No, That’s Not ‘How Color Works’. - Whitewashing

Whitewashing, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

In fandom context, we know it to include:

The Normalization of Whitewashing

Remember how I mentioned last lesson that despite the nature of poorly drawn Black characters, most audiences are not turned off enough to discourage the action in professional works? Similar idea with whitewashing. Not the same- unlike the Ambiguously Brown Character, which claims to have plausible deniability, overt whitewashing is usually enough to make fans speak up! But that’s the key word here- overt! It has to be “bad enough” to make enough people speak up, but as we’ve seen many a time, “bad enough” seems to have a much higher threshold for nonblack viewership (sometimes the limit doesn’t exist!)

Some visual examples

This is a link to my personal thread on a Netflix show I was watching- Worst Ex Ever. Now, while the show itself was quite enlightening, there was something I could not get over. I thought I was going crazy. And that was that no matter how dark the person of color would be in real life, the animated portions would draw this light pinkish-brown. Every. Single. Time. It's like they couldn't fathom scrolling down the color wheel. And this is a Netflix original! Netflix has plenty of money for someone to have caught this in creation. But... it was produced. And put out. And they're making more of it.

I asked all of the Dragon Age fans about the series, and uh… I didn’t know things were this bad, guys! Apparently this is a man of color, but it doesn't seem like the creators want you to know that 🤣. Jokes aside, as I’ve discussed before, the noticeable whitewashing- and that was one of many racist things I was told- was not enough to prevent sales... so why would they stop? I can only hope this new game, with all the updates, is enough to turn the tide. But the series has gone on for a while now, that if they’d chosen to do ye same olde… there clearly would not be a lack of financial support to prevent it.

Colorism as a Tool

Even when actors of color are cast, colorism often plays a role in normalizing whitewashing to audiences, even to Black audiences! People think “oh well at least they’re Black!” as if that is the only important part. It is not.

While Aaron Pierre, the actor cast for John Stewart of Green Lantern fame, is a GORGEOUS, STUNNING man, he is not the dark-skinned man that John Stewart is supposed to be and should not have been cast! To me, this is overt colorism, but clearly for many people this is not “enough” to warrant concern or even prevent the casting itself- including the studio behind the movie! Black fans have plead for years for the character of Storm to be played by a dark-skinned, preferably African, woman, and it has never happened.

It naturally happens in fan spaces as well, which is another indicator that colorism as a tool for whitewashing is quite effective for audiences. If I see one more Zendaya fan cast for Kida from Atlantis, I will scream. It’s been happening for years, and I don’t think any of the people who just want to see her and Tom on screen either understand or care that Kida is a dark-skinned character. Zendaya doesn’t look anything like Kida- it doesn’t matter if she’s Black too! Just because someone is Black does not mean they can play every single Black character! I’ve even seen people fancast Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame, to which… I don’t have the words. I can’t fathom what would cause these decisions other than racism.

The Common Excuses

I must be honest. I don’t really feel like re-iterating how certain things are not okay and how to fix them, because I’ve already discussed these things in massive detail. So I’m just going to direct the excuses I regularly hear to my lessons, where you can read up on them.

“Their hair/eyes are like that because they’re biracial so-”

Relevant Lessons: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 8, 9, 10

There is nothing wrong with having biracial characters with a range of features. I am not saying that! Because yeah, genetics do happen!

But I mentioned this in my last lesson, and I will re-emphasize here, that using biracial identity as a way to whitewash is a sinister form of racism. The intention here- the real intention- is the issue here! The idea that somehow this character can only look the way you want them to look by "diluting" their Blackness… I don’t know how you can explain yourselves out of that one.

You don’t get to use us as an excuse for diversity while still trying to maintain your preference for Eurocentric beauty standards. Black biracial people don’t always look light skinned, thin-haired and ambiguous, and even the ones that do don’t deserve to be treated as your fetish for pretend antiracism. If you just want to draw a white person with a tan, do that. But don’t change a character’s entire look just so you can work in some whiteness. If you want to claim that canon Black character’s mother was white, then I guess they inherited some of her personality because their features should not change.

“It’s my style/It’s the color-”

Relevant Lessons: 3, 4, 10

I hate all excuses for whitewashing, but I’ve grown to despise, hate, abhor and loathe this one the most as I’ve become an artist. I wish there were stronger words to describe just how much I hate the “style” and “color” excuse.

Are style and use of color oft intertwined? Absolutely. I’m not saying they aren’t. But out of everything, there are two things I want artists to understand:

1. Style does not cancel out racism! No style forces you to choose ashy greys and to change peoples’ features. That’s you! If you look at something, and it looks offensive, you change the style. You grow as an artist!

2. “Everyone who is brown will look ashy so I just-” if you recognize that your Black characters look strange in comparison to your nonblack characters, then it’s time to try something else! I don’t understand this sudden need for “realism” when it comes to color and lighting, but not when it comes to hair, for example. No one cares about realism when giving every and all Black characters wavy tresses they probably wouldn’t have, but suddenly milquetoast watercolor attempts at brown and off-putting lighting is “how it works”. That’s not fair.

The color picker is an available tool! I use it often!

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if someone gets the outfit color palette right via color picking, but the skin color is multiple shades lighter. That means they were looking at that character and chose not to proceed.

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if the white characters in the show are completely correct in their palettes. Again, that means they cared enough to look at everyone else… and not the Black characters.

If you use the color picker and the color picked is… disrespectful, you do not have to use that! You can simply choose a better color that is still similar to the brown that ought to be depicted!

“It’s the lighting-”

Relevant Lessons: 4, 5

If your white characters do not shine like snow in the sunlight because of your lighting, then your lighting does not make your Black characters suddenly light tan.

If your Black characters look bad in your lighting of choice- for example, putting a very dark-skinned character in electric white lighting can be ghastly- try changing the intensity or the color of the lighting. DON’T change your character’s skin color!

I'm going to show you some pictures of South Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. Pay attention to the choices of light, color, and makeup.

Look how BEAUTIFUL she is! Look at the choices of intensity and color of light, and how they make her look different in each image.

Now look at this image in comparison:

In this image, whoever did her makeup and took this picture did not take into consideration her skin tone. She's also under this really intense lighting. This is an example of "increasing the lighting does NOT make an image "better"". She didn't need to have lighter skin or "more lighting" to look good. She needed BETTER lighting, lighting that worked with HER.

To see this as an example in drawn art, @dsm7 makes an excellent argument for proper lighting and color, why it is an issue to use it as an excuse, and how to solve that problem.

‼️DISCLAIMER FOR NEXT EXAMPLE‼️

Okay. I am about to show y’all a fan-created example from my personal experience. It is a TEACHING EXPERIENCE ONLY. I am not including the artist’s name in this image. It happened a couple years ago, and it’s over- they’ve chosen to be who they are despite me kindly confronting them about it. The only reason I’m including it at all is because I feel like it would be remiss to have such a clear-cut, multi-level example, and not teach with it. That said, no, I am not telling anyone to act out towards them. Again, that is not what I’m telling you to do. The last thing I need is a literal lynch mob of angry nonblack viewership for trying to teach you all, and y’all sitting there watching it happen to me. Every example of whitewashing is not going to be so obvious, but I hope you learn how to spot the examples in the art you see and share.

I'm obviously a Hades fan, particularly of Patroclus- despite my disdain for the lack of effort in his canon character design. So I've seen a lot of things. That said:

“Well it’s just MY design of them-”

Relevant Lessons: ALL

The sepia coloring did not do this. The lighting did not do this. The design is the exact same as the Hades version, even down to the shape of the hair curling in the back. The only thing that is different… is the man himself.

Y'all. Y'all! You CANNOT take a pre-existing Black character and say “oh well this is my design of them” …and the design is of a whole white person. Because if the rest of the fit is the same, and the only thing that changed is the Blackness… Racism. If you’re going to “make up your own design”, then do that!

“Blackwashing”

Speaking of: I’m sure someone edgy out there thinks they’re so smart as they retort to the screen: “but if that’s not okay, then why is Blackwashing okay?” To which I say- shut up. 😐

The “definition” by fandom: making a nonblack character Black, usually an anime character, but characters in general.

Funny enough, the actual definition in the dictionary (or closest to) is “to defame”, in contrast with whitewash (as in whitewashing history). Maybe racist fans ARE using it correctly when they say you’re blackwashing their characters, when they mean you’re making them “less likable because they’re Black now”. 🤔

Anyway: Blackwashing is not real for the same reason reverse racism is not real.

Me painting these characters brown is not going to take away from the fact that there are far more of you in media than there is of me. Me saying that I ‘headcanon a character as Black with 4C hair’ is not going to make the studio go “oh! Well they must be Black with 4C hair now!” Me saying “oh I think I’d like this character better if they were Black” as a beta tester (less overtly, obviously, because I’m not racist!) will never make a studio change that character. Black viewers have minimal value in comparison to the power of the white viewer’s dollar. I could draw white characters Black every single day of every single game media… and they would still produce majority white characters. There has not been centuries- if not millennia, when we consider Jesus Christ himself, even- of purposeful “Blackwashing” with the intent of removing the original ethnicity- and thus importance- of white people. No one has ever been allowed to forget when someone is white. No one has ever been allowed to forget or not acknowledge white people.

How it could be "solved"

Personally, I love Black edits and I welcome them here. I find them creative and fun. But if you really, REALLY didn’t want us to make those edits, then naturally, we need more Black characters in all of our media!

I wouldn’t have to make edits if I saw more of me to begin with in the things I like to watch- but when we have those characters, racists act an ass about them. We’re not allowed to even be present! I’ve seen too many gamer bros mocking the existence of Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed, and he was a real ass man. But if we made a game about African peoples in African societies, how many of the gamer bros would actually play those games? Do you think there’d be as much support, when we hear so much about Black characters that are treated so abhorrently? How many games do we have where people would love their faves just as much if they were Black? I even learned that Solas was apparently supposed to be a man of color. IMAGINE how many people would not have liked that man, with the same exact plot and characterization.

Something I’ve noticed recently: apparently "Blackwashing" is not a thing when White fans “allow” it. Take this recent trend with Miku. International Miku was beloved! But if you draw any other character as Black on any other day, there will be people that are horrid about it. Ask any artist, Black artists and Black cosplayers especially, who’s ever done it what their comments are like. I’ve read entire missives akin to white supremacist drivel on how it’s somehow morally wrong to make characters Black. Meanwhile no amount of “hey maybe you shouldn’t do this” prevented the movie Gods of Egypt from being created, with a cast full of British White people.

Solutions to Avoiding Whitewashing!

1) Using References!!

Do I think you should know what Black people look like? Yes. We’re humans. It’s 2024. Everyone knows what we look like when it’s time to hate and discriminate against us, so you know what we look like when it’s time to love and depict us. If you’re on Tumblr, you have access to the Internet. ESPECIALLY if you’re in the U.S., as Black people are the source of damn near every piece of online pop culture. If you can find my dialect to make my jokes, you can find pictures of me.

Would I rather you use a reference every single time so that you can only strengthen your depiction of my people? ABSOLUTELY.

Anyone on the Internet telling you not to use a reference or that you shouldn’t need a reference? Unfollow them. You don’t need that negativity in your life. Why would you deprive yourself of a tool to create? The greatest portrait painters in history had to look at their subjects! You are not getting paid nearly as much to do this as Hans Holbein, and he had to stare at Henry VIII correct else lose his head- you can pull up multiple references. I’d far rather be judged for using hella references than be judged for being a racist!

Part of the issue is people draw what they’re used to, what they’re comfortable with (thus last lesson). But if what you’re used to is not what someone will look like… That’s not okay. Their features are not the issue, your skills are the issue. Learn! Practice! There is no rush. No one is rushing you to be perfect at drawing Black characters, and no one is rushing you to post them. You can just practice! If you’re not a professional, you can take as long as you need to draw! If you need to draw that piece of hair over and over until you feel like you have down the shape, you do that! If you need to use a tool that would draw the hair for you, you get that tool!

If you want to post, you can say you are practicing! If you make clear you are practicing, then be willing to accept that people may have feedback. I’d far rather deal with someone saying they’re unconfident and practicing, than someone posting a whitewashed caricature and closing their ears because “well at least I’m trying!”

2) Empathize! Care about actual Black people when you create a Black character!

Imagine, if you will, in the Twilight Zone: you went to an artist, and you asked for a white character (I typed in “regular looking white dude” on google). There’s hardly ever any white characters, you’re so super excited about this one! You paid good money, because you’ve seen just how amazing this artist creates! They’re so good at drawing characters of color! But no matter how many times you ask, they send you back an image of… Assad Zaman.

That man might be fine as hell! Gorgeous! Beautifully done! Chef’s kiss. Stunning! But… He’s not white. That’s not what you asked or paid for. You can’t even fathom how they mixed this up, they don’t even look alike! And when you confront them, they gaslight you, they call YOU the issue for not understanding how you can’t tell that this is a white man! They would never get this wrong! They have white friends, you’re the racist! But you’re not stupid, and you have functioning eyes- you can SEE what this drawing looks like! And… It’s not you.

It’s dehumanizing. It’s being told that there’s a “better way” to look like you, and that’s by… Not looking like you. You, as you exist, are what’s incorrect. Your identity is incorrect, not their drawing. It’s better to have thinner hair instead of an afro or locs, it’s better to have lighter skin, it’s better to have a straighter, thinner nose over a round one, and smaller lips.

And what makes it worse is knowing that people who don’t look like you? Probably won’t care. They won’t be willing to see- not unable, but unwilling- that playing with this caricature is harmful, that they’re propagating harm by not acknowledging it. They’re letting you know that your humanity means less to them than the clout received with a whitewashed or half-assed Black character, and that people will applaud them for that ‘attempt at inclusion’. And people will applaud! They will be entertained by the mere performance! And that hurts.

I’m going to say this, and it’s awkward and I try not to say it directly on here, but… Having Black friends and/or being around actual, real life Black people would help. I can tell from some of the questions I receive that Black characters and their traits- especially things like our hair and our cultures- are being treated as… alien concepts. But even if, for whatever reason, you legitimately don’t know any Black people, you do not need to know us individually to care about our humanity as a whole! Even if you do not know we’re there, we are, and we could possibly see your work!

By acknowledging Blackness and making room to understand what it means- and that includes how we can look- you are doing the bare minimum of acknowledging our personhood. If you cannot do even that, you don’t need to be drawing us.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing: if you want to draw a white man with tanned skin, do that. Just do it! You do NOT have to erase me to have more of you! There is not a single fandom where the majority of the white fans ever said “gee, not another white guy!” It simply doesn’t happen. God knows we wish it did sometimes. You will always have an audience for white characters. There’s no danger to any of you of “being erased”.

(Without putting on my political hat, I will say that a lot of white people who consider themselves to be far from white supremacist will express beliefs in line with great replacement theory if you push them hard enough. It is unfortunately not as uncommon an idea as you might think. I would do some self-evaluation.)

People are going to notice that you only ever draw white people, but… To be frank, that has never stopped anybody from being successful. Again, Jen Zee, at Supergiant with the terrible dark-skinned characters… Still has a job. at Supergiant. A professional studio. Dragon Age. Multiple games of consistent whitewashing and racist writing. Still going. If racism prevented creation and popularity, I wouldn’t have to have this blog. Alas, that is the society we currently live in.

But if you ACTUALLY want to depict Black characters, if you ACTUALLY want to do right and be respectful- not because you want the clout, but because it’s the right damn thing to do- then you need to commit! This means drawing them as they are meant to be! Accept that you’ll likely lose some fan base, who was there (whether they were aware of it or not) for the white and lighter skinned characters. Accept that this means that trying to appeal to those people by whitewashing characters is 1) wrong, 2) racist, which is 3) something you chose to do when you could simply have just… Drawn more white people.

I’ll say it again: antiracism is hard. It’s hard doing the right thing in a society that rewards racism so easily. It’s really hard knowing that people will stop supporting you or caring as much about your work when you start including Black characters as actively as you do white ones, especially if you start talking about the importance of it. But in my honest opinion, I’d far rather be someone that cared about others, with genuine fans, than someone that was racist for the fleeting internet clout of strangers. And that may be less ‘hopeful’ than I normally am in these lessons, but… People make choices. And people who have been informed- as you are now- are aware of the choices they are making. It’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers- let’s choose better actions.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

Never Forget the Reign of Terror waged against Muslims (and by extension, Sikhs profiled as being Muslim) in the nearly two decades following 9/11.

I was gunna put this in the tags but it’s a lot. When i first started going through the process of getting a diagnosis, i was labelled with ODD. I immediately took issue with this, it seemed like an unfair diagnosis based entirely on the session the psychiatrist had with my parents (which mostly consisted of “my child is being really difficult on purpose”), and Hoo Boy when i tell you ODD immediately strips you of your ability to call out anyone on anything, that would be an understatement. I couldn’t even disagree or bring up my concerns about the validity of MY OWN DIAGNOSIS without it being labelled as oppositional defiance. Whenever i displayed any negative emotion the “treatments” did so much more harm than good. When you label someone as ‘defiant’ (ugh), when that word is put on their medical record, that person is never allowed to complain about anything again. Knowing that POC are disproportionately affected with this diagnosis makes me feel sick, i can only imagine what’s being swept under the rug as someone just being “defiant to authority”, not even just in the medical field but as justification for police brutality and mass incarceration. When i say medical racism kills people, this is what i mean.

this is so fucking important. reblog.

I was labeled ODD as a child, and lemme tell you.

When I was eleven, I was put on a med I reacted negatively to. I don’t remember its name, but if I ever see the pill again I will KNOW. Within a week of beginning it, I told the school nurse I didn’t want to take it; I didn’t know the word “apoplectic” at the time, but that’s how it made me feel. It wasn’t irritation, it wasn’t anger, it wasn’t even rage—it surpassed all those things. The slightest issue left me literally blind from the level of anger I felt (yes, “seeing red” is a real thing). Someone bumped my desk at school ON ACCIDENT and my pencil hit the floor, and I nearly stabbed the offender with it. I was so furious, all the time, it was hard to think. I was becoming afraid of myself.

The nurse called my psychiatrist, who told him I had ODD and would naturally refuse to take my medication—even though by this point I’d been on multiple meds for many years, and I was objecting only to the single medication, it was clearly a sign of ODD and trying to manipulate my environment. I hadn’t been on the med for the full month it took to get up to a maintenance dose, so I couldn’t possibly be having bad side effects.

I had to take the medication.

The next day I hid under my desk and refused to come out. I was seeing things that weren’t there.

I begged not to take the meds. Again I was told I’d have to.

I was now on day nine of the medication and the special ed teacher literally had to physically move me into the nurse’s office.

I looked at him and said “tell Dr. X that if I have to take that pill today, he can explain to my mom why I cut my throat tonight.”

The med was discontinued, but only because my nurse took me seriously but without panic, called my mother, and asked her to call my shrink, and had me do my classwork in his waiting room while we waited for the return phone call. He intervened because he realized he’d only ever heard me object to a med once before, and it was because I was physically ill and afraid to eat (which the medication required) lest I throw up in class. On that occasion he offered me some crackers and had me stay in the office for twenty minutes to see how my stomach did, and when the crackers stayed down he gave me a few more and my medication, which I took without complaint as soon as I knew I could take it safely. Clearly if I was suddenly begging not to take a medication, something was wrong.

Without that nurse, I might be dead today, because of “oppositional defiant disorder.”

I want you to reread all of this post before my addition, and then I want you to reread my list of side effects, and then I want you to think about how many “Black person goes crazy out of nowhere, kills someone, tox report was clean, cops baffled” stories you’ve seen. I can think of at least three.

Lemme say, I'm one of a few black kids I know (especially AFAB) that got diagnosed with ADHD in the 90. Like Early 90s.

And it was a Fucking Stars Aligned MIRACLE.

Because in order for me to be diagnosed or even had it thought to be the following had to happen:

*skip Some Years and at least Three terrible teachers*

I got another doctor (white) that I was transferred to. What a lot of people fail to realize is a lot of medications that they do NOT recommend for kids now is usually because they've already tested it on kids before and it was BAD News, Jim.

So, the new white Doctor was a dismissive type of ass. The type that threatens kids because he wanted to flex his power over them. (I have literally been threatened by him. He told me he'd tell my mother to cut whatever hobby I liked then if I wasn't responsive to whatever the fuck he wanted to talk about)

At this point, I'm pretty sure he's writing up that I'm manipulative and possibly had ODD.

I was prescribed medications that they really tell you not to give kids these days unless like you absolutely last resort had to because of the side-effects.

There's one medication they gave me that sounds a LOT like Prismatic's but I don't know the name. I know what it is if I see it ever again.

But this medication definitely caused me to Hallucinate. (or rather believe I was infested with fleas) It was bad enough that my grandmother, who's a nurse, basically said Enough Of that and just chunked the meds out. All of them.

(one other one had a side effect of repressing your appetite that we didn't know about. And so I had been taking it before Lunch. It SUCKED that we didn't know about it.)

Anyway, the point of this is also:

Even when Black Kids are rightly diagnosed, we're still going to get shit from people who either think we're faking, or don't care to actually do any work about it. Instead, they'll punish us MORE. Or throw us in the SpEd classes to get rid of us in the general classes if they don't want to do any of the work.

Because that's ALSO what happened to me the following year after the Bad Year.

I actually could read quite well and could do normal course work, but they decided due to the former and my medical history that I should be in this class. (I could see it if they wanted me in there for things like Math, because it's my weakest subject and I have trouble understanding anything but.. I digress).

I was place in a class where people who actually needed it were at a very slower pace and school level than me. (and even then, the schools 100 percent failed one student who couldn't read at his grade level. He was reading at a first grade level. He was in seventh grade.)

And a large part of this is because there aren't enough POC (particularly at that time Black Doctors) in the field. Because it deeply matters when you get a doctor that is very familiar with your culture and the way your people work.

It prevents a lot of abuse and misdiagnoses. (that was literally my issues with a lot of places is because until I was in a predominately black school, I was treated pretty awful by teachers and principals that didn't Understand the Culture and didn't WANT to)

I didn't get a black doctor until my mid teens. When I've figured out how to manage shit my damn self with coping mechanics (but I definitely should've had an actual Doctor to Help. Actual people that could've given me better tools.).

He actually understood and thought I was misdiagnosed. But the main point is he treated me like a person.

He wasn't combative.

He was interested in what I had to say. He didn't dismiss me. He understood what my issues were and was able to explain them to my mother in a way that didn't give me protective mode. (that White doctor further up that was an ass literally upset my mother that I ended up hating him for it. )

My Kindergarten Teacher was also a Good Person and Good teacher. She put in the work. She tried to understand even if we were culturally different, she didn't send me to the principal's office every time I fucked up as a kid. She tried to make sense of it and tried hard to keep me in class. (I went from literally an F to an A, is what I'm saying.)

Both that doctor and that Teacher Saw humanity in me as a kid and I'm forever grateful for them in particular. (and also a few others but mainly them.)

Like if more black and other KOCs had these types of people, that ODD wouldn't even be a thing (even for white kids because I think the entire thing is just BULLSHIT excuse to be an asshole to people. Full stop. ).

Incidentally, if you want a great example of why we need to destigmatize mental health treatment, I read Manta’s comment and shot her a PM. We’re about the same age, so it stands to reason we may have been prescribed the same medication.

I NOW KNOW THE NAME OF THE MEDICATION THAT MADE ME WILLING TO KILL MYSELF JUST TO GET AWAY FROM IT. She told me what she was on, I looked up a photo, and damned near dropped my phone. In just a few hours I can call my current (very good) psychiatrist and have this name put on my file so it is never prescribed to me ever again, even by accident.

The atmosphere Tumblr has fostered, in which it is safe and acceptable to say “same hat?”, has made me quantifiably safer today. We need to work together to make it like this everywhere.

The UK is so fucking bad right now. Multiple hotels being used for asylum have been set on fire, poc have been beaten and stabbed, mosques are being violently targeted, and riots have started in multiple cities. I know there's a lot going on in the world right now but if you live in the UK, please check the stand up to racism website for any counter protests or calls for protection, and if you don't, they have a gofundme to help fund their efforts. If you can't donate, please just be aware that this is happening because I feel like nobody outside of the UK even knows this is going on

It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

@startorrent02

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/ama-use-bmi-alone-imperfect-clinical-measure

does. DOES THIS MEAN THAT MEDICARE/AID WILL COVER SURGERIES EVEN IF YOU DIDNT MEET THE BMI BEFORE?

Got an answer from a savvy anon btw:

they will probably take a while to change their rules. insurance (especially government insurance) changing their rules takes ages of bureaucracy and probably will not change in the next year or two. but the fact that the AMA updated its stance on BMI means that things will probably head in the direction youre hoping for (i.e. not requiring a specific BMI for certain surgeries and instead taking a more integrated approach)

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Newfoundland, Canada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada