#but we can do that without denying that under white supremacy

[qqueenofhades]

Hoping you can explain this because you’re smart but why in the world are the same people who scream about a labor shortage worried about the border and immigration? Isn’t more people coming to our country a good thing if we train them properly to fill vacant positions (a lot of which are service jobs anyway)?

Alas, you are forgetting what is quite possibly the chief shibboleth of Western white supremacy/far-right nationalism: that all people from other countries, especially *gasp* the brown ones, are invaders, murderers, job-stealers, polluters of the (white) body politic, etc, and that under no circumstances should they be invited or allowed to stay. This isn't just an American thing; witness the Tories in the UK salivating over the idea of torturing migrants, trying to shut down any legal migration routes even with the employment black hole caused by Brexit, steadfastly denying that their workforce problems have anything to do with Brexit, steadfastly denying that they need to loosen immigration rules, etc. This is also the case with the European right/far right, the Australian far right, and anywhere else in the world that has historically been built on systems of white colonization, white supremacy, and other racial and legal scaffolds of privilege and exclusion. The white people who come to a country and settle it are bringing "civilization" and therefore should be welcomed and encouraged, but the non-white people who already lived there are "savages" and need to be exterminated for the good of the "master race." If they try to come back to the (white) nation state after their homelands were colonized, moreover, they are "invaders" who just want to "soak up the money of hard-working citizens" and etc etc.

The core fascist hatred of immigrants is also why Trump is directly echoing Hitler's anti-immigrant rhetoric with his "poisoning the blood of America" screeds, his promise to round up and deport migrants en masse, and otherwise be as massive of a dick as possible. The fact that there's no economic benefit and indeed a lot of economic pain is entirely beside the point. Trump and his deranged followers like the cruelty and the idea of torturing brown people for daring to come to "their" (white) America, and think that if they can be outrageously monstrous enough, this will finally deter all the other ones from coming. It won't, and no globalized economy will run without immigrants, but again, this isn't the point. Reality or pragmatic calculations have nothing to do with it. It's only about what can cause the maximum amount of cruelty and chaos to everyone who doesn't wholeheartedly worship and fit the (white) fascist model. That's why the Republicans yelled about wanting a border bill before they'd fund Ukraine; the Democrats obligingly gave them one with some of the toughest restrictions in years, and the Republicans yelled and threw it away because Dear Leader Trump told them to trash it. In some sense this is a good thing, because it meant that Ukraine got funded without being beholden to performative partisan cruelty at the border, but it also shows that they don't actually care about any of this. They have bluntly stated in so many words that they want a manufactured crisis at the border so Trump will have it as a campaign issue. Then he can take office and implement all his terrible concentration camps and all the other genocidal fascist bullshit of Project 2025 (bUt bIdEn iZ thE wOrsE oPtiOn!!!!!)

So: yeah. There's no point looking for any actual consistency or logic in the modern far right, because that is so far from the actual aim. No matter if migrants are essential, no matter if Americans literally won't take many of the jobs they do, etc. I live in a big city that has had a ton of migrants coming here and have read many, many news articles about how all they want to do is get a work permit, make their own money, learn English, and integrate into American culture; they are often far more positive about the prospects of America than actual Americans. But because the entire project of a (white) fascist ethnostate as advocated by Trump and co. in America, the Tories/Reform in the UK, and the far-right European parties, Russia, and other places (this is all connected worldwide -- again, it's not limited to one country or region), rests on demonizing (brown) immigrants as subhuman scroungers who come to rape, murder, steal jobs, and otherwise threaten (white) law-abiding citizens, that will always win out above every single other consideration.

[dragonkatgirl]

there is a clear refusal in cultural radfem spaces to accept the possibility that any other source of social oppression and ostracisation could intersect with the the patriarchy. even when they use lesbians as a shield to attack trans people, they aren’t doing so because they truly care, but because they know we do (cue sartre quote about antisemites and language). these radfems view femininity as the be all end all of oppression, that the intended result of all historical crimes against humanity (e.g. colonialism) was to further oppress women, not for any other reason other than the fact that they were women disregarding the other, perhaps more pressing motivations (e.g. white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, capitalism).

radfems are so so ignorant of the many many ways patriarchy hurts far more than upper-middle class white cis straight women. julia serano has already clearly described how this affects amab trans people in her article why are amab trans people denied the closet?

but it absolutely extends to gender non-conforming cis women, cis men, enbies, trans masculine individuals, and really anyone who isn't them, because of one very simple reason:

cultural radical feminism is a childish ideology and ultimately a hate cult.

people who ascribe to cultural radfeminism are unable to comprehend that forces of oppression continue to push even if they personally aren't victimized, or that one can wield oppressive power without being aware of doing so. additionally, since they believe that femininity is the apex is all oppressive actions, they do not believe that they are able to be the oppressor or wield such power.

if you haven't experienced it, it doesn't exist. if someone insists that it exists, they are lying, maliciously and callously in order to hurt you specifically. but if you have experienced it, it is the first issue any organized movement should address.

fucking juvenile. these are people who failed to develop social object permanence, and their movement is simply solipsism disguised as activism.

sorry if this has become tangential, as someone who was bullied to an absurd degree for being 'feminine' when i was a child, who was called every gay slur under the sun all because i liked doing fucking ballet. i despise what these 'feminists' have attempted to turn feminism into. to me there is nothing feminist about a cultish obsession with hate and deliberate ignorance. i have no patience nor sympathy left for these shitheads.

the world is so vast, so beautiful, and with the input of so many different creative and diverse people, a better world is possible, it has to be, because i can't imagine any world where a hateful conservative ideology such as this can become so prominent being the best humanity can create

other than hell.

[maroonfairycherry]

I wish that transness wasn’t reduced to a “feeling” by white people

pre colonization 2spirit elders would help guide you to figure out your gender/ sexuality and your role in your community and what that meant to you, boundaries existed so that the nuances of gender diversity were always respected by the community , no-op was a lot more common back than because people knew themselves better, and If you didn’t have integrity and were just changing gender / gender roles for all the wrong reasons there was someone there to Correct you. NOT enable you.

NOW white trans people think that preferring the opposite white supremacist gender role is a good enough reason to IMPULSIVELY multilate your body and they often times regret it in the end and make a go-fund-mes guilting people into co-signing their self hatred and instead of doing anything to work on their psyche/personalit, they encourage others even more vulnerable than them to do the same; I’m so SICK of qu*er theory and toxic trans ideologies being so pervasive that they’ve now infiltrated indigenous spaces!!!!!! detransitioning shouldn’t be as common as it is but it’s the reality in a society that hyper fixates on “feelings” rather than honoring who you really are, it’s an obvious indicator of how people in western society habitually care more about how they’re PERCEIVED over unabashedly connecting with your souls truth, and it’s WHY transphobes now think they’re in the right for calling transness a mental illness, because mentally Ill white trans people make their own insecurities everyone else’s effing problem!!!! especially since the modern mainstream trans community is often ANTI no-op , constantly exclude , intersex and non-binary people and is habitually led by white/ toxic AMABS who choose to physically transition in some way BEFORE they mentally or spiritually transition and then accuse afabs of bigotry when we call them out on them taking shortcuts to womanhood without doing the real work of unlearning patriarchy and putting us in danger in the process , Which is SO stupid because no matter what they identify as, they still have sizism and patriarchy working in their favor even if they don’t subscribe to those ideologies they still benefit from it and no-op afabs like myself are always percieved as “privileged” when in reality we’re so not. Sizism is the root of sexism and white supremacy and even trans men who are afab, still are abused by those two systems. The trans rights movement being led by privileged non indigenous people was a mistake and I know we’re regressing because no one is ever allowed to accidentally misgender white trans people anymore without being publicly bullied , or even “canceled “ even though cis people of color are still habitually misgendered, by white trans people, because colonial gender roles was ALWAYS intended to exclude us. That’s why black and brown women can be women and non-binary at the same time! we’re already denied of womanhood for not being pale skinned which is often required to be granted feminity under white supremacy , and even skin color aside our natural attributes such as jawlines, and strong personalities are always read as masculine to y’all , because the (2) gender roles for white supremacy is decorated flesh-light with a womb to make aryan children, or big bodied soldier to enable bigotry. That’s it. It’s why cis people of color get genuine gender dysmorphia, because men of color while they can still be toxic aren’t supposed to be as repressed as they are! White patriarchy considered colors feminine, and things like colors and long hair are inherently non-binary to POC. MOC being so repressed is why they become abusive IE… women of color aren’t supposed to be abused as we are!!! This all not okay and I’m so tired of seeing the weakest links being fake woke and being enabled by everyone to publicly self victimize at the expense of us! I can’t stand it anymore! I hate q*eer theory so much for allowing this to happen, the insanity and the performative transitioning that I was almost peer pressured into just so I wouldn’t get accused of being transphobic in lgbt spaces is SO bad, that I’d rather be in the company of cis-straight people now days , who I’m not truly safe around , but I’d rather take my chances with potential old fashioned bigotry rather than whatever toxic , fake woke , neo-liberal , covert racist BS, y’all have going in the lgbt spaces now a days… I have not once ever felt genuinely safe in lgbt spaces , because for a community that claims care SOooo much , about “ progress” they’d rather PERFORM liberation than live it!

[realjaysumlin]

House Democrats warn of Project 2025 plans for a Trump White House | AP News

This isn't a conspiracy theory, this is taking shape right now as I post this blog. Voter suppression nationwide is taking shape to ensure a Trump victory in this year's election and the redlining of districts to enforce a very unfair and unjust election.

We are looking down the barrel of a dubious weapon that is going to blow the heads off of everyone who isn't considered as a white Christian. Red States are already passing laws that enforce everyone to be indoctrinated in whiteness and Christians values without trying to hide it.

Christianity is the greatest danger to all humanity, it's really sad that Black Indigenous People globally can't see this true history of genocides and injustices because of this shit religion. So many Black Americans grew up on reservations around this nation of ours and we also witnessed how whiteness divided our people.

People globally don't even talk about enslaved people who call themselves white nor do you talk about poor white people, under the contrary most of you mention white as being wealthy and free; even though this is a social structure that promotes white supremacy and everyone else incapable of achieving the same success.

Everyone seems to be living in a fog without seeing reality as it truly is, because you will see that no one can be denied success if they truly want it.

[lookwhatilost]

i don't get how some people out there preface a certain kind of social problem as it being systemic (which is usually correct) and don't actually seem to know what that word means. if you acknowledge that racism is systemic, by default you're admitting to the existence of a pipeline problem. the attempts to debunk it are just pathetic to me, like this as follows:

so let's get into why i'm not sold on this explanation at all.

for the purposes of simplicity, let’s boil things down to the black-white dyad and imagine that all job applicants are one race or the other, though most of what I’m saying here applies to relatively advantaged versus relatively disadvantaged groups more broadly. as of 2021, despite the fact that the country is getting increasingly diverse, there were still about five or six times more white americans than black ones. the numbers get fuzzy because not everyone is just one race. let’s just call it a 5-to-1 ratio for the sake of our exercise.

under these conditions, if white and black people apply to the same jobs in the same numbers, employers can expect about five job applications from white people for every application from a black person. but white and black people don’t apply for the same jobs in the same numbers. if you're economically marginalized, there are a million reasons you probably won't apply for a job at the new york times. just like how if you are economically advantaged, there are a million reasons you are not likely to apply for a job at foot locker (especially a full-time job, as an adult. in this country race and class are forever intertwined. white households have about 10 times the wealth of black ones. so we should expect that actual ratio of white to black applicants for jobs at elite institutions to be much higher than 5-to-1. what’s a reasonable estimate here? ten to one? higher?

of those applicants, how many will be truly competitive, in the sense that they will be able to demonstrate to a hiring manager that they can do work at the level required of insert elite institution? this is where people get uncomfortable, because it’s assumed that any claim about one racial group “beating” another in terms of the number of qualified candidates comes down to a belief in that group’s “supremacy"... but that isn’t how it works. at all. it’s genuinely insane to make this leap. in fact, we should be looking skeptically at people who believe in structural racism but don’t think it leads to proportional black-white discrepancies in how many well-qualified job applicants are produced.

here’s one angle that I think helps make this point: many people’s life outcomes are determined, in part, by their grandparents. I know that’s true for me. on both sides, my grandparents worked very hard to provide material security, education, and so on to my parents, who in turn passed on those advantages to me, which helped lead to my ability to do cool stuff. i’ve been exceptionally lucky. people could argue forever over how much of a given person’s success is the result of luck versus hard work – i find it silly to pin success on hard work given how many billions of people work hard without getting very far, but your mileage may vary – but the point is you’d have to be pretty nuts to deny that the role of grandparents and their opportunities, wealth etc doesn’t make a pretty big difference for many people.

when we're talking about race, or anything, i'm no essentialist. but i don’t like when people throw around the term “structural racism” as a way of implying race is an important causal driver of some outcome without actually making that argument. race, like any other term, can be invoked sloppily, including in this manner reminiscent of responding to the question “why did that happen?” with “uh, a ghost did it!”

but whatever you think of the precise way race continues to shape things today, and how much it can be fully separated from class, race has obviously shaped the transmission of wealth and opportunity across generations. again, we’re talking just two generations ago. there is no wild conspiracy theorizing going on here. it’s just not credible to deny this. 

it's comforting to think that discrimination is what’s leading to the outcomes we don’t like. it suggests relatively easy, nearby fixes. no one wants to be discriminatory. what people do want, or what the sorts of people in a position to shape how companies look want, at least, is to win the meritocracy game. they want that for themselves and for their kids. that’s why the conversation will grind to a halt if you press people on the actual depth of their desire for racial and socioeconomic justice. as in, if the results you see around you aren’t generated by discrimination, but rather by a big, complicated machine, are you still going to be enthusiastic about trying to change things? what about when you reflect on the fact that this big, complicated machine has generated excellent outcomes for you and your family?

to be fair, no one ever said companies are supposed to be major engines of justice. it’s pretty deranged to think they should be. but we keep pretending companies have a major role to play here, and they turn toward the easiest solution imaginable: claiming, albeit carefully so as to sidestep potential legal problems, that discrimination lies at the root of their issues, and that they can train and educate their way out of it.

what it comes down to is that if we can’t openly and honestly talk about what the problems are, they will be impossible to solve. and part of me thinks that’s the point.

[captainjonnitkessler]

How is that not denying your place withing western Christian society though? We live in a culturally Christian society, I don't think it's particularly reasonable to expect people not to acknowledge that reality, even if you no longer identify and are put off by being called that, it doesn't change the reality that Christianity is the dominant religion in the west and has tainted all of our lives, especially those of us raised with it. How else is that meant to be discussed and addressed when there is a very clear influence even amongst secularly raised people in western societies? It's part of the fabric of our societies in the west, opting out of the religion doesn't divorce us from our Christian roots and those things Do need to be acknowledged , unpacked and considered, even if being referred to that way makes you personally uncomfortable

Discussing cultural Christianity in the West is a very important conversation that we should have, I'm not trying to deny that. My problem is that this website, in my experience, almost never uses "cultural Christianity" to actually examine Christian supremacy in the West, and instead uses it almost exclusively to a) insult "reddit atheists" and b) shut down any criticism of religion. There's a few problems I have with the way it's used on this site:

1.) It is, ironically, incredibly Western/Christian centric and often denies the experiences of non-Christian religious people. I've seen multiple non-American, non-Christian people get dogpiled for criticizing *their own religion* by people telling them that they're just "cultural Christians" who "shouldn't say 'religion' when you mean 'Christianity'", under the apparent belief that using bigotry and abuse to gain and maintain power is exclusive to Christianity. And people often cite black-and-white thinking, thinking people who don't agree with you are going to suffer in some way, thinking that your religion or way of life is objectively superior, etc. as "cultural Christianity" - but none of that is in any way exclusive to Christians and honestly has very little to do with religion at all. That's just called being a dick, and anyone of any religion can do it.

2.) It is always, almost without exception, used as an accusation leveled at atheists specifically, as though atheists are the only people who internalize stuff about their culture. It's true that people will internalize some Christian teachings if they live in a majority-Christian culture! But that's not exclusive to atheists at all, or to Christian cultures. *Everyone*, of every culture, has some shit to unpack, and it's weird to act like that's exclusive to American atheists. Especially since most ex-Christian atheists became atheists *because* they started unpacking the thinking they'd grown up with!

I've got a post about the cultural pressure to celebrate Christmas (a great example of cultural Christianity that actively harms people) that several Jewish people have commented on saying that they got pressured to celebrate from *other Jewish people*. But nobody would consider calling them "cultural Christians", and rightfully so because:

3.) You shouldn't force labels on people. Calling someone a cultural Christian is *still calling them a Christian*, which most non-Christians aren't really comfortable with. I know it seems like nitpicking between calling someone a "cultural Christian" vs. something like "influenced by cultural Christianity", but if you wouldn't call an American Jew or Muslim a "cultural Christian", you shouldn't call an atheist that either. We're not Christian, full stop.

My last post was inspired by a particular post I saw where someone said they didn't like being called a Christian because they'd suffered religious abuse, and a bunch of blogs dogpiled them to VERY condescendingly tell them that well actually, they ARE still basically Christian like it or not, and therefore need to unpack a laundry list of views that had literally nothing to do with Christianity and which I'm pretty positive the OP doesn't hold. Which is, uh. A super fucked up thing to say to a religious abuse survivor. So I was a little hot going into that post.

TL;DR: Yes, we should talk about cultural Christianity and yes, if you see an argument that you think stems directly from cultural Christianity you should call it out as such. You should NOT call anyone you generally disagree with a "cultural Christian", nor should you act like having to unpack bigoted or outdated ideals is something only (ex) Christians have to do and need to be reminded of at every available opportunity.

[princeescaluswords]

Maladaptive Daydreaming vs. Unreliable Narrator: FIGHT!

Since the far-fetched theory of “Scott was an unreliable narrator of Teen Wolf who twisted what happened to make himself look good” is still making its way through the fandom, I’d thought I’d talk about how accepting this theory as true requires its adherents to pretend certain scenes never happened and how that becomes a cover for a racist re-interpretation of the show.

It was prompted by a notorious pro-Hale member of the fandom arguing that the canon scene of Scott figuring out that Derek was kidnapped at the beginning of season four had to be twisted by Scott because Peter would have to have noticed that Derek was missing first, would be the one who told Lydia or Stiles, and would be looking for Derek himself.   There’s an amazing amount of speculation to wade through there with not a single supporting scene to back the fan’s interpretation up, but I have to admit that if you believe that a major television production would go to such lengths as to create an entire narrative sequence which is completely false and yet never reveal to the audience what really happened in any way … and why would the production do that? … you could perhaps, if you strain yourself, see it.

But there is an earlier scene which serves to point out the incredible incapacity of the ‘Scott the Unreliable Narrator’ theory, and that’s the scene at the end of Season 3B.  In it, Derek is attacked in his loft by the Calaveras and by Kate, and in his terror, he retreats into what I’ve heard some people call a maladaptive daydream, where he talks with Stiles in a locker room, only for him to realize it’s not real when Stiles has six fingers on one hand.

If we apply this particular fandom theory, the scene is being told to the audience by Scott and thus passed through the filter of his perceptions.   The concept presents several interesting questions that will probably go unaddressed by the proponents of this theory.

How would Scott know the contents of Derek’s maladaptive daydream?  If, as they like to conclude, Scott reinterprets his relationship with Derek to be far more positive than it was, why would Derek confide in Scott about his moment of psychological weakness in the face of enemies?   After all, they argue that Derek does not like Scott, does not trust Scott, and does not see Scott as his alpha. What would Derek’s motivation be then?  An alternative would be that Derek didn’t have this daydream -- what a blow for Sterek shippers -- and that Scott is the author of this sequence, cleverly imposing it on Derek to show his weakness.   What cunning!   Scott’s motivation remains ... obscure.

If Scott is an unreliable narrator who is twisting the story to make himself look good, why would he present the dream in this fashion? This scene sets up Derek’s relationship to a member of Scott’s pack. They often present Scott as being an Evil Moron Tyrant, constantly self-absorbed and making everything about himself, so why wouldn’t he make this about himself as well?   If he was going to turn around the next episode and steal the credit for noticing Derek was missing, why not claim that he was so important to Derek that Derek would turn to him in his dream?  

If the narration of this dream was not twisted by Scott at all, revealing that Derek looks to Stiles for emotional insight, what other scenes in the show are presented without Scott’s manipulation?  There would be no reason, by the proposed interpretation of how the show is biased, for a distrustful Derek to tell Scott about this for Scott to twist.  Unless they want to make the argument that this scene and only this scene was not tainted by Scott’s bias, conscious or unconscious, what other scenes fall under this category?  If the goal of the production was to throw doubt on every single part of Scott’s story, why wouldn’t they make it clear what parts of the story were free of his point of view?   I know that meta specialists (if you can call them that) have tried to point toward examples of t-shirt colors and the presence of mirrors, but none of these serve as consistent indicators.  What’s the payoff for the production to do this in the long run, especially if they never staged a reveal?

The proponents of this theory argue against every single aspect of Scott’s hero’s journey, presenting him as the primary villain instead of the lead protagonist by claiming – without a shred of external evidence and no internal evidence that is not the subbest of subtext – that none of the scenes presenting Scott in a positive light are true but all of the scenes presenting Scott’s flaws should be taken as honest depictions.  They ignore the inconsistencies of its application and the conclusions implied by their arguments.   If Scott and Deaton (and only Scott and Deaton -- this isn’t applied to Isaac or Lydia or Liam or even  frickin’ Chris Argent) are the oppressors of the Hales and Stiles, if all examples of Scott’s virtue are manufactured and Deaton’s benevolence false, then that implies that the Hales and the Stilinskis and the entire cast were victims of a Latino teenager’s and a black veterinarian’s malicious behavior.  Yet, the powerful and noble born wolves of the Hale Clan did nothing.   And yet, the amazingly intelligent and resolute Stilinski family did nothing.  No one did anything!  

Or, even worse, an alternative implication is that characters tried to do something against the vile tyrannical reign of the Tree Alpha, and they failed.   That Derek’s noble purpose faltered; that Peter’s ruthless efficiency was helpless; that super-mega-genius Spark Stiles was stymied.  Perhaps they were too distracted gazing into each other’s eyes.

Now, anyone who understands how stories work would realize that while it is entirely possible to have the villains win and still be a satisfying story, it has to be done a certain way.   There has to be an awareness of the consequences of the defeat of the protagonist.   Think about the ending of The Empire Strikes Back.   But Teen Wolf … doesn’t have that.   If, as these people believe, the walk off at the end of The Wolves of War was the triumph of a deluded monster, it was amazingly bad storytelling.  It would be like if in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, if John Walker had managed to remain Captain America due to the manipulations of a congressional subcommittee.   Possible, but the audience would have burned Marvel to the ground.

In the end, there has to be a motivation behind this elaborate and easily disprovable fandom theory. It’s not hard to imagine the utility of having a means by which you can simply dismiss every single positive action by a character by claiming that the audience is being lied to. It would certainly free parts of the fandom to create any sort of alternative history that they wanted, and many have taken advantage of this to promote a narrative of denied white male character supremacy.  They have decided that the Hales and their fandom self-insert are not only victims of a deranged, selfish Latino teenager, but of the very people who created all of them.  

They don’t know, nor do they care to speculate, what Jeff Davis’s and MTV’s purpose would be for creating a show whose truth is composed entirely of inconsistent subtext.  They can’t explain why this would happen, and they certainly can’t explain why they would go to elaborate lengths to transform the narrative into something that doesn’t match anything on the screen.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM. 

[menalez]

Okay, so I want to be clear when I say again that white women in the suffragette movement said/did racist things, just as white women in feminists movements today say/do racist things,. Even white anti-racist activists will, at least on occasion, say and do racist things simply by growing up in a white supremacist society. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m disputing that reality. I only mean to illustrate some of the nuance (and why that matters today).

I sent those quotes in an effort to illustrate how the women’s suffrage movement was intertwined with universal suffrage, both white women and black men campaigned for each other’s right to vote. The women’s suffrage organizations grew directly from the basis of abolitionist movements. The initial suffrage (and wider women’s rights) movement was indistinguishable from the civil rights movement. When the 14th/15th amendment was proposed splits in the civil rights movement deepened — both white women and black women (and presumably some black men) campaigned against any amendment that didn’t include women. Similarly, black man and both white and black women favored the 15th amendment even without including women (of any race), who argued that women could wait. Ultimately the latter group saw their wish, and the division resulted in two separate organizations that continued to campaign for women’s suffrage.

The quotes you screen-shotted are undeniably terrible and exemplify the racism within the movements. To be nuanced however, they also span a wide range of individuals — from actual slave owners to women who said something racist but also directly participated in anti-racist activism.

To illustrate (from the quotes you provided):

Rebecca Latimer Felton - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Carrie Chapman Catt - she later said “our task will not be fulfilled until the women of the whole world have been rescued from those discriminations and injustices which in every land are visited upon them in law and custom”, lobbied against the word “white” being added to the 19th amendment, and lobbied congress/used her presidency of the League of Women Voters to advocate for people of color and Jews

Elizabeth Cady Stanton - she also founded the Women's Loyal National League that led the largest abolitionist petition drive at the time, organized the American Equal Rights Association a suffrage organization that explicitly supported universal suffrage. The organization split when (mostly) the black men in the organization supported the 15th amendment without advocating for it to be extended to women. (She definitely said racist things around this time, similarly Frederick Douglass, who was both her friend and one of her main critiques at the time, said many sexist things.) The split was later merged back into one organization that she headed.

Anna Howard Shaw - I know very little about her. She definitely said many racist things, but she did champion universal suffrage and campaigned to end racial violence (arguing that universal suffrage would end lynchings). Still, she also failed to condemn racist actions by her peers.

Same as (1)

Belle Kearney - terrible human, slave owner, all out white supremacist

Frances Willard - confusing mix of actively recruiting and working with black women and also promoting racists myth that white women were in danger of black men that facilitated lynchings (due to her “temperance reform”). Also appeared to be more laissez-faire when president of the WCTU since she let conservative states hold on to conservative and/or moderate positions regarding reform for both women’s rights and racial justice.

Same as (1)

As for why it matters today:

No, women definitely won’t have the right to vote revoked for discussing racism in past movements. But there’s a difference between discussing racism, and perpetuating misinformation. One of the main ways the American government disrupted activist movements throughout history was to sow dissension in their ranks. (And the American government/military taught many of these techniques to foreign countries.) An excellent example of this is the COINTELPRO operation, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Their goal was to divide and conquer - a movement can’t make progress if it’s busy fighting itself - and poison the public’s opinions of the movements, so as to dissuade new members from joining. (At this point, I want to reassure you that while this may sound like a conspiracy theory, it is very much proven and it/other programs did much harm to domestic and foreign reform movements.)

The myth that the suffragette movement was specifically racist, rather than operating in concert with and emerging from, anti-racist activism contributes to this divide and conquer method of disrupting activism. If you (general you) can convince women of color that the “original feminist movement” (ignoring the ahistorical nature of such the label itself) actively campaigned against them, then it’s much easier to dissuade them from considering feminist activism or to divide activist movements. (And, if it were true, it would be entirely justified!)

Of course, that’s not to say that feminists shouldn’t criticize (or disavow, to the extent possible) white supremacists like Felton or Kearney, or that we shouldn’t discuss and reform the racist sentiments in past and current movements. (In fact, I believe, and expect you do as well, that doing so is not only permissible but necessary, because to deny the racism that did exist in past/current movements would alienate women of color just as much as the idea that the feminism-of-old was solely for white women, and would in fact be an expression of racism in and of itself.)

I hope this clarifies what I’ve been trying to convey.

im surprised about the claim that white women and black men campaigned for each other's right to vote. i was under the impression that the civil rights movement was largely focused on black men and often outright excluded black women having a say, so i don't really know why they would support other women (such as white women) having a say when i heard they didn't support that for black women, who were always black men's biggest supporters.

i do get your point, to a degree-- and i think we agree overall but simply word things differently. i don't think that the women's suffrage movement was Bad and i don't think the white suffragettes back then were like, all evil and more racist than the avg white person in their society. i would say overall, those women were quite forward thinking and progressive for their time. i don't doubt that a significant portion of women were far worse than that, and even opposed women's rights (bc of the society they grew up in where this was a controversial thing). my only argument is that pretending they weren't also racist and had traits worthy of criticism (such as their racism) is innaccurate. a lot of prominent suffragettes were quite racist, and that's not to say that their feminist beliefs lead to that or that women's rights is interwined with racism, but just to point out that even those women who fought for the right to vote for women were not particularly good allies to poc but most specifically black people, and more importantly, black women. i also wanted to point out that being anti-slavery and campaigning against it, did not mean they were generally anti-racism or fighting against racism overall. they were fighting against the worst and most extreme forms of racism in their time, but they were all still racist in their own right. i'd like to reemphasise what i initially shared that you disagree with (+ my tags, and my previous comment on it so as to be fully transparent), which is not that different from what you're saying imo:

now i'm not trying to argue the origin of the movement, what it rose out of, how it relates to racism or anything else; my qualms are with the claim that the suffragettes were not racist. maybe back then, they were closer to allies to black people than most, however they were still quite racist. similarly, since you brought up white allies, white allies today may be the best we have and the best in our time, but they are also still often quite racist themselves.

my main and only point is that these women were still racist, and this is not to discount the women's suffrage movement, i just think that when we deny that aspect of the past then what we're doing is alienating woc. i've noticed a general trend of white women on here saying that white women were targetted by the KKK for example, fixation on stuff that is targeted at white women like 'karen' and placed on equal grounds with calling black women 'laquisha' to berate them, arguments that white women dont have racial privilege, etc and while i don't think the people making such arguments are necessarily coming from a bad place, many woc seeing this will end up feeling like the movement is geared towards white women and does not properly consider & include woc. that's why i take issue with the claim that xyz white female historical figure wasnt racist bc she was pro-slavery abolition, like, sure that must've been really progressive for its time but at the same time it doesn't change that the same woman did work w white supremacists and white supremacy was used as an argument to support white women's suffrage. it probably worked as a strategy and helped pave the way for other women, but its good to acknowledge these issues and criticise them esp since they remain relevant today when people are still indirectly debating how much woc should be considered in feminism.

[coconuthai]

actually makes me mad how “cultural exchange” isn’t an exchange at all. white ppl get to enjoy cultural exchange and have fun. what we get in return is racism, appropriation, alienation ... i can go on and on.

you always have white ppl asking “is it ok if i wear this?” or “is it ok if i do this?” why are you asking in the first place? why is it that when you see something that isn’t yours the first thing you ask is permission to take it just so you don’t get called out. why can’t you admire it for what it is and not to take it for your own? you can admire without participating. isn’t it already awful knowing that nonwhite people get denied opportunities, harassed, beaten, discriminated, and even killed for practicing our culture?

and yet the first thing for white ppl to do is take it for themselves because to them it’s like playing dress up; it’s something fun. for us, this is who we are even if there is a risk to our lives or well being. we have had to hide or assimilate parts of ourselves and so many of us have spent years just to take pride in who we are only recently. there is no such thing as cultural exchange under white supremacy. it’s only take and take. it’s so frustrating. i think that’s why it’s hard to see white ppl enjoying our culture without enduring the consequences.

i can only wish white ppl would put more time into combating white supremacy as much as they do consuming our cultures. nonwhite ppl suffer bc our culture is more valued than our people and that is in fact exploitation and not cultural exchange. the basic idea is that there is no respectful cultural exchange while we live under the logics of white supremacy. if you click the link @wesaidallegedly explains this concept more short and concise.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Packing the court

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Mitch McConnell's cynical reversal of his Obama-era prohibition on confirming a new Supreme Court justice in the waning days of an administration has kicked off a lot of interest in the possibility of "packing the court."

The number of Supreme Court justices is not spelled out in the Constitution: rather, it is the subject of federal law, and a new Congress, Senate and President could in theory pass a new law, expanding or contracting the number of judges - we could have a 21-seat bench!

How this could play out is complicated. Henry Farrell's history of FDR's threat to pack the court rebuts the idea that court-packing undermines democratic norms, arguing that the threat itself tamed the court and made it pliable to the New Deal.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/19/the-supreme-court-and-normcore/

The court's power comes from its legitimacy; even the alleged "textualists" (who say their only job is to strictly hew to the text of the Constitution) are secretly consequentialist (ruling on the basis of how their judgments will be perceived by the public).

To rule without regard to consequence is to undermine the court's legitimacy and thus its power.

Farrell: "Norm maintenance requires not just that political actors worry about the chaos that will ensue if the norms stop working. It also relies on the fear of punishment – that if one side deviates from the political bargain implicit in the norm, the other side will retaliate, likely by breaking the norm in future situations in ways that are to their own particular advantage."

More explicitly: "Norms don’t just rely on the willingness of the relevant actors to adhere to them. They also rely on the willingness of actors to violate them under the right circumstances. If one side violates, then the other side has to be prepared to punish. If one side threatens a violation, then the other side has to threaten in turn, to make it clear that deviating from the norm will be costly."

This view is not unique to Farrell. Writing in the LA Times,  Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Berkeley Law, concurs: "The threat of increasing the size of the court to 13 might be enough to discourage Republicans from their dirty tricks. But if they do it anyway, and the November election produces a Democratic win in the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, Congress would be totally justified in increasing the size of the court."

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-18/op-ed-democrats-have-a-secret-weapon-to-thwart-a-rapid-ginsburg-replacement-they-should-use-it

But FDR isn't the only president who bypassed the Supreme Court. Lincoln faced down a court packed with pro-slavery justices - the bench that denied Dred Scott standing on the basis that Black Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Writing in Jacobin, Matt Karp describes how Lincoln tamed the court by delegitimizing it, with New York papers declaring that the Supreme Court was a "a self-disgraced tribunal."

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/abraham-lincoln-supreme-court-slavery

Lincoln-supporting legislators like William Seward introduced legislation to weaken the court's power: "Let the court recede. Whether it recede or not, we shall reorganize the court, and thus reform its political sentiments and practices."

Though the law was doomed, it was part of a normative exercise in delegitimizing the court. Lincoln allies mocked their opponents for "superstitious worship" of the court, made fun of the justices' appearance, and rejected the idea of "judicial review" of constitutionality.

This crept into mainstream discourse. Maine senator (and Lincoln's future VP) Hannibal Hamlin wrote, "We make the laws, they interpret them; but it is not for them to tell us what is a political constitutional right of this body. Of all the despotisms on earth, a judicial despotism is the worst. It is a life estate."

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Douglas attacked Lincoln for undermining the court's legitimacy. Far from rebutting this claim, Lincoln made it a campaign promise.

"We do not propose to be bound by [Dred Scott] as a political rule. We propose resisting it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject."

Lincoln won the election, and in his inaugural address, he said, "[I]f the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court. The instant they are made the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal."

Lincoln DID pack the court, adding one more justice, but he also just bypassed them, ignoring their precedents and passing new antislavery laws that contravened them. SCOTUS was sidelined for a decade, including during Reconstruction.

Karp: "Drawing direct lessons from the past is a fool’s errand, but this history should remind us that judicial power — however grandly it may be imagined by friends and foes alike — is critically dependent on political currents. The Right’s resort to judicial supremacy is not a sign of strength, but an admission of weakness: a beleaguered regime calls upon the authority of the court only to achieve what it cannot accomplish through electoral politics."

[mediaevalmusereads]

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. By David Reich. New York: Pantheon Books, 2018.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: non-fiction, science, genetics

Part of a Series? No.

Summary: Massive technological innovations now allow scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA as never before, and it has become clear--in part from David Reich's own contributions to the field--that genomics is as important a means of understanding the human past as archeology, linguistics, and the written word. Now, in The New Science of the Human Past, Reich describes just how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized human egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of our species. He delineates how the Genomic Revolution and ancient DNA are transforming our understanding of our own lineage as modern humans; how genomics deconstructs the idea that there are no biologically meaningful differences among human populations (though without adherence to pernicious racist hierarchies); and how DNA studies reveal the deep history of human inequality--among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals within a population.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: discussions of racism and eugenics

Because this book is non-fiction, the structure of this review is going to be different from how I usually do things.

I picked up this book after it was used in a workshop on teaching Old Norse-Icelandic classes in an age of renewed interest in the mythical white past. The workshop used Reich's findings as an example of how to talk both about genetic differences between populations, and how to use scientific evidence to disprove the myth of a "pure" white race. The workshop itself was helpful, so I decided to look at the book as whole to see what else Reich had to say.

The first thing I really appreciated about this book was the way it was written. Reich makes clear that Who We Are is meant to be something of a hybrid: it's not a pop-science book, but it's not aimed solely at specialists, either. Thus, it's a good book for those who want to learn more about genetics and ancient DNA from an actual expert in the field, and I think Reich respects the reader's intelligence by including a lot of detailed, complex information about how genetic work is done. Granted, at times, some of the science went over my head, but that's due to my own limitations rather than anything Reich did wrong. Reich avoids jargon and carefully lays out what kinds of techniques his lab does and why to prove his points, and though it could be a little much, I understood and appreciated why all those things were included. If you're the type of person who wants a little more than pop science, you might find this book meets those needs.

Reich also has a genuine passion and fascination with the pursuit of knowledge, and loves being surprised by scientific findings. This passion is contagious and made me, as a reader, want to learn more and keep turning the page. I appreciated, too, that he called for scientists to work more with archaeologists and historians to avoid making elementary mistakes when interpreting data.

I also really liked the moments when Reich used science to critique racist myths from the 20th century and in the present. Reich makes clear at multiple points throughout the book that there is no such thing as a "pure" racial bloodline; all people alive today are the products of millennia of population mixture. He also stresses that though populations have genetic differences, those differences do not support white supremacist narratives.

However, I do think that Reich makes it a little to easy for people to accuse him of upholding or legitimizing some racist ideas. He spends some time in his book criticizing people who insist race is purely a social construction; in his line of work, genetic differences do exist between populations (people with African ancestry have increased risks for certain genetic diseases, people in Tibet have genetic adaptations that they benefit from, Ashkenazi Jews have increased risks of certain genetic defects, etc.), so I can understand the frustration he might feel when people insist that no significant differences exist between people of different races. However, in railing against a forced "orthodoxy," I think Reich opens himself up to unfair criticism and makes him look like he's fighting against "PC culture." Granted, he also rails against racists and makes clear that white supremacy is not only harmful, but scientifically unsound.

I also think Reich might come across as perpetuating racist ideas due to a small section in his book that outlines how genetics and cognition/intelligence are linked. Reich highlights the work currently being done in the world of genetics regarding cognition, and admits that some of this work may be misappropriated by white supremacists (or other nationalist groups). Granted, Reich also makes clear that, whatever the science says, we should be careful to shape our societies to treat everyone the same and not use genetics to deny people certain rights or opportunities. While I can get behind that sentiment, I think the turn to cognition is a little out of place in this book, and even if there is merit in having a conversation about the ethics of studying the link between cognition and genetics, I don't think Reich is the person to helm that discussion, mainly because it requires a lot of time and nuance (as in we need to account for how economics/class and other environmental or social factors play a role), and Reich doesn't devote that much time to it in this book.

Lastly, I think Reich comes across as a little insensitive to Indigenous/First Nations people. While Reich acknowledges the ways in which white/Western scientists have taken advantage of native peoples, I also think he underestimates the strength of that trauma. Given various tribes' refusal to participate in genetic research, I can, to some extent, understand Reich's professional frustration; but I also think Reich positions his field as benevolent and somewhat dismissive of tribal consent. Again, I think the topic of how to go about doing genetic research on Indigenous populations is worth having; I just don't think Reich is the one to helm it.

TL;DR: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past is a fascinating look at the history of ancient human migration using genetics. Despite some moments when Reich struggles to overcome his own biases, this book is an honest look at the possibilities genetic research can offer, as well as a powerful refutation of racist ideas about "pure" lineages.

[whitehotharlots]

Biden-era wokeness as a backlash against Wokeness 1.0

4 years of Trump rule. 4 years of Russiagate hysteria. 4 years of all the Decent People struggling to articulate why this particular president is a uniquely bad aberration in an otherwise functional system, not a completely foreseeable end point of Reaganism, a transition into something even worse. 

Joe Biden’s Democratic party is poised to be even more xenophobic and militaristic than they were under Obama. They will most likely win the White House, retain the House of Representatives, and come very close to winning back the senate. 

Cause for celebration? No. The left wing of the party is even weaker now than they were in 2016. On an emotional level, Biden will provide stark relief to a president who was a grotesque embodiment of the true essence of our ruling class. No one will be able to push back without associating themselves with the Bad One.

Biden’s Democrats will therefore be unchecked in their ability to implement the severe austerity they've been salivating for since the Clinton years. They can pull this off because on the cultural level they've managed to create a widespread sense that there is no change beyond radical posturing, that the only goal in politics should be to evoke a strong emotional reaction among your enemies. 

Against a background of policies that are materially imperialist and neoliberal we will have a loudly amplified cultural politics centered on ashistoricism and censorship. All Americans, left and right, have become convinced that the destruction of unifying social norms is a moral imperative--perhaps the only imperative worth pursing. We're going to get even more litigious and punitive, and that will be held up as progress.

We must accept the fact that privilege politics are establishment politics, and that the righteous anger animating the recent uprisings will be sublimated to establishment ends. Liberals control our cultural institutions. This cannot be denied. And they have succeeded in establishing abstract alterity (blackness, queerness, trans-ness, or any combination thereof) as the sole source of moral goodness, while allegiance with dominance (whiteness) is the cause of all the world’s evil. 

The Biden administration has confirmed a terrifying twist to this formula: Alterity and blackness are not manifested through one's identity markers, nor even through the material effects of one’s beliefs and actions. They are instead measured by one's adherence to imperialism abroad and neoliberalism at home. The establishment asserted, without a hint of irony, that Biden was the blackest and therefore most virtuous candidate. He was the blackest not because of his skin color, his legislative history, nor even his policy proposal. He was the blackest because the establishment said he was, and once he had earned that title there was no way to criticize him without engaging in “anti-blackness.” 

That’s the reality we are living in now. Even if Biden himself is not, we are.

Under Biden, austerity will be swift and widespread. Any attempts to point out the regressive and murderous effects of these policies will be squashed through the arbitrary invocation of cultural offenses. Likewise, those who adhere to the imperialism/neoliberalism will be shielded from any consequences for their crimes of tone and posture, since these crimes are prosecuted on a completely arbitrary scale. This is how Biden got away with battling Corn Pop and raping an intern, while Sanders' finger wave makes him simply unelectable. 

This was the explicit background of the 2020 primary--it's how they managed to cast policies that would disproportionately benefit non-white people as being race-blind or even white supremacist. Right now, there's some exceptions in that non-white/non-male candidates have a bit of leeway in not adhering to neoliberalism, but that's not going to last for long.

Any cruel thing they want to do, they can justify immediately within the terms of their culture war framing. They can raise the social security retirement age to 75 under something the White Supremacy Reduction Act. For rationalization, they can point out that a majority of social security beneficiaries are white, and therefore anyone who takes umbrage with their efforts is acting out of whiteness, has been blinded by privilege into believing they simply deserve to not live in squalor once they are too old to work. The fact that these policies hurt people is proof that they’re working; that fact that you’re criticizing them only confirms how righteous and necessary they must be. Conversely, anyone who suggests the implementation of policies that might actually help people can be immediately shut down because of their failure to frame their suggestion in the exact correct manner, focusing on the exact specific groups, using the exact right words, etc.

There is no avenue, however hypothetical, for progress to occur before the Big Collapse comes. We are fucked.

[wormprint]

hey guys! my commissions are officially open once again!

my prices have been updated-- it is now $9 (3 Ko-fis) base for 500 words, adding $6 (2 Ko-fis) per 500 words following. nsfw works add $6 as well! All of my examples are on my AO3 @ kickthematt !

I WILL write:

- Fluff, angst, soft sm/t - m/m, f/f, and some m/f ships. I am selective when it comes to m/f. - Light gore (battle scenes, some blood and cuts and bruises)  - platonic/familial relations

I WILL NOT write:

- Hardcore sm/t - Intense gore - children in romantic/sexual relationships, incest, general nastiness 

I have the right to deny any commission without explanation.

Click on the link to go to my ko-fi! I have a goal on there that’s pretty important, and there’s a blog post about it on there, but I’ll put the details of it under a read more on this post.

The gist of it is that I’m a gay, neurodivergent, transgender man who is escaping a toxic environment, and I need every penny I can get. (CW for under readmore: white supremacy , bad family relations , bad mental health , mentions of racism)

Thank you so so much if you read, and thank you doubly if you reblog!

(this is just pretty much copy/pasted from ko-fi) Hey everyone!

So, as the title of this post suggests, I'm going to highlight some of the things I am currently dealing with, and shed some light on the goal that is currently on my page.

CW - White supremacy, bad family relations, bad mental health, mentions of racism

Since the beginning of the year, my parents have been going down an incredibly scary path. As white supremacy and alt-right groups have begun gaining traction and rearing their ugly heads, they have dragged my parents with them. My parents were never hateful in the past; it was only recently that they began to feed on the harmful toxicity that is radical conservatism. As a gay, neurodivergent, transgender man, this is incredibly scary for me, and it has been for a while now. Things have gotten exponentially worse recently.

My mom has begun trying to push her propaganda onto me and my brother. She defends people who want me dead. She tells me to read the literature from those who feel that I threaten the "sanctity" of the United States. She pokes and prods at me to "discuss" politics with her, despite my requests for her to not do so. She claims that I'm being tormented and brainwashed by "terrorists" and that I've grown "intolerant" in the past few years, even though all that I've been doing is being assertive in telling others to not argue with me about politics. My family watches Fox News and PragerU quite loudly, and it permeates nearly every corner of the house. Almost every hour of the day I am bombarded with calls to action to harm people I care about, with statements that are flat-out false and "facts" that I must "accept".

This has gotten to a point where I dread seeing any member of my family. I dread leaving my room, which leads to me isolating, which leads to me not taking care of myself in fear that if I leave my room once more, another "debate" will spark. It's impacted my sleep schedule, as they watch and listen to alt-right propaganda late at night. It's hard to sleep when you hear the constant rallies to harm BIPOC in the late hours of the night.

My mental health has plummeted. It's gotten to scary lows, lows that I haven't felt in years. And I need out, or I fear that I won't make it to the end of the year.

Thankfully, one of my close friends was also looking to leave their house, and we have applied for an apartment that we can move into as soon as November, as well as a grant from my local LGBTQ+ resource center to help cover the security deposit. I have the funds to get me through the next month and a half, but once moving day comes, I'm going to need everything I can get to ensure I have everything I need for being on my own. That is where the commissions come into play.

My current goal is $250 that I can use to get the essentials after moving-- groceries, cleaning supplies, hygiene products, etc. I work two other jobs as well, which definitely helps supplement what I'll need when I move, but it would be greatly appreciated if I could get some more as well.

Anything that I get through here will go straight towards those moving costs.

Thank you so much, even if you only just read this post. All I ask at this point is to be heard.

[itswasteland]

Notes on my faceclaim for Tony Stark: 

I’ve been meaning to write this up for some time. Henry Golding is white on his father’s side and Malaysian of indigenous Iban ancestry on his mother’s side. This will be reflected in his character.  Depending on the artist at the time, Tony has been drawn very white, while at other times he’s been coded as Asian. Obviously in the MCU, there is no such ambiguity (and racial ambiguity is a cheap attempt at diversity anyway, but hey, so is the constant bisexual baiting in the Iron Man comics….anyway….). Under the cut are some thoughts on (1) why I changed my fc and (2) the Asian Model Minority Myth and the “smart Asian” trope. TW for Long Post. 

Disclaimer: If you feel anything below is wrong, problematic, etc. please feel free to message and let me know. It’s no one’s job to educate me but my own, but if people have insights, I’m here to hear them. 

Originally my face-claim for Tony was the wonderful Charles Michael Davis, who is Black and Filipino because (1) I play Tony according to one of his earlier backstories where he was not adopted and his parents weren’t this dynamic duo they were later written as. His mom was an immigrant “mail-order bride” who then self-taught herself English and started up a series of charitable foundations while battling an abusive husband; for this reason, it’s important that Tony is represented as bi-racial (his mother was written as Italian and, yes, historically, Italian people have also been treated like shit in the U.S., but as most Italian-Americans have by now successfully assimilated into general white culture, I think this needs to be updated–and i say this as someone of a Sicilian family, AKA the “dark Italians” that other Italians hated for, you guessed it, colorism). (2) I believe Iron Man should be Black. And I still do. Most of the tech, advancements, and science America runs off were Black-made and white-stolen, and having science-savvy Black characters in comics is incredibly important. Iron Man should be Black, but Tony Stark isn’t. And a lot of this just comes down to Howard Stark. 

He is the epitome of white capitalism, and he stepped on anyone he needed to to get ahead, while telling himself–and the world–that it was patriotism and the American dream. Howard might have been smart, sure, but he just wouldn’t have gotten where he did without white privilege. That has to be acknowledged. Tony’s story is largely about being the face of stolen advancements. White, class, male privilege is part of Tony’s story. 

Tony is not someone who persevered against the odds, the world against him; he’s someone who had success handed to him (which doesn’t erase how hard he worked or how smart he was or the abuse he had to overcome–but that’s the thing: acknowledging white privilege doesn’t mean you never worked hard or don’t deserve any success–it means you had a much easier time getting there than a POC would have in your shoes). Much of Tony’s story is about waking up and seeing that privilege and trying to do some good with it and to pass that mantel on (without turning into some white savior). Which is why Ironheart is the Iron Man the future needs, not Peter Parker (who I also love–but it’s time for Riri to have that spotlight). 

Now onto my faceclaim. So much of the original Iron Man story is dependent on Asia in problematic ways (this was later changed to the Middle East in the MCU–another war where U.S. Imperialism was the real enemy–but it was originally the war in Vietnam). Through 70+ years of comics, Tony has been working in and out of parts of Asia, selling off parts of his company to different Asian-based industries, etc. (with his girlfriend, Rumiko, and her father’s family being from Japan, many of the comics took place there, but they also took place in China, Vietnam, and Malaysia). 

Marrying an Asian wife and having an Asian son would likely have been very appealing to Howard as a way to help solidify those business connections, while believing and impressing upon his son that all Asians are smart, so he should always do perfectly and any of his intellectual success isn’t really his personally, just a given. And this is a part of Tony’s story too. Though I don’t play Tony’s adopted arc, the idea behind it is that Tony is told all of his intellect, all of his personality, is down to ‘coding’ done to his genetics. This turns out not to be true, but that idea is very real. We see this narrative all the time–Asians as ‘genetically deposed’ to be smart–seen as a “good” stereotype when in fact it’s incredibly damaging. It also creates a caricature: the smart, tech-savvy, and usually inherently asexual Asian man incapable of leading (always deferring to someone else). What we don’t see as often is the consequences of that–the mental toll, the self-questioning. The fact that Tony defers automatically to his intelligence to prove himself but wants to be seen as tough, attractive, a leader, etc.. 

My Tony is not only waking up to the realization of his white and class privilege, but to his own white-washing and the model minority myth. (You can read more about that here.) This is not only super damaging to Asian children in general, but also helps contribute to racism in America, particularly anti-Blackness.

 “When paired with racist myths about other ethnic or racial groups, the model minority myth is used as evidence to deny or downplay the impact of racism and discrimination on people of color in the United States. Given the history of that impact on black Americans particularly, the myth is ultimately a means to perpetuate anti-blackness.” 

For more info, here is a book on Asian Settler Colonialism. The short version of this is that in order to continue this lie of the “American Dream,” many Asian-Americans are made to believe that they both are free from racism and discrimination (erasing a lot of racist American history in the process), while having simultaneously “overcome” racism, meaning so can everyone else. It’s often a difficult process unlearning this and realizing that this “success” of the “American Dream” is both detrimental to Asian communities and other POC. Asian-Americans are often used to continue white supremacy. 

And a big part of Tony’s origin story is about being used. He benefited from it certainly, was well paid to shut up and be the smart one (which is the point of a model minority narrative: if you’re moving up the ladder, why should you question it? meanwhile, others continue to be oppressed and the system continues) , but Obadiah was the one in charge, taking whatever Tony’s big brain could come up with and selling it for his own interests. 

This will probably be added to in the future, but this is already long enough as is, so I’ll stop there.

[antiracistkaren]

On Grief and White Women

The stages of grief are well known: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

I am always surprised when I start coming out of the other side of grief, because the stages don’t feel like the typical grief cycle for me. Acceptance feels first: yeah, that person died. Or part of my life died, and it is that acceptance that kicks off my grief. And I’m angry, not in denial, but depressed, certainly.

It’s a weird depression though. It doesn’t make me sleepy, it makes me sharp and dangerous. It doesn’t keep me in bed, it keeps me focused on all of the pain. Any new pains added in are reacted to in a huge way: I cannot take any more, so I cause harm to others to force my experience of pain to be shared.

I am finding that my experience of pain--physical and emotional--are very intense. I am unsure if it is because of autism, or if it is because I have spent my life connecting my brain to my body, and notice the physical sensations that are a product of my stress much more readily than the average adult.

My threshold for physical pain is almost nil, in some regard. Especially internalized physical pain. I can deal with a cut, sometimes not feel it like others, but any internal discomfort radiates out from my body. It forces me to collapse mentally, I can’t make coherent thoughts from it, and due to that incoherence, I am then unable to figure out or communicate effectively about/around my pain.

So I had a surgery, and then I had a death in the family. Was it sudden? No, the person had been diagnosed with cancer in 2018. However, the speed with which she declined was shocking. I have an email written from her--a response from my own email where I poured out all of the love I had in my body for her--stating she felt really good, and didn’t think that she would be passing any time soon. She passed less than 10 days later.

Now I am about a month out from her death, and I am just starting to see how dark my world was for a long time. How angry I was that she didn’t fully accept my love, how angry I am for not having pushed to have my partner at her bedside sooner, how angry I am at myself for having a surgery which made it hard for my partner to get to her quickly and without concern for my welfare. I carried it all willingly, for a while. It was a welcome distraction from study. An excuse to dip into poor habits that brought out the worst of my anxiety. It was a reason to bomb the LSAT (unconfirmed at this moment, but I’m a catastrophizer), to not be able to focus.

I’m not denying myself those feelings and that time, but I couldn’t even see it until I started to see some sunlight again. Until I could start to receive some of the love my friends had been desperately throwing my way, until I could grab on to some of these lifelines to save myself.

All this to say: it makes me think about white women, a lot.

I learned in undergrad, when I was getting my PoliSci degree, that it is impossible to see the depth and breadth of oppression when you’re still in it or under it. On TikTok this week, white women have been handed a lot of flack for their inability to recognize that although they are oppressed by the patriarchy, they are not the most oppressed people, and their oppression (though difficult) is not the same as the oppression put on Black folks, and especially anyone who is LGBTQ, Disabled, or AFAB and also Black. That’s intersectionality, and white women suck at it.

Much like I sucked at seeing how my own sadness and oppressive grief was causing me to act out in ways that vented some of the physical and emotional pain, I think white women struggle in the same way. When you don’t feel pain, (and although women in general are abused, Black women are 3x more likely to be murdered than white women, more likely to be abused than white women) your introduction to it feels overwhelming.

However, it’s categorically wrong to try to compare oppression for oppression. It’s not a zero-sum game. I think of oppression like a ladder: white cis straight able-bodied christian men are at the top, with zero oppression and a society built around them. They have no notion of oppression, and mistake any pain they feel as systemic oppression and tantamount to the pain that others feel under the boot heel of white supremacy and patriarchy.

Everyone standing under them on the ladder know that those at the top of the ladder are not oppressed, and are aware that those on top have no idea.

White cis straight abled bodied christian women are just one rung below. Woke liberal white women start to wake up to their own oppression and fail to look down. They only look up at the men who are standing on their shoulders keeping them down, and have not a care for the myriad of people below them on the ladder. They can’t even conceive of a person who is LGBTQ, homeless, disabled, BIPOC, and a sexworker as someone who even exists, but they do.

When white women start to attempt to equate their unhappiness with oppression, it is tone deaf and very similar, if not exactly the same, as when a white man feels pain and starts screaming oppression.

Yes, we are oppressed by the patriarchy... but so are men. Yes, we are more likely to be murdered by a partner than a man, but Black women are 3x more likely than we are to be murdered by a partner or family member. Fight for women’s rights, yes, but not White women’s rights. Oppression has an additive effect: that’s what intersectionality is. Oppression has layers, and the more oppressed you are, the harder it is to find you in American Society, the more your voice is buried. The more you’re erased from consideration.

White women, if they are to participate in the liberation of all women or in smashing the patriarchy, have to take a long hard look at themselves, the ways they have upheld the patriarchy when it suits them, and the ways they benefit from specifically white patriarchy in their own lives.

Half-woke white women are dangerous allies. They scream “me too!” when Black women or Indigenous women start talking about their struggles, often over those women who are trying to share their harder, deeper, and more intense experiences. Half-woke white women who fly the banner of ally are dangerous to BIPOC. They’re the ones who will scream that a Black man is threatening because he is a man, without a care to the racism that lives in their minds alongside their fear of men.

And most of all, most white women--especially those are are not close to being awake--have no idea what the depth of oppression feels like. In order to even come to the table with BIPOC, it is our job to examine our own grief, our own mistakes, our own anger and work on that before we step out trying to lend a hand in the community. Getting triggered as a white woman can get a person of color killed in America. Only when a white woman has done her research, committed herself completely to uplifting the voices of women of color--over her own most of the time--can she really start to be effective.

Only when the healing is mostly done can we start to see the overall oppression. Until then, we are a double-edged sword that will swing back on BIPOC every time, to their detriment.

[qqueenofhades]

I have a question about your opinion as a historian about how to deal with problematic past. I am French, not American, so not quite as aware of what is happening right now in the US regarding statues as I probably should. My question is the following: many of the politicians who promoted (admittedly white) social equality in France, worked on reforming labor laws, etc, in the 19th / 20th century were certainly not anti-colonialist. How to deal with this "mixed legacy" today? Best wishes to you!

First off, I am honoured that you would ask me this question. Disclaimer, my work in French history is largely focused on the medieval era, rather than modern France, and while I have studied and traveled in France, and read and (adequately?) speak French, I am not French myself. So this should be viewed as the perspective of a friendly and reasonably well-informed outsider, but not somebody from France themselves, and therefore subject to possible errors or otherwise inaccurate statements. But this is my perception as I see it, so hopefully it will be helpful for you.

(By the way if you’re interested, my post on the American statue controversy and the “preserving history!” argument is here. I originally wrote it in 2017, when the subject of removing racist monuments first arose, and then took another look at it in light of recent events and was like “WELP”.)

There’s actually a whole lot to say about the current crisis of public history in a French context, so let me see if I can think where to start. First, my chief impression is that nobody really associates France with its historical empire, the same way everyone still has either a positive or negative impression of the British Empire and its real-world effects. The main international image of France (one carefully cultivated by France itself) is that of the French Revolution: storming the Bastille, guillotining aristocrats, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, a secular republic overcoming old constraints of a hidebound Catholic aristocracy and reinventing itself as a Modern Nation. Of course, less than a generation after the Revolution (and this has always amused/puzzled me) France swung straight back into autocratic expansionist empire under Napoleon, and its colonialism efforts continued vigorously alongside its European counterparts throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. France has never really reckoned with its colonialist legacy either, not least because of a tendency in French public life for a) strong centralization, and b) a national identity that doesn’t really allow for a hyphen. What I mean by that is that while you can be almost anything before “American,” ie. African-American, Latino-American, Jewish-American, Muslim-American, etc, you are (at least in my experience) expected to only be “French.” There is a strong nationalistic identity primarily fueled by language, values, and lifestyle, and the French view anyone who does not take part in it very dimly. That’s why we have the law banning the burka and arguments that it “inhibits” Muslim women from visually and/or emotionally assimilating into French culture. There is a very strong pressure for centralization and conformity, and that is not flexible.

Additionally, the aforementioned French lifestyle identity involves cafe culture, smoking, and drinking alcohol -- all things that, say, a devout Muslim is unlikely to take part in. The secularism of French political culture is another factor, along with the strict bureaucracy and interventionist government system. France narrowly dodged getting swept up in the right-wing populist craze when it elected Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen (and it’s my impression that the FN still remains relatively popular) but it also has a deep-grained xenophobia. I’m sure you remember “French Spiderman,” the 22-year-old man from Mali who climbed four stories of a building in Paris to rescue a toddler in 2018. He was immediately hailed as a hero and allowed to apply for French citizenship, but critics complained about him arriving in France illegally in the first place, and it happened alongside accelerated efforts to deny asylum seekers, clear out the Calais migrant camp, and otherwise maintain a hostile environment. The terror attacks in France, such as 2015 in Paris and the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, have also stiffened public opinion against any kind of accommodation or consideration of non-French (and by implication, non-white) Frenchpeople. The Académie Française is obviously also a very strong linguistic force (arguably even more so than the English-only movement in America) that excludes people from “pure” French cultural status until they meet its criteria. There really is no French identity or civic pride without the French language, so that is also something to take into consideration.

France also has a strong anti-authority and labor rights movement that America does not have (at least the latter). When I was in France, the joke was about the “annual strike” of students and railway workers, which was happening while I was trying to study, and we saw that with the yellow jacket protests as well. Working-class France is used to making a stink when it feels that it’s being disrespected, and while I can’t comment in detail on how the racial element affects that, I know there has been tension and discontent from working-class, racial-minority neighborhoods in Paris about how they’ve been treated (and during the recent French police brutality protests, the police chief rejected any idea that the police were racist, despite similar deaths in custody of black men including another French Malian, Adama Traoré.) All of this adds up to an atmosphere in which race relations, and their impact on French history, is a very fraught subject in which discussions are likely to get heated (as discussions of race relations with Europeans and white people tend to get, but especially so). The French want to be French, and feel very strongly that everyone else in the country should be French as well, which can encompass a certain race-blindness, but not a cultural toleration. There’s French culture, the end, and there isn’t really an accommodation for hybrid or immigrant French cultures. Once again, this is again my impression and experience.

The blind spot of 19th-century French social reformers to colonialism is not unlike Cold War-era America positioning itself as the guarantor of “freedom and liberation” in the world, while horrendously oppressing its black citizens (which did come in for sustained international criticism at the time). Likewise with the American founding fathers including soaring rhetoric about the freedom and equality of all (white) men in the Constitution, while owning slaves. The efforts of (white) social reformers and political activists have refused to see black and brown people as human, and therefore worthy of meriting the same struggle for liberation, for... well, almost forever, and where those views did change, it had to come about as a process and was almost never there to start with. “Scientific” white supremacy was especially the rage in the nineteenth century, where racist and imperialist European intellectuals enjoyed a never-ending supply of “scientific” literature explaining how black, brown, and other men of color were naturally inferior to white men and they had a “duty” to civilize the helpless people of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and so on, who just couldn’t aspire to do it themselves. (This is where we get the odious “white man’s burden” phrase. How noble of them.) So the nineteenth-century social reformers were, in their minds, just doing what science told them to do; slavery abolitionists and other relief societies for black and brown people were often motivated by deeply racist “assimilationist” ideas about making these poor helpless people “fit” for white civilization, at which point racial prejudice would magically end. This might have been more “benevolent” than outright slave-owning racism, but it was no less damaging and paternalistic.

If you’re interested in reading about French colonialism and postcolonialism from a Black French perspective, I recommend Frantz Fanon (who you may have already heard of) and his 1961 magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth/ Les Damnés de la Terre. (There is also his 1952 work, Black Skin, White Masks.) Fanon was born in Martinique, served in World War II, and was part of the struggle for Algerian liberation from France. He was a highly influential and controversial postcolonial theorist, not least for his belief that decolonialization would never be achieved without violence (which, to say the least, unnerved genteel white society). I feel as if France in general needs to have a process of deep soul-searching about its relationship to race and its own imperial history (French Indochina/Vietnam being another obvious example with recent geopolitical implications), because it’s happy to let Britain take the flak for its unexamined and triumphalist imperial nostalgia. (One may remark that of course France is happy to let Britain make a fool of itself and hope that nobody notices its similar sins....) This is, however, currently unlikely to happen on a broad scale for the social and historical reasons that I discussed above, so I really applaud you for taking the initiative in starting that conversation and reaching out for resources to help you in doing it. Hopefully it will help you put the legacy of these particular social reformers in context and offer you talking points both for what they did well and where their philosophy fell short.

If there does come a point of a heightened racial conversation and reckoning in France (and there have been Black Lives Matter protests there in the last few weeks, so it’s not impossible) I would be curious to see what it looks like. It’s arguably one of the Western countries that has least dealt with its racial issues while making itself into the standard-bearer for secular Western liberalism. France has also enthusiastically joined in the EU, whereas Britain has (rather notoriously....) separated from all that, which makes Britain look provincial and isolated while France can position itself as a global leader with a more internationalist outlook. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are currently leading the effort for the $500 billion coronavirus rescue package for the EU, which gives it a sense of statesmanship and stature. It will be interesting to see how that continues to change and develop vis-a-vis race, or if it does.

Thanks so much for such an interesting question, and I hope that helped!