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#privilege
nonbinarymlm · 3 days
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The thing is, most people (in the US and Western countries at least, that’s where my experience is from) have some forms of privilege some forms of oppression. This isn’t saying everyone is equally oppressed and privileged, but most people have privilege in at least one way and oppression in at least one way.
And if you experience oppression in some ways and privilege, it’s much easier to see your oppression then you privilege.
Privilege is largely invisible to those who have it. Oppression grates against you all the time. So it’s much easier to see the forms of oppression you experience then the forms of privilege.
That’s why it’s so important for us all to listen to each other and not play Oppression Olympics. You can face very real oppression that really affects your life, and still learn a lot from other people who face other forms of oppression that you don’t. We have to listen to each other. In the queer community especially I think this is important, because there’s so many different ways to be oppressed and to be privileged.
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lifewithchronicpain · 8 months
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Based on this post
I decided to be kind and add an answer between once or twice and annually.
Bonus question, how many of you as kids started to figure out the wealthy kids based on all your classmates who went to Disney every year and you never went once? I think I figured it out by 8.
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whereserpentswalk · 4 months
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Remember that hope itself is radical. Believing that one day the specific injustices we face will be nothing more than historical events. Just like how we live in a world without the divine right of kings we will one day live in a world without capitalism, just understanding that is itself a radical action. If spreading despair is praxis of the ruling class, spreading hope is praxis against the ruling class.
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writingwithcolor · 3 months
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Diversity Win: Is "Crazy Rich" POC Representation Necessarily Empowering?
sodapopsculptor asked:
I’m writing a story with two sets of protagonists: A trio with a Black girl, a Latino, and a Vietnamese-American boy who all come from middle-upper class to ridiculously rich families, and a pair of white working-middle class sisters. They’re all heroes of this story. I’ve seen way too many rich white people and poor poc people in fiction, and I’m kinda getting sick of it, but I’m worried that by having the poc kids be rich and the white girls not so much, I’ll be reinforcing the idea that poc somehow rule the world. The only time the rich kids use their status as leverage is when the Asian threatens to sic his cop dad on a bully (race unstated but I imagined him as white) picking on a freshman, and during the Black girl’s birthday party, when she pays the biggest jock there fifty bucks (And later says offhandedly that it was just what she had in her pocket) to chase off a creep hitting on her.
OP, have you ever seen the “diversity win!” meme before?
I understand that your motivation for these narrative choices is to give POC a chance, if you will, to be the rich characters. But it is evident from this ask that you have not asked yourself what this entails. I want to ask you to critically examine the race and class intersections you’re creating here, as well as these kids’ roles in oppressive systems.
You explain that these rich POC are heroes and only have righteous reasons for leveraging their power.
But is your Black girl character aware of the potential disciplinary and/or legal consequences her jock accomplice might face while she has the resources to keep her hands clean? Are you?
Is your Asian character aware of how much of an abuse of power it is to “sic” a cop on someone, and the sheer amount of harm a criminal record or incarceration does to a juvenile with behavior issues? Are you?
So you want to put POC in positions of power for #representation.
Does it resonate with the group you’re representing?
Do you research and portray the unique ways race, ethnicity, class, and majority vs. minority status come together?
Or are you putting these characters in oppressive hegemonic roles for the sake of a power fantasy, on behalf of a group you're not even in?
To your question, you're not reinforcing the idea that "POC rule the world" because such a generalized belief does not exist. Instead, you're reinforcing:
The idea that society has “winners” and “losers.”
The idea that the problem with disproportionately powerful people is the lack of “equal opportunity” as opposed to the power imbalance to begin with.
The idea that those in oppressive positions of power need only have the right intentions to justify their use of it.
To be clear: that is not to say that you can't have jerk aristocrat billionaire millionaire crazy rich POC. Evil or mean rich characters are fun! I have some myself! You can even have rich characters who are gentle-hearted and well-intentioned, but you have to know the ways in which they’re privileged and decide how aware of that your characters are. That’s no problem.
But if you think that wealthy and powerful POC would have the same values and priorities as their poorer counterparts, you’re deluding yourself. There’s a reason why the quote “power corrupts” exists. There’s a reason why no matter where you look on the globe, there are historical dictators and tyrants.
If you want bratty rich POC who lack regard for the consequences of their actions, because you want bratty rich characters, great! If you want them because it would be uplifting or empowering representation? You’re doing it for the wrong reason.
~ Rina
I fully agree with Rina, and truly want to emphasize the last paragraph.
If you want bratty rich POC who lack regard for the consequences of their actions, because you want bratty rich characters, great! If you want them because it would be uplifting or empowering representation? You’re doing it for the wrong reason.
I don't think you need to aim to subvert or purposely make all the BIPOC rich and powerful and the white people poor and suffering. Add diversity and include upper class rich and class privileged BIPOC, sure thing! And you can avoid your fears of intentional subversion message by including rich and powerful white characters as well, even if they're not the focus of your story. Just their existence helps. You could also include middle-class characters of Color as well.
More reading: Black in upper-class society
~Mod Colette
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escuerzoresucitado · 5 months
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decolonize-the-left · 3 months
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Everyone asks what I read and truth be told I learned a lot of politics through experience and listening to Black revolutionaries.
There is nothing- nothing- that I say on my blog that Malcom X or James Baldwin or Frantz Fanon or Thomas Sankara or Frederick Douglass didn't say first (and much more eloquently)
Further, their words have given me the tools to think critically about not just my place, but everyone else's and what we owe each other.
I myself, wouldn't have a Lot of the politics I do had I not been exposed to the ideas they talked about with such knowledge and experience. Whether it was by following activists or looking up things up or learning about them myself, they're influential and I would even say foundational to decolonization and dismantling white supremacy.
My usual recs are Wretched of the Earth and Braiding Sweetgrass, but those are just starters since people just usually ask where to begin.
So I wanted to make this post and for them to be Very Much credited for the following I have and my politics since I don't often mention them.
For example, I talk a lot about how the comfort of the privileged is an obstacle that stems directly from their privilege. How libs who only conditionally support peaceful protests don't understand what's necessary; that challenging the status quo can't be done comfortably and it's never been "peaceful" for the oppressing classes. How it's detrimental to progress to compromise on how we fight for our rights and to have been liberals telling us we demand too much.
Frederick Douglass:
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Frantz Fanon:
Privileges multiply and corruption triumphs…Today the vultures are too numerous and too voracious in proportion to the lean spoils of the national wealth. The party, a true instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, reinforces the machine, and ensures that the people are hemmed in and immobilised.
Thomas Sankara:
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Malcom X:
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James Baldwin:
In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions or their lives, or even their knowledge—revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man.
Bonus MLK Jr quote:
Over the last few years many Negroes have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers tranquillity to equality. In a sense the white liberal has been victimized with some of the same ambivalence that has been a constant part of our national heritage. Even in areas where liberals have great influence— labor unions, schools, churches and politics—the situation of the Negro is not much better than in areas where they are not dominant. This is why many liberals have fallen into the trap of seeing integration in merely aesthetic terms, where a token number of Negroes adds color to a white-dominated power structure."
Whether your medium is a PDF, a book, movie, clips, quotes, podcast, whatever. However you digest info easiest: learn about them and their words. Think about them. Talk about it and process it with friends.
That's how you shape your politics to be similar to the ones you find on my blog.
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animentality · 3 months
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s00mia · 8 months
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classycookiexo · 4 months
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Definitely
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acti-veg · 7 months
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People love to call veganism ‘privileged,’ while conveniently ignoring the fact that the only reason animal products are even close to being accessible for the average consumer is because they’re factory farmed, slaughtered and packed by grossly underpaid labourers working in dangerous conditions, and then massively subsidised by all of our taxes.
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antifainternational · 7 months
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Some people will get soooo offended if you say they are privileged ???what’s the deal with that
privileged=undeserving? it’s morally ambiguous?? privilege=malice??? evil intent?? no!
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wordsbyjenpoetry · 4 months
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Five words that we long to hear, "I'll keep your heart safe."
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polyamzeal · 5 months
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strangelittlestories · 4 months
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After the witch cursed the king to be a lowly crawly creature, the biggest problem was not the power vacuum or the vengeful knights.
No, it was the *upkeep costs*.
You see, curses don't just require magic to cast. It takes a steady flow of power to keep someone in a form that is not their natural state.
The magical drain could have been worse; after all, there was a part of the king that knew this new lowly and wretched station resonated with his very soul.
But the atoms of him that remembered being power-fat and veneration rich still rebelled and they took effort to force back down again.
That's the problem with privileged people: the unshakable belief that they deserve what they have. The memory of power, like a puddle that remembers being a thunder storm.
Decades went by and, eventually, the witch was forced into repeated acts of sacrifice to keep the king from turning back. It was worth it for a while, but eventually she had to burn her cottage, her broomstick and her herb garden - all the things that mattered to her, given up in a flare of spite and incense.
Finally, she even cut her long hair and set in on fire amidst the ashes of her former life.
Having given up this last thing - and knowing soon she may have to let the curse lift and allow the king to escape his wriggling-but-fitting form - she sighed to herself and said:
"Ah well, it's like they say: you shouldn't set yourself on fire to keep other people worms."
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bellisima-writes · 4 days
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More on Aziraphale and Suffering in Season 3
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I recently read this post by @dalliancekay about how Aziraphale doesn't need to suffer in Season 3 to warrant his happy ending and I could not agree more. He does not need, nor does he deserve to suffer anymore than he already has. And if you need more evidence of that, definitely go give that original post a read.
But, unfortunately, Aziraphale will suffer. And it's an important part of the story I think Neil is telling.
Good Omens is a lot of things, but when you boil it down it's really a story about oppressive systems and how they hurt everyone, both the oppressed and the privileged that "benefit" from those systems. Heaven is the oppressive system in our story, with Crowley, the fallen angel, representing the oppressed and Aziraphale representing the "privileged." And we know, Aziraphale has suffered, endlessly, at the hands of Heaven for his entire existence. So the word privileged is audacious to use here. But he is, and he knows it.
He's not had to fear for his life every time he's spent time with Crowley, while Crowley most definitely has. Easy examples we all know are here:
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"my lot don't send mean notes." or
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Or here Crowley's taken down to Hell. You get the idea.
Before thwarting Armageddon, Aziraphale knows the worst that would come to him is a firm reprimand, and maybe losing his post on Earth. And mind you, those things are devastating to him, but not life threatening the way Hell can be for Crowley.
And that's at least one of the reasons why he wanted Crowley with him in Heaven at the end of Season 2, to bring him into that privileged class, to change his threat level to something manageable that Aziraphale could help him with. But i digress.
So we have our oppressive system, our oppressed and our privileged. And we all follow Neil on Tumblr, we know where his political leanings are, and he knows the power of his and Terry's story.
In real life, we all live within oppressive systems, and there are many narratives on how to overthrow them. A well known, albeit relatively unpopular, one is that the privileged need to use their position to change the system they benefit from; that they need to do the hard work in order to do so. It will not be easy, it requires immense sacrifice of the comforts that they have become accustomed to and will result in, yes, suffering. But it is their responsibility and duty to do so.
And that's the story I believe Neil is telling. It’s a story of strength and courage in spite of the risks to himself. And it’s not because he deserves it or even needs to do it to earn his happy ending at all. It just is how systems are broken and rebuilt for everyone’s benefit.
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So when we look at this face at the end of Season 2, we can see a lot of things. What I see is an Angel who may not yet have a plan, but he sure as hell has a mission. And I can't wait to watch him achieve it.
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