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rabiid-bunny · 3 years

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To call racism a “white people problem” is just beyond ignorant. Plain and simple. I’m Indian and live in India atm and you’d be chocked on just how racist Han Chinese are to us. And also the other way around. I know of sooo many extremely racist Indians here who genuinely hates Chinese people. You shouldn’t gatekeeper racism like that. It hurts people like me who experience racism from non whites. (made a throwaway because you seem so aggressive with your ideas on racism and I don’t want to deal with that on my blog)

It began as a white people problem and it spread like a virus because of white people. The reason that racism exists is because of the ideal "nature of whiteness" and the rage for power behind it. Guess where that came from? Wypipo. There wouldn't be such harsh racism in India and if white people hadn't come there in the past and fucked shit up and told everyone fair skin in more beautiful. Racism around the entire globe was seeded by white people.

"India was ruled by the British from 1858-1947. This was the period when the racial discrimination took its worst form. The British were extremely fair skinned, hence they considered themselves as the most superior and influential."

"The white people became the ruling class and the dark people were the victims to racial discrimination and oppression."

This succession by the white people left behind the desperate desire of looking fair. Indians felt that only the light skin people can attain power, dignity and respect as they were the master race. The racial prejudice in our country has taken the form of colorism.

Google is god.

Now let me shed some light for you because this is a topic that can easily be mixed up and confused.

Racism is not about skin color. It's about power.

rac·ism | \ ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi- \

: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

You know why it's a white people problem? Because they hold the most power and wealth in the entire world. They are "superior."

There absolutely is racism within poc cultures. There is racism within Black cultures against Black people. Except it isn't racism. It's colorism.

col·or·ism | \ ˈkə-lə-ˌri-zəm , -lər-ˌi-zəm \

: prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin.

The difference between colorism and racism is that colorism is discrimination within poc cultures minus an unbalanced wordly power dynamic. Colorism judges you for your shade of skin. Racism says you are less than and unworthy if you are not white. It's very important to know the difference between these two things. Where colorism has to do with how dark your skin is, racism is only concerned with your lack of whiteness.

The concept of "race" was a product of white colonialism. Cultures learned this from the early British invasions and rule. Therefore, if a child continues to hit other kids at school because the mother, who is in charge of them, keeps teaching them to do so, it's the mother's fault.

It needs to be corrected but it will not be corrected until the powerful racist white people of Hollywood tell Bollywood that not being a certain level of whiteness is okay.

And then they have to do that for every fucking culture they literally control behind the scenes. It's politics and world trade, my dear. It's alllll about the money and the power.

But what you're doing right this moment is pitting poc against each other (you and I but also the people in your country) and that is exactly what the white people in power want us to do. Do not play into their agenda.

Instead, let's put your rage towards something much more pressing. The state India is in right now is a direct effect of racism and white greed.

Racism = white supremacy = white power/greed

The patents on vaccines and the withholding of equipment that saves people's lives in a deadly pandemic is not only because white people in power want to get even more power but it's also because they do not care for brown countries because they are not white.

So let's stand in solidarity. I understand you have a lot of rage on this topic, as do I, but we must funnel that rage in the right direction.

To my followers, below is an org that you can donate to to help India right now. Please educate yourselves on what is happening there and if you can, raise awareness and give what you can 🖤

https://www.khalsaaid.org/donate

I hope you are staying safe, throwaway blog.

#ask #india #blm #personal

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buzzdixonwriter · 3 years

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COMPARE & CONTRAST: Birth Of A Nation vs Gone With The Wind vs The General

TRIGGER WARNING: Talking about race in American culture and movies, so some readers may want to brace themselves (looking at you, wypipo).

. . .

Confining “classic films” to movies that: Demonstrate technical expertise, and Influenced other films and creators

-- we have three (and only three) movies about the American Civil War we can safely put in the classic bin.

Before we go further, let’s restate the obvious: A film’s impact in the medium of motion pictures is separate from its impact on the culture as a whole.

Case in point: Leni Riefenstahl’s The Triumph Of The Will is a perfect textbook example of how to stage massive crowd scenes for maximum visual impact, and how to promote individuals and ideas in purely cinematic terms.

It also contributed mightily to the Nazis’ rise to power, their subsequent wars of conquest, and the deaths directly and indirectly of tens of millions of human beings.

It’s important to know The Triumph Of The Will exists and why it’s important in film and cultural and political history, but you need never subject yourself to its vile hate mongering.

With that in mind, let us proceed.

. . .

Here are the three bona fide classic movies about the American Civil War:

The Birth Of A Nation (1915)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

The General (1926)

They are all problematic for the same reason: They embrace the “lost cause” myth of Southern white supremacists.

The Birth Of A Nation is by far the worst offender of the trio, helping to restart the Ku Klux Klan and promulgate jim crow for decades to come.

Director D.W. Griffith was a Southern boy, Kentucky born with a father who served as a colonel in the Confederate army (Kentucky, a border slave state, tried to stay neutral at the beginning of the Civil War, then leaned heavily towards secession, but by 1862 threw its lot in with the Union).

Griffith bought into the lost cause myth heavily, and The Birth Of A Nation explicitly states African-Americans are fit only for slavery, becoming a murderous / rapacious mob once freed, and the Ku Klux Klan were gallant heroes attempting to turn this tide.

Griffith tries to have it both ways, depicting Abraham Lincoln as a thoughtful and compassionate leader who would have treated the South better had he survived (ignoring the fact Andrew Johnson did everything in his power to prevent the Union from holding the South accountable, and that Lincoln’s assassin was a Southerner who killed him in revenge after the war ended).

There can be no denying Griffith’s enormous talents as a film maker (again, separating thematic content from the technical expertise). While the Hollywood publicity machine was quick to claim The Birth Of A Nation was the first feature length film (i.e., 65 minutes or more), the truth is the Australians, the Chinese, the English, the French, the Italians, the Japanese, and the Russians all made feature films long before Griffith, and Griffith wasn’t even the first American to make a feature but was preceded by at least a half a dozen other film makers.

What Griffith was, however, was a master synthesis of all the techniques that preceded him. Griffith made movies better than anyone else of his era, and his best films are still eminently watchable to this day.

That’s what makes The Birth Of A Nation so harmful and destructive: Like the Riefenstahl film, it seduced common audiences into complacency while stirring the worst people to action.

It’s a film whose final cost is not measured in dollars but in innocent blood and tears.

Griffith wasn’t stupid, and while he might have felt personally immune to the criticism of his racist attitudes, he was savvy enough to recognize publicly embracing them would not serve his career well. He followed The Birth Of A Nation with Intolerance, an epic that jumps around in its story lines like a Tarantino film, and in later movies displayed a far gentler albeit still patronizing attitude towards African-Americans.

But the damage was done, the lost cause myth cemented into not just the Southern psyche but white America in general.

Like The Triumph Of The Will, I would never recommend The Birth Of A Nation as a “must see” film to anyone. If you’re a film historian and you want to subject yourself to this cancer, that’s your choice, but if you’re a student of film there’s nothing Griffith did technically or artistically in this movie that he didn’t do better in his later efforts, and other film makers have since emulated his innovations and built upon them.

. . .

For many decades Gone With The Wind was celebrated as the pinnacle of American film making, but once the romantic blinders were removed we see it for what it is: An over long, over blown epic that promulgates what we now recognize as white supremacy, classism, and rape culture.

And while it uses every technical trick in the book, it doesn’t use them as well as Orson Welles did a year later with Citizen Kane.

Gone With The Wind is really two movies: A well made Civil War epic and its lackluster Reconstruction sequel.

They should have ended the movie with “As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!” (Seriously. The only two memorable scenes in the second half other than “I don’t give a damn” both center around Scarlett O’Hara’s dresses.)

Again, let’s emphasize that a technically well made movie does not excuse bad intentions in thematic content.

Gone With The Wind is a rip-roaring bodice-ripping historical novel, admittedly well research and well written by Margaret Mitchell.

She isn’t necessarily writing from a conscious desire to spread the message of white supremacy, but as a Southern gal who grew up in the midst of the lost cause myth, she ends up breathing that message into every line of the book.

The movie version can’t escape that, nor does it try to. There’s a brief scene early on where both Mitchell and the later film makers prefigure the lost cause myth where Rhett Butler explains to the good ol’ boys at the Tara cotillion that they’re about to be brutally decimated by the Union in a war of attrition, but both author and film makers side with the good ol’ boys and support their God given right to throw away their lives and destroy their homes in an attempt to keep enslaving millions of innocent people.

That last part in bold never gets mentioned, does it? As others have observed, Gone With The Wind isn’t antagonistic towards African-Americans, rather it treats them as if they don’t exist other that walking / talking props among the scenery.

In that regard, Gone With The Wind is on par with The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged (only with a far superior writing style). The protagonists of all three books are narcissistic sociopaths who will lie / cheat / steal / blow up buildings because the common folk -- the people who actually put in the grunt labor to make things work -- are nothing but slaves there for the elites’ entitlements, and God (or market forces, take your pick) help them if they ever raise their heads or voices -- much less their hands -- in protest.

Oh, but doesn’t it look gorgeous? As those beautiful rich Technicolor gowns and sets and matte paintings. All those balls and dances. All those smoldering looks. All those flames as Atlanta burns…

There’s the true hero of the story: William Tecumseh Sherman. The mofo cut the Confederacy in half, destroying lines of supply and communication, obliterating any rebels who dared to stand up to him, shortening the war by several months, and freeing tens of thousands of enslaved people in the process.

None of which would have been necessary if a few greedy bastards such as the O’Haras had lived Christian enough lives to say, “Y’know, maybe the way we’re treating these people is wrong…”

Gone With The Wind proved insanely popular, on a scale with The Birth Of A Nation a generation earlier, and once again it made it easier for mainstream middle American whites to turn a blind eye to injustices still being perpetuated on African-Americans of that day.

And it kept playing again and again, one of the very few non-Disney movies to enjoy a substantial re-release schedule, popping up about once every seven years in theaters until the arrival of first cable then VHS.

And it’s still popular, still a steady seller in DVD and BluRay.

That’s in no small part to the skill of both Mitchell and the film makers in hiding the most egregiously problematic elements of the story under a think patina of romanticism. It became a cultural touchstone that everyone knew and everyone could reference, from political cartoons to Carol Burnett skits.

But it’s still racist and white supremacist, saying African-Americans exist only to serve whites.

It’s still classist, saying not all whites are worthy of what the upper class hogs for itself.

It’s still about rape culture, saying all Scarlett needed was one good rape by Rhett Butler to set her straight.

Is it a product of its era?

Absolutely. The same way over the counter heroin at your friendly neighborhood drug store was a product of its era. The same way cocaine laced Coca-Cola was a product of its era.

Just because it wasn’t recognized as a bad idea then means we should still circulate it now.

Compared to The Birth Of A Nation, Gone With The Wind is a far less hate filled work, and one that inspires less immediate harm.

It has inspired harm over several generations by making it easy to overlook the real harm it represents in favor of a romantic antebellum fantasy.

If someone wants to see a film that represents the Hollywood studio system at the height of its creative power, I’d recommend Casablanca or The Wizard Of Oz.

I’d put Gone With The Wind way down on that list, and I’d caution it with caveats, but I would say it represents a good example of the old Hollywood system firing on all eight cylinders.

At least for the first half of the film.

. . .

In most ways, Buster Keaton’s The General is the least problematic of these three films.

In another, it’s as bad as Gone With The Wind.

The good thing about The General is that modern audiences can easily enjoy it.

Buster Keaton chasing after a stolen steam locomotive? What’s not to love?

It’s one of his best comedies and if it’s not the very best, I’d hate to live on the difference.

It certainly lacks the overt racism of The Birth Of A Nation.

In fact, it almost lacks any race at all.

And ironically, that’s what makes it a problem.

In researching this post, I re-watched The General, something I wasn’t willing to do for The Birth Of A Nation or Gone With The Wind.

I re-watched it looking for African-American faces anywhere in the film.

I think I found four.

Two porters lugging a trunk in an early scene at a train station, possibly two small children with their backs turned to the camera at the edge of a crowd about ten minutes later.

That’s it.

In a movie about one of the most crucial events in American history, an event entirely predicated on the issue of the enslavement of millions of African-Americans…that’s it.

Four faces.

Total screen time: Less than a minute.

If critics can justifiably lambast Gone With The Wind for sailing over the bloodied backs of millions of enslaved African-Americans to focus on the luxury liner S.S. Scarlett O’Hara, what can they say about a Civil War movie that almost succeeds in eradicating those enslaved humans from the story?

Paradoxically, this makes The General the safest of these movies to show an unsuspecting audience.

The Civil War is boiled down to the dark uniform army fighting the light uniform army; why they were fighting is never explored in detail.

But the lost cause myth was so prevalent at that point that Keaton and company didn’t need to discuss the causes of the war.

Audiences – even those completely ignorant of U.S. history -- automatically assume the light uniform army are the good guys simply because Buster is on their side.

Buster would never do anything bad, would he?

Of course not!

And so -- =poof!= -- millions of people erased from history.

Top that, Thanos.

To be honest, I don’t know how a modern audience should react to that, in particular an African-American audience.

Disappointment at being culturally short changed again?

Relief at being spared the most egregious stereotyping and white supremacy apologies?

Or just plain enjoy Buster chasing after a stolen locomotive?

The General’s cultural weightlessness helps it become a great film.

It’s a purely cinematic endeavor, with the intertitles used primarily to explain the spies’ and military leaders’ plans and motives, not tell us what Buster is thinking and doing.

For a guy called “the great stone face” Buster could be awfully expressive with his body language, and he needs title cards the least of all the performers in this movie

. . .

So where does that leave us, as a 21st century audience in a 21st century culture?

We can neither deny nor ignore the impact of these three films. Even The Birth Of A Nation, as vile and as hateful as it is, influenced the country and the countries attitudes for a century.

Gone With The Wind feels like something we’ve outgrown, something some audience members can look back on with fondness, but not anything we can fully embrace again.

The General can still make us laugh, and in this case the sin of omission seems far less than the others’ sins of commission.

Learn from the past.

Do better in the future.

#race relations #movies #art #cinema #morals #ethics #politics #Birth Of A Nation #Gone With The Wind #The General #DW Griffith #Buster Keaton

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turing-tested · 4 years

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Other cultures: *Believe that people that deviate from their traditional gender roles are freaks that belong in a different gender and should be treated like outcasts* Woke idiots. "YASSSSS!!!! These magical native people believe there are more than two genders! You stupid wypipo should be illuminated like them!"

i know what this post is about but i my favorite part of this is that you were so angry you didn't even check the replies to see me acknowledging that some cultures extra-binary genders are in fact recognized as ways that cis/heteronormative society has excluded gnc and gay people from being 'normal' men and women

like i could comment on how the point of the post that you missed is about specifically how centering 'absolutes' like gender around western interpretations is racist, and how excluding those interpretations in considerations of gender and how there is no Absolute is implicitly racist by upholding the idea that again, nonwestern ways of doing things are somehow incorrect, and that binary interpretations are that of Science Minded Western People Who Know Better actually suck.

i could get into the entire point of how, from what I assume you are a radical feminist, you must understand that gender is a social construct and a class, so where is the problem when pointing out to people that those classes are nebulous at best and completely dependant on the culture they reside in? where is the problem in pointing out that 'correct' ideas about gender are eurocentric and therefore racist? do you or do you not believe in core radical feminist tenets?

like i could get into that but if you've even read this far does it even matter? if you're so angry that you rushed into my inbox without even looking at the replies, does anything I have to say matter, or are you more angry for the sake of being angry that you will come here and tell me things that I agree with as if you've had some galaxy brained take that im too simple to see. like which is it.

come back when you've learn how to interact for communication not for anger, thank you.

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kurtwagners · 4 years

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You know there’s a reason why your opinions are not taking off beyond “wypipo” not even among Asians or Tibetans. It’s just very thinkpiece theoretical anger.

??? I am Tibetan? Tibetan mutuals have rbed this and I’ve talked abt this w Tibetan twitter mutuals? Chinese and Southeast asians users have contacted me and I reblogged/posted their criticisms too? U can take a look through my blog to see them if u haven’t yet, they talk a lot about their own experiences with the show that I had no idea about!

Also, people can enjoy things while critiquing them! That’s why media studies exists! A lot of people think pop culture doesn’t have cultural/societal impact, but a lot of the books I linked in previous posts argue otherwise and I totally agree with them, especially in terms of representing minorities and how it affects the general public’s perceptions of them! Its very fascinating stuff, please check out those books!

I admit I was emotional and frustrated in my original post but I have stated multiple times it’s just informative and as long as you know about the truth behind Tibet and how it was disrespectfully depicted in the show I’m satisfied! I’m just really happy that people are reaching out saying that they didn’t know much about Tibet before and now they want to support us! As a Buddhist I want to extend my compassion out to you as well and hope you will return it, the Buddha taught that ignorance is the root of suffering and I think we can overcome it by listening to the experiences of people we don’t know a lot about! I hope you consider looking more into Tibetan history and maybe even donating or joining ur local Students for a Free Tibet chapter!

#me when i discard my anger: woah...buddha had some points actually #the fact that u read my post and learned a little more about tibet makes me happy enough despite our differences!!

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msclaritea · 3 years

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A very important history lesson and why we have to fight back this time.

A lot of people saw the White Tears Death March at Michigan's capitol & said: "If black people did that..."

"Some mentioned Reagan's gun control law after '67 Panthers protest But there are many historical examples of white people freaking out when blacks protested.

(A thread)

After the Not-So-Civil War, this happened ALL THE TIME.

Remember, the states that got their asses kicked were not automatically allowed back into the Union. Southern white supremacists were so scared when blacks exercised their new right to vote that they started a race war.

In 1866, La. reconvened its Constitutional Convention because Democrats were trying to stop blacks from voting. (This was before conservative Southern "states rights" advocates switched became Republican. We'll get to that)

Of course, black people marched (but not like that).

When the black people showed up, a group of white supremacists (Y'all call them "Confederates now — same thing) was waiting on them and opened fire.

To be fair, the black ppl weren't actually protesting, per se when the racists opened fire. They were doing something much worse:

They were dancing and playing music.

Y'all, those racist bastards opened fire on a MARCHING BAND.

Then this happened:

Partly because of the New Orleans Massacre, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. Black Louisianans were guaranteed the right to vote but the act did something else that would make the racists even madder.

It took away the right to vote for any ex-Confederate.

If you think this was bad, Georgia was even worse.

Ga. holds the distinction of being the only state that was so racist that we had to kick the ENTIRE STATE out of America.

Seriously, that happened. And it was partly because of the Camilla Massacre.

First, you gotta remember that blacks damn near outnumbered whites in Georgia. So, after they got the right to vote, 33 black ppl were elected to the state legislature.

Wypipo wasn't having that shit.

So the white legislators called their homeboys up (Y'all call them the KKK)

The KKK ran the DULY ELECTED "Original 33" out of office.

Then the Ga. Supreme Court ruled that black people were technically citizens, but the Ga. laws were only meant for white people, so... Black ppl, y'all need to go somewhere with that "equality" shit.*

*I'm paraphrasing

A week after they ousted the Original 33, one of the (did I mentioned DULY ELECTED) legislators organized 200-300 blacks & marched from Albany to Camilla to hold a rally in the town square

When they got to Mitchell County, whites waiting in storefronts and on roofs, opened fire

The Camilla Massacre got Georgia kicked BACK OUT of the Union and the state had to be readmitted for a second time in 1870 after it seated SOME of the Original 33.

Why not all?

Well, 1/4 of the Original 33 were murdered or attacked.

On October 25, 1870, 2,000 black people gathered at a rally in Eutaw, Ala. right before the Nov. election. The crowd wanted to prove they weren't of white racists.

Why would they be scared?

Well, in March, 30 masked white men had lynched James Martin, a black Republican.

It happened again in July, but they didn't just kill Gillford Coleman, they cut his body up into pieces. The racists were afraid Eutaw Co. blacks would help elect a Republican Gov. liked they helped Grant win the county by 2000 votes the 1868 election,

Klansman rode into town and opened fire on adults and children and promised to do it again if Black people voted.

The tactic worked.

Instead of Republicans winning, the county by 2000 votes, the Democrat Governor won by 43 votes.

That was lame compared to the Battle of Liberty Place.

Remember when this whole "Confederate Statue" thing first started a couple of years ago? It was partly about a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, when a whole white supremacist army overthrew the Louisiana gvt.

In 18 months a white supremacist ARMY called the "white league" (racists are notoriously bad for coming up with nicknames) killed hundreds of Black voters in Colfax, New Orleans, Coushatta & Opelousas

This is what led to the passage of the 2nd Ku Klux Klan Act

(Side note: The Colfax Massacre also resulted in a Supreme Court Case, which was the first time the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment guaranteed individual citizens the right to own guns)

A lot of Black folks weren't having this shit. So they formed their own armies.

In SC, the KKK and other Dollar Tree brand racist groups were killing Blacks in the lead up to the 1876 election. In Ellenton, over 100 black voters were murdered.

But it wasn't just about politics. White people HATED when blacks told them what to do.

You gotta remember, most southern whites were Confederates, so during Reconstruction military occupation, a lot of the soldiers were black.

On July 4, 1876, in Hamburg, the town next to Ellenton, SC, a group of black national guardsmen were drilling while black people watched

A group of these Dollar Tree white soldiers called the "Red Shirts" came through trying to flex and the Black Guardsmen told them to wait to pass until they finished.

Yall know those former whip crackers weren't having that.

A white judge told the Red Shirts that they could take the black NATIONAL GUARDSMEN's guns, they found the black militia and began opening fire.

94 white men were indicted.

0 were convicted

The leader of the Hamburg Massacre?

He went on to serve 24 years in the US Senate

Again, it wasn't just about stopping black people from voting.

In 1887, 10,000 black workers went on strike and started forming a union on La sugar plantations.

So the plantation owners hired the KKK to come in and kill the organizers. Then, it became any black person.

No one knows how many were killed but the official number is "enough"

Louisiana sugar plantations wouldn't organize again for another 50 years.

On July 3, 1919, a group of black Buffalo Soldiers went to Bisbee, Ari. Now, this may have been before cookouts were invented, because the soldiers had planned to march in the parade the next day.

Bisbee's white sheriff told the black soldiers that they couldn't walk around with their guns. When the police officers tried to disarm the Buffalo Soldiers, the refused. So they deputized all the white men in town to disarm the negroes

The soldiers were like: "Fuck y'all lil' parade, then," and were preparing to leave when one of the deputies was like: "You can't talk to a white man like that."

He opened fire.

The other deputies did, too.

An investigation would later reveal that it was planned.

The Sherriff and others "had planned deliberately to aggravate the negro troopers so that they would furnish an excuse for police and deputy sheriffs to shoot them down."

No word on the cookout.

Later that same year, black cotton sharecroppers met at a church in Elaine, Ark. They were trying to organize to get better prices but white farmers showed up. After an exchange of gunfire, a white man ended up dead.

The rumor spread that there was a black coup in Elaine

Whites from all across the South came to Elaine to literally hunt Black ppl. No one still knows how many were killed. Estimates range up to 250. You know how they finally ended it?

Federal troops arrived...

And arrested all the black people who were left alive.

In 1945, 19 black Air Force fighter pilots were arrested for trying to integrate an all-white officers club at an Indiana Airbase. 17 more showed up. They were arrested. 25 more showed up the next night, and were arrested.

Segregation was technically against military rule

So the Air Force gathered all 101 black airmen in a room & offered a deal: All they had to do is sign a paper saying they agree to the segregation or,

Face arrest for violating a direct order, which was technically punishable by death.

All 101 refused.

They were all arrested

Historically, the white "patriots" who love the flag and the troops treated black soldiers like they all took a knee before an NFL game.

In August 1947, Chicago residents grew angry when they realized the gov't was giving homes to Black veterans in the white Fernwood Park area

The day after the families moved in, on August13, the whites attacked

For 3 days, as many as 5,000 white rioters pulled Black people out of cars and beat them. They threw rocks at the homes and smashed windows. Then they started setting fires.

The police did nothing.

In 1949, black Chicago union stewards assembled went to a meeting. There were white people at the meeting, too. The meeting was even in the home of a white couple, but a rumor had already been circulating that black people were planning to buy a house in the white neighborhood.

By the end of the meeting, hundreds of whites were outside.

This one lasted 5 days.

An estimated 10,000 white rioters took part in the Englewood riot.

Police did nothing to stop it.

Remember when MLK wrote about "white moderates" in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail?" Well, those protests were partially successful.

On May 11, 1963 black protesters were celebrating. The city had decided to desegregate water fountains, lunch counters, retail stores...

On May 11, 1963, the KKK was also planning a march in Bham because...you know.

Just before 11 am, a uniformed Bham police officer got out of his car and put a package on the porch of a small house.

It was dynamite.

It exploded.

A few minutes later, another bigger bomb at the AG Gaston motel.

Everyone knows about the 16th St. church bombing in Birmingham, but few people know that there were more than FIFTY bombings in "Bombingham" during the Civil rights era

One section of town was bombed so often it's still called "Dynamite Hill."

Of course, the KKK marched anyway.

Oh, and that bombed house belonged to A.D. King, Martin Luther King's brother.

King had left town a few hours earlier...

After checking out of the AG Gaston Hotel

(Fun fact: Angela Davis and Condoleeza Rice grew up around the corner from each other in Dynamite Hill)

On February 5, 1968, black students from SC State tried to integrate a bowling alley. They were kicked out, but this time, the police were waiting to beat protesters.

But students kept showing up. So the governor called the state troopers and the National Guard.

On Feb. 8, while attempting to put out a bonfire, the Troopers opened fire on 200 protesters, shooting dozens of black students and protesters.

1 high school student was killed and 2 SCSU students. Police said they thought the students were shooting,

They weren't

One person was arrested, convicted and served time, Cleveland Sellers...

A student.

You might know his son @Bakari_Sellers

In March, 1970, in Lamar SC, a mob of angry white people attacked black protesters. Well... these protesters were kinda young and they were protesting in a weird way:

They were going to school.

A judge had ordered the school district to integrate

There are so many more examples

Check out "Ax Handle Saturday" in Jacksonville, Fla.

Read about when Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democrats showed up at the '64 convention

The Freedom Riders

Bloody Sunday in Selma

Art Bacon in Talladega

So when white people show up to protests angry and outspoken, and nothing happens, you don't have to wonder what would happen if black people did that,

Just remember what happened when black people just SHOWED UP

Not if...

WHEN."

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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You may have thought the only culture war happening in hospitals right now was because of COVID, but here's a fun one: this week, the University of Washington's clinical facilities announced

plans to go live with the CKD-EPI equation without race as a component/parameter. This decision was made after careful review and many discussions with stakeholders. [snip] Please know that the discussion and ultimate decision to avoid using the equation with a race term was prompted by concerns raised by UWSOM [School of Medicine] students.

I learned of this from a triumphant tweet thread by Elizabeth Stein, a student who was "stunned, horrified" when she was taught to take race into account when estimating glomerular filtration rate (GFR), aka the flow rate of filtered fluid through the kidney, which is calculated based on the levels of creatinine in a blood sample. A few perspective pieces and round-table discussions later, everyone has come to understand that race is a social construct, and the backwards and racist practice has been ended with the race term simply removed from the equation by UW and its doctors.

There's a problem with this, which you can probably anticipate, and it's that race is empirically a very important predictor for GFR levels. Here's the equation they were using:

GFR = 141 * [piecewise function of creatinine level and gender] * 0.993Age * [1.018 if Female] * [1.159 if Black]

This equation was developed by the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) in 2009 as a significant improvement on the previous equation, which also included terms for gender and race. Racial differences in GFR are well-supported by the data; some studies have actually advocated more racial categories to include Hispanics etc. In contrast, here's the new equation used by UW Medical:

GFR = 141 * [piecewise function of creatinine level and gender] * 0.993Age * [1.018 if Female]

Simply removing the race variable reduces a black patient's GFR estimate by ~14%, a very bad thing to do when high GFR is the primary indicator for chronic kidney disease and is needed for calibrating drug dosages. Indeed, a study published just this March concluded that the removal of race from the equation results in significantly poorer and more biased estimates of GFR.

I'm bewildered by this. Is this the most egregious example yet of anti-racism infecting science, or is there a steelman here? In the replies to the tweet, a lady with the handle @thenephrologist, who Liz Stein thanks for being "a true hero and pioneer in this work," says something about black Americans having a "3.5x faster progression to #esrd [kidney failure] than wypipo." Which seems like the opposite of saying that race is a social construct (which isn't a strawman, as the students advocating for this change "hosted discussions during orientation to discuss race as social construct.")

I've asked for clarification (edit: welp), but in the meantime it's all just baffling. Won't this lead to just another statistic about how the American healthcare system disadvantages blacks?

#reddit #the motte #comment #long quote #race #medicine #biology

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fierceawakening · 4 years

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I teach community activism, allyship, and awareness and no matter how well you teach or moderate someone will get upset. I usually just ask them to step out and process on their own for a bit and check on them later because you can't have a productive conversation then and it isn't fair to my other students who are ready to do the work of unpacking and growing to stop and all turn our attention to the person who is upset. They need to do some regulation and processing themselves

That’s fair.

I think asking them to take the timeout counts though? As long as its not worded like “Betty, you’re being all WHITE WOMAN’S TEARS right now! We need you to step aside for a moment!” or something.

Asking someone to process their emotions, if you do it nicely, acknowledges that they’re HAVING emotions. The thing I don’t like is when people are in a conversation, usually online, and someone says something flippant about wypipo or whatever, and someone else is like “hey whoa” and the op is just like “it ain’t my fault you Feel A Way.”

Because like... in one sense no it’s not, some people react strongly to things and some don’t and a lot of it is personal.

But in another, if you talk in condescending ways then it’s not just “feeling a way”—it’s not some random lightning storm of Whitey Emotey that descends from on high. It’s a predictable way people respond to being challenged, and it’s not particularly white, even—defensiveness is annoying but it’s also normal.

It’s not that I’m saying all defensiveness is okay.

It’s that I think some people do a thing where they know full well they’re gonna get a defensive reaction and then chide the person when they totally predictably say something defensive.

I want activists to do that thing less.

#emotional aftercare

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hasufin · 4 years

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Walking at 1 am

Many years ago, I went to Manila for work. I was only there for a little over a month, but it was quite the experience.

One bit of surreality was, when I left it was the height of summer - and it was even hotter and more humid there. But when I came back, Autumn was nipping at Summer’s heels and it felt like a season had simply disappeared.

I was thinking about that when I went for a nighttime walk. It’s the first time I’ve done so since... June? I’d been avoiding going out, just in case I run into some idiots (there are always idiots), and also because, um, bears. No, seriously. Apparently with people not being out as much one or more juvenile black bears have moved into our area; there have been multiple sightings near the campus, and even some video. Also it’s been hellishly hot and humid, even at night. So, you know. Staying inside, using the treadmill.

But truth is, I don’t like that much. I’m not cut out for an indoors-only lifestyle. Tonight i decided I’d just wear lights, carry a mask, and go in the direction away from the campus. (Sure, I’m more able to handle myself around bears than most people. But that means I have the sense to not want to deal with that.)

I want to say you’d not know there was a pandemic. The three signs are all down now. What three signs? When this started there were always three signs in restaurant windows: “We are monitoring the situation and sanitizing more often”, “We have reduced store hours but we’re still open”, and “Our dining room is closed for now but we’re doing takeout”.

Those are gone now. But someone did make a mint on all those “Grab and Go” banners. They’re starting to look a little bit ratty, but not bad, not yet. Restaurants that can, have outdoor seating now.

It’s the little things, though. You can peer into offices which haven’t been used in months. It’s no longer the hurried closings, it’s the long haul. I wonder how many businesses will just decide they don’t really need office space anymore, they can be 100% telework. I recognized it was a sea change, when a friend of mine mentioned she now has virtual lunch-and-learns. Or, as she put it, “They’re expecting me to take training during my lunch break, and they’re not even giving me free food!”. Businesses are settling in to ways to exploit remote workers, they’re not going to want to change that.

Ironically, the new construction seems to be going faster than normal. There’s a string of new commercial construction along the main drag. It’s all terrifyingly bland, all that same “style” of treated lumber and decorative cladding, all meant to blend in with the ubiquitous 4+1 apartment buildings. These commercial buildings, it’s all the same pattern. You’ve got some niche grocery store, maybe one or two restaurants, maybe a nail salon or the like, possibly a specialty store - cell phones, vaping, organic pet food, whatever. Stuff that wypipo like, I guess. No idea what they’ll do when they have their grand openings. Gods know I won’t be going.

There are parking lots which haven’t had a car in them since April. Stores that closed and will never open. So many places that seem to just be waiting.

Yet also, I saw more people out in their backyards. Cookouts, talking, having a beer. Didn’t used to see that. It’s not just the season. People aren’t going out, so they’re staying in. That’s been a theme, among the merely inconvenienced. We’re staying home and finding we’ve been spending most of our income to have a place we don’t actually like.

I do hope for an end to this. Not soon, because that would be foolishness. As soon as we can. When it is over, I hope we learn. I hope we learn what we really missed, what we really care about, and what we really need. Let us have a new normal, let’s abandon the old one.

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