#bipoc solidarity

[n0n-binarypixie]

If a movement or political party doesn’t center ending Antiblackness , destroying white supremacy as a whole, indigenous rights, and decolonizing every structure is it actually a real movement for ALL people? just fighting against capitalism isn’t enough

[jesncin]

I hope Superman fandom as a whole will one day understand that if you truly want to commit to the immigrant allegory, scenes like Lois shooting Clark with a gun or her jumping off a building to prove he's Superman pair really badly with that allegory.

I know some fans like to say "Superman was always an immigrant allegory" and while I get the sentiment of retroactively looking at how the lives of his creators inform the character they made, we also have to acknowledge that the allegory was never consistent to begin with. The original Superman comics were fun gags and shenanigans. Superman Smashes the Klan wouldn't stand out so much if his immigrant identity was consistently integral to his character.

And if you're going to commit to Superman being an immigrant, then you've got to be open to changes on staple Superman lore. So much of this fandom is dedicated to nostalgia, references, canon events, "but Lois does that in the comics! It's not Lois Lane if she doesn't do crazy things to prove who Superman is!" without considering how that is contextualized in the allegory.

I still get so many comments on my Clois comics but especially the Private Interview comic saying "I've never seen Superman this way before" from even longtime fans of the character. Honestly, I never saw him that way until I read Smashes the Klan. Since then I want people to have that recognition of themselves in him too. But that means being brave with changes! Maybe it's okay for this version of Lois to respect Superman's boundaries. Maybe an Asian Lois can be more than an aesthetic shallow retread of white Lois.

These characters are more than callbacks and references. The reason they persist throughout many versions is because they hold themes. Lois isn't just "stunt girl reporter obsessed with Superman and THE TRUTH", she's also a jaded reporter hardened by life who finds hope again in Superman. Superman isn't just "save cats from trees" guy. He's an alien immigrant, and you can make a ton of new stories from that lens alone.

[rhetoricsofraceandidentity]

[ktempestbradford]

Jumping off of what I said in this post about having to dismantle certain toxic ideas about myself, I realized that folks might not know how deeply not being a straight, white, cishet, able-bodied, Christianized male (aka the Dominant Paradigm) in the West messes you up mentally. It's a huge mental health problem that isn't always addressed.

When I started up my latest round of therapy I began to acquire labels for some of the ways I acted or reacted to situations. One day in session I was like: Was that a trauma response? It was, wasn't it? And my therapist confirmed. What confused me is that I didn't think I'd experienced trauma.

The idea I had of trauma was some Major Incident in which something Very Bad had happened to me or near me. Or it was about being in abusive situations, usually at home. The kind of ways trauma is depicted in the media.

Then I came across a Twitter thread in which the person said that everyone needs therapy, especially marginalized people, because the way Western society works, anyone who is not the Dominant Paradigm or doesn't hew closely to it is constantly being harmed by society.

Are you BIPOC? Racism is almost everywhere, and where it is, it's constant. It's also not always KKK-level in your face racism; it's more often wave after wave of microagressions on top of whatever challenging condition you're in due to historical racism. In other words: Chronic.

Are you neurodiverse? Good luck not being overstimulated by allegedly benign activities like going to the grocery store. Good luck not being criticized on a daily basis because you can't act "normal". Try holding down a job that expects you to sit at a desk for 8 hours yet you can't even sit in a quiet environment because the asshole CEO read that open office plans make employees more productive.

Are you anywhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella? Welcome to the constant barrage of invasive questions from strangers, invasive laws, invasive religiosity... Once again, an allegedly benign activity (going to the bathroom in public) can be a damn crucible if you don't look like the "right" kind of woman or man. Have fun navigating the medical system when you want affirming health care.

I could go on. Disabled people, poor or working class people, fat people, any people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed all experience this. It is trauma. It is harm. It does affect us. But it's Chronic and Systemic. That's the crux.

Because we have to keep on going even with all this. It's every day and it's not easy to escape. So we "deal with it." Some of us have good coping strategies and or supportive family (bio or found) and that really helps. It doesn't alleviate the overall problem. Thus, we all need therapy (so the OP of that Twitter thread concluded).

I don't know that we ALL need it. And I for sure know that some mental health practitioners and therapy frameworks are quite harmful to marginalized people. I'm very lucky in that I have a great therapist and the treatment I'm getting is informed by my identity and background, not ignorant of it. Not everyone has that or has access to it.

What I do know is that we all need Community. True community offers true support, which is necessary for healing.

We also all need to know that our mental health struggles and our trauma are real and valid, even if they don't look or manifest the way we've been conditioned to recognize them. Don't let anyone invalidate your experience or mental health struggles because you don't fit into a specific, wrongly-labeled box.

And don't let anyone tell you that this society isn't out here traumatizing you, because it is. Society doesn't need to be this way. But here in The (European Colonizer Created) West, that's what those with more power have chosen for the rest of us. And it sucks.

I have nothing but hugs and empathy for all the other people out there experiencing this. The only piece of advice I have is: Find community, hold on tight to each other, be that oasis of Okay that others need and they'll be that same oasis for you. <3

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Non-Black “ally”: **Does something antiblack**

Black people: Can you not do that, and treat us with basic respect?

Non-Black “allies”:

“How dare you monkeys ask for basic respect? You’re supposed to be supporting us!”

“They can’t help it their culture is full of antiblackness!”

“It’s ok, (insert person). We accept your apology(even though we’re not black)!”

“Y’all are asking too much of them!”

“It’s always you Black Americans getting offended!”

*Blah, blah, blah, more racist dribble about how black people are supposed to mule for them*

Also the Non-Black “allies”:

Help! Help! Our group of people needs help! Bipoc/POC solidarity! We’ve always stood in solidarity with Black people!

Black people/me:

[bardass]

this blog supports xeno identities and neo pronouns.

your experiences are valid. your identities and pronouns are valid and should be treated as such.

you are trans, and your struggles are just as important as other trans experiences. no matter what anyone else says.

this blog stands in solidarity with every queer, bipoc, disabled, xeno, and otherkin member of the trans community and does not tolerate hate or invalidation of these marginalized identities.

[blacksapphhicmaddonna]

I will literally never ship Shuri and Namor, idk how y'all do it fr. I get that that's how they wrote the film, and I respect everyones ships but also...

he killed the queen, and almost Riri, damn near in front of Shuri, to prove a point. all after he eavesdropped on her and her mother trying to mourn T'Challa and hearing how Shuri was struggling. idk. I just can't ship that. Black women go through enough, and Shuri has certainly been through enough. im also extremely gay so I was never here for it based off that alone but I just feel like its crazy to ship her with the man who killed her mother LMFAO LIKEEE???

just my opinion tho, y'all be easy fr

[bfpnola]

From mutual aid societies to freedom farms and credit unions — Black communities have been using cooperative economics as a tool for collective liberation, self-determination, and to resist the violence of racial capitalism for centuries.

What we call the “solidarity economy” wouldn’t exist without this history and practice. We honor these legacies, and celebrate the radical Black cooperators in our network and around the world who continue to lead the solidarity economy movement and make new and liberatory worlds possible everyday.

—

🚨 want more materials like these? this resource was shared through BFP’s discord server! everyday, dozens of links and files are requested and offered by youth around the world! and every sunday, these youth get together for virtual teach-ins. if you’re interested in learning more, join us! link in our bio! 🚨

[chaos-in-one]

Friendly reminder

Indigenous people do not owe you anything related to our race

We do not owe you what tribe we come from, "what percentage" indigenous we are, knowledge on our culture, our opinions and beliefs on every single topic related to us, kindness or understanding about colonization we underwent, sympathy for people who contributed to our oppression, anything.

Hell we don't even owe ourselves that! An indigenous person does not have to know what tribe they come from, or what percentage indigenous they are, or knowledge of their culture, to still be indigenous. Especially when the entire reason so many indigenous people don't know these things is because of colonialism. Because of the oppression our people where put under for decades, even centuries in many places. Colonists did this to us on purpose.

They didn't want us to know our own heritage, our own culture, because they didn't want any remnants of cultures other than their own to exist. They wanted to erase us from history, from existence. They actively tried to forcibly integrate our people into theirs so the blood and heritage of indigenous people was spread as thin as they could get it. Which is why blood quantity will never matter or make someone no longer indigenous. Because taking away someone's indigenous heritage is exactly what colonists wanted.

They wanted indigenous people gone. They wanted our heritage to be spread so thin that they could decide we didn't exist. By telling someone they aren't indigenous enough, you are doing exactly what colonists wanted to happen to indigenous people. And we have been saying this for years.

It isn't just indigenous people who are "barely indigenous" by your standards saying it either. It is all of us, who are trying to hold on to what remnants of our people we have left, no matter how "small" it is in your eyes. And it will never be a non indigenous person's place to tell us not to. To tell us that some of us don't belong in our own community, that some of us should deny our heritage and say we are one of you.

Saying that any of us should do that is helping to prolong the effects of colonialism.

Indigenous people do not owe you anything, but many of you owe us everything for the damage done to our people that is still carried on today through your words and actions towards us.

[andsheoverthinks]

i am so tired of how easily people slip into anti-Blackness to defend their arguments

recently (always tbh but also recently) i've been seeing a lot of disdain circulating for African Americans, disappointedly but not surprisingly from a lot of non-white people as well.

[f appropriating other cultures is so repugnant to you... why do you have a kpop profile pic... but i digress]

specifically this is about the Cleopatra tv show? casting that people are discussing right now, it's really highlighted how Black people, especially African Americans, aren't allowed to do anything a little bit cringe without racist, violent blowback. Cleopatra has been played by many many actresses, most of whom aren't of Greek or Egyptian descent. So it's weird that people are acting like Black people are uniquely horrible and ignorant for the casting of a Black woman as Cleopatra, when many castings have not been historically accurate.

Liz Taylor was British-American, Vivien Leigh was British, Monica Bellucci and Sophia Italian... you get the point. and yet people aren't hurling racist slurs at white people (there are none) for casting Cleopatra as non-Greek/Egyptian all these years. if you're upset about this particular casting, you can at least be civil with your discussions. but, no, it's easiest to call us dirty, ignorant n******s because half the time people are just waiting for an excuse.

let me explain something to you, gently. a lot of people ask, well, African Americans and Caribbeans were sold from West African countries like Ghana and Nigeria, why don't they go appropriate those countries.

the answer's quite simple. we don't learn anything about West Africa in school.

laugh break, haha, dumb USAmericans.

okay, back to business. in the U.S., we learn a very short list of non-European civilizations: Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt. Maybe one line on Mali if you're lucky. the school system here is very sensitive to teaching anything that triggers 'white guilt' aka anything more than a cursory glance at anything concerning Black people and our history, which is deemed as unimportant. you can say we were obviously enslaved from West African countries so we should learn about those cultures, but... we don't speak our old languages, save for some loanwords like 'duppy' instead of 'ghost' in Caribbean vernacular and such, we don't eat our old foods, wear our traditional clothes... we don't even know what they were, what ethnic group(s) we would have belonged to. we're not immigrants in that sense that we have a home country, a definite place of origin. do you know what it's like to feel that so much of your identity is rootless? do you know how endless that emptiness is?

so when these three non-European civilizations were laid out before us, we latched onto the closest one, and ran a little too far with it.

in fact, my generation is less dependent on Egypt as a sort of crutch; this is more of an older people thing. we have healed enough to be able to look within.

this is not a sob story. this is just a story of how we got here, and how this construction of the world -- disregarding the effects of white supremacy and racial trauma while enacting racist behavior and showing incredible fluency with white supremacist imagery and rhetoric -- is fundamentally flawed.

this is just a sample of the racist tweets on the actress's twitter. i have chosen not to include the images that titilate these people but they are equally horrible, depicting violence against Black people.

in fact, i should stop calling this pathological behavior pattern 'white supremacy' at this point because a lot of people are actually getting off is to Arab slavery. the parallels between misogyny and anti-Blackness are so interesting -- misogynists are addicted to the ego boost of subjugating women, racists are addicted to the ego boost of subjugating Blacks. yes, your ancestors spearheaded an appallingly brutal slave trade of African people which lasted thirteen centuries and is continues to this day (yes, Black people are still being enslaved in your countries but you're butthurt over a tv show so it's time to go ballistic -- by the way white people were also kidnapped and sold but since the rise of European imperialism they'd been able to shed that 'shame'), even more evil than the triangular trade and there are fewer survivors because of the reproductive control methods (read, violent sterilization). source1 source2. you people spouting this nonsense because of a tv show are just as racist as the white people over here, possibly worse. do you feel edgy villain enough now? happy?!

and by the way, 'threatening' to cast white actors as Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King doesn't hurt us the way that Cleopatra not looking white enough seems to emotionally wound you, we are used to being minimized and erased for our contributions to society and are not thin-skinned like the losers complaining about this like it's the worst thing in their lives.

Is Afro-centerism inaccurate? Probably. Is it fearmongering to position it as equivalent to white supremacy? Absolutely.

[Pop quiz: Which ideology enslaved, tortured, raped, killed, and colonized across many centuries?]

Does calling us n******s and invoking 4chan 'we wuz kangz' (yes there was a we wuz kangz meme but i'm not reposting their childish shit on my blog) arguments make you sound like anything other than a whiny child? No. Just say you don't like the casting like a grown-up.

Why doesn't Hollywood produce West Africa period pieces in order to cast more Black actors instead? Now there's an actually productive question. Thank you. Actually, next they should do a long, high budget docudrama on the Arab slave trade so you can feel really uncomfortable.

[antifa-furry-soldier]

Okay I've been consuming too much pride discourse and I had an idea here's my pitch:

Radical Queer Solidarity Fair: No cops, No corporations, pro-kink, pro-trans, pro-BIPOC. An afternoon of radical acceptance, resistance, art, and organizing. Local queer acts (drag, bands, comedy, whatever), visual artists, clothing swap, and discussions of liberation, solidarity, and facing the queer genocide. Community funded and organized, no sponsors. People bring tents, PA systems, food, or whatever if they can.

Optional: don't ask the city for permission, just set it up and run it.

[decolonize-the-left]

"Note: 

There may be some resistance & discomfort when I say “we need to dismantle self-care”. The concept is prominent in leftist spaces & hailed as a radical form resistance. However, it is rarely understood in its original context with the necessary caveats which I’ll elaborate on below. It has also been sanitized, manipulated & co-opted for profit. As a result, it’s become bigger than what it was intended to be. People look to self-care now as a revolutionary “solution” to our collective problems (which it is not). Given that we live under capitalist, colonial systems that breed individualism, narcissism & self-centeredness, I think it’s important for us to rethink the utility of this concept today. In this piece, bringing in the knowledge of collectivist, land-based cultures, I’ll explain why it is urgent & critical for us to practice + embody COMMUNITY care which is a more complete framework that creates conditions of liberation needed for us to survive & thrive as we fight for the land & against the ecological destruction of our planet.

So even if you feel some discomfort arise, take a deep breath & hear me out."

- Ayesha Khan, Ph.D

Some quotes to consider:

The most prominent origins of the concept may be traced to Audre Lorde[...] She wrote about how cancer pushed her to realize that we all needed to slow down, pull back from oppressive systems, refuse to operate according to their values or accelerated “productivity” benchmarks when we can & that this divestment from a profit-driven system was critical for us to even begin to think about what collective “health” & healing means. It is an important first step in one’s political radicalization journey. It’s not everything & it wasn’t meant to be.

Self-care today is often reduced to: i) consumption of products, ii) neglect of community & erasure of the contributions of other beings who enable our care, and iii) one-sided, transactional extraction of care with a sense of entitlement to receive care without reciprocity or without focusing on daily practices of giving care in community. What does self-care look like in practice today?

Is there anything you do that doesn’t directly or indirectly involve the contribution of other beings? Even when we rest, there are conditions of some level of safety or security that have to be enabled for us to truly rest. So let’s take a moment to sit with how the beings at the other end of the “care products” we consume are being treated.

On the other hand, what does “self-care” that actively harms the collective look like? Relax at home alone with a sheet mask while ignoring a friend who reached out to connect because “you don’t owe anyone anything”, purchase care products & services from violent corporations killing our planet as a form of “self-love” while deprioritizing community building thinking it will heal you

Mainstream self-care has created NEW forms of oppression, extraction & exploitation. 

The perspectives I offer in my community care work are not MY novel findings but a responsibility I bear as part of my ancestral/ community teachings & traditions. These perspectives are sorely missing in leftist spaces. I write this piece to honor our collectivist traditions & to affirm the many global communities who find the concept of “self-care” reductive, confusing or fundamentally indecipherable. Our cultures are rooted in caring for each other & the land that sustains us all— I’m slowly learning to carry & embody these values by any means necessary.

[rhetoricsofraceandidentity]

[keepitmovinshawty]

Black is not synonymous with “POC.” Take the B out of BIPOC. At the end of the day, we are the only ones fighting for us. The others will happily pull the chair out from under us to get a seat at the table.

[underwaterspiderbird]

Friendly reminder if you're Indigenous/Black/Brown in any way, you're not white. You're a POC, no if’s, and’s or but’s. If you're even a drop of BIPOC, you're BIPOC, not “white diluted by mud”. Blood Quantum is colonial horseshit meant to try and genocide us, so treat it like the load of baloney it is. You either are Black/Brown/Indigenous, or you're not. Our👏🏼 people 👏🏼do 👏🏼not 👏🏼come👏🏼 in 👏🏼parts. 👏🏼

[moodr1ng]

i already hated the acronym bipoc but i just learned (some? many?) people in canada instead use ibpoc and the reasoning is uhhh. yeah its what youd expect. this is like saying out loud the quiet part of bipoc lol