ThePrettiestOne

whitegirlsaintshit:

I don’t even want Darren Wilson’s head. Honestly, he’s a pawn in something bigger than him. He can rot in hell or hiding or wherever. What I want is for everyone to stop questioning the anger, the frustration, the heartbreak, and the validated feelings of sorrow of black people. Stop pretending to empathize with us. Stop pretending to understand our sadness, our feelings of worthlessness, our feelings of hopelessness, and our wanting to be valued as humans. When I talk about race and the way I feel against white supremacy, and you tell me it’s because I’m jealous, you’re damn right. I’m jealous that I can’t even be seen as worthy of living in a society that was built against me in all ways possible. So fuck you if you want to know why I’m whitegirlsaintshit.

micdotcom:

Potent minimalist art sends a strong message about police and vigilante brutality in America

Journalist and artist Shirin Barghi has created a gripping, thought-provoking series of graphics that not only examines racial prejudice in today’s America, but also captures the sense of humanity that often gets lost in news coverage. Titled “Last Words,” the graphics illustrate the last recorded words by Brown and other young black people — Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and others — who have been killed by police in recent years.

Let us not forget their voices

On August 9, 2014, Brown, an unarmed black 18-year old, was shot and killed by Wilson, who is white. The shooting led to demonstrations, confrontations with police, and some looting and violence.

“A riot is the language of the unheard.”

- Martin Luther King
{the one you never quote} (via everythingrhymeswithalcohol)

“

Luke Cage was created in 1972.

Four years earlier, in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed.

Five years before that, in 1963, Medgar Evers was shot and killed.

Eight years before that, in 1955, a young Black man named Emmett Till was tortured, then shot and killed.

These events, and numerous others with frightening similarity, happened in a line, and in the early years of the first decade to reap the social benefits of the Civil Rights Movement, Marvel Comics gives the fans (and the world) a Black male superhero whose primary superhuman aspect… is that he’s bulletproof.

Not flight, or super speed, or a power ring.

The superhuman ability of being impervious to bullets.

Superheroes. Action heroes. Fantasy heroes.

Power fantasies.

Is there any doubt the power fantasy of the Black man in the years following multiple assassinations of his leaders and children by way of the gun would be superhuman resistance to bullets?

In American society, the Black man has come a long way from the terrors of the past handful of centuries, only to crash right into the terrors of the 21st century. Some of those terrors being the same exact ones their grandparents had to face and survive — or not.

There are Black men who are wealthy, powerful, formidable and/or dangerous. They can affect change undreamt of by their parents, and their parents’ parents. Their children will be able to change the world in ways we can intuit and others we can barely begin to try and predict.

But a bullet can rip through their flesh and their future with no effort whatsoever.

And so we look at Luke Cage, a man who gets shot on a regular basis, whose body language is such that he is expecting to be shot at, prepared for the impact — because he knows he can take it.

And maybe, in the subconscious of the uni-mind of Marvel Comics, is the understanding that Luke Cage may unfortunately always be a relevant fantasy idea for the Black man.

2012 – Trayvon Martin is shot and killed.

2013 – Jonathan Ferrell is shot and killed.

2014 – Michael Brown is shot and killed.

2015/2016 – Luke Cage premieres on Netflix.

I look forward to seeing if the Luke Cage of that show will have a true understanding of his power and what he symbolizes.

”

-

Real Life Proves Why Luke Cage Endures (via comicberks)

Reading that was like getting kicked in the gut. And yet it feels like that’s not enough.

(via optimysticals)

briecheesie:

the same liberal, ‘enlightened’ people who will condemn the police for the race riots in the 60’s, who will be deeply offended that you could even ask who they sided with in history, who will be the first to say the police were terrorizing black people and it was totally unprovoked back during the civil rights movement

a lot of those people are currently blaming black people for escalating the riots in ferguson. they “understand the frustration” but want everyone to know that “burning buildings and stealing won’t help”. 

don’t just be wary of those outright siding with wilson. 

be wary of those who claim to “understand the frustration” while looking down on it all from their position of privilege, who are doing nothing to educate themselves past what the mainstream news wants them to know, who think there’s no possible way the police could be escalating things themselves or using excessive force.

be wary of those who think the mostly black protesters must be thugs and criminals because they think the only peaceful protesters are white people with flowers in their hair.

be wary of those who claim to be on the side of black people even as they publicly blame them for any riots that have broken out.

be wary of those who refuse to acknowledge that they are part of the problem, no matter how “disappointed by the outcome” they claim to be

Darren wilson didn’t just avoid justice. He got paid leave, $400k in donations and got married. He was rewarded. This is the system.

mobrienorwhatever:

Michael Brown Jr. (May 20, 1996 – August 9, 2014)

Malcolm X on "Progress"

Candorville by Darrin Bell for November 25, 2014

Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson for November 25, 2014

“Treating women with respect should not be contingent on whether or not it “gets you somewhere.” Women have value even if we are too fat or too ugly or too loud or too standoffish or too homosexual to serve a ‘purpose’ for men. Women are people.

Any person (women are people) is allowed to ignore, reject, or break up with anyone else at any time, regardless of how sad it makes them feel.

I have compassion for your social difficulties, but only to the point where they begin to impede my humanity. It isn’t women’s responsibility to bear the brunt of your loneliness, or be the means to your self-improvement. Women deal with loneliness and social anxiety and private pains too. Women deserve compassion too.

If it genuinely goes without saying—as the men who write to me always claim—that you think of women as your equals, then find a solution that doesn’t hinge on exploiting women’s socialization to be passive, pliant, receptive, and kind.”

-

Lindy West, "The one basic thing men still don’t seem to understand about women" (via wocinsolidarity)

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.

(via thedatingfeminist)

“They were coming to college believing that all Indians are dead,” said education professor Sarah Shear of her experience in the classroom.

Her students’ seeming ignorance to the fact that American Indians are a part of the contemporary U.S., not just the historical one, led her to take a closer look at what they were learning. She examined the academic standards for elementary and secondary school education in all 50 states, these are the guidelines that educators use to plan curricula and write textbooks. The results are summarized at Indian Country.

Shear found that the vast majority of references to American Indians — 87 percent — portrayed them as a population that existed only prior to 1900.  There was “nothing,” she said, about contemporary issues for American Indian populations or the ongoing conflicts over land and water rights or sovereignty. Only one state, New Mexico, even mentions the name of a single member of the American Indian Movement.

Meanwhile, the genocidal war against American Indians is portrayed as an inevitable conflict that colonizers handled reasonably.  “All of the states are teaching that there were civil ways to end problems,” she said, “and that the Indian problem was dealt with nicely.”  Only one state, Washington, uses the word genocide. Only four states mention Indian boarding schools, institutions that represent the removal of children from their families and forced re-socialization into a Euro-American way of life.

The fact that so many people absorb the idea that Native Americans are a thing of the past — and a thing that we don’t have to feel too badly about — may help explain why they feel so comfortable dressing up like them on Halloween, throwing “Conquistabros and Navahos” parties, persisting in using Indian mascots, leaving their reservations off of Google maps, and failing to include them in our media. It might also explain why we expect Indian-themed art to always feature a pre-modern world.

Curricular choices matter. So long as young people learn to think of Indians no differently than they do Vikings and Ancient Romans, they will overwhelmingly fail to notice or care about ongoing interpersonal and institutional discrimination against American Indians who are here now.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

[depressedalien]

theartofanimation:

Tahra

scrapscallion:

When we talk about androgynous fashion, we usually mean female-presenting people in outfits that incorporate or echo menswear. One seldom sees male-presenting people doing the same with womenswear, at least in the mainstream.

I think some of that must be a side effect of the privileging of traits, roles, and characteristics associated with masculinity over those associated with femininity—a woman in masculine-associated roles or clothing is moving in the direction of higher status and increased social privilege, at least implicitly; a man in feminine-associated roles or clothing, lower. We associate women in menswear with freedom and assertion; men in womenswear with deviation, grotesquerie, and parody.

How fucked up is that?

“

this is kind of a general rule. abusers will co-opt extant systems as much as they can.

abusers will use the framework of poly to abuse. abusers will use the framework of BDSM to abuse. abusers will use the framework of feminism to abuse. abusers will use the framework of PTSD recovery to abuser.

abusers will use WHATEVER FRAMEWORK GETS THEM SEX/ATTENTION/A VICTIM to abuse, because abusers are assholes.

So whenever I hear things like “he’s a great feminist but–” or “we have a poly relationship but–” my radar goes up, because if what comes after the “but” is some kind of magically-justified terrible behavior that no one would flinch from calling abusive on, like, Unreconstructed Non-Feminist Monogamy Caveperson…listen to the behavior, not the framework.

”

- J. Preposterice on Captain Awkward (via knitmeapony)

“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.”

- Kait Rokowski  (via tromos)

brigidkeely:

jean-luc-gohard:

callmepan:

swamp-bitch:

sailor—poon:

Zack de la Rocha’s speech after witnessing a woman’s top torn off.

Damn.

RATM has become so associated with angry white brogressive men that it’s easy to forget they’re a radical communist band made up of Latinos.

It’s deeply, deeply depressing how many radical (in terms of politics) bands there are that have been co-opted by angry white brogressives AND conservatives… even to the point of their songs being used in political campaigns with  no permission.

ruthyless:

mental illness is fine and everyone is supportive until you actually start showing symptoms in which case “ur just being lazy” “ur just avoiding” “u’d be much better if u just picked urself up and did some work” “stop sleeping so much it’s making u worse” “but don’t stress urself out too much!!” “it’s not worth it!!!” 

Or “why can’t you just cheer up? You’re such a downer!” or “You work too hard.  You have to slow down and take some time for yourself!” except “We need this by x date and this by y date and this tomorrow —what do you mean you need to go home early?”  And the all-time winner: “You just want attention.”

a-laluna:

couldn’t not reblog this.

For two years, ever since Mitt Romney screwed up his response to the Benghazi attacks in order to score campaign points, Republicans have been on an endless search for a grand conspiracy theory that explains how it all happened. Intelligence was ignored because it would have been inconvenient to the White House to acknowledge it. Hillary Clinton's State Department bungled the response to the initial protests in Cairo. Both State and CIA bungled the military response to the attacks themselves. Even so, rescue was still possible, but it was derailed by a stand down order—possibly from President Obama himself. The talking points after the attack were deliberately twisted for political reasons. Dissenters who tried to tell us what really happened were harshly punished.

Is any of this true? The House Select Intelligence Committee—controlled by Republicans—has been investigating the Benghazi attacks in minute detail for two years. Today, with the midterm elections safely past, they issued their findings. Their exoneration of the White House was sweeping and nearly absolute. So sweeping that I want to quote directly from the report's summary, rather than paraphrasing it. Here it is:

• The Committee first concludes that the CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi....Appropriate U.S. personnel made reasonable tactical decisions that night, and the Committee found no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support....
   
• Second, the Committee finds that there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks. In the months prior, the IC provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat environment in Benghazi, but the IC did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks.
   
• Third, the Committee finds that a mixed group of individuals, including those affiliated with Al Qa'ida, participated in the attacks....
   
• Fourth, the Committee concludes that after the attacks, the early intelligence assessments and the Administration's initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate....There was no protest. The CIA only changed its initial assessment about a protest on September 24, 2012, when closed caption television footage became available on September 18, 2012 (two days after Ambassador Susan Rice spoke)....
   
• Fifth, the Committee finds that the process used to generate the talking points HPSCI asked for—and which were used for Ambassador Rice's public appearances—was flawed....
   
• Finally, the Committee found no evidence that any officer was intimidated, wrongly forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement or otherwise kept from speaking to Congress, or polygraphed because of their presence in Benghazi. The Committee also found no evidence that the CIA conducted unauthorized activities in Benghazi and no evidence that the IC shipped arms to Syria.

It's hard to exaggerate just how remarkable this document is. It's not that the committee found nothing to criticize. They did. The State Department facility in Benghazi had inadequate security. Some of the early intelligence after the attacks was inaccurate. The CIA should have given more weight to eyewitnesses on the ground.

But those are routine after-action critiques, ones that were fully acknowledged by the very first investigations. Beyond that, every single conspiracy theory—without exception—was conclusively debunked. There was no stand down order. The tactical response was both reasonable and effective under the circumstances. The CIA was not shipping arms from Libya to Syria. Both CIA and State received all military support that was available. The talking points after the attack were fashioned by the intelligence community, not the White House. Susan Rice followed these talking points in her Sunday show appearances, and where she was wrong, it was only because the intelligence community had made incorrect assessments. Nobody was punitively reassigned or polygraphed or otherwise intimidated to prevent them from testifying to Congress.

Read that list again. Late on a Friday afternoon, when it would get the least attention, a Republican-led committee finally admitted that every single Benghazi conspiracy theory was false. There are ways that the response to the attacks could have been improved, but that's it. Nobody at the White House interfered. Nobody lied. Nobody prevented the truth from being told.

It was all just manufactured outrage from the beginning. But now the air is gone. There is no scandal, and there never was.

pointless-letters:

"She didn’t even think to ask me." said Damian, later, a puzzled look of hurt on his face. "I mean, I was sitting right there. Staring at her. Deciding how attractive she looked. She could have just asked. Why didn’t she? I was right there.”

"It’s a shame." he added, staring at someone across the room who had a bit of mascara on. "Such a shame."

Local Man Saddened That No One Gives A Shit About Conforming To His Personal Beauty Standards, Film At 11

thechristmaspatch:

Hyperbole and a Half - The Motivation Game

this is too accurate for me right now

thebearsupthere:

the-cinnamon-peelers-wife:

antolovich:

thepandabaker:

adeyami:

Land of the free home of the rich

What really scares me is that they all have significantly cheaper health care AND education, which means Americans not only make the least, they pay the most.

…wait, what?

Yup.

I realize that Tumblr is made up of mostly a younger generation, that’s why YOU need to pay attention to this, because YOU can make a difference.