kenteklark

[kenteklark]

[k]ognitive dissonance Community Standards

It is the intent of the [k]ognitive dissonance blog, and I as its founder/moderator to establish a community that will foster critical engagement and discourse concerning ideas and knowledge in the pursuit of truth. With that mission in mind, a substantial portion of that work will involve dismantling interlocking systems of oppressions in all of its forms through principled critique.

To the best of my ability, I will attempt to critique through disciplined analysis rooted in logic and investigative query. Personally, this is about expressing my frustrations with the world publicly, while pursuing truth and learning to recognize the full humanity of all the people I encounter in the world. I hope my self-engagement in the work of decolonizing my mind in the public sphere resonates with others. Ideally, each individual and this community broadly will uncover paths in the pursuit of liberation -- the radical reordering of society and its basic governing tenets.

Though this work is rooted in a personal perspective, I intend to use that limited scope as the origin of my analysis and investigation. I both encourage and demand that I be pushed to de-center myself in those processes with the goal of adopting a just framework to view, and moreover, interact with the wider world.

If in any of these discourses, I (or anyone else) expresses or exhibits dangerous or violent thinking I (or they) should be addressed and checked in a language and tone that demonstrates the urgency of abandoning such problematic thinking.

I NEED to be CHECKED.

Moreover, I WANT to be CHECKED.

And as an engaged member of the community I hope to create in this space, I REQUIRE that I be CHECKED through the kinds of penetrating critiques of my own work that I hope to exhibit.  

I anticipate that my thinking will evolve often. I anticipate that I will routinely engage with this community concerning why my previous thinking was problematic. AND THAT’S OKAY. We cannot engage in this radical work meaningfully without a high degree of humility as well as intellectual curiosity, logic, and an overall desire for universal humanity.

No one who is involved in this community should go unchallenged, especially myself. Questions should be posed, language should be expressed that challenge each of us. I should be doing research, I should be asking questions about things “I never knew I never knew.” Be unyieldingly rigorous in your analysis of the theories that I posit. This community will succeed when we are learning TOGETHER while pursuing liberation.

A NOTE ABOUT METHODS...

The method that I choose to pursue truth -- both in this blog, and in life -- is through asking questions. It is the one thing that I know from childhood I have been especially good at. One of the few things I remember from middle school years is an inscription in my 8th grade autograph upon graduation from my English teacher that read in part, “Ask the tough questions, and push for answers…”. That quote has always resonated with me, and moreso now. I have grown in my adult life to incredibly skeptical of any person or entity claiming to be have knowledge of “answers”, especially concerning systems as intricate, ephemeral and yet as corporeal as those of oppression. As I have often told many folk, I’ve stopped trying to answer questions, and now, I’m just attempting to identify the right questions. In posing these questions, we arrive at a much fuller understanding the world, how it came into existence in this form, and perhaps most pressingly, how to create something better in its wake.

A NOTE ABOUT ETIQUETTE…

This is to be a community where respect is mutual and reciprocal. It will (at least initially) be assumed that any person who I (or others) engage with, is present as an intellectual and moral pursuit, seeking understanding of how oppressions interact with world, and how we recognize it when we make contact with it.

This community’s first and primary objective in pursuit of truth is devising sustainable methods for daily survival and developing strategies of living aimed at the total destruction of these interlocking systems of oppression.

I reserve the right to remove trolls this community or attempts to perpetuate / propagate oppressive, dangerous, illiberal, provincial, or otherwise unacceptable language and behavior. Ideally, I there should be no DRAGGING of individuals in this blog -- learning and teaching requires some marginal measure of tolerance. BUT if you engage in intolerable behavior, not only will you dismissed from this space, but I give anyone else in this space the unqualified liberty to mop-the-floor DRAG you before your dismissal.

I respect and above all, I PRAISE those physical and digital spaces dedicated exclusively to Black self-love and the unrelenting critique of oppressive systems. They are vital to the survival of the Black Diaspora in the modern world and have been one of the inspirations for the creation of this space. The mission of this blog overlaps with theirs with regards to critique, with the added dimension of attempting to envision what spaces existing outside of operation of systems of oppression can/will look like. Understanding and shaping the contours of that better world we all desire to live in gives us something to aim for in this collective work.

In the context of the [k]ognitive dissonance community, I consider myself to be a moderator who brings forward my questions and thoughts for public digestion, critique, and engagement. But, I vigorously encourage others to generate their own conversations in this space. As a matter of courtesy I would ask that you reach out to me to about the intent of your comment prior to posting. I will likely want to pose some questions to the sources of these conversations prior to giving approval. However, I have absolutely no interest in stifling discourse concerning these issues and would find it counterproductive to our communal work to do so.

As a matter of personal disclosure this blog is as much about my desire to opine about ideas concerning power and how oppression interacts with it as it is about me refining my writing, and (what I think) is a healthy desire on my part (both emotionally and intellectually) to do some thinking ‘out loud’.

I’m exciting to do this, and I hope that this will be an enlightening and revelatory experience in some way for everyone.

- Kente Klark

[kenteklark]

I have just one question....

I was at a party last night to raise money for displaced kids and there was a stripper there. When he came downstairs to do his routine two dudes were LITERALLY dudes scurrying around and out of the room like rats when this man is there clearly doing his job for the ladies because "that shit's gay."

Is your manhood so fragile, so delicate, so flimsy and unsubstantial that even the potential that it could be stripped away by what someone might think sends you into a frenzied mayhem?! We might be onto something...maybe all this oppression is here just to protect the privileged who are actually politically and socially feeble...

SOMEBODY needs a new definition of manhood for they life 

[kenteklark]

SO we were chilling in a nature preserve...

And somebody definitely yelled responded to another person's comments with, "That's what she said..." 

And of course everybody laughed, but of making a mental connection to sexist oppression that my mind automatically makes nowadays I just mentioned that it was sexist. 

Someone just shrugged and said "Well, so are most things..."

I guess it's hard to get White people to care a whole hell of a lot about sexist oppression, patriarchy, and misogyny when its just exploiting and discriminating against them and not OPPRESSING them!

[kenteklark]

I been saying it yall!

[kenteklark]

I love it when i hear the echo of "savages"  and musings about "the ghetto"come out of a White persons mouth when they get frustrated with an unfamiliar place & people

[kenteklark]

#WhiteGirlProblems #TakeASeat

So this White girl I know that's studying abroad in San Jose, Costa Rica who got her rental car broken into. This is after she got held up at knife-point prior to this incident. She went HAM on FB with all this recklessness about how Latin America is so dangerous and she feels lucky to be a citizen of the US. This is just some of what I have to say in response:

Never mind that the fact that you're here is yet another example of cultural exploitation­. You are going to another culture penetrating spaces (because you believe your White privilege entitles you to do so) to enhance YOUR life and to gain experience when you ain't doing shit for no Costa Ricans. 

This poor girl just decided to conflate the one country that she has been in for only 3 months with an entire region of the world (Latin America).

And what do you know about the ghetto?! I love White people using words like they don't mean anything or like they have a knowledge base or context for reference. 

If you were at all culturally competent to or trained academically/professionally to make an evaluation about another culture then you would know that you are not in a position to compare the two cultures.

Costa Rica is a "dog-eat-dog/caveman society”?!:  How dare you sit up here and call Costa Rica a caveman society because your ritzy sadity White self finds a different culture and society in Costa Rica (besides ain’t that what you came here for?)  Besides Latin America got to be the way it is in large part because of your precious United States. 

She used her post to basically say that we are “all lucky that we live in the United States of America.” All of this is besides the fact that as a White women your experience in America is SO DIFFERENT as mine as a Black man.As a Black man from the United States walking around in Latin America I am afforded a certain degree of mental reassurance about my safety UNCONSCIOUSLY that you are afforded everyday of your life in the US. If you feel uncomfortable and threatened in this environment (and I hate to say it, because I don’t wish bad things upon any person) then good because for four months you get to see what MY LIFE is like! Go cry your White people tears somewhere else!

[kenteklark]

Do we STILL need to talk about race? HELL NO!!!

So I have come to the conclusion that I flat out refuse to talk to another white person about race without the following prerequisites:

1. An HONEST understanding of why I am so god-damned ANGRY as someone who has had every institution and system in this country designed to work against him...

2. You stop talk all that bullshit about how things in the past are over and done with and we as black folks should just move on

3. You ACTUALLY engage in some soul-searching and RESEARCH without thinking that just because you are white you automatically have a valid point of view

4. KNOW YOUR PRIVILEGE #enuffsaid

[kenteklark]

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

James Baldwin (via black-culture)

[kenteklark]

Underneath the Homophobia

When a homophobe says “I hate homosexuals,” they generally mean male homosexuals and then, they generally mean the male homosexuals who are feminine-performing. In regard to lesbians, homophobes contrive to rape them into heterosexuality. Ah, fuck it! What they are saying is that: they hate women; they hate anyone who even remotely reminds them of women through thought, speech, or deed; and they hate anything woman-centric.

[kenteklark]

[kenteklark]

[kenteklark]

‎I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

Sister Joan Chittister, Catholic Nun (via andyouhavetogivethemhope)

Nailed it! And of course, the ‘pro-life’ child is necessarily straight and cis…

(via qbits)