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sleepynegress · 24 days

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*sigh* Featurism...

So, I woke up to this shit on the Twit app and I've only hit on this issue before, but today I'm digging in. Colorism is something that is not addressed often enough, but intersected within that and even more rarely spoken about, is the issue of featurism. The young actress above just got cast as Juliet in the latest big staged prestige production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland. And as usual the blue-checks, everybody else including "black", and even Black regulars are all-in on the cruelty.

...But I want to breakdown a nuance that is too often skipped over when this happens. The two people named with her, give away the featurism game, here; a particularly nasty form of often internalized racism. I guarantee if the young actress looked like this?

She'd definitely still get racist attacks, but the particularly nasty shit I'm seeing attacking her looks wouldn't come. In fact, I could see some people thinking they are defending her with "but she's pretty!" or more specific... "obviously she's mixed" comments. -Something pretty much every Black woman with features that don't align with a narrow perception of blackness hear often (and we'll get to why I specified women in a minute). And don't get it twisted...

These aren't exclusively nor standard white features either (see: the many ethnic features w/in white ethnic groups that also get hit to a lesser and non-racialized degree such as large "hook" and/or Romanesque noses for example, which is definitely about anti-semitism, anti-Romani sentiment, and other disparaged/discriminated against ethnic minorities in Europe) and yes, blue eyes are naturally occurring within non-mixed and dark-skinned Black people due to a mutation called Waardenburg syndrome. But there is a REASON why fetishizing even certain ethnic features within the African continental diaspora has been a thing for a long time...i.e. "the dopest Ethiopian" from the Tribe Called Quest lyric is pictured as this:

and this:

and not this:

...despite them all being Ethiopians of various tribal ethnicities.

A wide-nose, a tighter curl, coil, or zig-zag pattern of hair, fuller lips and often, but not always (because I've given examples above where features "mitigate" skin color) darker skin. Zendaya is grouped with Tracey and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, despite being both lighter in skin color and having a Black parent and a white parent because her nose isn't what has become the standard surgical look...that too many celebs have. This includes the ones who got so-called "ethnic" work or just a slight 'refinement'. No, her nose is born w/it, made for that good African air, as I call it. Nostrils prominent, nose bridge wide:

I went make-up free as well, because even make-up practices these days, go for that narrowing highlight technique i.e. just below it's subtle.

Sza is a an example of it taken to extremes, even with the Hollywood standard "ethnic" refinement she did get.

The thing is... I don't blame or attack her for that. Because you see above that is just a taste of what happens. Lil' Kim was relentlessly bullied by the men in her life for her ethnic features for her whole life...and that is why she is off-limits to this day for me when it comes to all the work she's had done.

...And this is where I explain why I specified men being mostly exempt. It's because "Blackness" including all the physical features associated with it, is by default masculinized. ...Which is why Idris Elba is considered one of the most handsome men in the world, w/o the caveats that even Lupita Nyong'o often gets. Nobody calls Samuel L. Jackson ugly. He is even idolized and fetishized by a specifically white male gaze for how culturally "Black" he is perceived to be for all the wrong reasons, his signature "motherfucka" for example (and I could go off on a whole other tangent here, but digressing). All this to say... Featurism sucks. It's not talked about enough. Blackness in all variations is Beautiful. Tracy Chapman looking as young she does?? Hell, mark it down to both her dark skin (a natural UV protector) and not messing with her given features (and being a lesbian, men will age you. lol -I got jokes-):

P.S. THANK GOODNESS for Tems and her rising prominence as a beauty as well:

P.P.S. Even Jay-Z the billionaire rapper has had the comments over the years about his lips and nose, hence that lyric in Beyonce's Formation.

#featurism #I only just scratched the surface #but man this shit needed to be scratched #colorism #racism #meta #tom holland #romeo and juliet #tracy chapman #lil kim #tems #jay z #sza #zendaya #francesca amewudah-rivers #francesca amewudah rivers

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spacelazarwolf · 9 months

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Can i ask why people seem to only refer to black and brown people? I'm east Asian, and it can feel kind of bad not really being included in the language surrounding talk about racism. We're one of the groups that faces the most discrimination and hate crimes, especially with how covid started. Me and nearly every Asian person i know has faced racism over our lives and many of us have very pale skin. It feels very alienating to be, in a way, left out of the discussion. I understand that often we're included somewhat implicitly, but it doesn't look like it when the language doesn't represent it.

so before i get into it, i'm giving two caveats: 1. even though i'm jewish and my family and i have had a complicated history with being racialized as non white, i'm still racially white. so while i always try to take into account all the things that my family has experienced and that the people of color i know have taught me, that's still the individual perspective i'm speaking from. 2. i live in the us, so that's the culture and society i'm talking about. it may apply to different places in the west (or even outside the west idk) but it may not so like inb4 "#american centric" bc i am literally talking abt america.

re: your actual question of why people seem to only refer to black and brown people, i think it's mostly used to talk about issues that affect darker skinned people of color, but sometimes used as another variation of "people of color" that's meant to encompass all nonwhite people. i've definitely used it that way before without really thinking about it, but i can see how that could make groups who may not see themselves as being black or brown feel left out of a conversation that still absolutely pertains to them. i think we as a society are currently struggling with what vocabulary to use when we talk about racial issues. there's a bunch of different acronyms and phrases people use, and listing out all the different racial and ethnic groups we can think of always leaves someone out.

but i also think our struggles with vocabulary are caused in part by the way our view of race has become very black and white. especially when it comes to east asians, i think people fall way too easily for the model minority myth + think lighter skin = less oppression, so they think east asians don't need as much advocacy as other groups. but as you said, especially since covid, there's been a massive spike in anti asian racism, and that's something i don't think people are really taking seriously. there's this one scene in station 19 (cw for discussion of anti asian hate crimes) that i feel like addresses this so well. people are afraid to downplay the severity of anti black racism (which is understandable considering that anti black racism has been downplayed for hundreds of years), but they end up gaslighting other racial and ethnic minorities or even themselves about the other kinds of bigotry that exist. and as one of the characters states in the clip, "it's all bad."

and like, as a jewish person, i definitely feel a lot of solidarity with east asians because our struggles are dismissed in similar ways. for those of us who are light skinned, we're often told (in my experience, usually by non black people) that basically our skin is too light for people to care because "black people have it worse." people use any success our communities have had as a reason why what we experience Can't Possibly Be That Bad. but what they're missing is that it's all connected. the same people who are perpetuating anti blackness are likely perpetuating anti asian racism and antisemitism too. you can't get rid of anti black racism without dismantling white supremacy, and part of dismantling white supremacy is addressing anti asian racism and antisemitism. we can't just keep hacking away at one brick and expect the entire wall to come down. we have to bulldoze it all.

#ask avishai

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neon-junkie · 3 years

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Hey everyone,

This will be my final post addressing the fandom conflict that has quite frankly gotten out of hand. Although it’s very likely this post will be picked apart, no matter how well intended it is, I will no longer be addressing, interacting, or responding to any further accusations made against me. Of course, if people have questions from a genuine place of interest, I will be happy to clarify anything for you, either via DM’s or non-anon asks. I will not be answering anonymous asks on this, as I do not want anything else posted on this topic.

As a side note: For anyone tempted to wade into the debate, I sincerely ask you not to get involved. Do not make yourself a target, do not feel you need to ‘pick a side’, and please do not think you have an obligation to reason with either side. It seems to be well past the point of that, so please find people you get along with in this fandom and curate a space for yourself away from all this conflict.

Warning: This post will contain uncensored slurs, mentions of racism, paedophilia, transphobia, LGBTQ+ phobia, death threats, threats of violence, targeted harassment, and abusive language.

To start off, I want to apologise to everyone who has somehow gotten drawn into this mess by either defending me, following me, or interacting with my content. This whole situation with me began well over a year ago when I wrote a crack-smut fic featuring Javier/Micah, posted back in August 2019. A crack fic is defined as “a work of fan fiction that is absurd, surprising or ridiculous, often intentionally.” It was inspired by a camp interaction between Micah and Javier, and like many other fanfiction writers, I decided to write smut about it. The fic was titled ‘Dirty Fucking Greaser’, and if that shocks you, I’m sure you can imagine how shocked I was to be informed afterwards that ‘Greaser’ was in fact a very serious 19th century slur for a Mexican individual. My first encounter with this word as insult was via RDR2, where it was used like a very casual insult. My only prior knowledge of this term was in regards to the greasers youth subculture, so the severity was lost on me. This obviously does not excuse my ignorance, and I should have researched the term better, but this is just again to apologize for that oversight, the insensitivity, and to highlight that my use of this term was not meant maliciously. Following this being pointed out, I proceeded to make 3 separate apology posts [Unfortunately I can only find the third one: HERE], renamed the fic, and added slur warnings in both the tags and the fic description. When I continued to receive complaints and increasingly aggressive abuse (which included being told my apologies weren’t good enough and I should delete my account and even kill myself), I attempted to delete the fic and mistakenly abandoned it instead. I contacted AO3 to see if it could be removed, but they said there was nothing they could do. I contacted their DMCA takedown team, who also said they couldn't remove it. Please note that all this happened 7-8 months ago, and has been dragged on for almost a year.

So, from this one unfortunate incident, I’ve been branded a racist, and someone who attacks POC, when all I have done is tried to defend myself and correct my past mistakes. I could have done this more gracefully in the past, but frankly when you’re suddenly the target of unrelenting callout posts and nasty anons, it’s very hard to be open to criticism of this sort, but this is what I’m trying to move past.

Over the course of the year, this one mistake has spiralled, and the crusade against me has somehow coincided with moral conflicts over certain characters and ships. This has devolved into dehumanizing abuse, witch hunts, death threats, doxxing, anon hate, and much more unpleasant behaviour.

I have been in fandom for a very long time, and at the heart of all fandom circles is the fear of censorship and subsequent purges, so the ‘ship and let ship’ mentality was more or less the pinnacle of fandom philosophy. And yes, this can be problematic in some contexts. People have their right to be uncomfortable with content, have a right to be offended by content, but that is not content meant for you. This argument has devolved into ‘what material is morally right to engage with’ and that is a mentality in which fandom will not survive, because for every person who is telling me I’m an awful person for writing about Micah, there are three other people telling me how much they appreciate me making that content. For every fic in which I characterize Javier and Flaco a certain way, some people are made uncomfortable by it and others tell me they enjoy it. And this isn’t just white people, but POC too, which makes it very difficult to know whether I am genuinely in the right or the wrong, especially when it comes to the concept of ‘fetishization’ which I have been made aware I need to educate myself on. I intend to do so, but I disagree with the common accusation that finding non-white men romantically and sexually attractive is inherently fetishistic and makes me racist. It’s pushing a catch-22; don’t find POC sexually attractive? Racist. Find POC sexually attractive? Racist.

I am always willing to be (politely) approached about anything my readers may be concerned about, but if it’s something I’ve specifically tagged for (such as themes, scenarios, etc.) I’m afraid you consented to reading it and with that I cannot help you. You are just as responsible for curating your space and what you see/read just as much as I am responsible for tagging it appropriately.

On the topic of racism, I want to bring up my prior use of ‘white racism’ which has obviously been a point of contention among both white and people of colour. The (literal) black vs white concept of racism is incredibly American-centric, and as someone from Europe, which has a history of oppression against white cultures and those of people of colour, it feels inaccurate. However, this has recently been discussed with me and I came to the realization that while growing up, especially in the UK, ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ were marketed as one and the same. So, with this little revelation in mind, I will no longer be using ‘white racism’ (Or ‘reverse racism’) to identify the abuse I have been receiving, but will instead call it by what it really is; dehumanizing, debasing, xenophobic, puritanical.

Very briefly, I will also touch on the NewAustin situation, which has also been dredged into this. I did not ‘chase a POC from tumblr’. NA was a minor who for some reason was on my 18+ blog and took issue with me, likely from the ongoing discourse regarding my fic and initial mistake, as well as my interest in Micah. They were subsequently harassed into deleting their account by anonymous hate following various conflicts with other users for their support of me or their ships in general. I have never encouraged my followers to target anyone, and have always asked to be blocked and blacklisted by those who do not like me or my content. When NewAustin messaged me following the deletion of their blog, I was admittedly indifferent to the point of being unkind, and accused them of sending the hate themselves. This was based on the anon hate being racially-driven without there being any prior knowledge or publication that NA was a person of colour. This aside, I should have at the time, whether I believed it was my followers or not, condemned this behaviour. Regardless of the issues I’ve had with these people, it is never ever ok to send hate to anyone, no matter the motivation behind it, and that should have been stated at the time.

All I can do at this point is acknowledged and apologize for my past mistakes, and try to improve myself going forward.

It is not my place to dictate the morals of the character/ship-aspect of this argument, and I am not interested in waging a war of opinion. This post is simply to clarify how I am involved in this, and why I am so viscerally targeted. You can draw your own conclusions, but I am no longer interested in this endless back and forth.

To my mutuals/followers, I stand by my request to not interact and to block and move on, as this is what I’ll be doing too.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope it makes things from my perspective a little clearer.

-RAT <3

EDIT: Just after this post was made, the fic in question was finally removed. I had to go through a DMCA take down, which can take months, since I originally abandoned the fic, thinking that meant delete. I explain this in more detail above. Said fic is gone, and has been gone since this post has been around.

#the tea #apology #long post

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Is it valid to criticize the Witcher series for being very white and having little to no non white characters. Even though it comes from a Poland, a very white country by percentage. Yet not ok to give those criticizes to Japanese media for being the same way, just with Japanese characters? ect ect to any story coming from a country that is overwhelming dominated by 1 race. Something America does not fall under.

With the obligatory disclaimer that I'm definitely not the most informed on this topic, I think the concept of a fantasy series is a more important factor than the supposed percentage of any place. (And I say "supposed" because we tend to think of certain areas as more homogenous than they actually are.) Meaning, why do these statistics even matter? The Witcher is a series where dwarves, elves, and human-looking dragons roam the world... but suddenly we care about presumed realism when we're talking about black characters, or other racial minorities? When it comes to fantasy, the problem has always been that it's fantasy; that authors imagine wonderful, impossible, highly diverse worlds... that just happen to not include anyone with darker skin. Same with Japanese media, which we generally think of in terms of manga and anime. If you take something like BNHA, this isn't a tale meant to reflect real Japanese school students, in which we might discuss the expected, racial makeup of a modern student body. This is a story about a classroom filled with kids that have tails, horns, make things float, and ignite the sweat in their hands. But again, in that wealth of insanity the idea of including non-white characters is suddenly off the table due to statistics? To say nothing of the global readership for popular stories nowadays and the major themes these fantasy series tend to engage with, one of which is the concept of the outsider. The Witcher uses both witchers themselves and non-humans to discuss minorities, whereas BNHA uses the lack of a quirk, and though we can apply that to numerous types of identity (sexuality, ableism, etc.) race is another, major consideration. So yes, I'm personally critical of any series that essentially goes, "I, like pretty much any author, wrote this with the hope that people outside my country would love it too, it's a fantasy series in which the concept of humanity is stretched to its limit, I engage critically with the themes of discrimination and physical difference... but no, none of my characters are people of color. Why would they be?"

Obviously you're quite right that the racial politics in the U.S. are not the racial politics of elsewhere in the world and that absolutely has to be taken into account when discussing each individual text. For example, the Witcher Netflix series has been criticized for being too Americanized, despite claims that they were going to be faithful to the books and their roots, and so though fans are happy that diversity has been added to the cast, we could have a conversation about what making the show more Polish would look like — including casting. But on the whole, I'm not sold by arguments that series don't need diversity because look, we (again, supposedly) have this homogenous society in real life. A story — especially a fantasy story — is not real life. It's meant to reflect aspects of real life in a manner that is accessible and worthwhile for an audience. But for a huge chunk of the world's audience, they're approaching these texts and receiving the message that they don't get to be a part of these fantasy adventures. To provide an example of the reverse, many white gamers were incredibly uncomfortable when it was revealed that their randomized avatar in Rust would be permanent. How can the developers expect me, a white person, to play someone who is black? How are we supposed to relate to that? Why are you forcing us to think about politics? It's about freedom of choice! Now, putting aside the inherent issues in those complaints — an inability to identity with others, the idea that it's only "making things political" when people of color get involved, etc. — that's precisely what every non-white player is experiencing when they pick up The Witcher 3 — a game where I can't think of a single person of color until Hearts of Stone — and, you know, the vast majority of games out there too. If all things were equal then yeah, maybe we could debate the merits of keeping the Polish fantasy series almost exclusively white. But we definitely don't live in that world.

#witcher #BNHA #My Hero Academia #racism

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puppyluvstummies · 3 years

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hey hunnies, thanks for checking out my blog! you can call me peanut, please read this before following or messaging me!

🍄 you must be 18+ to interact with me! if you’re under 18, you’re getting BLOCKED. if you don’t have your age in your bio, you’re getting BLOCKED. i do not want to interact with anyone who might be a minor, please respect that.

🍄 yes, this is a kink blog for feedism. if that grosses you out, kindly just leave, block me if you want.

🍄 if i reblog something from you and you want it removed for whatever reason, please let me know and i’ll take it down asap

🍄 i’ll generally only post/reblog sfw kink content. if something involves s*x/n*dity, it’ll be tagged #nsfw

🍄 i am a fat admirer/feeder, i am not a feedee.

🍄 i am a bisexual enby. my pronouns are they/them only, even if i refer to myself as a girl from time to time (for convenience, gender is confusing). if i think you’re a sexist, homophobe, or transphobe, kindly choke 💕

🍄 i am black!! if i think you are a racist, meaning you support/excuse racism, do not support BLM or ACAB, don’t care about racial injustice, or fetishize black people (with terms like ebony, cocoa, chocolate, etc) kindly choke 💕

🍄 this is a soft(er) feedism blog. just because it is a kink doesn’t mean it can’t still be consensual, respectful and body positive. death feedism, glorification of eating disorders, fatphobia, fetishizing obesity-related illnesses (diabetes, heart attacks, etc), degradation of any kind, and non-consensual fat shaming (including pig/cow play) are not allowed here. i don’t have beef with death feedism, just not into it myself.

🍄 i’m not into immobility or serious mobility issues. i am not into vore. i am not into scat. i am not into harsh/intense bd//sm. i am not into dd//lg or adjacent kinks. all of these, though i have no problem with them, turn me off. just because it’s your kink doesn’t mean it’s mine. post what you want, but please keep it on your blog

🍄 this blog may have some pet play as well. while i am not necessarily a furry, furries are absolutely welcome on this blog! i am not into age play or age regressing but it doesn’t bother me and is also welcome. z**philia, b**stiality and p*dophilia are absolutely not welcome and you will be blocked. all pet play fantasies are between consenting adult humans only.

🍄 fetishizing candid photos of fat people just existing without their consent is gross

🍄 editing photos of people without their consent is gross

🍄 stealing content from models/content creators is gross (i try to check before posting but if i accidentally/unknowingly rb stolen content, pls lmk!!)

🍄 drawing kink art of real people without consent or minors, fictional or not, is gross

🍄 i personally do not like feedist discussions with people i don’t know. i’m not interested in being anyone’s feeder unless we have an actual relationship (platonic or romantic). if you want to chat with me, please do not assume i want to see your belly/genitals. we can talk, but that’s it unless we come to know each other a bit more. i may be open to rp with or without ocs

🍄 i’m often busy with school or work; pls don’t expect me to respond right away. if i don’t respond ever, do yourself a favor and take the hint ♥️

🍄 if you are a cishet man, do not message me. follow, reblog, even comment, but do not dm me, i will not respond. yes, i’m still bisexual. no, i don’t wanna tease you or sext you or date you or meet you. i’ve had too many bad experiences with y’all and i’m over it. ♥️

tl;dr i just want this blog to be a respectful, safe space to express this kink. always keep in mind that there are human beings on the other end of what you post and we all just want to have a good time horny-posting. thanks for reading, loves!!

#non kink #about me

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coraxaviary · 3 years

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An Essay on POC and Fics

[ORIGINALLY A WRITER ASK GAME]: Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

(AKA me explaining in long-form why June is white, complete with some drama and a lot of rambling. Do not feel obligated to read).

I’ve never talked about this extensively, but I want to discuss ethnic minority OFCs in fics. Specifically, SiA. I originally was going to make June partially nonwhite. And I ran into problems.

I really found myself worrying about relatability. If a character is POC, I thought it would ruin immersion for people who are looking for an OFC fic to lose themselves in. It’s no secret that I’m Asian-American, and I was originally all for making the character part Asian. It’s ironic that I was worried about immersion when outside of fic spaces, I argue unendingly for Asians to be cast as leads and stereotype-defying roles. Because any POC is also just a person who can be as “relatable” as any white character, theoretically. I feel a little hypocritical, but at the same time it’s true.

When I watched The Walking Dead, Glenn was my absolute favorite. Because he was Korean-American. And for the first time, I watched a major (Asian!) character in a show become hailed as a man defined not by his race, but for his achievements and his personality. If Glenn was white, he still would’ve been one of my favorites. But seeing Asians portrayed as... normal people shouldn’t be this rare. However, it is, at least in mainstream America.

The issue with creating POC characters is racism. That’s always the issue, isn’t it? Racism has been ingrained into every system and cultural dynamic, globally. The remnants of colonialism are alive and well, and the treatment of POC people, generally, is far from sterling.

Thus it became almost impossible for me to justify creating an Asian-American (or, for that matter, any other POC) OFC. They would be defined by race, because back in the 40s, any American ethnic minority had no choice but to be characterized by their appearance. It still happens today. And I wanted the focus to be on humanity, war, bonds, and gender. Not race, because race is unpleasant to talk about. It wouldn’t be fun for me to be researching 1940s race discrimination to create a character who must overcome that too. I’m not looking to undergo an identity crisis in the pursuit of a fic aimed at social justice. I just want to write something fun.

Fic is created, many times, by minority groups, including POC. However, like any institution, it’s white-centric. And I don’t fault it for that. Most media in the mainstream is white-centric and thus it makes perfect sense for the works created based on the material to be also that way. But I felt like I was betraying myself by writing fic and not taking a chance to diversify the narrative.

Because if a significant part of my irl advocacy is attempting to champion race diversity, and I don’t take that chance in the fandom space, am I a hypocrite?

The fault of this culture, and this struggle, is not with me. It’s with the centuries and ages of oppression and typecasting and discrimination in the pages of world history. It’s unavoidable.

However, to be kind of frank, it sucks to have to consider these things when all I wanna do is write a self-indulgent narrative about WWII boyfriends. I want to just be myself and imagine a fun time with my favorite characters. But I know, deep down, that anyone who is not white would not have been accepted into the group. I decided to just circumvent all these problems by writing a white character.

And it’s not true to the narrative if I wrote a POC OFC and then bent all the other characters OOC and forced them to be non-problematic. Because I know, regrettably, that the norm back then (and still in some areas) is casual racism. It was only 1948 when the American Army officially desegregated. You can watch The Pacific for yourself and find out what the Americans called Japanese people. The racial slurs, I’ll admit, made me uncomfortable despite how much I love the series. Army culture in the 40s towards a woman who is also a racial minority would have been egregious. And that’s not fun to write about in a fic.

I can’t not think about race -- not forever, at least. I don’t have that luxury. I do acknowledge that I, as an Asian-Amerian, benefit from a white-centric culture that has designated us (condescendingly) as a “model minority” and as an exception race. Systemic racism is less impactful towards Asians. This is, however, not to discount the terrible history of Asian-American discrimination that is not immediately apparent (I have been told that not everyone is educated of the existence of the Japanese-American internment or other examples of irrefutable discrimination). There is history in my family of experiencing both ends of the Asian-American experience: as a “model” and also discriminated against as a perceived threat (or a scapegoat, if you will, for the Vietnam war and other matters).

I went through a phase (as many American POC do) of wanting to be white when I was very young. I don’t know exactly why. Is it because the American identity is so deeply rooted in the striking visual of the white settler, despite the deep history of the continent in indigenous people? Is it because diversity is (or was) not common in the mainstream -- when we didn’t have people like Glenn at the forefront of media representation but instead had stereotyped caricatures like Mr. Yunioshi? I didn’t know what it meant to be beautiful back then unless the portrait was of caucasian features. I have a distinct memory of complaining to my mother when I was about five or six years old that I didn’t like my black hair, and I think my way of thinking unconsciously had to do more with my Asian heritage than the actual color. I cannot tell you honestly what specifically caused this type of thinking, but it’s more widespread than you’d think among POC children.

So this is why I am a POC and yet I choose to write a white protagonist. Historical fiction always contains complexities: decisions that must be made with the wisest discernment that I don’t feel like I can always make. History is a burden upon us all. The present will never be free of the past, and it’s our job as writers to navigate the gray patches between interpretation and accurate portrayal. Sometimes it seems like an insurmountable task, and sometimes it’s as if I can forget about my POC-ness altogether and lose myself in my OFC without thinking about heritage or discrimination.

But here we are, writing fanfiction of WWII heroes who come from a different time and a different era.

It had to have felt different back then, don’t you think? When I think of the forties, I think of patriotism and B-24s and victory; I think of a feeling of hope tinged with despair. I think of radios and dance halls and tragic heroes and the glory of soldiers dropping from the sky, backlit like angels and tasked with democracy and hope and things that are right and true. I think of a time where Americans united for good.

But this is a glamorized version of history. It’s the enjoyable version, we all know. And it genuinely consisted partially of these snippets of greatness, but there was a larger part that lay, vast, underneath the golden panorama that sometimes we forget about. And I think the WWII fic-writing community is keenly conscious of this aspect. I see it in the writing that we all so lovingly produce: a lot of us understand, at least on a surface level, that war is not glamorous and that the times were still as turbulent as they are today.

It’s something we all must grapple with.

And this, in a slightly dramatic fashion, is my personal conflict of being a person of color, and choosing to write a white character for the sake of joy and fun.

Thank you for reading if you got to the end! I love you all :)

(Partially inspired by this post by @rhovanian, but mostly my own ruminations based on the brief time I have existed on this earth).

#not writing #SiA #literally an essay idk

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belonglab · 3 years

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Dispelling Myths: Model Minorities and Meritocracy as Sources of Harm and Hierarchy

by Neha Sampat

May 25, 2021

The Model Minority Myth lauds Asian-Americans as somehow superior to other minorities and parades them as proof of meritocracy and the American Dream: If you work hard, you will succeed. In doing so, the Myth creates a false racial hierarchy, placing Asian-Americans right below White-Americans and above all other racial minorities, thereby serving as a tool of oppression of all other minorities, and more broadly, as a manifestation of White supremacy that harms all minorities, including Asian-Americans. It is a form of the colonial “divide-and-conquer” strategy of oppression that pits one minority group against the other to sustain the power and privilege of the colonizers. It plays out in its harm societally and personally, but it also causes tangible harm in the workplace and to different minorities in different ways as they navigate their careers and their lives.

Right from recruitment, the Model Minority Myth is used as a tool of oppression and exclusion. Whether intentional or unconscious, many organizations and recruiters are relieved to find Asian-American applicants because doing so allows them to “check the diversity box” without having to confront their own anti-Black, anti-Latinx, and/or anti-Indigenous bias. In this way, Asian-Americans sometimes are recruited as “diversity candidates” and showcased as “diversity hires” by organizations that are not truly diverse. And the idea of checking the diversity box of course means that this type of hiring of Asian-Americans is a form of tokenism, whereby the Asian-Americans hired are not valued for their unique skillsets, experiences, and perspectives, but are valued merely for their identities as Asian-Americans and the optics they provide, which ends up stifling their authentic engagement in their work. Then of course, the employment data showing greater employment of Asian-Americans than other racial groups, perpetuates the Myth itself: “Well, see, these Asians have no problem finding a job; why can’t other minorities be more like them?”

The Model Minority Myth also plays out in a negative way for minorities once they are in their jobs, particularly when it comes to career advancement and monetary valuation. The Myth requires Asian-Americans to play by the rules and not step outside the lines: Be happy with what you’re given; don’t ask for more. We see the negatives impacts of this on Asian-Americans play out when it comes to raises, in that Asian-Americans are the least likely among racial groups to ask for raises, and when broken down by gender, Asian-American women, specifically, are the even less likely. In fact, one study found that white men are 1.8 times more likely to ask for a raise than Asian-American women!

In my experience as an Asian-American woman who has worked specifically with Asian-Americans in their career development, it is fairly clear that Asian-Americans (and even moreso, Asian-American women) are socialized to be agreeable and not rock the boat, which gives us approval as “model minorities.” I’ve experienced this myself: Asking for a raise always felt to me like rocking the boat. It felt risky and, based on how I’ve been excluded in the past due to my race, I rightfully feared that I would be the one to fall overboard.

The Model Minority Myth also negatively impacts all minorities when it comes to promotion. Bolstered by the stereotype that Asians are hard and good workers, an Asian-American may get that promotion over the equivalently or even more qualified Black-American. That is an example of how Asian-Americans are positioned as a “wedge” between White-Americans and other minority races. However, Asian-Americans still hit a leadership ceiling at some point, with Asian-American white-collar workers being the least likely among racial groups to be promoted into management positions, and with White professionals about two times as likely to get promotions into management than Asian-Americans. Asian-Americans are allowed (and in fact are expected) to be good, but they are not allowed to be the best. They are allowed to follow, but not allowed to lead.

I’ve seen this mentality play out firsthand, even in the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) field, with the role of leadership being reserved for White people and with Asian-Americans being looked to as great soldiers and followers. I can’t tell you how many times I have been approached by White colleagues and fellow business owners, asking me to join their teams and support their missions because they “need more diversity” on their teams. This is a double whammy because I’m being tokenized for optics reasons while also being expected to be a good soldier for them, the leader. Unfortunately, it has been a rarer occasion when I’ve been approached by White colleagues asking how they can support my ideas for equity and inclusion and support my mission; how they can follow my lead.

This dynamic is not just limited to Asian-Americans (although Asian-Americans may feel uniquely pressed by their role as “model minorities” to go along with it). After the murder of George Floyd and the reignition of the racial justice movement, I noticed a surge in White-led racial justice and inclusion initiatives, which would not be so awful if many of these initiatives were not already being implemented and led by our Black sibling experts in this space. Instead of throwing their weight, power, resources, and privilege behind the great work already being done by Black experts, some were entering the space to replicate what had already been done and receive credit for it. White supremacy teaches White people that they are the leaders by default, and this plays out even in the DEIB field, oftentimes with many subconsciously perpetuating it.

In my work focusing on internalized bias, I also see the Model Minority Myth being internalized to the detriment of Asian-Americans: The Model Minority Myth sets up an unbending expectation that Asian-Americans excel, and the buy-in to the Myth of Meritocracy sets Asian-Americans up to believe that when they don’t excel, it is because they somehow underperformed or didn’t work hard enough. So when Asian-Americans don’t excel, they may feel like epic failures. There is no space for Asian-Americans who falter and thereby disrupt the hierarchy, and that lack of space feeds the invisibility of Asian-Americans when they don’t meet the impossible pressures for performance or when they disrupt stereotypes about their group. There is a set space carved out for Asian-Americans in the racial hierarchy, and if they don’t do what it takes to get into and stay in that space (no matter whom they have to step on and how they have to alter themselves), they belong nowhere.

Sadly both myths (Model Minority and Meritocracy) feed Imposter Syndrome in the Asian-American community. Imposter Syndrome is the false narrative that one is not good enough for the work one is doing or wants to be doing, combined with a fear of being discovered as a fraud. Although Imposter Syndrome is commonly experienced by all races, it runs rampant in the Asian-American community uniquely as a result of the external pressure the Model Minority Myth puts on Asian-Americans to achieve, excel, check all the boxes, and abide by all the rules, setting Asian-Americans up to constantly feel like they are coming up short. This can sow the seeds of self-doubt in their minds, which then grow and flower into anxiety and a constant drive towards perfectionism, all of which can result in self-sabotage and underperformance (reinforcing the false narrative) and can fuel significant mental health issues.

Thus, the Model Minority Myth and the connected Myth of Meritocracy cause tangible harm to non-Asian minorities in America as well as to Asian-Americans themselves. Too many among my Asian-American community have bought into the myths and thus become pawns of our White supremacist system. They are unable or unwilling to see the falsity of the myths and the harm caused to other minorities, and clearly, unable to see the harm caused to the Asian-American community itself. The harm is fact, while “model minorities” and “meritocracy” are fiction. Only by facing the harsh truth can we dispel these myths and disengage from the system of White supremacy that oppresses all minorities, including the so-called “model” ones.

#model minority #aapihm #aapi heritage month #diversity #diversity and inclusion #bias #white supremacy #racism #belonging #inclusion #meritocracy #model minority myth #critical race theory #asian american #workplace #tokenism

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evilelitest2 · 4 years

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Why do fascists hate capitalism?

Good question. About half the reasons they hate capitalism are the same reason most leftist do, bad people are still likely to be annoyed at a bad thing that hurts them. Here are the other reasons

1) Fascists don’t believe in social mobility. Capitalism core tenant is “social mobility’, that somebody can work hard and become a billionaire, blah blah blah. Now this focus on social mobility is and always has been mostly a lie, but even rhetorically capitalism values the notion of social advancement. fascists do not, in fascist ideology, your birth determines your place in the world, and is part of a “natural order”. The only way to improve yourself is through war, and even that is more fulfilling your existing destiny rather than creating your own. Thus Fascists despises any form of social advancement outside military leadership, which is a major reason why they hate liberalism, socialism and communism, but its also a reason why they hate capitalism (though they usually prioritize the left wing ideologies first). This is even more true for them when somebody they think is “inferior” advances ‘above their station. Fascists aren’t aristocratic, but they hate capitalism for much of the same reason that the feudal aristocrats and monarchs hated it. It brings change and challenges the caste system

(Speaking of which)

2) On that note, capitalism is rarely…ideologically racist. Now capitalism is racist, it promotes and enforces existing racial hierarchies, and much of the damage of colonialism can be laid at the feet of capitalism. However capitalist ideology rarely buys directly into blood purity or “The Volk” style race theory that fascists so love. Capitalism in the US makes it super difficult for a black man to advance compared to his white counterpart, but if a black man does manage to become a billionaire, capitalism is basically cool with it. If you look at a demographic breakdown of the 1%, it is mostly old white men (and almost all people who at least partially inherited their wealth) but it also includes a lot of non white people and women. its a minority and many of them come from dictatorships (Saudi Arabia, China ect) but the ‘richest people in the world club isn’t entirely monochromatic. To leftists, this doesn’t seem especially impressive, but to fascists it is way too much diversity. Because capitalism is at its heart…amoral, the system will keep going even if the 1% are majority non white, gay or women, but to fascists that is terrifying. they barely tolerate capitalism because the ruling class are mostly straight white dudes, but the thought of the ruling class not overlapping with their belief in racial science to them is terrifying

3) Capitalism is ultimately an amoral system. It doesn’t really believe in a larger ideology beyond “make a fuck ton of money” and “innovate…somehow.” It does evil things because it believes that doing so will make them money, if doing the right thing will make them more money, they will. Capitalism is just an utterly mercenary ideology, and will gladly pretend to support progressive causes if it turns a profit. Again, leftists (rightly) aren’t big fans of this, but fascists hate it for the same reason we do honestly.

Like you know the whole “Woke capitalism” thing that gets leftists worked up. its doing something good but you know they don’t care and so they will abandon us the moment they feel like they can get away with it and all that. That is how fascists feel about the racism in capitalism, they like it but because it is not ideological, they don’t trust it.

Again this seems weird to leftists, but yes, fascists don’t like capitalism because it isn’t racist enough. We tend to interact with capitalism more than fascism, so people often don’t realize how much worse it can get

4) Capitalism doesn’t care about the spiritual, except as something to sell. ironically for all the hatred capitalism and communism have for each other, the two ideologies actually share a lot in common, they are super secular, materialist, and basically assume that everything in the world is nothing more than simply products. Communists and capitalists disagree on what should be done with these goods, but neither of them believe there is anything beyond this world.

Fascists utterly reject this world view, they hate it, they hate it with a thousand suns. I know that there current image is a sort of ironic racism chanboard nonsense, but in terms of their actual beliefs, Fascists take everything super seriously. The entire argument of Nazism is that they value symbols more than actual human life, and they are fiercely attached to various “spiritual” political issues even if they are officially atheists. I mean capitalism doesn’t give a damn about “degeneracy” because it isn’t actually a material thing, its just an aesthetic preference, there is no like “measurement” of degeneracy. same goes for honor, the family, purity, and their approach to art, fascism is in many ways about finding meaning in otherwise mundane things. So at fascist rally to them is this transcendental almost religious experience, while a capitalist would be more It interested in trying to find a way to make money off it. Fascism is a highly Romantic movement, which doesn’t play well with the cynical wordy perspective of capitalists, who believe in nothing.

Fascists also dislike aristocracy, but they love the myth and romance that is necessary for aristocracy and monarchy. They basically want aristocracy of the skin.

5) Fascists kinda…hate the idea of money. Like Capitalism emerged from the merchant classes and is basically came about with the argument “all of your aristocratic concerns over honor, titles, and god are stupid, what matters is who has the money and how you use it” And Fascists just hate that worldview, one of their defining traits is their love of war and conflict, in fact fascists prioritize war over almost everything else. It has been noted by smarter men than I (I recommend Ur Fascism) that Fascism is basically a death cult, they want effectively an endless war that they can die gloriously in destroying their enemies.

Consistently by the way, fascists will prioritize destroying the people they see as inferior over securing their own material best interest. Hitler probably could have run his dictatorship in Germany on his own for quite a long time and lived in luxury, but he wanted a giant war because that is what they care about.

in fact actively seem to indulge in self destructive short term ideologies. The Nazi economic policy was an absolute joke, with the economy serving as nothing more than something to keep the war effort going. Stephen Miller, the most fascist like person in trump’s administration, is hyper fixated on a brutal immigration policy, even though it actually hurts the economy. Fascists oppose freedom of movement and free trade, even though those are policies neoliberal capitalism supports. The reason is that Fascists value the preservation of “The Volk” over profits, and would rather their people suffer than have to live alongside other races (these people are deeply stupid)

6) Fascism doesn’t enjoy having fun. I know for most of, our experience of capitalism is misery as we work, to earn the right to work, to earn the right to give, ourselves the right to buy, ourselves the right to live, to earn the right to die. However the way that capitalism sells itself is basically “buy lots of shit and that will make yourself happy”.

Fascism doesn’t really…like being happy. As i said before, they like war, they like conflict, they like having an enemy who they can destroy. To fascists, what matters most is how you kill and how you die, rather than enjoying life. Fascism is about fetishistic death. Pink Floyd was right that Fascism is almost a form of intellectual suicide.

If you look at Japanese fascism, there is big fixation on aesthetic purity focus, with the only thing mattering being conflict

7) Capitalism tends to value the urban, the industrial, and the technology, while fascists, like the Confederates before them, are enamored with the rural and the pre-industrial. This might seem surprising, but there are a lot of fascists who are into environmentalism, Nazis Germany was one of the first states to pass laws banning animal cruelty and limiting smoking. Fascists are really into this sort of “Clean earth, clean people’ aesthetic which always serves as the breeding ground for cruelty.

8) Capitalism tends to be leery of state control and fascists are all about that shit

9)Finally….we need to be frank. A lot of the ways we talk about anti capitalism actually can fit really nicely into the antisemitic narratives that so dominated fascist thinking.

so the Marxist says

“Hey the entire world is controlled by a tiny elite of rich greedy parasites who are making us fight each other in order to benefit themselves”

And the Fascist says

“Yeah….they are Jewish”

its actually really hard to depict the rich as a class without accidentally wandering into anti Jewish sentiments, because the last 2,000 years of anti Jewish racism has been about creating conspiracy theories where they secretly control the entire world. A lot of what fascism does is taking existing issues of capitalism and being like “oh yeah…that is the fault of the Jews. Or migrants/African Americans/Muslims/feminists ect. Gamergate is a good example of this, they are pissed at corporations, but they blame feminists rather than you know…the inherently predatory nature of capitalism. Many of the things we don’t like about capitalism are things they also don’t like about capitalism. This is a major thing they do in terms of recruiting, they focus on getting people pissed at capitalism but then make it be secretly run by Jews rather than you know..Jeff Bezos.

(nazi properganda and below are soviet Images of capitalism )

(and sometimes both)

This is why btw, I am less anti capitalist than most leftists, because talking to fascists makes you appreciate things about them. Hitler was destroyed by both a communist dictatorship and a capitalist democracy working together.

Its worth noting that while fascists do hate capitalism, they hate socialism a lot more, and tend to ally with capitalist to kill leftists, as we see from the Weimar Republic. Fascist are often ok with certain types of corporate authoritarianism, but in the same way the left can be ok with somebody like Obama.

(Frank Miller’s Batman is if Libertarian and Fascism had a baby)

The lesson I would take from this is that just because somebody hates the thing you hate, doesn’t mean they are necessarily your ally, they might in fact be even worse. Yet another reason to distrust the dirtbag left

#ask EvilElitest #Fascism #capitalism #adam Smith #Communism #Marxism #Nazism #Political theory #Liberalism #Imperial Japan #Nazi Germany #Fascist Italy #Alt Right #Gamergate #Dirtbag left

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electricprincess96 · 3 years

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I, an asian american, was thinking about the phrase "You can't be racist again white people."

It really means, any racism again whites in white dominated/colonized countries* are comparatively insignificant and not part of any bigger ongoing issue.

In a white dominated society (like the US), non-asians can definitely be racist against asians.

In some counties like Japan, South Korea, and China, that's a different story. In those places, we'd call it xenophobia, but the definition doesn't always include non-asians who are born there.

When american says "black people can't be racist", they usually overlook the existence of other races when blurting that out, which is understandable because of America's horrific history with slavery and Jim Crow. It's a really big deal.

*A lot of countries have a minority majority, where the white minority generally have higher privilege than the native majority.

I'll be honest I just don't like this overall line of thinking. Institual racism isn't the same as an individual being racist. The UK is a majority white country yet in 2004 a young white boy (he was 15) was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a gang of Pakistani boys as "an example of what can happen to white boys in their area", now yes it was gang related but it was racially motived too and those people who kidnapped, tortured and murdered a 15 year old boy just because he was white were racists and were charged as such (although some fled to Pakistan and the media never fully covered the case so as to not stir up backlash towards the Pakistani Community). Like that white boy was a victim of a racially motivated hate crime and murder even though he lived in Scotland which was like upwards of 80% (probably more but I don't have the exact figures) white.

So this overall line of thinking I just don't agree with. Anyone can be racist. Institual Racism is different yes, that requires power and numbers behind it but an individual person can be racist to any other race regardless of what country they are in if the reason for their hatred is entirely motived by the colour of the other person's skin. Xenophobia is specifically related to hatred of someone because of their country of origin, but not necessarily their skin colour ie. Two white Europeans from different countries could be xenophobic towards each other but as they are both white they aren't necessarily being racist in the commonly uses sense of the word. Likewise Chinese vs Japanese would be Xenophobia in the traditional sense of the word.

Also don't come at me with the power + privilege or whatever it is definition bullshit, I've heard it before and I don't agree with it, its basically trying to give some people an excuse to be hateful towards other people. If you hate someone because they are a specific race, whatever race that may be and whatever race you may be, that's racist.

#princess answers asks #anon #racism tw

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briek58454521 · 3 years

Text

Let’s rant about bigotry in media and fake allies.

.Look. I get it. You want to believe that your cartoons, media and celebs are completely perfect darlings that can do no wrong, but let me be frank. I don’t care how much you don’t want to talk about it. I care about the creators who keep inviting the discourse their way through their idiocy. Whenever a creator gets in trouble for doing shit like making jokes about slave hats on a live stream, or including a blackface caricature in an art book, or killing off their gays the very episode they come out or are introduced, there’s always a subset of people who say shit like, “it was a mistake, they didn’t mean it. It kinda gives us as a leftist community a bad name when we keep attacking each other like this”.

Let’s dismantle that. And let’s break this down in three basic points I’ll use throughout. 1. It is not your place to accept an apology that was not for you, especially when in regards to racism, sexism, anti-LGBTA+ bigotry, and anti-semitism. 2. We need to stop lumping in actual criticism with alt-right idiots being shitty about marginalized groups existing, because ultimately, infighting is not the end of the world, and disagreements are not inherently bad. They are a fact of life. 3. Most importantly of all, just because these people claim to be allies, that does not mean that they are. Because make no mistake. CARTOONS ARE NOT ANY LESS EFFECTED BY THE BIASES OF THE ENVIRONMENTS WHICH PRODUCED THEM THAN ANY OTHER WORK OF ART.

Now. Let’s break down that shit completely.

1. I used those examples as a jumping-off point, but in general, this shit always happens. A creator fucks up, they get criticism which was unquestionably earned, they get rightfully dragged, and the creator uses the backlash to garner sympathy from their audiences and paint their critics in a bad light and whine about Cancel Culture. NOW, I already talked about that in another post, but basically, it doesn’t exist, and is used as a weaponized shield from criticism.

Thing about all of that as well is when the creators keep bringing up how they didn’t mean it like that. Most people would answer this with, “doesn’t matter, what matters is what you did”, but there’s something else that people don’t talk about. This is usually a bunch of white people excusing this shit. Or otherwise, a bunch of people who weren’t actually affected by the latest controversy. And therein lies the rub. Allies, let me put it this way. WHEN THE SUBJECT OF THE CRITICISM IS ABOUT THE PORTRAYAL OF MINORITIES IN MEDIA, YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO EXPECT SAID MINORITIES TO FORGIVE THOSE CREATORS WHEN YOU WERE NOT AFFECTED BY IT.

Remember the Lana Del Rey controversy, where her dumbass ended up getting shit for her statement filled with venom towards other artists? Could have been cleared up if she had just accepted that she messed up and didn’t word her statement correctly, but no. She lashed out at the people who told her it was kinda racist to lump a bunch of black female artists into a conglomerate of artists who just, “twerk, cheat, have sex, and get money”, and dismissing feminism as needing to accommodate women “like her, who were more delicate”, perpetuating inadvertently to the idea that black women are less delicate, white women are petite, demure, and need to have a place above the others. AND LOOK, it’s how she responded that sealed it. Accusing her critics of being the actual racists, who hate women, and conflating the criticism with.....ugh....a FUCKING RACE WAR. Do I EVEN need to explain the problem with that?

The point is that it was idiotic of her to assume that she didn’t deserve the criticism because she “technically didn’t mean it”, when ultimately, she wasn’t the victim, she wasn’t the one who ACTUALLY got hurt by all of this, and that most of the criticism WAS NOT ANYWHERE NEAR as vitriolic as Lana accused it of being. And people do this to minorities all the fucking time. Where the praise for the work is what matters, but then they’re just upset and looking to be upset about things when they....sorry, when WE have shit to say about the fuckups. Constantly, minorities are expected to praise bare minimum bullshit lest we have self proclaimed “””””allies””””” get pissy that we aren’t playing along. Well, sorry, but, I think it be time to stop with that shit. It doesn’t matter how pure you think that person is. If the people who are the actual part of the controversy have shit to say about it, MAYBE LISTEN TO THEM instead of trying to force people to accept the apology that wasn’t even yours to accept, nor was it for you to shove in our faces to shut us up. And if you dislike that I’m saying that, just know. That’s exactly what you’re doing when you pull that shit.

2. As simply as I can put it, complaining about how a trans person is portrayed badly is not the same as complaining ABOUT the presence of a trans person, and to lump that shit onto the other pile is dishonest and willfully ignorant. When we keep getting upset about the tone, or upset about, “WAAAH, they said a me-no-like”, and lump that in with the actual facists looking to erase us from the history books, we are doing half of their job for them, and normalizing shit like what I saw the other day, where on Twitter, some asshole complained, “Anime is supposed to be an escape from reality. Adding black people to it kinda ruins the point.”

I’m gonna talk about it in the next point, but for now, understand this. NO ONE says shit like that just out of the blue without having it come from somewhere, and that attitude is all too prevalent.

In cartoons especially, criticism of the NB lizard from She-Ra is not being bigoted towards non-binary people, because the use of a fucking lizard to portray them is the ACTUALLY bigoted thing. And to lump in criticism of that with the criticism of She-Ra not being conventionally attractive enough for men to masturbate to the fucking minor is only going to long-term HARM any discourse. Because having these conversations as well as discussing these issues and educating each other about them is how we AVOID THEM. Criticism is not just a vector for asshole conservatives to be pissy about your existence. It’s also a veritable TREASURE TROVE for how not to fuck your shit up. And when we all get it, we learn. I get it, you don’t want to do shit wrong, but when you do, as everyone will, the backlash will burn itself out, and once you’ve fixed it, people will be very forgiving. Because, and it’s gonna sound mean....THAT’S HOW AUDIENCES WORK. THEY WANT TO FORGIVE YOU FOR WHEN YOU DO SHIT WRONG. So just...fix it. And listen. Yeah, you’ll get called stupid, you’ll get called “moron”, but you will have saved yourself from getting that shit ten times worse later on down the line. BEAR IN MIND, THOUGH, any of you already typing about how that’s enabling cyberbullying under the guise of critique, IT’S NOT. There’s a wealth of difference between the two, and trying to distract from the point with that is just a red herring. So stop with that.

And now....for the biggest one of all.

3. See...here’s the thing. About that anime douche. That doesn’t happen in JUST anime. It’s been around for decades, and has been a thing to this day. The WoW community got upset about womz being in power for the past 15 years, and have gotten on their high horse about black people being in the game, stating that if they were around sooner, maybe it wouldn’t, “SEEM TOO POLITICAL”, with that Asmongold jackass trying to start a second wave of GamerGate because one of the people at Blizzard said, “Black Lives Matter”. Fantasy as a genre has been so rooted in racism, that the inclusion of goblins for the most part is synonymous with anti-semitism towards Jewish people. Captain Marvel was pilloried for the past two years because the mean lady said that shit needs to change and wasn’t too nice, and also, me don’t like her too much. Basically, tone policing over a personality that we still give Howard Stern a platform for. In cartoons, the inclusion of black people is seen as an inherently political opinion. The rumors of Gen 6 Apple Jack possibly having a black voice actress prompted comments such as:

“The thiing with AJ is clearly anti-white/conservatist as a response to Trump America. What is opposite of country redneck female? Of course, and urban black woman.”

“It’s the fact that she’s black that bothers me.”

“Killing a blonde freckled Southern character for some political agenda is the last thing I want to see.”

The news of Velma Dinkley being gay was immediately pounced upon with shit about a homosexual agenda, and constant bullshit about how it was so forced, or whatever. This shit always happens, and is gonna keep happening. You know why?

Because the entertainment industry is not ready to accept minorities. The games industry is not ready to accept minorities. Cartoons are still not ready to accept minorities. They accept them for a moment, until those minorities challenge someone’s ego. Fans embrace a character until they’re a woman, or a POC, or on the spectrum, or LGBTA+. The existence of us is denigrating to these idiots’ escape, not from reality, but from us. It’s bad enough that they have to put up with us in the real world, but even worse that they have to see us in fictional shows that aren’t real.’ Us merely BEING AROUND is a bad thing, and to ask for some improvements is met with bemoaning about agendas.

Supposed allies begin and end their support with how much money we put in their wallets and how much we stroke their egos about how woke they are, and actual allies are lumped in with actual offenders. If we get upset that a show they’ve posited as so enlightening is actually the utter pits and not in any way healthy, they get upset. Tell a Reylo they’re shipping something toxic and dangerous, they’ll get upset and yell racial slurs at John Boyega for sitting next to Daisy Ridley. Say, “Fuck Arthas”, people get upset jump down your throat about how you hate forgiveness. Tell people that the Grinch ought not to be forgiven, people get upset you’re strawmaned about how you hate forgiveness.

They just don’t understand, or care about the essential fact about all of this. As I said earlier. The environments which produce the worst of offenders in these fields, and the problems we hate seeing so much are in no way less affected by the biases that they were cultivated by. And media has never been any more ready to accept minorities as people and as worthy of being portrayed as people than literally anywhere else right now. And speaking up about that is what gets these fake allies mad, especially when they LIKE the media. What makes these people so mad is not the troubling portrayal of POC, or women, or minorities. Not that we are routinely ostracized for existing in cartoons, not that this shit happens at all. They don’t give a flying fuck about any of that. It’s the thing that they have to put up with as a result of that that makes them the most upset.

Criticism. And they don’t like that.

And no matter whether or not these cartoons are made by bootlickers, or this movie was made by a TERF, or if this creator has a history of blackface, racism, or has made garbage statements about women, if you aren’t nice and considerate enough towards their feelings, you’ll make them, and us, the allies, feel uncomfortable. NO DWAMA, just not too divisive feedback that’s ultimately worthless as it was made purely to try to appease idiots and the people most affected by these issues at the same time, meaning it had to be watered down past the point of no return in order for us to factor it in with our jaded mindsets and worldviews that are the direct cause of the problems we complain about, yet keep exacerbating through our ignorance and unwillingness to change.

If you aren’t like that, and don’t believe you should be lumped in with that, don’t behave as if you are that sort of person. But, even then, if you aren’t...listen to the actual experts. Stop listening to some white guy’s idiotic hot takes about black rep, and actually listen to black people. Listen to trans people instead of some cis white chick with no understanding of trans issues. Stop platforming the worst of offenders within these communities as the bestest ever. And most importantly....

remember that horses don’t exist.

#media #racism #sexism #cartoons #world of warcraft #reylo shippers #fake allies #anti lgbt idiocy #horses don't exist

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mikmaqs · 3 years

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so i took the plunge and watched promare (2019)

this morning i set out on something i have intended to for some time now, ever since seeing the very mixed opinions on the film. here's my take as an indigenous person, viewing indigenous/minority representation in this movie.

i will add that i am not jewish, which seems to be what most parallels get drawn to. this is just my view as an indigenous person w a long history of myself and my people dealing with oppression, so if jewish people have anything to add, absolutely feel free to do so, because i could have very well missed some things. that being said, let me compile my thoughts.

so, to begin with, i'll state my positive feelings on the movie to get out of the way the things that i did find enjoyable. then, i'll touch what i thought was...eh. less good, or downright bad.

first of all, the animation and color scheme of this movie really was beautiful, and a pleasure to look at (i.e. lio's volcano rage sequence, the promare itself, etc). interesting stylistic choices and enjoyable animation are, i hear, relatively intrinsic to the studio trigger brand. i can't verify, because i haven't ever viewed a studio trigger film before this to my knowledge, but that's what i get through the grapevine. the use of vibrant colors is very pleasing to look at, though it could probably be used as a murder weapon for anyone with color sensitivity or epilepsy, which is...less good, but the appeal was there. just know that it's very bright and a little flashy before viewing.

secondly, i enjoyed the character design more or less...except for, uh, a few things i'll mention later. generally, it was nice, and not an eyesore.

thirdly, the soundtrack was pretty good. i did find a few songs got reused a lot, but that's not exactly a this specific movie problem anyway, and generally not even much of an issue. it didn't unground me or anything, just was noticable enough to make me note it during viewing.

basically, as a whole, the aesthetic value of this movie is very good! credit is given where credit is due, so, yeah, i can say i did enjoy that part.

now, there's...a fair plethora of issues with this movie.

what i gather from this is i can, like...kind of see what they were prooobably trying to do here. like, i doubt they FULLY intended to make such a horrible approach at issues of social justice and racial equality, but, uh. yeah. it wasn't good. and i hear they've done similarly distasteful things, so who knows what the inner workings were with this. at best, it reads as insensitive and uneducated, which is not really what you want in a movie. the aesthetic value is not much if the storyline is sort of trash.

first thing i notice is that the minority group (the burnish, for those who have not viewed) is given a destructive ability and, apparently, an innate urge to........burn things down.......because........the promare......speak to them. like maybe that was just poor thinking, but the first thing you should not do is make the minority group inherently violent and destructive with the whole "the flames talk to us and tell us to burn shit so that's what we do" thing. personally, it reads to me as "oh these poor people inherently violent and horrible" and it's. um. unsettling. of course, the burnish hold pride in never killing for no reason, which makes this a bit more salvageable, but not good.

especially when part of the next scenes of the movie include lio (the leader of the burnish) losing his shit and having to be stopped by the white savior trope. like. well. this is unfortunate now isn't it. of course, i can't be positive galo is white, but i'm referring more to the "majority saves minority from...being a minority" thing that plays out here. like. imagine john smith stopping pocahontas from going into a rage and spearing people or whatever white people think we do. yeah that's basically what happens here and it's................yeah!

the only truly enjoyable characters were the burnish honestly. like. my dear fellow indigenous/minority i'm so sorry you have been subjected to this badly written movie. lio fotia i'm so sorry. you were the only character i liked.

and theeeen the parallels to the holocaust come in, and this is where it gets, uh, uncomfortable. more than before.

so this guy named kray foresight (what a name, huh) has an insane little superiority complex and thinks he's jesus or something. come to find out, he's a burnish — way to villainize the minority but without the "but they're people too" redeeming part, studio trigger — who is...doing experiments, human experiments, on the burnish to power his spaceship.

it's as weird as it sounds.

but the point right now isn't mr foresight's silly little spaceship adventure, it's the parallels to the human experiments conducted at concentration camps (promare has those too, by the way, but they're more of jail cells here) by doctors working under the nazi regime. most know by now about the horrific experiments conducted on people during the holocaust, majorly jewish people among other smaller percentages of other groups (poles, yugoslavs, actually mostly any minority the nazis could find and didn't like). the parallels to jewish oppression are staggering and impossible to ignore or not notice, for me anyway, and this is from someone who isn't even jewish. i'm sure watchers who are notice it even more starkly.

did i mention the whole symbol surrounding the burnish is a pink triangle?

gee. i wonder where we've seen triangles to identify a minority group before.

oh yeah. the identification tags used to separate jewish people from non-jewish people the nazis created.

funny how that works out.

there's also the way the star of david appears throughout the movie. or the several other parallels that exist within the film.

and the "genocide cultivation beam", whatever the fuck that means.

and the way the movie ends with the burnish just...not being burnish. identity: gone, white: savior, hotel: trivago.

yeah. the whole conflict of "the burnish keep setting shit on fire" gets solved by "well, we'll get rid of what makes them burnish as if we couldn't just settle it in another way anyone with a brain could think of". but, you know, plot is apparently more important than respect..

and all that aside? there's still more issues.

like the incredibly racist caricatures of Black people, y'know? the whole "big bulky deep voiced animalistic" racist rhetoric? yeah. yeah, they got that too. it takes about half a brain cell to notice it, and it's so hard to stomach, as a bipoc. i'm a poc, and even when it's not my race, it's so difficult to watch these poor, distasteful portrayals of real life oppression and real life people.

tl;dr, promare is a very well animated movie with a nice soundtrack, but that does nothing to wipe away the VERY large issues within it. if you are going to be interested in the characters and media, i IMPLORE you to remain VERY critical of every flaw and never excuse it. be sensible about your interests. i enjoyed lio as a character, but do i condone the issues in this film? fuck no, and i feel bad the poor guy had to be part of it. fork over the rights to lio fotia to me i'll treat him better than studio trigger ever did.

as always, be critical of your interests and listen to people affected when they bring something to your awareness. you can like characters without excusing the grossly evident issues of a piece of media. none of it is okay or excusable, regardless of what the intent may have been.

like i said, if anyone has anything to add, please do feel free to do so, and let me know — i'm always ready to listen and look at different viewpoints, especially of those affected by this media. ❤️

#fin.txt #long post #fandom critical #tw antisemitism #tw antiblackness #tw nazi #tw racism

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quicklyseverebird · 4 years

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Why I became politically activated (agitated), or why I became a Trump supporter.

All the cards on the table, I doubt anyone will read this, especially anyone to whom it might make a difference or change a mind. This is a textual equivalent to shouting into the wind, and at the moment of writing these words, I don’t even know if I will post them anywhere. Yet I find clarity in writing things out, and in light of the state of our country, I want to organize my stream of consciousness to see why and how I got here, to where I stand now, at this point of time.

I used to pride myself on my lack of political involvement. I used to all but sneer when people got all worked up about political issues. Such things were distant and had no seeming impact on my life, though I did my civic duty and voted whenever possible, because that’s what you do in a republic, and you have no right to complain about the results if you did nothing to affect them.

So, when Trump first mentioned that he was running for president, I just rolled my eyes and chuckled like anyone else. He was vain, self-promoting and way too quick on the Twitter finger. He’s no one I would want to have over for dinner, but now I’m glad he won and I hope he wins again. I don’t think anyone else’s ego would have been able to weather the storm we’ve gone through over the past 4 years. Especially not a politician, who survives mainly by going wherever the wind of public opinion blows.

But I’m not a Republican, so I can’t vote in their primaries, so when he rose to the top, I was as surprised as anyone else. So, who was my other option?

Hillary Clinton, the poster child of political corruption and cronyism, whose scandals and crimes make a bigger volume than all the books she’s written explaining(complaining) about her loss.

2016 is when I had my political awakening and started to really look around at what was happening in the culture around me. Perhaps it was because I was a parent to a child on the cusp of adolescence who would soon start to be immersed in it. What I saw terrified me.

America had a rising group of Nazis infiltrating our culture. And I don’t mean the stereotypical skin heads we all revile and view with disgust. And I don’t mean the paltry 10-11k white supremacists in our country of 365 million (per Anti-defamation League data). No one took them all that seriously, because their bigotry was all too obvious, easily exposed, and they were, quite frankly, too few to matter.

No, I mean a real group of extremists who were Nazi’s in all but name. Who actually made a point of labeling anyone who disagreed with them a Nazi, in fact. Who with seeming ignorance of the historical irony of their actions, re-enacted every deed performed by the black and brown shirts of pre-WWII fascist Europe. They worked to shut down free speech (of anyone whose position differed from their own), attacked and intimidated anyone who challenged them with threats physical, verbal, professional and political, advocating literal book burning, public destruction of property, and most sneaky of all, enacting a new form of acceptable racism into a form that some have compared to a state-sponsored cult or religion. I saw the blossom in 2016, and now I am seeing the fruit.

A couple weeks ago, I watched, in horror, live on television as the Krystal Naught was reenacted in my own city and cities across the country. Since then I’ve seen these groups claim territory, terrorize and destroy businesses and residents’ homes. Most often—again in seeming unconscious irony—those belonging to the very people they claimed to be fighting in support of. The term terrorist is apt, as well as zealot. They subvert groups of well-meaning people to their own political ends and rain down terror on anyone who disagrees with them, up to and including actual physical harm, and provoking situations that wind up in death.

They are left wing, just as the Nazi’s were, born from a communist/Marxist foundation with an emphasis on race, instead of class, as their dividing point. It’s not the proletariat and bourgeoisie anymore, it’s <insert minority group> vs white. The irony that most of these individuals are themselves, white, seems—of course—to be lost on them. Fascism is socialism with a nationalistic and racial focus. It was invented by a student of Marx as a way of making socialism feasible. Apart from the nationalistic bent, this group follows the same formula. Anyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi or some kind of “-ist” or “-phobic.” It’s a marvelous rhetorical device. Say you’re not racist, well that that’s proof that you are! Try and bring up a factual point that disagrees with them, and they slap you with a label and claim through intersectionality politics that they don’t have to listen to you or any facts you might have to offer because you are from the “wrong group.” They only have to listen to details or views on an issue from a group appointed and designated by their ideology. No one else could ever offer a differing position. And those from the group in question who DO disagree with them? Well obviously, they are “race traitors” and their views don’t matter either. After all, a person is only a part of the “right group” if they agree with these people. If this took place in Nazi Germany, they would have been called “Jew-lovers.” I’ve literally watched people of color assaulted, abused, called racial slurs, by white people. (yes, there’s that irony again.) I’ve watched POC being told by these individuals, unaware of their actual skin color, to check their white privilege because obviously they have to be white if they disagree with their position. I see this inherent and rampant racism every time I post my own views and watch as people assume I’m a white man because…I hold the “wrong view.” Why would race even matter to whether or not what is being said is true or accurate, unless you're a racist? They have all their groups in neat and tidy boxes, with their assigned positions and “proper,” “permitted” viewpoints and anyone straying from the herd must be culled. I’ve watched them tear down statues of the men who gave them their rights, and statues of the men who freed slaves or died to free them, even black heroes! They’ve torn down statues built to commemorate abolitionists in the name of…racism… They paint a street, claiming that it is free speech, but when someone else paints on the same street, it’s a hate crime.

They are, in fact, the most racist people in our country, and they revel in it because they feel it’s justified. Place any of these people in Nazi Germany and they would be chomping at the bit alongside the Fuhrer at the "outrages" the Jewish race had inflicted on their country and the "privileges" they possessed. Their racism is “justified!” It is “right!” I have no doubt that, if our skin color didn’t already distinguish us from one another, the mobs roaming our cities now would be demanding something akin to pink triangles or stars of David be worn by the designated parties. We can see their racism clearly wherever they find a position of power and are allowed to organize themselves. We watched an utterly self-unaware Chaz/Chop re-institute Jim Crow laws and create race-designated locations, parks, gardens, etc. Whenever they find themselves in power, they organize themselves along racial lines. Given enough time, they would probably have created separate bathrooms and drinking fountains.

Like the Nazi’s of Germany, they thrive on division and fear. It gave the Germans a sense of purpose and pride coming out of the Great Depression following WWI. In today’s world, they never would have risen so far or so fast if not for the economic devastation following Covid-19 and the many frustrated, unemployed, frightened people it left in its wake.

And they do it all in the name of “racial” or “social” justice, and justify their rampant racism that way. They excuse their racism in the name of…racism. It leaves one wondering if these are either the most historically ignorant and self-unaware people in human history, or if they are literally evil. And I don’t use the term evil hyperbolically. I don’t mean mustache-twirling villains in black. No one really evil believes they are evil. The Devil himself thought his actions justified. Evil always justifies itself, masks itself as good, and this allows them to do even greater harm, for no one does more damage than an intellectual fool who believes they are doing the right thing. The only thing greater than mankind’s tendency towards evil is our ability to convince ourselves that it is good. And oh, they lie, and they lie, and they lie. They lie about events where they were the aggressors. They lie and even post videos of the event proving they are lying, boasting about their lies, because they know that they won't be held accountable, and their lie is being spread faster than the truth, and the people in authority will allow this. Far from being counter-cultural, they are now a state-sponsored, state-supported non-theistic religion. The similarities with a cult are creepy.

The truth is, they aren't interested in eliminating racism. In fact, as we can see from these protests, they make racism worse! And they do so deliberately. Why? Because they aren't interested in lives, no matter the color. They aren't interested in actual justice. More black lives alone have been killed by these protests, by actual BLM and Antifa people, than unarmed black men were killed by cops across the country in all of 2019. Perhaps we should defund/disband them. They are militarizing racism the same way the Nazi's did, to gain power. It's not about lives, it's not about actual violence or inequality, it's about the Movement. It's about gaining power and influence in society. And it is working the same way it did back in Germany. When you have literally white, leftist people attacking and calling black people racial slurs because they don't agree with their positions, and then claiming they are against racism....

So, let’s see here. We have an international organization born from the German Communist Party, with localized cells but a unified ideology, cooperative networks, shared finances, a common uniform, trademarked logos and merchandise, who ferment racial tensions to gain political power, create divisions between communities, seek to destroy anyone who would stand in their way through threat of violence and intimidation, destroy history, hide in screens of “useful idiots” seeking to be a part of a cause that they stir into “protests” so they can create further unrest and violence, all so they can gain power for their ideology. And all the while, claiming to be the victims of the people they attack so they can claim the moral high ground. Self-defense in the face of the mob is “racist.” Protecting your property is a sign of “privilege” that must be purged, even as they loot, burn, destroy homes and businesses of the people whose lives they claim to want to protect.

Explain to me how, exactly, they aren’t exactly like the Nazi’s before the rise of Hitler? They are a socialist organization, with a racial element that use intimidation, threats of violence, doxing, actual violence and harm to anyone who disagrees with them or stands in their way to gain political and social power. A literally evil ideology that has caused more death and suffering to mankind than any other in history, that has failed everywhere it was implemented.

And all the while the media propaganda praises them, just as they did Hitler (who himself won Time’s Man of the Year award, recall).

If you want to know if you are one of the good guys, then ask, which side supports freedom of speech? Which supports liberty? Which side doesn't advocate for violence as a means to their ends? Which side are literally attacking their opponents? Are people better off when you are in control, or not? I think we can look at the smoldering ruins of our cities to decide where these extremists stand.

So, why did I become politically activated/agitated? It wasn’t some YouTube channel “radicalizing” me. I am not a MAGA fanatic or Trump fan. What motivated me was seeing the rise of a new, evil authoritarian power in America. They wear a different mask, but their actions speak for themselves. They are the REAL neo-Nazis. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves now. You can change your name, but your deeds remain. Your title doesn’t define you; your actions do. If it quacks like a duck…. The Right didn’t pull me to their side, you on the left drove me here in fear for my life and the future of this country. The fear is only growing now as I see official after official bow (sometimes literally) to these groups. If they gain any more political power, I shudder to think of the world my daughter will inherit. Will she be the new Anne Frank? The Right isn’t the one making threats or calling me names if I disagree with them. You are. They don’t threaten my life or my family’s future. You do. They aren’t the people approaching with devastation in their wake. You are. You activated me. I can only hope enough other people will see you for what you are and be activated as well. God help us all if you ever gain power. Some of them are literally already calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be imprisoned in "re-education" camps. No lie. This cannot happen. Never again.

#antifa #trump #politically activated #america #BLM #fascist #leftist #right

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jenniferyang · 3 years

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In Reply to Your Text Re: Hate Crimes

Thanks for reaching out. So many things keep happening that continue to knock the breath out of me. Weren’t we all still processing the Oprah interview last week?

I'll take this opportunity to share my thoughts and provide some context. Yes, it is indeed a dramatic increase in violence we are seeing, but there is also a history of violence against Asians and Asian Americans in this country. I too am shocked to learn from your text that you “never even knew that Asian Americans suffered from hate actions.” You being unaware is actually a reflection of the broader Asian American experience that is often thrust upon us, that of being silenced and expected to assimilate.

I see you coming from a place of concern and wanting to understand, which I appreciate; however, it is important for you to know that sometimes when people lay bare their privilege of never knowing these issues existed, it can be met with hostility. For minorities, people of color, women, these are facts of life. I am quite willing to have these conversations with you in hope that your awareness can drive the action that is so needed now.

I learned of the Atlanta and Acworth shootings on the morning after. As I watched the press conference with the Atlanta mayor and police, I already had a bad feeling about how this was going to play out. It began with the reluctance to acknowledge the racial aspect of these crimes, and a repeated emphasis that it was too early to tell if race was a motivator. It was only a matter of time… there, the mention of the suspect’s “addiction.” The police, the reporters, the person writing the headlines on CNN, they all missed the point. Hyper-sexualization is racism against Asian women.

What I see on my social media is baffling, two completely different conversations going on - one in which people are finding every reason to explain how this isn't related to Trump, and the other in which Asian Americans are constantly having to prove that their experiences are real. I've long taken the stance of not engaging with remote acquaintances or people for whom I only know their Internet name. But I've been amped about this, and I did make one reply. It was to a post by a former high school teacher of mine, who wrote that the killings had nothing to do with race. My response to one nonsense Facebook post, and the subsequent replies that doubled-down on explaining why my views were invalid, is an example itself of the difficulty Asians face when we choose to engage. When we find the words and momentum and opportunity to speak, so often we are reasoned away. How could this teacher, or anyone, have instead helped? Try, perhaps, talking with women, Asians, Asian women. In doing so he might have learned that racism, sexism, unwanted sexual advances, and violence are pervasive and deeply woven in our experiences. Instead of using his place as a public school teacher to espouse a narrow and hurtful point of view, he could have listened. He could have amplified an Asian American voice.

It hasn't all been negative. On the whole we are well, and vaccinated. And among my closest neighbors we did actually pull up chairs in driveways to have thoughtful conversations surrounding George Floyd, and we are talking about these latest Asian murders. My family and close friends have also been in touch. Still, how much can we hang our hopes on talk? As I traded stories with another Asian American friend, she recalled with frustration the feeling of being asked to absolve those who reached out to her, hearing repeatedly that they did not know these issues existed.

Last summer we reached a critical mass, and people of all types were shouting that black lives matter. We stand with our black and brown brothers and sisters, became the refrain for more and more people. I have always considered myself to be a person of color, but in these conversations from last summer, I didn’t always get the sense that I was viewed as such. The specific phrasing itself, person of color, can be uncomfortable for some. While I embrace it now, I can instantly bring myself back to times in my childhood and adolescence, feeling the hotness in my face as I preferred that yellow not be named in such roll calls, given my experience with schoolyard taunts. But I understood early in my life what it meant to be different, and so I identified with the minority experience in general. I did not need an invitation to the group, but this is not everyone's experience. Not all Asians or Asian Americans are alike, think alike, look alike (ha). Opinions run the gamut, sometimes following generational lines, sometimes not. Do we, Asians and Asian Americans, have skin in the game for George Floyd? Do black and brown brothers and sisters see us as part of the family? It will require a reckoning from all sides to free ourselves from the definitions of being this or that, one but not the other.

Including Asians in the conversation has far-reaching implications for racial justice. During my career in marketing, my work centered on understanding consumer behavior. I regularly met with dedicated client teams from leading providers of consumer point-of-sale data for consumer packaged goods (these are fancy words to say, in other words, I met with companies that helped me figure out how to get you to buy more boxes of cereal). These big companies draw from their big data to interpret trends among various segments of the population. The segments include basic demographics of age, sex, geography, race, and ethnicity; but they can also switch lenses to view the data more artfully, defining groups based on life-stage, attitudes, and aspirations. The resulting classifications often get alliterative labels that slip off the tongue, like Millennial Moms, or a favorite, Sinc’s and Dinc’s, referring to single-income childless homes and, you guessed it, double-income childless homes.

In one meeting, Big Data Company presented to my team a refresh on the latest health and wellness trends among such segments. When it came to their analysis of the data along race and ethnic lines, a colleague of mine noticed on the presentation slides that the charts showed a small group off to the side labeled “All Other.” Out of curiosity, he asked, what is included in All Other? This was one of those moments, looking back now, that could have unfolded differently. It could have launched a discussion on the semantics between race and ethnicity and why the verbiage "Non-Hispanic whites" exists. We could have debated a chicken versus egg situation on whether these groups were being defined based on meaningful separations in the data, or if they reflected a design flaw in the boxes available for survey participants to check. It was easier, though, just to move on. When probed about how Asians were categorized in the groupings, the client lead explained with noted apology, Asians are usually assumed to act similarly to whites, so they often get bucketed together. This, coming from a company touting deep, granular, and proprietary analytic capabilities.

Here we are again on the precipice of another wave of racial awakening, but the tide relies on enough people caring and asking. Enough people listening and believing. Enough people acting. Your text is only the start.

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things2mustdo · 3 years

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“White people are terrible,” “I have white privilege,” and “most of the world’s problems are caused by white people” are three general statements countless social justice warriors and their enablers agree with. Yet they are all based on the severest distortion of reality. You or I should no more apologize for being white than an African-American should for being black.

Just as many blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities are made more pliable by the media and the establishment by being told they are eternal victims, white people are made more pliable by agreeing that they need to always feel guilty. Using an SJW “anti-racism” that feels awfully like the leftist version of a Nazi book about hereditary, white people supposedly inherit the evil deeds of dead dudes who owned slaves prior to the Civil War or arrived on a foreign continent in a year like 1492 or 1788.

The establishment-enforced guilt is even greater for those directly descended from such people, but even culturally and genetically unrelated individuals like Polish- and Italian-Americans, whose ancestors pretty much all arrived after periods like the slavery era, are held accountable, too. Why? Even if we ridiculously assumed we can find descendants “guilty” of their ancestry, the white guilt thesis is like putting all of Harlem’s young black men in 2016 under house arrest because 20 of them were involved in a vicious street brawl… in 1937.

Provided you adhere to our creed, neomasculinity and the Return Of Kings community form the broadest functional church you will find. We do not care where you come from, so long as you support our goal of a return to masculine societies that emphasize community-building and do not apologize for taking pride in their own cultures. ROK readers who are black, white, Asian or something else are all equal in this regard.

Here are just three of many reasons why I will not hate or feel guilty about my skin tone.

1. I’m the descendant of victims myself because many of my ancestors were from oppressed ethnic and religious groups

Look at those privileged starving Irish!

Are you heavily Irish-blooded, like me? Italian? Polish? Ukrainian? Were your ancestors Catholics living in heavily Protestant areas, or perhaps Huguenots who had to flee persecutory France?

It’s funny how SJWs prance on about white privilege when over half of all whites who emigrated to America, Canada or Australia, from the Puritans to Yugoslavian Civil War refugees, came because the civilian government or monarchy representing another ethnicity or religion essentially chased them out, had killed their family members, or wanted them dead, too. Many of the white groups who did take the journey, particularly the Italians or Irish, were then subjected to quotas and mistreatment in places like New York for years.

A great deal of my ancestors were Catholics in Prussia and other Protestant parts of northern Germany. This section of my family tree is replete with persecutions, including one great-great-great-great grandfather who lost sight in one eye and movement in his arm after being brutally assaulted by a Prussian policeman. His crime? Being an ethnic German leaving a Catholic church on Sunday in the 1800s. Catholic churches were only for “subhuman” Poles. Catholic Prussians were seen as traitors who belonged in Bavaria, prison, or dead. He ended up eking out an existence as a tailor with one good arm, after both he and his brother were repeatedly refused admission to the civil service for their faith.

In addition, I had Irish immigrant forebears whose fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters died as a result of the Potato Famine. One of these ancestors, the eldest child in his family, was working in Dublin to make money for the family when, in the space of three months, he received news that his parents, all his sisters, and all but one of his brothers had died from starvation, malnutrition, or diseases related to them.

When my aunt did the genealogy over three years, she counted 37 family members in one corner of an Irish county who died from starvation or starvation-related illness in 13 months. The famine was predicted and even aggravated by the British. Considering the squalor into which the occupiers had driven the Irish Catholics, the whole ordeal was fundamentally caused by them, too. With only an extra mouth to feed, this great-great-great grandfather of mine took his barely school-aged brother with him to Australia two months later. What role did these two have in oppressing others, white or non-white, that I should feel shame about today?

Look further back into my family tree and you find German, Dutch and Swiss Jews, many of whom were shunted around various locations within Europe, depending on what limited patience local authorities had for yarmulke-wearers at the time.

With this lineage, what exactly do I have to apologize for, aside from my supposedly very, very privileged, at best lower middle-class English forebears from drab West London and grim Yorkshire? Most of them never saw a dark person, let alone mistreated one. To boot, the vast majority lived poor, thankless lives without clean sanitation, abundant food, or anything close to job security. And these are the stations in life, through no fault of their own, that 95% of your ancestors reached as well.

2. Minorities and other non-whites frequently treated and still treat each other far worse than white people did

Rwandan genocide, anyone?

From the pre-Columbian Central and South American peoples to the Rwandan genocide, non-whites have very often treated one another even more abysmally than whites have treated them. European technology may have amplified the number of indigenous and other deaths in places like the Americas, but raw hatred, aggression, and the continuity of violence can be found in even greater quantities in non-white historical squabbles.

Europeans have also been incorrectly blamed for things like infectious diseases, despite the scientific work of antiseptic procedure pioneer Ignaz Semmelweiss being years, sometimes even centuries away. Meanwhile, non-whites have been allowed to kill non-whites without serious condemnation from SJWs.

For example, critics of the Iraq War and the attempted rebuilding of post-Saddam Iraq have said that the whole country is based on a fiction that dates back to the European post-World War I mandate systems. In other words, if Kurds, Shia Arabs, and Sunni Arabs inhabit the same country, they kill each other! Whilst it is appetizing for SJWs to blame the big, bad British and French for this, it is far from the truth. Kurds and Arabs have been butchering each other for countless centuries. The greatest Muslim figure of all the Crusades, Saladin, was consistently mistrusted because of his Kurdish origins. Similarly, intra-Arab or Arab-Iranian Sunni-Shia violence is age-old and has little if anything to do with Europeans.

Last year, Rock Thompson wrote a superb piece about the hypocrisy of attacking Columbus Day in the Americas. His work exposed the double standards of many Native American and also Central and South American tribes, who pretend their ancestors were routinely peaceful when, in fact, they regularly engaged in deplorable acts of gratuitous violence, including human sacrifices and the sadistic mutilation of enemies who were not so ethnically different. The conquistadors and Puritans are falsely seen as the harbingers of cultural and racial genocide in the Americas. Local indigenous tribes, however, were already hunting each other down for sport well before the tall ships arrived.

3. White-majority countries make the humanitarian world go round

A tent city the Saudis refused to make available for fellow Arab Syrian refugees.

Whenever you find an aid program for starving Africans, war-torn Arabs, or other suffering people, chances are that a number of white Westerners are behind it. Even if they’re not all white, they invariably come from white-majority and/or white-founded Western countries, or are funded by them. All to assuage the guilt of white people living in 2016 who feel the need to apologize for a European colonial regime that replaced almost always far more brutal indigenous ones.

Western countries also welcome non-whites in droves, both as immigrants and as “refugees.” The recent Syrian crisis is a testament to this (over-)generosity. While Saudi Arabia refused to accommodate fellow Arab Syrians in their already-constructed tent city, used normally for the Haj Priligrimage, Germany and other European states bore the brunt of those fleeing, including through the open door policies of leaders like Angela Merkel.

In general terms, white people care more about the developmental outcomes of non-whites. Wealthy non-white countries like Japan and Korea have perfected a system of meticulously keeping their populations pure and rejecting the asylum claims of over 99% of claimed refugees. This asymmetrical state of affairs is ironic when Japan’s own history of colonisation, notably the Rape of Nanking, is taken into consideration.

White guilt is also very profitable for certain establishment figures and zealous entertainers. It’s why twats like Bono and Bob Geldof get up every morning, after all. And, far from sucking the world dry, white folks have repeatedly tried to make it better. Very often this generosity is taken to an extreme, but the point of white-majority countries acting and non-white countries stalling or ignoring remains valid.

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rametarin · 3 years

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It’s not a fun position to be in.

I’d like to clarify, again. I’m not an ethnonationalist, ethnoseparatist, white supremacist, or any of those things. I actually quite dislike them. That’s WHY it makes me mad to see overpolicing of white people or whiteness as inherently oppressive and bad, and anybody else as inherently oppressed and good.

They enshrine and put it into words and ideology that white people and other people exist and should exist on two different levels of society, and their preferred solution is to disestablish one as not existing because races and race-culture doesn’t exist, while empowering everybody else, and pretending that’s not hypocrisy. And since they later updated what they define as racism, technically, it no longer is.

You have to understand. When I was coming up in the late 80s/early 90s, the discourse on race was simple: For anyone to consider themselves by their race first, was to be a racist. The highest tier racists were Nazis, the next step beneath them were KKKlansmen, and then loosely affiliated neo-nazis beneath them, then ‘vaguely white supremacist and hostile towards non-English speakers, brown people and Asians’ people that weren’t loud, screaming hate mongerers came next. But, for a person to think of themselves separate or of themselves or their families as a member of an extant community defined by their race and background, was to be a racist. And that was socially taboo/faux pas.

At least, for white people. Of which in the US, they are/were the majority (even today) and the conversation was deliberately just broadbrush to assume it applied to white people by default.

It did not, however, apply to “oppressed minorities,” conveniently. So, if you were black, or your community/heritage didn’t speak English and wasn’t a “white country” (Latin American, basically) you could be as insular and think about the welfare and integrity of your own little microcosm and diasporic ethnostate that you wanted. One need only look at media and entertainment in the 90s geared towards keeping that spirit of separatism in the American black community to see that double standard. But it was justified and defended by, “We need this, we are under threat of racists, klansmen and hostile Southern confederate-sympathetic gentlemen every day of our lives.

And as vaguely progressive people in the 80s and 90s, yeah, we conceded that roaming bands of horrible southern monster-men were probably a thing black, Hispanic, Indigenous North American and Asian people worried about a lot and had to deal with constantly. Since the news made damned sure to publish every single instance of a hate crime against a minority, and later public school would hold special sessions to talk about such a horrible thing.

Always white-on-somebody-else, always seguing into conversations about how prevalent white supremacists and white supremacism, the actual confederate flag and [your choice of specific and purpose made white supremacist club/militia symbol here] used to be, and in many ways, still was.

At the time, common public discourse was not, “the United States is memetically a white supremacist oppressive shithole based on the very culture and roots, it’s just there are a lot of suppressive, hateful, bigoted people, most of them are in the majority demographic, and most of them are male.” The US was not considered, “white supremacist/racist” by default.

And on paper, taking the moral high ground on racism meant implicitly that you hated racial discrimination, in theory, in all forms. That included favoring people for their real or perceived racial background as well as disfavoring. So preferential treatment to hiring practices were as taboo as preferential treatment for hate crimes.

In practice, many of the same Woke Folks that today said one thing but applied it only to reprimend white people, do so today while saying, proudly, “you can’t discriminate or be racist against white people.” But at the time, they feigned, “just hating racists” to ignore any such racism, bigotry or intolerance from any other group towards whites. They might, however, recognize it if, say, black people did a hate crime towards Asians, but they did so begrudgingly. They HATED having to proactively come out and police that as racism and declare it as such, because they wanted the discourse to evolve into, “it’s ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY racism when it’s white-on-others, because ONLY whites can be racist.” But that wouldn’t be for another 25+ years.

Even that stupid, safe, classic, “haha stupid insecure white man; there’s no such thing as Reverse Racism!” line? That’s a save.

Privilege Theory existed back then, you know. it was published in the late 80s, and the radicals had been using it unofficially for decades before then. But it was a radical school and in deep, and only peeked its head out to try and make cultural headway the way radicals try to make anything radical the mainstream. It just so happened that academia at the time and society at large was not willing to accept that permutation to the racism discourse or dialog. “All white people are racist and racism is an intrinsic quality of white people, nobody else can be” was tested, like a spank on the ass.

And it almost blew the illusion. So, they ran damage control and hid for a while, putting out feelers only for those so deep down the rabbithole or so gullible they’d accept that. And they gaslight anybody that experienced dealing with a radical asshole that said shit like that by saying, “oh that’s just Patty. She’s a meaningless extremist and has no power.” Or, “Haha are you really going to take that anecdote as signs progressive people are all like that bro? omg come on. XD.” Or, “You must have misunderstood her. I know how progressivism and anti-racism can seem when you’ve been raised your whole life by society and the media to think white people are by default superior, so any taste of equality feels like you’re being singled out and discriminated against. :^)”

But the fact is, “haha there’s no such thing as ‘reverse racism’“ had two endings. If you mentioned you experienced someone saying, ‘only whites could be racist and nobody else can be,’ you’d hear either:

1.) “lol no. They were just confused. Racism is the discrimination of anybody on the basis of race! So calm down, the established definition applies to all. :^)”

2.) “there’s no such thing as reverse racism, because racism is the phenomenon of the white supremacist power structure lording and oppressing People of Color. You cannot be racist to white people if you are black, Indigenous or Hispanic, because you have no privilege and no centuries worth of oppression. Cry more.”

Way back in the day we’d SEE these glaring contradictions. And in truth? Most of us hated racism, so we stomached the glaring, disjointed bullshit. But, we ALSO grabbed up that anti-racism stick and BEAT the privilege theorist types subversivelyu hijacking the culture over the head with that anti-racism, too. You wanna claim you hate something because it’s, “racist,” AKA, involves race in the cricteria of something at all? FINE. You’re also going to hate affirmative action and when people come down on the side of not-white people specifically because they’re not-white. You will ELIMINATE race from consideration in any aspect of secular modern civic society and private enterprise and protect everybody equally on the basis of being a person. And any instance that is not the case we’ll come down on you with all the heavy handed spite we see and experience of you fuckers coming down on us, showing us off on soap boxes and sacrificing us on the altars of public socialization to shame and belittle us for the bigotry of generations passed.

You want to hit me with that stigma and smear me as some sort of white supremacist because I object to a thing, dismissing my objection and chalking it up to white supremacism? Then by god I’m going to point out the hypocrisy in the supposed “progressive far left” and their tolerance of anti-semites like Farrakhan, their tolerance towards the polygamy, misogyny and religious fundamentalist patriarchy in Islam, and how non-white communities act and think the same way to protect their own respective ‘brands,’ and the only people you seem to go after for these crimes are the white ones.

Which was fair. After all, we all just, “hate racism :^)”, right? So if you’re going to be an aggrandizing asshole and make a big to-do about castigating a lowbrow joke as a “teachable moment” that involves making every progressive woman hypersensitive and reject men based on how taboo something is to say, then that lack of forgiveness and hypersensitivity and the results of that intolerance will also apply to YOU, god damnit.

But the supposed “progressive” people would not stop. Anti-”racism” was their new toy, aka, their stick to choose their targets and seem absolutely morally right for doing it, and they were going to play that social tool down to the hilt. They did not like being beaten at their own game by being flagged and forced to acknowledge glaring instances of hate crimes in the news when groups of roaming black men found and randomly beat up gentile whites and Jews. They did not like being forced to acknowledge those. So they’d object and scowl at the people bringing them up, like, “Why are we discussing the hate crimes of black men specifically?! You have a problem with black men!?”

Because remember, they were playing the defacto ‘whites are considered default Americans’ to the hilt when it suited them, and using it against people in the discourse suited them. You could talk about generic hate crimes that appear on the newspaper, because those were just regular hate crimes. Their mentality was, if you brought up hate crimes of Asians or black people, then clearly you were just a white man motivated by spite and insecurity to even be tabulating those in the first place, and that meant your opinion and point should be disregarded. You horrible anti-black/Asian racist.

So, please bear in mind, my case is not that white people are in any way better than anybody else. I don’t think that. But by god, in an era when the supposedly progressive, far-leftist, “woke” people are running around saying Europe and North America and Australia are by default white supremacist “cultures” that need “dismantling and replacement,” and simultaneously declaring, “white people do not exist,” and “there are no ‘white countries,’ just cultures and nations without race’ while ABSOLUTELY enshrining that EVERY country in Africa, even ones that are majority Semitic or Arab, are in fact, “black countries.” Or Asian countries being Asian. Or North America as still belonging to the native inhabitants and unjustly stolen land.

I absolutely abhor the doubletalk, I absolutely abhor the mentality that ONLY white people doing things is a problem. I hate that something ISN’T a problem when another group does it, but it’s JUST an issue when white people do it.

I want consistency. If people are going to enshrine and respect the existence, difference and integrity of a black culture in the USA, that is, a culture that exists purely because the people in it have black African features and characteristics and aren’t too “light skinned” to be part of it, and in an era supposedly trying to “get over” race and racial identity, tolerate that from everybody BUT white people, tolerate the idea of a, “chocolate New Orleans” but openly say New Hampshire or Maine being so majority white is an actual problem, then yeah, I’m going to expect one of two things:

1.) The woke/progressives actively discourage black Americans from considering themselves a separate or distinct culture from mainstream America. They stop secluding and culturally isolating themselves in their own hearts and minds and just be fellow countrymen.

2.) They acknowledge, enshrine and respect the fact whites do have their own specifically white cultures of which other races cannot be part of, they’re a distinct people that have their own communities and need their own communities to remain white.

They will do neither and would prefer if white people just disappear. The same sort of disappearance that they see as so disgusting and horrible if it were to happen to literally any other group of people on planet Earth.

When a Chinese immigrant arrives to the US, takes a wife (we’ll just assume white in this instance) and miscegenates, people later chalk this up to, “being colonized in a white supremacist pressure cooker culture.” And mourn how his kids and grandkids, “wash away his culture and background with every generation.” Instead of growing the Chiense-American community. They talk about him like he was enslaved and colonized and his culture eliminated from the American fabric by some schmoozing, destructive white plague cutting it down.

They talk about white Americans like we’re just originless, rootless vermin, and no such distinctness or integrity is to be respected. If we treated other groups in the US the way we treat white people that talk about their background, distinct cultures and etc., we’d be denying them any identity but mainstream American identity. If we treated black Americans that way, we’d be calling them black supremacists every time they wanted to have any sort of civic or educational or societal or community meeting to talk about blackness and the struggles of being black.

It’s just.... absolutely disgusting and frustrating, dealing with the hypocrites, the double standards, and the people maliciously using social justice values to sell policies and top-down application of cultural values the way used car salesmen try and sell people lemons. I dislike them.

I dislike that if a white person talked about their background or group the way a black person in the US does, they’d be called out for their insularity and eurocentrism in a heartbeat, shut down, deplatformed, become an effigy of conversation about, “the growing tide of white supremacism in America.” When all they’d do is take someone like DL Hugely or Cedric the Entertainer or Bernie Mac, and make it, ‘white ethnic’.

Imagine having your racism and in-groupcentrism excused because, “THAT’S PART OF YOUR CULTURE,” and immune to criticism or critical thought. But then, that’s exactly the mentality foisted on us by dialectic materialists and Marxists.

My preferred solution to all of this isn’t to respect white community or white sovereignty or white identitarianism. My preferred solution is the complete dissolution of race as a culture or background in the New World whatsoever. The Old World, you have indigenous cultures and communities across Europe, Africa and Asia that should NOT be expected to “mix” themselves up and out to where the indigenous featues and characteristics are marginalized or ‘bred out.’ That’s where they MAKE those people. But the New World is 100% different. Space should be 100% different.

But I’m also not going to accept, “well only half of us should kill ourselves.off :^)” either. While other communities across the Western World insist on having their communities and insular, demographically concentrated, demographic-culturally-conscious people respected and accommodated, I’m going to expect parity. And not an equality that uses privilege theory ow considers population size being disproportionate as, “they need it more than you.” No. You want to respect peoples, “cultures,” and consider black a culture in the US, then by GOD you will also respect and acknowledge those of European extraction as their own culture in the US. It’s all or nothing, you don’t get to single out one group as not existing or irrelevant and say, “race doesn’t exist” one minute, and then go on about how blackess, cultural and genetic, are “very real things that affect people very much and very really.”

These people would throw public money and social services at immigrant communities, hoping they demographically grow, maintain integrity and spread their numbers- preferably to red states, where they can start turning them purple, or blue. But they’d balk and consider it racist colonization if a white community moved to Niger or Chad and did the same for their own community interests. They’d call that racial supremacism and soft apartheid.

And I absolutely hate all of this.

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