Lest we forget:

Reblogged from The Black Feminist Manifesto

On Phantom Negro Weapons

Phantom Negro Weapons are those weapons which White Americans report black people having but which are never found for some strange reason.

Examples:
1999: Amadou Diallo - shot 41 times, hit 19 times, died. His gun shapeshifted into a wallet.
2006: Sean Bell - shot 51 times and died after one of his friends reached for his gun. The gun cloaked itself and was never found.
2009: Oscar Grant - shot dead when he reached for his gun. Since it was a Phantom Negro Weapon, police failed to find it when they searched him before putting him face down on the ground.
2011: Kenneth Chamberlain - shot dead when he threatened armed policemen with a butcher’s knife. The knife, of course, being a Phantom Negro Weapon, did not appear on the video recording.
2012: Ramarley Graham - the gun in his waistband cloaked itself after police shot him dead in front of his grandmother.
2012: Trayvon Martin – no weapon was reported, but the way his killer acted you would think his Arizona iced tea and bag of Skittles had shapeshifted from something far more deadly.
2012: Rekia Boyd - was killed when police shot at Antonio Cross, whose gun shapeshifted into a mobile phone.
2012: Jordan Davis - killed after threatening Michael Dunn with a shotgun rather than turning down his music. The police were unable to find the shotgun. Maybe it will still turn up, but more likely it was Phantom Negro Weapon which has cloaked itself.

Phantom Negro Weapons | Abagond

(via Sister Outsider)

"In North America, the Black immigrant is used to downgrade the North-American-born Black population; in Europe, the North American Black is used to downgrade the Black European and African and Caribbean permanent residents there. Each instance allows the dominating populations to conceal their racism by appealing to a worse racism elsewhere and by castigating the resident population for failing to excel under the status quo. How often have I heard American Blacks speak of how wonderfully they were treated in Europe! My experience--perhaps from looking too African in Brussels or too Black in Prague--is that European Whites are not particularly different than U.S. Whites when they think the Black is one of their "own," which ironically includes the type of immigrants they are used to."

--Lewis Gordon

(via The Black Feminist Manifesto)

Photo

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

"You know that feeling. It's the one that makes us hear about Trayvon, and now about Jordan Davis, and reach back across decades into our history, for the name of another boy named Emmett Till. Then, it was a whistle at a White woman. Now, it's a hooded sweatshirt, or music being played loudly from a car. But always, this one thing has been the same--no presumption of innocence for young Black men. No benefit of the doubt. Guilt--not determined by what they did or said--but presumed to be inherent in their very being. They need not wield a weapon to pose a threat. Because, if you are a young, Black man, who you are is threat enough. And in yet another case, it seems, that perceived threat is justification enough for someone who would play judge, jury, and executioner."

--Melissa Harris-Perry

(via Sister Outsider)

Props to Roger Young

Reblogged from Clutch Magazine

Roger is a White South African filmmaker. In the wake of observing White backlash against a grocery store explicitly seeking to hire Black workers, Roger is trying to document apartheid's legacy, how people like him are still reaping the benefits of the now defunct system and coloreds and Blacks are still disadvantaged. He printed up 40 of the t-shirts he's wearing in the above photograph, which read "I benefited from apartheid," and placed them under a sign that read, "Free t-shirts--Whites only." Predictably, a whole slew of White South Africans are outraged, or at least offended, by his gesture. 

Ignorant people took to Facebook, as they are wont to do, to say that Black South Africans should be grateful for apartheid, because when Whites came to what is now South Africa, there were no roads or hospitals or an organized system of government. Because a government that systematically denies you basic human rights is a government to be praised! Blacks should be thankful that apartheid allowed them to be civilized. Riiiight. Because civilization only comes in one form and one skin-tone--cookie-cutter or bust! It puzzles these people of Facebook why strangers appearing in a land that has been doing just fine on its own for literally thousands of years, literally tramping on history and culture in the name of helping the original inhabitants might be regarded poorly by the descendants of those original inhabitants. Black South Africans still make, on average, a sixth of their white counterparts' income, but they should be humbled, really, because they weren't making any money before Whites came and introduced a money-based system that destroyed their livelihoods!

And then there were the people who tried to absolve themselves through claiming to have been reluctant participants in the apartheid system, those who basically said, well I couldn't have benefited from apartheid because I didn't actively support it. Those people must have forgotten that there's a funny thing about privilege--you can't wish it on or away. If your entire society was based on rules (written or implicit) that gave people like you certain advantages over people not like you, you benefited from apartheid in South Africa, or from systemic racism under other or no names in the United States and elsewhere. Racists aren't the only people who benefit from racism.

Kudos to Young for taking a proactive stand in the battle against denialism and the dismissal of a progressive agenda as "White guilt". I think John Shapiro's political cartoon says it best:

        

From Skittles to Stereos

We've all rolled up at a red light or in a parking lot next to someone who seems to have a blatant disregard for his or her long-term ability to hear. We've all rolled our eyes and muttered under our breaths, asking if it's really necessary for that person's music to be loud enough to make our cars vibrate. We've all written it off as a momentary frustration in the course of our days, and maybe sped a little to get away from the jerk with the loud music before the next red light.

Michael Dunn is not like most of us. When Michael Dunn thought that Jordan Davis and his friends were playing their music too loudly when both parties were stopped at a gas station, his solution to this problem was to confront them. He approached the car that contained Davis and his friends, and an argument ensued. Dunn felt "threatened" during this argument, which, remember, came about after he went out of his way to approach and confront these boys, and decided to rectify his feeling threatened by pulling out a gun and firing 8 or 9 shots into the teens' SUV, collecting his girlfriend from inside the gas station, and driving off. When he was later apprehended by police in his home, he claimed that he "didn't think he'd hurt anybody" and had just been "trying to scare them off."

1) Warning shots AREN'T A THING. This isn't the Wild West. You aren't a police officer. 2) Even if warning shots were a thing, I believe that by definition, to be a warning shot, you must not be shooting horizontally at a target in front of you. 3) 8 or 9 shots "to scare them off"? Fired INTO THEIR CAR?!? This is actually the worst defense story I have ever heard concocted. This man murdered a 17 year old black boy in cold blood at a gas station in front of three of his friends because their music was too loud. He walked away from his car with a gun in his pocket to confront a car full of minors about loud music and riddled one with bullets because HE felt threatened. 

Maybe this is a horrible thing to say, but I want this to be a bigger deal than Trayvon Martin's death. Both are absolute tragedies. Both exemplify why so-called "Stand Your Ground" laws have got to go. I firmly believe that George Zimmerman's decision to leave his house to chase Trayvon in his car and then hunt him on foot to confront him completely and totally eradicates any right he had to defend himself using deadly force, but no one knows what actually happened in their scuffle after George cornered Trayvon. There is a tiny tiny speck of reasonable doubt. There is NONE in this case. How could Jordan threaten Dunn's life FROM INSIDE HIS CAR?! No sane person in the world can tell me that emptying one's clip into someone else's car is an appropriate means by which to "scare someone off." You just can't. Dunn started this confrontation and ended Jordan Davis's life long before it escalated into anything physical breaking out between the two parties. He has shown a bone-chilling level of disregard for this young black man's life and property. 

It doesn't lend itself to photos and protests as easily, but Twitter says to turn the music up for Jordan. But beware--like wearing a hoodie makes you suspicious, playing loud music can evidently be construed as justifying homicide. I hope the mass media picks up on this. If not, the country might as well be saying, "Oh well, sorry, we can only rally behind the unjust killing of one dark-skinned boy in a 365-day period. Y'all will just have to wait. Don't worry, we know it'll happen again soon."  

"When feminists can see the problem with all-male panels but can't see the problem with all-White television programmes, then it's worth questioning who they're really fighting for."

--Reni Eddo-Lodge

(via Lavender Labia)

"Bullying" is a euphemism.

"If we actually started calling bullying what it is and address it as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fat phobia, and classism, it would actually give children a better way to deal with the very same power dynamics they will face as adults, while also giving adults more responsibility to challenge the intolerance that is rooted within our society overall."

--Amanda Levitt, of Fat Body Politics

(via come correct) 

Post-Racial Fucking America, People.

Reblogged from Free Bird

I have no consistent feelings about stand-up.

Sometimes I try to watch stand up and these comedians are making a living by stereotyping, humiliating, and dehumanizing various groups I currently belong to or have belonged to in the past, like Black people, women, poor people, LGBT people, people-whose-bodies-don't-resemble-sticks, etc. 

But then sometimes I watch shit like this and am falling all over myself to give virtual standing ovations (while simultaneously cringing a little bit about the disabled-persons-shade he throws).

 Reblogged from La Belle Vita

'Cause when you white, the sky's the limit. When you black, the limit's the sky!

This hits me deep.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

Fact: I've never watched The Office.

But this guy's name is evidently Oscar, and he is on point.

Reblogged from Tudo Bom(b)

Saying #preach feels redundant...

Reblogged from La Belle Vita

So I've been throwing around the idea of watching HBO's "Girls"

when I finish The L Word, even though I've been reading that there's some controversy because there aren't any Black people, but there's no Black people on Sex and the City ever either and I didn't let that stop me from being entertained by it while I'm waiting for Without a Trace on weeknights when I'm in a place with cable. I have been places where I am the only Black person in a crowded room, and so it is not inconceivable to me that the group of friends that the show follows could all be White, or that I could enjoy such a show. 

What IS inconceivable to me, however, are the beliefs of the show's writer. I cannot, in good faith, or even under any form of irony or curiosity I could drum up, under any circumstances, watch this show (even if finding it online does little if anything to support the writer).

 
I'm not sure you can read that. I wasn't turned off yet in the beginning. She was reported to have said that she doesn't have any personal relationships with black people, and thus can't create a black character. I hoped that this would go off into her saying that she didn't want her own ignorance to contribute to harmful stereotypes, or to go the opposite route and so totally whitewash a character of color that she loses any cultural authenticity. I would have accepted reasonings of that sort, even if I'd rather see people of color on the show. I would have seen that she was coming from a place of...understanding of her lack of understanding, and that kind of a place is honest enough that I could probably have still watched the show.

But then, she continued. The bottom paragraph reads, 

"Writers are supposed to write what they know," Dunham told a reporter. "I don't know any black people, so how do I write about them? I'm not sure how they think. I'm not sure what they feel. I'm not even sure they exist. Is there any conclusive evidence that people can really be black? I don't see color, so I honestly don't know."

YEAH, RIGHT, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY YOU, WHITE PEOPLE, ARE A HUGE MONOLITHIC GROUP THAT THINKS AND FEELS THE EXACT SAME WAY ABOUT EVERYTHING AND WE, BLACK PEOPLE, ARE A SMALLER  MONOLITHIC GROUP THAT THINKS AND FEELS THE EXACT SAME WAY ABOUT EVERYTHING BUT OUR EXACT SAME WAY IS WHOLLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM YOUR EXACT SAME WAY EVEN THOUGH EVIDENTLY, WE MAY VERY WELL NOT EXIST IN THE WORLD BECAUSE YOUR PRIVILEGED PORCELAIN-COLORED FACE HAS NEVER HAD TO "SEE" COLOR. #ICANT #IMDONE

Who exactly constitutes a "jury of your peers"?

In a nation with the racial history of the United States I am baffled by the idea that non-racism would be the presumption and that it is racial bias which must be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

--Melissa Harris-Perry, The Epistemology of Race Talk (via Sister Outsider)

This made me cry

Since Zimmerman's arrest 7 weeks after Martin's death, we are finally on the road to something we've come to call "justice". But that word seems so thoroughly inadequate. A world where things like this can happen and no one cares for so long and mothers have to feel this way about their sons and five year old boys ask heartbreaking questions should never be called "just". Where is the justice in these kinds of fears?

Reblogged from ChoosingPancakes

Disliking hip-hop doesn’t make you a racist any more than liking hip-hop makes you not a racist, and I’m sure there are plenty of Stormfront enthusiasts with Rick Ross in their iTunes. If you don’t like Jay-Z because you just don’t like the way he sounds, or you’re sick of his cloying ubiquity, or you wish he’d talk about something other than where he’s from for five seconds—hey, I’m not mad, I don’t like Bruce Springsteen for the same reasons. But if you don’t like rap music—a genre that contains multitudes—because of a self-satisfied moralism, or because you’re scared of it, or because you wish those people would stop talking about their problems and get out of your television and radio and kids’ bedrooms: well.
And I’m not just talking about the American right, I’m talking about all the well-meaning white folks who’ve told me how they want to like Lil Wayne but lo, the misogyny, the violence, the drugs. But, but, I’ll say: Bob Dylan aced misogyny; the Rolling Stones sang about violence; the Velvet Underground knew their way around some drugs. Yeeeah, but it’s different, they’ll say, elongating that “yeah” with conspiratorial inflection: you know what I mean. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Rap music doesn’t get unarmed kids shot to death, “it’s different” does. “It’s different” infuses “these assholes always get away” and gives solace to people who hear that sound bite and nod their empty heads in agreement. “It’s different” is the same logic that suggests a teenager’s skin color combined with the music he listened to means he had it coming, and it’s the same logic that lets a bunch of people feign outrage over a teenager’s use of the n-word to describe himself when they’re really just outraged that he beat them to the punch.
“It’s different” makes me shake with anger because it turns music into a dog-whistle to justify the murder of a kid who doesn’t seem all that “different” from me was when I was his age, not that different at all. I liked Skittles and hoodies and weed, too. And yeah, I’m white and never worried about getting shot for any of it, which is only the most loathsome excuse for not identifying with someone that I can possibly think of.

--Jack Hamilton, “America Is Dying Slowly: Talking About Hip-Hop After Trayvon Martin”

(via ChoosingPancakes)

Gorgeous socially concsious Black men. Yes.