#all because I pointed out some antiblackness- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hometownrockstar · 2 years

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What are some of the things in regards to fat politics you wish were talked about more? What are some of the things you consider most important across the board as well :-)

First off, that fatphobia greatly originated from antiblackness fostered within 18th century western artistic, medical, and eugenic race scientific white supremacist values. this is not talked about much even in fat political spaces, but i was reading Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings which outlines how this origin fostered. I can't explain it all in just one ask, but it essentially shows how "average-sized" or "plump" bodies were more valued aesthetically, until the rise of eugenics race science that categorized Black Africans as lazy and fat, mingling with the rising protestant work ethic philosophy already brewing in within the west that associated fatness with a lack of self-control and intellect. Thus associating Black people with fatness, laziness and stupidity through this race science began facilitating pro-dieting and antifatness in the western sphere, even when plump bodies were seen as desireable before.

Second off, that dieting is bogus and pushed by weight loss industries and ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by making health spaces hostile to fat patients, and them suffering because of lack of healthcare (or when the opposite happens and fat patients in studies are shown to be MORE likely to survive certain medial complications, its labeled as a "paradox" rather than an evidenced fact). people will talk about loving your body no matter the size, but dont say WHY these diets are harmful and wrong, why calorie counting and restricting and the basics of essentially all of these weight-loss diets are enabling eating disordered behavior and thinking, and most importantly: Nobody points out that people who go on diets are 95% likely to regain the weight they lost or MORE within 5 years. mindful eating and eating until you are full and satisfied, and eating what you ENJOY, should be your priority. and if someone says this, fatphobes act like youre encouraging a "food addiction" (as if you could be addicted to water or air or anything else you need to live) and not as if you're trying to break down the extremely prevalent societal idea ingrained in people that starving themselves is a form of purity and restraint, a mindset that is MUCH more deadly and harmful than "overeating"

#fat politics

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akajustmerry · 5 months

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Hey can u tell me wat race were the thg characters in the books? Was Katniss gale peeta finnick etc not white?

so this is kind of difficult to answer because in the world of the novels, The Dark Times™ whatever they really were clearly were so destructive to the fabric of society that the USA ceased to be what we know it as.

The process not only changed the land itself and how it was governed, but the language used to do that (states become districts, America becomes Panem, etc.). The fascistic government of the Capitol, when you read the books, clearly controls language as much as any other resource. Both Katniss and Snow (the only 2 pov characters in the novels) refer to words that have been forbidden and forgotten. Throughout the books you also come across words that are clearly mutated versions of known words "morphling" is one, which is the word used for what we call morphine.

I say all that to say that the people in the world of these novels, while they still obviously use English, they don't have the same concepts we do now because they've been eroded along with the language itself.

One of the crucial steps to control and oppress a population is deprive them of the ability to conceptualise and communicate that oppression. This is even happening right now wihh right wing governments around the world attempting to outlaw education and content on sexuality, indigenous histories, etc.

I say all this to say that the characters we read the POVs from in the thg novels do not and probably cannot define race in the way that we do now because doing so has been lost and repressed.

BUT!!!! that's not to say that racism does not exist, even though the language to define race is absent. Katniss is described as dark olive skinned, with dark eyes and dark hair. so is gale. I can't direct quote it, but Katniss talks in the early chapters of book 1 about how she is treated differently to her mum and sister who are fair and blonde. specifically, it says people do not warm to her as quickly like they do her sister and mum. Katniss also comments that the Capitol stylists make a mockery of her thick body hair. It's also worth noting she's among the poorest of district 12, living in the Seam. Not for nothing but Katniss also talks about how her father was also dark skinned and knew a lot about native plants.

These things on their own probably wouldn't necessarily point to Katniss being a person of colour, but together they paint a pretty clear picture of someone who experiences racism both systemically and personally even if she can't conceptualise it as that. Due to the fact Katniss' knowledge of plants and animals and carving weapons was passed down to her from her father, many people headcanon her as Indigenous, same for Gale.

As for Finnick? Jury's out. When I read catching fire well before the films came out I thought Finnick was maybe not white because he was described as very tanned and golden and in my experience white people just don't tan that way.

But Suzzanne Collins had very clear subtextual racial commentary in the books. Especially in the demographics of the districts. District 11 is predominantly Black (Katniss describes every D11 person as having typically Black features) and they're the agriculture district, described as the one that does the most physical labour. It's also the first district in the novel main story to do an uprising. And if you think a little bit about that and what Suzzanne Collins was saying with that particular subtext it's a very obvious racial commentary on the legacy of slavery and antiblackness.

Peeta was definitely white. Not only is he described that way physically. But his family is one of the wealthiest in D12 which means they had intergenerational wealth of some kind which it's clear Katniss and Gale did not.

Suzanne Collins is white and I think she did what the best white authors do when writing about race which is to acknowledge it and be realistic without overstepping or pretending to know. I'll forever hate the movies for eliminating that subtext.

#the hunger games

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justsomeantifas · 4 months

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I don’t think ANYONE who was popular and regularly covering mike browns murder and the ferguson protests and the trials didn’t get their blog temporarily blipped off the website for anywhere from a day to months to just permanently

You couldn’t search the tag “antiblack” at one point you couldn’t search the ferguson tag at one point, etc.

You literally cannot forget about this context when discussing the fucking mystery “russian agents” email that mysteriously had all of the MOST popular blogs to talk about the ferguson protests that we are all conveniently forgetting about for some kind of blank history that apparently we’ve forgotten WHY they were so popular

Spoiler: It was because they were covering issues PEOPLE CARED ABOUT

It was pointing out antiblackness IN ALL OF THE POLITICIANS because they were ALL COMPLICIT IN IT.

and fuuuuck to just DO THIS SAME SONG AND dance again

STOP FORGETTING WHAT HAPPENED

#antiblackness #racism #politics #the united states of america

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ca-suffit · 2 months

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This antiblack campaign the fandom just tried to kick up again (to avoid talking about the real issue with Nalyra) reveals how powerless they're starting to truly feel now.

They don't have many users left to vilify so they're putting people on blocklists who are brand new (I was here 3 days lol) or not even really in the fandom. That looks goofy and desperate but then it keeps going. DMing strangers to say "the truth" isn't about racism and "talk to me if you really want to know about anything." Everyone's reblogging those blocklist posts now and adding large commentary suddenly, when before they often fully sat it out. They're doing this in a group to look like they have larger numbers and are "revealing" there's a "big secret bullying problem"....except nobody believes them. Because there's plenty of accounts who are out here saying this shit straight to their faces and they pretend we all don't exist. All of this group has to manufacture drama solely because they just don't want to talk about harmful shit they actually do.

Neil has to make an antiblack statement she made suddenly be about antisemitism towards her, Nalyra's antiblackness is "actually" fans upset about shipping and "what's REALLY coming" in S2, showmey0urfangs is always happy to show up with her dumb screencaps and villain monologue nobody asked for so she can make her everlasting outrage about popular black fics and "feminized" Louis sound deeper than it is, Virginia suddenly cries about IRL issues and wants to leave the fandom because she wants to distract from the Nalyra receipts, Keybearer accused another black fan of trolling people and getting accounts suspended on twitter in 2023 when a Marius fan eventually confessed to it and his eternal shame for that means now every black fan except him is a bully (despite nobody talking about this ever anymore except him), chicalepidopterare mocks a black fan for blocking her "because I thought we were supposed to talk about racism" and then poorly tries to frame any retaliation against her to look like bullying ("see, they're misogynistic, they're bullying my art, they're mean for disliking these ships!").

To quote Claudia here, "You must think me an idiot." And the big cherry on top is also how none of these losers can stand to hear any mention of race....in the fandom of the show that nonstop talks about race. They're using very basic (and meant in a gentle, loving way) teasing of Jacob as proof that black fans are racist against Jacob too, black fans hate Jacob's white wife. People hate Lestat for being white too (what?). They can write crap meta all day about Lestat letting Louis "rape" him and only white victims (Lestat) being real victims to the evil black and brown "true" manipulators (Claudia, Louis, Armand) but gentle teasing from black fans about Jacob's haircut is the real racism. Okay lol. Care to tell us again why you think Delainey's Claudia looks "less innocent" now then? This 3D chess you think you're playing isn't playing how you think for anyone else.

I also notice that afaik there's not a single black American in this group. Idek if there's many Americans of any kind in the group. It's been a lot of shaming to black Americans specifically though, again from the show that's focused on black Americans....by people who aren't black Americans.

"There's people pretending to be black so it's okay to keep hating this whole group." It's not enough you already nonstop shit on black fans as it is, now you have to try to angle it as if none of this could be authentic in the first place. Vile behavior. For what? Tumblr isn't even a platform that pays you for whatever clout you have, so really what is the point here. In a small ass fandom on top of it. Some of you have pretty grown kids too, this is extra sad. It makes all the jumping through hoops to coddle Lestat's behavior make sense though, if you're the same kind of person yourself. Anyway, maybe you don't actually know everything because race exists in the real world beyond how Anne Rice wrote about it in her useless books! You make books written by a racist white woman your whole personality and guess what your outlook on life is going to be.

It's been really pathetic to especially watch any fans of color move more to this extreme bullying side as time has gone on. It will never pay off to promote white fandom ideals. These accounts you're trying to cuddle up to aren't even that big. The fandom outside of the tags actually has much more popular posts, supporters, and fics...although that's also half of what this all is actually about, fic numbers. Again, these are grown adults obsessing over this. We could have a whole different fandom if this group didn't exist and keep wanting to gatekeep everything and be the only people who get praise about anything.

It's no surprise that people who worship Anne Rice have major ego problems themselves. It's been fucked up to deal with but the good thing now is that big egos have big collapses eventually and that's what we're starting to see happening now. People are sick of you and able to see through your basic ass manipulation techniques. People just want to have a fandom, they're not here to worship fans who want to be dictators. Nobody is here for your fragility, losers.

#fandom racism #iwtv fandom #amc iwtv #iwtv #interview with the vampire

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fandomshatepeopleofcolor · 2 months

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Hello!

I hope I'm not being invasive by posting this ask.

My names is Zade and I run a blog dedicated to Baldur's Gate 3.

Both the game and its fandom have a huge racism issue.

About the game: There is only one black core companion in the game, Wyll, whose story ties directly to the events of the game. He is a textbook prince charming. He also is the companion with the least amount of content and a lot of it is bugged. The writers even publicly mock him and dismiss the issues he faces in-game (he is subdued by a devil that is white-coded). Fans have been sending reports to the developpers for months and are consistently ignored in favour of fans of the more popular (white) companions/NPCs.

A new patch was released a few days ago where Wyll was once again sidelined. This led to a lot of outrage and some responses to that outrage tap directly into the fandom's antiblackness.

About the fandom: Since the game was released, gamers have repeatedly dismissed Wyll as being boring and go to great lenght to justify why they don't interact with him. They purposefully ignore the fact that the character was rewritten late in production in-part because people who played the beta version of the game couldn't handle him having flaws and depth. As of today, he is the least represented in fanarts and posts concerning him will generally receive less engagement than those featuring his white counterparts.

It's no mystery that a lot of Wyll's fans are POC. Those same fans are consistently called aggressive and hostile by the white fandom when they demand that all main companions are treated with the same amount of care. They refuse to see the racism the only black companion faces both inside and outside the game. Our reactions and demands are described as disproportionate and entitled.

I thought this ongoing issue could be of interest to you.

Bonus: A petition is going around to tackle his lack of content and care by the developpers here.

hey thanks for messaging us!!! this ask is not a bother at all :D this is what we're here for. Sadly I know more about bg3 because of the fandom antiblackness against Wyll than anything positive at this point. (I found this article which was similar to an ask one of our blogs got I'm so sorry I can't seem to find it https://www.themarysue.com/baldurs-gate-3-is-the-latest-target-of-racist-dog-whistle-mods/)

Thanks for this summary, blog promotion, and fandom racism breakdown I looked through the first page and it looks great so far!!!

Followers please go give Zade a follow on the blog @absansombre and check out the petition!

mod ali

#wyll ravengard #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #fandom anti blackness #whitewashing mods #video games #racism in gaming

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greatrunner · 1 month

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@tododeku-or-bust's post asking for examples of racism (experienced/witnessed) in fandom has got me thinking about how abstract the experience of antiblackness is once you (as in me, because I can only tell you my perspective) 'remove' yourself from the situation or the situation is considered 'settled.'

A lot of that is, obviously, a defense mechanism. If I didn't learn how to dissociate or numb myself from said experiences, I think I would be in a much worse place than I am right now.

But it also highlights how much I spent on Tumblr reading or experiencing antiblackness in different fandoms. Within the moment, the experience is raw and extremely triggering.

Left 4 Dead 2, Pacific Rim, Princess and the Frog, and Star Wars were probably the most active I'd been within a fanspace on Tumblr, and the antiblackness that ran rampant in those spaces was pretty vile.

At every turn, instead of owning up to the acts of passive and active racism, yt and non-Black users would break their backs to defend their position as 'not racist.'

The absolute refusal to investigate why they were so comfortable calling characters like Rochelle and Tiana boring or annoying compared to Lottie or Zoey allowed antiblackness to run rampant because, "I should be allowed to dislike a character!"

Do you know how aggravating it was to watch old-ass shows like Buffy and Angel at 14-then-22 and watch not only the writers but the audience (or LiveJournal or Television Without Pity) demonize characters like Charles Gunn and Robin Wood for doing things they cheered white characters on for doing... on the same shows? All while engaging in some truly racist stereotypes? It feels like you're going crazy when you see it. It made me wanna cry for help.

The fact that I had to remind Star Wars fans that 'DLF didn't mean it that way' wasn't an excuse for how LucasFilm treated Finn or John Boyega. That "actual racism" was benign, passive, uncritical, and often intentional.

The fact that much of my Pacific Rim experience was watching yt fandom call Stacker Pentecost an "asshole" or "control freak" because he was holding Raleigh and Chuck to account, or they wouldn't engage with his and Mako's relationship with the same respect they did with Herc and Chuck's.

I decided not to engage with the media outside of isolation or friend circles. As I moved further and further away from it, and it became vague and less sharp, I'd start to question, "Was it really that serious?" When so many people failed to read the room and centered themselves as victims of 'harassment,' was it really that serious?

And I have to remind myself, "Yeah, it was." Even as it becomes hard to verbalize or put into words to recall, it was and is that fucking serious.

And the worst part of all of this? Most of those racist shitheads knew that too. But they could get away with it, so...

The point ultimately is to drive people who'll challenge positions out of those spaces. That's why so many fanspaces don't promote growth or shifting dynamics. They prioritize anti-intellectualism and infantilization of the self or the work itself.

#greatrunners meta #tododeku or bust #antiblackness

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doberbutts · 6 months

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he's already pointed out the post himself, where he said that it wouldn't be right for israelis to move to america because it's also colonised land- but the way he phrased it was as if it was an afterthought, a footnote, to the more important fact that america is an antisemitic country, and also as though the colonisation of america has already been "completed" and is not also still being actively fought against. personally i felt like it was a little tokenising and insensitive, NOT purposeful or deserving of bigotry in response, but like, that's the thing with microaggressions? they're very small and it's easy to dismiss them as unimportant when you're not on the receiving end. and a lot of indigenous people are on edge right now, for reasons he should understand- because there's just as much anti-native sentiment flying around as antisemitism right now, and i wish there was some care taken in these conversations for our sake, even if it is just small things

While as a black and indigenous person myself I understand that those microaggressions are incredibly frustrating, I also want you to consider that you're upset at an autistic person about phrasing of all things and you're trying to tell me the correct response to an autistic person having maybe clumsy phrasing (a common problem with autism!) is to go on a multi-post rant about how terrible of a person they are instead of just being like. "Hey. I get it. I also think your phrasing sucks btw." And then being mad when said person goes "HEY" in response to the multi-post rant.

And I understand that maybe you don't have the relationship with him to feel comfortable doing that but like. I have absolutely poked various blogs that I genuinely like and enjoy and want to read their posts about their phrasing, and they have all gone "oh shit I didn't know" and fixed their phrasing. Not everyone is out to get you. We can always block those who go "no fuck you I MEANT IT" after all.

As I just said to someone else, we are all traumatized by bigotry and oppression. None of us are unharmed by it. Let us show a little solidarity among us and fix our issues with grace, because, as you said, it probably wasn't intentional, and he probably didn't realize it because for him the more pressing issue is antisemitism. Of course it is, he's literally Jewish? I think the most pressing issue in my life is antiblackness because it's mainly only other Natives who recognize me as Native without me having to bring it up. That means I might not realize if I've said something or phrased something in a way that is insensitive to someone who has lived a more Native experience than me. That's okay. I'm allowed to be wrong. As long as I strive to fix it and do better when it's pointed out to me.

I think that's worlds apart from a, ahem, racist sycophant.

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logray · 2 months

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The comment Lana Wachowski made at that trans100 event - about how she knows a lot of black people that would vote against trans-friendly bathroom bills, and that they should know better because black people used to be forced to use segregated bathrooms - is probably one of the worst things I've ever heard a white LGBT celebrity say. She and her sister have a long and well-documented history of being two of the most racist people in Hollywood, and this is a perfect example.

While she didn't directly say that black people are responsible for preventing trans-friendly legislation, she still heavily implied it. She still singled out black people as opponents of trans rights. She still, for some reason, basically said that black people being transphobic is worse than nonblack people being transphobic because it's also hypocritical (never mind that you can certainly say the same for cisgay transphobes, who she never mentioned, but she felt the need to single out black people because it's... bathroom-related?) and that she expects better of them - why would you expect better treatment from a cis black person, but not from a cis white person? She also heavily implied that trans people and black people are wholly separate, mutually exclusive communities, as if there are no black trans or transfem people

@ardourie this is what came to mind instantly when I saw your posts over the last couple of days. The Wachowski sisters love to make their films & shows racially and culturally diverse, they love to fill their shit with nonwhite people (who can be cis, straight, gay, but conveniently never transgender, as if that can be chalked up to coincidence), but their respect for blackness & black people crumbles as soon as they meet a black transphobe. Suddenly black people have to be singled out as transphobic. Suddenly transphobia is worse when it comes from a black person. Suddenly blackness is antithetical to transness and suddenly those are separate communities.

The Wachowskis are racist. Lana Wachowski is racist and her remarks at the trans100 event were antiblack. Audiences are way too ready to overlook the anti-Asian racism in Cloud Atlas, they're way too ready to overlook the comments the sisters made about white saviours not being a real thing, they're way too ready to overlook the active removal of any and all references to Norsefire being racist or white supremacist in V for Vendetta (despite making it clear they're anti-LGBT!), and they're way too ready to overlook the trans100 comments. They're influential white artists, and so (like we see constantly on this platform) any attempt to address or criticise their racism is met with allegations of transphobia. It's not transphobic to point out when trans people are racist. It doesn't make you a TERF to point out when transfems are racist. It doesn't make you transphobic to point out when trans people make the LGBT community unwelcoming and hostile towards black or other nonwhite people.

The Wachowskis, their comments in real life, and the media they make, are racist. They perfectly exemplify the kind of stuff Tyler's been posting about, where they drive qpoc out of the community, decry criticism from people of colour as transmisogynistic, and are racially exclusionary in their support for LGBT rights.

#txt**#lana wachowski #lily wachowski #sense8 #cloud atlas #v for vendetta

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prismatic-bell · 1 year

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Anti-Racism In Glass Onion: It's A Whole Thing, Part One

So I wasn't going to write this, because I'm white and it felt like veering very far out of my lane. But I also haven't seen anyone else talking about it, and finally I decided I'd rather make an ass of myself by doing something well-meaning than I would to uphold a status quo that zips right by one of the most important things in this film (that doesn't get explored enough in media or fandom), so here we are. Please keep in mind this is going to be FULL of spoilers so if you're not about that life, you'll want to give this a pass for now. (I also expected it to be much shorter than it is. It’s, uh, nine pages long. So it will be multiple posts long. Sorry.)

I don't think I've yet seen anyone really touch in-depth on the fact that this is a movie with a pretty strong theme calling out antiblack racism and the overturning thereof. Indeed, I’ve only seen one post mentioning it at all.

So let’s analyze, yes?

First, let's look at "the disrupters." They include:

--an alt-right streamer who's openly mentioned as being just about every -ism in the book

--his blonde-haired, blue-eyed girlfriend who's with him for status

--a white politician who objects to Klear not on the basis that it could cost lives, but that it will lose her the progressive vote

--an absolute idiot of a white supermodel who's had two serious antiblack race-based scandals, and is about to have another that's just generally racist

--a Black scientist who repeatedly tries to speak up and gets shot down

--a Black woman, the actual brains of this entire outfit, who created the original business plan and a multibillion-dollar company and got first fired, then financially ousted, then murdered

Now let's look at some other Black characters and Black imagery in the story. These include:

--a mural of Kanye West depicted as a messiah

--Serena Williams, as Miles' personal trainer

--the phrase "sucking on his titties," spoken by a Black woman

--a cameo by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as one of Benoit Blanc's friends

—a Beatles song (yes, really)

--the lower-middle-class sister of the Black woman who was the actual brains, etc.

Before we move on, I want to address the Kanye thing, because Glass Onion was filmed in 2021, probably written in 2020, and the point where Kanye went absolutely batshit deep-end off-the-fucking-rails was in 2022. I do not believe Rian Johnson was making any kind of "go Kanye" statement here--I think it was an unfortunate confluence of timing. As I discuss Kanye further, I want it to be clear we're discussing already-gross-but-not-yet-gone-full-Nazi Kanye.

So let's go ahead and get him out of the way first, because he's an incredibly important figure in Black music but as a Jew I just. Really do not want to be discussing Kanye West longer than I have to, I'm sorry. West is the kind of figure Miles Bron would absolutely want to have in his life as a status symbol. First, if we look at Bron's definition of being "a disrupter" (first you break a small thing, then very quickly you break the system itself), Kanye absolutely qualifies. He started out as a small artist mostly producing beats for other musicians, then did some work for Jay-Z that led to an album Rolling Stone considered one of the best hip-hop albums of all time, and then he dropped The College Dropout. I knew his work was considered influential before I started looking into this imagery deeper, but I had no idea how influential--this was his debut album and it hit #2 on the charts, produced a single that debuted at #1, included a song called "Jesus Walks" that hit the top 20 even though it was predicted a Christian song would never land in hip-hop, and the album is still considered one of "the greats" by other artists--twenty years later. I'd say that pretty neatly fits Miles' definition of "disruption." He did, indeed, first break something small and then turn the hip-hop world on its head.

Where there's a second layer to this that I think would also speak to Miles is that in 2018, Kanye declared the chattel slavery of West African people in the Americas was "a choice"--as in, they chose to be enslaved. He later claimed he was referring to "mental enslavement," but no matter how you cut it, regardless of his own race, that's a pretty fucking racist antiblack statement (in addition to being wildly historically revisionist). While I doubt Miles would be like “hell yeah, racism!,” he’d absolutely buy 100% into the idea of choosing to be in hellish circumstances, because He Got Out All On His Own (even though he didn’t), So You Can Too.

Moving on, we have Serena Williams. She's another person who'd fit Miles' description of "a disrupter," but where Kanye would probably revel in that idea, I honestly don't think she'd like it very much, and her attitude in the movie really underlines that. Yes, she's taking his money to be his "personal trainer," but really, he's frittering her life away. She's sitting there reading a book waiting for him to decide he wants to get off his ass and work out today. She's not a slave, but she has been explicitly put in a role as a paid servant. I don't think it's out of the question to say Miles specifically picked her over, say, Jillian Michaels, because she is Black. Do I think he sat down and went "who's a Black athlete I can subjugate?" No. I think if you asked Miles he'd be the kind of person who'd unironically say "I'm not racist! The head scientist at Alpha is Black!" What I think happened--or to be more accurate, what I think the kind of train of thought Rian Johnson would attribute to him would have caused to happen--is that he picked someone he'd be comfortable ignoring. Did he consciously decide he'd be more comfortable ignoring a Black woman and telling her to put up or shut up if she complained he was wasting her time? No. But do I think we should attribute unconscious biases and prejudices to him that aided him in the decision that he'd be comfortable ignoring her? Yes.

Incidentally, while we’re here, let’s discuss how the two of them stack up to Miles’ other “status symbol” name-drops. First, let’s discard Banksy. He’s a special case here and we’ll discuss him later. But now let’s look at the others. We’ve got Jeremy Renner, whose personal I-make-this-for-my-inner-circle food Miles proudly eats and hands out; Jared Leto, whose personal I-make-this-for-my-inner-circle drink Miles proudly offers to friends (although if memory serves me, he himself is drinking beer); Gillian Flynn, who he’s hired to write a mystery game for his own inner circle; Philip Glass, who he hired to write the music for the Glass Onion’s clock, which is there to impress guests; and Anderson Cooper, whose party he supposedly attended. Notice something about all the celebrities whose products he actively engages with? Yeah. They’re all white. Serena is relegated to a private room and not interacted with, while Kanye doesn’t even get a mention—and as I noted above, this movie would have gone through post far too late for Rian Johnson to have been able to say “let’s…remove praising the dude who’s declared himself a Nazi, please,” which means if Kanye was ever mentioned at all, it was cut long before real!Kanye’s final downward spiral. The Black “status symbols” have literally been relegated to being Miles’ props and “the help.”

Now let's talk about Helen's turn of phrase when she's reading "the disrupters" for absolute filth. She tells all of them what they want is Miles' (and, by extension, Andi's) money, and that they're "sucking on his titties." Putting the line in the mouth of a Black woman puts me instantly in mind of the "mammy" stereotype, where the Black woman is expected to nurture and nourish and care for all of the (implied or outright stated to be white) children and have no personality outside this. Technically it's Miles' money, but it's Miles' money specifically because of the shit he pulled with Andi--he sucked her dry and now is being fed upon in turn. The thing is, the way Black women are further treated throughout the narrative doesn't make this a faux-cutesy little image like those godawful racist vintage ads; it's horrifying. It is horrifying and it should be horrifying; it’s disgusting and the narrative wants you to be disgusted at this.

To continue, we have that cameo by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It's really only noteworthy because he's the one who's giving Blanc shit for failing at Among Us and refusing to get out of the bathtub. This is important for reasons I'll come back to (put a pin in this), but for now suffice it to say it's important because Blanc is white and Southern and we'll get back to that.

Next up, it’s “Blackbird,” the song Miles was playing on guitar when the ship lands. Other posts have noted that for all Blackbird sounds very pretty and impressive, it’s actually very simple to play, and that this reflects Miles’ relationship with the world in general—pretending he’s bigger, better, smarter, more, than he actually is. This is probably true. I’ve also seen it mentioned that it, like Glass Onion, is a Beatles song from the White Album, and this is also true. What you may not know if you’re not a Beatles nerd is that “Blackbird” isn’t about a bird at all. Paul McCartney has stated several times over the years that the song had a dual inspiration—the sound of blackbirds, but also news reports about the American Black civil rights movement, and that when he says “blackbird” you should be thinking “black girl.” Birdie is excited and immediately declares it’s “her song,” which in her mind probably has to do with her name, but I strongly suspect that for Rian Johnson, this was another way to tie in how absolutely wildly Birdie is willing to appropriate Black experiences and culture. This is particularly true because of the exact part of Black history the song references—Birdie tells us she’s done blackface to dress as Beyoncé (a modern Black feminist who strongly pushes for empowerment) and has compared herself to Harriet Tubman (an escaped slave who proceeded, during Reconstruction, to become part of the women’s suffrage movement). Blackbird links these two together, with our nameless 1960s Black civil rights protestor falling squarely between the two named women. Also worth noting here is that “Blackbird” was released in 1968; while the Black Power movement was getting underway and “Black” or “African-American” would become the accepted terms over the next decade, “Negro” and “colored” were still the polite ways to refer to a Black person in the US. McCartney has since gone on the record apologizing for some pretty serious racism during his time with the Beatles, and I’m choosing for simplicity’s sake here to assume he was sincere, but this makes the song itself another example of appropropriation—“Black” wasn’t really a word McCartney, as a white man, had the right to use when the song came out. That makes “Blackbird” an even more apt double-metaphor—Birdie the appropriator of Black culture calling it “her” song, and Miles “I steal everything not nailed down and say I did it” Bron using it to look like he’s more than he is.

The second half of this (admittedly extremely messy) essay is here.

#glass onion #racism #media analysis

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bi-hop · 11 months

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across the spiderverse spoilers under cut

was discussing the film with some of my friends who saw it last night, same as me, and I think I can provide a perspective on one of the major themes that is heavily rooted in the Black Caribbean student experience

tw: institutional racism, references to sexual harassment and antiblack hate crimes

everything in across the spiderverse is incredibly intentional, including the early college advising meeting. now, you may think it's solely furthering the theme of expectations, and while it is concerned with that in a fundamental manner, that's not the full story.

colleges, especially top colleges, want stories about struggle. they live for it! crave it! I was naive enough starting out that summer between my junior and senior years that I thought writing a personal essay about how my interest in game writing has influenced my own trajectory would fly. it didn't. my family, my advisers, they all said it lacked something, that it wasn't me. can you guess what WAS me enough to get me into 13 colleges, including the university of chicago? writing about me being hate crimed and sexually harassed at the same time. because I 'overcame it'. I struggled, yes, but I persevered!

I don't like college applications. I get the point of the holistic approach, but said approach fails students when what is personal is only seen as worthy if you suffered and can adequately describe it on the page. they constantly say 'we'd rather see a student who did poorly but had to raise their siblings than a Straight As students with no experiences to speak of' but why is the only merit we can find in students, especially students of color, moments of anguish that you have to then fight against? why do I have to recount the worst moments of my life (sanism in Afro-Caribbean communities, sexual harassment, the works) for the sake of a school that doesn't actually give two shits about me now that I'm here? thanks by the way, uchicago, love being a token, it's really cool. I swear this is still about Miles.

the framing of his familial story into something palatable yet appealing to princeton (a school that I also applied to back then) even though it's not exactly true? pure autofiction. and it's what colleges eat up. they want to see a Black boy, son of immigrants (again regardless of how true this might be), suffer but persevere. he's 'beat the odds'! look at him, going from his miserable little Brooklyn existence to studying quantum physics at an Ivy League!

and by the middle of the film, Miles says 'no' to all that. people are constantly trying to write his own story. they want to take who he is and judge it against a board of critics, against algorithms that say his choices are wrong, against his peers who don't think he belongs. and he says "nah. I'mma do my own thing."

he might not be able to transcend the desires of admissions, but he can assert himself here. he can protect his inner child as his mother wanted. and he does it as well as he can. it's why I relate to him so much, I wish I was in the position to do what he does: look someone dead in the eye and reject their narrative of him as unfair and stifling.

#spider man: across the spider verse #across the spiderverse #atsv #atsv spoilers #miles morales

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spacebeyonce · 10 months

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EOTWR has been getting some heat for their preliminary post on the board candidates, to the point that some are disavowing the movement all together, and I’ve been wondering -- are there any other organizations that are addressing the issues that you believe EOTWR hasn’t covered appropriately?

and I’m not talking about little fun fandom events where we pass fic and fanart back and forth and pat each other on the back like ‘we’re so diverse, guys! we exist!’. I’m talking organizations. a group of people that have come together and decided to push for systemic change. because as far as I know, EOTWR are the only ones doing it.

where I’m standing, though some parts weren’t worded as well as they could have been, the post is....fine? it’s fine. it introduces the candidates and their intro profiles and examines if their goals as a board member line up with EOTWR’s, which have been clearly stated from the jump. so to go into the notes and see all that has been. hm! it certainly gave me whiplash lmao.

idk, I don’t see the issue...as a black person I know intimately how diversity in a space doesn’t automatically mean that our goals will align. just because you’re a person of color doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of being racist -- especially, in my case, antiblack, because antiblackness is global. so. I think it’s fine that all the candidates get the same amount of scrutiny when it comes to their goals on the board and if they bring up the concerns re: racism in the OTW that have been brought up for months.

if you think that EOTWR is falling short in places, alright. that’s certainly your right to feel that way, and no organization is perfect; it’s made by a group of people, and people will always fall short (just look at the ao3/otw lmao).

but are there any alternate groups out there doing this work as well? groups that are organizing and doing the work regarding the concerns that you have re: the otw that you feel EOTWR hasn’t addressed properly, if at all? and I’m genuinely asking because having more groups organize to put the otw’s feet to the fire is never a bad thing lmao. there should be more organizations! because EOTWR can’t be the only group out there- and they shouldn’t be. there should be more groups like them.

#endotwracism #end otw racism #fandom racism #literally thought about all this in the shower this morning lmao #but it has been on my mind for the past few days

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butch-reidentified · 1 month

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thank you for your reply!! i hope it's okay to send you an ask instead so i don't impose on that other post any further haha. but you know what, i never even saw it that way "they're also using it to try to make black women (and ESP black teen girls, who are uniquely vulnerable and socially isolated) feel explicitly invited in." because this is so true, i observed it. there are a lot of younger black girls who get caught up in the online-discussions about "attraction" as it relates to black women and it's brutal. the attacks come from all sides, within the community from black men and women alike, from racist white people, from other women (regardless of ethnicity) so i get that instead of realizing this is racism and ignoring or defining their own black womanhood instead of letting it be defined for them, they understandably look to distance themselves from it entirely. it's traumatizing. and then you have the idea of non-binary with a community of people already there just waiting for you and go for it. you absolutely have a point.

for me personally i think i just realized the amount of misogynist stuff i have to swallow and accept to identify as nb + the idea that i'm supposed to internalize the racist actions of others as some kind of personal flaw didn't sit well with me. it also plays into this idea that many women are groomed into, that if there is something wrong, it's internal and YOU have to fix yourself. not the outside world might need to change to accommodate you as a woman, you have to cease being a woman since you don't fit some misogynistic racist patriarchal ideal. i know there were black women who claimed that people didn't "read them as women" because they never held doors open for them or helped them with their luggage and thus they concluded they were not women. and i just couldn't accept that, why give up control and agency like that? (not to mention people do these things for me and i'm dark brown and live in lily-white europe, like? it says nothing about you as a woman at all.)

and about your addition on tifs and blocklists, you know it's funny. tumblr is full of altright and super racist blogs, there is a corner of tumblr like that. i have never once seen people on this side of tumblr (political or just random blogs) make blocklists for those blogs. because it's not needed because anyone who finds that content knows to block it or just stay away. it's universally bad and easily identifiable. for radfem and rad leaning (etc...) blogs however, this doesn't apply. the posts are simply about womanhood and female reality and it rings true for many if they take their time to read them. and effectiveness lies in their truth, so they need to be blocked.

ngl this made me cry

of course it's okay to send me an ask! or dm, or anything! please please know you aren't imposing if you were to add this to the post - and the "haha" honestly stung because it just (and I already know I'm not gonna be able to put this into words the way I'd like to rn), it's female socialization, yk? and I won't begin to try to imagine what that's like when you factor in antiblackness and specifically misogynoir, but I make it a point to call this out because SO many asks I get start with an apology for existing, for reaching out to me. and it hurts, it enrages me that this world has taught its women & girls to do this, to feel this way. I LOVE getting asks and messages from you gyns, truly. it's my favorite. what you wrote here is so meaningful and raw and important, and I honestly think every word of it belongs on that post. you have a right, every right, and you deserve, to speak and be heard. truly heard. you have every right to reach out and make connections and build sisterhood. please do.

I would love for you to add this to the post, and I'd be honored to reblog it and boost YOUR voice fr. I'm honored you wanted to talk to me about this ❤️

btw, your url is just flawless

#mine #ask #radblr #non anon #whengodwasawoman

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thottybrucewayne · 5 months

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And if I said that watching the way yall will extend endless amounts of grace and space to the worst white people on the planet but the second a Black person is actually dog piled for something they didn't even fuckin do its crickets is what made me actively divest from predominantly nonblack leftists online spaces?

Watching what yall did and are still doing to people like Prof Flowers, Jai of Twitter fame, and more recently Soulbunni makes me feel like Black MaGes have no place in these spaces and are endlessly harassed with nobody defending them other than other Black leftists. You wanna know why, even after the rise of Cornbreadtube, breadtube still struggles when it comes to not being racist as hell? It's because yall actively push out Black people the second they come under scrutiny for anything (it doesn't even have to be true.) You view Black people (but esp Black MaGes) as expendable. You would never throw the kind of support behind a Black person facing harassment for "problematic past posts" the way you would for someone like Lindsy Ellis or even Keffels. And that's because you really don't view Black MaGes as being in community with you in the first place. We're literally tokens until you can't cash us in anymore. A while back, I was a mod in a PNB (predominately nonblack) leftist discord server. A server that I had to ask for a POC channel in. Now, I want to preface this story by saying that the events that followed me being modded were not the creator of the server's fault in any way. I still have a great deal of respect and admiration for the server's creator. There are even some mods that I still respect and am very grateful for the way they supported and defended me in those events. That being said, the things that I experienced in that server have really shaped how I feel about nb leftists and the online left as a whole and have put a bad taste in my mouth. Which has only gotten worse as I watch other Black MaGes go through what I did and worse. Even after the creation of the POC channel, I watched as every single Black person in that server slowly left or stopped interacting with the server, some of whom are close friends of mine, citing instances of frustrating interactions with nb server members when discussing antiblackness that made them feel unwelcome. There was this sense that, if Black server members weren't there to educate (there were many instances of nb people popping into the POC channel to pick our brains about an issue or topic to the point where we had to put in the channel description that the channel wasn't for that) then we weren't of use. Black server members, including myself, felt like we had to walk on eggshells at all times, it eventually became too much. Many of the nb server members (and even some of the mods) quite literally couldn't stand hearing a Black perspective on Black issues that challenged the way they thought about things in any way. I found myself trying my hardest to speak in the plainest language possible only to be met with either a complete misunderstanding of what I said or a flat-out dismissal of it in favor of what certain nb server members felt to be true about Blackness.

I was the only Black mod and I tried (when I could) to be there to really talk about issues surrounding antiblackness and the use and misuse of aave by nonblack people in an educational way because I believed (still believe) in educating first and foremost.

I was met with "Well, Black people on Twitter have a differing opinion on the matter." and eventually, I was villainized and demonized. I just decided to leave after being accused of " muddying the discourse" and causing derision. I was a token that dropped in value. Multiple non-black people who attacked me called me out my name and treated me like I was some angry, mean, Black bully trying to take over the server and call everyone antiblack. Once again, they could not handle hearing a Black perspective that challenged their worldview in any way. I'm telling this story, not to gain sympathy (because I know that will never be afforded to me) but to make a point that, if you look around at your online spaces and wonder why they look like the front row of a Taylor Swift concert, it's most likely that you've pushed out anyone who would make you think about the ways you interact with Blackness and Black culture longer than five seconds. But what do I know? I'm just some angry Black bitch on the internet.

Edit: rb the edited version, pls

#thotty speaks #thotty rants #antiblackness #breadtube so white #cornbreadtube

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thorraborinn · 1 year

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sonneve

How might you describe or define animism, or alternatively, do you have any recommendations for reading about it?

Graham Harvey defines it as understanding "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others." This is definitely a better definition than "the belief that everything has a soul" but you might also notice that it's vague to the point of including practically everything that doesn't include Aristotle's rational soul as a distinctive feature of humans. Harvey is aware of this (he even includes things like yelling at your computer as an animistic behavior). As soon as you start to narrow the definition more than that, it starts to exclude peoples and customs that it's trying to include.

Nordic Animism has a good short video that does like a drive-by description of animism and history of its study that comes from the same sorts of books that I'm going to mention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_j9oPCE-Ns

Harvey edited a book called The Handbook of Contemporary Animism. If you were going to pick a single book to start with, you could do much worse than this. Very many of the authors are ones that you'd see recur frequently if you were to go deeper into studying recent anthropology related to animism. If chapters stand out, it would be a good idea to find that author's other works.

My personal favorite single book on the subject is How Forests Think by Eduardo Kohn. He has a lecture on YouTube that introduces some of the ideas in the book: https://youtu.be/mSdrdY6vmDo?t=102.

Kohn draws heavily on the works of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Viveiros de Castro is one of the most important recent anthropologists in terms of him being the guy that everyone writing after him has to have an opinion about, whether positive or negative. It's a good idea to read him because he's going to come up in others' works. I personally find his stuff on Amazonian "perspectivism" very good. There's a collection of his essays called The Relative Native.

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram is a good book about animism and phenomenology, kind of using ideas from Western philosophers like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty to derive something compatible with non-western animistic ideas. He has another book called Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology that I wasn't into but might be a good intro for some people.

There's like this whole scene of books about "entanglements" and use words like "response-ability"; it's not a bad idea to read one of them but I don't think it's necessary to read all of them; my favorite was The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Donna Haraway has some books in this category that I know some people love but didn't do as much for me, admittedly possibly because of stuff I'd already read that was influenced by them. Here is also a good critique of these authors that I think preserves the positive while pointing out limitations: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10180270.

Though only tangentially related to animism, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson is not only good on its own but I think is important to read if you're also reading stuff that focuses on distinction or non-distinction of human from non-human.

Pantheologies by Mary-Jane Rubenstein isn't specifically about animism but intersects with and includes it. I think just reading through the first chapter is worthwhile (the rest might be better for others but it drew heavily on stuff I'd already read). She also has a bunch of stuff on Youtube.

I dunno if she uses the word, but some of Gloria Anzaldúa's work intersects with it, e.g. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro.

I am a big fan of Katherine Swancutt, she has written a lot of articles and done a lot of book editing; her book Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination is not really about animism per se but is a very good read.

Also not about animism, but a good thing to read for anyone interested in it, is The Invention of World Religions or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism by Tomoko Masuzawa.

This is probably getting overwhelming so I'm cutting myself off even though there's other stuff that I would list otherwise. This stuff is currently very popular and well-funded in academia which means they are actually fairly widely available, including as audiobooks, for those who prefer those.

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