21 year old boricua grrrl looking for the Marceline to my Princess Bubblegum. My name is Melanie.
#womanism #the black woman #abbey lincoln #feminism #black feminism #black women #racism #white washing #whiteness #beauty standards
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This whole video is perfection.
(via lavender-labia)
(Source: autumn-and-eve, via lavenderlabia)
#race #racism #racial prejudice #people of colour #PoC #whiteness #oppression #privilege #n-word #slur
I just saw someone suggest that the world would be an infinitely better place if everyone was vegan - even ‘Peruvian indigenous villages’ because we live in ‘a developed world’. In short the person is being purposely vague but ultimately suggesting making contact with uncontacted tribes in order to force them to become vegans; talk about turning the quest for global veganism into a genocide project.
Establishing contact with isolated tribes is a sure way to exterminate at least 50-90% of their population and if you do it in order to force a vegan lifestyle upon people who live in areas where an entirely vegan lifestyle just isn’t viable, you’d be sure to have said indigenous group entirely gone from the face of the planet in less than a year.
But at least those pesky natives wouldn’t be eating meat, am I right?
Not to mention that veganism, despite all it’s positive sides, isn’t as eco-friendly and wonderful as people would like to think; one of the reasons why the Brazilian Enawene Nawe tribe is currently being driven away from their lands is so that people can use their ancestral lands to grow soy for vegans and the meat industry alike, while simultaneously pumping out loads of pesticides into the rivers in the area, thereby making a pescaterian tribe (the Enawene Nawe don’t eat meat) lose their main source of food as the rivers are more or less killed by the poison dumped in them.
The thing that bugs me, that always bugged me, was this complete denial of the circumstances, conditions and even the moral framework of non-western people.
Nobody thinks about the destruction of healthy ecosystems for farming, rising commodity prices in production zones (like how quinoa is too expensive for Bolivians to buy it, despite growing and relying on it for centuries), or how the adoption of westernized diets has created a public health crisis.
Then there’s the moralizing. This universalist ideology that declares that in order to live at the apex of ethical humanity, we must all convert to veganism, which will in turn solve all manner of environmental issues and end the brutal factory farm system, praise God.
And sure, industrial-level agriculture is problematic, and the meat industry in particular is brutal. There is something seriously wrong with how we get our food, and there is nothing wrong with frank, serious discussions about how we feed ourselves. The way that life, labour and the environment is exploited demands serious critical examination.
But veganism is a lot more than that. It’s a code, a way of life which derives all of it’s legitimacy and authority by uncritically appealing to Western concepts of humanity and morality. In seeking to impose a universal, moral veganism, it’s adherents utterly fail to account for views and philosophies which exist outside of the dominant/normative power structure and, in point of fact, denies their legitimacy and worth completely. That’s pretty fucked up and it accounts for the very real racist undertones in arguments levelled against indigenous people who hunt to support themselves. Witness the hue and cry of the animal rights community over Newfoundland’s seal hunt, and see how many times you can pick out words like savage.
I can guarantee that I do not hunt for the reasons that these people think I hunt, and I do not approach the taking of a life in the way that these people believe I do.
And frankly, I’d rather wear real wool than something that was made with plastics. The oil industry isn’t really known for it’s environmental stewardship, and that shit is in my backyard.
(via lavenderlabia)
#vegan #militant vegan #veganism #dietary choices #food #privilege #oppression #whiteness #power #stigma #moral #ethics #animal rights #vegetarian #vegetarianism #poverty #choice
Great article on the War on Drugs in Australia.
“…the war on drugs seemed waiting for me: deaths, addiction, corruption and failed attempts to bring calm and good sense to a deeply difficult issue. I’d reported it for a decade.
1994 Though E is for Ecstasy is on sale around the world, the book is banned in Australia. Why? Because new censorship codes are designed to pursue the war on drugs. Books and films can be banned for showing drugs and addiction “in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults”.
1994-97 Supreme Court judge James Wood’s royal commission lays bare systemic corruption of the NSW Police Force by the drug trade. Wood’s cautious suggestions for decriminalisation are brushed aside by then-NSW premier Bob Carr.
1996 Bill Clinton’s chief international drugs enforcer, Bob Gelbard, flies in to threaten Tasmania’s legal and lucrative poppy-growing industry to stop the ACT going ahead with a heroin trial. The trial never happens.
1999 Cardinal George Pell quashes plans by the Sisters of Charity to open a safe injecting room at St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst.
2001 The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, attacks the “law and order auctions” held at every state election: “My view is that the so-called war on drugs is going the way of most other wars. It’s costing time, it’s costing money, it’s costing lives, it’s achieving nothing other than creating more crime, which I then have to prosecute.”
2005 Australian-raised Nguyen Tuong Van faces execution in Singapore for running drugs. Our hearts are hard. Talkback is loud in its admiration for Singapore. A couple of nights before the kid’s death, Roy Morgan Research finds a great swathe of the nation wants Nguyen to die for trying to smuggle half a kilogram of heroin to Melbourne.
America began its crusade to rid the world of opiates after it occupied the Philippines in the 1890s and discovered opium smuggling was rife in those islands. A passionate fear of opium had grown up in America during the Californian gold rushes – fear mixed up with distaste for the Chinese who smoked the stuff. Race has always been an element in this enduring moral panic.
So, in the first years of the new century, America set out to cleanse the world, especially the white world, of the opiate scourge. At a conference called in Shanghai in 1909, a number of world powers signed up to the American mission. Every one of the dozens of treaties banning drugs since has been, in a sense, a forlorn attempt to make the Shanghai strategy work.”
#australia #australian politics #war on drugs #drugs #criminalisation #racism #borders #whiteness #punitive #harm minimisation
Here’s what you need to realise about anti-racism: It’s not about you. It’s not about your feelings as a white person. What you just said is that you’ll entertain the idea of listening to POC talk about ways they’ve been fucked over by whiteness, white privilege, and white people as long as they don’t hurt your feelings.
To put it another way: you’re saying that not having your feelings hurt is more important to you than actually trying to understand PoC’s experiences of enduring racism—which is, itself, perpetuating racism. No, maybe you didn’t partake in whatever act of racism we’re talking about in this very moment, but if you’re white, then you are benefiting from the systemic racism that allowed it to happen, whether you like it or not.
Yes, listening to the ways that your privilege fucks over other people is uncomfortable. Yes, it can be embarrassing & lead to feelings of guilt, but it is not up to People of Color to censor ourselves to spare your delicate fee-fees. If you truly want to be considered anti-racist, you need to deal with those feelings with other white people & not add to the burden of PoC’s experiences of racism by saying that you won’t take us seriously unless we’re ‘nice’ about the emotional & psychological violence that we endure simply by being PoC in a racist society.
So literally, all I want you to do is understand that being anti-oppression (of any kind) is about understanding how the oppressed group is affected & then countering those systems, activities, mindsets, etc. It’s not about you being comfortable, because if you’re doing it right, it’s not going to be comfortable.
”– VELOCICRAFTOR (via sapphrikah)
(via cherryvision-deactivated2012011)
#racism #white people and their feefees #white privilege #whiteness
White kids? I need y’all to listen.
We are not all Troy Davis.
This would not happen to us.
No, cork it and let that settle in for a second. This would not happen to us in this country and in this “justice” system and in this white supremacist…
(via cuntygrrl-deactivated20111201-d)
#whiteness #White privilege #racism
