appropriation

Why Does Everything Have to Do With Race?

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

There are interesting, usually unasked, questions that are unintentionally answered in the course of discussion. I’m always fascinated by the views others provide you when they engage people. Those views always prove useful in future interactions/discussions. 

 

To paraphrase George Orwell, white people have prejudices about people of color because American culture has normalized whiteness, but the fact that people of color act “differently” further entrenches the “obvious correctness” of a white cultural norm.

Why is it normal to eat with a fork instead of chopsticks?

Why is it normal for a man to wear a suit to a business meeting instead of a loose, colorfully printed robe?

Why is it normal to sit in a chair instead of on the floor?

Why is a woman in a long gown and a bonnet accepted — archaic, perhaps, but accepted? Why is a nun wearing a black gown and habit accepted? Why is a woman in a burka and hijab somehow threatening?

Why do we teach the way we do? Write our laws the way we do? In short, why is our society the way it is?

 

 

“When a white person says ‘It’s not about race,’ they are pretty much always saying it when a Black person, or a Latino person, or a Muslim person is not acting the way a white European would act or wants them to act.”

(John Metta)

Why Hasn’t Disney Gone Bankrupt?

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

Remember that time I got really angry about the portrayal of the Polynesian god Maui in the sure to be shit film ‘Moana’?

 

Well, it looks like Disney is doubling down on the bullshit. They made a Maui costume, complete with a stereotypical grass skirt and blackface, for children to wear this Halloween. Retails for $49. You can be racist for free.  

 

If you feel the need to buy this for anyone, please hand your children over to CPS and sterilize yourself. 

 

Why Do Fans Always Focus On The Wrong Aspects Of A Player’s Personal Life?

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

Odell Beckham Jr. is not gay.

 

Or maybe he is.

 

Which brings me to two points: Black men are still archaic when it comes to anything remotely outside the male-centered construction of masculinity, and we really need to grow up.

 

In the staunch and limited definition of black maleness as defined by most black men, there are only two categories in which men’s behaviors live: straight and gay. You’re either one or the other, and there is little room for debate.

 

Undefined sexuality doesn’t live in the barbershop conversation of black masculinity. So because Beckham’s antics, his shirtless dancing and hot tub shenanigans can’t be identified on the straight scale, he must be gay. Don’t believe me? His friend and former Louisiana State University teammate Kavahra Holmes, who danced with Beckham in one of his viral online posts, had to speak about his sexuality because the internet just wouldn’t chill.

 

“It’s crazy how we been brothers for so long and if anybody really knows us know anywhere we go they see us being clowns and dancing but of course it’s made as ‘we gay,’” Holmes wrote on Instagram.

 

“Strictly brotherhood and just cuz we dancing having fun don’t make us gay.. I dance with our [sic] without him and vice versa so the ‘gay’ comments really funny .. We laughing … But we gone keep dancing lol,” he continued.

 

When black men delve into their insecurities because of questions they have of their own sexuality, they unwittingly uphold the toxicity of white supremacy. They are reducing themselves to sex objects incapable of operating outside a tiny box of hetreonormativity, where feelings are for pussies, heckling other men is an acceptable display of maturity, coming to blows over a disagreement is par for the course, and date rape isn’t a crime. 

‘Tarzan’ ridicules black characters in incredibly racist movie – NY Daily News

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

It’s not that ‘Tarzan’ hasn’t always been racist, because you’d have to live under a rock to not  understand the whole ‘King Kong’-esque white fright of losing white children and women to the “wilds” of Africa after fucking with things and people they have no business trying to cage and study (an imagined lashing out to what horrors actually happened) bit. But COME ON. David Yates is clueless as fuck, but even he can’t be so stupid as to not comprehend what he’s directing.

Ugh… Just please tell me that Alex is just a lot dumber than I thought he was and that he has no idea what he has participated in. Because I can’t. 

The director, David Yates, actually told The Los Angeles Times that, “All that racist baggage that belonged to the earlier books or earlier B-movies, there’s no place for that. This is a modern film with modern sensibilities.” God help us if he’s right.

Reality check: Over 10 million Congolese slaves died horrible deaths and Yates thinks his “Tarzan” scenario in which the black slaves were really saved by a white ape man is not racist? Is Yates ape-s–t?

If you didn’t know better, you’d think the latest “Tarzan” was a Mel Brooks production. All that’s missing are dancing slaves in chains.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/tarzan-ridicules-black-characters-incredibly-racist-movie-article-1.2697242

It May All Just Be An Issue Of Time

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

As angry as I was at the beginning of this article, I couldn’t find the energy to even bother with being disappointed with Jo by the time I got to the second paragraph. I think that as a child, I was so in love with the core sociopolitical messages in Harry Potter that I rationalized away fleeting feelings of annoyance and disbelief over the fact that certain characters were absent, and later, that certain people were not represented at all. Luckily for all of us, Rowling decided to clear up any misconceptions about her profound level of ignorance this past March with a nice batch of erasure. Said bigotry will soon be compounded with a theme park dedicate to the colonial savior complex.

 

Well, I imagine that I’ll be able to afford that Tesla coupe a lot sooner now that JK Rowling is on my shit list. …At least there’s a silver lining, right?

 

Time of death: 11:10 PM, July 2, 2016. 

People Have Asked Why I Haven’t Shared Jesse Williams’ Speech. But I Have – All My Life

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

“I’m very tired of many of us black men believing that if you aren’t a heterosexual, cisgender, non-disabled male, you’re not allowed to ever say anything about the black condition or black liberation; that you are, somehow, secondary or tertiary unless you occupy those identity categories.” 
– Son of Baldwin

“They’re seeking only to measure their own chains to see if they will fit when they put them around someone else’s throat.”

Screenshot 2016-06-29 at 12.16.35 PM

“It is no secret that, within the Black community, Black women have consistently been at the forefront of our social, political, and racial justice movements — particularly movements that began as a result of something terrible happening to a Black male. Perhaps the appointed leaders have been Black men, but women have done the bulk of the grassroots groundwork and provided the emotional and spiritual foundations the work has leaned on.

 

Unfortunately, we (Black men) collectively have not been there the same way for them. While they have stood with — and even, at times, in front of — us when White supremacy and racism need to be challenged, they generally do not receive the same support from us when issues specific to the health, well-being, and safety of Black women and girls (street harassment, sexual assault, etc) are brought up. And sometimes the reaction goes past apathy and an empathy void and settles into a sheer resistance. Where the validity and relevance of those concerns are challenged and/or dismissed, and the agenda behind even expressing them is also questioned.

 

Of course, the reason why this happens is obvious. The primary antagonizers in this context also happen to be Black men. And it’s far easier to mobilize against a collective oppressor than it is to look in our barbershops, our happy hours, our locker rooms, our street corners, our homes, and our mirrors.”

 

– Damon Young, “The Best And Blackest Part Of Jesse Williams’ Speech Was An Indictment Of Black Men“

As I Open An Email From Heatherwood Offering Me An Apartment in Gentrification Central…

Posted on by loudspeakerandlemonjuice

568 Union is plagued by the same exact issue displayed in this article.

 

Brooklyn Bridge Park, the 85-acre park at the edge of Brooklyn Heights, transformed an industrial shoreline into a recreational esplanade that today draws over 125,000 people on summer weekends. It has become the emerald trim of a jewel-box neighborhood of handsome brownstones.

Particularly prized are the park’s tidy basketball courts that draw players from as far as the Bronx and Queens for their million-dollar views of Lower Manhattan and other amenities not often found on more humble home turfs — like actual nets on the hoops. But a spate of courtside fights among rowdy visitors, punctuated by gunfire last year, has prompted the police, at times, to shut down Pier 2, where the courts stand.

The situation has set some residents in the well-off neighborhood, which is mostly white, on edge, some of whom portray the pier as an OK Corral for gangs and complain that their quaint streets have become overrun with teenagers. The players, many of whom are black, say that whatever problems have occurred are relatively limited and believe that they are the victims of stereotyping.

Aaliyah Johnson, 17, travels from Flatbush to use the courts. “We just came here to play basketball,” she said. Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times

Courtside fisticuffs, they say, are just a result of teenagers being teenagers — and isn’t that what happens in parks?

The conflict between the players and the neighborhood plays out in particular at the southern end of the slim, 1.3-mile-long park, where it pours out onto Joralemon Street.

“Joralemon Street becomes like this funnel of kids who are already very agitated running down the street screaming, bouncing basketballs, taunting pedestrians, taunting cars,” said Linda DeRosa, the president of the Willowtown Association, a local civic group, referring to times when fights have caused the park to be closed by the police. “It’s just a sign that the park really needs to get control of their facility.”

The issue came to a head during a recent meeting at the local police precinct house, which was reported by Gothamist, in which residents said that the unruly crowds drawn to the courts were damaging the character of the neighborhood.