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uselessheretic · 1 year

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but also bouncing off of this with ed, racialized masculinity, and rage (and i'm using that term specifically and for a reason) one of the other parts i think is fascinating is the way that rage is dangerous. not to an individual but to the oppressive structures surrounding us.

moc and anger is something that has always been policed and their image in media has to be crafted to fit a specific ideal. i'm taking a look at this through the lens of a biracial african-american, but if you look at the history of how black men are depicted in media you see a stark change occur upon the abolition of slavery. during slavery, the image of enslaved people that was promoted were those of a happy and content group of people. they were infantalized and portrayed as child-like and mentally deficient. you can see gone with the wind as an example of "the happy slave" myth. there's a great teen vogue article you can read if you wanna see more about the myth and how it relates to current pop culture. you can also read more about caricatures and the way they're still normalized currently with mascots of aunt jemima and uncle ben in this op-ed. but like all caricatures, they serve a purpose and fulfill a need of white supremacy. when it came to the happy slave, it was to push the idea that black people were content in slavery, that slavery was a civilizing process that was actually white people helping them, and that the only kind of work black people were capable of is physical labor, that any other kind would make them unhappy.

you can see similarities actually with the way māori men are spoken about and locating their use to physicality. when māori schools (in traditional western sense) were first opened, māori students scored just as well as the european lead schools. white people actually literally forced them to change their curriculum to be labor based completely because anything else was thought of as too complex for their simple minds or some bullshit like that. there's a great paper by brendan hokowhitu "The Death of Koro Paka: “Traditional” Mäori Patriarchy" that goes in depth about the white supremacist fetishization of māori physical labor.

in the same way that māori school curriculums were changed, the happy slave myth was a way for white supremacy to maintain a status quo that naturalized using poc for hard labor while patting themselves on the back for doing them a favor. for a long period of time in america, black rage and anger was erased. it was hidden from white eyes to shield them from having to face the reality of their brutalization. this is why frederick douglass was so revolutionary, btw. he pulled back the curtain on the myth, showing these caricatures as the shadow puppets they were, forcing white people to look at the brutality they were inflicting on real human beings.

the abolition of slavery changed this image. it's like it underwent a PR campaign overnight (which it kinda did) where suddenly pictures of slaves singing with huge grins were replaced with the image of animalistic, out of control, absolutely furious black men. part of this was from a white paranoia projecting their anxiety that black people will come at them for revenge from slavery. but the main reason for this was because of a caveat in abolition that still allowed slavery in the case of incarceration. (the 13th is a documentary on netflix that goes in depth on this!) you can't say that you're enslaving people because they like it and it makes them happy anymore, so what do you do? you change that narrative. it's not to keep them safe, it's to keep you safe especially your women safe. jim crow laws are rolled out, black men in the south are either incarcerated or lynched (the great migration from the south was fleeing white terrorism!) the myth of the angry, violent, savage negro takes form.

the point i'm making related to ed, beyond the history lesson, is related to that idea of white fear of moc's anger. when we talk about the anger of moc, we don't erase it. that's already happened before, and it was used against us. instead we lean into the idea of what makes white people so fucking shook at the idea of an angry moc.

a huge part of this that i think is very relevant to ed is the need for the state to control him. piracy is disruptive as fuck. a huge portion of pirates were ex-navy who left because they no longer wanted to put up with how fucking shitty the navy is to their men (no, it wasn't for radical reasons 😭) piracy also had a large amount of black people fleeing slavery too! one of the reasons black pirates were so scared of capture was because unlike their white counterparts, they wouldn't be hanged, they'd be brought to plantations. if you want to read an interesting article about piracy and race i'd suggest this one! it's untrue to say that piracy was an aracial utopia, but the history of it is complex and fascinating. (fun fact, blackbeard actually gets cited sometimes as one of the pirate ships that were a lot more equitable with race where the famous pirate black ceasar served upon his ship. this does not mean blackbeard wasn't horrifically racist. he still sold slaves and raped black women. do not mistake this for him being an antiracist legend)

pirates were able to operate outside of state control and this was terrifying. at times, they would work with the navy, also a fun fact. hornigold is famous for attacking spanish ships and leaving the british ones alone, meaning england just kinda looked the other way lmao.

but for ed (the character) i think this is what grants blackbeard so much power in a way that just plain old edward teach would never be able to harness. all the way up the chain, blackbeard is feared, and blackbeard is respected. the mere chance that blackbeard would be willing to take an act of grace and concede that power to the king is so lucrative that even an admirals subordinates are willing to go against him for it. to have blackbeard under english control is the greatest propaganda anyone could've offered them.

i think i said this yesterday, but as a powerless child being told that he can't have fine things, that's just how it is, it can feel like your only two options are either anger or despair. ed chose anger, and by doing so, ed chose survival. he can despair over his surroundings or he can get angry, say fuck this, join a pirate ship, and go ham. he can despair over his mother's abuse, or he can get angry. angry that she's treated like this. angry that his father is so cruel. angry that there is nobody who is willing to help them. angry enough to kill your father. not because ed is, at his core, a violent person, but because, at his core, he's a loving one who will kill off a part of himself if it means keeping his mother safe. ("when you kill, you die as well.")

and not just anger, but rage? it's powerful. it's the natural conclusion for having even the slightest awareness of your circumstances as a moc, and it's in the states best interests to quell that as much as possible. not to be like "malcolm x said" but also malcolm x said "Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change." and i think there's something to that with ed, where he's trying to change the circumstances of his life to no longer be a nobody. that anger has served him well over the last few decades, his path has scorched a legacy, but it's also burned him out on the way. something stede offers to him alongside retirement is the possibility that he may be able to let that go. doesn't have to hold onto that anger anymore and wield it like a weapon. maybe love can be enough?

and in this case, it doesn't work out for him. there's many reasons why, but a big one is that ed hasn't yet done the introspection necessary to move forward. he struggles with acknowledging his past (he frequently forgets his acts of cruelty) and although he may be ready to let that go, it's not so easy. it clings to him. also why i think izzy's role is so important and not just black and white villainy. what he and izzy had worked. for decades it served them both well. but now it doesn't anymore and ed wants to let that go, but it isn't that easy to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. izzy is his reminder of that, good and bad.

i mentioned malcolm x earlier, and it feels worth it to bring up how much a disservice history does to his legacy where he's painted as angry with no other nuance. they called him the angriest negro in america. there's also a fascinating legacy within the black male community of attempting to claim him for black masculinity at the expense of others, but malcolm x was also a loving husband and father, and a huge proponent for self-love. his love was complex, and it was only after he began to start making connections globally and start advocating for a more nuanced approach of black radical politics that he was assassinated.

ed is angry, and in that anger is power, but it's also exhausting. he wasn't wrong that love and vulnerability is something that will heal him, but he also hadn't yet done the work of examining his own internalized self-hatred, despair, loneliness, and anger. he's not going to have a fairytale ending where stede swoops in and rescues him from the evils of piracy, but will need to dig deeper into his emotional roots and connect with that same complexity of love that figures like malcolm x embodied.

this will probably look different for ed though since there are māori practices specific to that self journey of healing. Te Whare Tapa Whā is a model of health and wellbeing that takes a holistic māori and indigenous approach to health that positions five tenets as necessary for one's health.

i don't feel like i can do it justice summarizing it since it's focused on five culture specific concepts, but here's a neat link!

this is something i try to keep in mind when writing ed and his healing. even if i'm not naming the model specifically, i think it's great to check back in on "is ed getting these five needs?"

i would highly recommend reading more about māori approaches to mental and physical health where the trauma of colonization is something that is brought to the forefront of needing to be addressed to heal. not only that, but how strong a backlash this receives from white groups because acknowledging that pain and history is dangerous to white supremacy.

but ed's relationship to emotion is something i really love about the show. rage and anger threatens the control of the british empire. it wreaks havoc across the seas and makes a mockery of their power. with ed though, when he's able to take control over the navy and for a brief moment becomes the most powerful person on that naval ship, is the act of grace. an action born from his love of another person. it feels so? hopeful and kind. and it wouldn't hit as hard if there weren't those moments of pain. after all, ed's desire for softness becomes all the more meaningful when we know he's use to only being treated roughly. that contrast is what keeps us feeling.

#edward teach #ofmd meta #yes i am salty and including a bunch of sources bc of that lol #long post

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lets-steal-an-archive · 1 year

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Ben Collins: It’s time for journalists to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard

“Triumphs of the truth are not accidents. They are times the American media — including and especially those outside of the disinformation beat — did not equivocate and did not give an inch to lies and the liars who tell them.”

By BEN COLLINS June 13, 2023, 12:16 p.m.

Editor’s note: NBC News reporter Ben Collins was one of the winners of the 2023 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Television Political Journalism, given by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. This year’s awards focused on “best practices of TV journalism aimed at combating disinformation and defending democracy.” Collins included this memo to the judges, along with a compilation of TV news reports.

An update on the information war, for the 2023 Walter Cronkite Awards

We’re losing.

I’m hesitant to start off this memo on such a grim note, but it’s true: The people putting out the truth are under siege in the information war, and we’re not doing so great. That’s, in part, because a lot of those people aren’t even aware they’re in an information war to begin with.

There is good news: We can still win. It will take a change in tack, and a little bit of courage.

But first, since I’m doubling down on bad ideas right out of the gate, I’m going to do something else that’s probably ill advised. I’m about to quote Edward R. Murrow, who, I’ve been told by a bunch of books, was not a pal of Mr. Cronkite. They both wound up at the same place — the facts — and they took two separate ways to get there. They were in the trenches and were too deep in it to see they were on the same side. I get it. We’ve all been there. A lot of us are there right now.

Murrow, famously, said this:

This instrument can teach. It can illuminate. Yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

Stonewall Jackson, who is generally believed to have known something about weapons, is reported to have said, “When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.” The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.

We’re back in that very same battle right now, and it’s against the same enemy: ignorance, intolerance, indifference. The box is smaller now. It’s in your pocket. It’s brighter and faster and it vibrates and dings and brings you horror and joy and knows what makes you feel better and sure as hell knows what makes you feel worse. Then it assigns those bad feelings to a political enemy, and the good feelings to anybody trying to get rid of those people.

youtube

That’s what you’ll see in the stories I’ve covered in the last year. Fear and panic and paranoia and lies and deceit that led to terror, death and the attempted disenfranchisement of American voters.

You’ll see that first with my coverage of the Buffalo shooting, a terror attack perpetrated by a white supremacist obsessed with the “Great Replacement Theory” lie that has pervaded extremist spaces online. The shooter posted his own tranche of racist lies on the internet in his manifesto for 4chan and 8chan users, which I had to convey to our viewers without further spreading his hate.

You’ll see midterm election night coverage of the attempts to shoo away voters from early voting ballot drop boxes by “mule watchers,” the conspiracy theorists obsessed with the lie that “2,000 ballot mules” had stolen the election from Donald Trump.

You’ll see the hate campaign targeted at America’s trans youth that continues to make some of the most persecuted Americans fear for their lives to this day.

But you’ll also see interspersed moments of justice and relief. You’ll see my reporting on a day I thought would never come: October 12th, the afternoon Alex Jones was forced to reckon with his decades of lies and pay almost $1 billion to the families of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. You’ll see how Russia’s global information war fell apart as its military began to invade Ukraine, and how Vladimir Putin’s propaganda arm scrambled to adopt lies first spread by American anti-vaccine groups.

I hope you notice something specific while reviewing my coverage of the last year of hate, and how hate loses. Triumphs of the truth are not accidents. They are times the American media — including and especially those outside of the disinformation beat — did not equivocate and did not give an inch to lies and the liars who tell them. No one attempted to falsely humanize the inhumane — like the horrors of Vladimir Putin. No one tried to bend over backwards to provide positive framing to intentional cruelty — like the lies of Alex Jones — even, or especially, if it was politically inconvenient at the moment.

When media manipulators were met with a unified opposition armed with clear facts — when that unified opposition stood firmly alongside those who were constantly attacked by men with powerful and profitable propaganda machines — that opposition won. We won. The news won.

But it takes unity, and not capitulation, in these moments. There is no meeting liars halfway, because the truth then becomes one-half lie. We must simply be louder, and clearer, with the truth.

The wires and lights in the box aren’t quite so simple now that they’re in our pockets. Some of them are keeping your kid up at night, telling your teenager fantastical tales about the Illuminati on TikTok. (And some of them are keeping your parents up at night, too, telling equally fantastical tales about the nightly gunfight that is actually just fireworks on NextDoor.) The people spreading those Illuminati lies are not playing by the rules, nor are they particularly interested in the truth. They are interested in money and power, and they have been gaming our algorithms to gin up fear and sell a balm for it.

I have been covering this stuff for too long now, and I can assure you that they are not going to stop. So we have no choice: We simply have to tell better stories than them. We have to be better at extolling truth — based in empathy, democracy, and human rights — than fearmongers have become at selling profitable lies.

We can win, but we have to be more unified, and we have to be more human. We’ve faced this before and we’re facing it again. “There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.”

Look down at your phone. The lights and wires in that box are smaller, but they contain exponentially more ways to do harm. If you want your vote to count, or if you were born in any way different, I’m certain you’d agree.

“When the war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.” I’m confident I threw away my scabbard.

—

Ben Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.

#ben collins #good words #walter cronkite awards #information war #journalism #nbc news #long post #Youtube

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rametarin · 10 months

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Another internal struggle between the World of Darkness of the past, and World of Darkness of today.

Past World of Darkness was considered to be in the, "Screw you, hippie" school of game design. Which is, I think, a label applied most by screwed hippies with sour grapes.

In truth, World of Darkness was a celebration of horror, pop culture and folklore. And sometimes, culture and folklore is not politically correct. It just isn't. You may take umbrige with the idea of some ghost of an aborted or stillborn fetus angry at its mother or other women as some sort of misogynistic or patriarchal phantom of guilt meant to make women feel bad, but you don't get to disinclude it from the big list of adult fables and folklore we get to add to our edgy tabletop game featuring horror and unsavory macabre superstitions.

Culture does not care about your modern day ideas of what is right or wrong or just. It's history, and it is tradition, and it is origin. To censor that because you don't like it is merely to do what Maoist China does; trying to edit shit like the Bible to conform to modern, more socialist ideas about what is right by having Jesus spit out a line like, "No man is perfect and no man can be free of sin. Not even me." You know, the guy who was sent to be sacrificed as the ultimate sinless person. Anyway..

In those years, the big struggle was against domestic religious ubiquity of Christianity that was rallying itself to culture up because it felt like all these non-Christians moving in would change the pluralistic and defacto supremacy of the cultural outlook of the US along with other parts of Europe. So, naturally, the punk and anarch and liberal youth response was to take the real life annoyances of televangelists and those jealous, out of touch middle aged people from the 60s to 90s and depict them as enablers of baby-eating, child raping priests and clandestine abusive religious institutions.

What was en vogue at the time was putting neo-paganism on a pedestal, and that meant whether you liked and vibed with that or not, you trusted the Odinists and the neo-pagans of other cultural "faiths" (that were really just excuses to wear horns and go to concerts and engage in good ole fashioned orgies) more than you trusted or tolerated your everyday milquetoast religious population. That of course meant an eclectic and often shallow mishmash of misc. European, African and Asian cultural icon traditions, as only ill informed but arguably well intentioned children withj limited access to information and sources will do.

It was WELL known at the time that Odinist or similar European neo-Paganism was often affiliated with white nationalists, but they understood you didn't just throw all that shit under the rug just because some cultural identityless stormfuckers adopted the symbols. It was understood that those symbols didn't belong to the fascists and neo-Nazis, they were appropriated and didn't belong to them. Nobody thought Norse mythology was inherently just a whistle blown for neo-Nazis, it was considered something they illegimately held and were ignored for doing it. Unlike today, where any viking or European Paganist symbols or traditions are considered to be violently subversive white supremacist symbols. Because, didn't you know, WhItE PeOpLe dOn'T hAvE CuLtUrE. It was cringy, but you could at least run games with elements of old elements of folklore and myths played as having a kernel of truth. Now they treat that shit like you want to be a Nazi but just aren't following through.

And it was more liberal, in that you could have figures such as the wendigo chilling and real alongside the damned, demons and the possessed. Something that certain overcompensating people will say is a social no-no, because the icon is "sacred." Well, guess what? To literal billions of people on earth, not a few million, depicting demons is also sacriligious and disrespectful, but the naysayers will scream about how it shouldn't be permitted because it, "trivializes the beliefs of the aboriginal Americas."

I wonder what percent of those aboriginal americans are Christian, today. Anyway..

However, there has ALWAYS been a progressive-to-the-point-of wet blanket element to World of Darkness' writing overtones that contradicted the more liberal narrative and openness for adult subject matter. A grey space where the forces trying to make everything politically correct and "healthy" Vs. realizing the real world is not. And, unfortunately, sometimes this internal strife compromises the game.

So on the one hand you have encouragement to talk about "serious adult subjects and black subject matter," but then on the other, reprimends if you talk about it in a certain way, or contradict someone at the table that doesn't like something depicted any way but one.

And I kind of feel like the writer's room for WoD must just be this uncomfortable minefield of walking on eggshells between the Problem Glasses that don't compromise for anything and have the power to dial up the HR department if they decide disagreement with them is, "lichurally calling for the deaths of LGBT and persons of color" on if red curtains on a canopy bed are sexist or something.

90s WoD acknowledged that there existed a nonpartisan middle America that was neither their avowed enemies or Nazis, and conservatives weren't actually Nazis just because they were conservative. At least, they knew it was a nonstarter and not tolerated to say that aloud, and they didn't want to destroy social capital of people that weren't ideological side choosers by doing that. There were always partisan ideologicals that were more radical anarcho-communist or anarchists that occassionally would get drunk (or some other kind of intoxicated) and decide to use WoD or the social circles to push and platform narrative, but the older guard largely told them to shove off.

Well. Time passes, old guard stop playing or die off. Social circles add new people and lose old ones. This is inevitable. The older culture gets replaced naturally, as well as unnaturally.

But the thing is, World of Darkness as a franchise and the companies behind it tend to grow as these positions are argued to the point of numbness. When WoD first began it was a bunch of drunken cynical goths all over the place, politically incorrect in certain ways, violently volatile against one another, with contradictory schools and factions that wouldn't tolerate one another while preaching that they were tolerant, unlike the conservatives.

As time passed and the game advanced, elements that were introduced that were passe or painfully examples of their time changed, too. Werewolf: the Apocalypse can best be characterized as if the misanthrope psycho that always wears three wolf paw print shirts wrote a game. In it, an entire tribe of Greek amazons called the Black Furies was created just to give the second and third wave feminists something that resonated to anti-male womanness woman dominated culture and space that platformed much of the shit feminist academics were saying.

But as the editions matured, it became less an anti-technology and cowardly hidden anti-capitalist "but don't accuse me of that, you red scare McCarthyist!", anti-industrialist, pro-aboriginal spiritualist messages, and became more a story about how insanity itself has warped the world to self-destruction. It became less an episode of Captain Planet starring jaded goth protagonists.

The meta changes and improves if the writers and spirit behind the game change over time. Here's hoping V5 experiences the same maturation. First edition had may of the same growing pains of overcompensation and hilariously unintentional racism by people that were trying to be anti-racist according to shitty definitions of what it is, at the time.

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marieadeledracherambles · 2 years

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Realms of Infinite Wonder: The Program

CWs: this section discusses child soldiers and experimentation on said child soldiers.

The advent of heroics in America was an opportunity for several parties. An opportunity to help for many people. An opportunity to create for their fans.

And an opportunity to make money.

A man named Stanley Atkins saw where society was headed and decided to cash in on it. He was a brilliant scientist, but didn't listen to anyone who disagreed with him. He also believed that heroics was an untapped cash cow. He took the most expedient route he could see, which was also possibly the least ethical: he took kids in the foster system whose parents were dead or not coming back for them and put them into training to be heroes.

The Program, est. 1989, sold itself as a talent scouting system for heroics focused on kids who otherwise might not get that opportunity, and it worked! The first run of Program Heroes, who debuted with merchandise already ready to go, were a huge success. They moved out in teams of five excitable teenagers led by a "field commander," who was in fact a handler to keep them from running away.

And keeping them from running away was a real issue, because the Program pulled no punches getting the kids up to fighting form. Grueling training, a curriculum that barely passed muster and focused only on heroics, even the meals' only saving grace was the nutritional balance. Some of the kids liked most of it--the routine, the moving, the lack of school, and the actually doing something to help--but for the most part, Program Heroes were quietly miserable in their compounds.

Despite being thought up by a scientist, Program Compounds were designed by an architect, because Atkins thought he knew his weaknesses and he definitely knew he was bad at building design. Therefore, they weren't white, sleek, and shiny; they were gray concrete, boxy, and pure 80s brutalism. Most of the compound, the parts visitors were Banned From, would be underground in sub-basements on sub-basements. The training rooms, labs, and mission meeting rooms were all belowground. Team dorms and employee rooms (for those employees who lived on-site) were above ground, as were the meeting rooms for investors and cooperating heroes.

Atkins retired in 1999, a millionaire who saw his ideas flourish beyond his wildest dreams. His niece, Megan Atkins, stepped up as the CEO. Under her purview, the Program became nation-wide with compounds in every state capital. There was also a large Experimental Complex set up in the middle of Wyoming, where new techniques or drugs were tested on volunteer Program Kids. Stock prices were astronomical.

In 2012, one of the Program labs had a breakthrough. They came up with a drug that when given to kids with the potential for superpowers activated those superpowers immediately. The recipe was immediately highly classified, but it involved at least 10 grams of concentrated adrenaline per dose. Having superpowers activate mid-battle was a great spectacle, but it required rebranding and new merchandise and the old stuff didn't gain value as fast as it could have, so it was just more efficient to activate superpowers and build their branding around it before they debuted. To keep this on the down-low (because Ms. Atkins was, for all her flaws, not a power supremacist), there were still non-powered Program heroes. Most teams were a mixed structure with a couple powered and a couple non-powered. Society, of course, focused on the powered individuals anyway.

In 2017, the Program was flourishing and planning to go international. Then there was a confluence of events that brought it crashing down.

First, an extremely popular group of older heroes in South Carolina realized that their Program colleagues had squishy baby faces and decided to protest these children being sent out to fight.

Second, a well-loved Program hero found out that she'd been sent away for her protection, not abandoned, and decided to defect and go find her family. Her team went with her and helped her escape, and the tabloids caught everything.

Third, there was a tell-all by one of the first and most beloved Program Heroes who kind of expected to get black-bagged for it and didn't mind that if it meant he'd finally get out of the Program somehow.

Fourth, an investor decided that since Ms. Atkins had turned him down, he would withdraw his support.

On their own, these wouldn't have done anything, but combined, everyone suddenly started getting suspicious of the Program and an investigation was launched. Everything ugly poured out, and for a solid month you couldn't go on Twitter without something new and worse trending. The Atkinses avoided prison (via bribes), but the Program was shut down and all the heroes and heroes-in-training shunted into society.

It could have been a happy ending, but that was all the government did. No support programs, no follow-up, just releasing about two thousand traumatized heroes into the populace and expecting them to even have bootstraps to pull themselves up with. Some states had court-mandated therapy, but that was hardly universal.

The vigilante population skyrocketed. Approximately no one was surprised.

Currently, there are foundations being opened to help ex-Program Kids get on their feet and learn how to society. The main driver and preferred foundation belongs to David Redmond, who I'll elaborate on in another post.

#my writing #the program #vigilantes #realms of infinite wonder

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symptoms-syndrome · 4 years

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Alters and Race in White-Bodied Systems

I said I was going to write something up, so I’m going to try. I will try to make this as easily understandable as possible, so please let me know if parts are unclear. This will be a little long because it’s a complex topic, but I hope you try to read it if you can. I’ve broken things up into chunks and made the text large for each header so that it is more ADHD-friendly, and tried to use layman’s terms whenever possible.

Things I’m going to be talking about in this post will be:

What is race?

What are the types of racial oppression?

How do people in DID communities/spaces perpetuate racism?

How can I check myself and avoid perpetuating racism?

Final notes

When I can, I will link to sources. For transparency, I am a nonblack/indigenous, Korean-American mixed race person with diagnosed DID. When I use the term “DID” in this post I am referring to both DID and OSDD.

#1: What is Race?

Race is a social construct, created by white people. It is not based in any science, as science has disproven there are significant genetic markers that differ between different races. “Whiteness,“ especially, has been an idea that has changed wildly over time. (A good book to read about this is called How The Irish Became White.)

Socially, people are divided along lines of race, which are blurry at best. Things like “the one drop rule“ make it so that no person of color (POC, a noun not an adjective) can fully claim whiteness. Whiteness is primarily defined by “not being a POC.”

‘Whiteness,’ like ‘colour' and ‘Blackness,' are essentially social constructs applied to human beings rather than veritable truths that have universal validity. The power of Whiteness, however, is manifested by the ways in which racialized Whiteness becomes transformed into social, political, economic, and cultural behaviour. White culture, norms, and values in all these areas become normative natural. They become the standard against which all other cultures, groups, and individuals are measured and usually found to be inferior (Henry & Tator, 2006, p. 46-47).

(In layman’s terms: Whiteness is created by society, and is now defined as “normal” and “default,” while actively oppressing people of color. People of color, by not being white, are seen as inferior. It’s a catch 22 of not being enough, and when you ARE enough, you’re not considered a person of color anymore, which is exactly what happened to the Irish.)

#2: What is Racial Oppression?

“Oppression” is a word a lot of folks throw around these days, and is commonly defined by what are called the “four Is of oppression.” These four Is are:

Internalized: This is oppression instilled in POC. Thoughts like “if I am more like my white peers, I will be more respected,” “I’m not like those people of color,” and pitting different POC against each other are all examples of internalized racism.

Interpersonal: This is oppression that is between individuals, and the most recognized form of racism. Interpersonal racism can look like calling people slurs, expecting POC to conform to stereotypes, etc.

Institutional: This is oppression built into the society and systems we live in. It can look like schools with higher percentages of POC getting less funding, differing descriptions for the same behavior (hyperactive white children being described as “outgoing” while a child of color is described as “disruptive”,) income inequality, and police brutality.

Ideological: Probably the hardest for people to recognize, ideological racism exists within our very thought processes. White people are told, directly and indirectly, that they are harder working, more deserving, more capable, more advanced, and so on. The inverse is applied to POC. A good example of this is the idea of “welfare queens,” or the idea that someone only got to where they are “by playing the race card.”

All of these interact with each other. Ideological racism is the basis of institutional racism, institutional racism is enforced by interpersonal racism, and progress towards liberation is inhibited by internalized racism, which is instilled in us by all of the above. Oftentimes, these are perpetuated in ways white folks don’t even notice or intend. Offhand comments and other microaggressions (more about those here, in a 2 minute video) can reinforce racism in ways that seem small or insignificant.

Now, onto the part folks are most likely here for:

#3: How Does This Relate to DID?

In DID, alters form for all sorts of reasons, and can look like anything. From demons to angels, fictional characters to animals or objects, the ways parts form can tell someone a lot about that parts beliefs, particularly when they differ from the body. In The Haunted Self, an example is given of a part that believes they are Superman because they cannot be hurt.

When race is involved with this, ideological biases come into play. Though you may not consciously make the decision to have an alter appear a certain way, ultimately, an alter is created by your brain and your brain alone (apart from, of course, the society that your brain/body exist in.) When you are a white person, and your brain creates an alter that appears to be of color, there is a reason. Even “positive” reasons can carry racism, such as splitting an Asian-appearing alter to help with schoolwork. Oftentimes, even without knowing, that reason is due to biases regarding race.

When an alter is created, it does not magically gain the experiences of someone who would actually live in that body. An alter that appears to be a POC has no idea what it’s actually like to be a POC, has no experience with racism, and does not experience any racism. Any racial experiences they may seem to carry with them are a white person’s perception of them, it’s a lot like claiming you know a show because you watched it through a neighbor’s window.

#4: How Can I Check Myself?

So, how do you never do anything racist ever again?

I’m sorry to say, but it just isn’t possible to be 100% non-racist. Even POC cannot be 100% non-racist or anti-racist, because we unfortunately live in a society that is constantly upholding white supremacy and white supremacist beliefs.

However, the next best step is being an anti-racist! Checking yourself for biases you’re upholding or racism you’re perpetuating is an important first step. This is an often uncomfortable and confronting process, and one that never has an end, but an important one. There are a LOT of ways you can do this, but I’ll just list a few that are relevant to DID.

Familiarize yourself with common stereotypes.

The easiest way to find where your internalized biases are with alters that appear to be a different race is familiarizing yourself with common stereotypes and ideas that our society has about POC. These are often tied to things like violence, hypersexualization, drug use, and other negative attributes, but can also be things that on the surface appear to be positive, such as being studious, people-pleasing, or frugal. Regardless of whether the stereotype seems positive or negative, either way it’s still perpetuating racism.

Ask yourself: Is my POC-appearing alter more sexual than others? Are they aggressive? Is my POC-appearing alter a monster (such as a demon or a zombie,) or otherwise less human, like an animal?

Keep an eye on your language

Obviously, if you follow my blog, I don’t support talking negatively about my parts. But in addition to this, when race is involved, it’s even more important. Words like “feral,” “aggressive,“ “sassy,” “soft,” and others can have a more racist impact when used on POC than when used on white folks. Additionally, your POC-appearing alter is not an actual person of color, so avoiding language like “my Asian alter” and replacing it with (when race is relevant,) “my alter that appears Asian” can be also a helpful change. Lastly, and I would hope this goes without saying, but language like AAVE, slurs, and “broken” English are not yours to use if you have a white body. If you wouldn’t let a white person say it, you should not let an alter in a white body say it.

Ask yourself: Would I use this word if this alter appeared white? If I saw another white person talking like this, would I be okay with that?

Avoid cultural appropriation, be aware of culture

A lot of this may seem obvious, such as not wearing native regalia if you are not native, but other aspects of cultural appropriation may not be as obvious. Asian names, for example, are both incredibly personal, important, and significant in Asian culture, and stigmatized against in white society. I don’t know of any Asian folks who do not have a white name they used in school because teachers literally refuse to try and learn our real names. The issue of cultural appropriation is, at its core, that white people are treated differently for doing the same things that POC do, even when it’s originally something that POC created.

Ask yourself: Would someone of x race be treated differently from me doing this? Is this something that POC have been told they cannot do, even though I can?

#5: Final Notes

As I say whenever I do equity workshops, learning does not end here. I encourage you, if possible, to do more research on your own about racial equity! Clicking the links I’ve included throughout my writing would be a good start, and those links may lead you to others. Getting involved with local activism groups, meeting diverse groups of people with varying ideas, and reading would also be excellent ways to further your learning at your own pace.

Reading this may have made you uncomfortable. You might’ve read something and cringed, thinking to yourself “oh no, I do/did that!” in which case, forgive yourself. Learning is always a process, and no one is ever perfect. As long as you keep in mind what you’ve learned going forward, you are not a bad person for having done something racist in the past. We live in a society that at best doesn’t punish, and at worst rewards upholding the racist beliefs we all live with. Discomfort is a part of learning, and if you were uncomfortable and kept reading, I commend you. That’s hard.

This is all written by one person, with one experience and one life story. You may at some point in time talk to someone with an entirely different experience who may say totally different things than me. Use your best judgement.

If you read all the way through and found something useful, and you can spare any change, my cashapp is $beepollen98. Money would be used to prepare for my upcoming gender surgery! Obviously no pressure, I hope you learned something and feel a little more educated, and maybe even enjoyed reading!

As always, my DMs and asks are open if you found anything confusing, and/or have suggestions/questions.

#actuallydid #actuallyosdd #did/osdd #dissociative identity disorder #other specified dissociative disorder #actuallydissociative #did #osdd #race and DID

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thatpoppinat · 3 years

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👸🏻More Than A Nickname👸🏻

In this story, the miraculous lore is the same and so is the time period

but, instead of the French monarchy being beheaded in the French Revolution, the government is a constitutional/democratic monarchy

-Lives are Changed-

Marinette is the only daughter of Their Royal Highnesses Melody Cheng (commoner, Asian) of China and Maxim Louis Bourbon (royalty, European) of France, making her Princess Marinette Coccinelle Bourbon Cheng of France, making her the heir to the throne

and she doesn't even know it at first

an assassination attempt on an unborn baby Mari ended up killing her mother, she had been taken out via c- section and was labelled as 'dead' to the public

Marinette was taken in by one of Melody's distant relatives Sabine to live in Paris, because the King feared the for only child of him and his no deceased wife's safety

A fake certificate was made in order to keep her safe and for her to have a couple of years with a normal life

(So, yes. This is basically a "Princess Diaries" kind of story. I love those kinds of stories. Deal with it.)

This changes when she becomes Ladybug, however

To summarize the whole affair, Maxim discovers that Marinette is Ladybug and escorts her (read: forces her) back to the Versailles Palace in order to keep her safe, but due to Marinette's passion for her job she is very against this

She is also reeling from the fact that she had been lied to for practically her entire life up to this point

Oh, and the fact that her birthmother had been murdered and there were people out there who wanted her dead.

No biggie.

-Schools are Switched-

Earlier, Marinette had been switched to online schooling due to bullying (Lila and her lackeys).

She was sent by Maxim to the Beauvoir Boarding School for Wealthy and Artistic Young Women; it's a part of the Versailles palace, near the public gardens (so it's technically not a boarding school for her, seeing as though she doesn't technically leave her "house")

She is given her own (gorgeous) room and has to get used to the luxury that surrounds her, all the while trying to hide her secrets from her new school friends: Anastasia, Elodie, Brielle, Rosamie, and Catalina

There is this one girl named Emma that absolutely hates her for -insert reason- and is rude to her (she'll regret that later on)

Also, she ruins the name Emma for Marinette; don't want to name your child after someone who torments you, after all

Thought I guess children in general are tormentors, idk, pick your poison

Her identity is hidden from the public, but after another attempt on her life, leaks of her existence spread, and the news was suddenly blasting this one question

"Is our Princess alive?"

The king eventually announces that, yes, his daughter did survive that attack, and tells the world her middle name, Coccinelle.

Everyone wants to know who the Princess is and it's all over the news, nobles insist on meeting her, etc.

Crack theorists connect 'Coccinelle' to 'Ladybug' and there are now conspiracy theories on how the missing princess was Paris' heroine Ladybug; however, many people thought that was stupid (how little did the know lol)

and, of course, Lila claims to have met Coccinelle before (technically, yes) and that she was friends with her (absolutely not)

Marinette was given a pet poodle as an apology from her father for drastically changing her life, and because ~French~

-Insight is Made-

After the tension kinda fades away, she starts to hang out with her father in his private gardens so she can learn more about him and her mom, "I've always had a passion for gardening, Sabine told me it was one of your hobbies." "Your mother was incredibly sassy, so defiant."

Marinette noticed that his usual stone cold face seemed to soften when he talked about her, and she began to admire her birthmother

Tom and Sabine will always be held dear in her heart, however. They raised her and loved her after all.

She learns her father had met her mother when they were in their teenage years.

Maxim had disguised himself as a 'commoner' and snuck out of the palace. He had snuck onto a tourist ferry going through the Seine River.

On the ferry, he had seen someone painting a portrait of his future wife. He thought she was pretty and started talking to her

Hence how Marinette got her name:

French for "Rider of the seas" or 'little marine'" :P

(Yes, a river is not a sea, but bear with me)

She eventually convinces Maxim that being Ladybug was her duty and that she could defend Paris and herself with her partner

However, in her spare time when she's not doing schoolwork and defending Paris, she trains to be a Guardian from the Miraculous Temples and have private tutoring on economics, the royal family tree, etc..

Also, I want there to be some white supremacists who didn't like the fact that the past Queen of France was a non- royal Chinese woman; to be raging that a future ruler is going to be biracial. I believe that this has happened to some European royalty that were minorities, and I want Marinette to deal with that and to grow from that

Race doesn't equal nationality; and Marinette knows France, she was raised in France, I feel like this needs to be included

So, basically, I want her to be swamped with physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion - but not forever though, don't worry-

- Announcements are Released-

Her new friends find out she's Ladybug. Marinette de-transforms right in front of them because she was exhausted and wasn't paying attention.

They then proceeded to topple her.

The world learns the Princess is Marinette during an announcement at a Ball her father threw for her; her old class explodes into chaos

Her new friends topple her, again. Her old classmates want to be friends with her again. And her bullies back off. Big time.

Marinette is then approached by Gabriel Agreste to start a clothing line with him inspired by royalty, and while she's tempted to, she doesn't want to associate herself with Adrien

She tells him about how when she was being bullied by one of his models, Lila, Adrien knew she was lying and did nothing when Marinette was isolated from the class. Lila was immediately fired after the talk. Gabriel then has a talk with his son about how his poor behavior had taken away an amazing opportunity from his company, and prays the public never hears about this

Later on, however, they eventually do

Much later on it is leaked that Princess Marinette is Ladybug after footage from an akuma attack

Alya nearly faints. Again.

The 'Crack Theorists' laugh in Smart™, and the world explodes once again

Marinette is definitely popular now.

Adrien freaks out: "OMG, I was flirting with the Princess!" "I ignored my partner when she needed my help!" "She's too good for me!" etc. He can't face her during akuma attacks anymore, and Marinette assumes that because of her status, he's intimidated by her. Chat Noir eventually reveals that he's Adrien and it takes her a while to forgive him, but in time, she does.

In time.

After attacks, reporters start to swarm her for answers and interviews. To get the reporters off her she creates an Instagram and a YouTube channel. Why? Cause I said so.

She's called Princess Coccinelle and gets millions of followers in like, hours after putting herself on the websites. She makes videos of her having fun with her friends, akuma safety tips, answers questions asked about her life, so on and so forth.

'Coccinelle' eventually talks about how she doesn't use Alya's blog because she doesn't fact check their recourses

She doesn't mention how she originally started giving Alya interviews because she used to be her friend

"It took me while to realize that I didn't deserve the mean texts I had gotten from my old classmates, or the ruined sketchbooks; which, as an artist, broke my heart. Anyone can be bullied, be it a princess, or a superhero. The important thing is to know that you are worth it and shouldn't be treated that way regardless of your status or your looks. If the people who are rude to you come to apologize later on, you have the right to be upset and not forgive them initially."

Gabriel questions if targeting Ladybug, the Princess and symbol of the whole freaking country was a good idea

All the while, Marinette trains to be a good guardian, the future 'ruler' of France, and a better hero.

She hardly ever gets homework, but the girls at Beauvoir think it's fair

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I really wish that someone who is a better writer than me and has a lot of free time would write this into a story and not a summary. I might write it later, later on but I have a lot going on rn and I don't feel like my current writing skills could do the story I have envisioned in my head justice. I guess you never know till you try it right?

I’m still on the fence of whether or not it was a good idea to add in Marinette’s secret identity as Ladybug being exposed, but idk.

Anyways, I'd like to hear what you'd guys think about this AU? Should I change something? Do you have ideas and headcanons you'd like to add? A new villain? I'd like to read your comments and suggestions! (ヾ*≧∇≦)ﾉ

Have a nice day, ThatPoppinAT

#ml au #princess marinette #miraculous royalty #minor salt

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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

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I was in an a cappella group in college, and at my university if you were in the ~performing arts~ it was 90% of your social life. my group spent SO MUCH time together at school, and then lived with each other 24/7 while we were on tour together over winter, spring, and summer breaks. there was this one guy in my group who was a bit younger than me who I always thought was fine? we weren’t that close but there were only 17 of us and we lived out of each other’s pockets & all got shitfaced together twice a week or so, so like, I knew him pretty well. and I remember I always kind of felt for him because he was a recently out gay dude from a conservative family and I was a closeted lesbian also from a pretty conservative background and it was one of those things where you’re like ah yes your weird fucked-up internalized self-loathing resonates with my weird fucked-up internalized self-loathing! I hope we both get out of our early 20s and to a place where we despise ourselves just a tiny tiny bit less! also we were both writers who got humanities degrees & then went on to do doctoral work in the humanities, so in a way, similar intellectual trajectories too.

anyway I mention this because, if we fast-forward to the present, he has become a white supremacist neo-fascist with a large twitter following, whom other neo-fascists describe like this:

(the New Right... young, energetic youth with good character and strong moral fiber... love their country... like jesus, come on, just call him a Hitler Youth and go.)

anyway I think about this guy a lot because my other college friends and I talk a lot trying to figure out like... was he always like this and just repressing it in our presence? was he harboring fascist tendencies all those years or did something change after we knew him? (I don’t use the word “fascist” glibly here—it’s what he is.) I have no idea and I find it extraordinarily disturbing to think about!!

the other piece of it I think about a lot is like... we were both white gays from a certain type of social and political world, and in our late teens/early 20s we both had a lot of emotional rot inside of us. but man oh man I prefer what I did with mine to what he did with his. it’s clear that he decided the way to alleviate his culturally-induced queer self-loathing was to refashion himself so as to make that culture love him. which meant wholly adopting and internalizing its values—just, like, absorbing into himself all the ugliest and most hateful parts of it, and deciding that instead of saying “maybe it’s wrong to hate people who don’t align with the dominant culture’s norms” he was going to perform that hatred even more vocally & eloquently & viciously towards an even broader swath of people. he chose to carve out a space for himself in that culture by committing his energy and intelligence to making the world shittier and more dangerous for literally everyone else. man! get fucked, spencer.

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hold-my-hand-kuroo · 4 years

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tendou as my favorite naruto!! openings-

it’s midnight where i am right now, so a big hbd to one of my favorite nerds!! here’s something quick and dumb that i did while i’m still functioning,,,this is what he would’ve wanted, i’m sure of it.

also before someone @’s me, i have more than four favorite naruto openings, but i just don’t have the time to write them all- (i am a “lovers” supremacist though).

pairing: tendou satori x reader

i. “We’ve pretended to forget the things we held dear, so we can just laugh and say it’s nothing.”

Tendou can’t say that quitting volleyball after high school was a bad idea. No longer does he have to ache throughout his legs and arms, and no longer does he have to practice inside a stuffy gym until the sun was gone. He can finally rest on the weekends or take time to work on assignments before midnight. It’s liberating and less stressful on his part. Plus, even if he slightly missed volleyball from time to time, he could just watch one of Ushijima’s games during his now-open weekends. For sure, Tendou can’t say that he regrets leaving the sport.

But he also can’t say that he doesn’t miss his paradise.

His favorite spot at university is the secluded spot in the back, hidden away from most students. It’s where you find him during long breaks in between classes or during lunch, and it’s where you sit under the shade of a tall tree, watching Tendou as he bounces the volleyball back and forth against the brick wall. The sound is soft, gentle, and steady, and it helps you concentrate on your work. Sometimes, after the long, grueling hours of an all-nighter, you find the noise to be lulling, almost hypnotic. It wasn’t hard for you to nod off.

Today is no exception. Procrastinating and leaving your final papers to the night before wasn’t your best idea, and after what seemed to be the strangest period of limbo, drifting between dozing off and waking up, you found yourself finally submitting and missing your entire night’s worth of sleep. You take your lunch break as an opportunity to finally get some rest, and when you round the corner, Tendou’s already there. He’s humming a tune, fingers pressing against the white ball. Hearing your footsteps, he turns and gives you a wide smile. Even then, he doesn’t stop tossing the ball.

“You look terrible,” he comments, stifling his laughter. You groan, settling against the wood of the tree but make no effort to respond. Tendou changes his song, picking a melody that is more calming while continuing to play. The gentle breeze sets you into a deep slumber with the redhead acting as your lullaby.

When you wake up, you find yourself leaning against his shoulder. Your eyes flutter open and then close almost immediately at the sudden intrusion of sunlight. Tendou chuckles from beside you, placing his hand over your closed lids and whistling to himself. Feeling around for his other hand, you trace your fingertips over his own, lingering touches dancing on his skin. You can tell that he’s in a good mood based on the song he’s humming. It was either that or the kiss he places on your cheek after letting you open your eyes.

“Satori?” you murmur, voice still tinged with drowsiness. He pauses his singing, signaling you to finish your thought. “Why aren’t you in the volleyball club?”

“Babe, are you getting sick of me? Or do you just hate me?” he laughs. “I’d run out of time to breathe, let alone see you on the regular.”

“You don’t miss it?”

“Are you really asking me if I miss being bruised all over and struggling to meet deadlines?” He laughs again and pokes your face with a teasing glint in his eye. “Y/N, I’m hurt!”

“You seem to like it a lot considering that you’re literally playing on your own every day.” You put extra emphasis on the last two words and give him a knowing look. Tendou just shakes his head.

“Nah. I only played in high school because joining a club was required. I don’t really care about it now.” His response is simple, less wordy than his usual elaborations, so you let the topic rest. Closing your eyes again, you take part in the humming. The melodies, completely different, clash like day and night, and it makes both of you laugh.

Tendou watches as you fall back to sleep, eyes filled with fondness. In truth, maybe Tendou misses his volleyball club a little bit. His paradise. Not the sport itself per se, but the people around him. It was hard finding classmates that didn’t find him utterly repulsive, so he wasn’t surprised that he fit well into a team that was filled with nothing but the most eccentric people he has ever met. Ushijima and his love affair with volleyball and Semi with his drive to risk it all were standouts, but he supposes that there were others too. Yeah, he misses them more than he’d like to admit, and he misses spending all his waking hours with them. Just a little.

“You stopped humming.” It’s more of a comment on your part rather a complaint, but you can tell by his jolt that you had unintentionally snapped him out of his deep thoughts. “There’s nothing wrong with missing high school, you know?”

“No, it’s okay.” He lies through his teeth, and you’re aware, but you decide to stay quiet.

ii. “I will never let go of your hand. Tell me what is on your mind.”

Tendou works hard because he knows he’s not enough. Because he feels undeserving.

When you waltzed into his life, he hardly had any time to prepare. It’s the first time someone has ever liked him back, and he’s still surprised to this day. Tendou’s not sure which qualities exactly that have caught your interest, but he’s almost 100% sure that your taste is terrible. There isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t think that the person holding your hand on the street could be someone so much more attractive, so much more appealing. Someone who didn’t make kids hide whenever they saw him or someone who could embrace you and say with full confidence that you deserved each other. You don’t need someone that constantly makes you worry. You definitely don’t need a guy like him.

He knows your entire schedule and pays special attention to your free periods so that he can visit you. His head is now space for him to keep notes on every little thing about you from your pet peeves to your favorite snacks. It’s counterintuitive for sure, thinking that he’s not worth your time but also desperately trying to keep a hold of you. It’s paradoxical, he knows, but he’s stuck in a limbo of wishing you the very best while also craving your touch and affection at any moment given in time. It’s selfish, and he finds himself wondering if the title of ‘Monster’ is fitting after all.

“Are you sure you’re okay like this?” he asks nervously one Saturday with you sitting by his side. You look at him curiously, setting your book down.

“What do you mean?” His eyes become shifty, looking away.

“I mean, aren’t you bored just reading manga at my house?” he asks, chuckling nervously. “We could go to that restaurant you wanted to go to instead-“

“We’re always doing the things I want though, Satori,” you whine. “That’s why today’s date is something you like. You’ve been wanting to catch up with this series for a while now, right?”

“Yeah, but-,” he tries to protest, frowning, but you just shake your head, silencing him. You don’t know much about the series, but you whenever you see Tendou’s eyes glitter at something particularly cool that his favorite characters did, your heart becomes warm. It’s incredibly endearing, and you definitely want to spend all day just watching him pursue his interests instead of fussing over you. You want to know more about his hobbies, his likes, and dislikes, but he’s oddly reserved about those topics.

“Which character is your favorite?” You ask in hopes of having Tendou open up and maybe give you a passionate rant, a sight you’ve been wanting to see for a while now. Nudging at his lanky arm, you crawl under, placing yourself in his lap. He immediately sets the volume down and pulls you into a tight embrace, balancing his chin on top of your head. You’re not upset about it, but you’re just a little disappointed. You were hoping that he’d keep reading.

“Do you know any of the characters?” he responds teasingly. You shake your head and pick up the book. “I can start from the beginning if you want-“

“No, no, no! Keep reading.” You’re urging him to continue, practically holding the pages over your head so that he can see them. Tendou laughs, shifts his chin to your shoulder, and complies, taking hold of the book once again. You’re not sure if he’s actually paying attention to the storyline since he keeps peppering you with kisses every few pages or so, but this is a good start. “What’s going on?”

“Curious, are we?” He clears his throat and points to one of the characters. “You see this guy over here? He’s the villain. My favorite, since you asked.”

“Is he…your type?”

“You’re my type,” Tendou coos, stifling another fit of laughter. He continues describing the plot, however, going through what has developed since volume one, each pivotal character, his favorite moments, and unbelievably deep analysis on symbols and events. He’s usually a chatty person, but you’ve never seen him rave over something so personal to who he is as a person. It wasn’t like when he would talk endlessly about something funny that happened or something he saw. Rather, his glow and animated gestures, his sense of comfort, and his lack of restraint keep you mesmerized, and it’s then that you realize that Tendou rarely talks about his hobbies in front of you. You wish he would.

“This is nice,” you murmur, returning a kiss onto his cheek. He immediately stiffens, and you’re a little bit startled. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry for rambling,” he says rather on edge. He quickly closes the manga, arms returning to wrap around your body. “It was boring listening to me just talk about-“

“I thought it was cute though.” You sigh and turn around to face him. Pressing your nose to his, your lips are just barely a few millimeters apart from his. “I could listen to you talk about this all day, Satori.”

Tendou’s not sure if it’s the kiss that you press on his lips that intoxicates him or if it’s the fact that you smell like his shampoo, but for a moment, he feels himself wondering if it’d be okay to let you in onto his hobbies, his likes, his dislikes, and everything that he tries so hard to keep from you in fear of driving you away. Just for a second, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it’d be fine for him to open up.

iii. “You cried just now like a sobbing child. Even if the future becomes invisible, I will protect you.”

An angel. That’s what Tendou thinks you are when you let him rest his head on your chest and wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling him even closer into your comforting warmth. He’s calmed by the gentle rise and fall of your breathing and the soft beating of your heart. The way your fingers rake through his hair, the way your humming fills the emptiness, you’re his safe haven, his sanctuary. His new paradise. He likes how you just seem to know what’s wrong, because he hates to complain, especially to you. He would much rather prefer making you laugh with a funny joke or story, but for now, he lets you play with his hair and caress his back.

You’re humming the song that he often sings for you when you’re feeling down. While you’re not exactly the perfect vocalist, straining at some high parts, you wonder if it helps Tendou at all, even if minimally. He cries quietly, and you wonder if it’s because he’s spent years being sad alone. The thought pains your heart, so instead, you take his palm and place it against your lips, quietly whispering praise. Things about him being more than enough and things that you wonder if he’d laugh at, you pour your sincerity into it all. You know he’ll tell you when he’s ready, so you find a way to pass the time.

“Let’s take a bath, Satori,” you mumble into his hair, waiting to see if he’s willing to get off of you. His movement is slow, reluctant, but you do feel him nodding, getting off of you with his head hung low. He doesn’t mean to be so down, so annoying, and he doesn’t hold it against you if you get irritated. But you don’t, and he feels like he’s the luckiest man in the world. “I’ll wash your hair for you. Come on.”

He holds your hand all the way to the bathroom, refusing to lose contact from the warmth of your skin. Even when the two of you are getting undressed, he’s quickly back to leaning into you in the tub. It’s a little bit difficult since his limbs are so long and lanky, but with a bit of curling up on Tendou’s part, you make enough space for yourself. He practically sinks into your fingers rubbing through his scalp, and you see his shoulders begin to lose their tension. You hum, satisfied, and work the soap around his body, helping him wash up. The smile that spreads across your face when he starts humming back is wide. You feel a little bit dumb, but you’re just so relieved that Tendou’s energy is finally back. The giggles that spill from your lips as he splashes about practically pour out from your pretty lips that Tendou wants to kiss so, so badly, but he decides to wait for a more comfortable position.

He hates to admit it, but he loves the feeling of being pampered. Granted, he was always more of a giver, but he supposes that being on the receiving side of things isn’t as bad as he initially thought, especially when you take the towel to rub against his hair and sit him down on the couch with hairdryer in hand.

“My hair is gonna get all puffy if you use that,” is the first complete sentence that leaves his mouth after returning home that night. He lacks his usual energy, but you don’t blame him. Rather, his soft chuckle sends your own spirits flying. “I’ll look ridiculous.”

“Really?” you muse, plugging in the device despite his protests. “I think you’ll be cute, all fluffy and stuff.”

“Why don’t you get a pet or something instead then?”

“Wouldn’t you get jealous if I paid too much attention to a cat over you?”

He pretends to think hard, then nods his head rapidly. You giggle again, maneuvering the hairdryer around his head. The machine is a little loud, but you can hear Tendou back to his usual humming, moving his body around ever so slightly just to make your task a lot harder than it was supposed to be. You watch as he swings left and then right with a certain mischievousness about him, twiddling with his fingers and then casually flipping on the television to his favorite channel. You’re not sure if he actually likes the show that’s being broadcasted or just the BGM, as he never really watched it and would much rather prefer to listen to the audio only while doing something else.

“Babe, can this be our song,” he jokes before going back to sing the opening lyrics to the children’s show.

“Satori, I don’t even know this show,” you reply, trying to sound exasperated as possible. He knows you’re pretending though and raises a curious brow. Then, he breaks into a grin. “I don’t have a good feeling about this-“

“What do you want to watch then?” His question is abrupt, but his eyes glint impishly. You’d be nervous if you weren’t overjoyed at his newly regained energy. “You sound like you want to do something else.”

“You’ll catch a cold,” you try to scold, but he pays no head, grabbing the hairdryer out of your hand and shutting it off. He tugs at the chord gently, unplugging it all together, and reaches for your waist. He places you securely on your lap. You can only stammer short retorts that are muffled by the energetic kisses he places all over your face. He relishes in every giggle and every squeal that escapes your mouth. Even the ways your eyes crinkle when you’re smiling makes his heart go insane. Suddenly, he stops to rest his forehead against yours. Your gaze almost absorbs him completely, but he doesn’t have qualms about that part.

“What’s wrong, Satori?” you ask, barely above a whisper.

He takes a deep breath. “Do you…mind if I vent a little?”

“You know you never have to ask for permission about that, right?” You kiss him on each of his eyes, each a little bit puffy, and then on his cheek. “I’m all ears.”

iv. “So keep trying to break free to that blue, blue sky.”

It’s always a fun, albeit loud, time when Tendou invites his old Shiratorizawa friends over for his reunion parties. You don’t mind at all, of course, considering that you were the one who encouraged this gathering in the first place. To be honest, you’re a little bit curious about how he acts around his closest friends that he talks so much about. You even wonder if a man like Ushijima Wakatoshi, the one you only see on TV or in interviews, is actually as funny as Tendou makes him out to be. In other words, you expect your home to be loud, but what you didn’t expect was that it’d be loud over you.

“Guys, Y/N’s super-duper gorgeous, right?” he asks for what seemed like the thousandth time that night. He’s set on making Ushijima give in to the fact that you’re the most beautiful person in the entire universe, but you wonder how many times you have to witness the professional’s utter silence at the question before Tendou would give up. “Toshi, you should just give it up already and say it!”

“I haven’t seen every single person in this universe, so I can’t answer,” his friend answers, brushing him off. Shirabu snorts from Ushijima’s side.

“Boo,” Tendou whines, kissing your face. From the corner of your eye, you catching Goshiki gagging. “Can’t you be a little bit more excited over the love of my life?”

“We are excited.” Semi chuckles, whacking Tendou a few times on the back to which the red-head responds with feigned pain. “But we know you’ll start sulking if we go overboard with the compliments.”

“I do not sulk that easily!” Tendou huffs, chest puffed out, and slaps Semi back. He only laughs. “I can’t believe I’m being bullied by a guy with no sense of style at all!”

“I asked you about this jacket before I bought it, and you told me it was fine!”

“You shouldn’t have asked him at all.” Shirabu smirks from across the table, arms crossed. “I bet this smart ass thought it was Y/N texting him instead of you, Semi.”

“You didn’t have to do him like that,” Kawanishi mumbles from beside the former setter. Still, that doesn’t wipe away the smirks they’re both wearing, and Tendou can only chuckle sheepishly.

“Well, what am I supposed to when Y/N looks good in anything?” Tendou sighs. His exasperation and added theatrical flair make you giggle even though you’re slightly embarrassed that he’s showing off to everyone from his old team. “Semi Semi, if it was Y/N wearing that jacket, it’d look great. You? Not so much.”

“That’s the most roundabout way of insulting me.” Shirabu and Kawanishi snicker quietly, earning a glare from Semi that goes ignored. “I suddenly remember why all the underclassmen thought you were such a hassle, Tendou.”

You turn to him in fascination. It wasn’t a surprise to you that he liked to tease and poke fun of other people, but you never thought that he was a bully. You initially had imagined Tendou to be a well-respected senior based on his reputation as a middle-blocker. Never in a million years did you think that it was the exact opposite.

“Goshiki, is that true?” you turn to ask, and the younger man nods emphatically. He’s agreeing with Semi so much that his nods make his hair fly all over the place, earning a loud laugh from Tendou.

“Y/N, Tendou was the absolute worst,” Goshiki answers, setting down his drink so forcefully that it almost spills. “He’d always ignore us when we did something good, but then he’d compliment us for absolutely nothing. It messed me up so much that instead of expecting him to cheer for landing a really good serve, I waited for praise for turning off the lights or something. Tendou was awful.”

“That was probably you being dumb, but I do agree that Tendou was never quiet during practice.” Shirabu grimaces, but you’re not sure if it’s because he just remembered something particularly annoying or if it’s because he’s agreeing with Goshiki. “I never want to go back.”

“I remember one time, he thought it’d be funny to salt the water,” Kawanishi mutters and the entire table breaks into a loud groan. “Yeah, I think I have to agree with you guys. Tendou was a handful.”

From beside you, you hear Tendou tsking and catching him wagging a disapproving finger. “Guys, you can’t insult Y/N like that! I’m gonna beat you guys up if you keep going on.”

“Dude, we get it.” Semi punches him once on the arm and then another time for good measure. “You’re married. You’ve told us a million times.”

“There’s that and the fact that we were, you know, at the wedding,” Shirabu sighs.

“Congratulations.” Ushijima’s comment is a little out of place, especially since the ceremony was already a month ago, and he had been one of the first people that Tendou told, but you only smile and thank him again. “It was an honor to be the best man.”

“Toshi, you don’t have to be so formal, you know?” Tendou grins, resting his chin on his hand. From underneath the table, you feel his other hand reach for yours, running his digits over the silver band sitting on your ring finger. “But really, I’m just reminding you guys that Y/N and I are married. I wouldn’t be surprised if you forgot since you’re all always so busy.”

“Oh, what would I give to forget you?” Shirabu sighs, earning another chuckle from Kawanishi and even Semi.

You laugh at the playful banter between Tendou and his friends. You squeeze his hand gently, and even while he’s participating in a heated debate with Semi over the gray-haired man’s best album, your husband makes sure to return your squeeze. In full truth, Tendou’s still aware of every little thing that you do. It’s one of the many things that have stayed the same over the years. He still sings, and he still likes to mess up your hair, but most importantly, he makes it a point to keep remembering everything about you. Tendou’s aware that something in him has changed, so he reasons that maybe you had your little changes too. And he’d remember all of them.

“Hey, spill the tea, Y/N,” Semi jokes. “Doesn’t Tendou make for a terrible husband?”

“Yeah right,” Tendou scoffs. His grin doesn’t falter and only widens when you shake your head at Semi. “That’s absolutely correct! I’m the best husband ever."

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #satori tendou #tendou satori #tendou #tendou x reader #satori tendou x reader #tendou satori x reader #shiratorizawa #happy birthday tendou!!#nerd!!#lol how do you write dialogue???

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skinfeeler · 3 years

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i've got a relative who works in deradicalisation. currently he's studying white people who hold racist beliefs, or racists.

his research aims to classify them into different types, see what drives them, how their views are framed by the particular subcultures they are part of, and what suggestions they're susceptible to. these are generally impoverished people, who feel like their particular oppression gives them a particular voice. a common belief is apparently that while immigrants, regardless of class, get lots of aid, nothing is left for them. this is evidently wrong, of course, but this is the narrative. he interviews them to this end. he does not tell them to put their screeds on twitter. he does not tell them, "you know, i've got a newspaper contact i could put you in touch with." he views these things as deeply undesirable. ultimately of course, these are cultural problems, not something innate in the psyche of white people or anything, and he regards them as such. even so, he does not view these people as peers, or their ideas as particularly important or noteworthy, even if his line of work requires him to at least pretend. fortunately, this is a tumblr blog and i am literally not in any way reliant on this website, and i don't have to pretend.

my point is, no, i don't want to put black people in the zoo or dissect them, rather, i want transmisogynists whose transmisogyny is so blatant that it can only be attributed to either a contextual feedback loop that makes it impossible for them to understand or acknowledge it as such or indeed personal perverted malice to delete their tumblr accounts. moreover, i am highly interested in the particular factors that give rise to transmisogyny, which like other bigotries we can find through application of sociological methods over empirical study which by the way, actually does include interviews and what people are saying and such. this goes for people of all backgrounds and races, to be clear.

connecting this to other issues: if a non-british european happening to use the word 'specimen' (since rectified) is definite and reliable proof of being a white supremacist who wants to imprison and dissect and skinnerbox black people or at least that this statement is racist in nature in and out of itself, but saying that you want 'freaks of nature' to be lynched in the streets is not proof of either indifference to transmisogyny or seen as transmisogynist in itself, the standards are obviously so warped that they can only be warped to in-group thinking, not to an actual leftist ethos that would obligate you to be critical of even your own and your peers' behavior and speech. this is what's at play here: none of this was ever about ethics, any sort of appropriation of leftist/progressive lingo isn't because these people are actually interested in progressivism in egalitarianism as schools of thought which actually must be consistently applied. it's purely self-serving. when it comes to people like these, i owe them nothing and no dialogue is possible, since nothing could actually cause these people to be held liable to any sort of meaningful concept of transgression or obligation, including yourself and your peers. i'm pretty apathetic to the ultimate fate of people who are aggressively uninterested in this regardless of background — indeed i have met many trans women like that whose suffering i don't care about — and wish whoever turns this into some surreal kind of grift a very 'die in the streets'.

the same deeply malfunctioning and perverse logic that pretends to be something else is obvious in one very obvious faux-apology, since it is only a stepping stone to say that transmisogyny indeed is not real like other bigotries, unique in that trans women use it to 'hide behind', not as like, an actual offense or anything. what good are apologies like these even, if we don't have any sort of sense of obligation and ethics in common? you can't re-establish or reassert a shared and fair ethic that was never there through apology or otherwise, and this kind of decontextualised, pathetic remnant of kindergarten logic is a clear consequence of failed social planning — much like america lol — which is one of these things i think needs to be studied and rectified somehow.

#fortunately in the latter case it's very very simple #all it takes is to arm the dprk and for all first-world nations to join in solidarity #and train the nuclear arms that were illegally stashed in their countries onto the united states of america :^)

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Charles Schulz vs Andrew Dobson: What a Blockhead!

There are certain things about Dobson’s behavior and particularly his approach at being a nerd and presenting himself as someone who enjoys the art of storytelling that I have issues with. Issues I want to tackle on in more detail within later entries quite a bit.

One such tendency is, that he mocks directly or indirectly the work and accomplishments of others.

See, if Dobson doesn’t like you as a content creator because he does not like something you work on, he will try to show it. He will make stupid assumptions of you (like how he accused Kojima of being a sexist creep because of Quiet and how he deals with “male gaze” in MGS compared to Death Stranding), half heartedly mock you (look at anything he makes about Ethan Van Sciver) or he will call a piece of work boring and dull based on a minor element instead of overarching problems (calling Batman the character a white supremacist based on the dumb work of only one author).

By doing that he also tries indirectly to insinuate that he is better in some manner, though most of the time it really just shows his own ego and that his pet peeves are rather petty compared to the overall quality of the work he criticizes as well as its flaws.

One such sight of ego boosting while mocking the work of his better is in my opinion to be found in this comic he uploaded sometimes around 2016/17 randomly online.

This comic in my opinion is both laughable and insulting. Why? I will explain soon.

First however I want to clarify that I get that this comic is supposed to be a joke mostly. The old “What others expect, what I expect” thing, where the punchline is supposed to be the discrepancy between the two fractions and what they expect, mostly by making one of the expectations come off as worse than the other. However, I find the punchline to be Charlie Brown (and as such what Dobson seems to see as something he does not want to be favorable compared too) quite insulting. Why, as I said, will be elaborated on sooner.

First, let me just get on the part I find laughable: The fact that Dobson in his own head seems to believe he can be even remotely compared to people like Paul Dinni, Bruce Timm, Greg Weismann, Justin Roiland, Miyazaki, Shigeru Miyamoto and all the other character creators and animators whose creations we see in the first panel.

Dobson, don’t make me laugh. Putting aside the fact that those people are animators more than cartoonists, what makes you even believe in your wildest dreams you are on the same level as them? The fact you too are an animator, seeing how you graduated from an art school with a degree in that field? I have seen your contributions to the field and honestly, I would expect a bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0tdWNCrIxo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6PfiUCxHQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PyonOqClf8

I give you credit, you can animate. Which is more than I can say for myself when it comes to the arts. But when you look what other freelance animators can do online, some of them younger than you and NOT with a degree in animation…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=64&v=FmkAcGz1BJk&feature=emb_title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IfPfjSaDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEUoxQ4qSfs

Viviepop’s demo reels alone are just gorgeous to look at and more fluid than what I have seen of you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFlha-KOKCc

And it is not just the technical quality, Dobson. It is also just the overall “originality” of your work. Cause this is the thing with those animators hinted on in the first pic and even many, many freelancers/fanartists as well as webcomic creators online: They have a spark of originality in presentation and storytelling that you lack. I will one day go more into detail for that, but here is the most brutal thing I can say at the moment: I know shitty porn fanfictions, that have more plot development and character growth than all of Alex ze Pirate.

Your characters and stories tend to be derivative and you barely take any risks in telling a story. Neither in your fanbased work (like the Miraculous comics) nor your original content (mostly because you take comfort in four panel strips anyway) and when you have an idea for something on which the basis idea actually sounds good, you screw it up by a lackluster execution. One example I want to give for that, would be this fanart of yours in regard to Steven Universe.

(I apologize for not getting one in better quality) This pic was something Dobson created around 2015 for Steven Universe. The picture is supposed to show Lapis, trapped under the ocean following the events of the season 1 finale of the show. A very emotional situation if you are aware of why Lapis sacrificed herself and was “banned” to the ocean floor. Short explanation: Fused with Jasper and then took primarily control of the fused being they became (Malachite) by using her water powers to bond it with heavy water chains on the ocean floor, so that Jasper would not hurt Steven anymore.

How much of that was even an emotional strain on her and her psyche was in one episode of season 2 even a theme, as seen here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK3l8mGNhMg

I am not even a fan of the show and I get the emotional weight and impact of Lapis actions.

So… why is that not conveyed in the artwork? If you are so talented Dobson, why is none of the strain and despair on the character? The idea of a pic showing Lapis under water, longingly looking up, even in despair is a good basis for a fanart. But the execution lacks any emotional detail. You want to know how I would execute the thing if I had the artistic talent? Make the picture a huge horizontal pic, where we slowly decent from water surface down the ocean. The light getting dimmer. Blue turning into dark. The silhouette of a hand and an arm similar to Malachite’s in the background, trying to travel up, the fingertips barely touching the surface. Heavy chains around the flesh. Symbolic of the fusion trying to break free and cause havoc. And down on the dark bottom, beaten and exhausted Lapis with tears in her eyes and chains all over her body like she is Jacob Marley, desperately trying to keep Malachite at bay for the sake of the only being on earth who ever showed just a little bit of kindness towards her.

Why can’t we have something like this here, Dobson? If you were even remotely as original as the creators you want to be compared with, I think you could come up with something like that and perhaps even draw it.

But you know, his delusions of being as good as them is one thing. It is even funny.

Pissing over the Peanuts is another. Dobson, what are you trying to hint at?

That people comparing you to Charles Schulz and his creation is in your eyes automatically a sort of insult? That it is something that should at best only be a mockable punchline in a comparison?

Just to clarify a few things: I am NOT much of a fan of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts as a property. As a child, I was just not very entertained by them. Yes, I saw animated movies, episodes and specials of them here and there and my grandparents gave me volumes of them to read, but as a whole I never thought them quite as entertaining than other comics or cartoons I watched. Some parts of Peanuts animation felt to me often times like just dead air (especially parts of Snooby dancing with Woodstuck, as they had no function to move the plots forward) and I really could not stand how some characters treat Charles on a regular basis. I mean, we all agree that Lucy is one of the worst female characters in fiction and that even while we hate Family Guy, this clip likely gave some of us some sort of satisfaction, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZkJAx8FycI

But before the Peanuts fan out there go and want my head on a silver platter, let me make one thing clear: I may not like the Peanuts franchise… but I respect it and the man behind it.

Charles Schulz drew the comic strip from October 1950 till late 1999 (the final strip being finished months before it would be published on February 13 of 2000, one day after he died of colon cancer) , creating a total amount of 17,897 Peanuts’ strips. His work marks a major impact in the nature of newspaper comic strips and inspired many people out there, including Bill Watterson, to create comics or be in the field of animation. His achievements include among other things, that he created what many people consider the first animated Christmas special ever. The names of his creations became nicknames for the Apollo 10 command module and its’ lunar modul. Four of the five Peanuts movies in existence (animated made for tv specials not withstanding now) were written by him. And the fifth was only not by him, because that one came out in 2015, a decade and a half after he died.

And speaking of things Schulz wrote for the Peanuts, let me mention two things. Two things that though I am not a fan of the Peanuts, I have mad respect for existing in the realm of animation. Two animated specials that stuck with me ever since I was eight.

“What have we learnt, Charlie Brown?” from 1983 and “Why, Charlie Brown, Why?” from 1990.

In the first special, which functions as a semi sequel to the fourth Peanuts’ movie “Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown”, the characters actually travel across France and after ending up on Omaha Beach and Ypres the special turns into a tribute to the soldiers who fought in World War 1 and 2, elaborating on the sacrifices made during the war by showing actual footage of fights, recordings of Eisenhower and reciting the poem “In Flanders Fields” among other things. Do you know how impactful it is to learn about the world wars as a small kid, by being reminded of the actual sacrifices others made in order for your own grandparents to survive?

And speaking of grandparents, I lost my grandmother as a child by cancer. So when I saw the second special I mentioned, you can bet it stuck with me. After all, of all the things in the world, the Peanuts addressing the seriousness of cancer by having a story where a friend of Linus is diagnosed with leukemia and we follow the emotional impact it has on Linus and the girl? Again, I may not like the franchise, but I am not ashamed to admit I think the special treats the subject with a lot of respect and dignity while telling a good story. You bet your ass I get a bit teary eyed when the little girl survives her leukemia treatment and finally gets on that swing again. Those two specials alone are more mature than ¾ of the shit Dobson likes to gosh about, including his oh so precious gay space rocks. And just for those things existing I have respect for Schulz, his creation and the impact it had on so many people. As such, Dobson “belittling” the Peanuts, at least for me, is a freaking insult. The only way Dobson could have been even more insulting is if he called Schulz something derogative. Dobson should be glad if his life’s work in total could even amount to 10% of what Schulz has done and achieved.

Cause Dobson, you are NOT a Charles Schulz. Schulz served during the second world war on the front, fighting actual Nazis instead of calling idiots on the internet fascists for not liking Star Wars. He had integrity and work ethics that drove him to draw and write over 17.000 strips, while you can not even finish one FREAKING story. He knew how to tackle a mature subject, while you make shitty shipping jokes involving Ladybug and Cat Noir and claim Steven Universe knows how to be about psychological trauma, when it just romanticizes abuse. He may have drawn simplistically, but at least he could tell a joke instead of constantly berating others for not sharing his opinion. He did all of that and more without having graduated from college.

And what have you done, Andrew Dobson?

If Dobson reads this, there is one thing in my opinion he should take away from more than anything else: That if people compare him to Charles Schulz’s work, that it means a) he should not be ashamed of it and b) they overestimate him.

#adobsonartworks #andrew dobson #so you are a cartoonist #syac #sjw #peanuts #charles chulz #charlie brown #snoopy #fuck you #animation #steven universe #disney #cartoons #cartoonist #adobsonartwork

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padawan-historian · 4 years

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"Southern whites cannot walk, talk, sing, conceive of laws or justice, think of sex, love, the family or freedom without responding to the presence of Negroes." – Ralph Ellison

The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his “proper place” and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. – Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro, 1933

When we discuss anti-Black racism, it must be noted that we are talking about a very specific root of white supremacy, one that is wholly unique – but still connected – to the anti-indigenous, anti-Muslim, antisemitic movement that infects and affects the [white] Western world.

In the weeds of complexities and intersections, there are two major types of anti-black racism that dominate our public sphere: segregationist and assimilationist.

Segregationist is the school of thought we are most familiar with, in part, because white supremacist violence is both visible and vitriol.

Our minds supply us with images of the Ku Klux Klan and burning crosses, the Nazi sympathizers and defenders of the Lost Cause with confederate flags, the red-faced parents screaming at Ruby Bridges and the Little Rock Nine, and police officers brutalizing Black bodies peacefully protesting in the streets. These images were introduced to the [white] American public during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s on their living room television sets. They are now ingrained into our collective consciousness and we label those actions and images as RACIST. However, those the danger that comes with that system of reality is that it detaches us from the subtle, pervasive, and continuing politics and practices of segregationists’ work. The Klan did not create America's caste system. They merely reinforced it.

To understand segregationist thought, you must understand their historical AND contemporary system of reality.

Southern educator and researcher Thomas Bailey details in his 1914 work Race Orthodoxy in the South the racial credence that was adopted by the majority white Southerners:

Segregationists believe that Black people are inferior by nature. This idea is based on a multigenerational caste system that places Blacks as intellectually, socially, morally, and physically inferior to those who identify as white (or near white).

1. “Blood will tell.”

2. The white race must dominate.

3. The Teutonic peoples stand for race purity.

4. The negro is inferior and will remain so.

5. “This is a white man’s country.”

6. No social equality.

7. No political equality.

8. In matters of civil rights and legal adjustments give the white man, as opposed to the colored man, the benefit of the doubt; and under no circumstances interfere with the prestige of the white man.

9. In educational policy let the negro have the crumbs that fall from the white man’s table.

10. Let there be such industrial education of the negro as will best fir him to serve the white man.

11. Only [white] Southerners understand the negro question.

12. Let the [white] South settle the negro question.

13. The status of peasantry is all the negro may hope for if the races are to live together in peace.

14. Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro.

15. The above statements indicate the leadings of Providence.

(Scholar question: Which of these credence’s do you think still exist in our present-day spaces?)

While we have moved forward since Bailey’s book publication 106 years ago, some of these decrees are uncomfortably familiar . . . we often don’t want to analyze why the South, as a geopolitical region and former secessionist state, was able to enforce white supremacy in every area of public (and private) life nor do we care to examine how these policies set the tone for the rest of the United States in regards to the larger Jim Crow ideology, or Dixie Doctrine.

Dixie Doctrine, as defined in Glenda Gilmore’s massive work Defying Dixie, as the active participation and organization of white supremacists in both the South and nation’s capital who worked to reinforce the racial caste system.

While Jim Crow often exists in the pages of academia as a series of segregationist policies that influenced [white] public spaces, Dixie Doctrine showcases an international, color-coded solution for ever human deed and thought across color and racial lines. White supremacists believed that a racial caste system would spread across the nations – with the white race at the top.

Since the South was not a sovereign nation, Jim Crow’s – and, by extension, Dixie Doctrine’s – health depended on the federal government’s support of its administration and on receptive public opinion or – at least – the complacency of people both within and outside of the South. Scholar Amy Louise Wood notes that “with the final withdrawal of federal troops in the South in 1877, the use of violence to control the black population was practiced without hindrance, as white southerners sought to reverse the changes brought about Reconstruction and to restore the old social order” (Wood 762). The violence and disenfranchisement that covered the Jim Crow era came about, in part, due to the vacuum created by the disruptions and dislocation of the New South:

In this new environment, one’s social status was less known and less fixed and traditional forms of authority—the patriarchal household, the church, the planter elite—were called into question. Moreover, interactions in industrial workplaces and exchanges in the commercial marketplace could potentially place white and blacks on equal footing . . . white southerners reasserted their authority amid these changes through the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans and the establishment of racial segregation throughout the 1890s. (Wood 764)

Jim Crow took the national stage when Southerner Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913. The first national Congress under his leadership saw no less than 20 bills presented that pushed for Jim Crow legislation in DC. These bills included segregated train cars – or Jim Crow cars – race segregation of federal jobs, racial exclusion from military service, and tougher miscegenation laws. Under his administration, any form of legal or economic justice for Black Southerners (and Black citizens across the United States) was merely a calculated maneuver meant to “make Jim Crow work more smoothly” (Gilmore 19).

Under Woodrow, the United States saw one of the worst decades of anti-Black violence – over 100 Black individuals were lynched, shot, or burned in 1915 alone. Following the 1920s, the Great Depression fueled a whole new way of violence against black Southerners and Westerners who were seen by working-class whites as competitors for labor jobs. Since many Black workers were willing (or forced) to work for lower wages and were barred from unions, they were seen by many industrialists as the perfect workers to exploit for labor, given that their protests were met by overwhelming police force. Black laborers also had to worry about the possibility of being fired for speaking out or protesting given that most Southern states had strict vagrancy laws that targeted unemployed Black men, who were then shuffled into hard labor camps and chain gangs for indeterminate amounts of time.

Employing overworked and underpaid Black workers over white union workers and independent laborers also served to deepen the established racial divide since employment not only guaranteed wages, but also served as a social and economic barometer in the reimagined, industrial age. This resented not only resulted in heightened racial violence, but also squashed any potential interracial efforts to create inclusive unions and strengthen better workers’ rights.

In summary, white segregationists are very concerned with the economic, political, and [spiritual] advancement of Black, brown, and indigenous people. When author Isabel Wilkerson noted in a recent interview that Trumpians were not only voting on issues relating to 2016 (and now 2020) but also the "Race Question" of 2054 (the year when, according to our census, the United States will no longer be a white-majority country).

The idea of race & caste runs so deeply, and the suggestion that white Americans will no longer be the political and racially dominant group comes from the same place of fear that white Southerners in the 1870s and 1920s used to justify their racial violence and segregationist system of reality . . . .

Join my patreon and follow me on Instagram @rosecolored_scholar

#history #white supremacy #leon litwack #glenda gilmore #padawan historian #antiracist liberation #rosecolored_scholar #segregationists #assimilationists #understanding racism #carter g. woodson #scientific racism #antiracism #black lives matter #politics #woodrow wilson

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Washington, DC has been continuously militarized beginning the week leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, when 20,000 National Guard troops were deployed onto the streets of the nation’s capital. The original justification was that this show of massive force was necessary to secure the inauguration in light of the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

But with the inauguration over and done, those troops remain and are not going anywhere any time soon. Working with federal law enforcement agencies, the National Guard Bureau announced on Monday that between 5,000 and 7,000 troops will remain in Washington until at least mid-March.

The rationale for this extraordinary, sustained domestic military presence has shifted several times, typically from anonymous U.S. law enforcement officials. The original justification — the need to secure the inaugural festivities — is obviously no longer operative.

So the new claim became that the impeachment trial of former President Trump that will take place in the Senate in February necessitated military reinforcements. On Sunday, Politico quoted “four people familiar with the matter” to claim that “Trump’s upcoming Senate impeachment trial poses a security concern that federal law enforcement officials told lawmakers last week requires as many as 5,000 National Guard troops to remain in Washington through mid-March.”

…

It is hard to overstate what an extreme state of affairs it is to have a sustained military presence in American streets. Prior deployments have been rare, and usually were approved for a limited period and/or in order to quell a very specific, ongoing uprising — to ensure the peaceful segregation of public schools in the South, to respond to the unrest in Detroit and Chicago in the 1960s, or to quell the 1991 Los Angeles riots that erupted after the Rodney King trial.

Deploying National Guard or military troops for domestic law enforcement purposes is so dangerous that laws in place from the country’s founding strictly limit its use. It is meant only as a last resort, when concrete, specific threats are so overwhelming that they cannot be quelled by regular law enforcement absent military reinforcements. Deploying active military troops is an even graver step than putting National Guard soldiers on the streets, but they both present dangers. As Trump’s Defense Secretary said in response to calls from some over the summer to deploy troops in response to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa protests: “The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations."

Are we even remotely at such an extreme state where ordinary law enforcement is insufficient? The January 6 riot at the Capitol would have been easily repelled with just a couple hundred more police officers. The U.S. is the most militarized country in the world, and has the most para-militarized police force on the planet. Earlier today, the Acting Chief of the Capitol Police acknowledged that they had advanced knowledge of what was planned but failed to take necessary steps to police it.

…

This threat seems wildly overblown by the combination of media outlets looking for ratings, law enforcement agencies searching for power, and Democratic Party operatives eager to exploit the climate of fear for a new War on Terror.

But now is not a moment when there is much space for questioning anything, especially not measures ostensibly undertaken in the name of combatting white-supremacist right-wing extremism — just as no questioning of supposed security measures was tolerated in the wake of the 9/11 attack. And so the scenes of soldiers on the streets of the nation’s capital, there in the thousands and for an indefinite period of time, is provoking little to no concern.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that a mere seven months ago, a major controversy erupted when The New York Times published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) which, at its core, advocated the deployment of military troops to quell the social unrest, protests and riots that erupted over the summer after the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd. To justify the deployment of National Guard and active duty military forces, Cotton emphasized how many people, including police officers, had been seriously maimed or even killed as part of that unrest

…

The backlash to the publication of this op-ed was immediate, intense, and, at least in my memory, unprecedented. Very few people were interested in engaging the merits of Cotton’s call for a deployment of troops in order to prove the argument was misguided.

Their view was not that Cotton’s plea for soldiers in the streets was misguided, but that advocacy for it was so obscene, so extremist, so dangerous and repugnant, that the mere publication of the op-ed by The Paper of Record was an act of grave immorality.

…

Two editors — including the paper’s Editorial Page editor James Benett and a young assistant editor Adam Rubenstein — were forced out of their jobs, in the middle of a pandemic, for the crime not of endorsing Cotton’s argument but merely airing it. Media reports attributed their departure to a “staff revolt.” The paper itself appended a major editor’s note: “We have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” In addition to alleged flaws in the editorial process, the paper also said “the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate.”

There is a meaningful difference between deploying National Guard troops and active duty soldiers on American streets. But both measures are extraordinary, create a climate of militarization, have a history of resulting in excessive force against citizens engaged in peaceful protest and constitutionally protected dissent, and present threats and dangers to civil liberties far beyond ordinary use of law enforcement.

Why was the idea of troops in American streets so grotesque and offensive in June, 2020 but so normalized now? Why were these troops likely to indiscriminately arrest and murder black reporters and other journalists over the summer but are now trusted to protect them? And what does it say about the current climate, and the serious dangers it poses, that the public is being trained so easily to acquiesce to extreme measures in the name of domestic security?

#glenn greenwald #substack

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anchanted-one · 4 years

Text

Harry Potter Talk

Settle in everyone, this is going to be a long one.

So a couple of days ago, I saw a massive anti-HP (the character) rant that really irritated me that I wanted to address.

Before I do, let's address the transphobic in the room. Rowling. Transphobia is detestable, and not wanting to support the series while that directly benefits and enriches her is a super valid stance. Also my personal stance, we support the trans people in this house!

Now that that's out of the way.

"Harry Potter, jock from a wealthy family" or something to that effect.

Regardless of how big his bank account is, remember how Harry was brought up? And by whom?

The Dursleys. The magic-hating child-abusers. Who forced Harry to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs for eleven years. Who gave him Dudley's things secondhand. His mother's sister was so unwilling to spend a dime on him that she was dyeing some of Dudley's old things gray to use as Harry's school uniform.

His cousin Dudley, who delighted in tormenting him, and whose gang joined him in beating up Harry whenever Dudley felt bored enough that he wanted to beat him up for fun.

Is this the upbringing of a "rich jock"? He never used much of his wealth in the Muggle world and even in his school years he seems to know the importance of restraint, and sharing (in book one, he's delighted to be able to share with Ron, and in book four he gives the Twins a thousand galleons without a second thought). Dudley was the one who got thirty-six presents on his birthday and threw a fit coz it was less than what he'd got the previous year. Harry got a used tissue for Christmas. He was the one so not expecting any gifts at all that his best friend's mother packed him a hand-knitted sweater for him, and made his day.

Jock? He played the loneliest position in the Quidditch team. The Chasers and Keepers work together as a team, and the Beaters too, but Seekers are ignored by everyone--including the team--until it becomes apparent that they've spotted something.

Harry was quite popular when he joined the school, but that popularity mostly manifested as people pointing at his scar and whispering about him. Most made him uncomfortable. He only ever had a few friends he was comfortable with.

There were long periods when he was in fact an outcast. That time he lost fifty points for the thing with the dragon, or the time when the Ministry and the Newspapers had turned the entire Wizarding world against him. The time his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, all Houses except Gryffindor treated him like shit, and even the Gryffindors, while they were cheering for him, weren't paying much mind when he was saying that he didn't do it, or that he needed support. That one time, even Ron didn't stay by his side. He was all alone but for Hermione.

The only time he fit the bill of the jock was in book six, when he was too obsessed with what Malfoy was doing to give a damn about his newfound popularity. That was also when he chose the company of outcasts like Neville and Luna over popular hangers-on.

Yes, there are legit reasons to hate the character; he has a massive hero complex. He routinely gets his friends into trouble because of it. He has a very narrow and myopic perspective because of which he doesn't notice much outside of his mystery-hunter track (there was a time when I could illustrate that point better, but it's been a decade and more since I read the last book. I wanted to better read up before talking about this, but I can't bring myself to binge-read like I used to)

By contrast, yes James Potter was a 'jock'. But that's reason to hate him, not his son. Harry, when he sees Snape's worst memory, is rightly horrified. When Remus tries to make the "we were just fifteen" excuse, Harry reminds him "I'm fifteen!". (It should also be noted that Snape's memories obviously show his nemesis at his worst, whereas Remus Lupin--the Werewolf--tells Harry repeatedly that James and Sirius were there for him when no one else was. James risked his life to fight Voldemort, whereas Snape was happily on Voldy's side until that one person he cared about was marked for death by the Prophecy©. Snape was also an abusive bully well until he died--just ask Neville. Dumbledore has also told Harry that memories are fickle things, which can be changed, so the chances that Snape simmered in this memory and unconsciously distilled it to make his old nemeses seem even worse--or himself seem like the angel who wouldn't hurt a fly--also exist. As someone who's experienced bullying, mockery, etc, I know this self-serving tendency of memory quite well. Though this bit is speculation on my part. )

Regarding the sillier names like Pansy Parkinson, and mean descriptions

In addition, when the series began, it started as a children's series, hence the Roald Dahl-like non-villain bad guys of the early part, and the "hate-me-I'm-nasty" names they were given. The Dursleys. Dudley Dursley aka Dudders. "Pansy Parkinson". Everyone was more caricature than character. That's how they are in children's books.

Many people are also described in a way to make the reader immediately dislike them. Malfoy is pale, with a pointy chin. Snape is an oily man with a large beaked nose and greasy hair. Rita Skeeter has a mannish jaw. Umbridge has a face like a toad. All of this is again in keeping with the Roald Dahl theme. Whether it's Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregarde or their mannerisms and descriptions make readers feel an instant dislike for them.

When the series became more... Mature, those caricatures can start finding their critics. Never mind that such caricatures and worse can be found in thousands of other works, like Superhero comics for instance. Yes, no one names their children "Pansy" but Slytherin was an allegory for white supremacist type people. Back in those days, JK wanted them to be hated without reserve, much as she wanted bigotry and racism to be (irony, considering where she stands today).

Death of the Author

In the text there is no real transphobia that I can remember, other than that description of Rita having a "mannish jaw" (I admit that I haven't read it in ages, but I am still certain of this). Once the material is out in print, everyone is free to interpret it as they choose. Whenever JK comes out with clarifications or retcons or something--as she is known to do anyway--it's still more of her headcanon than in-world truth. If there is no outright mention of something in the text, then it doesn't matter what meaning the author intended to convey. What matters is what each reader makes of it. In the case of Harry Potter, the enemy are clearly folks obsessed with blood purity: Purebloods.

Lazy names

I'm going to speak specifically about the Indian names here: Parvati and Padma Patil.

While India is a large country and the name is more common in certain regions than others, I had heard that Patel/Patil surname is quite common in Britain. And really in Indian cinema the most common girls' names are Priya (Big Bang Theory as well) or Pooja, many girls in this side of the screen have goddess names. Like "Parvati". Many people also keep the same first letter for names for twins, or even in families (for instance, my parents, sister, and I, all have names starting with "A"), so "Padma" is a nice choice of name. And really, Padma and Parvati Patil are much better names than "Khan Noonien Singh" (now there's a lazy name).

Everyone insists that Star Trek's Khan is supposed to be of Indian origin, but with a name like that and an actor with a Mexican accent... I don't really think so. It was because of this silly character generation that I didn't particularly mind him being played by the very white Benedict Cumberbatch.

But the Patil twins. Them I can feel that connection to.

Races of the main cast

Now this might be something contentious, so I apologise for that in advance.

No one cares what Harry is, though since Petunia is noted as being pale, and Lily has red hair, the unknown factor is James Potter. Was he black? That would make Harry biracial at best.

Ron is written as a freckled boy with red hair, and all Weasleys share that look.

As for Hermione... She is the poster child of the blood-purity bigotry bias. When reading her, people are supposed to understand that the prejudice against her is certainly her Muggle-born origin; not her skin color, not her nationality, not her sexual orientation. Which is why I feel it's necessary that she stand out as less as possible in those other ways. For this reason I think that it was a good idea to portray her as white.

Here are characters who are specifically noted as black: Dean Thomas, Michael Corner (both of whom were Ginny's boyfriends), Kingsley Shacklebolt, Angelina Johnson, Alicia Spinnet, Lee Jordan, Blaise Zabini (who's noted as being very handsome, and quite popular). Aside from these we have a few token people of Indian and Chinese origin. Speaking again as an Indian, I don't really mind. This is a British story set in a mid-nineties British school only accepting students from the British Isles. It makes sense to me if there are few Indians.

What does all of this translate to? There are legit reasons to hate both the character and the series. So don't make stuff up, especially if you're ignoring the text to do it. Don't confuse the author and their work, even if you have resolved not to buy that work and thereby support her.

#Harry Potter #In defense-ish of #My opinion #Bigass post

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noxrose · 4 years

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Will u tell me more bout how the lost boys came to be?

I guess that depends on what you mean?

If you mean, how did the movie come about, it was originally a Vampire version of the Goonies that was heavily influenced by Peter Pan. Supposedly, David was originally named Peter and Lucy was originally named Wendy. Max was given that name not long before shooting began. I don’t remember what his name was before Max. When Joel Schumacher was asked to direct it, he said he’d only direct it if he could make the Vampires sexy teenagers or 20 somethings. He drastically changed the script from there! Star was originally a boy! He wanted the Vampires to have killer style and be gorgeous young adults. He added the motorcycles to the script too.

If you mean where David, Dwayne, Paul and Marko came from, we don’t have much of canon answer for that. We know Max was their sire so they had to listen to him to some degree it seems.

With David being the leader of the Lost Boys we can guess Max turned him first. Dwayne seems to be the second in command so I think he was turned second. The novelization of the movie stated Paul was the youngest of the 4 Lost Boys Vampires so that’s canon.

I’ve seen a few places that have said David was like 130 years old in the movie, but I can’t find any official reason for people saying this. I like that idea though. I like to think Dwayne is only a few years younger than David. David could have been a cowboy, maybe even a young bounty hunter for a living. Dwayne’s actor is part Native American, so I like to think of Dwayne as a Native American Vampire.

That’s all the cannon information we have on the Lost Boys. I have lots of headcannon about them so here it goes!

Now some of my personal headcannon for Dwayne is since he’s a bit light skinned for a Native American, he could be part European, which would have made one of his parents white. There were colonist women encouraged to marry Native American men at some points. There were a few schools of thought behind it. Some wanted to water down the Native American bloodline. Some thought it would make Native American men less 'savage' and the women would 'tame' them. It was all pretty racist. Some of these women were institutionalized by their families and this was an option out of those facilities. Maybe Dwayne loved his parents and hated how America treated them, so that’s why he wears a communist flag in the movie. He wears to honor his parents. It couldn't have been easy to find a communist flag in 1980′s America! How gentle Dwayne is with Laddie makes me think he had a kid before he was turned into a Vampire. I like to think Dwayne was once happily married. He married his childhood sweetheart, who was also the sister of a good friend of his. Dwayne’s friend is pissed about it! He’s even more pissed when they have a daughter. The woman he married was white. The brother and some other white supremacist kill the wife and daughter. They leave Dwayne dying in the dirt and that’s when David finds him. David find Dwayne’s rage impressive and begs Max to turn him. David has a ball hunting helping Dwayne hunt down all the men who killed his family.

Some of my David headcannon is that his mom died giving birth to him. He has a dad and older brother who blame him for this. As soon as he can ride a horse and aim a gun he’s expected to join the family business of bounty hunting. David and his brother are tracking a bounty when they come across Max feeding on the bounty. Max jumps at his brother, but David tries to protect him. David’s brother leaves David to die. Max is so impressed with David, he turns him right there.

Some Paul headcannon for me is that he was hippie from 1967 in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. That’s when he comes across the Lost Boys at a party. They all like him, especially Marko. Paul is the rebellious son of a Preacher in San Francisco. His father HATES Paul! Paul is everything his father can’t stand and is planning to get rid of him. His father is convincing some of his flock that Paul is possessed by the devil and they must do an Exorcism on him. The Lost Boys have been keeping tabs on Paul and his family so they get something is up. The Lost Boys find Paul dying from the Exorcism. They save his life by turning him into a Vampire.

My Marko headcanon is that his dad died in WWII. His mom dies when he’s still young. Marko gets bounce around to various relatives before ending up on the streets. He’s small but a real brawler! His fiery temper and pugnacious nature is what catches David’s attention. David convinces Max to let him give this little imp the blood. After that, Marko is one of them.

Sorry it took me a moment to answer your question. Hope you like the answer ^_^ This was fun! Feel free to ask more questions!

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ramen540k · 4 years

Text

“Terrorism”: Inequities of Association

Sai Hudspeth

S5126293

Media Production

Level 4 Terrorism has many different yet similar definitions and as such is not wholly defined legally in many areas (Al Jazeera, 2014). Due to the lack of consistent definition, terrorism has often been assosiated with foreign forces, especially post-9/11. A series of attacks were committed by a terrorist organisation known as “Al-Qaeda” on September 11th, 2001 (Bergen, 2020). These attacks went down in history as the single largest act of terrorism in history being live broadcasted all over the world and leaving a lasting fear in the hearts of American Citizens. Since, and to a lesser degree prior to, the attacks of 9/11 the world has experienced a heightened sense of Islamophobia. With heightened fear and a common enemy, an anti muslim rhetoric was adopted in the media and soon after, the “War on Terror” (Bergen, 2020). Even though it has been almost a decade since the the 9/11 attacks, anti muslim sentiments continue to grow while acts of terror committed by white supremacy groups are utterly disregarded, and racial equality organisations are labeled as domestic terrorist organisations (Al Jazeera, 2010).

Post 9/11 showed a 90% increase from 1,171 to 2,227 deployments by federal tactical teams between 2005 and 2014 based on research done by the Congressional Research Service (Grabianowski, 2007). It was SWAT’s initial purpose to be a higher powered response to increases in bank robberies in Philadelphia but later was expanded to cover a range of high risk situations including; hostage situations, search warrants, anti terrorism, and riot control (Grabianowski, 2007). As previously shown in the CRS research, SWAT’s expansion has put in place a large amount of high powered forces across the usa, accounting for around 1,200 teams in total countrywide (Federal Tactical Teams, 2015). It is important to note this as the way the USA and other countries’ media defines terrorism may warrant use of high powered forces on unwarranted situations. By observing race politics, the media’s rhetoric, and the ethics behind the use of the word “terrorism��, we are able to discern when the word “terrorism” should be used.

The war on terror was not confined to the USA, a major defining contributor to islamaphobia were a series of bombings in London that shook the foundation of “British Liberality”. Known as 7/7 these attacks on July 7th, 2005 launched the UK into severe paranoia just as 9/11 had in the USA (Sky News, 2014). Due to two proliferators of this act of terror being under surveillance for two years prior to 7/7, the public was in serious unrest over the lack of decisive action taken by the British Intelligence Service, which many thought could have prevented two of the attacks (Sky News, 2014). In addition to the lack of action, and the fact that the bombers were born and raised in Leeds, UK further instigated anti-immigrant/muslim ideologies of the British public (Al Jazeera, 2014).

As stated in The impact of counter-terrorism measures on Muslim communities, a study done by the research department of Durham University, “There is a danger that Muslims in contemporary Britain may become the new suspect community. Policymakers and operatives are grappling with the old dilemma: it is an inescapable fact that the majority of those suspected of terrorist activities are Muslim, and that counter-terrorism measures are likely to target Muslims.” (Choudhury and Fenwick, 2011) With the rise of hostility the freshness of a home grown attack provided space for people to vocalise and bring physical attacks against both immigrants and muslims alike due to fear. As a caller on LBC said “The population of the third world widens by 5% every year...there are 23000 people among us who are plotting to kill our families” (Ferrari, 2018) referring to people of interest to the British Intelligence Service, representing both the concern for the public's safety and the connotation between people of interest and islamic terrorists. By piggybacking off this fear legislation was pushed by both the USA and UK in an attempt to prevent future acts of terror. This however led to more frequent stop and searches of racial/religious minorities as well as higher levels of police presence in the USA and the UK.

As we move further and further from 911 and 7/7, the definition of terrorism has been used more loosely used and not allocated to some blataint acts of terror. In the USA, there is no “...statute that applies to domestic ideology inspired extremisms...” (Former Acting Assistant Attorney General, Mary Mccord) and as they are not associated with foriegn terrorist organisations they cannot be charged with terrorist crimes (ITV News, 2019). This effectively omits one of the most prolific terrorist ideologies in the USA, white supremacy. A combined disregard for white domestic terrorism combined with hightened conservative media spokes people, tentions have risen contributing further to the race rift as well as provide a normalised culture around white terrorism. Conservative news outlets took up the call to action, during Obama’s presidency, spreading defamatory statements such as “This president I think has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep seeded hatred for white people…” (Fox and Friends) and commentary on the economic depression that was “caused by immigrants” further hightening both conservative and white supremacist ideologies (Al Jazeera, 2010).

With the onslaught of antiterrorism rhetoric, and a widening race gap, the USA would face its biggest turning point yet with the inauguration of Trump in 2016. Following his inauguration, incidents in Charlottesville known as “Unite the Right” in 2017 where the largest white supremacy gathering occured, resulting in an act of terror in which a white supremacist drove their car through an anti fascist protest killing one and injuring 20 others (PBS, 2019). Thus, the birth of media’s buzz word “antifa” would become interchangable with terrorism. After this act of terror, Trump would take to live broadcast and condemn “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence, on many sides…” (PBS, 2019). Following this press conference, the former leader of the KKK tweeted saying he was grateful for Trump to “condemn the leftist terrorists in antifa and Black Lives Matter.” (PBS, 2019) sparing national outrage and further social unrest. Simultaneously with acts of terrorism against minorities, combined with more acts of police brutality caught on video and distributed throgh various media outlets, the single party and democratically fascist government consciously decided to negate any mention of the word “terrorism” in association with white supremacy.

With continued social unrest the ethicality of the use of the word “terrorism” in mass media, is an important conscideration to take. If a country is not willing to define domestic acts of terror as “terrorism” yet uses the word to amplify their own political views as Trump has done by attempting to label antifa (an ideology not an organisation) and BLM as terrorists on national news (France 24 News, 2020). As we take into account the current and past events that led to the condition both the USA and UK are in, associating “terrorism” with minorities and immigrants must be reconscidered when part of the rising threat of terrorism is contributed to by white supremacy as preducated by National Police Chief’s Council lead for counter terrorism policing, Neil Basu in a Channel 4 Interview. In this interview, Basu says 7 of the 22 plots foiled since 2017 have been in association with white supremacy. The only effective way to deal with this and other racial and religious biases, is to elect people into power who provide fair and equal ideas for the betterment of our global society. In doing so, we will be able to provide a clear definition for terrorism and an equal understanding that the treat of terror can not solely be attributed to minorities or immigrants without running into ethical issues as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stated in her question to the FBI over the double standard that goes into labeling organisations and people as terrorists (Guardian News, 2019). When a topic such as terrorism is spoken about on mass media outlets, we must understand our words have consequences legally, socially, and ethically. Using words such as terrorism in connotation with minorities can have long lasting affects on the legislation of a country, and the ability for the general public to coexist in a multicultural society.

Bibliography

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Muslim Communities. [ebook] Manchester: Durham University, p.iii. Available at: <https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research-report-72-the-impact-of-counter-terrorism-measures-on-muslim-communities.pdf> [Accessed 5 October 2020].

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Unrest Over George Floyd's Death. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGWjMnHBp8> [Accessed 1 October 2020].

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[video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsKFpJ-cyJY> [Accessed 10 October 2020].

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Sky News, 2014. 7/7 Attacks On London. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFb-gV-6uDo> [Accessed 19 October 2020].

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