#hispanic housing discrimination | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sophiaphile · 9 months

Text

The Curse finale interpretation

Ash's ascent/death, parallels to pregnancy, and "lived experience" in The Curse

There was a parallel between the way nobody believed or understood Asher when he was stuck in the tree to the way that pregnant people are treated while they are in labor (or even how women are treated in medical settings in general)

Ash's ascent/death

Nobody would believe Ash (besides Whitney who witnessed him floating inside the house and Moses who saw Ash float up into the tree) that he couldn't come down. Everyone who sees him projects their own interpretation of Ash's experience and intentions.

Dougie thinks Ash is running from his responsibilities because Dougie's dad did the same, and (from Dougie's POV), some men panic or even run away from their responsibilities once their partner is in labor or gives birth.

The neighbors from the community think that Ash and Dougie must be filming something because that's is their experience with these outsiders; they are TV people and act strangely, which can be explained by assuming that any weird behavior is a part of making a TV show. This explanation is also the best that they have for how Ash could possibly defy physical law (because it really isn't reasonable to assume that he just is breaking physical law in some way).

Ash repeatedly tells them that he will fly up. He tries his best to explain what he is going through, and he isn't doing the best job, probably because he's extremely afraid that he might die. I repeatedly tells Dougie and the first responders what he needs from them, and nobody listens. They think that Ash is delusional and that everyone else has a better understanding of the situation and therefore know what to do.

Connection to pregnancy

I think some of Ash's experience can be seen as analogous to what pregnant women (and women in medical settings in general) experience. Historically, doctors have been male, and they obviously have never been pregnant or gone into labor, and studies show that even women healthcare providers dismiss women and minorities in medical settings (it has to do with socialized biases in everyone, which I will come back to).

These professionals often dismiss a pregnant person's self-report of needing help, and a CDC report shows that 1 in 5 women report medical mistreatment while giving birth:

Approximately one in five (20.4%) respondents reported experiencing at least one type of mistreatment. The most commonly reported experiences of mistreatment were being ignored by health care providers, having requests for help refused, or not responded to (9.7%); being shouted at or scolded by health care providers (6.7%); having their physical privacy violated (5.1%); and being threatened with withholding of treatment or being forced to accept treatment they did not want (4.6%).

The same report found that the poorer the woman or more marginalized her background, the more risk of facing mistreatment:

Overall, 28.9% of respondents reported experiencing at least one form of discrimination during maternity care (Table 3), with highest prevalences reported by Black (40.1%), multiracial (39.4%), and Hispanic (36.6%) respondents. Overall, the most commonly reported reasons for discrimination were age (10.1%), weight (9.7%), and income (6.5%); reasons varied by race and ethnicity.

Initially Whitney planned to go to what was implied to be a better hospital. It feels like the show maybe wanted the viewer to expect that Whitney would die due to being at a "poor" hospital (and maybe she did; the finale went no full magical realism, imo). Benny and Nathan probably expected that viewers would immediately think or even assume that this would happen (drawing from our own biases, even if they are informed by statistics), which makes me think that Ash's experience is analogous to pregnant peoples' medical mistreatment.

In these medical settings, doctors frequently ignore a pregnant person's self-reports or requests for help, and instead, the doctors and medical staff (regardless of gender) tend to think that they know better or that the pregnant person is delusional/hormonal/emotional/etc. They dismiss their lived experience. Doctors have historically been male, so they have NO experience being pregnant, but they think they know better than the pregnant person, and even women who have been pregnant cannot speak for every woman. It is not rational to take your own experiences and extrapolate them to everyone else (which has been a common theme in the show: making assumptions based off of limited experience or socialized biases).

Like pregnant people facing medical mistreatment, Ash was ignored by health care providers Dougie and First Responders, had requests for help refused, or not responded to; he was shouted at or scolded by health care providers Dougie for running from responsibilities of becoming a father; and had treatment withheld (the anchored net that he repeatedly begged for) and was forced to accept treatment they did not want (tree branch cut off, sending him to his death).

Lived experience, hermeneutical gaps, and epistemic injustice

OKAY. So this comes back to (what I have taken to be) the overall recurrent theme of The Curse: lived experience, hermeneutical gaps/injustice, and testimonial injustice (which are forms of epistemic injustice, for anyone who is interested in learning more about this).

Hermeneutical gaps occur when a person or group lacks the concepts or terminology to describe their experience. Such gaps lead to hermeneutical injustice; Miranda Fricker describes hermeneutical injustice as occurring

when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences. An example of the first might be that the police do not believe you because you are black; an example of the second might be that you suffer sexual harassment in a culture that still lacks that critical concept . . . hermeneutical injustice is caused by structural prejudice in the economy of collective hermeneutical resources.

Before the term 'sexual harassment' came to be, people impacted by such harassment didn't have the concepts or terminology to be able to describe their experience or what they were going through; they were often dismissed as just being flirted with or they didn't even discuss their experience because even though the felt like something was wrong, they didn't have the concepts to articulate their experience, particularly to groups who do not have such experiences.

Here, Fricker describes hermeneutical injustice as:

. . . someone has a significant area of their social experience obscured from understanding owing to prejudicial flaws in shared resources for social interpretation . . . The wrong is analysed in terms of a situated hermeneutical inequality: the prejudicial flaws in shared interpretive resources prevent the subject from making sense of an experience which it is strongly in her interests to render intelligible.

So hermeneutical gaps (lack of conceptual resources [words or formed concepts] to describe experience) lead to hermeneutical injustice (where a person's experience is misinterpreted in a way that leads to harm or testimonial injustice).

Testimonial injustice occurs when one party (person or group) dismisses the credibility of another group (basically treating the marginalized person as though they are not a true knower).

An example might be Fernando trying to be heard about his knowledge of the community violence. Whitney dismisses him, thinking that she knows more about systemic issues. Ash takes advantage of this kind of injustice when he tries to cover his lie that Abshir, Nala, and Hani live in transitional housing once they bought the property they live in. Whitney called out the inconsistency, and Ash decided to exploit the lack of credibility marginalized people are usually extended. He says something like "honestly I don't know with them they say one thing then another," implying that they are dishonest.

Connecting Ash's ascent/death and medical mistreatment of pregnant people with overall themes in The Curse

ANYWAY. Pregnant people in labor go through a unique experience, and sometimes they lack the concepts necessary to explain their experience in a way that medical professionals will "understand" or take seriously (hermeneutical gap leading to hermeneutical injustice). Further, medical professionals dismiss a pregnant person's testimony and treat them like they are not credible while the medical professionals work from their own assumptions or formal medical knowledge (testimonial injustice).

Asher does not have the concepts to describe what he's going through. Nobody has experienced what he experienced, and the experience is new to him, so he doesn't know how to convey what he experiences in a way that Dougie and First Responders will understand. Further, Dougie and the First Responders dismiss Ash's testimony and treats him like he's not credible while Dougie and the First Responders work from their own assumptions or ascriptions of Ash's intentions.

Throughout the show, our main characters have made assumptions about poor people, natives, and their own employees. Many of these assumptions arise out of dismissing or discrediting the experiences of others in favor of their own interpretation of events or others' intentions. Whitney (and Ash) thinks she knows what's best for Las Espanola, even though she lacks the lived experience or even the proper educational experience to understand the complex nature of amending systemic injustice. She is like the medical professionals and First Responders who do not listen to the lived experiences (self-reports) of what people want or need.

This behavior necessarily implies that the people she's helping don't know what's best for themselves, which implies that Whitney has some kind of expertise that qualifies her to intervene on their behalf. She actually doesn't; she has no qualification other than she happens to have rich parents, which doesn't really qualify a person for any kind of job, especially one as complicated as amending economic or social injustice.

I didn't expect there to be growth on behalf of the characters (largely because people have pointed out that Safdie brother projects rarely involve any kind of meaningful growth or resolution; they have bleak outcomes), but in the finale, I thought that Whitney (and Ash) had grown. She expresses jealousy and bitterness that Cara was receiving national attention for leaving the art scene while her and Ash's show wasn't even aired; it ended up being direct to app content. She uncharitably criticizes Cara for disliking exploitive collectors, and Whit says that she thinks that Cara quit because no one bought her work. Ash jokes that maybe if Whit quits her project to work in a massage parlor, maybe people will write about her too. Whit bitterly jokes back that she would need some kind of cultural sob story like saying she was making a statement on the Holocaust. Ash says he knows that she's making joke that selling her art retraumatized her but goes on to point out that native people have gone through a lot, which he says that he fully understands where Cara is coming from and that people process tragedy in their own way (discussing Mel Brooks), and Whitney finally concedes that she probably shouldn't be talking the way she is and that she doesn't have that lived experience. He assures her that he considers her Jewish (and that she can make such jokes), but I think the takeaway is that—on some level—Whitney has gained some self-awareness and realizes that her experiences shouldn't inform the way she interprets other peoples' choices and intentions.

The concepts I discussed here might also be connected to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the phenomenon that people (at any level of intelligence or education) learn something and think that they have a better understanding of what is going on than they actually do. When people (like Whitney) decide to act on such false assumptions of self-evaluation, they are likely to make mistakes or perpetuate injustice.

tldr; the real curse (imo) is the insidious implicit biases that are socialized into us and lead us to making assumptions about others' experiences and intentions. These assumptions ultimately create barriers that limit social understanding and social progress. If we all take a moment to examine why we reasoned as we do or where we get our ideas about people who don't share our ethnic, economic, gendered, religious, etc. background, we might find that we are missing the necessary lived experience (a hermeneutical gap) to understand where they might be coming from. Instead of assuming intent or competency or dismissing or being suspicious, we should all charitably interpret others to try to assume the best in and most of other people. It is what we would want others to do for us. Performing this kind of empathy will ultimately lead to developing the necessary empathy to overcome such biases by habit alone, which will create a more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding world, while also deepening and enriching our own lives and the lives of others by celebrating our plurality.

When we allow certain ideas into our head, they become very real to us, and when we act on those ideas without examining them carefully, those false beliefs can cause real harm.

#the curse #nathan fielder #benny safdie #emma stone #a24 #showtime #epistemic injustice #hermeneutical gap #hermeneutical injustice #lived experience #spoilers #the curse explained #the curse finale explained #green queen #the curse s1e10 #implicit bias #cognitive bias #dunning kruger

81 notes · View notes

ladamedusoif · 1 year

Text

Visiting - Chapter Two: Bright in the Sea

(moodboard by the wonderful @cutesyscreenname)

Pairing: Professor!Ben (College AU) x OFC Lydia/fem!Reader (reader POV/2nd POV)

Summary: Seeking a change of scenery after her life falls apart, Lydia crosses the Atlantic and arrives in a small New England town, to spend a year expanding her intellectual horizons as a visiting professor of art history at a small liberal arts college. Her growing friendship with Ben Morales, professor of Hispanic literature, forces Lydia to confront the fallout from her past - and raises unexpected questions about the future.

Chapter Summary: Lydia continues to settle in at Barrow College, developing a closer friendship with Ben as well as other colleagues. Not everything is smooth sailing, however, and things come to a head at a staff team-building away day at a New England beach.

Word Count: 6.5k (??)

Rating: Mature; will become Explicit in later chapters.

Content (chapter specific): Professor Ben College AU; smaller-than-usual-for-this-fandom age gap (she is 41 and Ben 47 when the story begins); canon is not a thing here; slow burn; strong language; thinly-veiled racism and discrimination; accent discrimination; "anti-woke" culture war nonsense from academics; not all historians, etc; alcohol consumption; discussion of anxiety and panic disorders as well as coping methods.

A/N: This chapter is part world-building, part "dealing with academic assholes", part meet more characters - all woven through the growing friendship between Lydia and Ben. I guess this is mostly fluff but kinda angsty at times? I did warn you it was a slow burn...

Much of this chapter is set around academic administrative and 'team-building' activities. Trust me when I say that these are the norm if you work in a contemporary university or college (and that I'm jealous of the Barrow people having a cute beach house for these events).

Also trust me when I say that the views and attitudes of K. Wright Lacroix are scarily common in academia on both sides of the Atlantic, and kicking against this is vital.

The title of this chapter is taken from the lyrics to Laura Veirs' song 'Cast a Hook in Me'.

I also listened to Lisa Hannigan's Sea Sew album while writing the last scene, and 'Sea Song' from that record feels very fitting for these two.

See the Series Masterlist for an outline of Lydia's story and background.

Further, short A/N right at the end to avoid any spoilers.

Taglist: @cutesyscreenname; @lunapascal; @fuckyeahdindjarin; @julesonrecord; @tieronecrush; @perennialdoll247; @vermillionwinter ; @iamskyereads ; @love-the-abyss; @tessa-quayle; @javierisms; @imaswellkid

The universal language of twenty-first century academia is, it seems, all-faculty meetings in airless lecture theatres, fuelled by terrible coffee and slightly stale cookies.

For you, though, attending your first proper meeting of the year at Barrow was a novelty, and the mid-September residual sunshine and warm temperatures (by your standards) meant that your new colleagues were in an upbeat mood.

Well, more or less.

“Are you ready for your first mandatory death by a thousand statistics? Fuuuuuck me, I hate this shit.”

Ani Sen stands at your office door, hip cocked, dark curls piled on top of their head to show off their freshly trimmed, back to school undercut, and impossibly funky, bright green glasses dangling from one hand.

“It can’t be as bad as an all-staff briefing I once had,” you suggest, scooping up your notebook, pen, and iPad and popping them into a tote bag. “Twenty minutes with the head of department and every slide had an animated graph, pie chart, or word art on it. I felt nauseous.”

Ani grimaces. “Okay, that does sound fucking awful. But where we lack in pointless animations, we make up for in tedium. And dick-swinging.”

The first time you met Ani, a fellow art historian and specialist in contemporary art, you’d been in awe of how cool they were. Mid-40s, smart, stylish, and highly accomplished, Ani’s coolness was positively glacial. They were also sweet, kind, and incredibly funny, their brand of sardonic (and sweary) humour chiming perfectly with your own.

Ani’s best friend in the faculty was Evan Rhys, a colleague of Ben’s in the literature department. Where Ani was dry and sardonic, Evan was bright and effervescent. He was about 40, tall and rangy, piercings dangling from one ear, and a perpetual spark of colour in the faculty corridors. When you first met him, Evan was sporting a shock of bright orange hair and a lurid green slash-necked jersey shirt, paired with white jeans and a pair of Converse exactly the same colour as his hair.

He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge student favourite. Rather more surprisingly, for a college professor entering middle age, he also had an Instagram following in the tens of thousands. (Ani was completely at a loss as to why he was so popular. “It’s just photos of him in those fucking outfits!”, they whined. “Maybe it’s because he matches them to his hair.”)

Between them, Ani and Evan had wasted no time in ensuring that you were invited for lunches, coffees, and introductions to the colleagues they thought you’d like to meet. Or, as Ani put it, “I’m gonna make sure you meet the non-fuckwits first.”

There was no shortage of fuckwits, apparently. Ani had drawn up a masterlist - “in case I’ve forgotten someone is, or has been known to be, a dick.” You had scanned it casually, feeling an unexpected surge of relief when you note that Ben Morales’ name is absent.

You knew deep down that he wasn’t a fuckwit, though lord knows what he thought of you. But you had had one day to get the measure of the man - Ani had been working here, alongside him, for several years.

“I met Ben Morales on my first day,” you mentioned, trying to sound casual. “He was tasked with doing the welcome for me. Seemed really nice, actually.”

Ani closed their eyes and makes a sort of “awwwwwh!” noise, as if they’d just seen a red panda or a sea otter or some other furry creature of equivalent cuteness.

“Oh, definitely not a fuckwit. Me and Evan have coffee with him or sometimes go out with a bigger group to Murphy’s - that’s the one bar that even students usually steer clear of. Ben’s the anti-fuckwit, actually, in every sense. Just an all-round good guy.” They raised an eyebrow. “Total fucking dork, though.”

Total dork or not, Ben had continued to take his welcome duties seriously. A couple of days after your welcome meeting, he’d met you in the staff lounge yawning at the filter coffee machine while it brewed up a fresh pot.

“Are we running you ragged already?”

You turned, smiling when you realised who it was. “I swear to god, I get the worst slumps around 4pm. Trying to get ahead of this one.”

He nodded sympathetically and brandished his blue mug. “Why do you think I’m here?”

The next day, around the same time, you were about to get up from your desk in search of coffee when you noticed a familiar silhouette in the glass panel of your office door: Ben, bearing two cups of coffee (one black, one with creamer).

“I hope you don’t mind? I was getting some for myself and remembered what you said about your 4pm slump, so…”

You beckoned him into the office and to a spare seat, gladly accepting the cup and placing it on your desk. “I’m so grateful. Coffee to your door? Come on, that’s the dream.” You rummaged in your tote bag, producing a small box of cookies and shaking them in his direction. “Unfortunately these are all I can offer by way of a thank you.”

It had only been a couple of weeks since you started at Barrow, but in that time the coffee call had developed into a bit of a habit on days where you were both around in the afternoons. He’d claimed that the companionable chatting that accompanied the coffee was just to see how you were getting on and make sure you had everything you needed, but you suspected that he really just liked having someone to talk about books or movies and swap silly stories with.

And you like it, too, especially when you manage to make him laugh so hard he has to take his glasses off to wipe his eyes. You’d bonded with some of your closest work friends (of all genders) at home in a similar way. It felt easy and natural with Ben from the start, and - with Ani and Evan - you were glad to have found such welcoming people so soon.

There was no sign of him at the all-staff event, though. You slip into a row of fold-down seats alongside Ani and Evan, who’s nursing the biggest iced coffee you’ve ever seen.

“Have you prepared her?” he asks Ani, who’s retrieving a pen and notebook from their bag.

“I have. From what she’s said, this is a universal experience. She’ll be fine. Right Lydia?”

He swigs some coffee, ice cubes clattering inside the enormous plastic goblet. “Not every college has a Professor Lacroix, though”, he muses, ominously.

You are about to ask who Professor Lacroix is when you feel a brush of fabric on your right arm and detect a familiar scent: clean soap, paper, bergamot, slightly spicy cologne, and with the addition, now, of coffee.

“Okay if I sit here?” Ben is gesturing to the empty seat beside you, at the end of the row. He’s a little more formally dressed than usual: black jeans, checked shirt, and a dark red tie. Somehow he’s managing to carry a cup of coffee, his glasses, and a folder all at once, and an old conference tote bag is slung over his shoulder.

“Of course!” you nod, moving your things over to clear space. He sits down and puts on his glasses before turning to you with a smile.

“Benjamin,” Evan says, nodding and raising his enormous iced coffee in Ben’s direction. Ben reciprocates the gesture, nodding with exaggerated ceremony. Evan’s gaze shifts to focus on Ben’s tie.

“Um. Benjamin. Are those…giraffes?”

You turn to look a little closer. Sure enough, Ben’s tie features a pattern of tiny giraffes, woven into the silk fabric. He looks down and lifts up the tie.

“My brother’s kids got it for me at the San Diego Zoo,” he explains. “I promised them I’d wear it for the first talk I had to give this year.”

Evan remains sceptical, sipping on his coffee as if the tie has personally offended him. You are about to tell Ben about your eldest niece’s love of giraffes when Professor Jennifer (Jen to most, Jenny to very few) Arden walks up to the end of your row.

Jen is head of the literature department at Barrow and a formidable figure in the world of gender studies, with a publication record as long as her arm. She is petite and fine-boned, her dark bob neatly slicked down, and she always looks perfect: beautifully tailored palazzo pants, gorgeous silk blouses, and a collection of statement necklaces that you covet greatly. She’s incredibly smart, deeply charismatic and very no nonsense, but has been extremely kind and welcoming thus far, embodying the perfect blend of “do no harm, take no shit” that a role like hers requires.

She’s also close to Ben, having joined the department around the same time. One day over lunch, Ani had mentioned to you that there’d even been a student rumour about them being secretly married. “Someone in one of my classes once claimed - no, swore blind - to have met them grocery shopping in town with their kids. Their KIDS!!” Ani laughed so hard the tears ran down their face. “Her wife is a goddamn paediatric surgeon for crying out loud, and a gorgeous one at that! I mean, no offence to Ben but if they saw Rachel they’d realise how wrong they were, because she’s incredible.”

Jen checks in ahead of the staff briefing, making sure you’re okay with being introduced to the entire faculty (do you really have a choice?) and confirming that Ben’s ready for his presentation.

“It’s going to be great, promise. It’s vital work.” She pats Ben’s shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.

Ben looks up at her, his expression uncertain. “And if there’s a backlash…?”

Jen raises an eyebrow. “Then we deal with it. Don’t let the bastards grind us down.”

When she's returned to the central podium you ask Ben about the presentation, wondering why he’s preparing for a negative reaction. This sort of trepidation was normally only seen when someone was about to announce a faculty restructure or cuts.

“It’s the next stage in the diversity and inclusivity initiative we’ve been working on,” he explains, opening his folder to retrieve some of the documents. “It’s a team effort - I’m just the person who reports back on the committee’s plans. Unfortunately, some colleagues aren’t quite so keen and -“

He’s interrupted by the loud voice of Professor Andrew Whitney, faculty dean, calling for attention as the meeting gets under way. “I’ll explain later,” Ben whispers, dark eyes serious behind his glasses, “but…well. You’ll see.”

Professor Whitney introduces you about halfway through the meeting. “…who will be with us for the entire academic year, working in Art History. Lydia?” He scans the lecture theatre. “Perhaps you could introduce yourself more fully, tell us about your expertise and plans for the year?”

Panic rises in your chest. Public speaking is literally part of your job, but something about the rows of expectant faces makes you want to sprint up the steps of the hall and run.

A gentle nudge from your right. “I think that’s your cue. You got this, don’t worry.”

You nod appreciatively at Ben as you get to your feet, introducing yourself and explaining your research interests. “So, uh, yeah. I’m really excited to be here, and thank you all for being so welcoming so far.”

You sit back down as quickly as possible, heat rising in your face. Jen stands up at the podium and leans into the main microphone. “A reminder too that, as is traditional, Lydia has two elective modules open to students on any major/minor combo in the faculty, so please do encourage your students to sign up! Lydia, would you like to tell us what these are?”

You stand up again. “Um, semester one is a course on unpacking the gaze in visual culture, focusing on the female gaze and queering the gaze; semester two is focused on readings in radical theory and applying this to visual culture studies. All welcome! No prior knowledge required!”

Jen grins at you from the podium and lightly applauds. You suddenly become conscious of a theatrically loud tut-tutting coming from the other side of the lecture theatre, where a pale man with sandy-coloured hair and dressed in a navy blazer, chinos, striped shirt and bow tie is staring directly and disapprovingly at you.

Evan leans over. “That’s Professor Lacroix. I think you’re his worst nightmare. Apart from Ani. And me. And probably Ben, after this.” He gestures towards the podium.

Ben is standing at the rostrum, loading up his PowerPoint presentation. He seems a little nervous, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck and occasionally fiddling with his tie.

When he glances around the hall and meets your eye, you can’t help but give him a little thumbs up, mouthing “you got this!” in a reciprocal act of reassurance. He half-smiles, and starts the presentation.

He’s a natural: convincing and engaging, every detail meticulously prepared and evidenced. The project, it transpires, focuses on making Barrow - historically associated with providing a liberal arts education for the “elite” (translation: rich white people) - more inclusive and diverse through a range of admission schemes, scholarships and grants, and ongoing support.

You can see why Ben is the committee’s spokesperson. His passion for the project is plain to see as he outlines the supports being introduced - monitoring progress for students who’ve entered through the new schemes, offering extra, free support services and guidance to help them throughout their degrees, and so on.

“A liberal arts education is for everyone,” he says, “A college like Barrow is for everyone. We’ve started to make this a reality, and this year - with your help - we’ll ensure every student gets the support they need.”

Applause ripples through the theatre - except from the po-faced Professor Lacroix, who exhales, rolls his eyes, and does the most half-hearted attempt at clapping imaginable.

Ani leans in to you as Ben walks back up to his seat. “Lacroix is Fuckwit Numero Uno. King Fuckwit. The Fuckwit Tzar.”

Sure enough, when you look back over in his direction you notice that Lacroix has his hand up. Andrew Whitney calls on him to ask his question, and you swear you can hear everyone around you doing a sharp intake of breath.

“Professor Whitney,” Lacroix drawls in a bizarre mid-Atlantic accent, “I suspect you know what I am about to ask. But I must once again express my concerns about the direction of travel in this faculty.” To your horror, you notice a handful of his colleagues in history nodding appreciatively.

“Fuuuuuuck offffffffff”, Ani mutters under their breath. You steal a glance at Ben, whose usually open and friendly face has fallen into a scowl, jaw ticking as if he’s biting his tongue for fear of what he might say.

Lacroix turns in your direction, and gestures to himself. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m K. Wright Lacroix, Professor of American History.”

“The K stands for Kevin,” Ben whispers in your ear. “Or Kunt”, Evan adds, draining his iced coffee and forcing Ani to suppress a giggle.

Lacroix isn’t that old. Hell, he might be younger than you, but he’s got that countenance of someone who came out of the womb clutching a copy of the National Review. He continues speaking, now addressing the entire hall.

“Over the last couple of years this college has drifted in a dangerous direction,” he pronounces, as if addressing a rally. “We have had the incursion of critical race theory, gender ideology, and now we have our visiting professor offering radical theory to our students. Meanwhile, traditional subjects and approaches - the bedrock of the liberal arts education! - are forgotten.”

You want the ground to open up and swallow you. This isn’t the first time you’ve had this shit thrown at you. It won’t be the last. But the tacit acquiescence to this guy’s bullshit is mortifying.

Ben is clutching a pen in his right hand, long fingers gripping it like he’s afraid to let go.

“And of course, we have just heard the latest from Professor Morales and his comrades - pardon me, committee - in their efforts to kill off the grand Barrow tradition of high standards and academic excellence. And I ask once again - where will it end? Who will we ‘cancel’ this year?”

There’s something about the way he pronounces Ben’s surname - technically correct, if one was speaking Spanish, but with an extremely exaggerated accent intended to reiterate its “foreignness” - that makes you feel sick. Coupled with his use of “comrades”, the implication is clear. You’re appalled and surprised. This sort of thing would result in immediate action if it happened in your institution. Wouldn’t it?

The seats in the lecture theatre are close together, and as a result you can actually feel Ben’s entire body tense up. Ani is throwing their hands up in exasperation.

“Can we move on? This isn’t adding anything to the meeting, for crying out loud!”

Professor Whitney waves his hand in a call for calm. Jen Arden is rolling her eyes and shooting daggers at K. Wright Lacroix.

“Thank you, Professor Lacroix. As ever, your comments will be noted.” Professor Whitney looks at his watch. “I think that’s us done. A reminder: the annual away day is on Saturday, at the Barrow beach house! A wonderful opportunity for some team building and lobster rolls, as always!”

In your experience, an “away day” literally meant going to another room on campus to eat terrible buffet food while doing team exercises and focus groups. There was no “away” involved. It comes as a surprise, then, when the reaction to Professor Whitney’s announcement from the room is decidedly muted.

“Why does no one seem to like a beach away day?” you ask Ani as you pack up your things.

“Because they expect us to attend at weekends, because the actual beach time involves stupid shit like scavenger hunts or building a raft, because Andrew fucking Whitney thinks that’s how you build collegiality and interdisciplinary working,” they hiss. “Plus, it’s cheap - the college owns the property so they don’t have to pay venue hire.”

You turn to ask Ben if it’s really as bad as all that, but he’s already gone.

You swing by the college canteen, in search of some sustenance to bring back to the desk. Evan is still fuming from the briefing.

“Fucking historians I swear to fuck!” he hisses, assessing the selection of sandwiches on offer.

“I mean, they’re not all like that guy,” you offer, trying to defuse the tension. You’re still smarting, too - not so much from the stuff Lacroix had directed at you, as the casual racism and classism in his comments about the diversity initiatives. About Ben.

Evan exhales and reaches for a hummus and roasted vegetable wrap. “I know. Some of my best friends are historians, as they say. It’s just Lacroix. He gives them a bad name. And he’s always had it in for anyone who isn’t a cishet WASPy fucker.”

“Why doesn’t anyone do anything? I mean, he’s clearly guilty of implicit discrimination, at a minimum.”

Evan rolls his eyes. “First, he’s a bit of a nepo baby. Family of academics. Well connected, especially to the head of the college. Well off. So the college leadership doesn't really bother pursuing it when the issues are raised.”

He fills a paper cup of filter coffee for himself. “Secondly, the Barrow way is that colleagues - as in, permanent employees of the college - aren’t allowed to directly confront colleagues unless it’s specific to a class. There’s a process involving filling out forms. Supposed to stop confrontation and tensions, apparently.”

“What the fuck??”

“I know. It’s toxic.”

You fill a coffee cup for yourself, add creamer, then pour another. Black, this time. You pick up two donuts: one glazed, one powdered sugar. You walk with Evan as far as his office and then continue along the corridor.

You can see him through the glass panel in his office door, sitting at his desk. He appears to be reading something on his computer screen while absentmindedly playing with a little bobblehead figurine on his desk, lightly tapping its head so it wobbles back and forth.

You knock gently, holding up the coffee expectantly when Ben looks up. He nods, beckoning you in.

“This is very kind. Thank you.” He looks deflated. He takes off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose, and exhales.

“I’ll leave you be. I just thought you might appreciate the coffee -”

Ben shakes his head, gesturing for you to sit down. “No, no. Just a bit of a headache. I probably need caffeine. Stay. Please stay?”

You sit down in the chair facing his desk, opening the bag of donuts. “Glazed or powdered sugar?”

His eyes widen and his mouth forms a little “o” shape. “Ooh. I think I’ll go with powdered sugar.” He smiles as you hand him the donut on a serviette.

Ben’s office is, well, very him, inasmuch as you know what “him” is after a couple of weeks : a substantial desk with an anglepoise lamp stands in front of the tall windows, covered in piles of papers and books; a mid-century armchair sits in one corner with a low table beside it and a floor lamp behind, also stacked with books; and there’s a whole wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all heaving with texts of various shapes and sizes (and in several languages, you’d noticed). Family photos and framed prints are dotted here and there, and you’ve been meaning to ask him about some of the trinkets that you can see on some of the shelves.

“I was really impressed by what you said today about the diversity and inclusion initiative, you know,” you say, sipping your coffee. “It’s such important work, and the plans are great. Like Jen said, it’s vital.”

He shrugs and chews thoughtfully on his donut, powdered sugar lightly dusting his moustache. “You saw what I meant about some colleagues not being keen.”

You raise an eyebrow. “I know I've only been here a few weeks, and it may not be my place to say it, but… that guy’s just one asshole. One asshole on the wrong side of history, ironically for a historian. And he shouldn’t be allowed to treat colleagues like that. Especially not the way he…well, how he referred to you.”

Ben sighs, resigned. “It’s not the first time, probably won’t be the last. It’s not that simple here, unfortunately. There’s a rule -”

“Evan mentioned it to me. And - again, might be speaking out of turn - in this case it’s fucking stupid. Anyway, more importantly - the scheme sounds fantastic, and I’d be glad to talk over some of the equivalent stuff we do at my place sometime. Maybe share some best practice and swap ideas?”

Ben tilts his head and smiles. “I’d like that.”

You scrunch up the paper bag. “Before I go, I’ve got two questions.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Go on.”

“One. Is the beach away day really that bad, and what’s the dress code? Because I’m not sure I want to do bathing suit chic in front of the entire faculty.”

He huffs a laugh. “It’s not that bad. Just be prepared to help academics who’ve never as much as changed a lightbulb complete a scavenger hunt or assemble a raft from a selection of junk. And shorts are about as far as anyone goes. Thankfully.”

You feign wiping sweat from your brow. “Phew. Okay, question two. Can I see who that bobble head is?”

He turns the figurine around. “It’s our old pal Indy. I know you’ve probably never seen a professor with a bobble head in their office before. Please don’t judge me.”

“Judge you?!” Your grin is wide and genuine. “Just wait until you see my historical figures Playmobil collection. I love this! He’s got a PhD and everything. Didn’t you say he’d given you a misleading expectation of what it would be like to be an academic, though?”

He smiles at the figure, sending Indy’s head bobbing in its Panama hat. “I did. Not so much the fighting Nazis thing. More so that he never had to do any admin. And that he could climb out of his office to escape students.”

“That said… some might argue that you’re fighting oppressive and would-be dictatorial individuals, just at work rather than in the field? Wait - I didn’t say that. You never heard anything.” You mime locking your mouth and throwing away the key.

Ben gasps before collapsing in a fit of laughter. “Holy shit, Lydia, you’re the only one who could get away with that.” He rests his hands on the desk and tries to recover his composure. “Fuck. I really needed a laugh.”

You nod your head as you open the door to leave. “At your service.”

“Has everyone found their teams and their colour-coded sticker?”

Andrew Whitney is trying to corral an entire faculty’s worth of humanities academics into five teams for his grand team-building exercise - as Ani predicted, this year it involves building a raft. To promote interdisciplinary communication (per Professor Whitney’s introductory talk, delivered that morning), the teams are mixed, with people from various departments working together. To your relief, K. Wright Lacroix is on a different team, one primarily made up of other historians. Ben is on a team with Evan, and you and Ani are working together with a mixed group of musicologists and literature colleagues.

Though most of your colleagues remain cynical - Evan, for example, is wearing huge sunglasses, an enormous black hoodie emblazoned with the word NOPE, and a brightly-patterned pair of board shorts - you’re enjoying the relatively warm mid-September weather, stiff ocean breeze notwithstanding, and appreciating the novelty of seeing the New England coastline. Not having banked on a professional visit to the beach so soon, you’ve rustled up your most beach-appropriate and practical attire from your limited wardrobe: a pair of dark green cropped linen culottes and a long-sleeved Breton striped top, with a trusty pair of vintage-style leather sandals.

Ani stamps their Teva-clad feet on the sand and pulls up the hood on their tie-dye oversized sweatshirt, wrapping their arms around themselves to warm up. “You know the drill, right? We just have to make something that’s going to stay afloat for like, a minute.”

You nod. “And we can use the pile of beach trash in the middle as our source for components, and the aim is to work together to decide on a design and execute it. Is there a prize?”

Ani looks at you with a pitying glare. “Two guesses, girl. I’m motivated by spite. I just wanna beat the shit out of fucking Master and Commander over there.” They flick their head towards Lacroix and the historians, who seem to be assessing wind speed and direction by holding up fingers and tossing paper handkerchiefs into the air.

The building process is less an example of teamwork and more a sociological case study in group project dynamics, where one or two people take the lead and do most of the work while the rest kick back. Ani’s desperation to triumph over Kevin Lacroix and his crew has them going hell for leather in designing a simple but lightweight structure, dispatching you to gather plastic bottles and twine for the other team members to bind together.

You wander over to see how Evan and Ben are getting on. Evan is literally motionless, sitting in a lotus position on the sand with his hood up and shades on. Ben, clad in a pair of dark red shorts, a navy zip-up hoodie, and a grey, well-worn Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot T-shirt, is constructing a mast and sail of some sort from a long twig and an empty plastic bag. The ocean breeze has left his hair a tousled mess and he appears to be squinting against the glare despite wearing his sunglasses, but he looks like he’s in his element.

He notices you and waves, and you move a little closer. Your culottes flap against your legs in the wind, and you have to rest a hand on your brow to shield the sun enough to see him properly.

“I think you’re enjoying this, Professor Morales.”

Ben stands up, leaning forward to brush the sand from his knees and thighs. The gesture draws your attention, unconsciously, to the strong, lean muscles of his legs.

Your brain immediately remembers, unbidden, that he cycles to work.

He shrugs but his smile says it all. “Transferable skills!” he admits. “Building Lego taught me everything I know.”

A roar from Ani jolts you. “Lydia get your ass over here we have like ten minutes I swear to fuck!”

“They want to beat Lacroix,” you explain. Ben lowers his sunglasses and looks at you conspiratorially.

“Who doesn’t?”

And then he winks at you.

Ani is a pretty good raft-builder when they’re out for blood. Your team's haphazard construction bobs around in the surf while its captain whoops and cheers it on from the shore. The musicologists have long absconded to the beach house, hoping to steal an early march on the lobster rolls, so it’s just you, Ani, and a couple of the literature people left to witness the triumph of the SS Fork This Shirt.

“I thought you hated this stuff?” you ask Ani while they jump up and down in the sand.

“I love it when I’m winning and Fuckwit Tzar over there is not.” They gesture to where Lacroix is hastily trying to fix the mast on the overly elaborate ship his team had constructed out of an old plastic barrel. “Hey, historians!" Ani roars. "Oceans are battlefieeeeeeelds!”

Lacroix’s raft is the only one not to successfully set sail, which makes Ani even happier. Evan embraces them in a hug as you all stroll up to the beach house for the long-awaited lobster rolls.

The beach house, which was left to the college by a former professor, is an early twentieth-century building with shiplap cladding painted a pale blue with white accents, accessed from the beach via a white wooden staircase. Two white Adirondack chairs sit in a small garden facing the ocean, perfectly placed to admire the view.

You fall into step with Jen Arden and Ben as you join the rest of your colleagues inside. You’re all ready to dive in for a lobster roll when Andrew Whitney puts himself between you and the food. Never a wise move, but this is technically the boss, after all.

“So tell me, Lydia, are you settling in okay? What made you want to come to us for the year?”

You have your responses down pat. Professor Whitney seems impressed enough, moving on to ask about your plans for your elective classes.

You’re in the middle of explaining the concept of “queering the gaze” when a familiar but unwelcome face appears alongside the faculty dean. K. Wright Lacroix sips his white wine as he tries to insert himself into the conversation, and you feel deeply uncomfortable.

The next time there’s a natural lull, he pounces.

“I’m not here to critique your ideology this time, my dear. I am here to offer some friendly, constructive advice. Your accent, it's…difficult to follow. Impenetrable, at times. You speak very quickly, you know, and not all of us are used to having colleagues or tutors with an accent.”

You silently try to draw on some of the grounding techniques you’d learned for anxiety, willing yourself to stay calm.

“Technically, everyone’s got an accent,” you say quietly.

He understood that, alright. “Be that as it may - think about your new surroundings.” He speaks to you as if you are from another planet. “Speak more slooooowly. Enunciate. Yes?”

Your eyes are starting to prickle with tears but fury is rising in your chest. Fuckwit Numero Uno, indeed.

“There’s nothing wrong with how Lydia speaks, Kevin.” Ben, behind you, has overheard the last part of the conversation. “No one else has trouble understanding. Do you, Andrew?”

Professor Whitney is flustered, eyes darting between the three of you. “I…do not.”

Kevin Lacroix looks like he’s sucking a lemon. “Another bit of friendly advice, Lydia.” He flicks a glance at Ben before returning to stare at you. “Choose your friends here carefully. Though, admittedly, it looks like Morales here has already won you over.”

That fucking exaggerated pronunciation, again.

The red mist descends.

“Oh, okay. Enough. There you go again. I know your colleagues can’t say this - but I can. I’m not a permanent colleague, am I?” You’re trying not to raise your voice, but it’s taking every ounce of self-control you have not to let this creep have it.

Lacroix looks startled, clearly unused to someone letting rip.

“I don’t know exactly what your problem is, but I can take a pretty good guess. And if this is the stuff you throw out in public about someone like Ben - I mean, about Professor Morales - then I can only imagine what you say in private about your colleagues. And it’s disgraceful. No wonder you can’t abide the work being done to make this a more diverse and inclusive institution.”

You do not notice that the hum of conversation in the rest of the room has died down, as your colleagues turn their ears and eyes towards you.

“I genuinely don’t care if you think I speak quickly or not, but I do care that I’m about to spend a year in a working environment where someone can undermine their colleagues on the basis of their ethnicity or identity or gender or their first language or even just what they teach. That is not the image this college should want going out into the world.” You glance over at Andrew Whitney, who shifts uncomfortably.

“I don’t need your advice on how I speak, Professor Lacroix, and I certainly don’t need your advice on choosing friends. I think I’ve done pretty well so far on that front, you know?”

It’s only when you turn to meet Ben’s gaze that you realise everyone has been watching and listening to you tearing strips off K. Wright Lacroix. There’s a note of concern in Ben’s eyes, and when you look for Ani you see them mouth the words “Fuck, Lyd”.

You fucked up. This isn’t how they do things. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Fuck.

“Um, Professor Whitney? I will follow the official complaints procedure, just to keep everything above board, and…yeah. Excuse me.”

You walk as quickly as you can out of the house, settling on one of the wooden chairs out front as you try to quell the panic starting to grip your whole body.

Deep breaths, and the sound of the sea. Eyes closed, you concentrate on your breathing and on the waves lapping at the shore.

“Hey.”

Ben is standing beside you, a plate with a lobster roll in one hand and a glass of what looks like lemonade in the other. “I don’t think you managed to get a lobster roll in there, did you?”

You shake your head, and he hands you the food and drink, tilting his head as if he’s trying to read your mood.

“I wouldn’t mind some company, if you’d like?” You gesture to the other chair, placed just to the right of yours. He does that little half-smile of his and sits down, looking out to sea as you tuck into your food.

“Oh, fuuuuuuuck me!”

Ben turns, startled. You swallow the bite of your lobster roll.

“M’sorry. It’s just so good. I didn’t realise how hungry I was. Or hangry, maybe.”

“You didn’t have to say that, you know? Inside.” He looks back out towards the Atlantic, brow slightly furrowed.

“I’m really sorry, Ben. I just…me and my big mouth. I am so sorry if I’ve caused trouble for you, and - fuck. Not even been here a month and I’m a troublemaker. Typical.”

“You’re not a troublemaker, Lydia. I meant that you didn’t have to feel it was on you to take Lacroix to task like that.” He turns slightly towards you and a smile creeps over his face. “But I’m kind of glad you did. Dropping that ‘international reputation’ thing with Andrew Whitney there? Fuck, Lyd. It was…pretty badass.”

“I just hate that fucking gatekeeping shit from people like…him. It’s hard enough making it in this job without connections and family prestige or whatever he’s got.” You shrug. “And anyway, you stuck up for me and my accent, too.”

He hums thoughtfully as he watches the surf breaking on the sand. “It’s what friends do, isn’t it?”

You study his profile for a moment. The art historian in you is somewhat tickled by its near-classical proportions, noting the strong curve of his aquiline nose. You’d never noticed the little heart-shaped patch of bare skin in his beard before, either.

“It’s really beautiful here, isn’t it?” you say quietly, turning your gaze back to the water. “Maybe they’ll let me just move out here for the duration of the visiting role, keep me in lobster rolls all year.”

He chuckles. “It is beautiful. It’s nice to have the ocean relatively close. And hey, if you do stay here and need help eating the lobster rolls, well…”

A crunch on the gravel of the front yard interrupts the conversation. Ani has come to find the two of you.

“They’re loading us back on the buses to campus now, dudes. You okay, Lyd?”

You pop the last of the lobster roll into your mouth and give them a thumbs up.

“More than okay. Apparently, I’m a badass now.”

This time, you wink at him.

(bookshelf divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more)

Further A/N: Kevin Lacroix's comments to Lydia about how she speaks and her 'having an accent' are, believe it or not, based on actual stuff that was said to me by a colleague at a conference in the US.

Reminder: everyone has an accent.

Thanks, as ever, to the Visiting headcanons and sounding board: @cutesyscreenname, @julesonrecord, @lunapascal, @imaswellkid

#visiting fic #visiting masterlist #mr ben snl #professor ben x OFC #mr ben #pedro pascal character fanfic #mr ben x ofc #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal #Spotify

65 notes · View notes

icedsodapop · 3 months

Text

If it's one thing I cannot stand, it's when White actresses do biopics or docudramas and choose to whitewash the problematic irl women they portray as either misunderstood victims or intelligent underestimated girlbosses or both. Aussie actress Jacki Weaver, who's playing Shelly Sterling the wife of former Clippers' owner and billionaire slumlord Donald Sterling in FX's Clipped, literally described Shelly Sterling this way in an interview:

One of the overriding scenes of this story is female power. Shelly Sterling is ultimately the winner here. She outsmarts and outwits all those guys in that bastion of male supremacy — men's sports — with her superior business acumen, her negotiating skills. Shelly was running most of [the Sterling] real estate [empire]. She's the strength. And I think her story strikes a nerve for women. Shelly Sterling is a softly spoken, ladylike, small woman, being underestimated and humiliated with his endless affairs, and yet in the end, she knocked it out of the park.

The problem with describing Shelly Sterling as the true brains behind the Sterlings' real estate empire it's that it's not exactly the girlboss win that Weaver thinks it is. The Sterlings have been sued for housing discrimination against low-income African-American and Hispanic renters, which according to Weaver's logic, would mean that Shelly herself was complicit in racial and class discrimination as well. And for Weaver to describe Shelly Sterling, this White woman who was reported to be just as racist as her husband is while managing to avoid the same scrutiny he got, as "a softly spoken, ladylike, small woman", coded terms used to denote the fragility and innocence of White woman? It's probably unintentional on Weaver's part but it's leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

#clipped #clipped fx #clipped hulu #racism #white feminism

7 notes · View notes

justinspoliticalcorner · 4 months

Text

David Smith at The Guardian:

The blueprint for a potential second Donald Trump presidency known as Project 25 would take “a wrecking ball” to America’s democratic norms and institutions, a leading Democrat has warned. Representative Jared Huffman spoke to the Guardian before the launch of a congressional working group designed to sound the alarm about the rightwing roadmap and ensure that Trump never has the chance to implement its extreme agenda. The near 900-page Project 2025 handbook was produced by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington, as a manifesto for expanding the power of the presidency while dismantling layers of government. It recommends purging the federal ranks of many appointed roles and stacking agencies with loyalists. This would lay waste to democratic institutions, checks on executive power, individual rights and freedoms, and church-state separation in order to impose a far-right agenda, Huffman said. “You can look at what they’re going to do to our democracy: weaponising the Department of Justice, clearing away any norms that limit executive power.

“You can look at what they’re going to do to the civil service with ‘Schedule F’ [an executive order Trump issued in 2020 that sought to strip job protections from tens of thousands of federal employees], putting their political operatives throughout the government and firing people based on political loyalty to Donald Trump. “[Look at] what they would obviously do for women’s reproductive freedom and rolling back rights and protections for the LGBTQ community. Church-state separation – in the name of religious freedom, allowing all of this discrimination and further embedding Christian privilege into our government and public policies. It goes on and on.” Founding members of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force joining Huffman are Ted Lieu, vice-chair of the Democratic Caucus; Nanette Barragán, chair of the Hispanic Caucus; Judy Chu, chair of the Asian Pacific American Caucus; Mark Pocan, chair of the Equality Caucus and Labor Caucus; Diana DeGette, co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus; Jamie Raskin, co-chair of the Freethought Caucus and ranking member of the House oversight committee; and Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Progressive Caucus.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) is the lead person heading up a task force named the Stop Project 2025 Task Force.

The task force is created to warn the American people the dangers about Project 2025.

See Also:

Axios: House Democrats launch task force to counter Project 2025

#Project 2025 #The Heritage Foundation #118th Congress #Stop Project 2025 Task Force #Jared Huffman #Ted Lieu #Nanette Barragán #Mark Pocan #Diana DeGette #Jamie Raskin #Pramila Jayapal #Judy Chu

11 notes · View notes

micvick · 4 months

Text

Between the Sea and the Sand

Themes and Warnings for this chapter: Death and violence, Mental health struggles, Poverty, Cultural and racial discrimination, Familial loss, Forced participation in violent events, The text contains mild profanity and colloquial language and words in spanish.

Disclaimer: English is not my first language, and most of this text has been translated. The original text in Spanish is this: "Entre el mar y la arena".

Normal text: Spanish, Highlighted text: English

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The awakening in Puerto Cabello brings with it the penetrating smell of the sea, but this morning, the salty scent seems more ominous. My father's absence is palpable; I miss waking up to his tickles. I used to hate it, but now I miss it more than anything. I still haven't accepted that he's gone, and my brother Kai must already be on the boat. After my father's death, my best friend Annie's dad gave him a job as a helper on his boat. He's probably there now, working hard in the early morning light. Anxiety gnaws at me because today is the Reaping. Every year it's torture watching my friends go and not come back. They're always from our port because we're poor people. The only way to live for us is to ask for tesserae, and now it's my turn, my first year in the bowl. But my thoughts aren't centered on myself. The shadow of worry looms over my older brother, Kai, 17, whose name has been entered into the Reaping more times than I can count. In our toughest times after my father's death, all we could do was ask for tesserae, but he never let me take one, to the point that now his name is in the bowl 32 times.

Annually, the prospect of my brother leaving me in this brutal place horrifies me. Since our father's departure, Kai has become the family's pillar. It's just him and me, and if he doesn't survive these games, my existence hangs by a thread. In District 4 in Puerto Cabello, our home, life is tough, and survival becomes even more precarious. We're just one of the thousands of islands in District 4. We're nothing more than a place where people who shouldn't be here live. We're Hispanic, so we should be dead like the others in South America, but a few of us survive. Now we live here, in a place where we barely eat once a day and live off fish and seaweed. The only ones who live moderately well in this port are those who have businesses, and sometimes not even that, as mostly they live in houses with all their relatives together, although that's better than living in a house with just one room, one bathroom, and a roof almost collapsing. As I got up and dressed in my best clothes with a bracelet an old friend gave me, I saw the television that only serves to watch government programs and saw an announcement about the Reaping and what time it would be. That annoyed me, seeing how the presenter laughed and the people around him shouted with joy.

It's undeniable that the Hunger Games are considered a monstrosity by everyone. Instead of using their resources productively, the Capitol chooses to watch children fight to the death for events that happened 68 years ago. It's stupidity, as well as unfair, because our people's names always come out, a Hernandez, a Gonzalez, a Mendoza, since we're the only ones who desperately need tesserae. Interestingly, all the Latinos who go die, it's like you step into the arena and you die if you're Latino. One of the few Latinas I saw who won was Noorena Colinas, who won the 60th Hunger Games. I remember her very well because she always refused to speak English inside the arena. She always spoke her language, and it was the first games where the Capitol was forced to put subtitles because she was super interesting to the Capitol's audience. First, she fled to the forest, and with her machete that she grabbed a while later in the Cornucopia, she finished off each of the tributes on her own. When only she and a boy from District 2 were left, while fighting with the female tribute from District 5, he was very badly wounded. But he didn't realize something: Noorena was above him on a tree branch covered in blood from her previous victims, and when he least expected it, she with her machete cleanly cut off his head and declared herself the winner of the 60th Hunger Games. But still, it seemed depressing to me. She was praying all the time, always killed the tributes in ways they didn't suffer, and when she won, she broke down in tears and never appeared again as a mentor. This is unfair, girls and boys sent to die, and even though I don't agree, the government of Panem has no problem killing children like me.

I prepare to go to the Plaza de las Flores, grab my bag, and fill it with pearls that I got while walking on the beach near my house, hidden in a mini forest. Only I know about it, because no one wants to go there because of the mutts, and not normal ones, giant sea creatures, that can devour you as soon as they see you, but they haven't attacked me, I'm invisible to them. I grabbed a handful of pearls to exchange them for basic food at the square to have one more day of food. My destination is to meet my best friend, Annie Cresta, a Cuban whose laughter and warm hug are a balm in these dark times. And it always has been. When my father died, she was with me at my house for three days along with her mother. She gave me her lunch at school and comforted me whenever I needed it.

I go to the square and quickly go to a jeweler. He looks at me and greets me as he invites me into his tent. "Let's see, my girl, what do you have?" I showed him a bag full of pearls. "I can't believe it, where did you get so many?"

"I can't tell you, sir, you know they'll shut down my business." Anyway, entering that place is a death sentence.

"Well, my girl, how much do you want for them?" he said as he took money out of his cash register.

"With that amount of pearls, I think they would be like 300." I said, that would be enough for a week, but my brother eats a lot. He's tall and very strong and robust. He eats twice or even three times as much as I do, but his job warrants it. He gave me my 300 and shook my hand.

"Have a good day, girl, take care," he said as he stroked my head.

When I go out, I set out to look for Annie. They always give me my lunch for free there, black beans with rice and shredded meat. They always give me all kinds of food, and I appreciate that more than anything. At Annie's food stand, shouts and laughter can be heard from the entrance of the square, people dancing along with peacekeepers with their families eating. I enter the tent and there is Lucía, Annie's mother. She is counting the earnings while Annie hands me an empanada. "Chama, take this, you look malnourished," she laughs as she ruffles my hair.

"Yes, yes, Annie. As if I had ever experienced malnutrition with all those delicious dishes they prepare here," I reply with a smile. She has a quite particular sense of humor, she always tells me I'm skin and bones as an excuse to give me more food than I should. But she brightens up my day every day, and more so on a day like this. She was very nervous last year because

because she was eligible for the games for the first time that year. She spent her time praying every night, and I spent the two days before at her house because she was so nervous, and we didn't sleep those nights. Luckily, she wasn't reaped, but this year she's still nervous. She thinks I don't notice, but I know her so well that I even feel like I can read her mind.

"And are you excited for the party?" Lucia comments with sarcasm in her voice. "It's starting in two hours, so get moving and get ready. Today you should be more dressed up than ever, something formal like a dress," she says while looking me up and down. She doesn't do it unpleasantly; she has the same sense of humor as her daughter and her whole family, but it's like a Hispanic tradition, laughing to keep from crying, laughing to avoid suffering.

"Oh, ma'am, you know I don't have dresses. The only one I have is my mom's, and it's from her wedding. Today I'm not getting married, you know," I reply, trying to keep the mood light. But I would never wear my mother's dress for something like the reaping; I will never in my life wear it for anything. It's the only thing that holds the memory of my mother, and you can see her personality in it: a white dress with edges that simulate waves, with open sleeves and a light blue on each edge, and very shiny. I wouldn't be able to wear it, maybe at my wedding, but I don't want to get married. That means children, and I don't want to have them just to see them die.

Annie touches my shoulder, pulling me out of my thoughts, and says with a contagious laugh, "Don't worry, girl, I'll lend you a dress. Remember, I'm rolling in dough and have a bunch of dresses." It's a bit true; it's just that her seafood business became popular, and they even opened a restaurant downtown. Still, they refused to leave their home here. They say they belong to the port and won't leave unless it's necessary.

"Okay, if you say so, let's see," I agree, and Annie takes me by the hand to her house. Her house is in front of the square, and it's a huge house where Annie's whole family lives: her grandparents, uncles, cousins, great-grandparents, etc. She lives on the third floor with her mom, dad, and four brothers.

We climb the stairs until we reach her room. While she searches among her dresses, she continues talking to me about the latest news from the district, trying to dispel the tension that hangs in the air.

"Did you hear that Finnick Odair has another girlfriend? She's a redhead who lives in the rich neighborhood. Finnick sure doesn't waste time with the rich," Annie comments while she fixes my hair into two ponytails.

"Well, Finnick always had a weakness for redheads." All the time I've known him, he's always had that thing for redheads. He even told me once. I remember, we were in one of the many hidden coves near my house. We were talking about how a guy was pretending to court Annie, and the topic of what kind of boy or girl we like came up.

"Annie, what kind of guy do you like?" I said while eating ice cream. I remember that at that time neither she nor I could afford such luxuries, but Finnick bought us ice cream, just because he wanted to, not expecting anything in return.

"My type of guy is tall, muscular, tanned. Mana, you know what my type is."

"Your type is Mr. Carlitos' son," Finnick said, laughing. She grabbed a handful of sand and threatened to throw it at him, but in the end, she didn't do anything.

"And you, very cool guy, what's your type? No lying, lies and you get sand in your face," Annie said. He just laughed.

"My type is girls with a tan skin, brown eyes, freckles, and who are redheads." Finnick stared at me intensely after saying that, no idea why. Annie just burst out laughing and touched my shoulder.

"And you, girl, what's your type?"

"I don't have one," I said while playing with the sand. Suddenly, I feel a piece of sand fall on my head. I turn around and see Finnick. He said to me, "L-I-A-R." I grabbed a handful of sand, and we started a sand war. I miss that. I wish we had never drifted apart.

Annie was looking at quite a few dresses, but none seemed to convince her. Finally, at the back of the closet, she pulled out a light blue dress with shell design at the bottom of the dress and with sparkles on the neckline. "This dress is made for you," she says as she hands it to me to put on. It's very beautiful, too beautiful for someone like me to wear. "You should wear it, you'll look so beautiful. You'll look like a princess," she says.

"No, girl, I can't wear this. You should wear it." After I say that, she rolls her eyes.

"It's not a question, you're going to wear it," she says without giving me a chance to say anything else. Then she turns around and grabs a small box. When I open it, I feel like crying. It was my mother's necklace. We had to sell it after my father's death, a beautiful necklace with a mermaid holding a bluish-green stone that my mother wore all the time. "Happy early birthday."

"But how did you get it?" I was sobbing as I held it in my hands.

"I paid a guy with 4 zeros the amount you sold it for," she said while laughing and hugging me. "Should I put it on you?"

I nodded, and she put the necklace on me. I couldn't stop crying. Now I have more debts to repay her; rather, I will never be able to repay her. "Girl, this looks perfect on you." I look at myself in the mirror, and yes, I actually look somewhat pretty. "You're like a mermaid; you sing very well and swim better than anyone in this district. It seems like you could live in the water perfectly." I blush slightly at her comment, and before I can say anything, she takes my hand and says, "Come on, we've talked too much and the reaping is about to start."

With the borrowed dress, we head together to the Plaza de las Flores. The music and excitement increase as we approach the heart of the event. The reaping is about to begin, and although the fear persists, Annie's company gives me the strength to face what is to come.

On the way, I met my brother. I went and hugged him, and he hugged me back with more force. He had a small bag in his hand.

"What's that, brother?" I asked curiously.

"They're tequeños. Since it's going to be your birthday, I want you to gain like 5 kilos." It's a tradition for poor people like us to feed the next birthday person until they can't eat anymore. It's like a reward for staying alive.

I was eating them when peacekeepers directed us to the lines with the other children. I was almost in the front row, and the Plaza de las Flores is enveloped in a gloomy atmosphere as the reaping ceremony begins. The sky is cloudy, casting unsettling shadows on the faces of the District 4 residents. Annie and I grip each other's hands tightly, feeling the weight of uncertainty looming over us.

The District 4 escort, with his extravagant attire, steps onto the stage. He is followed by Mags and Finnick, victors of past Hunger Games, along with the mayor. I make eye contact, and he immediately winks at me. He was always this ridiculous, always trying to flirt with all the girls in the district. I just rolled my eyes and continued paying attention to the ceremony.

Silence takes hold of the plaza as he begins to recount the history of the dark days and how these games were made to punish the districts. Every word seems like an ominous echo, resonating in my heart. When it's time to announce the female tribute, the escort starts making jokes that don't quite fit at the moment. Then he says, "Ladies first." A chill runs down my spine as he pulls out the small slip of paper. I have a bad feeling.

"This year's female tribute is…" The escort takes a moment that seems endless before saying, with a voice that cuts through the air, "Marina Fernandez."

"No, this can't be real. This is impossible. How, why?" Annie says, looking at me horrified. I feel like time stops. The stares focus on me, and a mix of resignation and terror leaves me paralyzed. My heart beats hard, and the certainty that the Hunger Games stretch before me like a dark abyss consumes me. A peacekeeper pulls me toward the stage. I don't want to go, I'm too young to die, that's what all the tributes say, but there's nothing they can do. But in that moment, I find Kai's eyes in the crowd.

My brother's gaze reflects terror and shock. The anguish on his face doesn't go unnoticed. The possibility of losing me is as real as the Arena itself. The terror grows stronger and stronger. I'm not ready to face what's coming. The Capitol cameras focus on my face, and I know that every gesture, every expression, is being scrutinized.

The escort prepares to announce the male tribute. The air becomes denser, and nervous glances are exchanged among the district residents. I feel a commotion, but I'm so stunned that I don't realize my brother is advancing toward the stage.

"This year's male tribute is…" The escort hesitates for a moment before saying, "Kenji Ishika-" Everyone turns to see my brother shouting and making his way through the crowd.

"I OFFER MYSELF AS A TRIBUTE," he said with a desperate voice.

"Boy, I think you got a little ahead of yourself. Well, it doesn't matter. Come up on stage, please."

My heart sinks. The crowd reacts in shock. The Fernandez siblings. The people in the Capitol must be moved. This is cruel, but I can't say anything, because if I do, it will be worse for us. My gaze meets Annie's, paralyzed by surprise, and in her teary eyes, I see that she knows we won't make it out of this.

The reality of the tragedy hits me hard. My brother and I, condemned to the Hunger Games. Kai advances to the stage with determination. Our eyes meet, and in that moment, I know he will do whatever it takes to protect me, and that terrifies me. We will die because of me, all because of me.

The Plaza de las Flores plunges into a sepulchral silence as the Fernandez siblings face our fate. Darkness looms over us, but amidst the tragedy, the people around us start singing a song, a song that was used in ancient times to demonstrate pride. That gives me a spark of hope, but it's just an illusion of the deadly fate that awaits me.

#annie cresta #finnick odair x reader #finnick x y/n #hispanics #mags flanagan #the hunger games

12 notes · View notes

moontyger · 2 months

Text

Ozempic Can’t Fix What Our Culture Has Broken

If GLP-1 drugs only treated diabetes and did not promote weight loss, they would still be medically groundbreaking. But Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro probably would not have social media hashtags. These drugs are blockbusters because they promise to solve a medical problem that is also a cultural problem — how to cure the moral crisis of fat bodies that refuse to get and stay thin.

That many people don’t even question that eliminating fat people is an objectively good idea is why it is such a powerful idea. Thinness is a way to perform moral discipline, even if one pursues it through morally ambiguous means. Subconsciously, consciously, politically, economically and culturally, obesity signals moral laxity.

Any decent cleric will tell you that there is no price too high for salvation, so an entire class of people — the roughly three in four adult Americans who are overweight — is a target for profit-seeking. Medical weight loss interventions have, over the years, led to heart damage, strokes, nerve damage, psychosis and death. But under this moral code, it’s the social policies that promote, subsidize and profit from obesity that are cleansed of their extractive sins. It’s as if fat bodies, by housing slovenly people, do not deserve the protections of good regulations and healthy communities.

There’s something seductive about a weekly shot that fixes the body while skipping right past the messiness of improving the way people have to live. Both diabetes and obesity are conditions that are as much about social policy as they are about what people eat. Studies show that the crops the U.S. government subsidizes are linked to the high-sugar, high-calorie diets that put Americans at risk for abdominal fat, weight gain and high cholesterol. Sprawling communities, car-centered lives and desk jobs make it hard for many Americans to move as much as medical guidance thinks that we should. Under these conditions, telling people to change their lifestyle to lose weight or prevent diabetes is cruel.

...

There is weight loss for health. There is also weight loss for status and avoiding stigma. While both men and women experience greater discrimination if they are fat, women suffer more for failing to be thin enough. Study after study shows that overweight women are more likely to be unemployed than their thinner counterparts. When they are employed, larger women earn less, with smaller penalties for Black and Hispanic women, who already earn less, on average. Overweight white and Asian women experience the labor market discrimination that Black and Hispanic women already do.

Outside of the workplace, the trend of educational and economic elites marrying, befriending and socializing with one another — assortative matching and mating — is also a marked characteristic of our time. Elite homogeneity has a look, and the look is thin. So when women say that it is better to be sick and thin than healthy and fat, they are perfectly rational.

Kate Manne, a philosopher, says that the fear of being fat — fatphobia — is structural and intersectional. In her forthcoming book, “Unshrinking,” she questions whether solving obesity is something that can truly be done by eradicating fat people. Ozempic mania is not just a perfect example of how self-defeating our health economics are in this country, as Dr. Kahn points out. It is also an example of how the American penchant for solving structural issues by fixing individual bodies is excellent at creating demand without solving social problems.

#fatphobia #health care

3 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

Text

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: May 31, 2024

The ‘iDIVERSE’ program bars white and Asian researchers from applying.

The University of California, Los Angeles, medical school was hit last week with whistleblower allegations that its admissions office has for years discriminated on the basis of race, in violation of California law, by holding black and Latino applicants to lower standards than their white and Asian counterparts.

The allegations triggered an email message from the dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, who denied the claims and said that students and faculty "are held to the highest standards of academic excellence." He subsequently told an obscure Los Angeles Times opinion columnist that the allegations, published in the Washington Free Beacon, are "fact-free."

Hiring and admissions decisions, he wrote in his message last week, are "based on merit," not race, "in a process consistent with state and federal law."

But Dubinett himself directs a center within the medical school, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, that houses a race-based fellowship experts say is illegal.

Participants in the "iDIVERSE" program "must be" black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, LGBT, or a woman, according to screenshots of a now-deleted webpage obtained by the Free Beacon. Fellows research ways to increase diversity in clinical trials as part of a study funded by Pfizer, the American Heart Association, and Gates Ventures, the personal LLC of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The website indicates that the deadline to apply to the program, which has existed for two years, was March 1.

"This is obviously illegal," said Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions in its lawsuit against Harvard, which led to the Supreme Court decision last year that outlawed affirmative action. "Every time we sue a company or institution for doing this, they settle by ending the program."

Dubinett and UCLA medical school did not respond to requests for comment.

The program is an awkward albatross for a school that spent Memorial Day weekend doing damage control after a Free Beacon report showed that record numbers of UCLA medical students are failing basic tests of clinical knowledge—in part, admissions officers said, because standards have been lowered by affirmative action.

On Saturday, a fourth-year student posted data on X, formerly Twitter, that he claimed had been released internally to refute that report. Though the new data showed that students did better on a recent round of tests, known as shelf exams, than some other cohorts, UCLA has not addressed the rise in failure rates over time or the fact that nearly a quarter of students in the class of 2025 failed three or more shelf exams.

Nor has it explained how the percentage of Asian matriculants shrunk by almost 50 percent since 2018, with most of the drop occurring after a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero was hired in 2020. That decline coincided with a sharp increase in the number of students who come from "medically under-served" areas or identify as "disadvantaged"—indicators that admissions officials say are being used as proxies for race.

Matriculants from under-served areas nearly doubled as a percentage of the incoming class after Lucero took the helm in 2020, rising steadily from 34 to 56 percent of first-year students over four years, per data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

The number of first-year students indicating disadvantage likewise rose by nearly 60 percent, from 42 percent in 2020 to 67 percent in 2023. No other elite medical school has come close to these numbers, according to a review of AAMC data for the top 20 schools on U.S News & World Report’s rankings for medical research.

While the trends don’t provide proof of discrimination, they are consistent with the accounts of racial gerrymandering from UCLA admissions officers. Lucero has allegedly told officials that the class should reflect the "diversity" of California, where racial preferences have been illegal since 1996, and has attacked those who raise concerns about minority candidates with low test scores. She even made the entire admissions committee sit through a two-hour presentation on Native American history after a Native American applicant was rejected, three sources said.

Together with the iDIVERSE fellowship, which launched in 2022 and involves partnerships with other institutions, the accounts paint a picture of a medical school suffused with racial preferences and determined to skirt civil rights law by any means necessary. They come as the medical school is reviewing its entire first-year curriculum in the wake of a separate Free Beacon report on a required course, "Structural Racism and Health Equity," in which students learn that weight loss is a "hopeless endeavor."

That course also hosted a guest speaker, Lisa Gray-Garcia, who has referred to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks as "justice" and led students in chants of "free, free Palestine." Days later, two residents in the medical school’s psychiatry program delivered a talk that glorified self-immolation as a form of "resistance" in the context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Both incidents were cited in a congressional probe of UCLA’s response to anti-Semitism—another ongoing controversy. At a hearing on Capitol Hill this month, UCLA chancellor Gene Block said the medical school was investigating Gray-Garcia’s talk but offered no further details on the review.

The whistleblower allegations are not the first admissions scandal to hit UCLA. In 2021, a former soccer coach was sentenced to eight months in prison after he helped two applicants pose as athletic recruits so they would be accepted to the university.

#Aaron Sibarium #University of California #UCLA #medical school #affirmative action #diversity equity and inclusion #equity #diversity #inclusion #DEI #DEI must die #academic corruption #corruption of education #racial discrimination #religion is a mental illness

4 notes · View notes

eclectictransgirl · 8 months

Text

This review has spoilers but most people will never hear about this movie anyway so go ahead and read it.

I have not seen a film so heavy in a long long time and I cannot emphasise enough the importance of Origin. I caught this film on its opening night at the Loft Theatre here in Tucson and I was captivated by the incredible technical choices that director Ava DuVarney made in this film. Ava DuVarney is a deliberate filmmaker- she doesn’t waste resources. Origin was made on 16mm film and one can recognise that almost immediately as the movie starts. Ava DuVarney is adapting a non-fiction book about caste into a video format. Most people would think this should be done as a documentary. But Ava DuVarney knows that the intent of the book is to bring out the humanity of the characters of colour. And so Ava shoots the film on 16mm- blurring out the background, or in some instances completely darkening it, and focusing on the emotions of her characters- none of them any less important than the next, even as the protagonist Isabel Wilkerson is movingly played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. One can talk endlessly about the technical choices of the film, but there is a larger conversation to be had- one which Ava DuVarney herself intended to start by adapting Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents.

In a century of injustices galore worldwide, the words capitalism and racism get thrown around as catchphrases amongst liberal and leftist circles- almost diminishing the depth of the oppression that minorities around the world face. Isabel Wilkerson and Ava DuVarney confront this issue throughout the film (and presumably the book also). The film starts with the scene of the murder of Trayvon Martin- a black American child murdered by a Hispanic American man. Isabel (both the character and the writer) asks the question- “why does a Hispanic man stalk a black boy in a white neighbourhood and murder the black boy to make white people feel safe?” She receives a naive answer from her white colleagues that she can’t completely agree to “It’s racism of course”. This is the kind of answer that has become commonplace in liberal and leftist circles that hinders people from thinking deeply about why racism. Isabel says “Everyone says racism these days. What even does that mean?” Her answer to her own question, of course, is caste.

Isabel is trying to connect the common thread that connects discrimination all over the world. It is not race, it is not antisemitism. She tells her cousin Marion (played by Niecy Nash) “If white people truly believed in racial superiority, why would they let black women be nannies? The Jews were mostly white in Germany. Were the Nazis racially discriminating against them during the holocaust? What does race have to do with the caste system in India? They’re all brown skin.“ To seek the answer, Isabel travels. She travels across the US, visits Germany and visits India. There are moments in both the US and Germany where most of the audience would think “I wish this scene had played longer”. And that’s where Ava purposely defies her audience’s expectations.

When Ava spots a leakage in her house, she calls a plumber to fix it. The plumber (played by Nick Offerman) comes in, with a stoic face, wearing a MAGA cap. Ava tells him her husband died, and he is unfazed. Ava is uncomfortable. But she pushes on and tries to talk to him. They talk about their mothers, about their passing away- their losses. MAGA plumber softens up and becomes vulnerable here forth. This is the scene where I know a lot of white audiences would want the scene to extend longer, but this is where Ava cuts it short. The purpose of the scene is to show Isabel’s humanity, not the MAGA plumber’s. Isabel’s discomfort is powerfully captured by Aunjanue through her facial expressions. She doesn’t want to continue the conversation, but she does. This is her grandeur- her majesticity.

The second scene is a little different. Ava talks to her Jewish friends in Germany who explain to her how terrible the holocaust was. The Germans also whitesplain slavery to her- to Isabel, a black scholar. Isabel retorts “Slavery was done for over 400 years, and then a hundred years of Jim Crow laws.” But the Germans continue their whitesplanation. “6 million Jews intentionally murdered.” Isabel’s disdain is once again patent through her facial expressions, but here she doesn’t make any more efforts to reconcile. These are scholarly white people, not a humble plumber. Their pride is unfathomably large- something that Isabel cannot tame.

But in Germany it is where Isabel finds the key to the lock. The rules of Jewish subjugation were framed after Jim Crow laws. The German scholars' claim that there is no relationship between slavery and Nazism cannot stand.

Throughout the film, Isabel deals with loss. Isabel loses her husband, her mother, and her cousin. It is a deep movie dealing with dark themes, and this is why a large part of the first half of the film is shot during the night. Love is a big part of Isabel’s life. There is a scene where Isabel comes back home from work, and her husband Brett (played by Jon Bernthal) is the light of love for her. This is not some hackneyed cinematography taken out of a film textbook. In fact, it reflects perfectly Bell Hooks’s concept of family and love. At the end of the day, when we’re tired of fighting injustice outside, we come home to family and find comfort.

There is a juxtaposition between the first and second halves of this movie. The first half is characterised by its sombre silences and blacked-out backgrounds. The second half, where Isabel finally is enlightened by the concept of caste, is highlighted by the music and the broad daylight scenes. For this, she must make a journey to India- to talk to Dr. Suraj Yengde (love <33) about caste. Suraj tells her about the Dalits who have been dehumanised for over 2 millennia. About manual scavenging. She learns how Dr. Martin Luther King recognised the connexion between untouchability in India and slavery in America. She is inspired by Babasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and she finally understands that the origin of all our discontents is caste. It is caste that creates a hierarchical system in different forms across the world- racism and slavery in America, anti-Semitism in Europe, and Hinduism in India. It is caste that enables the dehumanisation of groups of people and denies them of love and empathy. “It is difficult for people to dehumanise one single person. But do it to a community, and you have dehumanised every single one of them.”

Caste is a conversation Isabel Wilkerson and Ava DuVarney want us to have today. Caste is the common denominator between racial injustice in the West, Palestinian genocide in Palestine, dalit subjugation in India, Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and all other injustices in the world. This movie moved me in a way that no movie has. I was fortunate enough to be part of a post-film screening discussion with the brilliant Mia Farrell who has worked with Ava DuVarney in the past and with multiple other talented film people. This movie teared me up, and this is me begging people to go watch it in a theatre, and show the love and support it deserves.

4 notes · View notes

musingsofmonica · 6 months

Text

January 2024 Diverse Reads

January 2024 Diverse Reads:

•”How We Named the Stars” by Andrés N. Ordorica, January 30, Tin House Books, Literary/LGBT/Hispanic & Latino/Coming of Age

•”Red String Theory” by Lauren Kung Jessen, January 09, Forever, Romance/Romantic Comedy/Asian American

•”Come and Get It” by Kiley Reid, January 30, G.P. Putnam's Sons, Literary/Coming of Age/Women

•”Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar, January 23, Knopf Publishing Group, Literary/Family Life/LGBT

•”The Storm We Made” by Vanessa Chan, January 02, S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, Literary, World Literature/Asia/Historical /20th Century/Post-World War II/Women

•”The Mayor of Maxwell Street” by Avery Cunningham, January 30, Hyperion Avenue, Romance/Historical/African American/Women

•”The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel” by Reshonda Tate, January 30, William Morrow & Company, Biographical/Historical/African American/Women/Own Voices/World Literature/American/20th Century/Post-World War II

•”A Quantum Love Story” by Mike Chen, Mira Books, January 30, Romance/Time Travel/Science Fiction/Time Travel/Family Life/Siblings

•”The Bullet Swallower” by Elizabeth Gonzalez, January 23, Simon & Schuster, Literary/Hispanic & Latino/Magical Realism

•”When Things Don't Go Your Way: Zen Wisdom for Difficult Times” by Haemin Sunim & Charles La Shure (Translator), January 23, Penguin Life, Buddhist/Mindfulness & Meditation/Philosophy/Personal Growth/Buddhism

•”Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism” by Jenn M. Jackson, January 23, Random House, Women/American Government/Feminism & Feminist Theory/Women's Studies

•Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think about Race and Identity” by

Michele Norris, January 16, Simon & Schuster, Ethnic Studies/Discrimination & Race Relations/Social Classes & Economic Disparity/Cultural & Social

•”River East, River West” by Aube Rey Lescure, January 09, William Morrow & Company, Literary/Coming of Age/Family Life/Asian American/Cultural Heritage/World Literature-China/21st Century

•”Where I Belong: Healing Trauma and Embracing Asian American Identity” by Soo Jin Lee & Linda Yoon, January 09, Tarcherperigee, Ethnic Studies/ Asian American Studies/Mental Health/Personal Growth

•”Your Utopia: Stories” by Bora Chung & Anton Hur, January 30, Algonquin Books, Horror/Science Fiction/Short Stories/World Literature/Korea

•”On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life's Great Labors” by Brandi Sellerz-Jackson, January 09, Ballantine Books, Personal Memoirs/Inspiration & Personal Growth

•”The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years” by Shubnum Khan, January 09, Viking, Historical/Gothic/Women

•”Behind You Is the Sea” by Susan Muaddi Darraj, January 16, Harpervia, Literary/Short Stories/Humor/Coming of Age/Women/Family Life/Cultural Heritage/Feminist/Muslim/Own Voices/World Literature/Middle East/Arabian Peninsula

•”Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Ijeoma Oluo, January 30, HarperOne, Activism & Social Justice/Ethnic Studies/Personal Growth/Anthropology/Cultural & Social/Race & Ethnic Relations/Civil Rights/Social Activists/United States/21st Century/Human Rights/Motivational & Inspirational

.”The Night of the Storm” by Nishita Parekh, January 16, Dutton, Thriller/Mystery & Detective/Family Life/Asian American

#books #bookish #bookworm #bibliophile #book lover #reading #bookaddict #book #booklr #bookaholic #reading list #to read #reading resolutions #reading recommendations #bookblr #books and reading #reader #diverse books #diverse reads

2 notes · View notes

womenofnoise · 2 years

Text

Moor Mother - Circuit City back cover

Transcript below cut

Reverse Gentrification of the Future Now

The present realities of housing for low-income people living in Philadelphia are located temporally-spatially near the one in Circuit City. We are experiencing an affordable housing crisis, and this crisis is exacerbated by the average of 22,000 eviction filings each year and the unknown number of illegal evictions. In my work as Managing Attorney of the Housing Unit at Community Legal Services, where we provide legal representation and advice to more than 3,000 low-income tenants a year, I hear countless stories of tenants who face racial, sex, gender, family, ethnicity, and disability discrimination from landlords; stories of tenants intimidated into not complaining about substandard housing conditions that exacerbate health and safety problems; or tenants who received eviction filings from disgruntled landlords that have resulted in virtual blacklisting from future homes and opportunities for stability. Growing displacement and mass evictions of entire buildings of often low-income residents is a particularly vicious form of eviction that has widespread health and economic impacts, and destroys economic, cultural, and racial diversity in neighborhoods. Mass evictions, often unexpected, further aggravate the city’s shortage of affordable housing—existing affordable housing units are often lost forever, putting pressure on resources and housing stock elsewhere in the City and concentrating poverty in particular neighborhoods.

Compounding these issues is pervasive housing discrimination – single mothers and their children, seniors, Black people, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and people living with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by evictions and lack of access to safe, habitable, and affordable housing. Tenants face systemic and individual discrimination at every stage of the process – they are barred from getting into a new home for discriminatory reasons, and often kicked out of their homes for those same reasons.1 The ACLU, for instance highlights how “women of color bear the burden of eviction,” noting that women of color made up 62% and 70% of the tenants facing in eviction in Chicago and Philadelphia respectively.2 These and other instances of structural inequity related to housing disproportionately impact the City’s poor, Black and Hispanic populations live in racially concentrated poverty.3 This loss of housing has a distinct racial impact, where 63% of African-Americans live in project-based housing compared with 44% of the city’s population, and where African-Americans are disproportionately more likely to carry severe housing cost burdens in the city.

These types of inequalities are often framed in terms of spatial inequality and displacement from location. However, as Helga Nowotowny notes, “power, exercised by central authorities, establishes itself over space and over time.”4 (emphasis added). Hierarchies of time, inequitable time distribution, and uneven access to safe and healthy futures inform intergenerational poverty in marginalized communities the same ways that wealth passes between generations in traditionally privileged families. Sociologist Jeremy Rifkin says that “temporal deprivation is built into the time frame of every society,” where people living in poverty are temporally poor as well as materially poor.”5 For example, time poverty is routinely used to penalize marginalized people in the justice system, where being ten minutes late to court can mean losing your job, kids, home, and freedom. Time and temporal inequities show up at every step of the eviction process, for example, from the short or fully waivable notice requirements for termination of a lease agreement, to the time required for an evicted family to vacate a unit that is severely out of line with the time needed to secure new housing. Inevitably, marginalized Black communities are disproportionately impacted by both material, spatial, and temporal inequalities in a linear progressive society, with many Black communities forced to occupy “temporal ghettos” as well as spatial ones.

Circuit City considers both the implications of time and of space involved in privatization of public housing, gentrification, displacement, and redevelopment. There is no set year or place in the play, but instead a layering of multiple temporal spaces. The residents of Circuit City are integrating the time(s) of redevelopment, privatization, and hyper-gentrification, into the pre-established temporal dynamics of the community, layered over and within the communal historical memory and the shared idea of the future(s) of that community. Nested within those layers are individual, subjective temporalities and the lived realities of the residents, at odds with the linear, mechanical model of time on which Circuit City and its external spatial-temporal constructs are etched. It takes as its central provocation a practical strategy for achieving a Black flight, a reverse gentrification, and inverse displacement, and the conditions necessary for temporal autonomy and spatial agency. Circuit City is presented using Black Quantum Futurism praxis as a critical framework, fusing Afrodiasporan philosophies and rituals with quantum physics, recovering artifacts of Black temporal consciousness, and dismantling oppressive social temporal constructs.

#moor mother

26 notes · View notes

iseulsoda · 1 year

Text

Introduction

Welcome! Please come on in...oh! but it's dangerous to enter a strangers house...I think it would be only appropriate (and cautious) to present myself

xviii

double major in psychology and logopedia

future prison psychologist question mark?

chaotic but kind (I'm trying to be less chaotic and more kind)

saved by Grace!

i name my plants, say hi to plants, collect flowers I find on the street

i love reading so much

i have my how Gilmore Girls head canon ending and I won't hear a thing about the "real one"

I killed a cactus one

Do Not Interact

If you support discrimination of any type, this applies to "positive discrimination", misandric comments (we support men rights in this blog), misogynistic comments (we support women's rights too) and body shaming of any type. This is a safe space. "But I-" I do not care. Really. Take that to Twitter or to somewhere off the internet, I personally do not need nor want to create more echo chambers!

If you are a ddlg/bdsm/nsfw account

If you sexualize people (no matter gender, age, race) and/or animals

If you're gonna insult me because of my religion or if you openly disrespect it (Christianity, catholicism)

If you're going to disrespect me because of any kind of believe I may show or "send me to hell"

If you're gonna call me a colonialist bc I'm from Spain??? (I've lost count of how many times this has happened to me, y'all r not okay)

If you're an ed/sh blog

If you skinny shame (heavily triggering for me)

If you're close minded and can't stand people that think differently than you

If you don't like cool people B)

"You're not that type of white girl/european/christian/hispanic/whatever so I'm okay with you" get off my blog please <3

If you're going to trauma dump, I'm not comfortable with that, so kindly please don't do that here or in my dms and it puts me in a really bad place. If you need help or assistance of any type regarding your mental health please click here the link will take you to a wikipedia page with a list of emergency numbers, suicide/help lines around the world. You are greatly loved <3

Book List

✓ Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos (Tragic Sense of Life) — Miguel de Unamuno (essays)

✓ Man in search of meaning — Viktor Frankl (biography-ish)

✓ En esta noche, en este mundo — Alejandra Pizarnik (poetry)

... The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde (novel)

... Antología de poemas — Cernuda (poetry)

° The Dehumanization of Art and other essays on art, culture and literature — José Ortega y Gasset (essays)

° Way more books (LOTS)

POV: You are me and open Pinterest

now we're not complete strangers, so you can hang out here for as long as you want

#aesthetic #chaotic academia #light academia #spirituality #chritianity #reading #bibliophile #you are loved

11 notes · View notes

ausetkmt · 1 year

Text

While debates around reparations for the descendants of slaves often focus on costs of such action, advocates believe discussions must also address other efforts for systemic change.

Financial estimates are wide-ranging depending on how they are projected and thoughts on what exactly will, or even can be paid for are also divided.

"Reparations is not a check in the mail," Raymond Winbush, author of Should America Pay? Slavery and The Raging Debate on Reparations and Belinda's Petition: A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic Slave Trade, told Newsweek.

"We've got to look at the difference between changing symbols and changing systems."

The growing dialogue surrounding racial justice following worldwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd has also brought the issue to the fore. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has got behind Democratic calls in Congress to enact a study on the matter of reparations being made to the descendants of those impacted by slavery.

House Representatives could hear a bill, H.R. 40, this summer in regards to forming a committee to discuss reparations. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he could be in favor of cash reparations to African Americans and Native Americans if studies found this to be a viable option.

"I think that Black people are saying we've had enough and I think white people are coming to grips with the fact that this country owes a debt that has been unpaid," Winbush added.

How could a cost be calculated?

If payments were to be made, the amount that would be calculated could vary dependent on how the cost is estimated, applications of factors such as interest and who would be considered eligible.

A study in The Review of the Black Political Economy journal, first published on June 19, titled "Wealth Implications of Slavery and Racial Discrimination for African American Descendants of the Enslaved," looked at the Black-white wealth gap alongside the cost of slavery and discrimination to descendants of the enslaved.

Among its estimates for the costs were around $12-$13 trillion in 2018 dollars, based upon estimates looking at land-based, stemming from the promise made to freed slaves, and price-based, considering what slave prices were.

This amount, divided by 40,909,233 Black non-Hispanic descendants of the enslaved, could result in a total reparations payment per descendant of $151.63 million. This figure on the number of descendants may be overstated, as it likely includes some Black U.S. Residents who do not trace their ancestry back to slavery, the researchers note.

Another estimate, based upon wealth disparity, is around $14 trillion. Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, suggested this sum, which would amount to around $350,000 each for the estimated 40 million African Americans in the United States, giving them an amount signifying the wealth disparity between African Americans and white Americans.

This amount echoes that of a previous study, from University of Connecticut researcher Thomas Craemer, who was involved in the aforementioned study published June 19, that suggested an amount of up to $14.2 trillion.

This was calculated by tabulating the hours slaves worked between 1776 and 1865, multiplying the time they worked by the average wage at the time, then accounting for 3 percent annual interest, as previously reported by Newsweek.

As well as reparations based upon earnings, others suggest payment to backdate the failed promise of "40 acres" promised to slaves by Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman. Land was set aside though the order was reversed by President Andrew Johnson.

The June 19 study suggests based upon these parameters, the reparations could amount to around $11.9 trillion, estimating around $291,186 per descendant, based on an estimate for 2018.

The case for reparations now

A Brookings Institution report, titled Why we need reparations for Black Americans by Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry refers to the value assigned to slaves in 1860 of $3 billion dollars as another point backing calls for reparations.

"Slavery enriched white slave owners and their descendants, and it fueled the country's economy while suppressing wealth building for the enslaved. The United States has yet to compensate descendants of enslaved Black Americans for their labor," the report said.

The report suggests payments to the descendants of slaves, as well as programs such as student loan forgiveness and down payment grants.

Speaking with Newsweek, Ray said Congress should have looked into reparations long before now.

"There should not be any blocks to simply forming a committee. It should be a no brainer and should have occurred long ago," said Ray, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution.

On what should be done, he said "wealth-building opportunities" might also be an option.

"While direct payments are one option, we might also think about wealth-building opportunities in the form of tuition payments, housing grants, and small business grants," he said.

Winbush echoed that the time for reparations had come.

"The reparations movement is old. I think that people think it's very young," he told Newsweek, suggesting people linking it to Black Lives Matter makes them think it does not go as far back as it does.

"It goes back well over 200 years in this country," said Winbush, also a research professor and the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, commenting on how social media in recent years has brought it to the fore.

More than just money

Winbush also suggested that while handing out money is an option, other methods of reparations, focusing on systemic change, could be implemented.

"If we were to say, 'just give everybody a check,' that's only a partial solution. I think reparations has been narrowly defined as it's related to money," he said.

"It's acknowledgement by a nation that they did something wrong. One way of atoning for that is money. But it's a variety of solutions."

Roy L. Brooks, author of Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations and Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice suggested that reparations must look at factors other than simply money.

"One of the most important responsibilities of the commission would be to educate the American people, including African-Americans, not only about slavery and its lingering effects, but also about the fact that reparations come in many forms and are not the only way to redress slavery," he told Newsweek.

"Apologies, truth commissions, truth trials, and reparations are just a few of the ways to redress any atrocity, whether it is slavery, Japanese-American internment or the Holocaust. Calculations are complex but not impossible because they have been performed all over the world in the last 70 years."

Regarding the cost of reparations, he said African-Americans will have to work through the models and issues in the context of the commission.

"Until that happens, it is not only premature to talk about the "cost" of reparations (or more generally slave redress), it is irresponsible," said Brooks, who is also a professor at the University of San Diego.

The costs of slavery

Joe Feagin, author of The White Racial Frame and co-author of Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, and Racial and Ethnic Relations, similarly told Newsweek that there needs to be an examination of the "many other costs of slavery."

He said: "For example, how do you calculate the costs of great pain and suffering, and lives lost or cut short?"

Stating that most reparations estimates calculate "just the labor and wealth lost," he added, "I think it is at least as important to talk about the many other costs of slavery."

In terms of a starting point for reparations being paid, he suggested beginning with people who suffered under segregation.

"Start with reparations for Jim Crow, no questions there about the white nonsense about this harm happened centuries ago and we cannot figure out who did what to whom," he said. "Start with the living folks and then work backwards to slavery."

Deciding the amount

Craemer, whose research is mentioned above, suggested the work of a commission in looking at the financial costs has largely already been done—though stated issues that are difficult to quantify need to be looked at, with the descendant community integral in choosing an outcome.

"I would say, the commission's work has largely been done. It might be more reasonable to proceed directly to reparations," he told Newsweek.

"Otherwise, the need for further study may be misused by reparations opponents to indefinitely delay implementation. This has disadvantages not only for eligible recipients, but also for the U.S. government—reparations become exponentially more expensive the longer we wait."

With regards to the sum of reparations, he said estimates only address the financial aspect of slavery, not looking at its other implications.

"These specific estimates only address the value of slavery in the United States, they do not address colonial slavery, or racial discrimination after slavery. Also, they only address lost inheritances, they do not address loss of freedom, loss of other opportunities, or withheld compensation for pain and suffering," he said.

"In my view, it is up to negotiations between the descendant community and the federal government to determine whether the entire estimate should be compensated, or only a portion, at what interest rate, and using what estimation method."

Despite the increased discussion on the matter, polling from earlier this year found that only one in five asked felt the U.S. should spend "taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States," according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll which asked 1,115 adults in June.

Ray said the issue of reparations happening should no longer be a point of discussion.

"If 40 acres and a Mule was actually implemented we wouldn't be having this conversation," he told Newsweek. "Time is up. This needs to happen."

#After Reparations Study Suggests $151 Million for Each African American #Experts Say Money Alone Isn't Enough #Reparations #Reparations Study

4 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 1 year

Text

This June, the Biden-Harris administration acknowledged the historic role that biased home valuations have played in limiting Black Americans’ wealth-building opportunities, releasing a fact sheet detailing how the administration plans to address this systemic racial bias. The plan reflects a call for action to confront a broader set of issues within the housing market and taxation system that intersect to uniquely affect Black communities. Black homeowners face inequities in our tax code and housing industry, unfair tax burdens, and a biased appraisal system—all of which undermining the potential of homeownership as a wealth-building tool for Black homebuyers. But structural reforms are possible, and they could help to build systems that grow—rather than extract—Black wealth.

In this piece, we explore the often overlooked and compounding racially discriminatory practices in the housing market and property taxation system, and how they limit wealth-building opportunities for Black homeowners. We also explore how the current housing market allows white homebuyers’ preferences to dictate the racial makeup of residential communities and the extent to which Black homebuyers can gain equity from their home. These issues underscore that the Biden-Harris administration must remain committed to addressing the layered practices of discrimination and promote policies that empower Black homeowners to build generational wealth.

Housing and tax policy penalize Black homeowners and widen the racial wealth gap

Twentieth-century discriminatory housing policies and practices are indisputably responsible for segregating America’s residential communities and contributing to existing racial wealth disparities. Tax law and practice aggravate these effects and place a disproportionately heavy financial and oftentimes emotional burden on the average Black homeowner. So, while public conversations about how to close the racial wealth gap often focus on the importance of homeownership, they overlook the impact of the property tax system—particularly, property valuation mechanisms—on the Black homeownership experience.

Property assessments and appraisals are two different estimations of a home’s value, conducted at two different times. Their contribution to the improper valuation of Black-owned homes—through both over-assessment and under-valuation—have caused Black homeowners to lose money by way of monthly property tax payments and at the time of sale. This burden is a reflection of America’s disinvestment in, devaluation of, and disrespect for predominantly Black neighborhoods. It also reveals a penalty that housing institutions and legal frameworks place on Black homeowners—a penalty that will only grow more harmful if we continue to try to address it with ahistorical, race-neutral solutions.

Today, median white household wealth sits at $187,300, compared to just $14,100 for Black households. And while 72.7% of white Americans are homeowners, only 44% of Black Americans are. These extreme racial disparities in wealth and homeownership signify a chasm in access to homeownership and the opportunities and privileges it affords. As outlined in a 2017 report, home equity is the largest segment in most U.S. families’ wealth portfolio. However, Black and Latino or Hispanic families are less likely to own their homes and accrue less wealth through homeownership than white families. According to the Census Bureau’s 2019 Survey of Income and Program Participation, the median wealth for renters was $4,084, compared to $125,500 for homeowners (excluding home equity).

Although homeownership is thought to exemplify the American dream, our tax laws are designed such that homeowners in Black-majority communities don’t always see that dream realized as home equity. Empowering Black people and their communities requires housing and tax reforms that affirm their historically unrecognized value.

The US tax system protects accumulated wealth, creating a barrier to homeownership for lower-income, low-wealth households

For decades, researchers have shown that qualifying for homeownership is a sizeable financial challenge due to the large upfront costs. Many prospective buyers need financial assistance or must save for years to make a down payment, whereas others can rely on intergenerational wealth transfers to fund their purchase of a home.

White college-educated households are more likely to receive a financial gift of over $10,000 from family members than Black college-educated households: 32% versus 9%, respectively. Moreover, the average gift to white households is significantly larger than the average gift to Black households: $235,353 versus $65,755, respectively. In white families, wealth transfers are more likely to flow from parent to child or grandparent to grandchild; yet in Black families, wealth transfers are more likely to flow in the opposite direction.

Now, consider that the U.S. tax code provides additional relief to prospective buyers whose families have excess capital to gift them. The code enables a grantor to gift up to $17,000 without having to report the transfer on the IRS gift tax return form, and the grantee does not have to pay taxes on it or report it (unless it comes from a foreign source).

Such financial gifts are powerful in that they provide white families with a head start to wealth-building through homeownership. They also allow wealth to accumulate across generations in ways that it does not for Black families due to family structure and lack of access to excess capital.

Property tax assessments and valuations are biased against Black homeowners

The average Black homeowner faces a disproportionally higher property tax burden than the average white homeowner. In the U.S., property taxes are supposed to be based on the value of the home; however, researchers at Indiana University concluded that nationwide, tax assessors often over-assess Black-owned homes relative to their market value. Consequently, the local property tax applied to the over-assessed value of Black-owned homes is 10% to 13% higher than for white-owned homes.

Conversely, property assessments for white-owned homes are often closer to the home’s market value. Ultimately, Black homeowners end up paying a higher property tax bill than they should because the value of their home has been over-estimated compared to what it will sell for. White homeowners, on the other hand, pay a more accurate property tax bill because their home value estimations are often closer to the actual sales price.

Similarly, Brookings research has shown that real estate appraisers often undervalue Black-owned homes by 21% to 23%, which lowers the price a home is likely to be sold for. The over-assessment of Black-owned homes is the fault of tax assessors (81.3% of whom are white), whereas the undervaluation of Black-owned homes is the fault of licensed professional appraisers (99% of whom are white). These discrepancies demonstrate deep flaws in the two mechanisms the housing industry uses to determine “value” and present a real barrier to wealth-building for Black homeowners.

Data suggests that Black homeowners’ ability to gain wealth through homeownership is also largely dependent upon the housing preferences of white Americans. Whereas Black people prefer to live in neighborhoods where the majority of the population is made up of racial and ethnic minorities, white people prefer to live in communities with very low Black populations. Further, homes in white neighborhoods are appraised at three times the value of homes in communities of color, and, over the last decade, homes in white neighborhoods appreciated $200,000 more on average than similar homes in communities of color. Data also shows that homes lose approximately 16% of their value once the neighborhood’s population of Black residents reaches 10%.

Therefore, Black people have the highest likelihood of building wealth through homeownership when they purchase in predominantly white neighborhoods, where homes are more likely to appreciate, but where they are also severely outnumbered by white residents. The experience of Black homeowners in choosing where to live is heavily influenced by white preferences, which limits potential opportunities for Black Americans to build wealth.

Identifying equitable solutions for Black wealth-building through homeownership

The many racial biases within the housing market are often addressed as individual challenges rather than compounding factors that work together to undermine Black wealth. Despite numerous legislative efforts to combat racial discrimination in housing, racially biased practices are still prevalent and utilized by private actors, lenders, property tax assessors, and property appraisers.

The disproportionately heavy tax burden alongside racialized home appreciation and wealth transfer disparities reveal that our federal, state, and local tax policies and housing industry penalize Black neighborhoods and their residents. At its core, this penalty is rooted in systemic racism and negative perceptions of Blackness enforced by our legal system. In fact, the American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers, in their historic official texts, advocated for appraisal practices that viewed an influx of racial and ethnic diversity as lessening the desirability of a neighborhood and contributing to the lowering of home values.

Access to wealth-building homeownership should exist in every neighborhood, and a Black homeowner’s ability to build wealth should not be based on the subjective perceptions of white professionals or the preferences of white homebuyers. Furthermore, using homeownership to close the racial wealth gap—which was estimated to sit at $10.14 trillion—requires that the burden to eliminate wealth inequality in America no longer be placed on Black homeowners as individuals, but the factors that created it in the first place. After all, Black people created America’s wealth, not its wealth gap.

Today, Black Americans are trying to play “catch up” to others that have been afforded the necessary conditions to build wealth for generations. While many Black homeowners have achieved upward social mobility, the tax code and housing industry do not empower them like it does for white homeowners. Attempting to close the racial wealth gap by encouraging Black Americans to pursue homeownership—assuming that it will benefit them in the same way it has white Americans—is a hollow hope because of the inequities within the broader housing market. Moreover, it places an undue burden on prospective Black homebuyers to do alone what white people have done with significant government assistance that explicitly excluded Black Americans. Accordingly, reforms must be made to finally acknowledge and cement the value that has always existed in Black communities.

To combat the racial wealth gap, Dorothy Brown, Georgetown Law Professor and author of “The Whiteness of Wealth,” proposed a wealth-based refundable tax credit for taxpayers whose wealth falls below the median of approximately $100,000. Brown has acknowledged that although the tax credit is not targeted directly at Black taxpayers, a disproportionate share of taxpayers that fall below median wealth are Black (83%). Thus, an initiative of this sort is likely to withstand legal challenges because it is directed toward a socioeconomic class rather than a racial group.

The U.S. tax code is somewhat “progressive,” although Brookings research has shown that it has become less so over the last five decades. Irrespective of income level, the tax code is structured to reward existing wealth, predominantly held by white households. Creating a wealth tax credit might be a sizable legislative challenge, but one worth fighting for given its potential impact on Black communities and its ability to economically empower those with the lowest levels of wealth.

In addition to proposing a wealth-based refundable tax credit, Brown has also advocated for introducing a “living allowance” deduction. In this, taxpayers would receive a deduction or fixed amount of money that could be subtracted from their taxable income (reducing the amount of taxes owed) based on their cost of living. If they earned more money than the living allowance, they would pay taxes on the excess amount at a progressive rate; if they earned less, they would receive a check from the government. This is different from the current system in that it would tax all income and remove all deductions and exclusions in the tax code, which primarily benefit wealthy white taxpayers.

Lastly, greater transparency would also help address the root causes of the wealth gap. Brown has called for the public release of IRS tax data by race to more easily identify discriminatory tax policies. All of these proposed reforms seek to level the playing field for Black taxpayers and mitigate the advantage the tax code currently provides to wealthy white taxpayers.

These changes to the tax code should be supported by complementary policy. One suggestion is the baby bonds program proposed by economist Darrick Hamilton and William Darity, Jr. Through this program, the government would create and manage investment accounts for infants, providing them with grants based on their family’s wealth. The account would grow at a guaranteed annual rate, and upon reaching adulthood, the child could use the money for higher education, a startup, or a down payment on a home. This program has the potential to support low-wealth families in the same way financial gifts empower high-wealth families, again with a high likelihood of disproportionately benefiting Back families.

We need structural changes in taxation and housing to make wealth-building through homeownership a reality for more Black homebuyers

Ultimately, removing the influence of white subjectivity on the mechanisms that determine the value of Black communities, people, and assets is imperative to building Black wealth. It is unreasonable and unjust to expect Black Americans alone to close the racial wealth gap through homeownership, especially if solutions to closing the gap continue to rely on the subjective beliefs of white Americans and a housing industry that is still rife with racial bias.

The current systems we use to measure the value of Black homes invite racial biases that influence home value estimations and, ultimately, the market value of Black-owned property. Changing property tax assessment procedures by regulating government-appointed assessors and standardizing assessment procedures so that they are based on the characteristics and quality of a home as opposed to its proximity to Black people would be an effective way to remove biases that lead to the over-assessment of Black homes and the subsequent higher taxation of Black homeowners.

We must confront the inequities in our tax code and housing industry, remove the disparate tax burden from Black homeowners, and make wealth-building through homeownership a reality for more prospective Black homebuyers. The racial wealth gap is not an accident—it is a policy failure rooted in white supremacy and enshrined in biased policy mechanisms that punish low-income and Black communities. Until we acknowledge this truth, the dream of opportunity, economic success, and well-being for many Black Americans will remain deferred.

4 notes · View notes