The Friendly Black Hottie.

If your teacher seriously assigns you a PragerU video please dunk of their ass so hard 

Hi, social studies teacher here: if your teacher assigns you one of these videos in any context except for the following, drag them to hell. Call your principal, sure, but also. Ruin them on twitter. Make it a big public stink the whole district has to scramble to hush up. Complain to your local news if you have to. Complain to the ACLU– they have a whooooole department on education. Make that teacher a liability to the school. See how fast their shit changes.

Now, exceptions include:

- you are studying propaganda and these videos are an example of such

- you are studying conservatism (alone or as compared to other ideology) and the videos are a case study in alt right thought

- you’re studying things like media literacy and critical media consumption and this is one of the examples you have to deconstruct

- you’re making comparisons between the message of the videos and other messages in history and whether they’re coming from the same root

- basically ask “am I being given this video to inform me or have I been given this video to analyze?” and if the answer is inform, as in your teacher is using this shit as part of introducing new info, FUCK that. Drag them to hell. This shit cannot be used as direct instruction. But if the answer is “critically analyze the video” or “the video is an example of something really happening that we are learning about” then that’s actually very useful to you to learn because it will help you identify this thinking when you see it and understand how conservatives you’re up against are coming to their conclusions.

Basically, videos like this are only good for studying the alt right like the wacked out, neurotic, inbred lab rats that they are at heart. Teachers trying to use them as factual direct instruction need to get as fucked as possible as soon as possible.

Don’t forget, public school teachers are *~*strictly prohibited*~* from anything that might be deemed political indoctrination. If your teacher tries to use PragerU as a legitimate, credible source that you should parrot all your opinions from, DRAG. THEM. AND. THE. DISTRICT. THROUGH. THE. MUD.

It really is disturbing how aggressively journalists use the passive voice in contexts that relieve perpetrators of violence of any shred of accountability

It reminds me of the break down of grammar on sexual violence transforming “Jack beats Jane” into “Jane is a battered woman” where by the end of it Jack isn’t even part of the situation at all and the harm inflicted is just part of Jane’s identity rather than something inflicted onto her by someone else. 

They took “Thomas Woodworth, a Captain at a for-profit ICE facility, drove his personal vehicle, a 2012 Chevy Silverado, over a crowd of Jewish people protesting ICE concentration camps” into “A van tried to drive through a group of protestors.” By the end of it, Woodworth isn’t even mentioned– a van driving (itself?) into a group of people is just something that happens to protestors, it’s just something that happened, like a force of nature. 

Is there any way to more distance Woodworth from accountability for this act of violence? 

“if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention” used to be such a powerful phrase but now it’s more accurate to say “if you’re not angry you’re probably exhausted by 5+ years of Panic Outrage Mode and are nearing the limit of your emotional range for reacting to this shit”

via @deadmomjokes

As a society, we need to stop assuming that everyone enjoys drinking alcohol.

Lmao @ people who think I’m ridiculous for this post. I’m defensive because alcoholism is a huge issue. Everywhere in the world. Not to mention, I know it’s hard for some of you fucks to believe because of how widely accepted alcohol is, but there are a HUGE amount of people who have personal issues with alcohol. Either being recovering or previous alcoholics themselves, having a close personal tie with someone who abused alcohol, growing up in an unstable alcoholic household, having DEEPLY EMBEDDED family or spouse issues ALL because of alcohol. FUCK OFF with your me being so offended bullshit. Just assume people are sober till you find out on **their** terms they aren’t. Don’t expect that everyone likes to drink. Just like you wouldn’t expect that everyone likes to smoke cannabis, why would you do it with alcohol? (That’s rhetorical, it’s obviously because basically everyone assumes the entire world enjoys drinking). It’s not hard. Don’t offer people drinks unless you know they drink. BYE.

My favorite response when I tell people im straight edge is “what? You’ll never drink ever? Not one drink? I don’t believe you.” And they’ll laugh And I’ll look them straight in their fucking eye and tell them both my parents, and my aunt are recovering alcoholics. The rest of my family? Has never tried, nor ever got the chance to recover from their addiction. It’s by some miracle my mother is alive right now because she drank so much her liver stopped working. She was in a coma for two weeks. The doctors almost gave up on her. My dad was an abusive drunk and then turned to hard drugs and that certainly didn’t help anything. My 3 younger sisters and I were almost put into foster care because of the both of them. I was only about 14 at the time. Making my youngest sister, 7. And because of all of this my family went bankrupt and we were almost homeless. All because of drinking :)

That usually shuts them up real fucking fast but, I shouldn’t have to explain that to anyone. I shouldn’t have to defend my (perfectly healthy!) choices!

If someone tells you they don’t drink, it’s for a fucking reason. Don’t be a dick. Casual alcoholism is a huge fucking problem in the world and its scary that most people can’t see it.

Also, some people just… don’t like drinking. There are people out there who just genuinely do not enjoy drinking alcohol. They don’t like the taste, they don’t like being impaired, and they have no desire to try to force themselves into enjoying it just because someone else thinks it’s “weird”.

There are all kinds of reasons that someone might not choose to drink, and all of those reasons are valid. There’s nothing wrong with it, it doesn’t mean they “can’t have fun”, and I guarantee you they’re not judging you for drinking. And if they are? It’s definitely not as much as they’re being judged for not drinking.

Don’t try to force people to drink. Don’t assume everyone likes to drink. And if someone says they don’t drink? Don’t force them to explain why just to get you to stop hounding them.

There are plenty of reasons to avoid booze and the particulars of someone’s reasons are none of your business. Nobody deserves to catch crap because they don’t imbibe.

It’s so gross and hypocritical to frame food waste as a personal failing. Like, people are dying of hunger because someone forgot some leftovers at the back of their fridge and ended up throwing them away. Major chain grocery stores throw away millions of pounds of food because it’s “too much work” to donate it, and then poison it and destroy it when they throw it away to punish dumpster diving. 

Waste is not a personal failing. It’s engineered by corporations, and they profit off of obscuring that.   

This is very true.  We do, as a society, waste a shocking amount of food, but the majority of that is wasted by the food industry, not consumers.  It’s over-ordered by supermarkets and restaurants, it’s rejected between farm and store for not looking perfect (some estimates say up to 40% of fruit and vegetables in the UK are rejected for cosmetic reasons!), it’s thrown out after reaching its (artificially shortened) Display Until date, it’s occasionally destroyed because of trade rules.

But the recommendations for reducing food waste always seem to start with a list of “great mid-week recipes to use up your leftovers!” and while I’m not knocking that, food waste is like fossil fuel use.  You’re not going to solve it by scolding people for their individual behaviour without fixing systemic problems.

not sure how to articulate this but “visibility” by itself isn’t a cohesive / radical / healing goal for a group to build their efforts around considering any marginalized or oppressed group that is visible is met with overt violence

anyone claiming hypervisibility is a privilege has never lived that

context: to be told as a member of a hypervisible group “hey, I mean u experience x y and z forms of awful violence but whatever at least people know what you are and you aren’t erased!! lol” is so trivializing and diminishes suffering to the point where it’s viscerally painful to read / hear.

That antiblack moment when an Asian person in your apartment building keeps glancing back to look at you in the hallway as you walk to YOUR OWN apartment. And this was literally right after we spoke in the elevator but still suspicion and “fear” as I walked behind them. Not to mention the countless times other Asian people in my building have deliberately not held the building door open for me and my black friends when we try to enter after them. Antiblackness as always.

I’ve lived in Taiwan and the US and the depths of antiblackness amongst Asian people still never ceases to amaze me. Did I mention how people in Taiwan who were alone with me in elevators would literally RUN out when they got to their floors (this happened to me twice). Or when a Chinese woman in Chengdu asked if she could prick my skin with a needle so she could see if black people bled BLUE blood unlike human beings which bled red? Or how about when people would rub my skin to see if the black would come off, or tell me not to drink coffee so I wouldn’t become “even more black”? How about my black friend of a friend in Korea who had a student LICK her in class to “see if she tasted like chocolate.” This is just a few of countless experiences of the severe antiblackness in Asian countries.

People love to make excuses for nonblack poc and say “it’s just ignorance” but it’s not. Look at history. Blackface has been commonplace in South Korean media since the 70s and many Kpop stars to this day continue to parade around in blackface with some serial offenders like G-Dragon in just the past few years. In the 80s in China there were several anti-African riots in Chinese universities where Chinese students en masse assaulted African students claiming that they had sexually assaulted Chinese women. Africans in China to this day are subjected to incredible amounts of police harassment and violence. In 2009 a Nigerian migrant in Guangzhou died jumping from a high rise to escape a Chinese police immigration raid. Africans protested in large numbers in Guangzhou after his death. In 2012 another Nigerian migrant died mysteriously in Chinese police custody (sound familiar?) with no answers from the Chinese authorities. This led to more protests by Africans in Guangzhou. In 2012. Not 1912. (x)

And the shit in America with Asian people is the same. Asians running around saying the n word. Putting on blackface (UCLA Asian frat). And I’ve literally been denied service at an Asian restaurant in DC before saying that they “were closed” even as I stared at tables upon tables full of WHITE people. When pushed, the waiter said - “well you can sit here if you want” and ushered me and my black friend into a back side room where nobody would see us. We refused to sit and left.

People wax poetic about “POC solidarity” but honestly I don’t buy it anymore. Haven’t for a while. Non black POC are always clambering over black bodies to try and gain proximity to whiteness. As Toni Morrison says, the second word an immigrant learns when they come to America is “nigger.” And it’s because they know how central and pivotal antiblackness is in white supremacy. They know that finding any way to distance themselves from blackness is their ticket toward whiteness and humanity - just as the Irish and Italians did to become white in America- and so they reproduce the same bullshit as white people if not worse because of it.

I’m so over it. Like I’m literally just living my life and minding my own business and so many Asian people just won’t leave me alone with their antiblackness- no matter where I go. I go to Asia- bullshit. I go to Palestinian rallies where people scream “nigger” at black people- bullshit. I go in online spaces with Asian people defending blackface in Kpop (see FB comments on this post)- bullshit. I go to my own home minding my own business- bullshit. I’m so fucking over it. Just leave me alone if you have not done any work to dismantle all of your community’s internalized antiblackness.

The other reproductive rights:

Watch This. Poets Crystal Valentine and Aaliyah Jihad Call Out the Black Men Who Hate Black Women.