#Countering Racism with Justice

[slaveryemembranceday]

Creating Global Freedom: Countering Racism with Justice in Societies and Among Nations.

For four hundred years, enslaved Africans fought for their freedom, while colonial powers and others committed horrific crimes against them.

On the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, we remember and honour the millions of Africans who were trafficked and enslaved.

Their lives were ruled by terror, as they endured rape, floggings, lynchings and other atrocities and humiliations.

Many of those who organized and ran the Transatlantic slave trade amassed huge fortunes. Meanwhile, the enslaved were deprived of education, healthcare, opportunity, and prosperity.

This laid the foundations for a violent discrimination system based on white supremacy that still echoes today.

Descendants of enslaved Africans and people of African descent are still fighting for equal rights and freedoms around the world.

Today and every day, we reject the legacy of this horrific crime against humanity.

We call for reparatory justice frameworks, to help overcome generations of exclusion and discrimination.

We appeal for the space and necessary conditions for healing, repair and justice.

And above all, we resolve to work for a world free from racism, discrimination, bigotry and hate.

Together, as we remember the victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, let’s unite for human rights, dignity and opportunity for all.

[alwaysbewoke]

A federal judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X that had targeted a watchdog group for its critical reports about hate speech on the social media platform. In a blistering 52-page order, the judge blasted X’s case as plainly punitive rather than about protecting the platform’s security and legal rights. “Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation,” wrote District Judge Charles Breyer, of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in the order’s opening lines. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose.” “This case represents the latter circumstance,” Breyer continued. “This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.” X’s lawsuit had accused the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of violating the company’s terms of service when it studied, and then wrote about, hate speech on the platform following Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October 2022. X has blamed CCDH’s reports, which showcase the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, for amplifying brand safety concerns and driving advertisers away from the site. In the suit, X claimed that it had suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages from CCDH’s publications. CCDH is an international non-profit with offices in the UK and US. Because of its potential to destroy the watchdog group, the case has been widely viewed as a bellwether for research and accountability on X as Musk has welcomed back prominent white supremacists and others to the platform who had previously been suspended when the platform was still a publicly-traded company called Twitter.

[txttletale]

what do you think of "extremism". i see it used often in the context of like, horseshoe theory, the "extreme" right is like the "extreme" left, or at least the two sides of the same coin, and i do have to wonder if that's not obscuring what's actually happening to profit a "both sides" narrative.

like for example, i think that right-wingers becoming "extreme" is simply a natural conclusion of their ideology. tbc i don't think that becoming, like, a fascist isn't "extreme", but whenever i see the word "extremism" used in this context the implication is "passed the tolerable threshold for bigotry" even tho i think that any kind of sustained bigotry was just going to turn into that anyways.

meanwhile for the left, i can actually sort of see an argument for that being the case, but most cases of "extremism" there usually seem to be fundamental misunderstandings in the ideology they're pushing for which leads to blind dogmatism rather than actual social-political analysis and activism, if that makes sense. i don't know if that counts as "taking it too far", which extremism would imply.

what do you think?

'extremism', much like 'totalitarianism', is an obfuscatory tactic to delegitimize radical positions by posting a false equivalency to fascism, racism, &c.

furthermore, because what makes a position 'extreme' or 'not extreme' is of course profoundly contingent on the status quo, the broad and nebulous concept is similarly used as a repressive cudgel against all dissent and the existence of marginalized communities. for example, prevent (the uk's "counter-extremism" program) is basically just a vector for state-sponsored islamophobic harrassment. in fact, the uk government has recently unveiled plans to use broad and far-reaching charges of 'extremism' against any group or ideology that 'undermines the uk's institutions and values' (!)

so, yeah. i don't think that the concept of 'extremism' has any value outside of that paradigm of proscribing acceptable relations to the status quo & power and tarring socialist, anti-imperialist, and social justice causes with the brush of some unspecified equivalency to fascism and hate groups. silly concept for unserious people

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

“Their intentions aren’t exactly a secret. Government programs that attempt to redress decades of racist policies would be eliminated should Trump be elected to a second term. “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated,” Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told the news outlet.

A top Biden campaign official said Black voters needed to pay close attention to Trump’s plans.

Trump is “making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy, gutting programs that give communities of color economic opportunities and making the lives of Black and brown folks harder,” said former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), one of the co-chairs of the Biden campaign. “It’s up to us to stop him.”

The warning comes as polling shows Biden’s level of support from Black voters has slipped. Democratic strategists have some fear about GOP plans to target Black men in the coming election. And they have major fears Black voters could stay home or vote for third-party candidates. Highlighting Trump and Miller’s plans could raise the stakes of the election for Black voters.

Miller, who pushed white nationalism and xenophobia in leaked emails, is at the heart of the effort. America First Legal, the right-wing nonprofit group Miller founded, has filed over a hundred lawsuits against “woke” corporations — like Disney, Mattel and Nike — that it alleges discriminate against white men. These complaints — many of which cite the 1964 Civil Rights Act — are laying the legal framework for Trump’s Justice Department to eliminate programs designed to counter racism, Axios notes.

Jasmine Harris, director of Black media for the Biden-Harris campaign, said the report should worry Black Americans.

“This report, in addition to all of the recent examples of shameless racism by Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans, serves as a warning to Black America: Donald Trump is a selfish and vindictive man who doesn’t give a damn about Black people,” Harris told HuffPost. “He will make our lives worse by using the very laws that the pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement fought for, against us.”

Miller’s group is not alone in the effort to roll back DEI initiatives.

The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025, a sweeping playbook that lists policies and initiatives for the next conservative administration. The initiative is open about its goal to reshape the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. One of the mandates within the playbook is to “reorganize and refocus the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to serve as the vanguard for this return to lawfulness.”

Trump has affirmed to supporters that he aims make good on his promise to eliminate DEI. “We will terminate every diversity, equity and inclusion program across the entire federal government,” he told a crowd in Rochester, New Hampshire, in January.”

[emily84]

watch the language shift. forget about everything else for a minute, just focus on the language shift. i'm talking about the progressive left who came out to support israel, i mean.

i am speaking about people who are politically conscious and have critical thinking skills and follow the news and get involved in anti-racism, queer rights, what have you, and are also pro-israel. over here on tumblr and on social media and in the news, at the beginning of the israeli "counter-offensive", they started out by explaining why it was justified etc., by immediately stating that israel has a right to defend itself and why, etc. which, i guess, fair, in alignment with their position, all cool.

and then as the days turned to weeks and there were attacks on hospitals and refugee camps and images coming out of the "war zone" etc. but most importantly we watched the palestinian death toll turn to the thousands and then break the tens of thousands, with photos of neighborhoods turned into ghost graveyards, and suddenly pro-israel peeps (again, i am talking about ppl who know their stuff, who are progressive and interested in social justice) started prefacing every post or statement with "we empathize with the innocent palestinians, but" or "we don't hate the palestinians but" or "we pray for all innocent lives but", and then continue on spouting their opinion unhindered

but they do add that bit now.

so they know.

consciously or unconsciously, they know this shit it indifensible. they do feel that cognitive dissonance, at the disproportionate and indiscriminate israeli response. they're progressive, and they care about social justice, and they know how to interpret the news and the numbers. and then, i guess, they justify it by reinforcing the guiltiness of hamas (which i am not disputing, btw). in pro-israel rallies, they say "of course we feel for civilian palestinians who reject hamas but" or "we are all praying for the safety of innocent civilians. But",

and then it's always "but all of them actually voted for hamas" (even though that's not true), "but they were told to leave why are they still there", or "but they are probably all anti-semitic and hate queer people", or "a ceasefire would be bad actually".

but they do add that bit beforehand.

they know, as people who are politically and socially conscious, that if they don't add that bit, that their conscience would call them liars. even those who genuinely don't care about palestinian lives add that, because they realize how inhumane (and dehumanizing) it would sound if they didn't.

[odinsblog]

On August 27, 1960, a significant event unfolded in Jacksonville, Florida. Rodney Hurst, the 16-year-old President of the NAACP Youth Council, along with numerous fellow activists, organized a peaceful sit-in protest at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter marked for "whites only." Prior to this, the Youth Council had successfully conducted peaceful sit-ins at various prominent lunch counters, including Morrison's Cafeteria, throughout the month.

However, on this particular Saturday, the peaceful demonstration took a violent turn. A mob of over 200 white individuals armed with baseball bats and ax handles attacked the young Black demonstrators. The violence erupted when onlookers, angered by the protest, began spitting on the sit-in participants and hurling racial slurs at them. Despite the provocations, the Black demonstrators remained steadfast and continued their peaceful sit-in.

In response, the white mob escalated the violence, brutally beating the demonstrators with wooden ax handles and baseball bats. The attack spilled onto the streets of downtown Jacksonville, where innocent Black individuals became targets of the indiscriminate violence. Reports indicate that the Ku Klux Klan orchestrated the attack, which resulted in over 50 people sustaining injuries.

This event, known as "Ax Handle Saturday," stands as a chilling reminder of the pervasive racism and violence faced by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. The bravery and resilience displayed by the young Black activists, who peacefully protested against segregation and white supremacy, is a testament to their unwavering commitment to justice and equality in the face of brutal opposition—Never forget! (source)

[mariacallous]

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, close allies want to dramatically change the government's interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on "anti-white racism" rather than discrimination against people of color.

Why it matters: Trump's Justice Department would push to eliminate or upend programs in government and corporate America that are designed to counter racism that has favored whites.

Targets would range from decades-old policies aimed at giving minorities economic opportunities, to more recent programs that began in response to the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Axios: "As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to Biden's un-American policy will be immediately terminated."

Driving the news: Longtime aides and allies preparing for a potential second Trump administration have been laying legal groundwork with a flurry of lawsuits and legal complaints — some of which have been successful.

A central vehicle for the effort has been America First Legal, founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, who has called the group conservatives' "long-awaited answer to the ACLU."

America First cited the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in February in a lawsuit against CBS and Paramount Global for what the group argued was discrimination against a white, straight man who was a writer for the show "Seal Team" in 2017.

In February, the group filed a civil rights complaint against the NFL over its "Rooney Rule."

The rule — named for Dan Rooney, late owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers — was instituted in 2003 and expanded in 2022. It requires NFL teams to interview at least two minority candidates for vacant general manager, head coach and coordinator positions.

American First argued that "given the limited time frame to hire executives and coaches after the season, this results in fewer opportunities for similarly situated, well-qualified candidates who are not minorities."

In 2021, Miller's group successfully sued to block the implementation of a $29 billion pandemic-era program for women- and minority-owned restaurants, saying it discriminated against white-owned businesses.

"This ruling is the first, but crucial, step towards ending government-sponsored racial discrimination," Miller said then.

Zoom in: Other Trump-aligned groups are preparing for a future Trump Justice Department to implement — or challenge — policies on a broader scale.

The Heritage Foundation's well-funded "Project 2025" envisions a second Trump administration ending what it calls "affirmative discrimination."

Part of the plan, written by former Trump Justice Department official Gene Hamilton, argues that "advancing the interests of certain segments of American society ... comes at the expense of other Americans — and in nearly all cases violates longstanding federal law."

Hamilton is America First Legal's general counsel.

Such groups have gained momentum with the Supreme Court's turn to the right — most notably its recent rejection of affirmative action in college admissions. The court ruled that programs designed to benefit people of color and address past injustices discriminate against white and Asian Americans.

In 2021, a federal judge blocked a $4 billion program to help Black farmers.

Earlier this month, another federal judge ruled that the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency was discriminating against white people and that the program had to be open to everyone.

What they're saying: The Trump campaign directed Axios to the candidate's already stated positions bashing Biden's policies promoting equity.

"Every institution in America is under attack from this Marxist concept of 'equity,' " Trump said in 2023. "I will get this extremism out of the White House, out of the military, out of the Justice Department, and out of our government."

The Trump campaign's Steven Cheung added: "President Trump is committed to weeding out discriminatory programs and racist ideology across the federal government."

The NFL and Miller declined to comment. CBS didn't respond to a request for comment.

Between the lines: A CBS poll last November found that 58% of Trump voters believe that people of color were advantaged over white people — just 9% of Biden voters said the same.

Polls also show, however, that Trump is gaining support among Black and Latino voters.

Zoom out: Trump has portrayed himself as the victim of racism amid his legal troubles.

He repeatedly has said Black women prosecutors in Georgia and New York are "racist."

His political career really began in 2011 as the chief Birther-agitator, questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to be president.

When Trump jumped into the presidential race in 2015, he accused Mexico of dumping criminals and rapists into the U.S.

[reasonandempathy]

Looking on from abroad, I don't like any of the recent rulings by SCOTUS ideologically, but they're also clearly correct. The constitution is not in line with liberal or leftwing values. Like I'm not saying "thus these values should not be pursued", but the court's role is to say what the constitution says; and the constitution says "fuck the poor" etc.

They're not though. Before getting into it you need to be aware that there are proper and improper procedures for how these things are done. It makes sense, because otherwise the Supreme Court could pro-actively dictate what the law is and isn't, as you understand.

There have to be cases brought to them, there need to be parties to that case, etc. Does this make sense?

With that said, a brief line about why the recent rulings are actually incorrect.

Dobbs v Jackson (Overturning Roe v Wade) - Arguably the most defensible ruling, it still flies in the face on 50 years of legal precedent, the rulings stand in exact opposition to sworn testimony of many of the judges, and it's still wildly ideologically driven. They were put on that bench to overrule Roe and they took the opportunity to do so.

Biden v Nebraska (No student debt relief) - The Heroes act, which was the law at question, gave the secretary of education the ability to modify or waive parts of the law. The majority opinion is very much a "you're right by what the law says, but it looks wrong to us." They rooted a lot of their ruling on "There's no way that Congress wanted this" despite the heroes act explicitly being for the relief of educational debt during times of national crisis.

Stewart (Gay Web Design) - There is no case. On top of the fact that this is explicitly counter to the entirety of existing civil rights law, precedent, and theory, the web designer was never asked to make a gay wedding website. It was a god damn sham from the word go. It was rooted in a theoretical "wouldn't it be fucked up if I had to do a thing?" It also gives the framework and arguments, in the Justices own god-damnable words, to overturn the Civil Rights Act, Gay Marriage laws, and even a whole host of anti-espionage laws. I actually would like some of those to be overturned, but I'm including them here to emphasize how idiotic, short-sighted, and bullshit the ruling was.

SFA vs Harvard (Affirmative Action) - Also flies in the face of decades of precedent and laws, but more importantly it flies in the face of this own court's other rulings. You may have heard about Allen v Milligan, where the Supreme Court threw out an Alabama congressional map for being really, really racist. That's correct: the map was, but the support for throwing it out was the same argument for the dissent in this case. State bodies can use racial makeup and information in efforts to eliminate racist institutions.

You can make judgments based on race if you're getting rid of racism, basically. Which is what Affirmative Action is intended to do. People can argue that it might need to be more fluid, less restrictive, or reconfigured frequently, sure. But that is a legitimate pursuit and application of governmental power.

There are more problems, and more cases, but there's a reason why law schools and firms all over the country are collectively giving side-eye and shit-talk to this Court.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Fabiola Cineas at Vox:

It took less than a day for the world to start rallying for George Floyd in late May 2020. The events that led to Floyd’s murder unfolded over hours, but a viral 10-minute video recording of the deadly encounter with Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was enough to send floods of people nationwide into the streets for months.  In the weeks after Floyd’s killing, the number of Americans who said they believe racial discrimination is a big problem and that they support the Black Lives Matter movement spiked. As books about racial injustice flew off of bookstore shelves, corporate leaders, politicians, and celebrities pledged to fight racism. The events of 2020 disturbed America’s collective conscience, and the movement for justice captivated millions. Until it didn’t.  

In retrospect, there were signs of brewing right-wing resistance all along. While many peacefully protested, others called for their defeat. Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton demanded that the US military be brought in to fight “insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.” As police officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds across the country, President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to “dominate the streets” and defend “life and property,” sending thousands of troops and federal law enforcement officers to control protesters in Washington, DC; Portland, Oregon; and other cities.  Some Americans who wanted to stamp out the unrest took it upon themselves to practice vigilantism. One of them, Kyle Rittenhouse, fatally shot two unarmed men and wounded another when he brought an AR-15-style rifle to protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Rittenhouse was later acquitted of all homicide charges.)

Though the mass mobilization of 2020 brought hope, it’s clear today that it also marked a turning point for backlash as the mirage of progress morphed into seemingly impenetrable resistance. Historically, backlash has embodied a white rejection of racial progress. Over the past few years, the GOP has built on that precedent and expanded its reach.  The right watched progressives rally for change and immediately fought back with the “Big Lie” of a stolen election. In many of the states that Biden flipped in 2020, Republicans rushed to ban ballot drop boxes, absentee ballots, and mobile voting units, the methods that allowed more people to vote. Since then, we’ve seen the passage of dozens of regressive laws, including anti-protest laws, anti-LGBTQ laws, and anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion laws. In state after state, these bans were coupled with incursions against reproductive rights, as some conservatives announced plans to take over every American institution from the courts to the schools to root out liberalism and progress.

[...] “There’s a backlash impulse in American politics,” Glickman said. “I think 2020 is important because it gets at another part of backlash, which is the fear that social movements for equality and justice might set off a stronger counter-reaction.” The protests of 2020 did. And though race is still at the core of the post-George Floyd backlash, many Republicans have gone to new lengths to conceal this element.  "One of the things that the civil rights movement accomplished was to make being overtly racist untenable,” said Anderson. “Today they say, ‘I can do racist stuff, but don't call me racist.’” For Anderson, backlash is about instituting state-level policies that undermine African Americans’ advancement toward their citizenship rights.

By early 2021, alongside the effort to “stop the steal,” legislation that would limit or block voting access, give police protection, and control the teaching of concepts such as racial injustice began spreading across Republican-controlled state legislatures — all in the name of protecting America.  “They cover [voter suppression] with the fig leaf of election integrity, with the fig leaf of trying to protect democracy, and with the fig leaf of stopping massive rampant voter fraud,” Anderson said. And, she said, laws banning the teaching of history get covered “with the fig leaf of stopping indoctrination.” That coordinated legislation was a direct response to potential racial gains for Black Americans and other marginalized groups. “After the death of George Floyd in 2020, it seemed like all of our institutions suddenly shifted overnight,” conservative activist Christopher Rufo said in a 2022 interview. Rufo’s answer was to release a series of reports about diversity training programs in the federal government and critical race theory, which, he argued, “set off a massive response, or really, revolt amongst parents nationwide.” 

[...]

The new era of backlash is grievance-driven 

That racial resentment has since taken on a particularly acrid temperament since Floyd's death. At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump, facing a litany of criminal and civil charges, stood on stage and told the audience, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”  Trump’s words summarized the political discourse that has spread since the killing of George Floyd and highlighted the absence of a formal Republican policy agenda. “[What he said was] not policy,” said historian John Huntington, author of the book Far Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism. “It was just vengeance for some sort of perceived wrongs.” He added, “policy has taken a backseat to cultural grievances.” 

What Huntington calls out as “endless harangues against very nebulous topics like critical race theory or wokeness or whatever the current catchphrase is right now” are an important marker of this new era. “A key element of the current backlash we’re seeing is a politics of grievance,” he says. “‘I have been wronged somehow by the liberals or whoever, and Trump is going to help me get even with these people that I don’t like.’” Glickman calls this backlash tactic an “inversion” or “elite victimization”: “It’s a reversal that happens in backlash language where privileged white people take the historical position of oppressed people — often African Americans but sometimes other oppressed groups — and they speak from that vantage point.” To be sure, Republicans have passed dozens of laws through state legislatures to do everything from restricting voting to banning trans athletes from participating in sports. But for Huntington, these reactionary laws don’t amount to legitimate policy. “It's very difficult to convince people to build a society rather than trying to tear down something that's already existing,” he said. “Critiquing is easy. Building is hard.” Nationally, Republicans only passed 27 laws despite holding 724 votes in 2023. 

Vox has a great article on the right-wing backlash against the racial reckoning of Summer 2020 has had effects on our politics the last few years, such as waging faux outrage crusades against CRT and DEI.

[learnfromeinstein]

When we think of Albert Einstein, we often think of his groundbreaking work in physics. But did you know that he was also a passionate political activist? Throughout his life, Einstein was committed to promoting peace, democracy, and social justice. In fact, he once said, "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

Einstein's political activism was shaped by his experiences as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He was deeply concerned about the rise of fascism and the threat it posed to democracy and human rights. He spoke out against anti-Semitism and racism, and used his platform as a world-renowned scientist to advocate for peace and disarmament.

One of Einstein's most famous political actions was his 1939 letter to President Roosevelt, in which he urged the United States to begin developing an atomic bomb in order to counter the Nazi threat. However, Einstein quickly regretted his role in the development of the bomb, and became an outspoken advocate for nuclear disarmament.

Einstein also supported the civil rights movement in the United States, and was an early supporter of the State of Israel. However, he was also critical of some of Israel's policies towards Palestinians, and called for a just and peaceful resolution to the conflict.

So what can we learn from Einstein's political activism? For one thing, it reminds us that even the most brilliant minds have a responsibility to use their influence for good. But more than that, it shows us that science and politics are not separate realms - they are intimately connected. As Einstein once said, "Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity."

Thanks for joining us on LearnFromEinstein. Stay tuned for more insights into the life and legacy of one of history's greatest geniuses.

[batboyblog]

“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, close allies want to dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color,”

“Trump’s Justice Department would push to eliminate or upend programs in government and corporate America that are designed to counter racism that has favored whites. Targets would range from decades-old policies aimed at giving minorities economic opportunities, to more recent programs that began in response to the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd.”

[haggishlyhagging]

The evaluation of Mayo's work [Mother India] and its impact has been left to such scholars as the authors of Marriage: East and West, who write:

The dust finally settled. It was conceded that Katherine Mayo's facts, as facts, were substantially accurate. It was recognized that she had taken up a serious issue and drawn attention to it, which had helped in some measure to hasten much-needed reforms. But at the same time her book had done a grave injustice to India, in presenting a one-sided and distorted picture of an aspect of Indian life that could only be properly understood within the context of the entire culture [emphases mine].

Thus Mayo is put in her place. We find here the familiar use of the passive voice, which leaves unstated just who conceded, who recognized. We find also the familiar balancing act of scholars, which gives a show of "justice" to their treatment of the attacked author. The qualifying expression, "as facts," added to "facts," has the effect of managing to minimize the factual. Women who counter the patriarchal reality are often accused of "merely imagining," or being on the level of "mere polemic." Here we have "mere" facts. Then the authors graciously concede that Mayo hastened "much-needed reforms," which gives the impression that everything has now been taken care of, that the messy details have been tidied up. Then comes the peculiarly deceptive and unjust expression "grave injustice to India." Mayo was concerned about grave injustice to living beings, women. Injustice is done to individual living beings. One must ask how it is possible to do injustice to a social construct, for example, India, by exposing its atrocities. We might ask such re-searchers whether they would be inclined to accuse critics of the Nazi death camps of "injustice" to Germany, or whether they would describe writers exposing the history of slavery and racism in America as guilty of "injustice" to the United States. The Maces go on to accuse Mayo of distorting "an aspect of Indian life." But what is "Indian life"? Mayo is concerned not with defending this vague abstraction (presumably meaning customs, beliefs, social arrangements, et cetera), but with the lives of millions of women who happened to live in that part of patriarchy called "India."

The final absurdity in this scholarly obituary is the expression "properly understood within the context of the entire culture." It is Katherine Mayo who demonstrates an understanding of the cultural context, that is, the entire culture, refusing to reduce women to "an aspect." Her critics, twenty years after her death, attempted to absorb the realities she exposed into a "broad vision," which turns out to be a meaningless abstraction.

Feminist Searchers should be aware of this device, commonly repeated in the re-searchers' rituals. It involves intimidation by accusations of "one-sidedness," so that others will not listen to the discredited Searcher-Scholar who refused to follow the "right" rites. The device relies upon fears of criticizing "another culture," so that the feminist is open to accusations of imperialism, nationalism, racism, capitalism, or any other "-ism" that can pose as broader and more important than gynocidal patriarchy. Thus the just accuser becomes unjustly sentenced to erasure. Her life's meaning, as expressed in her life's work, is belittled, reversed, wiped out.

Feminist Seekers/Spinsters should search out and claim such sisters as Katherine Mayo. Her books are already rare and difficult to find. It is important that they do not become extinct. Spinsters must unsnarl phallocratic "scholarship" and also find our sister weavers/dis-coverers whose work is being maligned, belittled, erased, deliberately forgotten. We must learn to name our true sisters, and to save their work so that it may be continued rather than re-covered, re-searched, and re-done on the endless wheel of re-acting to the Atrocious Lie which is phallocracy. In this dis-covering and spinning we expand the dimensions of feminist time/space.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[ausetkmt]

Arbery killers ask court to overturn their hate-crime convictions

ATLANTA, Ga. - Attorneys for three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia subdivision asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to throw out their hate crime convictions, arguing that prosecutors relied on their history of racist comments without proving they targeted Arbery because he was Black.

t the end of the day, this issue isn’t about the racism of these defendants,” A.J. Balbo, representing Greg McMichael, told a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. “It’s about whether or not the government met its burden.”

Their arguments also strayed beyond the core issue of whether a racist intent to harm motivated the Feb. 23, 2020, pursuit that ended with Arbery shot dead in the street. Defense attorneys raised legal technicalities, including their contention that prosecutors failed to prove Arbery was killed on a public road.

Federal prosecutors countered that the trial jury in 2022 heard sufficient evidence to find the trio guilty of hate crimes as well as attempted kidnapping. Racist views evidenced by the men’s prior text messages and social media posts, they said, informed their mistaken assumption that Arbery was a fleeing criminal.

“The hate-fueled violence the defendants inflicted on Ahmaud is precisely the type of conduct that Congress targeted when it passed the Civil Rights Act,” said Brant Levine, an attorney for the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Meanwhile, supporters of Arbery held a rally of their own Wednesday in Atlanta:

“I am so hurt, still, because when we saw what happened at first, we thought this would be over with now,” said Ahmaud Arbery’s aunt, Diane Jackson.

Jackson was just one of many outside the federal courthouse in Atlanta on Wednesday. The white men’s lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn’t prove a racist intent to harm.

As he waits for a decision, Ahmaud Arbery’s father Marcus Arbery said on Wednesday that he thinks the jury got it right and feels confident the federal conviction will be upheld.

“Evidence was just too strong, and me and my family, we just have to be strong and just sit back,” he said. “We know everything is all right, because the evidence was just too strong against those three men.”

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery at close range with a shotgun.

More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan’s graphic video of the killing leaked online and a national outcry erupted over Arbery’s death. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and charges soon followed.

All three men were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court in late 2021, followed months later by the federal hate crimes trial.

In their oral arguments and legal briefs, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited the prosecutors’ use of more than two dozen social media posts and text messages, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using racist slurs or otherwise disparaging Black people.

Bryan’s attorney, Pete Theodocion, called it “some of the ugliest, most repulsive evidence any of us have ever heard in a trial,” and explosive enough that prosecutors could sway a jury without proving a racist intent to harm Arbery himself.

“When the jury hears that evidence, we have to make sure that the government is actually presenting some evidence as to all the essential elements of crimes because it is such an uphill battle,” Theodocion told the judges.

Balbo said Greg McMichael initiated the pursuit of Arbery because he mistakenly suspected him of being a fleeing criminal. He had seen security camera videos in prior months that showed Arbery entering a neighboring home under construction.

When Arbery ran past the McMichaels’ home in February 2020, Balbo argued, Greg McMichael recognized him from those videos “by his height, his weight, his tattoos, his manner of dress.”

“If this person had been a 60-year-old Black man, Greg McMichael would not have engaged him,” Balbo said. “The race was a non-contributing role in this matter.”

One of the judges sounded skeptical. Judge Britt Grant, nominated to the appeals court by former President Donald Trump, said the trial evidence of racist intent behind Arbery’s killing “seems pretty overwhelming to me.”

None of the videos showed Arbery stealing, and police found no stolen property or weapons on his body.

Judge Elizabeth “Lisa” Branch, another Trump appellate court nominee; and District Court Judge Victoria Calvert, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to the federal bench and is serving temporarily on the 11th Circuit, also heard the arguments. The judges did not indicate how long they might take to rule.

The legal technicalities raised by the defense included Travis McMichael’s attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, arguing that prosecutors failed to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was killed were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men.

Copeland cited records of a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners in which they rejected taking ownership of the streets from the subdivision’s developer. Prosecutors countered that service request records and trial testimony from a county official showed the streets had been maintained by the county government for decades.

Theodocion also argued that using their pickup trucks to cut off Arbery’s escape from the neighborhood didn’t amount to attempted kidnapping. He said the charge was improper because the men weren’t seeking ransom or some other benefit, an element required to prove the charge as a federal crime.

Levine countered that the McMichaels and Bryan sought the “satisfaction of catching a Black man that they assumed to be a criminal on the streets of their neighborhood.”

The trial judge sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison for their hate crime convictions, plus additional time — 10 years for Travis McMichael and seven years for his father — for openly carrying guns while committing violent crimes. Bryan received a lighter hate crime sentence of 35 years in prison, in part because he wasn’t armed and preserved the cellphone video that became crucial evidence.

All three also got 20 years for attempted kidnapping, to overlap with their hate crime sentences.

If the U.S. appeals court overturns any of their federal convictions, both McMichaels and Bryan would remain in prison. All three are serving life sentences in Georgia state prisons for murder, and have motions for new state trials pending before a judge.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Reid Newtown

Published: Nov 27, 2023

I grew up attending integrated public schools in Atlanta. From the start, I was used to being in the minority: I’m white and my friends were almost all black or Hispanic, and when I was a freshman in high school, in 2010, I came out as a lesbian. Neither my race nor my sexual orientation mattered to my friends. One reason for that was dance and music and the belief that my friends and I shared that art can change people, give them purpose, communicate something beautiful and transformative.

I moved to New York City when I was 18, but the day after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, I was back in Atlanta visiting my parents, and I drove to my friend Sean’s house. He lived in a quiet, black suburb called Camp Creek filled with orderly, identical homes.

That night, I remember wanting to wrap my arms around my friends, to be there for them in what felt like this unbelievably dark moment. As the protests turned to riots closer to the heart of the city—just a few miles east of Camp Creek, near Centennial Olympic Park—Sean’s neighborhood stayed quiet.

But as soon as I stepped foot inside Sean’s house, I was greeted by the family dogs, and smelled the grill being fired up. There was a bowl of potato salad on the counter. Our mutual friend Khalil greeted me as if nothing was wrong, sweeping me off my feet into a familiar dance lift we’d done a thousand times. “Reidist!” he said.

Sean’s mom told me she was so glad I was safe, away from the neighborhoods being vandalized and, in some cases, set on fire. She shook her head as she prepared the hamburgers and hot dogs, as she always did in the summer. There were violent clashes all that night, and the mayor issued a 9 p.m. curfew, which meant, as usual, I would be sleeping over.

That night, all of our friends were there. There was a sense of deep-seated grief, and people wanted to be together, and they wanted to cry and hug and share stories. My friends—all black men in their early twenties—recalled run-ins they had had with the cops.

Being pulled over for no obvious reason while police dogs searched their car. Being roughed up. Being cuffed. Being called racist slurs. Being taken down to the station for questioning when they had done literally nothing. In the coming days and months, we donated to bail campaigns and posted a black square on our Instagrams. In June, we marched, and chanted, and we waved signs and demanded justice.

That summer, the world seemed upside down, violent, crazy. We wanted to make it right. What I couldn’t see then was that, far from making it right, we were on this spiral, and it was taking us somewhere dark: The world I had grown up in was being dismantled, and it was never coming back.

* * *

I grew up going to public schools just north of downtown. My kindergarten class resembled one of those stock diversity photos with one kid from every race sitting at a table together. I didn’t think twice about it. They were my friends.

I frequently had friends over at my house. My mom—everyone called her Mama Newt—hosted everyone no matter what they looked like or where they came from. No one left Mama Newt’s kitchen hungry.

[ Reid’s mother, “Mama Newt” ]

In middle school, the black kids started sitting with the black kids at lunch. The Hispanic kids with the Hispanic kids. The white kids with the white kids. I agonized over where to sit. All of my friends were at different tables.

I loved to dance, and I became captain of the step team. I was the only white girl on the team, and I stuck out, but the girls didn’t treat me any differently. There were jokes about how surprising it was that I had rhythm; we all laughed about it. Race was present, but it didn’t feel overbearing.

In high school, race and racial identity became more important, more talked about, inescapable. The dance studio was the only classroom that reflected the school’s diversity. Most other classes were de facto segregated based on students’ academic track.

The dance crew—we were like a sitcom. There was Sean, the music theater geek who was also a first-rate swimmer. Then there was Khalil, who was a firecracker gymnast and cheerleader—and hilarious. (People compared him to Kevin Hart.) Then there was Isaac, who was tall and lanky, a lacrosse player and preacher’s son. And then there was me. They called me “lil sis,” which I loved, maybe because I’d never had siblings. As an only child, my friends really felt like family.

[ From Left to Right: Sean, Khalil, Reid, Isaac, and Kwame ]

The studio was like a race-blind utopia, and it felt unreal, because it was: the moment you stepped out into the hallway, the intimacy and warmth gave way to a kind of unhappy, low-level tension.

Usually, that tension resided just beneath the surface. But not always.

I remember one day in 2011 there was supposed to be a big fight between the black, white, and Hispanic students. There had been an altercation a few days before between rival gangs, and it was near the end of the school year, when fights were more common, and someone started a rumor about a “race war.”

I stood in the middle of the courtyard and looked around at the various corners full of people siloing themselves into white, black, and brown factions. I had no idea which corner I belonged in. In the Hispanic section, I glimpsed Jessica Sanchez, who had taught me in the sixth grade how to throw a punch. I wondered what would happen if I had to punch Jessica Sanchez.

Luckily, security stopped it before it started, and everyone eventually returned to class as if nothing had happened.

The point is, the racial tension notwithstanding, we seemed to be moving in the right direction. Maybe I was blind. Maybe my whiteness made it impossible for me to see what was really going on in other people’s heads. I don’t know. I found my tribe wherever I found kindness and laughter. Wherever the bass was bumping, and people were dancing. The rest always seemed to work itself out.

* * *

In 2014, I moved to New York to go to Fordham University and the prestigious Ailey School of Dance. Alvin Ailey, who founded the school in 1969, was known for having said that “dance is for everybody” and “we are all human beings and color is not important.” I loved the power of art to transcend difference.

[ Reid and a fellow classmate at Ailey School of Dance ]

My high school sweetheart, a black woman I naively believed I would one day marry, started her freshman year at Harvard, where she immersed herself in the spoken-word poetry scene and acquired a new racial consciousness. I remember taking the five-hour bus from New York to Cambridge only to find myself sitting alone in her dorm, excluded from the party and poetry slam she’d gone to.

She said that she no longer felt safe being near me because I was white, that any physical affection I offered was me attempting to colonize her body.

Six months into college, she broke up with me.

At the time, I thought this was an anomaly—a sad derangement that came out of elite places like Harvard. I had no idea what was coming.

Dance distracted me from the hurt. My goal had been to make it to the professional Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater since I first saw Ailey’s Revelations performed at the old Fox Theatre, in Atlanta, and that feeling intensified after I attended Ailey’s Summer Intensive when I was 16—now that I was at the dance school I felt like I was on the cusp of getting in.

A hip injury put an end to that dream, but it didn’t really matter. I went on to dance professionally elsewhere—among other gigs, I spent three seasons as a dancer and stunt double on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—graduated from Fordham in 2018, fell in love once again with an older, Bengali-American woman, got my own apartment in Queens, and moved my dog, Tiger, a Pekingese-poodle mix, from Atlanta to New York.

I also started to think beyond the narrow confines of a New York City progressive, which felt increasingly small and myopic. I read books like The Coddling of the American Mind and The Problem with Everything and The Rise of Victimhood Culture. I started to disagree, silently, with my friends.

Then, in early 2020, my girlfriend and I broke up, and Covid happened. I was furloughed from my day job as a technician at a physical therapy clinic, and my dance gig auditions came to a halt. I got depressed being all alone in my apartment, and I flew home to Atlanta to be with my family.

A few days after I got home, George Floyd was murdered.

Suddenly, I felt this thing I had never felt: people viewing and talking to each other through the lens of race. Yes, I know, that lens had always been there. But there had always been other people, ideas, forces to counteract that. Our impulse to divide had always been eclipsed by a more powerful desire to come together.

But now the fissures were opening up, and it was impossible to sew them together. I remembered being broken up with six years earlier by my critical-race-theory-poetry-slam girlfriend, and suddenly it seemed like millions of people were breaking up with each other, walling themselves off. When I showed up at Sean’s house that night, his mom’s familiar embrace almost made me cry. Between social distancing and racial siloing, physical affection had started to feel foreign. I leaned into her hug hard, and she had to steady herself to keep herself from falling backward.

When the lockdowns ended, I went back to New York, but I couldn’t stay for long. My mom had always had multiple sclerosis, but now it was getting worse. My parents were everything to me: They’d supported my dancing; they’d supported me when I came out. Now, my mother was struggling, and my dad, forced to juggle full-time work and full-time caregiving, was overwhelmed, drowning in responsibility. I had to go home, and I wanted to. 

At the time, I didn’t know you can’t ever really go home again.

* * *

By spring 2022, things were finally reopening, and we all wanted to go out and dance.

That night, at a club in midtown Atlanta, I was, as usual, the only white person. I was used to that, but this time it was different.

As I danced with my friends to classic southern hip-hop songs like “Knuck if You Buck” by Crime Mob, “It’s Goin’ Down” by Yung Dro, and “Walk it Out” by Outkast, I could feel the eyes around me searing into my back and head and legs and face. People pulled out their cameras and filmed me in disgust—as if I had two heads. They said things like: “Who does she think she is?” and “She shouldn’t be allowed here—I don’t care if she can dance.”

The worst part wasn’t how it made me feel, how out of place I felt in this world I had once thought of as an extension of home. The worst part was that the people in that room felt threatened by my being there. This seemed crazy to me, but it was undeniable. They genuinely felt unsafe and uncomfortable because of the color of my skin. They viewed me as an oppressor and a grifter looking to take—to appropriate—what wasn’t mine.

The world of dance, which had given me that precious language to communicate with anyone irrespective of who they were or where they came from, was fragmenting—consumed, like everything else, by our seemingly inescapable racialization and tribalization.

A few weeks later, I received an invitation to a party. At the top of the invitation bold letters stated:  “THIS IS AN ALL-BLACK EVENT.” I responded to the friend who sent it to me and asked if they meant to wear all-black clothes. She responded, “Nah, it’s for black people only, but you know you’re the exception.”

I did not attend.

The self-segregation was suffocating. The most meaningful art and friendships in my life had come out of piercing through racial boundaries. Expanding my horizons. Now, it seemed like those horizons were closing in on me, my friends, the wonderful, collaborative, fluid, undulating world of dance that had infused my life with so much meaning. It felt like something was being lost forever.

I know, I know—we’ve been in this moment for three years, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that setting aside my race, my whiteness, is a privilege. Does that mean we shouldn’t aspire to live in a world in which we all set aside our immutable traits? That we shouldn’t try to see beyond race?

Which brings me to the most amazing woman I’ve ever known.

After a couple of years of dating as a gay woman in New York, I was feeling discouraged. Everyone I had gone out with was a hyper-political leftist. They always seemed to be in the middle of a rant. Every date gave me an uneasy feeling for fear of saying the wrong thing—my views on race, sex, gender, you name it, were not in lock-step with those of my fellow LGBT New Yorkers. On edge and worried I would never find my person, I had almost given up dating entirely.

Then I connected with Bianca. She’s an elite marathoner and the daughter of Cuban immigrants, and she’s perfect: measured, kind, curious. The only woman I’ve ever met who could convince me to run a 5K and the only one who’s made me rethink some of my opinions about politics, identity, life, and the world.

I like to believe we were always meant to be, but I also know I would never have arrived at this place were it not for the ups and downs of the last few years. Before the summer of 2020, it was easier to feel or think or exist outside our superficial differences. We didn’t talk about these things with the same frequency or intensity. There weren’t as many landmines. Now, it’s more important than ever to discuss our differences—while also trying to see beyond skin color and demand that we’re seen the same way.

A few months ago, I had a ring made for Bianca using the diamond from my late grandmother’s wedding ring. I haven’t proposed yet, but we’re thinking maybe a small wedding with family down the line. As for Sean, Khalil, and Isaac—they’re planning on being my three best men.

[ Reid and Bianca ]

==

"Critical theory is a universal solvent, and the problem with a universal solvent is finding a container that can hold them. Spill enough and dissolve society." -- James Lindsay

[hussyknee]

Being a fan of Harry Potter is not transphobic. Buying merch and giving JKR money is. But simply being a fan of the characters you grew up with and loved and making fanworks for them and pirating the media has nothing whatsoever to do with systemic transphobia, any more than loving any other problematic media means you endorse either the creators or its messages.

I'm not invested in HP anymore but those books fucking saved my life as an abused neurodivergent kid. I know other trans and ND who still love it and write fic and art. My sister-in-law is kind and decent and not terminally online; she has no idea this puritannical push to expunge HP from cultural consciousness exists. She raised her kids on those books because she loved them as a kid, while teaching them to respect trans and gay people in a country where homosexuality is still criminalised and trans people can barely exist in public. My friend is a doctor who meticulously asks for her patients pronouns when it gets her weird looks from her colleagues. She made a Hogwarts letter for her little cousin who managed to escaped her Dad's abuse with her Mum. My trans autistic friend who is actively suicidal finds escape in writing HP fic.

There are millions people in the world like this, and you can't stamp them out and pillory them because they consume media made by a problematic creator. Protestant capitalism and consumerism has given you an especial kind of brainrot to project individual consumption and preference onto systems of oppression. This is what I mean by the suffocating whiteness of current leftism. All children of the Global South grow up on books written by people who supported colonization. Black people have dealt with the West's cultural cop show fixation forever. Native people have had to allow for the genre of Westerns. Western media and its institutions are saturated with racism and ableism; the majority of it completely invisible to you. People of color and disabled people simply have to navigate it how we can, so we can be fans of anything. You got Lin Manuel Miranda uncancelled because y'all loved Encanto; according to you the choices are either robbing Hispanic kids of representation and a story they love or supporting the US colonial violence of Puerto Rico.

You cannot take out your beef with artists and creators out on people who love the art they create. Social justice has absolutely nothing to do with moral policing. It's cruel, destructive and actively counter-productive. You're conditioning yourself to see danger and enemies where there are none, in a world that already isolates the vulnerable. You're just trying to hurt whoever you can reach to make yourself feel better, and whoever you can reach is other marginalized people.

[princeescaluswords]

And oh gosh, now I am overthinking my overly blasé comment at the end of what I just sent. I am absolutely not wanting to come across as dismissive of what the fandom has done to your favorite character and the actual pain you might have gone through, and I apologize if it came across that way. I just wanted you to know that I wish and mean you well!

First off, thank you for your concern. I'm not being sarcastic. We'd all be a little better off if we took a moment to reflect on not only what we're saying but how we say it. I appreciate it. And while my words below might seem to run counter to this, it's okay if you don't share my attitude toward the fandom.

But, to be clear, I haven't devoted a significant amount of my online presence to this particular situation only because it causes me pain. I didn't join a fandom until I was middle-aged, and if my participation mostly served to make me miserable, I would simply stop participating. After all, I have enjoyed media for decades before that, sometimes quite intensely, without it. I feel my motivation goes deeper than that. I am motivated by justice. I am motivated by teenagers. I am motivated by Ronald Reagan, and I am not joking.

I know it might sound a little over the top, but as a product of my life's experiences, I see this fandom's behavior and I know that it is wrong. The usual counter to a statement like that is that while it might be wrong, it's trivial. Even if people are disappointed by the rampant racism and misogyny, it's about a fictional character on a television show. How much hurt could it cause?

I remember growing up as a teenager in the 80s, and while I've talked about this before, this is from where my conviction arises. We lived in the suburbs where there were limited cultural options. We moved around a lot due to my father's occupation, so I never developed a large friend group. My father practiced an authoritarian parenting style, limiting my options. So when I became aware of my own sexuality, the only resources I had for what this might mean was on television. Gay characters on television in the 80s fell into three major categories: clowns, predatory criminals, and victims. That's what I saw. Without peers, without parental support, that's how I came to view myself. It was damaging, and I had to struggle with internalized homophobia for a long time. I sometimes daydream about what I could have accomplished with my life if I had been born twenty years later.

I experienced first-hand how cultural depictions can shape identity, so I am indeed sensitive to the fact that they still do. When I watch as the Teen Wolf fandom -- and it's not the only fandom that does this -- goes to extreme lengths to establish value in white male characters and only white male characters regardless of these characters' narrative purpose or even their behavior, I am fully confident that this is not just. It's not about something as personal as liking or disliking something. We are indeed individuals with our own wills, but those wills can only act in the environment in which we find ourselves. Parts of the Teen Wolf fandom work hard to create a toxic, racist environment. They should stop.

We see the impact it has beyond influencing the narrative or fandom interactions. It's been known that Dylan O'Brien wasn't going to be in the Teen Wolf movie for nearly a year before it came out, and he's still the primary media focus. The response to movie has been primarily driven by this. How is this remotely a good thing? Imagine the decision making in the editor's room about how to cover this story: "We know this show isn't about this white man, we know this white man isn't in the movie, but we're going to focus on it anyway." The sad part, the source of injustice, is that this isn't an innovation. Hollywood has always been this way.

And that's when we get to Ronald Reagan. I spent a lot of time during the 80s and the 90s thinking about him in terms of the AIDS crisis. (And if you think that crisis didn't scare the crap out of a young gay man, let me disabuse you of that notion.) Unlike some people today, I don't think he personally hated gay people. I don't think he turned to Nancy and said "Let those Sodomites die." He had to have known gay people; he had to have worked with gay people. He spent three decades in Hollywood before entering politics. But here's the thing -- the way Hollywood dealt with gay people during those three decades was to pretend they didn't exist. This isn't my opinion -- read any history of that time period in Hollywood. Sexual minorities were part of the day-to-day business, but to function the powers that be simply edited them out of their perception of reality. So I believe that at least part of what motivated Reagan's response to AIDS was habit. He was so used to not mentioning what was behind the curtain that he simply didn't perceive any value in talking about it openly. People like him created an alternate reality where what actually happened didn't matter as much as what they wanted to have happened.

See the connection? It doesn't matter how many actors of color Hollywood employs or how many stories about characters of color they tell if at the end of the day the production and the audience still act as if white characters are the only thing worthy of time and attention. Fandom has become a significant part of media. It's undeniable. So anodyne bullshit like "Don't like; don't read" or "Fiction =/= Reality" isn't just distasteful to me, it's the root of the problem. This false consciousness -- this daydream that fandom can create enormous amount of content vindictively transforming a story about a Latino character into a story about white male characters and it's not about race at all -- is just another manifestation of an ongoing social injustice.

I'm not, and I never will, ask people to see this situation exactly as I do. But I won't stop talking about it. Not yet. I think it's too important.