i feel like this needs to be a separate post

ianthe:

so if

• modern clown makeup is rooted in blackface/racist caricatures of black people
• and one potential psychological explanation for why clowns are so scary is that they seem “less than human”
• what the fuck does that say

Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago. Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children. Closing schools is not an education plan. It is a scorched earth policy. Evidence shows that the underutilization crisis has been manufactured. Their own evidence also shows the school district will not garner any significant savings from closing these schools.

This is bad governance. CPS has consistently undermined school communities and sabotaged teachers and parents. Their actions have had a horrible domino effect. More than 40,000 students will lose at least three to six months of learning because of the Board’s actions. Because many of them will now have to travel into new neighborhoods to continue their schooling, some will be victims of bullying, physical assault and other forms of violence. Board members are wishing for a world that does not exist and have ignored the reality of the world we live in today. Who on the Board will be held responsible? Who at City Hall will be held responsible?

unsuccessfulmetalbenders:

its my birthday and the struggle is real

nosdrinker:

i don’t know what these are but i love them

(Source: weeaboo-chan)

nitanahkohe:

it’s not a dismissal. i have read her books multiple times, and am well versed in her work. there are quite a few scholars who have critiqued Gloria Anzaldúa for her problematic definition and mobilization of indigeneity, including Andrea Smith (there is a quote from Smith’s article somewhere in this month’s archive of my blog, if you wanna dig thru to find it). a quick search on google scholar should find you what you’re looking for.

i appreciate Anzaldúa for the work that she did, and recognize that she has been a foundational inspiration for many powerful women of color, and for that reason deserves love and respect. her writing style is beautiful and she has a strength in her that i have continually tried to fortify in myself. as a woman who is also trying to connect to her indigenous heritage and make sense of her identities and situatedness in and outside the academy, i admire her relentless passion for such endeavors in her own life—it’s not easy.

none of that detracts from the lateral violence in her writings, which essentialize indigenous cultures of the Southwest and periodize them in a static framing of what Anzaldúa imagines Native cultural practices to signify. a lot of what she has written in that regard is inaccurate at best, and is so incredibly self-absorbed it’s hard, as a Native woman, to take seriously at times. i think it’s really short-sighted and selfish to claim indigenous ancestry and demand that others recognize your birthright to what you paint as a fossilized indigenous culture, while not also simultaneously aligning yourself with living indigenous communities. to my mind, as a reconnecting person, you don’t get to be Native and still not give a fuck about other Native people and what they are struggling with. moreover, indigenous cultures are not something that can just be melded into whatever you want (which is what she does)—ancestry does not give you the right to selectively pick and choose bits of a culture to appropriate or edit as you please.

i think both those problems are ultimately tied into a gross hyper-romanticization of mestizaje as the answer to some grand postcolonial borderlands question—theories of third spatiality, hybridity, and mestizaje have been tempting for a lot of postcolonial scholars because they allow for recognition of nuance and intermixing, but i personally don’t think that’s enough of a legitimation for an ideology that leaves a lot to be desired. a lot of people who romanticize third spaces, for example, do so with no recognition of the fact that for those of us that live in third space forms of survival and resistance because we don’t have a choice, it’s a life of hardship and struggle that often means physical and emotional needs go unmet—when the third space is your only option, there’s often not much you can do and it’s not as glamorous and revolutionary as everyone makes it out to be. hybridity to me seems similarly short-sighted—interrelations and intermixing are two different things and do we really need a vamped up melting pot vision in order to make the point that things are complicated and bound up in their relations with one another? getting back to Anzalduúa, i think the romanticization of mestizaje is especially egregious considering the lateral violence perpetrated against Natives previously discussed—Andrea Smith has written a critique of this that is basically arguing that Anzaldúa’s entire formulation of the mestiz@ as the person who travels between worlds and crosses boundaries is pinned on a theoretical imagination of Indian as Romantic & Prehistoric (especially oppressive re: gender & sexuality), that can only be updated and transformed into something liberatory by the mestiz@. that’s a pretty offensive implication to me.

i’m not doing these critiques justice, there’s plenty of scholarship that goes into this at great length. i don’t have the time to do your research for you, but there’s plenty of stuff out there if you make the effort to look for it. Natives don’t owe you an annotated bibliography every time they say something is offensive.

(Source: mysimpsonsblogisgreaterthanyours)

I’ve had a p rough day and I did an okay amount of hw so I’m just gonna go to bed

entartetekunstler ha contestado a tu publicacin: Yknow what I cant listen to music or do much of…

Im sorry for peoples shittiness.

Thanks. I’m just glad I won’t have to deal with most of these people anymore like wow I never really wanna see most of them ever again tbh. Like even if their thoughts have changed (although some have gone from shitty -> shitty) the fact that they believed a lot of this to begin with at this age is a big red flag (“Native Americans are unintelligent” wtf?)

(Source: seawhim)

Y’know what I can’t listen to music or do much of anything without just re-experiencing the feelings from this WONDERFUL day and getting a headache so I’m just gonna say what happened

SO, I have this Anthropology class called something like Native North American History, and it’s run by an old white anthropologist guy. I should have just left the class when I had the chance, but silly me thought it would be a good idea to stay. Of course had to endure casual racism here and there (read: every class) and he thought he was correct in defending himself for saying NDN even though my friend Claire in the class who’s Seneca had told him she found it personally offensive for him to say as an old white dude…and well I guess that all led up to today, the last day of class til the final which I now really don’t fucking wanna go to.

For some bizarre, totally not well-thought-out reason, he thought it would be a super idea to have every person in the class write down 3 perceptions/misconceptions they had about Native Americans before class and how it’s changed. Some people actually said things that weren’t offensive, but wow hahaha did it go down quickly from there

Of course there were the thoughts of all Native American groups being either extremely violent or extremely peaceful, saw that one coming a mile away but didn’t stop my friend and I from being completely pissed off and bad-mouthing everyone the whole fucking time. One guy (head of the student anthropologist society SHOCKING) said he thought “they were all war-hating, docile creatures” FUCKING CREATURES ARE YOU SERIOUS. There was also someone who said he thought AMERICAN INDIANS WERE UNINTELLIGENT LIKE WORD FOR WORD HE SAID THIS SHIT, other people thought doing anything really was “unstructured” and they were surprised to find out they are actually fucking organized?? Of course so many fucking underestimating intelligence and dehumanization like that godfuckingdamn. Bunch of people thinking just hunting and gathering existed and only eating meat, another didn’t know having varying origin myths was fucking possible like wowie people are different haha these crazy religions!! One girl fucking said she thought they “were more ethical and less wasteful but found out this wasn’t true because of how people would kill buffalo and potlaches” OH MY GOD DON’T EVEN GET INTO POTLACHES THIS TEACHER DOESN’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT THEM AND NEITHER DO FUCKING YOU. Claire and I said that our perceptions had not changed at all and everyone laughed when he asked if we knew everything wrong with those preconceptions…yeah bc it’s like totally hilarious to not be a racist, ignorant asshole like the majority of you fucknuts oh my fucking god

THEN THE TEACHER THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO “SEE WHAT ACCURATE GENERALIZATIONS WE COULD MAKE ABOUT THESE CULTURES” UH FUCKING NONE AND THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR ASS TEACHING THIS CLASS. Like the purpose of this fucking class is for (those that are ignorant) people to learn differences between a few cultures and not generalize and then he fucking ends it with “hey so what can we generalize about a whole fucking race.” Anthro society guy said some bullshit like “oh family and lineage is really important and Native Americans care a lot about it” WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING SAYING WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE SAYING. Oh my fucking god OH MY FUCKING GOD THE NEXT GUY SAID FUCKING “Oh we can say that they all have like weird random tribal names like Sky High and Soaring Eagle you know like Indian Names and they’re all really into nature and connected to it” AND HE FUCKING SNICKERED ABOUT IT OH MY GOD. Claire and I were fucking steaming and shaking with anger so then I decided to raise my hand and shit on these assholes by saying “The only generalization you can make is that Native Americans are people and individuals” Claire called them racist and of course the teacher and anthro guy defended their racist bullshit like “oh sometimes generalizations are necessary” like fucking stop. God fucking damn it I wish the teacher was actually Native American he would shut these motherfuckers DOWN. What I found especially ironic during all this that proves that this professor didn’t change a damn thing is that people were talking about them as if they’re in the past and only referring to past things (as shown by quotes and paraphrases above) like okay y’all totally don’t think all Native Americans just live in the past.

After all this bullshit I was walking from class and in our free speech area some this fucking old guy with a sign that said on one said “HOMOSEX IS A GODDAMNED SIN” and I fucking yelled at him then had a breakdown like 70ft away. I went to go file a complaint bc yeah no hate speech shouldn’t be covered under free speech but the dean was out to lunch til 2 and I had to leave. Soooo gonna complain tomorrow, possibly complain about anthro teacher but Claire might have done that already or at least is going to tomorrow too