-n-for-the-fandom-meme] regarding the Steven Universe fandom that the developments in the canon are turning you off to the show. I was wondering if you could explain what you mean? But only if you feel comfortable to, I’m just curious

wynx-hates-pedos:

lj-writes:

(Discussions of recent episodes of SU follow)

For me a big turning point was the portrayal of the human zoo and the woobification of Blue Diamond. The human zoo was presented as a fairly good and humane place to live and the human inhabitants as childlike and not suffering too much from their captivity. The one time they were shown to be in pain at the “choosening” their grief was treated as ridiculous and incomprehensible. This leaves an especially bad taste in the mouth given that human zoos actually existed in Earth’s history and were sites of terrible injustice and racism.

Compare this to the treatment of Blue Diamond’s grief over losing Pink Diamond. Her pain, despite the fact that we know she literally owns humans and co-leads an organization that wanted to obliterate all life on Earth, is treated as serious and worthy of empathy, with an actual song and dance about how sad she and Yellow Diamond (the instigator and driver of the plan to destroy Earth itself) are. After the 10,000th time Blue Diamond fan art showed up on my dash with people calling her “space wife” and such, I unfollowed the tag and a bunch of blogs and my SU fandom activity went into indefinite hiatus.

The Blue Diamond arc was the tipping point, but there was also plenty going wrong with SU before that point. The Bismuth arc, for instance, and specifically the confrontation scene where we were asked to identify through Steven with the Diamonds who were her targets, was not well-handled at all. I still like aspects of the show, but I’m too angry at its biases to give it my undivided support.

Also can I just say there’s a really creepy implication behind the Diamonds making human zoos where an unseen gem instructs the humans how they can decide who they can date? I wouldn’t notice the implication if it wasn’t highlighted by the writers and the narrative too. The implication I get is that the humans in the zoo aren’t allowed to say no to this arrangement. ThIs is incredibly nonconsensual and even Greg points this out. He refers to it as the “catch” to this “utopia.”

What makes me heartsick is that the human zoo’s inhabitants having a collective breakdown was a sign of how deeply, deeply broken and fucked up (in many senses) they were by their captivity. Greg first introduced them to the concept of sexual choice and consent. Their mass-“choosening” Greg was the first real agency for them in their lives, in generations even, and I don’t think they literally meant they all wanted to have sex with him. They were reacting to this new-old concept in a way they understood, and their reaction to Greg’s rejection was much deeper than “wah you won’t sleep with me.” I saw it as the painful crack of a shell, the realization that something fundamental was missing from their lives and they had not even known.

So what’s the narrative reaction to this? Inviting us to laugh at these childish, simple peaple (UGH) and using the occasion as an opportunity to tell us how nice their captors are for giving their captives a pat on the head and then keeping them right where they are to have their every move controlled and (possibly, depending on how this choosening crap works) to be raped over and over again. It turned my stomach and I couldn’t enjoy the show like I used to.

on the one hand: we have to push back against narratives that substitute preconceived notions for research and facts, and must guard agaist our own biases which lead us to accept without serious investigation that one dominant culture was always the innovator and the “peripheral” cultures simply received those innovations

on the other hand: there’s so much agenda-driven bad scholarship in these non-dominant cultures as well, and some  scholars who push these counter-narratives make grandiose claims about how they were “better” than these dominant cultures with little evidence, to the extent there’s a kneejerk reaction against these counter-narratives as automatically suspect

michonnegrimes:

Danai Gurira photographed by Meredith Jenks for Bustle

There are some esteem issues that come with the assault of being colonized and being dominated and being marginalized. But we have to push through those and embrace and immerse ourselves in the stunningness that is of us. You have to get on that one man boat and go out into the raging storm until you get to the break of a new day. You have to get to the point where it’s like this is not truth, and consequently it is no longer going to be my truth. And now I’m going to embrace the power of who I am and where I’m from.