When a post is written with the word 'Racefail' or 'Racism' in the title, but then proceeds to be all about the white OP staring at their own navel and coming to the conclusion that they are perfectly alright because they are trying though maybe they need to try a little more.
When a post is written with the word 'Racefail' or 'Racism' in the title, AND includes mentions of 'why I didn't write this before' - and then proceeds to be all about the white experience of oppression, particularly the oppression of white women.
When a post is written with the word 'Racefail' in it, and instead proceeds to discuss ageism.
Let me just say: I see what you did there.
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ProCon Latte - Firefox Add On.
I tried it yesterday but I must have been really tired, because I didn't think things through and ended up uninstalling it. But today, staring at it again, my brain clicked in.
- Download and install.
- Restart Browser
- Go to Main Filter
- Click Enable Explicit Material
- Click on Edit List
- Delete all the blocked words.
- Delete all the blocked sites.
- Go down to FILTER ACTIVITY and choose Blocked Sites
- Go back up to Blocked Sites and add in all the URL's of everyone in Racefail you'd rather not accidentally click a link for ever, ever, again.
- PS: There is no need to add a * wildcard.
- Press Apply.
- Watch them all vanish from your internet experience.
__________I tried it just now and I can still load livejournal proper on Firefox, I just can't load those pages. And I don't have to worry about having more than 6 or 14 sites as per the other filter content add ons available. And it feels so damn good - especially considering that minutes before I clicked on a link and ended up a greyworm's LJ, having forgotten for a moment just wtf that spectacular human!fail was. I only remembered while I was reading and going WTFF??!! Now? No more worries about stumbling into something that will raise my blood pressure. *hugs to ![[info] - personal](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) quivo who offered a possible script* - Please don't bother yourself unless it's something you'd like to offer everyone who'd prefer NOT the pages to load with a warning, instead of them not loading at all. Now I just have to figure out a way to have a handy-dandy portable, easily updatable list of Fail!Authors for whenever I'm looking at books. JJot will only work online. Maybe a list in my phone?
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Rather than have a battle of the utensils, I'm going to officially convert some of my spoons, ala The Spoon Theory (PDF), into Forks. I'm a disabled black lesbian dinocorn. I can totally do this with my magic powers.
Spoons are about those of us with mental and physical disabilities rationing out our energy.
Forks are about those of us dealing with the mental and physical social handicaps of not being white.
In modern westernized society, not being white is an issue requiring energy. Do you point out the racist joke at work? Do you ignore the racist jerk on the bus, at the diner, sitting at your table beside your family member who obviously likes them. Do you point out the racist content in books, and music? Do you ignore and grit your teeth and tolerate people acting as if your ancestors never contributed anything but blood and fear of rape to the building of America; to the ending of World Wars (the liberation of France at the end of WW2 - white/light skin soldiers only, who cares about the brown skinned people who died), Code Talkers, to people assuming non white peoples have done nothing for global civilization infrastructure, technology, culinary arts and who think that Elvis invented rock and roll?
Sometimes, you just don't have the energy, it would take too much out of your life and your attempts to pursue your own happiness to pause to slap some honkey upside the head, or correct some well meaning progressive white person showing and parting their buttcheeks.
Sometimes, if you have to deal with just one more clueless and ignorant white-is-the-default racist comment, you feel you might go postal, or hermit or end up under evaluation half covered in your own blood from trying to claw your eyes out.
For those times, I say we discuss our lack of forks. Because every day we wake up non-white, we only have a certain amount of forks at our disposal. And if we want to make it all the way through a week without killing some moo-cow or pantsless Sh*tterly, we have to store them up and judge how and when to use them. And while we can borrow against tomorrow's forks and sometimes even next month's forks, it's draining and can lead to burn out and can lead to smacking someone red in the face cause the fool dared to touch our hair without asking and we had but one fork left for the ride home and we weren't going to give it up to them.
I hope with the Fork Theory, people will understand why some PoC/NWP just abstain, or sigh, or walk away. I hope it will help people understand why PoC/NWP do. not. have. the. time. to teach them how to be better white people.
Psst. Pass it around.
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A couple of weeks ago, right after Obama won the election, I was on the bus on my way home and I sat down next to a little old lady. One of those sweet bookish old ladies, with her knit bag of books (it had wheels). We got to talking after a woman came on the bus who was also selling posters she'd made of the new First Family. This spurred more conversation and then the little old lady popped out with.
"And you can tell he's a proud black man, because look at who he married. He could have had any woman in the world, but he chose a black woman."
Oddly enough that very day I'd come across an editorial by the editor (she who wears the braids) of ESSENCE magazine. And her big thing there was also black love and how everyone believed the black family has always been mishmash and piece meal but before the 1960's when the welfare system began to demand that there be no male figure in the house in order for people to get needed benefits - black men were not only part of the black family, they were proud and eager to show they could be.
It hit me then that I really had no idea, no visceral idea how important this was, not just to black people, but to black women in general. The pride in this little old lady's voice. 'That he chose one of us' - She was more proud of him for that, than I think winning the election. The election came second on her list.
I had a weird dream last night involving actors, a boat and what seemed to be a reality tv show. One of the actors was Dule Hill. So really this isn't coming up out of nowhere for me. In the dream I realized that the tv executives who wanted to pair up certain actors/celebrities were not factoring such a thing. In fact they were trying to match/pair every black actor/celeb with a white teammate, possible romantic partner. And all the black actors were suddenly adamant that this was not what they wanted and if the matching continued, they were going to leave.
Anyway, I woke up thinking that I didn't have the proper understanding, until now. That I've known it's important, but that awareness has been crowded around the edges of the examples in my life where my Chinese godfather married a black woman and my black (mixed) uncle, married a Chinese woman. And I have cousins who are very dark (serious Nubian features) and light as white with blue eyes, both from the same mother. And that's all normal to me. Love is love, if you're lucky it works out.
The dream hit me with an aspect of that little old lady's pride I've never consciously thought of before. And that is that black women are worthy to be wanted, loved and cherished. They are worthy to be life partners and the mother of one's children. I didn't realize how theoretical ungrounded, floating, clean room, some things seemed to me since this dream last night where it hit me, hard, that the message sent to black women is that you're good enough for a roll in the hay, from the tender ages of 11 upwards, but black women aren't domestic partners; they aren't women you can fall in love with and devote a lifetime to being with.
In a way it's not anything new and yet... it is new. My brain's never processed it in that way before. I certainly didn't believe that and my childhood hadn't shown me that. And thank goodness it didn't hit me back then, cause it's effing painful. Very painful. It makes the strength I've seen, all the more powerful. It's more demoralizing than 'real women are a size 0', at least to me. Because I suddenly realized that the message that's been out there for decades and centuries left no options open for black women to be seen as real women. No diet would work. No outfit. Nothing. Nothing except having a light skinned daughter and hoping one day she or her heirs would pass enough to slip in through the cracks.
Just eff damn fuck ow.
I've never felt that force weighing down on me before. And I feel it now. And I find myself looking at Black Communities, and Black Gays with a deeper understanding. Certain experiences in my own life are suddenly crystal ass clear. The re-writing of the women's equality movement and of the gay movement tastes even more bitter seen through such a lens.
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This is a very intersting take on the concept of Joe Six Pack and what Sarah Palin might have thought she was saying, abuot who those individuals, aka, Middle America really are.
I have noticed, however, that so far no one who's said 'Right on' has identified as black, or Muslim or Jewish though there are a couple pagans and some polyamrous folks and definitely some queers. I've also noticed a lack of Asians and South East Asians. But I'm not sure whether any one should remind the original poster that these individuals too make up 'the average American', even if she did mention MLK.
So is the average American,straight, queer, college educated or simply well read, single mothers, single fathers, dildo using, lube loving, transexual, gender challenging, pagan, Episcopalian, Christian, conservative, liberal, fiscal minded, budget conscious, beer drinking, wine loving, mead making, costuming, grease monkey, dainty, hard working and only WHITE?
Then again I'm only on page 8 of 9.
ETA: Comments say folk have posted (in the comments there) and also remind me I did forgot one example where someone was half white, half PoC.
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That's not Ibarwwwuh. That's International Blog Against Racism Week, headed up by Ocyter over on LJ. But I'm fairly certain spitting on iJay users will not be going on.
This year's theme is Intersectionality.
Very topical, yes? I think so too.
More info here. And if you're British, Canadian, European, from/in the Caribbean, South East Asia, Asia or the Middle East, the organizer would greatly appreciate articles and or essays from you. That was my very long way of saying that she wants to stress the International and not have it be all American.
Random: Hey, where does Australia fit in - South Seas? What area is that ?
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contemplative
sore / blurry eyed