#(and then americans are like '~country x is less diverse than america~')

[darthlenaplant]

This new (could ve a year old tho, I don't really keep up with contemporary pop music since the early 2000's) american pop cersion where some boring ass, run-of-the-mill female artist sings some bullshit to the melody of Dragostea Din Tei feels like a fucking hatecrime whenever I am unfortunate enough to hear it.

Just play the fucking original ya NUMBCHUCKS.

[xtruss]

'Blue Beetle': Latino Culture Reigns Supreme in Long-Needed Superhero Departure

'Black Panther' proved there was an immense audience for movies based on diverse comic book characters. Will DC's latest also deliver at the box office?

— Steve Appleford | August 11, 2023

As a young comic book writer and fan in 2006, Josh Trujillo was immediately captivated by a new take on an old second-tier superhero, the Blue Beetle. Less important than the character’s powers and ancient scarab technology was the name behind the mask: Jaime Reyes, a high school kid from a Latino home in El Paso, Texas, grappling with his new capabilities amid the usual teen angst.

Traditionally, most superheroes from DC and Marvel were dependably square-jawed and Caucasian, but this was something different. “The fact that his name was Jaime —that’s something you rarely saw in comics at the time, and even now, it’s relatively rare,” says Trujillo, a Los Angeles-based creator who now writes the character for DC Comics. “I kind of became obsessed with learning everything I could about him.”

Now, the character is the latest superhero to lead a live-action feature film, Blue Beetle, directed by Ángel Manuel Soto, with Xolo Maridueña (the hit Netflix series Cobra Kai) in the title role. The August 18 release from Warner Bros. Pictures will face a variety of constituencies, including fans outraged by last year’s cancellation of Batgirl, which had been anticipated as the first superhero film starring a Latina actor, Leslie Grace. Blue Beetle also lands after disappointing box office numbers in June for The Flash, which some blamed on allegations surrounding its star, Ezra Miller. Others suggest, not for the first time, that the superhero genre is simply running out of steam.

For many of those eagerly awaiting Blue Beetle, its arrival as a commodity could not be less relevant to its value as a cultural statement, regardless of fallout from The Flash. Superhero fans from Latino neighborhoods across the country are openly anticipating the film, which stars a mostly Latino cast, including George Lopez and Adriana Barraza, with Susan Sarandon as a ruthless villain named Victoria Kord.

Ángel Manuel Soto, George Lopez, Xolo Maridueña, and Harvey Guillén. Instagram.Com/George Lopez

“Everybody’s really excited about this in the community,” says Frederick Luis Aldama, author and professor of humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in comics studies and Latino pop culture. “The support is going to be because, for the first time, we have a Latino superhero who is the protagonist — he’s the one carrying the story. And we haven’t had that in the past.”

Aldama, who has adopted the nickname “Professor Latinx” (a takeoff on X-Men’s Professor X), noted his disappointment that the film relocates Jaime from the borderlands of El Paso for the fictional Palmera City. But he appreciates that in the comics, and in the movie trailer he saw a month ahead of the film’s release, Jaime “didn’t lose his Latino-ness” after being transformed into the Blue Beetle. “It was very much still a part of his identity and his struggle.”

Before Blue Beetle, the first major superhero film to feature a Latino lead character was 2018’s animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, winner of that year’s Oscar for animated feature, with a kid named Miles Morales in the Spidey mask. It was followed by this year’s sequel Across the Spider-Verse. Last year, Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness included a teenage Latina superhero named America Chavez. And in The Flash, the central role of Supergirl was played by Colombian American Sasha Calle.

Most likely, the castings aren’t so much about social justice as reading the room. In 2021, Latinos made up 24 percent of the U.S. moviegoing audience, according to a study by the Motion Picture Association. “Within the Latino community, there’s always been excitement for colorful characters and larger-than-life heroes,” says Trujillo, who also created an openly gay version of Captain America for Marvel. “You see that in luchador [wrestling], right? You see it in even telenovelas. There’s this larger-than-life element that people are really drawn to in our community.”

With the new DC Universe brand of superhero films, television, and video games still a full year away, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has declared that the movie’s incarnation of Blue Beetle is “the first DCU character” of the new regime. What exactly that portends for future films with Blue Beetle was left vague, but the film seems destined to rise and fall on its own, unconnected to any of the major DC heroes. It’s also arguable that Maridueña is much better known for Cobra Kai and better positioned to lead a film than The Flash’s Miller had been.

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics

“He looks just like Jaime Reyes, and we all know he can act,” says Trujillo. “The special effects and the action, it feels very youthful. It feels very fresh. I think a lot of people who might be turned off by the heavier continuity of the superhero movies will be able to find something new and something they can really take ownership of in the Blue Beetle movie.”

The negativity emanating from Batgirl’s cancellation continues to resonate. The company line from the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery was that the film was unreleasable, though the move was widely seen as a Machiavellian choice by CEO David Zaslav in order to take an easy $90 million write-off, turning the mogul instantly into DC’s least popular supervillain.

Zoe Saldana, a star of three popular movie franchises — Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, and Avatar — called the cancellation a “truly atrocious act from a studio.” And filmmaker Kevin Smith, normally a dependable booster for the comics properties he adores, noted that it was “an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie. I don’t give a shit if the movie was absolute fucking dogshit — I guarantee you that it wasn’t,” pointing to the sterling bona fides of the film’s codirectors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, on the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel.

The Batgirl cancellation drew the attention of U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, who was already critical of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Castro was one of four members of Congress in April to urge the Department of Justice to investigate the merger. “I don’t see how it’s been beneficial to many people,” Castro says.

That said, Castro is already looking forward to Blue Beetle and has met with the director and star, with plans to rent a theater in his working-class “bread and butter” district to share the film with members of his community. “I and many others were concerned at the time of the Batgirl announcement that the same thing would happen with Blue Beetle. I’m glad that it didn’t,” he says. “It’s important for the Latino community because Latinos have been excluded from Hollywood, by and large, in front of and behind the camera.”

Castro has also been active in promoting Eva Longoria’s streaming comedy-drama Flamin’ Hot and attended a screening at the White House. He says these films follow generations of Hollywood stereotypes of Latinos and other communities, if they’re shown onscreen at all. “So Blue Beetle, where you have a Latino who

is a superhero, is a striking departure from the usual Hollywood fare of Latino as gangbanger, as ‘illegal,’ as criminal. And that means a lot.”

The movie was already in production when Trujillo began writing his recent comic book miniseries Blue Beetle: Graduation Day, which is set for rerelease in book form in time for the movie’s debut. He says it is the first American mainstream superhero comic to be created by an all-Latino team, including Spanish artist Adrian Gutierrez. He was given bits and pieces of information from the movie to incorporate into his storyline but hasn’t seen the film. He hopes to attend the premiere and bask on the “blue carpet.”

“I’ll be there day one, regardless,” he says of the Blue Beetle movie. “I do think there’s a bit of a rising tide, and DC in particular has done a really good job of embracing the Latino community. I’m really grateful that DC’s been on board for it from the very beginning.”

[i-did]

A guide for proper terminology for Nicky Hemmick:

Written by me, a Mexican-American.

Latin American: someone from Latin America, this includes Mexico but not Spain. Latin America is multi ethnic, and not just Spanish speaking, the non Spanish speaking countries of Latin America are Brazil, Belize, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, and the Falkland Islands.

Latino: decent from Latin America, similar to saying Latin American, but can include people born in America of Latin American decent. People don't really say "Latin American American," they say Latino American. (Latina = woman, and Latine = neutral but not commonly used, often typed Latin@s online for shorthand to include both). Latin American countries are very diverse, some are dominantly black/Afro-Latino.

Afro-Latino: Afro-Latin Americans are dominantly from African decent, some Latin American countries are majorly black/Afro-Latino. when used outside of Latin America it can mean someone who’s mixed black and Latino. 

Latinx: "gender neutral" term for Latino, but probably made by white people because .... Spanish words don't end in x, and x isn't pronounced that way in Spanish, for example the name Xitlali (sometimes spelled Zitlali and other variations, but pronounced like an S). Honestly say Latino/Latinos or Latin@s, and in online queer spaces Latine/Latines.

Chicano: Latin American decent but born in America.

Hispanic: related to Spain, colonized by Spain, so this includes Spain but not Brazil, which is a Latin American country.

Mexican: a person from Mexico living in America, for example Nicky's mom, but often also casually used to mean Mexican Americans (or Latino/Chicanos in general).

Mexican American: Latin American decent born into America. Unlike chicano, it is associated more with the idea of assimilation into white America, but not always.

Mexicano: what Mexicans call themselves in Mexico (feminine is Mexicana).

TexMex: people who were living in Mexico, and then America bought/stole the land and said "this is also America now, you can leave or stay" and they stayed. They became Americans, Texas Mexican American culture is different than for example SoCal Mexican American culture because of this, (but still more in common with each other than not).

Anglo: someone who is non Latino, usually in reference to someone who lives in the America's that were colonized by British people and English is the standard spoken language, ex/ North Americans and Canadians who aren't Latino. Usually in reference to white people but not always. If someone is Asian American and constantly purposefully mispronounces my name, instead of being like "🙄white people" I can be like "🙄 Anglos" (or I could say gringo, which is not as nice of a term for anglo). I honestly don’t know if I can call a spaniard anglo, but I assume not, since they're not Anglo-Saxon, which is where the term comes from.

despite what the media represents, not all Latino’s are Mexican! although the two terms are often used interchangeably when they’re really not. there are 32 other countries besides Mexico in Latin America.

Mexican is technically a nationality, but because of colonialism it’s not that simple. Race dynamics work differently in different countries. Most Mexicanos are not connected with their mixed indigenous ancestors, while some still are, like the Maya. It is something that has been taken from us and has evolved into its own thing. Some Mexicanos are lighter than others, sometimes by being more related to the Spanish than the indigenous. Mexico has a huge problem with colorism and class divide as well as overall racial tension.

Mexico is also not only "white/more Spanish" "more brown" and "fully indigenous, culturally and ethnically", there are afro-latinos (like mentioned before), and also Asian latinos, specifically a large amount of Chinese immigrants from when China became communist, middle eastern latinos, etc. Latin America has immigrants too! 

I have a friend who is fully Korean but grew up in Guatemala, I have another friend from Brazil who is 100% of polish and Ashkenazi decent, her grandparents having escaped to Brazil during WWII, but she and her parents grew up and spent their whole lives in Brazil, they are Latin Americans. 

List of things Nicky's mom Maria is:

Mexican, Mexicana, Latina, Latin American, 'Hispanic' but like.... outdated term and usually when people use this they just mean Latin@.

List of things Nicky is:

Mexican-American, Latino, "Mexican" in the broad sense of the word.

Describing Nicky or his mother as "looking hispanic" doesn't really make sense because he takes after his mother who is described as very dark and therefore less Spanish decent and more indigenous decent, she's from a Spanish speaking country so... its not technically wrong, but Nicky is from and English speaking one and doesn't speak Spanish, so it doesn't really make sense.

He isn't Chicano and neither is she, she wasn't born in America and Nicky doesn't identify as Chicano or in general much with his mothers culture beyond visible features. He is never mentioned to make Mexican food, listen to Latin American music, or other aspects of Latino culture in general. He chose to go to Germany instead of Spain or Latin America, and he talked Aaron out of taking Spanish in exchange for German so Nicky could help him with his homework, (meaning he doesn't know Spanish, which many Mexican Americans don't know).

saying Nicky “looked Mexican” or “looked brown” isn’t a bad thing, Neil in the books says he’s two shades too dark to be considered tan, so... stop tip-toeing around it and call him brown instead of tan. It’s not a bad thing to be brown, and It’s not a bad thing to be Mexican. maybe I’m just from somewhere with a lot of Mexican-Americans, but when I look at people I can tell they’re not Anglos, or I think to myself “oh another Mexican” or at least “brown person” vs when I see a white person I think “white person.” I’m not face blind, I know that different races exist and look different and can see such trends in real people in the same way that when I look at a little girl I go “oh a little girl” not “what sex is this weird hairless animal, what is this alien”.

these concepts are a lot more complicated in practice, I get told often I don’t “look Mexican” but so does one of my cousins who’s afro latino and plays professional basketball in Mexico. Gender is fake but the majority of people we see are still falling into two categories on sight, it’s how we’re socially trained. 

I'm also not an encyclopedia, if you think I made a mistake let me know and I'll check it out. A lot of this was just off the top of my head and words I just learned from.... existing, I didn't exactly look them all up in the dictionary.

Also if you’re writing Nicky, don’t be afraid to get a sensitivity reader, @sensitivityreaders is a good resource for this, and so is @writingwithcolor

[arcticdementor]

“There is a great deal of a ruin in a nation,” replied Adam Smith to a friend who lamented that General Burgoyne’s defeat by the American rebels at 1777’s Battle of Saratoga had ruined Great Britain.

And the United States in the 21st century has seemed exceptionally impervious (so far) to being ruined by its multitrillion-dollar mistakes such as the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration’s push for increased minority homeownership, the various Covid botches, and the racial reckoning.

On the other hand, a decisive military defeat galvanizes the attention in a way that more subtle fiascos do not, such as how it took fifteen years for social scientists to even notice that the turn-of-the-century promotion of synthetic opioids as the cure for what ails the working class was lowering their life expectancy.

So, what lessons should we have learned from the Afghanistan micro-debacle of recent days and the macro-debacle of the past nineteen years?

…

Of course, the basic reasons for the collaborationist forces collapsing, gradually and then suddenly, are clear, even if who specifically within the U.S. government deserves the most blame for not anticipating them remains to be seen.

Like the Wolverines in Red Dawn, the Taliban live there. Afghanistan might not be much, but it’s all they’ve got. Granted, Afghanistan is a crummy country with a comically awful culture. The revolution in ways of thinking that swept the West beginning in the 1200s has yet to arrive in much of Afghanistan.

But, for some people, it’s home.

In contrast, the Americans were always the invaders. Sure, the Taliban were criminally negligent accessories to 9/11 by hosting Osama bin Laden (although no evidence has since emerged that they knew of this specific enormity ahead of time). So, the U.S. had every right to engage in a butcher-and-bolt punitive expedition to overthrow the Kabul regime, which we succeeded in doing in a couple of months.

But then we hung around for twenty years trying to make ourselves popular. Of course, in a country teeming with young men (Afghanistan has the highest birth rate outside of sub-Saharan Africa), being an outsider roaring around on their home turf in our Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles is no way to make us loved. So, among the youth of the dominant Pashtun tribe, the Taliban tended to recruit the patriots while we wound up with the parasites.

…

But in the meantime, the U.S. could hire collaborators to pretend to fight for whatever the Americans were in favor of at the moment—democracy, globalism, women going unmasked, everybody going masked, gay rights, black lives matter, you name it, somebody in Afghanistan would figure out an angle on how to skim off the budget for it. For twenty years, the leading economic activity in Afghanistan has been stuff falling off the back of American supply trucks.

But ultimately, some American president would grow sick of shoveling money into the maws of incredibly corrupt collaborators—like Captain Renault in Casablanca only much less charming—and bring our boys home. (And while Captain Renault was a man like any other man, only more so, around beautiful Bulgarian brides, America’s allies in Afghanistan tend to be into boy-molesting.)

…

Still, the Biden administration could have managed to not botch things up quite so badly. In any sensible pullout plan, you would leave the fortified Bagram airfield last, not first. You shouldn’t have to depend on the good graces of the Taliban to get your people out of the (soon-to-be-renamed) Hamid Karzai civilian airport.

The political alliance between the White House and the media had led to a kibosh on questions about the administration’s competence. Yet, at best, Biden is a very old president who has focused, hopefully wisely, on strategy while wishing the tactics would take care of themselves.

It’s also possible that the ineptitude of the exit might stem in part from the deep state deciding to knife Biden in the back for shutting down their favorite route to career advancement.

The national security apparatus has been manipulating presidents over Afghanistan for a long time. Back in 2009, general Stanley McChrystal teamed up with Bob Woodward of the Post to cajole the greenhorn Obama into giving him 30,000 more troops. The generals likewise bullied Trump into not pulling out by hiding basic information from him.

Perhaps, then, after years of being praised for disobeying Trump, when Biden stayed stubborn on getting out, the deep state decided to let him fry by throwing a snit and refusing to draw up basic contingency plans.

Or, it could be that the military, which has grown ever more focused on pushing diversity and crushing internal dissent rather than winning wars, has simply become increasingly useless.

To climb the career ladder in modern America, you are expected to lie: about race, about crime, about men in dresses.

And if you are in the U.S. deep state, you have to lie about our Afghan allies. For example, general Mark Milley, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and advocate of reading Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo to understand “white rage,” announced in Kabul in 2013:

This army and this police force have been very, very effective in combat against the insurgents every single day.

Underlings figure out what the bosses don’t want to hear and then don’t tell them. Colonel Bob Crowley reported in the Afghan Papers:

Truth was rarely welcome…so bad news was often stifled. There was more freedom to share bad news if it was small—we’re running over kids with our MRAPs—because those things could be changed with policy directives. But when we tried to air larger strategic concerns about the willingness, capacity or corruption of the Afghan government, it was clear it wasn’t welcome and the boss wouldn’t like it.

Lying isn’t just bad for the soul, it’s bad for effectiveness at dealing with reality.

After 1991, we of course stopped winning wars. But now we can’t even avoid losing in spectacularly humiliating fashion.

If there’s anything we’ve learned about the deep state from this episode, it’s that it’s real…and it’s inept.

[96thdayofrage]

The anti-racism consulting industry does deserve both some sympathy and some credit. Its intention, to prod white Americans into more awareness of their own racism, is beneficent. And their premise that white people are often unaware of the degree to which racial privilege has enabled their success, which they can mistakenly attribute entirely to merit and effort, is correct. American society is shot through with multiple overlapping systems of racial bias — from exposure to harmful pollution to biased policing to unequal access to education to employment discrimination — that in combination sustain massive systemic inequality.

But the anti-racism trainers go beyond denying the myth of meritocracy to denying the role of individual merit altogether. Indeed, their teaching presents individuals as a racist myth. In their model, the individual is subsumed completely into racial identity.

One of DiAngelo’s favorite examples is instructive. She uses the famous story of Jackie Robinson. Rather than say “he broke through the color line,” she instructs people instead to describe him as “Jackie Robinson, the first Black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball.”

It is true, of course, that Robinson was not the first Black man who was good enough at baseball to make a major-league roster. The Brooklyn Dodgers decided, out of a combination of idealism and self-interest, to violate the norm against signing Black players. And Robinson was chosen due to a combination of his skill and extraordinary personality that allowed him to withstand the backlash in store for the first Black major leaguer. It is not an accident that DiAngelo changes the story to eliminate Robinson’s agency and obscure his heroic qualities. It’s the point. Her program treats individual merit as a myth to be debunked. Even a figure as remarkable as Robinson is reduced to a mere pawn of systemic oppression.

One way to understand this thinking is to place it on a spectrum of thought about race. On the far right is open white supremacy, which instructs white people to fight for their interests as white people. (Hence the 14-word slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”) Moving to the left, standard-issue conservatism tends to discount the existence of racism and treat all problems in pure color-blind terms, as though racism has been banished. To the left of that is standard liberalism, which acknowledges the existence of racism as a problem that complicates simple race-neutral solutions.

The ideology of the racism-training industry is distinctively to the left of that. It collapses all identity into racial categories. “It is crucial for white people to acknowledge and recognize our collective racial experience,” writes DiAngelo, whose teachings often encourage the formation of racial affinity groups. The program does not allow any end point for the process of racial consciousness. Racism is not a problem white people need to overcome in order to see people who look different as fully human — it is totalizing and inescapable.

Of course, DiAngelo’s whites-only groups are not dreamed up in the same spirit as David Duke’s. The problem is that, at some point, the extremes begin to functionally resemble each other despite their mutual antipathy.

I want to make clear that when I compare the industry’s conscious racialism to the far right, I am not accusing it of “reverse racism” or bias against white people. In some cases its ideas literally replicate anti-Black racism.

Glenn Singleton, president of Courageous Conversation, a racial-sensitivity training firm, tells Bergner that valuing “written communication over other forms” is “a hallmark of whiteness,” as is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.”

This is not some idiosyncratic oddball notion. The African-American History Museum has a page on whiteness, which summarizes the ideas that the racism trainers have brought into relatively wide circulation.

“White” values include things like “objective, rational thinking”; “cause and effect relationships”; “hard work is the key to success”; “plan for the future”; and “delayed gratification.” The source for this chart is another, less-artistic chart written by Judith Katz in 1990. Katz has a doctorate in education and moved into the corporate consulting world in 1985, where, according to her résumé, she has “led many transformational change initiatives.” It is not clear what in Katz’s field of study allowed her to establish such sweeping conclusions about the innate culture of white people versus other groups.

One way to think through these cultural generalizations is to measure them against its most prominent avatar for racial conflict, Donald Trump. How closely does he reflect so-called white values? The president hardly even pretends to believe that “hard work” is the key to success. The Trump version of his alleged success is that he’s a genius who improvises his way to brilliant deals. The realistic version is that he’s a lazy heir who inherited and cheated his way to riches, and spends most of his time watching television. Trump is likewise incapable of delayed gratification, planning for the future, and regards “objective rational thinking” with distrust. On the other hand, Barack Obama is deeply devoted to all those values.

Now, every rule has its exceptions. Perhaps the current (white) president happens to be alienated from the white values that the previous (Black) president identified with strongly. But attaching the values in question to real names brings to life a point the racism trainers seem to elide: These values are not neutral at all. Hard work, rational thought, and careful planning are virtues. White racists traditionally project the opposite of these traits onto Black people and present them as immutable flaws. Jane Coaston, who has reported extensively on the white-nationalist movement, summarizes it, “The idea that white people are just good at things, or are better inherently, more clean, harder working, more likely to be on time, etc.”

In his profile, Bergner asked DiAngelo how she could reject “rationalism” as a criteria for hiring teachers, on the grounds that it supposedly favors white candidates. Don’t poor children need teachers to impart skills like that so they have a chance to work in a high-paying profession employing reasoning skills?

DiAngelo’s answer seems to imply that she would abolish these high-paying professions altogether:

“Capitalism is so bound up with racism. I avoid critiquing capitalism — I don’t need to give people reasons to dismiss me. But capitalism is dependent on inequality, on an underclass. If the model is profit over everything else, you’re not going to look at your policies to see what is most racially equitable.”

(Presumably DiAngelo’s ideal socialist economy would keep in place at least some well-paid professions — say, “diversity consultant,” which earns her a comfortable seven-figure income.)

Singleton, likewise, proposed evolutionary social changes to the economy that would render it unnecessary to teach writing and linear thought to minority children. Bergner writes:

I asked whether guiding administrators and teachers to put less value, in the classroom, on capacities like written communication and linear thinking might result in leaving Black kids less ready for college and competition in the labor market. “If you hold that white people are always going to be in charge of everything,” he said, “then that makes sense.” He invoked, instead, a journey toward “a new world, a world, first and foremost, where we have elevated the consciousness, where we pay attention to the human being.”

Whether or not a world along these lines will ever exist, or is even possible to design, is at best uncertain. What is unquestionably true is that these revolutionary changes will not be completed within the lifetime of anybody currently alive. Which is to say, a program to deny the value of teaching so-called white values to Black children is to condemn them to poverty. Unsurprisingly, Bergner’s story shows two educators exposed to the program and rebelling against it. One of them, Leslie Chislett, had to endure some ten anti-racism training sessions before eventually snapping at the irrationality of a program that denigrates learning. “The city has tens of millions invested in A.P. for All, so my team can give kids access to A.P. classes and help them prepare for A.P. exams that will help them get college degrees,” she says, “and we’re all supposed to think that writing and data are white values?”

Ibram X. Kendi, another successful entrepreneur in the anti-racism field, has a more frontal response to this problem. The achievement gap — the long-standing difference in academic performance between Black and white children — is a myth, he argues. The supposed gap merely reflects badly designed tests, he argues. It does not matter to him how many different kinds of measures of academic performance show this to be true. Nor does he seem receptive to the possibility that the achievement gap reflects environmental factors (mainly worse schools, but also access to nutrition, health care, outside learning, and so on) rather than any innate differences.

Kendi, like DiAngelo, argues that racism must be defined objectively. Intent does not matter, only effect. Their own intentions are surely admirable. But the fact is that their insistence on denying that America provides its Black children worse educations inhibits working toward a solution. Denying the achievement gap, like denying the gap in how police treat white and Black people, seems to objectively entrench racism.

It’s easy enough to see why executives and school administrators look around at a country exploding in righteous indignation at racism, and see the class of consultants selling their program of mystical healing as something that looks vaguely like a solution. But one day DiAngelo’s legions of customers will look back with embarrassment at the time when a moment of awakening to the depth of American racism drove them to embrace something very much like racism itself.

[rosemallowss]

Im so sad too with all that´s happening around TBWDOA, it was magical the first time that I listened it: so much life, love and humanity even in the darkest places of the world... I felt that the hope around it was more strong that any problematic subject... I know that maybe im being naive and self-blinded by my own privileges, but im so angry that the controversy destroyed what for my was so beautiful. I dont know if this is weird, but I wanted to talk with someone that maybe feels the same :(

Hey dude, I thought exactly the same thing. I actually still think it, but every time I see any trace of the show in my camera roll or the copy of the album, it’s so hard not to think about all the angry people. I think now that it’s been a few weeks however, I can fully hold a discussion about this musical without feeling guilty or sad. Despite what other people think, I really don’t believe that the writers has hostile intents at all. If you look at old posts like this:

You can tell just how passionate they were about this show. & plus, I realized recently that these guys tend to write shows about topics that are not normally talked about as well. Example: this show and ‘Talk To Me’– a show about a child who is on the Autism spectrum. I suppose you could kind of count their other show “With The Right Music” as kind of that? However I’m actually not totally clear on what that show is about since it wasn’t actually written to the end– though I think it is about a closeted teenager in high school. I suppose this counts because there aren’t that many musicals written about closeted teenagers. I truly don’t believe that they were trying to offend anyone– simply were just so so invested in trying to get a story out there, maybe one that was unfamiliar to them, and perhaps it was also bad timing that the full show was released? Or maybe they were just as naïve too when they wrote the show probably around 2015 (earlier?) I used to always get their attention (unintentionally I swear) on Twitter when I’d talk about the show. Those dudes were really kind. And they follow back a lot of their fans. So, perhaps it was just naïvety? I’m aware that they’re attempting to make it right, and they are probably at the moment in conversation with Afghan Americans. That’s important, and speaks more than words I think. I know Troy, Nikhil, Sittichai, and Jonathan have been under fire. Troy has gone silent and if I’m not mistaken I think Sittichai and Jonathan as well? Other actors in the show such as Osh (Zemar) and though a small appearance– Shiv Pai (future Paiman’s son) have gotten no such comments I realize. Maybe the show was bad timing. Perhaps it would’ve had a more positive outcome in terms of rising popularity had it been talked about in a past tense; in a sense that “this practice doesn’t happen anymore” so that the setting is not modern day, but instead sometime in the late 1900s?Would that have made the show less controversial? Maybe? But we can never be sure. Would it have been less controversial if they minimized the extend of the abuse? Or removed that altogether and made it that it was simply two boys falling in love in rural Afghanistan who were coming terms with the fact that they were feeling this feeling with each other? well, yeah, because it would just be a love story in a different setting, and we’d probably see Feda and Paiman exploring the marketplace as well. If this was the case, I’d assume the conflict of the story would be homophobia from parents/internalized homophobia itself, or struggling to understand themselves. Another conflict could be something that many teenagers experience as well, such as fear of the future. Maybe arranged marriage could still be a conflict, and since Feda’s name literally means “sacrifice” he’d probably still have to die in the end. Perhaps they could have rewritten the show like that and the show would have little to no controversy? The music is incredible, and it could even portray the beauty of Afghanistan through their amazing way of writing music. I’m just brainstorming and rambling here, sorry! when it comes to this show it seems as though that I always just vomit out more words than anyone cares to hear. Let’s address why it was controversial as well though... Many were repulsed by the idea of s-x trafficking as a musical, and even more outraged with the musical being about Afghanistan. It showed negative parts of the country, and that would add on to people’s perception and dislike toward Afghans, which if you live in America you are aware of the racists’ stereotypes and disdain toward Afghans. (If you are naïve like me, you probably did not catch that as well. I truly forgot that there were people who perceived Afghans in a negative light. I was awed by the diversity in the show and so focused on that) I believe that they also have said how gay men are usually perceived as pedophiles as well and this show did not help to minimize that harmful stereotypes. I’m obviously kind of dumb because I didn’t realize that stereotype.

However it is true, because realized I often see this trope in fiction books about “creepy uncles preying on their nephews”. Though people don’t agree with the fact that it is a musical, I always saw it as a different way of storytelling. There’s a book called The Kite Runner that talks about the same topic in this musical by the way. I didn’t know this but my friends have had to read that book as an assignment in their English class. I thought, well, TBWDOA, it just tells the story through songs. So all in all, these were many of the points people made, and you cannot be upset with them for being angry. When I first listened to the show, I was aware it was controversial, but I thought the controversy would be something that can be discussed and debated while being enjoyed. Similar to how Hamilton is often debated for glorifying the founding fathers while still being a good show. However, when I replied to one comment because I thought that this was how it was going to go, I was bombarded with several other comments, I was called pedophilic and was told that because I was not Afghan that I should not speak and when someone said that, I realized “okay, I was wrong to think that this was an issue that could be debated!” I did not realize how much deeper it would be. As a result, I was flooded with comments from instagram and twitter and it was STRESSFUL and overwhelming that I just couldn’t sleep and had to take a break! However someone told me that even the most controversial, flawed works of art should be appreciated or discussed. It’s up for debate if that’s true. The show is incredible in portraying the strength of the human spirit— “find your voice, even if it’s weak, using it can make a difference that will lead to a greater change.” It showed a boy who used something that was SUPPOSED to degrade and silence him as a tool to lift him up and strengthen him– that was an incredible theme. He found power in the resources he could. Dancing was supposed to be something he could not decide, but he made it his own, would not let it weaken him, and used it as a tool to push him toward more positive hopes. There’s something so powerful about people taking back the thing that was supposed to weaken them, and twisting in into something that gives them strength. Though just because the music embodies the main characters incredibly and the message is empowering, we cannot ignore that perhaps, yes the show was quite insensitive to many Afghan Americans. It might take me several months before I can listen to any song from this show again though. But the show has such a special place in my heart, for making me fall in love with music theory and musical instruments all over again, for pulling my heart strings with incredible themes/life lessons, and the show embodying that theme in a heartbreaking final song, and then lastly providing a beautiful love story. Am I insensitive for saying that? I really don’t want to be, but a story like this has never made me feel like that before. I was intrigued by Islamic wedding customs and researched into that. I fell in love with the purpose of whirling dervishes, and fascinated by how beautiful that was. I watched videos about them, i read about them. Feda talked about an old Afghan poet in the show and god, for hours I looked up that poet and read the translated English phrases (didn’t finish however). I was taken by the beautiful geography of Afghanistan. I researched beyond the show to look at Afghan culture and I appreciated that. I understood that, of course this wasn’t a common practice that is active in Afghanistan. But I’m aware now that so many people will not see it that way at all. They saw the show as indulging the idea that this practice is apart of their culture which is not true, and the original theater did not market that well at all.. I want to hope that this was just really bad timing, that this show was misinterpreted, and in the future will be enjoyed and discussed rather than torn apart. I never like being on the controversial side of things, but, gosh, I don’t know.

But, I know exactly how you feel. And I welcome any asks/my messages are open for discussion about this show now.

[brooklynblerd]

So You Want To Be An Ally

Over the last 2 weeks, I have been fielding many white-guilt questions at work and having very interesting conversations and Zoom calls. Overall, they have been well received, but I am not sure if anything will happen once this is no longer a hot topic. I hope we keep up the momentum, but the media and Politicians and other power holders will try to silence us as quickly as possible. All of the companies realizing that #BlackLivesMatter will inevitably fade away as well. WE HAVE TO KEEP THE PRESSURE ON. So I made a list of talking points for the company that I work for, I hope they put it to use. I will begin sending this to anyone that reaches out to me to “talk” or “to see if I am ok”. While I appreciate the concern (if it’s genuine), I cannot continue being your only Black friend or the only Black person that you feel comfortable speaking to. 

I saw this on Twitter recently, White privilege doesn't mean that your life hasn't been hard, it just means that the color of your skin isn't one of the things that makes it harder. I think this pretty much sums up what white people need to understand, what those people calling themselves our allies need to understand. Having Black pride & saying Black Lives Matter should not offend anyone. It does not mean that we are anti white people.

Black people are not a monolith. While we have all experienced racism in some form or another, we do not share the exact same experiences with it. To try and get an overall view of the different types of racism, you need to speak to many different Black people. Stop treating us as a collective, we are all individuals.  Racism has permeated every single institution in this country. Education, Housing, Banking, Healthcare, Criminal Justice, Entertainment, etc. Racism is very much systemic, not always overt. There are also many different microaggressions that do not present as overt racism. Also, if we are going to have these discussions, please make sure that we feel safe, that we will be heard without reprimand or cynicism or disbelief. Our silence is the reason why this has gone on for so long. We want to be heard. We are no longer willing to stay invisible. Fear makes many of us stay silent, not willing to upset the status quo.

Revamp your hiring strategy/quota. People and organizations tend to conflate diversity and inclusivity. They are NOT the same. While there are many women, LGBTQIA members, Black and other People of Color, the Executives, Sales Management, and HR do not reflect this.

Conversations about race and other social justice issues are uncomfortable. Having these conversations without any Black and People of color present is pointless. Make sure you have Black people and other People of Color in any discussions you have regarding race relations and any other social justice issues. Empathy and sympathy is great, but it will not replace an actual experience.

Understand that the current state of the world has been a long time coming. George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel's back. The only difference is that everyone has a camera now and the police aren't doing themselves any favors by brutalizing everyone who is protesting police brutality.

Acknowledge your privilege. Acknowledge that the system is built to benefit you more than it does us and that it always has.

Saying "I'm not racist" isn't enough anymore. You have to be anti-racist. You have to stop the jokes, stereotypes, etc amongst your circle of friends and family members. This will be hard. But Black and Brown lives have to matter more than offending anyone that is unwilling to change.

Racism is not up to Black people and other People of Color to solve. This wasn't created or instituted by us and as we remain the "minority" in positions of power, we are unable to change it. We only have the ability to fight it, to rise up and demand change. To show that we will no longer take it. We will no longer be silent. We were all taught to be quiet and hold our feelings in to make sure that white people are comfortable. To make sure that we don’t appear threatening or angry. That is changing. Things will not go back to the way that they were. 

Books to read in your journey of becoming an ally:

How To Be An Antiracist - Ibram X. Kensi

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism - Robin Diangelo

So You Want To Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo

Me and white Supremacy - Layla F. Saad

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America - Ibram X. Kendi

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Notes of A Native Son - James Baldwin 

Born A Crime - Trevor Noah

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower - Brittany Cooper

Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth - Dana-Ain Davis

Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States - Edwardo Bonilla-Silva

Towards the Other America: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter - Chris Crass

Two Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage - Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin

How To Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide - Crystal Fleming

The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions - Vilna Bashi Treitler

Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach - Tanya Golash Boza

Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations - Joe Feagin

White Rage; the Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide - Carol Anderson

Black Americans - Alphonso Pinkney

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to Present - Harriet Washington

The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry- Maryann Erigha

Code of the Street - Elijah Anderson

The Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon

The Mis-Education of the Negro - Carter Woodson

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol.1 - Joseph Zerbo

UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. 2 - G. Mokhtar

Black Wealth/White Wealth - Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race - Beverly Daniel Tatum

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice - Paul Kivel

Witnessing Whiteness - Shelly Tochluk

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race - Derald Wing Sue

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching about Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know - Tema Jon Okun

Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race - Frances Kendall

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics - George Lipsitz

Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race - Debby Irving

How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood - Jim Grimsley

Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories - editors = Eddie Moore, Marguerite W. Penick-Parks & Ali Michael

Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America - Joseph Barndt

Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History - Vron Ware

Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence - editors = Chad Williams, Kidada E. Williams & Keisha N. Blain

We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America - editors = Elizabeth Betita Martinez, Matt Meyer & Mandy Carter. Forward by Cornel West. Afterword by Alice Walker & Sonia Sanchez

killing rage: Ending Racism - bell hooks

Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America - Devon W. Carbado and Mitu Gulati

Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy - Chris Crass

White Like Me: Reflections on Race form A Privileged Son - Tim Wise

White Trash: Race and Class in America - editors = Annalee Newitz & Matt Wray

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces - Radley Balko

Race Traitor - editors = Noel Ignatiev & John Garvey

Feeling White: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education (Cultural Pluralism #2) - Cheryl E. Matias

Disrupting White Supremacy

Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times - AmySonnie, James Tracy

For White Folks Who Teach in The Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education (Race, Education, and Democracy) - Christopher Emdin

Benign Bigotry: The Psychology Subtle Prejudice - Kristin J. Anderson

Subversive Southern: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South (Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century) - Catherine Fosl

How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America - Karen Brodkin

America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America - Jim Wells

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge

Living Into God's Dream: Dismantling Racism in America - editor = Catherine Meeks

Promise And A Way Of Live: White Antiracist Activism - Becky Thompson

What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy (Counterpoints #398) - Robin Diangelo

[drawlfoy]

Faux Diplomacy p.1

pairing: draco x femilvermornymugglebornslytherin(a mouthful i know)!reader

request: no, i’ve just always wanted to write this

warnings: explicit language, mentions of drinking, and most importantly, the reader has a moment where she thinks of inducing vomiting (not for a disorder but for a reason totally unrelated). if you’re sensitive to that then i suggest maybe skipping the part where she describes the slytherin boy dormitories. also, drink “spiking” (not date rape drugs though, just veritaserum)

summary: ilvermorny exchange fic during 6th year. reader is sorted into slytherin along with nearly all of the other exchange students. they realize they may be there for another reason than just for diplomacy when they discover that all of them are muggleborn. slow burn for draco...you’re supposed to hate him in the beginning.

a/n: i drafted this in the very beginning of summer without the intent of showing it to anyone, so this is a pretty large step in my writing journey. feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the replies, i’m always here to hear them! more requests are coming soon and i’ll try and whip out another original idea once i slough through the requests i have right now. also: the best friend and the reader are going to be very affectionate, and i apologize if that’s not your thing. it’s just how i interact with my friends and i like to insert my favorite people in my stories, even when it isn’t very smooth. also if you’re wondering why i have so many fics based in 6th year it’s because i always found that to be the hottest year for draco lmao

music recs: i listened to a lot of lorde when i wrote this for some reason. i couldn’t tell you why but i did lol

word count: 2,038

“This is ridiculous.”

“What?”

I turned around to look at my roommate and best friend, Bella, who was sitting sprawled out on my bed and repeated the sentiment.

“This is ridiculous. My application status is still ‘review’, and everyone else already got their acceptance letter. Do you think it means they’re trying to find a nice way to reject me?”

Bella rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“Jesus Christ Y/N, with your grades and qualifications, they’d be a fool to not let you go. I got in. Hell, even Peter got in!”

Her comment made me crack a smile. Peter was in our year, sure, but a whole idiot. He was probably the lowest ranked person in Y/I/H. His parents were super loaded, though.

“Plus,” Bella added, “Hogwarts doesn’t have much experience with muggle electronics. I hear they switched to electric acceptances for foreign matters for efficiency purposes since they were so sick of losing owls over the Atlantic. They’re a bunch of old geezers that might still be looking for the send button on your acceptance email.”

“Wait.” Y/N froze as she saw something pop up in her inbox from Hogwarts’ administration. “I think they sent me something.”

Suddenly, the hot August air was more stifling than ever. Y/N had an urge to get up and open her window, but she couldn’t leave her laptop. Her eyes were glued to the email.

“You gonna open it, or...” 

“YES! Fine, I’ll do it.” Y/N’s hand clicked on the email and hid her face. Bella’s hands began prying her fingers away from her face. 

“You’ve gotta see it, Y/N. You’ve gotta look!”

Y/N allowed her hands to drop, peering at the screen in front of her. 

No way. No way.

It took her a minute to actually comprehend the words “Congratulations!” on the screen, but once she did, her entire body began vibrating with electricity.

“Oh my GOD!”

“We’re going to Hogwarts together!” Bella shrieked, jumping off Y/N’s bed and grabbing her. The two girls clung to each other while Bella spun them in circles until they fell on the bed with dizziness.

After the Hogwarts acceptance letter, Ilvermorny reached out to the students as well to detail their departure. The 16 students selected--a rather odd number, Y/N thought--were to meet on the Ilvermorny grounds at 6am on September 1st. Dumbledore himself had prepared 4 portkeys for the students and expected them to teleport to Hogwarts using them.

As far as Y/N was concerned, this day couldn’t come soon enough. It was time for her to get away from the loudness of America.

♥♥♥♥ 

The first thing Y/N saw was a very old witch standing in front of her small group of peers. She was wearing a traditional witch hat, something no one ever did back in America.

“Welcome, students.” Y/N was taken aback by just how delicate her voice was. She always forgot how diverse accents were in Europe. “I am Professor McGonagall. We are so pleased to have you joining us for this school year.” 

The elegant old lady fiddled with her eyeglasses before she continued.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it appears as though there won’t be enough time to sort each and every one of you. We do have a rather large group of first years and would prefer to keep things moving along.” 

Everyone groaned in unison. Who did this lady think she was, taking away their chances at being sorted by the infamous Sorting Hat?

“Thankfully,” she continued, “The head of the Slytherin house, Professor Snape, was gracious enough to take all of you in. It appears as though there are exactly 16 open beds in their dorm, so it works famously. I expect you all to behave yourselves and represent your country well so that we’ll consider taking exchange students next year. We have no qualms with sending students home who don’t follow the rules.”

Everyone nodded, nervously glancing around the group. Y/N couldn’t help but wonder if people were going to be sent home, or if that was simply an empty threat.

“Well, come along then!”

McGonagall ushered the nervous group of witches and wizards across the courtyard and into a giant dining hall, much larger than the one Ilvermorny boasted.

As the students entered, the soft chatter that had filled the room faded away as the Hogwarts students examined the newcomers. Whispers replaced the chatter once they saw a magical display above them unfurl an american flag.

So much for getting away from that obnoxious American stereotype Y/N thought bitterly. What’s next, magical reenactments of the Vietnam War?

“Students,” McGonagall called. “Sit at the Slytherin table.”

A long but well kept fingernail motioned to the long table on the right side, filled with students wearing green.

“Good thing green looks great on both of us!” Bella whispered into Y/N’s ear. She giggled. 

“Yellow and red wash me out. We got lucky.”

Unfortunately for the girls, everyone else had gotten to the table first, leaving only two open seats open. When they saw who was across from them, they began to understand why they were the least desirable seats.

One platinum haired boy and a dark haired girl occupied the seats, both wearing disgusted looks. 

“Hello, I’m-” Y/N’s timid attempt at an introduction was cut short when the dark haired girl cut in.

“We know why you’re here.”

“Excuse me?” Bella looked ready to kill.

“She said,” the blond boy met Y/N’s eyes, “We know why you’re here.”

“Uh...yeah, the weather’s great this time of year.” Y/N tried to push for a laugh, but clearly it wasn’t coming.

“No, you idiot.” The girl raised one eyebrow. “Do you not know?”

“Well, whatever you think you know wasn’t deemed important enough to mention to US, so fuck off,” Bella answered.

“Jesus, Bella, we can at least be nice,” Y/N interjected. “Can you tell us? We probably already know, but sti-”

“No.” The blond boy looked slightly amused at our curiosity. “You’re right. It’s so important that of course you would know. Pansy and I are just playing with you. That’s all you mudbloods are good for, anyways.”

Y/N’s jaw dropped. Blood purity discrimination? That shit was outlawed years ago in the US. If anyone even mentioned the term “muggleborn” in a less than positive light, they were blacklisted. 

“What did you just call us?”

“Perhaps you need to get your ears checked,” the girl shot back. “You heard him.”

Y/N sucked in a breath. She’d woken up at 5 for this. 

“So tell me, Pansy.” Y/N leaned over the table. “Was it an accident? Or were you just born with a pug face?”

The girl turned bright red but maintained her composure. 

“I’m sick of talking to you,” she finally said.

♥♥♥♥

“Oh, bitch, you got her!” Bella was cackling to Y/N in the privacy of her dorm room. “You were like, ‘do tell me’, and the second those words left your lips, I was like, oh no, here it comes...”

They both ugly laughed on the bed together until their sides hurt. 

“Blondie was kind of hot though,” Y/N admitted.

“Kind of. I guess, if you’re into racists.” 

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not.” Y/N chucked a pillow at Bella/s head, just narrowly missing it and instead hitting her suitcase. 

A knock on their door sounded, stopping their shenanigans. Bella crept up to open it and saw Laurel, another girl from their year, with a few other kids.

“The Slytherins are throwing a welcome party for us in the common room,” Lucy informed them. “The nice ones are, at least.”

“There’s nice Slytherins?” Bella asked sarcastically. “Whatever. We’re in. Give us a minute to get dressed.”

Lucy nodded, shutting the door. Y/N could hear their footsteps walk away from their room.

The two rushed to get out of the sad looking sweats they were planning to sleep in, Y/N opting for a skirt and a short sleeved shirt. She’d always been a fan of old-fashioned plaid.

♥♥♥♥

Y/N did not get drunk. It was the unspoken rule between her and Bella: one of them drinks, the other one sips and plays the mom friend. Y/N was always the mom, something she didn’t mind that much, but at the welcome party, she indulged in two cups of firewhiskey. She held her liquor well anyways, and it wasn’t like anyone had to drive. 

A few hours had gone by when a Slytherin girl who introduced herself as Daphne Greengrass stood on a table and yelled, “Everyone, quiet!”

The music quieted a little and the chatter erased itself as the room waited on her words.

“In Slytherin tradition,” the Greengrass girl said, “We’re going to play a game of Truth or Dare. The Firewhiskey has been laced with Veritaserum, so if you’re choosing truth, beware! We’re playing around this table!”

With that, Daphne stepped down and all the Ilvermorny students stood frozen. Y/N couldn’t believe that the Slytherins spiked their drinks. She also couldn’t believe the fact that she accepted drinks from people she didn’t know, violating every bit of party safety rules her father had taught he. He’d be so disappointed.

Against her better judgement, Y/N allowed herself to be pulled to the table by a very intoxicated but very cheerful Bella. She managed a smile--she loved drunk Bella almost more than she loved normal Bella. She’d always heard that people became their true selves when they drank. If that was the case, Bella was the sunniest person to walk the earth.

Unfortunately for Y/N, she was sitting next to Daphne, who announced that the person to the right of her would spin the bottle to see who the question poser would be. That was Y/N.

She sighed, already deciding on asking for a dare. She wasn’t holding back any secrets, but she didn’t want to answer anything with a dumb or embarrassing detail of her life.Y/N spun the bottle, praying for it to land on Bella.

Nope.

When it stopped, she looked up to meet the eyes of the girl she insulted in the Dining Hall: Pansy.

“Well,” she drawled, a smirk forming on her face,”Truth? Or dare?”

“Dare.”

“Hm.”

Y/N could nearly see the gears in her head turning to find the cruelest dare she could. Finally, her eyes light up and her smirk deepened.

“You know who I don’t see here?” 

“Who?”

“Draco,” she responded. Y/N noticed Daphne grimace next to her. “Go wake him up and get him to come out. Of course, he probably won’t come out. But you have to at least make a valiant effort.”

“Ok.” Y/N gulped. “Where is he?”

“I’m going to assume his room.” The Slytherins surrounding her chuckled. “But if you want specifics: last door on the right of the boy’s dormitories. Zabini will let you in. You can go now.”

Y/N stumbled off with the boy she assumed was Zabini. He opened the door for her, whispering the password under his breath and looking almost sorry for her. “Good luck.”

♥♥♥♥

The dormitories were exponentially cooler than the common room, and Y/N felt herself shiver at the sensation of the air on her bare skin. The stone walls and flooring made her feel as though she was in a dungeon, something she found to be an interesting choice for a house with so many wealthy students.

Y/N slowly crept towards the furthest door on the right, pondering her options. She could, of course, just come back and lie, saying he didn’t answer. Then she remembered the Veritaserum in her drink. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could get herself to throw it up, but her logical mind struck that idea down. The alcohol was already absorbed and she would have to explain to everyone why there was a pool of bile outside the door she was tasked to knock on. 

There was something else that was nagging at her, though, a morbid curiosity regarding what someone like him could be bothering himself with on a Friday night. If he wasn’t partying, was he sleeping? 

It simply didn’t add up.

Y/N knew what she had to do. She raised her hand to knock on the door.

[leviathangourmet]

Dear profs X, Y, Z,

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counter-narrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews.

None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number.

I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.

Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. No discussion is permitted for non-black victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of non-black violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd.

For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.

The claim that black interracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession.

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives. And yet, donating to BLM is bankrolling the election campaigns of men like Mayor Frey, who saw their cities devolve into violence. This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles. I refuse to serve the Party, and so should you.

The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.

There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’: hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship. Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.

MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?

As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors. And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise.

Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.

It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.

I hope you appreciate the frustration behind this message. I do not support BLM. I do not support the Democrat grievance agenda and the Party’s uncontested capture of our department. I do not support the Party co-opting my race, as Biden recently did in his disturbing interview, claiming that voting Democrat and being black are isomorphic.

I condemn the manner of George Floyd’s death and join you in calling for greater police accountability and police reform. However, I will not pretend that George Floyd was anything other than a violent misogynist, a brutal man who met a predictably brutal end. I also want to protect the practice of history. Cleo is no grovelling handmaiden to politicians and corporations. Like us, she is free.

[sunbookie]

THE FBI’S WAR ON BLACK BOOKSTORES 

By Joshua C Davis

In the spring of 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced to his agents that COINTELPRO, the counter-intelligence program established in 1956 to combat communists, should focus on preventing the rise of a “Black ‘messiah’” who sought to “unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.” The program, Hoover insisted, should target figures as ideologically diverse as the Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), Martin Luther King Jr., and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.

Just a few months later, in October 1968, Hoover penned another memo warning of the urgent menace of a growing Black Power movement, but this time the director focused on the unlikeliest of public enemies: black independent booksellers.

In a one-page directive, Hoover noted with alarm a recent “increase in the establishment of black extremist bookstores which represent propaganda outlets for revolutionary and hate publications and culture centers for extremism.” The director ordered each Bureau office to “locate and identify black extremist and/or African-type bookstores in its territory and open separate discreet investigations on each to determine if it is extremist in nature.” Each investigation was to “determine the identities of the owners; whether it is a front for any group or foreign interest; whether individuals affiliated with the store engage in extremist activities; the number, type, and source of books and material on sale; the store’s financial condition; its clientele; and whether it is used as a headquarters or meeting place.” 

Perhaps most disturbing, Hoover wanted the Bureau to convince African American citizens (presumably with pay or through extortion) to spy on these stores by posing as sympathetic customers or activists. “Investigations should be instituted on new stores when opened and you should recognize the excellent target these stores represent for penetration by racial sources,” he ordered. Hoover, in short, expected agents to adopt the ruthless tactics of espionage and falsification they deployed against civil-rights and Black Power activists, and now use them against black-owned bookstores.

Hoover’s memo offers us a troubling glimpse of a forgotten dimension of COINTELPRO, one that has escaped notice for decades: the FBI’s war on black-bookstores. In addition to Hoover’s memo, I uncovered documents detailing Bureau surveillance of black bookstores in a least half a dozen cities across the U.S. in conducting research for my book, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs. At the height of the Black Power movement, the FBI conducted investigations of such black booksellers as Lewis Michaux and Una Mulzac in New York City, Paul Coates in Baltimore (the father of The Atlantic national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates), Dawud Hakim and Bill Crawford in Philadelphia, Alfred and Bernice Ligon in Los Angeles, and the owners of the Sundiata bookstore in Denver. And this list is almost certainly far from complete, because most FBI documents pertaining to currently living booksellers aren’t available to researchers through the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The FBI’s reports on black booksellers were highly invasive but often mundane. The FBI reports note phone calls from Coates’s number to his former comrades in the Black Panther Party—but also to Viking Press and the American Booksellers Association. Agents in New York reported an undercover source’s questionable claim that Lewis Michaux “was responsible for about 75 percent of the antiwhite material” distributed in Harlem, but another report conceded that he was “no longer very active in Black Nationalist activity as he is getting old.” In Philadelphia, agents traced a car’s license plate at a Republic of New Africa convention to Dawud Hakim, but not long afterwards they quoted sources stating that the RNA was “now defunct in the Philadelphia area” and that Hakim “has not shown interest in any Black Nationalist Activity.”

While perhaps not surprising, it is deeply disturbing that Hoover and the FBI would carry out sustained investigations of black-owned independent bookstores across the country as part of COINTELPRO’s larger attacks on the Black Power movement. But Hoover’s order that agents track these stores’ customers represented not just an attack on black activists, but also an absolute contempt for America’s stated values of freedom of speech and expression. Any citizen who stepped into a black-owned bookstore, it seemed, risked being investigated by federal law enforcement.

To be sure, many black bookstores did have direct connections to Black Power activists. Quite a few black booksellers themselves participated in Black Power organizations, even if those organizations didn’t operate their stores. But more often the connections between the bookstores and the movement weren’t institutional, but intellectual and informal. Customers sought out copies of such titles as The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, which black booksellers gladly sold them. The rapid proliferation of black-owned bookstores in the late 1960s and early 1970s signaled African Americans’ growing appetite for black political and historical literature and reading materials on Africa.

Black-owned bookstores also sold works by authors who were not formally associated with Black Power organizations, including critically acclaimed writers such as James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, as well as street-literature favorites like Iceberg Slim, author of the novel Pimp. Black bookstores weren’t fronts assigned by activist organizations to distribute political propaganda. They were independent businesses serving black people’s growing appetite for books by and about black people.

The Drum and Spear Bookstore in Washington, D.C., seems to have drawn more scrutiny from the Bureau’s agents than any other black bookstore. Established by veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the famed direct-action civil rights organization founded in 1960, the store opened in late spring 1968 just weeks after an uprising devastated the District following the assassination of Martin Luther King. The store was an especially convenient and frequent target for federal law enforcement, both because of its ties to prominent figures in the Black Power movement, and its location in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, less than three miles away from the FBI’s headquarters.

The Bureau launched its surveillance of Drum and Spear after sources sighted Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) visiting the store in its first weeks of business. Hoover’s office soon ordered that the investigation of the store “should be intensified” beyond occasional visits by agents and expanded to cultivating customers, employees, and people who attended meetings at Drum and Spear as undercover sources. From 1968 until the store’s closing in 1974, the Bureau compiled nearly 500 pages of investigative files on Drum and Spear.  Plainclothes agents who visited the store aroused employees’ suspicions when they sat in parked cars in front of the business for hours. In another incident, two men wearing suits who appeared to be federal agents visited Drum and Spear and asked to purchase the store’s entire inventory of Mao’s Little Red Book. Agents’ reports meticulously detailed the store’s contents, relating that its roughly 4,000 copies of 500 titles were divided into five sections—African Works, Works of the American Negro, Fiction, Third World, and Children’s Works—while posters and photos of H. Rap Brown, Carmichael, Huey Newton, and Che Guevara decorated its walls.

Hoover was right about one thing: black bookstores were on the rise by the end of the 1960s. As late as 1966, black-owned bookstores operated in fewer than a dozen American cities, and most of them struggled to stay in business. Within just a few years, however, the number of stores had skyrocketed. Dozens of new stores opened throughout the country in the final years of the ‘60s, roughly tripling their numbers since the start of the decade. As The New York Times reported in 1969, “A surge of book-buying is sweeping through Black communities across the country.” What had been about a dozen black bookstores operating in the mid-1960s grew to over 50 by the early 1970s, and around 75 by the middle of the decade.

In Hoover’s eyes, black-owned bookstores represented a coordinated network of hate-spewing extremists. His clumsy invocation of the phrase “African-type bookstores” betrayed his lack of understanding of pan-Africanism, a philosophy that people of African descent around the world should unite in pursuit of shared political and social goals. To Hoover, radical anti-government organizations actively fomented black Americans’ growing fascination with Africa in the hopes of using it as a weapon against whites. But Hoover grossly mischaracterized the organic groundswell of popular interest in African history, culture, and politics spreading throughout African American communities.

As with much of COINTELPRO, Hoover took a model of counter-intelligence developed to combat the rigidly organized and centralized Communist Party of the United States of America and applied it to a much looser and decentralized array of Black Power groups emerging across the country. The CPUSA for instance, had operated a series of official bookstores carrying party literature in cities across the U.S., which the FBI had monitored since at least the 1930s.

The FBI appears to have wound down its surveillance of black bookstores by the middle of the 1970s, in the wake of Hoover’s death and the formal conclusion of COINTELPRO. As the Black Power movement declined in the late 1970s, so did black bookstores, and their numbers significantly dwindled by the start of the ‘80s (before experiencing a resurgence in the early 1990s). Looking back, it’s worth asking if the Bureau’s investigations may have undermined the viability of these black-owned businesses, creating undue stress for owners already struggling to make ends meet and scaring away customers who wanted to avoid any encounters with law-enforcement officials.

Indeed, the FBI’s war against black bookstores represents a sad chapter in the history of law enforcement in the U.S., a time when federal agents dispensed with all notions of freedom of speech as they targeted black entrepreneurs and their customers for buying and selling literature they deemed politically subversive.

“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Philadelphia bookseller Dawud Hakim lamented in 1971, having learned that that he was himself a target of the Bureau’s misguided surveillance campaign. “We are trying to educate our people about their history and culture. The FBI should be spending their time instead on organized crime and dope peddlers.”

This article is part of our project “The Presence of Justice,” which is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

JOSHUA CLARK DAVIS is an assistant professor of history at the University of Baltimore.

[myheroaizawashota]

[Southern wives part 2??? Heck yes!! I think Toshinori would be the CUTEST with a small little southern lover. A small little five foot southern woman who’s a spitfire like Reba McEntire who can cook like Paula Dean and who’s got sex appeal like Dolly Parton! Haha someone who just grabs Yagis heart and makes him weak in the knees! Maybe we’ll finish the trend and do a Present Mic x Souther wife reader haha @heroes-r-us ]

America, a land of grest diversities. The country always appealed to Toshinori, even from a young age. Spending his glory years between the great states of America, he often found himself compelled with the culture. It always astounded him how vastly different each state was. He’d spent time in California and in states like Michigan. From New Hampshire to Texas, the man had traveled to just about every coast of the widely known country, praised for their blend of strong traditions. Though out of every region he’s visited, even the west coast, one of his favorites was the south. It held such a deep heritage and held some of the richest subculture. From the flavor driven foods, to the charming atmosphere each of the southern states held, the man was captivated. It was no shock that when he returned to Japan, he’d bought a little piece of the states back with him. It seemed like the culture of south wasn’t the only thing the Japanese hero had fallen in love with while visiting over seas. All those years ago, he fell in love with you.

You were patient and sweet as the pies you crafted while also being headstrong and as fierce as a coyote in a chicken coop. His love for you was passionate and wild, like driving 90 down the freeway with the top of your car down and the radio blasting. If you asked the symbol of hope and peace, he’d tell just about anyone he knew from the first time he met you that you were the girl he would marry. Even after all these years, it still made you blush. It was moments sweet like those that made everything you’ve gone through worth the while. Holding such a high price on his head, the number one pro hero always kept your love hidden away from everyone. ”I would never be able to forgive myself if a villain came after you because of who I am Y/N.“

You could understand your husbands protective nature. Being seen out with him would cause a far bigger problem in your relationship than anything, so you agreed to keep your love under wraps. You were understanding when the pro left home without his wedding band daily, and when the pro acted as if he was unattached to anyone romantically. It hurt, but you understood it was all only to protect you. Though when the keepers of fate wrapped their stings around your husband, claiming the entirety of his left side and an immense amount of his power, things began to change. Soon enough being All Might became a different face from being Toshinori Yagi. Unable to maintain a steady body weight from the devisteting wound to his body, the pro hero quickly became unnoticeable to the public while his quirk was dormant in his body. This man put you in constant worry every time he left the house. Knowing that his quirk ate a massive amount of energy, weakening his body and injuring him, you couldn’t help but worry constsntly.

You never just sat by with your hands under your rear waiting to know he was okay though. Hell even if you were as quirkless as a new born baby, it didn’t stop you from helping your husband out the best you could, supporting him on all fronts. You’d make sure he didn’t over push his limits and giving him one hell of an ass chewin’ when he did. In these days, you were his rock. Some days he couldn’t believe that you still loved him as much as you did. He was proud to have you as his partner. Long after his looks had faded, the face of all might being nothing more then a costume for the crowds, you remained. Well after his strength had left him, the little embers of his quirk fueling the short burst of power he could scrape up, you still stood by his side. You never stopped caring about that foolish reckless man, he was your husband after all.

That’s why when he was late to dinner, you couldn’t help but stand an inch away from a duck fit. “It is nearly seven at night, where in the lords good name is that man? He is really tryin’ my patience tonight” you mumble, undoing the apron around your waist and draping it casually over the back of your chair. You wandered your way over towards your phone, you giving his a ring.

After the thrid or so he picked up the phone, his tone soft and hushed. “I know i know I’m late for dinner, i lost track of time with Young Midoriya. He’s making great progress, I guess I kind of lost my head about how late it was getting.”

Pinching the bridge of your nose you gave a tested sigh “you are one blessed man Toshinori Yagi, you’re lucky I love that rump of yours. Hurry up and get yourself home, dinner is done. I made your favorite.”

You could all but hear the smile in his voice when he responded back with “chicken fried steak?”

You couldnt help the grin that tugged it’s way across your lips. “With all the fixings. Biscuits and gravy with tatters on the side.”

His stomach all but growled at the thought of that, well if he had one he was sure it’d be growling at the idea. He watched as midoriya continue to swing his leg out, winds tunneling around him from the strength of his kicks. He was proud of that boy, every day he worked harder to reach his goal. He’d make a fine hero one day. “I’ll wrap things up shortly dear, I’ll be home soon, I’ve got to before midoriya notices me on the phone.” He whispered quickly hanging up.

You rolled your eye. That man was something else. As time continued to roll past, it now seven thirty, your husband still wasn’t home. You were madder than a box of frogs. Huffing up a storm, you packaged the food up, setting it into three nicely kept bento boxes. “When I get down there, that man better be prayin’ to Jesus. He’s about ready to get my damn boot up his ass...” you grumbled as you gathered the food and left your home.

It wasn’t as if Toshi was near home training either. You dragged yourself all the way down to the beach, those typically sweet lips of yours pulled into one fierce pout. Lord help this man, for he was about to be begging for forgiveness. It was late at night, no one else was around but you your husband and his predecessor. Storming the beach, you couldn’t help the heat bubbling in your stomach. Never mess with a southern woman, and never be late for a meal. “I’m so mad with you right now I could chew up a whole box o’ nails and spit out a barbed fence.”

Toshinoris shoulders hunched as he slowly ran a hand through the messy strands of blond hair that stuck out at the back of his head. “I’m in a lot of trouble aren’t I?”

“Oh you bet your bottom dollar you are.” You looked fiercesome. Hell you looked madder then a wet hen. You had a look on your face that could scare even the rowliest of bulldogs. “Your fixin’ to find your rear end on the couch tonight. You’re lucky I love you so much, or I would let you starve” you huff handing the rail thin man a box of food. “Since y’all clearly won’t be done anytime soon, please don’t rush on my account.”

Toshinori couldn’t help but feel guilty. He knew dinner was an important part of the day as a family. It was were the two of spent time together discussing your days and enjoying each other’s company. He looked at the meal in his hands, those hollowed blue eyes of his apologetic as he stared back at you. He was about to say something when the child claimed by your husband as his successor spoke out, pulling the attention toward him. “all might- hey all might!” He shouted running his way closer from the distance, panic setting into his eyes when he saw you standing there. “uH UH IM JUST KIDDING THIS ISNT ALL MIGHT” he nervously laughed looking up at his mentor with large eyes begging for forgiveness.

“Kid, relax...its okay..” your husband sighed, his frail but large palm resting on the boys shoulder.

The small boy balled his fist, tucking them to his chest as he looked between you and your husband. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed that you were someone his teacher knew. He listened and watched as you folder your arms across your chest, shifting your body weight as you glared your lover down. “You drive me up crazy some days ya know...I spend all day frettin’ over if your okay or not. If ya weren’t gonna be home for dinner you could have gave me a call. God went and gave ya ten fingers and two hands. Coulda’ used them to let me know you’d be running late.”

The boys eye went wide, his stomach dropping as shock spread across his features “all might do you know this woman?” He asked, teeth digging into his lip in anticipation. Was this all mights wife! He couldn’t believe it! An American girl, how long have they been married? Did they have kids! No he’d have known that, the world would have, but if he was married wouldn’t the world know that too? Midoriya babbled to himself, unaware his inner thoughts soon became outter thoughts. It wasn’t until his teacher slammed the side of his hand down on the top of his head that he stopped his frantic speaking. “Sorry....”

“Gez, we gotta work on that kid. That never gets any less creepy. I want you to listen closely to me Young Midoriya. What I am about to tell you can never be shared or repeated. As my successor, our lives are now connected as one. Much like the secret of our shared quirk, promise you will never speak this to anyone. It’s dire that you agree.” Now that toshinoris power was nearing its end, it was important more than ever that no body else know the knowledge that was about to be passed on to the child in front of him.

Lips pressed together, fist clenched now at his side, midoriya gave a solid nod in agreement. Toshinori could tell by the look in the boys eyes he was serious about this bond of trust, he releasing the breath he’d been unintentionally holding. Softly sliding his free hand into yours, he innertwined your finger together squeezing your hand softly. “Midoriya i would like you to meet my wife, Y/N.”

Shocked by your husbands full trust in the boy, you stood blinking for a moment. Never before had toshinori introduced you to anyone as his wife. It fluttered your chest. The small boy all but fell to the ground in shock, he bowing immediately “ITS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU IM SO SORRY I KEPT ALL MIGHT BUSY” He apologized, words flying past his lips at a million miles an hour.

He was a bit high strong, but he was cute. The passion in his eyes, the way he looked so determined. It reminded you a lot of your husband. You couldn’t help but give a soft laugh, shaking your head. ”Aw hell, I guess I can’t be too mad. It ain’t exactly your fault. Someone shoulda kept a check on that time, not that I’m gonna go throwin fingers at anyone.”

Toshinori couldn’t help but smile, eyes casting down at the floor as he rubbed at the back of his neck. You smiled and handed one of the remaining boxes over to Midoriya “now I ain’t to sure your gonna like it, but I figured with the way this one trains you’ve gotta be hungrier than a hippo right now. Why don’t you two take a break and we get our feed on. I hear quite a bit about you young man, but I think I’d like to know a lil more about you myself.”

The boys cheeks flushed red, as did his mentor, you giving a laugh. The three of you walked back towards a set of benches, eating as your husband explained how the two of you met, how you fell in love, and his reasons as to why you’ve been hidden from the public. The boy was inquisitive, his eyes bright as he learned more about his idol than he’d ever hoped to know. You watched as both boys scarfed their food down, toshinori giving you a soft kiss to the lips. “I won’t be out much later, I promise this time. Thank you for bringing us dinner.”

Midoriya face was red, as he pulled the brim of his shirt up past his nose. This was the cutest thing he’d ever seen. “Yeah yeah, don’t get all used to it. Next time I’m draggin’ your ass home by the ear if I gotta. Don’t y’all make me come back out here! It was nice meetin’ you Izuku. Don’t be a stranger, now that ya know the truth, feel free to drop on by and say hello! You’re always welcome at ours anytime. Maybe then I won’t have to drag dinner all the way to the beach” you laughed. “You two enjoy yourself now, ya hear? I’ll see you at home Toshi, I love you”

You made your way back to the car, humming at your lovers response, snickering to yourself. “I love you too....come on kid, let’s get back to work. We’ll go for a little while longer and then we should get you home or I’m going to get myself into trouble all over again...my couch isn’t comfortable.”

[makeupbychio]

Lost & Found // Chapter 1.

pictures are not mine (and all the pictures in this chapter were taken here in my country,Chile...boys looking fine)

Chapter 1. Lost & Found

pairing : Calum Hood x Foreign female oc

warnings : emotions,i think(?)

word count : 4.8k

summary : she’s a dancer with a normal life in her country located at the end of the world, who would believe that even this things happens far away? that’s where Calum and she were found but people could be lost and found multiple times.

notes : hi babies,chapter 1 of the “Lost & Found” serie,

I know that is a foreign female oc and i still wrote everything in english (and just a few words in spanish) lol but you got the point.

Enjoy and as english is not my first language and it’s my first fic feel more than welcome to talk to me about opinions,suggestions,ideas,etc. thank you , love you xx.

fic serie is inspired by Lost & Found by Jorja Smith (listen to the song in the link to understand/enjoy chapter 1)

I never thought I would ever find

Something so assured but so fine (but so fine)

I'd fantasize that you'd come around

Focus and your dreams turn to reality

Rosie gets close to the boy that was already located in a table between the bar and the stage, although she doesn’t like prejudices, she can feels that the boy is not from the country so it’s better that she attend him because if the boy speaks in english Rosie is the only waitress in the bar who speaks english.

The boy nervously and with difficulty says in spanish “hola una cerveza , por favor”

She immediately laughs at him saying in english “that’s very sweet from you but don’t worry,I speaks english”

The blond boy returning to his first language a lit bit embarrassed “oh so it was a waste of time to come all the way here learning how to say ‘beer’ in spanish”

“It wasn’t a waste because you learned four words in spanish” she says.

“You know what? I changed my mind because looking at this amazing place,I’m not going to order a beer that’s a bit boring” he says.

“Then what are you going to order?” Rosie asks.

Can I trust you? you choose, bring me something typical of this country, a drink and a dish...surprise me” he says changing his attitude less embarrassed.

“Okay,I’ll be right back” Rosie says going to the kitchen to ask the order of the boy who looks like an actor from Grease.

Meanwhile the boy focuses all his attention on each musician of the band and especially the talent of the percussionists and internally trying to understand the rhythm of the unknown music to him.

Rosie came back to the boy’s table with his order, “so I brought you a drink called ‘terremoto’ that in english means ‘earthquake’ and well, the name it’s kinda obvious”

The boy’s surprised “wow, not scared at all with the name, if I get drunk with one of these you have to call my friends”

She laughs at the exaggerated comment “trust me, you need at least three of those to get drunk but if you want I can bring you a ‘piscola’ that is only pisco with coca cola”

“Oh no no,I definitely want to try this, challenge accepted.And what about the dish? he says.

“Well I brought you my favorite that is called ‘pastel de choclo’ which consists…” she was interrupted.

By a ring’s cell phone but he didn’t answer when he saw the name so Rosie keeps talking but doesn’t concentrate because the cell phone starts to ring again so she says “you should answer, it could be your girlfriend or boyfriend”

“Oh it’s not my girlfriends, it’s my mom but I liked that comment #diversity�� he says.

“With more reason you should answer! that’s so rude” she answers.

“She has called me to tell me the same thing since I arrived south america and I told her that I’m going to ask for the person I’m trying to find” he says defending himself.

Rosie doesn’t want to look like a meddler but she likes to help people and also she was curious.

“If you need help I can help you to find this person, by the way my name is Rosie” she says offering her hand.

“Oh really? thank you! I’m Ashton and your name is cute” he takes her hand to shake. “Well my mom has been telling me to visit this bar because she knows one of the owners she met in Australia because this bar she told me that it’s here,Australia and other countries of South America” Ashton says.

“yeah I know, cool right? but there’s only one owner, the other two are partners that help the owner” she says.

“Got it,I’m trying to find Mario, if you could tell me if he’s here in this country or in one of the rest” he says hopefully.

“Mario?! your mom met Mario in Australia?! omg he’s actually here, I’m going to tell him” Rosie says surprised running to where her boss is sitting near the stage watching the band.

“Don’t dance today,Mario?” Rosie says softly to Mario.

Mario, an old man of 77 years old, his heart is bigger than the planet.A fan of football and sports in general, tango, journalism (the real one),loves drink mate and games and his family is his biggest treasure.

“Oh no darling, you know this old man doesn’t dance like before...what happened? I see you so exalted” Mario answers.

“Actually, someone is looking for you” she says.

“Oh I hope it’s not my friend Will again,I won fairly in our domino game” Rosie knew very well that Mario won most of the games because he cheated but she knew him enough so she just let him talk.Rosie helps Mario to stand up from his chair then she takes him by the arm.

When they arrive at the table where Ashton is, who was drinking and eating his order,Mario recognizes him immediately.

“Ashton?...” Mario asks with emotion walking slowly to the boy who stops drinking and eating to stand up and meet the old man.

“Yes sir, it’s me, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, my mother told me to visit your bar and look for you sir” Ashton says.

“How are you son? wait, let’s move to the bar to talk...Rosie takes the dishes to the bar please” Mario says.

All set in the bar, they keep talking.

“Wow I can’t believe how big you are” Mario says.

“What? my mom is the one who met you, not me” Ashton says confused.

“Oh no son,I did get to know you too, you were a few months old to remember.I’m going to sum it up...I’ve been a journalist all my life but I also dedicated my life to tango that’s why is my favorite when the band play it at the bar...the point is that when I dared to open this bar here, then I did it in Argentina, in Brazil was opened by my son who lives there and one in Australia was opened by my grandson who lives there too with his girlfriend, so they are my partners who run those bars, also in Australia and Europe are plenty of chilean people living there because they had to leave Chile during the dictatorship or other reasons...So when I went to Australia to the inauguration of the bar your mother visited the bar looking for a job and I hired her because she was going through difficult economic times and I could not help her knowing that she had a newborn son, you.That’s how I met you and your mother because I stayed a couple of months to be near my grandson” Mario says.

Ashton is speechless, he didn’t expect that story since his mother never told him but he’s grateful to find out now.

“Now all makes sense why the dish that Rosie brought me was familiar to me, there were days when my mom came from work with food from the bar to give it to me.And makes sense why she told me that if I found you to thank you and told me to have a good time at the bar because sir let me tell you the bar is fantastic” Ashton says.

“It was what I had to do, it was the correct thing to do and I hope to contact her again, the last thing I knew was that you were a drummer, you dedicated yourself to music” Mario says.

They say we’re way too young to get the job done.

Are we really too young to be having so much fun?

Rosie and Theo did 1+1.Australian, drummer, musician...they clicked on their mind and now they know why Ashton’s face was so familiar to them.

“Yes,I’m in a band, we just played today here and we have a few days off before traveling to Argentina” Ashton confirms.

Rosie carefully intrudes into the conversation.

“Mario you never told me this story or that you went to the opening in Australia” she says.

“I didn’t tell you because you don’t believe several of my stories” Mario points at her.

“Ah yes, the one when you assisted to an olympic games when Hitler was alive” she defends herself.

“Darling,I’m a sports journalist! I have proofs of that” Mario says.

Ashton is laughing at the conversation between the owner and the waitress. “wow sir everything is unbelievable,I suppose you know the rest of my family’s story so I can only thank you”

“Just call me Mario, son.Now, why don’t you cheer up and show us a little bit of your talent?” Mario says.

“I don’t want to bother, besides, the band is incredible” Ashton says.

“Don’t say that!, ‘Los Dominós’ will be more than happy to have you on stage and you can learn some south american music and let me tell you we have enough percussion instruments” Mario tries to convince him and Ashton accepted. “Rosie takes Ashton to the stage and tell the band, please”

“Okay, do you want me to help you to stand up and get close to the stage again?” Rosie asks but she was interrupted by Ashton.

“Oh let me help him, leave it to me” he says.Rosie mutters thanks to Ashton and she goes to the stage when the band finished playing the song they were playing, she speaks to the leader of the band, Pablo, who Mario always makes fun of him because he looks like Lenny Kravitz.

So Rosie told him the story and Pablo says “Of course he can! you know that we love to welcome people and meet colleagues”

Rosie waves at Ashton to take the stage while Ashton is leaving Mario in his chair.When she gets off the stage, she sits next to Mario to watch and enjoy the show.

Pablo greets Ashton “hi kiddo, so you are a musician too, eh? Is okay if I give you the bongos?”

“yes! hell yeah” Ashton answers.

“Okay, so I’ll show you the tempo of the next song” Pablo says.After Pablo shows Ashton the tempo he takes the microphone to introduce Ashton.

“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a special guest, a new friend, his name is Ashton who is also a musician, he comes from...Hey kiddo, where are you from?”

“I’m from Australia” Ashton answers.

“So everyone a round of applause for our australian friend! Enjoy the next song, groove!” When the song starts makes people immediately lose themselves again in the groove.

Ashton is little bit confused because this type of music is new for him so it takes him the first seconds to catch the rhythm with the bongos and goes along with the band.

He has a huge smile and feels so inspired seeing the atmosphere that is formed and the energy that people is radiating.

Ashton is watching them dancing, singing, having fun and clapping almost in slow motion, so he saves that moment in his mind to treasure it forever and get inspiration for maybe a next song for his band’s album, who knows?

People look so unworried as if every bad thing that each individual could be living was leave it outside the door of the bar and they just enjoy.

Ashton is almost overwhelmed by how kind everyone has been here and everything he found out, so far.

After two songs,Ashton gets off the stage but without first thanking the band, and ‘Los Dominós’ asks for a picture with him and Ashton tells them to tag him so later he can share it on instagram.

“That was amazing!” Mario and Rosie say at the same time which makes Ashton laugh.

“Thanks to you, that was so fun” Ashton says and he already was sweating, so he takes the sweat off his forehead.

Mario looks at his watch and makes a sign to the band.

“Okay, we have one more song left because the bar it’s going to close, enjoy it and see you tomorrow, goodnight!” Pablo says.

“Damn it’s almost midnight ,but I want to keep talking” Ashton says noticing that it’s close time.

“Stay all the time you want son, no problem.We leave when everything is clean so we have a couple of hours more” Mario says.

While Ashton was helping again Mario to go back to the bar to keep talking,Rosie and Theo don’t waste time to clean and order everything fast as they can.

“By the way, the food and the drink were delicious,I want a couple of everything here to eat in United States” Ashton says with a little laugh to Mario.

“Or you can buy the ingredients and cook them in United States, or you’ll have to come back” Mario says patting Ashton’s shoulder.

“Or you can open the bar in United States” Ashton says with a winner look.

“Good idea to be honest” Rosie screams from the kitchen and returning to the bar to talk.

“See,Rosie agrees with me, give me five” Ashton says while he and Rosie high five.”But to be serious,I’m going to come back Mario”

Mario laughs at the fast mutual understanding Ashton and Rosie have in less than 1 day like if they were friends for years. “Okay kids, if you let me I’m going to see if the chef is ready to close the kitchen,I’ll be right back”.

Rosie’s cell phone starts to ring that she receives a message, well actually more than one.

“Wow I think that your boyfriend or girlfriend is really trying to tell you something” Ashton takes Rosie’s words from before.

She just laughs noticing that,”It’s my best friend,Cami.I thought she was on a date with her boyfriend.And I don’t have a boyfriend, he broke up with me because I quit my career” Rosie says without taking her eyes off her phone’s screen.

“Such an asshole!” Ashton looks if Mario it’s not around because he said a bad word. “What did you study before? and you’re just working now?” he says with a curious face resting his elbows and interlacing his fingers.

“I studied architecture for one year and now I’m in my third year studying dance, what I really love and I work here” she says a little bit nervous because most of people don’t like the idea of her dancing studies.

“You are a dancer?! that’s so cool!” Ashton says excited like a kid.

“Not yet officially,I still have two semesters left but I already work with some national artists so yeah it’s cool” she says happy talking about what she loves.

“And why I didn’t see you dancing tonight?” Ashton says disappointed.

“Because I’m working as a waitress not as a dancer, duh.Trust me,I would have been dancing there but I need the money because my parents didn’t like the idea that I decide to be a dancer so I’m paying my career” she says with an attitude. “But don’t talk about me, that’s kinda boring.Let’s talk about you...with Theo we discovered who you are”

“Really? I thought that people didn’t notice when we arrived or left a place” Ashton says.

“I don’t know if you’re overreacting or being sarcastic” she laughs.

Now there is nobody left in the bar so Theo closes the door and puts the ‘close’ sign outside.

Mario is back in the conversation but with a smile as if he had an idea “So Ashton, you told me you have a few days off..” Ashtons nods at him. “What if Rosie makes you and your band a tour outside the capital, because I don’t think you prefer to stay in your hotel all the days, that is so boring”

Ashton interrupts him “Mario I don’t want to bother and also I think that Rosie has her own things to do”

“Yeah Mario, you told me to work tomorrow because Chris had his niece’s baptism and I have to cover his shift” she says.

“Don’t worry darling,I would call Theo and I’ll pay him more.And also you can go with Cami and go there where you like to go” Mario says to Rosie. “It’s a nice place with mountains, lakes, away from this pollution and it’s just a few minutes from here” now he’s talking to Ashton trying to convince him.

“Okay,I have to be honest, that sounds cool.I’ll go if you want of course” Ashton directs to Rosie.

“I’m in.Do you think your band would like the idea?” Rosie says to him.

“I go with you,I don’t care if they prefer to stay in the hotel” Ashton says.

They were interrupted by someone who knocks desperately at the door of the bar and Theo says in spanish “we’re closed!” but this person keeps knocking as this person didn’t what Theo said.

Mario gives Theo a gesture to open the door.That’s when a tanned boy with brown eyes and dark hair and moles on his face, he also seemed taken out from ‘Grease’ with his style, he was with a worried face.

“Calum? What are you doing here buddy?” Ashton says surprised to see his friend there.

The boy called Calum with relief “Ashton here you are! Thank God” he just keeps talking as if there were nobody else “Do you know what time it is? I went down to the hotel restaurant because I was hungry and I thought you were there when nobody answered in your room and your phone.And then the receptionist told me that you had asked about this place.We were worried with Michael and Luke”

“Calum breathe please” Ashton says gesturing to his friend with his hand to calm down. “I came to visit a family’s friend”

For the first time Calum return to Earth and notices that he wasn’t alone.He turns his head and the first person he saw is Rosie, he doesn’t even notice Mario and Theo so he thinks that Ashton went to visit this girl. Bowing to his friend he says “now I understand why you’ve been here for hours...God is a woman for sure”

He said that so fast that Ashton even when was gesturing with his hand to him to shut up, it was too late.”Calum they speak english too”

Calum throws a deadly look at Ashton and says ‘FUCK’ to himself.

Mario breaks the ice “Ashton came to visit me, my name is Mario and I’m Ashton family’s friend” with a protective position behind Rosie, Mario puts his hands on Rosie’s shoulders “and she’s my granddaughter”

“Your granddaughter?!” Ashtons says shocked and Calum doesn’t understand why his friend is so surprised. “Mario why didn’t you tell me? this is amazing”

“She’s like my partner in crime since she was born,I think that from me she got the passion for dancing, which makes me proud but at the same time I know that my daughter, her mother, doesn’t like the idea that now she is a dancer” Mario says looking at his granddaughter.

Calum is trying to understand everything because it’s too much information in less than 5 minutes.But now all his attention is in the girl in front of him and can’t believe that she is a dancer.

“If I had known that before,I would have asked for a dance tonight between grandfather and granddaughter” Ashton says with a pout and throwing hands to exaggerate.

“On another occasion” Mario says.

Rosie speaks for the first time since Calum goes into the bar “yeah,Mario is my grandfather and hi my name is Rosie” extending her hand to Calum, who is still ashamed but he takes her hand. “Ashton give me your number to coordinate about tomorrow”

“What? What is going to happen tomorrow?” Calum says confused.

“I will tell you at the hotel” Ashton says.

Rosie and Ashton exchange numbers.

“I’m going to call Cami to know if she is going tomorrow, she left a lot of messages” after a couple of seconds “She didn’t pick up her phone, maybe she’s busy”

“For sure she’s going to go tomorrow, she’s your partner in crime” Mario says calming her.

“Well I think we’re going back to the hotel because it’s late and Rosie when you can send me all the info for tomorrow” Ashtons points at her. “Mario thank you again for everything,I can tell by looking at your bar and what you have done for my family you are an important person in Chile and for the culture and the journalism.I’m going to be back here,I promise, now more that I know what you did for my family” Ashton says grateful.

Away from the rest Mario answers to Ashton “You’re always welcome here with your family, son.I’m glad to see the man you’ve become, have fun tomorrow and please take care of Rosie, she’s my only granddaughter who lives in this country”

“Don’t worry” they hug each other. “Okay Cal, let’s go...bye Mario,Rosie and Theo” and Calum says goodbye too.

Once outside the bar,Ashton and Calum walk back to the hotel in silence through the empty, slightly illuminated streets of the city.

In the elevator Calum speaks for the first time “that was embarrassing what I said, you could have warned me”

“I would, but I wasn’t expecting THAT reaction because you never react like that” Ashton defends himself. “I mean, that was very impulsive from you”

Calum’s left thinking about it, what his friend is telling him because Ashton is right.What makes him to react like that? Why now?

In another hand,Michael hears the elevator and goes into the hallway in search of his friends. And he can hear the last part of what Ashton said. “Hi guys, what was very impulsive?”

“Nothing” Calum says changing the topic of the conversation and leading to Luke’s room.And Michael looks at his friend muttering ‘what happened?’ and Ashton gestures him to keep walking.

The four of them reunited in Luke’s room,Ashton says “I have an offer for us”

That’s when Ashton tells about the bar, Mario, what he planned with Rosie and her friend.Everyone agrees to go and have fun.

Now is Michael who does 1+1 in his mind, “Oh so you were talking about this girl in the elevator”

“Yes,I made myself look like a creepy in front of this girl that Ashton met” Calum says a little bit pissed off.

Ashton told the story to his friends about Calum’s reaction when he saw Rosie.

Luke is laughing till the point he can’t breathe “GOD IS A WOMAN?! really Cal?”

Michael is surprised of his friend “wow Cal, that’s new”

“Yeah yeah, thanks for your support” Calum says with sarcasm. “Night y’all, see you tomorrow” But now in his room he doesn’t know why the situation keeps spinning in his head, because it wasn’t a big deal, or maybe it was? ‘I don’t know’ he says to himself.It doesn’t even matter because in a couple of days he’s never going to see this girl again.

Ashton goes to sleep after Rosie send to him all the information.

---

Finally Rosie is at her home, and her dog is the first one to receive her and of course because everyone was sleeping at that hour of the night.She’s tired walking upstairs to her room and she wasn’t expecting to see her best friend,Cami in her room with two spoons and a huge ice cream to share.Something happened because that was their thing to deal with sadness.

Cami, a young woman, a couple of months younger than Rosie, Cami has brown skin, dark brown hair and hazel eyes.She wasn’t fat, her body type was just thick and she loves that about her body.If she didn’t say that she’s chilean, people would think that she is caribbean because of her tanned skin and her braids (that Rosie always tells her that she should live with her natural hair because it’s so beautiful, but Cami was insecure about her afro)

Cami has a particular way to be that makes her so special and Rosie’s best friend.They always joke about that they were like opposite poles in relation of their physical aspects, it was because there is a chilean candy called ‘Tuyo’ that was part of the joke.

They were friends since they were 10 years old and they have in common their friendship, their sense of humor, their joy of enjoying life and future plans in common.

“Hi bestie, what happened? Ice cream alert?” Rosie says softly closing her bedroom door.

Cami can’t hold anymore the tears, she gives Rosie a spoon to start eat and talk. “Matty broke up with me”

“What? Why? When?” Rosie has too many questions.

“He said that he doesn’t have more time for our relation since he’s in university and that was all he cares about and also he said that my body changes since I gained weight” Cami cries.

“You wait me here,I’m going to his house and show him that nobody disrespect my best friend” now Rosie is walking out her room so furious ‘yo lo mato’ she thinks but before she can put her hoodie again her friend stops her.

“Can I stay here tonight? so we can cry, watch rom-coms and eat ice cream all night and the whole weekend”.  Cami says with a pout.

“Mmm the truth is that I have better plans for the weekend for us and I’m sure that this is going to make you feel better” Rosie says with a smirk.So she tells Cami about who is Ashton and what she planned with him and his band, and at the end she adds Calum’s comment when he saw her.

“Yas mami, you know that means he’s into you.So you better do your thing and your magic girl that you do with those eyes” Cami says hyping her best friend.

“You’re crazy,I’m not going to do anything.Besides they’re just going to be here a couple of days so that means I’m never going to see him again in my life except for Ashton because Mario made him part of the family already” Rosie says.

“I’m just saying, then you’re going to tell me ‘Cami you were right’.And you know why? because I’m always right, and you’re going to see again this boy” Cami says with her bossy attitude.

Rosie sends Ashton the info for tomorrow.

After the ice cream disappears,Rosie and Cami went to sleep even when Cami goes to sleep with a broken heart but Rosie knows that her plans are going to make her feel better.

…

In the morning Michael wakes up Calum and Calum lets him know that he looks like a little child and looks like he was injected with sugar.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

“After the disappointment of the Andrew Garfield-led Amazing Spider-Man movies, everyone’s favorite wallcrawler has been having a renaissance. Entering the Marvel cinematic universe in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, the webslinger fully redeemed himself with well-crafted live-action film in Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

 Yes...okay...that was definitely what Homecoming was....

 “and a wildly successful spin-off film Venom, ”

 I mean financially successful sure...

 “In the midst of all his success, Spider-Man has quietly become one of the most inclusive and socially conscious superheroes of today.”

*raises eyebrow*

 Okay...go on...

 “Last week, it was announced that Spider-Man: Far From Home would feature two out transgender actors playing trans characters, the first big-budget superhero film to do so. Spider-Man: Homecoming also featured a queer character, as well as numerous people of color.”

  Wait who was the queer character in Homecoming?

 “It’s also worth mentioning that Spiderverse included a Jewish version of Peter Parker, who is typically portrayed as either secular or Christian.”

 ....ehhhhhhhhh....yes and no.

 In media adaptations barring maybe one (the 1994 show cos I do not remember where he got married) Spider-Man is portrayed as...I guess secular but really it’s more that they just don’t say anything.

 It’s not that the character is not a believer in a faith per se, especially if you go by older adaptations during times when hardly anyone was secular. It’s just that they, understandably, aren’t saying anything.

 In the comics Peter is some kind of Christian but probably a Protestant (unless you go by Amazing Grace where he is an atheist but that’s hot trash we don’t talk about) but we don’t really talk about it that specifically.

 We just know that he and his family celebrate Christmas and very, very occasionally Aunt May references going to church and that she, Peter and MJ believe in a monothetistic deity they refer to as ‘God’.

 And really apart from the Church thing there is no clue to Peter’s religion and Marvel probably (wisely) would rather keep it that way. He even got married in a civil ceremony!

 However in the SUBTEXT...he’s Jewish. And it’s basically an open secret that he is and always has been Jewish.

 “The Spider-Man video game also featured a wonderful easter egg for queer fans by having a giant rainbow flag, as well as several smaller ones, scattered around the game’s fictionalized New York City map. ”

 I mean that’s wonderful but I wouldn’t call that an Easter Egg so much as...it’s just what you’d find in modern NYC.

 “Even the Venom film got in on the fun, with fans shipping Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and the titular male alien-symbiote after the two kissed in the film. Sony even encouraged the pairing, releasing a romantic comedy-esque trailer for the film to promote the home release. While some complained of queer-baiting, most felt that it was all in good fun and included queer people in on the joke, instead of making us the target.”

 Again, good for them but I don’t think that was the movie actively trying to be positive towards queer people.

 Brock and Venom kissed when Venom was bonded to Brock’s ex-fiance and had a pronounced female form, being an adaptation of a character literally called She-Venom.

 And it was based upon a script written in the 1990s so really it was more the movie did it and then people took it as a thing that was shipping Venom and Brock (even though Venom is sexless). Brock and the symbiote have been shipped numerous times in the comics but the subtext has always been that the symbiote, if any sex, is female. In the Spec cartoon it is referred to as Symbi (a pun on Cyndi) and in the Spider-Girl comics it is marked out as female (granted this happens after it’s bonded to a woman).

 And again, headcanon away but like...that probably wasn’t intentional at all Sony were just being goofy or unintionally made something people took a certain way.

 “Indeed, even in the comics, Spider-Man has always been a fairly inclusive hero. Miles Morales was introduced in the early-2000s, taking over the mantel from Peter Parker for several years. ”

 Okay, this is so weird for me to be correcting such a praising point but lets really look at this.

 First of all Miles didn’t take over Peter’s role for several years he did it permanently.

 Second of all Miles is from 2011 so that’s not the early 2000s, that’s the early 2010s, but okay maybe that was a typo.

 Third of all, is it really all that logical to say this franchise that began in 1962 has always been fairly inclusive and then cite a character from 2011 as proof of this? Wouldn’t examples from during the FIRST quarter century have been more apt?

 Fourth of all...eh. Has Spider-Man been fairly inclusive from the start? Yes, no, its complicated.

 Look there were exactly 0 LGBTQ+ characters in Spider-Man until maybe the 1990s and even then I couldn’t off my head tell you who they were. Felicia Hardy is bisexual but we didn’t find out until the 2000s and it was most prominent in an AU. Really the most significant LGBTQ+ character who’s had the fact that they are queer be more than a one off reference was Max Modell and he debuted 2011 and IIRC wasn’t established as queer until 2012. In defence of Spider-Man the Comics Code literally FORBID any character be anything other than straight until the 1990s and even then it was relatively rare, even in X-Men which you’d think it wouldn’t be.

 If we’re talking POC again this one is a bit complicated Glori Grant, Joe Robertson, Randy Robertson are frequently appearing POC characters but not in every run and they aren’t usually as prominent as like Jameson, Aunt May, Harry Osborn, MJ, etc. Characters of other ethnicities are even less frequent and I don’t even know what we should make of Puma/Thomas Fireheart. I mean A for effort, they wanted a Native American character who wasn’t really a villain and wasn’t exactly a sterotype so there is that I guess.

 Again though...most other Marvel franchises decade by decade weren’t much better with this and we should give credit where credit is due to the same guy who created Black Panther writing a nuanced scene where 2 black people in the 60s separated by age discuss different approaches to civil rights with neither being proven right or wrong.

 When it comes to disabled people, outside of evil insane villains, forget it, there is nothing before Flash Thompson in 2008 unless you count Aunt May’s chronically poor health.

 “Spider-Gwen quickly became one of the highest-selling female superhero comics. Spider-Woman was a prominently featured bisexual character, and the female Asian-American hero Silk also had LGBT supporting characters, Rafferty and Lola, who were in a healthy relationship. Additionally, many view vampire villain Morbius, who is getting a spin-off film starring Jared Leto next year, as a metaphor for those suffering during the HIV crisis of the '80s. ”

 Again...Spider-Gwen and Silk are 2010s characters so that’s not ‘always fairly inclusive’.

 I don’t even know if Jessica Drew is bisexual, I’ve never heard that but I don’t think she is.

 Morbius as a metaphor for HIV...MIGHT be true if we are specifically talking about his 1990s solo-book which I’ve never read. But the character as originally created 100% was never about that because he was created in the 1970s before HIV was known about.

 “Unlike his Marvel counterparts Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, Spider-Man’s world has accurately reflected real world diversity for years.”

 ....Not really.

 I’m not even saying Spidey maybe haven’t been comparatively better at it than those guys but he’s deffo not been accurate.

 Plus to be fair to the other guys, Captain America and Iron Man have had at least one major black supporting cast member and in Cap’s case he was fairly candid about social strife and issues.

 And with Thor it’s not that fair to throw shade at him for not reflecting the real world given that 90% of this characters and stories are literally pulled from fantasy and myth. I don’t even know if there are any queer figures in Norse myth let alone poc.

 “While it’s a seemingly simple idea that any of us can be a superhero, it’s sadly still a radical concept in a endlessly growing film genre that has predominetly centers straight cisgender white men. ”

 Well that’s mostly because the comics the movies adapt are about those types of people.

 “That is because relatability and inclusion has always been core to Spider-Man’s appeal and message. It’s why the late Stan Lee decided that, unlike other superheroes who expose parts of their faces, Spider-Man had to wear a full-face mask.”

  Stan Lee only speculated that that was part of Spider-Man’s appeal, he never had any input on that design choice it was all Steve Ditko...who frankly was unlikely to have been thinking about that...

 “Even further, Spider-Man isn’t the king of a country, a billionaire, a woman out of a Greek myth, or a brilliant scientist. He’s just an average high-school kid from Brooklyn who always strives to do the right thing even while struggling to balance his everyday life and hiding a secret identity.”

 WHOA there buddy...Spider-Man isn’t routinely ‘a kid’ nor is he from Brooklyn.

 MILES is from Brooklyn but Peter, as evidenced by that great big caption in Captain America: Civil War, is from QUEENS.

 “And it’s the idea of balancing a secret identity with everyday life that has always allowed Spider-Man to connect with queer audiences long before comic writers were allowed to explicitly include LGBT characters.”

 ...I’m not denying this necesarrilly but whilst i’ve heard stories from poc who connected with Spider-Man I’ve never heard this about LGBTQ+ fans of Spider-Man.

“Indeed, perhaps the strongest part of Spider-Man’s inclusivity is the subtlety to which it has been done. While Black Panther, Black Lightning, and Wonder Woman rightly put issues of identity front and center, Spider-Man’s quiet diversity allows audiences who typically cry “SJWs are ruining my favorite characters” to actually see diversity showcased without it being overt.”

 Errrrrrr...sure....*represses memories of when Miles Morales was first announced*

 Lets um...wait and see what happens when those trans characters show up in the movie this year okay.

[feynavaley]

K, T, and U :)

Thank you so much for the questions! 😊(list here)

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

Well… I’m not really good at angst because, while I like to make my characters suffer, I also like to end on a hopeful/positive note. So, the angst is never too bad. 😅

That said, I guess the worst idea I toyed with was a story set in a war scenario, where the opposing forces (the humans on that side, actually) are trying to capture America to cripple the nation’s military power. (Not knowing that personifications aren’t actually vital at all to a nation’s military.) After an ambush that leaves America unconscious and Canada injured, Canada, believing to be less important than America, swaps their uniforms and leads their captors on a chase away from America. Due to his injuries, Canada is eventually captured. Afterwards, Canada is tortured for information as he’s believed to be America, while America cannot divert all his energies to finding and rescuing Canada because he still has his duty and people to think of. This leaves him feeling torn and guilty. In the meantime, Canada’s captors discover his true identity and stop the interrogation but not the torture, using him instead for some experiments on personifications’ physiology (their healing and immortality). America eventually finds out where Canada is being held. Seeing the condition Canada is in, he gives himself up in exchange for Canada – but their enemies don’t keep their words and keep both of them. Canada gets tortured in front of him to convince America to spill information he doesn’t even have (even in canon, America isn’t privy to all the decisions of his government) and he couldn’t give anyway, because his people are more important than a personification who cannot even be killed and will eventually recover, no matter how much he’s tortured. Canada can still feel pain, however, so it’s horrible for America. On the other hand, Canada feels like he’s too weak and worthless because he didn’t manage to escape on his own, which lead to America being put in danger (and basically nullified Canada’s initial sacrifice) and suffering by witnessing Canada being tortured. America and Canada would manage to break free, of course, (courtesy of America, mostly) but the rest of the story would deal with the struggles both of them face recovering from such a traumatic experience, with a lot of difficulties and setbacks. I don’t actually think I will write it, though – I’m afraid I would end up not being able to deal with such heavy themes in a satisfactory way, and I don’t want to make light of them.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

Ohh boy that’s a heavy one. There’s a lot of stuff that really gets on my nerves on the long run, haha.

Before I write my answer, however, I want to specify that these are just my personal preferences. I’m writing them down because that’s what I have been asked – but I would never dream of dictating what other people can or cannot do. If I don’t like something, I just avoid reading it and keep quiet, I would never complain to the author about it. These are just very personal opinions of mine.

I have already talked about it [x] [x] so I won’t dwell too much on this, but I really don’t like how many people turn Canada into an edgy asshole. Why can’t nice characters just be nice?

I also hate when people behave like it’s canon that Canada is a stoner, when it’s not. In canon, he consumed marijuana exactly once, and his reaction and strong embarrassment afterwards hint that he strongly regretted it. I really don’t think he ever repeated the experience. (Not to mention how being a stoner would clash with his sensible, hard-working, and selfless personality.)

I don’t understand why people take the few times America displayed some insecurities as undeniable proof that the other 99% of the time he was positive and confident was all fake, and he actually has major depression issues and no self-esteem at all. I mean… people can be more complex than that. Why should all be fake? A person with a healthy self-esteem can still have some insecurities – and some moments of insecurity don’t mean that a generally positive attitude is completely fake (actually, even people with major self-esteem issues can retain a positive attitude – see Canada – so I think this last part is even more of a stretch). Of course, it is a possible interpretation, but it irks me when people claim it’s the only right one. Actually, I think that being so overconfident yet well-meaning and, in particular, always able to keep a positive outlook, is what makes America such an endearing character.

This is a very small pet-peeve – but in canon, there’s no FACE family. Not in colonial times, especially. So, I’m always a bit baffled when people write France and England living with America and Canada like a small, happy family in colonial times and consider it canon instead of the AU/canon-divergence it actually is.

Always about America and Canada, I don’t dig the ‘America and Canada are the children of Native America’ interpretation. First of all, why would there be a single personification of Native America? I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there should be different personifications for the different peoples of Native Americans… Moreover, whether you consider it rightful or not (I’m not discussing this, but the canon portrayal) I think it’s pretty clear Himaruya wrote America and Canada as initially representing the cultural and political establishment of the coloners in North America… that, as far as I know, didn’t really have strong ties with the indigenous populations. That’s why America and Canada look Caucasian – and why it makes sense for them to be, too. Now, they represent all the different peoples in their countries and there is a lot of diversity, but they were born representing a much smaller (and less diverse) group so those were the features and ethnicity they mirrored. 

Romano being part of the mafia. a) This statement goes against canon; b) Maybe I’m oversensitive, but considering the personification of South Italy as siding with the mafia for shit and giggles feels really disrespectful to all the people of South Italy who are struggling to fight against mafia – who died fighting it.

People making everything about shipping and acting as if the slightest indication of two characters caring about each other is an undeniable proof of a romantic attraction. Don’t get me wrong, this is something you can build a romance from – but people caring for each other doesn’t necessarily mean it’s romantic. Most times, it’s not even a hint, actually.

Aand I should probably stop talking or I’ll get too salty over stuff I have no business being salty about in the first place, haha. 😅

U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

That’s a nice one! Allow me to ramble a bit, because there are some truly amazing writers who have inspired me a lot and deserve all the credit they can get. 😊

@mandelene – Her writing is just fantastic. It isn’t only about the plot and characterization (which I should mention is phenomenal, too – she always paints complex and realistic characters), but also the structural aspects of the writing are incredible. The pacing is always perfect, and she strikes an excellent balance between keeping her style simple and making the story immersive – she uses just the right amount of details to let you get into the story and convey (very well) the characters’ emotions, but not become long-winded. And the phrasing and choice of words is meticulous. Just a pleasure to read. 

Emperor Kumquat – She wrote some of my favourite long fics ever. Her characterization is intriguing and well-thought and researched, and it’s also very coherent through the story. The character arcs are built naturally, you can really feel them grow. Also, her plots are something incredible. They are original and interesting, but there’s also a meticulous foreshadowing and attention to details that really pays off. As the plot unravels, you start putting everything together and seemingly random events and words get a new meaning. They are incredible reads.

Azumizai – She wrote some of the first fics I read for Hetalia (years after they were published, though), and centred on Canada in a way I really love. It’s a lot of fluff and hurt/comfort but there’s also an interesting plot and take on the characters. I think her fics were the ones that actually drove me to try writing for Hetalia.

[arcticdementor]

Thread: I was sent this and felt the need to thread it here on Twitter. It will be long. It is purported to be an anonymous, open letter from a professor at UK Berkeley in the History Department. The only comment I will make is to say it is worth every moment of the read.

C Berkeley History Professor's Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy

Dear profs X, Y, Z

I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them.

In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders.

Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

…

A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email.

Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates' undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department's apparent desire to shoulder the 'white man's burden' and to promote a narrative of white guilt.

If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it's fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. "Those are racist dogwhistles". "The model minority myth is white supremacist". "Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime", ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.

Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number.

…

The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.

Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is.

No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders.

Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald's and Wal-Mart.

For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.

…

Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run. Minneapolis itself has been entirely in the hands of Democrats for over five decades; the 'systemic racism' there was built by successive Democrat administrations.

…

Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.

MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?

As a final point, our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach.

He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors.

And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I'm ashamed of my department. I would say that I'm ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It's hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job.

It shouldn't affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race.

The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating.

No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.

No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

This week’s poll

Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently captured headlines in her “60 Minutes” interview when she said the U.S. should raise taxes on a portion of the income made by America’s top earners; the idea is that once a person had made at least $10 million in a single year, every dollar coming in after that would be taxed at a rate of up to 70 percent. Many have dismissed the idea, saying it would be too radical and would damage the economy. But the Democratic representative from New York might have hit on something voters want.

A new poll from The Hill and Harris X found that 59 percent of registered voters supported imposing a 70 percent tax rate on every dollar over the 10 millionth a person earns in a year. (Tax rates that apply only to income over a certain threshold are called marginal tax rates.) The idea even received bipartisan support: 71 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 45 percent of Republicans said they were in favor. In contrast, the Republican overhaul of the tax law that President Trump signed in 2017 — which decreased the marginal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent on married couples earning over $600,000 — has far less public support. A September Gallup poll found that only 39 percent of Americans approved of it.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Americans would support higher taxes on top earners given that tax rates on high income brackets were once much higher than they are today. The top marginal tax rate was as high as 94 percent in the 1940s, and throughout the 1970s, Americans in the top income bracket (which in 1970 was $200,000 and above, or about $1.3 million in today’s money) were taxed at a 70 percent rate, according to the Tax Policy Center. It wasn’t until 1981, when Congress and President Ronald Reagan implemented one of the largest tax cuts since World War II, that the top marginal tax rate fell to 50 percent. Over the course of Reagan’s term, tax reforms eventually cut the top marginal tax rate down to 28 percent.

Wanting the wealthy to pay more in taxes isn’t a new idea to American politics either. According to a Gallup poll from 2016, since 1992, Americans have largely felt that upper-income earners don’t pay enough in taxes. For the last quarter century, a majority of Americans — between 55 percent and 77 percent — have believed that top earners pay too little. And a 2017 Ipsos/Reuters poll found that 3 in 4 Americans said that wealthier Americans should pay more in taxes.

Ocasio-Cortez has not made any official policy proposal for a higher marginal tax rate, but she is already shaping the national conversation on economic policy ahead of the 2020 elections. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, who recently announced a presidential run, has already endorsed Ocasio-Cortez’s tax hike proposal in an interview with ABC News. And while it’s still too early to know for sure, 2020 Democratic hopefuls looking to appeal to The Left may soon follow suit.

Other polling nuggets

The polling news of the week continues to be the ongoing partial government shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history. On Wednesday, 49 percent of registered voters said in a Morning Consult/Politico survey that they blamed Trump for the shutdown. That number falls largely in line with four other polls FiveThirtyEight looked at this week, which showed that a plurality — if not a majority — of Americans hold Trump most responsible for the shutdown.

A NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll suggests President Trump could face a tough re-election bid in 2020: 57 percent of registered voters said they definitely plan to vote against Trump, while only 30 percent said they definitely plan to vote for him.

A CNN poll found that President Trump has lost ground among white voters without a college degree, who are arguably his most loyal supporters, during the government shutdown. A January poll found that 45 percent approved of his job as president, a 9-point drop from a month before, when the government had not yet shut down.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has become more popular with voters since the 2018 election. Thirty-five percent of Americans said they have a favorable view of her in the most recent poll from Civiqs, a polling firm associated with the pro-Democrat site Daily Kos. That marks a significant improvement from Election Day, when just 27 percent of voters had a favorable opinion of her.

29 percent of Americans said “the government/poor leadership” is now the most important problem facing the country, according to a new Gallup poll. This is a 10-point increase from when Gallup last asked the question in December. Immigration was deemed the second most important problem at 21 percent, up 5 points from December.

Nearly 3 in 5 Americans oppose expanding the U.S.-Mexico border wall, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Opinions haven’t changed much from a year ago, but the data suggests that the issue has become even more partisan. Now, 82 percent of Republicans support building the wall, a 10-point increase from last year. And the share of Democrats who support building a wall has dropped from 13 percent to 6 percent.

After news broke last week that in May of 2017, the FBI had opened a case looking into whether Trump was working on behalf of the Russian government, an Economist/YouGov poll found that 36 percent of Americans believed that he had, in fact, been working for the Russian government. Another 36 did not believe that to be the case, while 28 percent were unsure.

About 3 in 4 Americans in a Pew Research Center survey didn’t know Facebook used their personal information to target ads. Fifty-one percent said that after reviewing their “ad preferences” page, they felt uncomfortable about the information Facebook had collected.

Pew Research Center also released a study that found that the political views of generation Z (age 13 to 21) are very similar to those of millennials. Like millennials, they are less likely to approve of Trump (30 percent) than older generations, more likely to say the government should play a bigger role in public life (70 percent), and more likely to say that increased racial and ethnic diversity is a good thing in society (62 percent). Another sign that Gen Zers might be more liberal — 35 percent said they personally know someone who prefers being referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. A quarter of millennials said the same. Fewer people in older generations knew someone who used gender-neutral pronouns: 16 percent of Gen Xers did, as did 12 percent of Boomers and 7 percent of Silents.

  Trump approval

According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 40.2 percent of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 55.0 percent disapprove (a net approval rating of -14.8 points). That’s almost a 2-point drop from one week ago when, 41.0 percent of Americans approved and 53.9 percent disapproved of the president (a net approval rating of -12.9 points). And his net approval rating has dropped significantly from one month ago, when he had an approval rating of 42.2 percent and a disapproval rating of 52.4 percent, for a net approval rating of -10.2 points.