(((I Will Outlive)))

Rest in peace Nichelle Nichols, December 28th 1932- July 31st 2022

“Last night, my mother, Nichelle Nichols, succumbed to natural causes and passed away. Her light however, like the ancient galaxies now being seen for the first time, will remain for us and future generations to enjoy, learn from, and draw inspiration.” - nichellenicholsofficial

i’m getting really tired of the “you know, you don’t have to ship people” posts that are circulating tumblr because what you people don’t want to acknowledge is that this mentality disproportionately affects people of colour.

fandom will go out of its way to prove that a person of colour and a white person are just fucking friends, when you will reach as far as possible to ship two white guys together. 

it is fucking known, and i see through your anti-shipping bullshit. it’s just perpetuating the same fandom racism over and over again. 

“don’t reduce this female character down to a love interest” does not translate into “this female character shouldn’t have a love interest.”

preventing female characters with strong, compelling narratives from experiencing love, intimacy, and affection is just as regressive as reducing them down to sexual accessories for male characters. it assumes that women must choose between a romantic interest and depth of character and ignores a far more productive message: that women are capable of possessing both. 

The thing with telling “cliche” stories, but with representation, is… these stories aren’t cliche for us.

Picture this. The people at the table next to you have been getting chocolate cake as a dessert for YEARS. After every meal, they get a chocolate cake. Now, it’s been years, and the people at that table can barely stand chocolate anymore. They want maybe a cheesecake. Or lemon mousse.

But your table? Has NEVER had chocolate cake. Mousse is also good, but you are SO hungry for that chocolate cake, cause you never had it before, and it’s brand new for you, and you’ve been watching the other table eat it for YEARS.

That’s what’s like getting a “cliche” story that’s representative. Has it been done a million times before? Yes. Has it ever been done for US? Well… no. Maybe it’s the 500th chocolate cake in existence, but all the other chocolate cakes weren’t meant for us (girls/PoC/queer folk/disabled folk/etc)

So it being cliche is not a bad thing. You may not want chocolate cake anymore. But we want our slice too.

How do I explain to you people that interracial relationships are okay

Not every white person dating a POC is fetishizing. White people can be respectful and responsible when it comes to culture and relationships and not everyone has bad intentions.

Asian people can date Black people without you saying shit like “your kids will be so pretty” they’re not dating for pretty kids. They’re dating bc they like each other.

Someone can dress their partner in clothing from their culture if they want. Someone can take their partner to cultural events if they want.

People in relationships can share cultures, experiences and love without it being toxic or skin deep.

Their partner isn’t culturally appropriating. Their partner is being shown the ultimate form of love, bc their partner trusts them and loves them enough to share their history and heritage.

Yeah, dating someone from your culture is nice bc you automatically have similar experiences. But you’re not limited to dating people with the same experiences. Loving someone is sharing and growing and being together.

Interracial relationships aren’t always toxic, and some of y’all need to stop projecting onto other people.

👆 THIS 👆 👏👏👏

Calling ineterracial relationships toxic or fetishizing just seem like anti race mixing or racism with extra steps

This reminded me of this

if i had a daughter i would much rather see this than her marry a racist white dude

Reblog to support this interracial Jewish couple who have seized the means of production.

listen… i’m a lesbian and i know full well what oppression based on love is like… but i wish white gay folks wouldn’t act like sexuality is the only reason anyone’s ever felt that

there are people in my family who’ve been disowned because they married someone of a different colour to them… i’m mixed race and the very concept of my existence would’ve been illegal in the us when my parents were born. the supreme court only ruled against discrimination of mixed-race marriages in 1967! that’s barely 50 years ago. homophobia is an awful thing to experience and i know that from first hand experience but i’m begging you to remember that gay people aren’t the only ones being killed for who they love. please remember the struggles faced by Black and brown people when you talk about oppression. please have some solidarity with your nonwhite friends (especially your nonwhite gay friends!) when you talk about dismantling the systems that keep us alone and isolated. please remember the horrible history that is anti-miscegenation laws when you talk about equal marriage rights, because they aren’t just for white gay people.

this is okay for white people to reblog

Mixed-race marriages were still being denied in 2009. This is not ancient history. Just because it’s law, doesn’t mean bigots give up their preferences. In communities that shelter and protect bigotry, it takes a long, long time for oppressed people to get the same rights everyone else has.

!!!!!!!!

How do I explain to you people that interracial relationships are okay

Not every white person dating a POC is fetishizing. White people can be respectful and responsible when it comes to culture and relationships and not everyone has bad intentions.

Asian people can date Black people without you saying shit like “your kids will be so pretty” they’re not dating for pretty kids. They’re dating bc they like each other.

Someone can dress their partner in clothing from their culture if they want. Someone can take their partner to cultural events if they want.

People in relationships can share cultures, experiences and love without it being toxic or skin deep.

Their partner isn’t culturally appropriating. Their partner is being shown the ultimate form of love, bc their partner trusts them and loves them enough to share their history and heritage.

Yeah, dating someone from your culture is nice bc you automatically have similar experiences. But you’re not limited to dating people with the same experiences. Loving someone is sharing and growing and being together.

Interracial relationships aren’t always toxic, and some of y’all need to stop projecting onto other people.

👆 THIS 👆 👏👏👏

Calling ineterracial relationships toxic or fetishizing just seem like anti race mixing or racism with extra steps

This reminded me of this

Joan Hooley about the story behind Emergency – Ward 10 interracial kiss on television (Video)

If you’re a white person and you’re thinking about writing a long rant about how that one interracial couple in your favorite series is totally heteronormative i want you to do a little exercise with me.

Can you name 50 interracial couples off the top of your head? Can you name 40? 30? 25? Even 15? Of those you could name how many are actual canonical relationships? How many are portrayed as fetishistic caricatures with a bunch of racist tropes?

How many have their relationship based on cheating (like a white man cheating on his white wife with a black woman)? How many are portrayed as something taboo and shameful that needs to be kept in secret? How many have to struggle with their families/society not approving of their relatonship?

For the couples who have children, how many of them have the conception of the baby treated as a regrettable accident? How many of them are married? How many of them are portrayed as irresponsible parents? How many of them are portrayed in a miserable relationship where they can’t stand one another and don’t genuinely feel any love? How many are toxic and/or abusive, to the point the narrative itself acknowledges the relationship is wrong?

How many of them are actually allowed to have happy endings? How many of them break up at some point in the story, especially if each of the persons involved ends up in a intraracial relationship? How many of them end in tragedy, like one or both of the partners dying?

Finally, how many are actually portrayed in an heteronormative way and how many are just ships you personally dislike because they get in the way of your white/white otps?

fandom when the canon het pairing is white: omg otp they’re soulmates they’re made for each other they LOVE EACH OTHER so much how can you not ship them

fandom when the canon het pairing is interracial: its important that men and women can be friends

I get the desire to see lgbtq+ representation, but people act like two white women/white men are the be all to end all, they never recognize pairings with people of color.  And they never consider how our identities intersect.  Like they don’t realize that seeing a black character gaining importance through relationships is often the only representation queer black people get, we don’t get the lgbtq+ part.  So for me, seeing people have violently negative reactions to het romances involving a black character becomes a red flag.