eating bad in the neighborsad

Sin’s turn!

He gets: Black hair and a darker shade of grey for eyes!

springer: nah 

prowl: 

springer: why care about a deadbeat lol 

White fans: It’s not racist! That’s how she’s written in canon!

Me: Yeah, and canon is racist too.

White fans:

That is exactly what I’m saying. Riordan’s depiction of Piper is racist. I doubt it was intentional, but racism borne out of ignorance is still racism, especially since Riordan is a very famous and well-off author who could’ve very easily hired a Cherokee consultant to help make sure that Piper was as accurate and appropriate as possible. Instead, he turned her into a walking stereotype.

1) She wears feathers in her hair. Not sure why people think that this is okay in the year 2019, but a lot of settlers have gotten pissed off at me for bringing up so let me just say that it is absolutely racist no matter how you look at it. 

Native people do not just randomly braid feathers into our hair, that’s a stereotype that was created by white people to exotify us. We especially don’t braid random EAGLE FEATHERS in our hair, considering that eagles are sacred and their feathers are only worn under very specific circumstances by very specific people. In Cherokee culture, eagle feathers are only worn by spiritual leaders or warriors, and they MUST be gifted to that person by an Elder or tribal leader. The best equivalent I can think of is a Purple Heart badge.

Even if she did earn her eagle feather and received it from a tribe Elder, she still wouldn’t wear it casually. Feathers are only worn for ceremonial purposes, and kept safely stored away until they’re needed. No Native person who has received that incredible honor would wear an eagle feather with a Hello Kitty t-shirt, as Piper was explicitly described as doing.

2) She’s given “kaleidoscope eyes”, which has a lot of bad connotations. First of all, they’re supposedly inherited by Aphrodite but a) gods don’t have DNA and b) no other child of Aphrodite is described with shifting features like that. If they were inherited from Aphrodite, that’s still bad since her appearance shifts based on what others think is most beautiful, suggesting that not only are regular brown eyes not beautiful, but that Native girls with actual Native features are less beautiful than Native girls with European features.

3) She’s oversexualized in her claiming and by Jason afterwards.

“But now she was adorned in a beautiful white sleeveless gown that went down to her ankles, with a V-neck so low it was totally embarrassing.” (The Lost Hero, page 95)

“With the makeup and the dress and the perfect hair, she’d looked about twenty-five, glamorous, and completely out of his league. He’d never thought of beauty as a form of power, but that’s the way Piper had seemed—powerful. 

He liked regular Piper better—someone he could hang out with. But the weird thing was, he couldn’t quite get that other image out of his head. It hadn’t been an illusion. That side of Piper was there too. She just did her best to hide it.” (The Lost Hero, page 201)

She is sexualized by Aphrodite in her claiming and then later by Jason, without her knowledge or consent. The things said above are absolutely not appropriate ways to describe a 15 year old, and definitely not a 15 year old Native girl.

The oversexualization of Native women, especially young girls, is DANGEROUS. According to the National Institute of Justice, about 56% of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes, and 55% have experienced domestic violence. In 97% of those cases, the violence was from a non-Native perpetrator. This is a very dangerous reality for our community and our women and girls, and I am NOT impressed with a white man contributing to that sexualization and exposing all of his readers to it too.

4) It’s stated multiple times that her dad is from a reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. There are no Cherokee reservations in Oklahoma; in fact, Oklahoma doesn’t have any reservations at all, something you can find out with a simple google search. Instead, Tahlequah has the Cherokee Nation Headquarters, which is a government base and not a living facility. 

To make this sort of mistake, Riordan had to have done the absolute bare minimum of research. If it wasn’t a mistake, then he made a conscious decision to make up an entirely fictional reservation, pushing the frustrating and stereotypical misconception that all Native people have to be from reservations in order to be Native.

5) She’s a kleptomaniac. There’s a violent stereotype associated with Natives being thieves, something that has gotten countless Native people arrested, assaulted, and killed for the crime of being Native. There was no reason to make stealing her way of getting attention when there’s tons of other things she could’ve done.

6) “The week before, he’d turned down several million dollars to play Tonto in a remake of The Lone Ranger. Piper was still trying to figure out why. He’d played all kinds of roles—a Latino teacher in a tough L.A. school, a dashing Israeli spy in an action-adventure blockbuster, even a Syrian terrorist in a James Bond movie. And, of course, he would always be known as the King of Sparta. But if the part was Native American—it didn’t matter what kind of role it was—Dad turned it down.” (The Lost Hero, page 165)

Her dad is more willing to play a violent Middle Eastern stereotype than play as a Native person. I think that speaks for itself.

7) There are frequent mentions of the rattlesnake song and a lot of implications that it would help Piper in her journey. It’s one of the very few mentions of Cherokee culture in the series, and the only thing that has any real bearing on Piper as a character and her journey.

“Her dad laughed, as if that had never occurred to him. ‘No, Pipes. Fine airplane. That’s not how I named you. Grandpa Tom picked out your name. First time he heard you cry, he said you had a powerful voice—better than any reed flute piper. He said you’d learn to sing the hardest Cherokee songs, even the snake song.’

‘The snake song?’

[…] Afterward, the snakes were impressed that the man had given up so much and kept his promise. They taught him the snake song for all the Cherokee to use. From that point on, if any Cherokee met a snake and sang that song, the snake would recognize the Cherokee as a friend, and would not bite. 

‘That’s awful!’ Piper had said. ‘He let his wife die?’

Her dad spread his hands. ‘It was a hard sacrifice. But one life brought generations of peace between snakes and Cherokee. Grandpa Tom believed that Cherokee music could solve almost any problem. He thought you’d know lots of songs, and be the greatest musician of the family. That’s why we named you Piper.’

A hard sacrifice. Had her grandfather foreseen something about her, even when she was a baby? Had he sensed she was a child of Aphrodite? Her dad would probably tell her that was crazy. Grandpa Tom was no oracle.” (The Lost Hero, page 256)

And when she finally encountered a snake that she had to fight, that build-up led literally nowhere. Instead of singing the traditional and cultural song that was explicitly talked about, she sang an entirely different song for literally no reason.

“Kekrops’s offer made sense. At least, it sounded like the least suicidal option. But Piper was certain the snake king was hiding his true intentions. She just didn’t know how to prove it …

Then she remembered something her father had told her years ago: You were named Piper because Grandpa Tom thought you would have a powerful voice. You would learn all the Cherokee songs, even the song of the snakes.

A myth from a totally different culture, yet here she was, facing the king of the snake people.

She began to sing: ‘Summertime’, one of her dad’s favourites.” (The Blood of Olympus, page 337)

Not only does that choice not make sense, but it threw all of the previous foreshadowing right into the garbage and discarded one of the very few, possibly only, accurate depictions of Cherokee culture in the series.

1) Change how you depict her appearance. Don’t draw or write her with feathers in her hair, or with feathers in general. A lot of people try to get around that by covering her in things like feather earrings, but that’s just really goddamn annoying for Native fans who have to deal with white people being obsessed with their ideas of how we’re supposed to look and dress. 

Make her brown. Give her brown eyes. Give her brown skin. Give her brown or black hair. People seem scared of actually making her look like a Native girl and she ends up just looking like a generic brunette white girl with slightly tan skin. If you draw her, look up pictures of actual Native women; the NDN tag here on tumblr often has people posting selfies and you can also look at Native celebrities like Kimberly Guerrero, Q'orianka Kilcher, Sacheen Littlefeather, Tanaya Beatty, and kawennáhere Devery Jacobs. Get an idea of what actual Native women look like and reflect that in your drawings of Piper, instead of just giving her brown skin with very white features like a lot of people do.

(Obligatory #BrownIsBeautiful bc it is no matter what Riordan thinks.)

Also try to avoid putting her in “hipster”, “boho”, or “hippy” clothing; not only is this annoying for Natives, being associated with “nature-based” fashions that we’re rarely interested in, but it also doesn’t fit her character at all. Piper is someone who is more comfortable in jeans, a t-shirt, and a pair of hiking boots than she’d ever be in floral shorts or flowy tops or boho headbands.

If you want to make her look “more Native”, you can put her in clothes and fashion that actual Native women wear. I recommend looking at things being sold in stores like Beyond Buckskin, Eighth Generation, I Am Anishinaabe, SheNative, and B.YELLOWTAIL, which are all Native-owned businesses that sell a variety of contemporary Native fashion, including jewelry that a ton of real Native women and girls love. They’ll give you good ideas for making her visibly Native and proud of her Native-ness without turning her into a walking stereotype. And if you see something you personally like in those stores, maybe think about supporting some Native-owned businesses while you research :)

2) Talk about her reconnecting to her heritage! She’s in a situation that tons of Native people are in, with our families rejecting our heritage and culture in an attempt to protect themselves, and I personally would love to see more exploration of that in the fandom. (Beyond white people telling us that the racism in her writing should us feel represented because it’s supposedly her attempts to reconnect.)

There are a ton of blogs on tumblr run by disconnected and reconnecting Natives, including my own, which you can check out to get an idea of how we think and feel and how we’re approaching our Native identity and heritage. 

Maybe she’s scared, worried that she’s not Native enough for her tribe, not Native enough to reconnect. Maybe she’s angry, at her dad for not giving her the opportunity to be part of that community and life, at the world for making her dad and other Native people feel like they need to hide themselves, possibly even at herself for the mistakes she made before she learned better. Maybe she’s excited, and constantly talks to her friends about the things she’s learned and the way she feels and how incredible it is to discover new parts of herself. Maybe she’s weepy, learning about the traumas in her family and community and all the terrible things that have been done to her and her loved ones. Maybe she’s a mix of all those things (I know I am).

Those are all really common experiences for Native people and they’re almost never explored in media or fandom, so this could be a really great opportunity.

That sort of narrative can also help you avoid butchering Cherokee beliefs and culture. There isn’t a lot of reliable information about Native cultures online, so if you do decide to incorporate those things in your works, try to talk directly to Cherokee people, check out official tribal websites for stories and beliefs, and look at cultural centers and museums.

3) If you’re okay with canon divergence, change her claiming. Please. For the love of god. Aphrodite is supposed to make her children feel beautiful, not make them feel stressed and uncomfortable and upset while she changes them to look how she wants and publicly humiliates them. 

Instead of putting Piper in a dress meant for a grown woman and other things that made her visibly uncomfortable and upset, her claiming could involve evening out her choppy haircut and giving her clothes that are not only cool and interesting, but also functional and appropriate for a 15 year old girl. I personally imagine her in something like a heavy jacket, a graphic tee, good jeans, and a pair of interesting but functional boots.

4) Don’t make her an alcoholic. I know this sounds weird, but it is a really disturbing trend in the fandom and it personally breaks my heart. Alcoholism is a very real issue in Native communities and it is completely devastating to our families and loved ones. Piper has shown no indication of being interested in alcohol, and there’s no reason for the fandom to have looked at her and decided “this is a character who constantly gets drunk” except that they associate Native people with drunkenness.

5) Don’t describe her as half-white please. There are half-white Natives, of course, but making her one not only ignores the canon that gods don’t have DNA but also suggests that the gods are either definitely white or that Aphrodite, a goddess whose appearance changes based on what people think is most beautiful, would absolutely be white when seducing a Native man. There’s some bad implications there.

(And don’t use the term “part Native” either; we aren’t part Native, we ARE Native. Native identity cannot be separated into parts of sections; it is everything we are.)

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as a depressed neurodivergent Black lesbian with two immunocompromised family members this quarantine has been difficult to navigate around and social media has been even more stressful and triggering as of late. im doing a stream tonight to add some light heartedness and Black joy to everybody who’s seen enough of Black hurt & pain.

ive been angry and anxious and having trouble sleeping. today i de-escalated a DV situation with a Black family in my neighborhood. he was 6 ft plus and im 5’1”. he had a hammer in his hand trying to break his front door down to get to his wife who locked it out of fear. i talked to him to distract him until his wife climbed out over the side fence and snuck over to another neighbor’s house. between my own heart racing at the possibility of me getting hurt, knowledge that the police were coming and they could shoot and kill every one of us involved based off of our race, and my fear at him catching his wife, i still haven’t really come down from it.

but im glad i was brave and i would do it again. it made me re-realize how real it is that as well as antiblack racist killings/murders, in the midst of a pandemic where Black ppl are more likely to contract & die from COVID-19 from racist medical practices and inadequate healthcare and a lot of us being “essential workers”, that quarantine is not peaceful for a lot of us Domestic Violence situations have been on the rise since shelter in place started.