An oldie but goodie:
“Naces Pendejo, Mueres Pendejo.”
In other words, when a woman says, “I hate men,” this doesn’t necessarily mean she hates me, Allan. But, living in a society dominated by individualistic thinking makes it easy to lose sight of the crucial distinction between men as individuals and men as a category of people.
[…]
Women’s anger is an important engine for change, and if women have to tiptoe around worrying about whether it might hurt a man’s feelings, they’re going to be silenced.
EJ Hill
Help is On the Way (For Mark Aguhar, Trayvon Martin, and the rest of Us), 2012
Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles
Day 1 of White History Month: No, Your Favorites Were Not “Good for Their Time”
Attempts at defending the founders and other admired figures in history generally revolve around comparisons to their time period. They weren’t “that bad”. They were “progressive for their time”. Perhaps they were simply unaware of the complex and nuanced issues that existed.
Not only is this a bad argument, but it’s inaccurate. Racially oppressed peoples have always spoken out against their oppression, for one. Second, many of the people who have orchestrated oppressive acts or at the very least, continued them, have been aware of their obvious oppressive nature. Third, there have been examples of people who were “good by modern day standards” at every point in history. The reality is that most people were complicit and are still complicit in white supremacy.
As much as possible, people of color have spoken out against the evils of racism. Before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Olauduh Equiano spoke out against the horrors of slavery. While it took until the 1840s for white activists to strongly commit to abolition, Black Americans had clearly been calling for abolition since slavery’s inception. Before any white sociologist recognized race as epiphenomenal, Frederick Douglass analyzed racism. Black Americans who were enslaved were clearly aware of the evil of slavery.
To ignore that these were obvious evils is to treat Black people as a nonfactor in history and to say that only white people mattered.
Not only did Black Americans recognize the oppressiveness of slavery and racism, but many white Americans were as well. They simply did not care, or were aware of how racism benefited them.
James Madison, for one, said that it would be immoral to include within the constitution that men could be owned as property. The colonists also had compared their situation with Great Britain to that of plantation slavery. They were aware of the oppressiveness. They simply did not care about enslaved Black Americans, and they enjoyed the wealth and privileges wrought from slave labor.
It is not as if they were without example, either. Robert Carter III (1728-1804), coming to view slavery as immoral, gradually freed all of his 500+ slaves that he owned and instead, in more of an economic decision, rented out land to his freed slaves. Other plantation owners in the Chesapeake Bay area also freed their slaves, citing equality as their sole rationale. It is not as if the founding fathers were unaware of Carter (a wealthy plantation and slave owner) and the others; they simply did not follow their example. Certain US states and other countries abolished slavery years before the United States did on a federal level.
In the 1850’s, John Brown was a dedicated abolitionist who drafted a provisional antiracist constitution along with 33 Black Americans.
Later, in the dissenting opinion of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, Judge John Marshall Harlan wrote that separation by race was clearly done in the interest of white people and that it would be at odds with the ideals of the constitution.
It is uncomfortable for many people to accept reality because it shatters the fantastical American mythos, the founding fathers, and other prominent leaders in the United States, but there was no excuse for supporting racism.
The folks at This is White History kick off the beginnings of white history month.
Mark Aguhar (2011)
That feeling you get when you miss someone, you never even knew.
(Source: gimmeyourblank)
submitted by sonoftherifleman
So, this is the 2nd POC Problem that’s been posted by one of my FAVORITE Tumblr Blogs! This is really exciting!
It’s great to have an outlet for this kind stuff, outside of my own art practice. Although, considering the current direction my art is taking, instances such as these compel me to fuse art and life.
A BIG THANK YOU to the folks at POC Problems!
You can find my first submission here.
![offwhitelikeme:
[Reverse-Manifest Destiny, documentation, 2013]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/ce2c288487ad99538981114a859917d9/tumblr_mibyj9ZVCA1rhbyfio1_500.jpg)
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing on Donahue (by Duron Chavis)
Big fantasy. Dr. Frances Cress Welsing has the best definition and theory on the white supremacy of racism from the perspective of a psychiatrist
When watching this practice CRITICALLY looking at the audience and listen to the people who call in.
Fans of Son of the Rifleman should check out the line of inquiry I am currently following in my newest blog Off-white like me.
Off-white like me is an investigation of white-identification (within communities of color), color-blind racism and honorary whiteness.
Welcome to CubFluffer!
