courage, dearheart.

Never forget the Porjamos–the genocide of over a million Romani people by the Nazis.

Never forget the Farhud, a Nazi-inspired pogrom in Iraq, 1941.

Never forget the Nazis also killed Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.  

Never forget Aktion T4, a the so-called “mercy killings” (genocide) of those called “useless eaters” (disabled people). Never forget that this policy of eugenics was directly inspired by the USA’s eugenics movement and purposefully exported there. 

Never forget that the parents of the first disabled child killed in Aktion T4 wanted their child dead. 

Never forget the hundreds of Black Germans who were forcibly sterilized by the Nazis. 

Never forget the “inverts” and “homosexuals” who were rounded up and sent to their deaths because they were deemed a threat to the “Aryan Race.”

Never forget the “nice Germans” who didn’t “care about politics” and silently watched their neighbors be taken away to be tortured and killed. 

Never forget the Resistance. 

Never forget the anti-fascists and the Partisans who were of many nations, including Jews, who fought the Nazis and rescued concentration camp survivors. 

Never forget the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an armed resistance of Jewish people that saved thousands of lives from the concentration camps. 

Never forget the smaller acts of resistance like industrial sabotage practiced by those in the concentration camps to reduce their contribution to the Nazi war machine. 

Never forget the communists, anarchists, trade-unionists, and other radicals who opposed Nazism and who were incarcerated and killed. 

Never forget the Danish gentiles who saved 90% of its Danish Jewish population of 7,000 while under years of Nazi occupation. 

Never forget that the United States of America’s xenophobic, racist, eugenicist, antisemitic, ableist, and anti-Romani immigration quotas policy condemned millions of people to death. 

Never forget the fate of the M.S. St. Louis. 

Never forget that Nazism was fairly popular in the USA until Germany declared war on it. 

Never forget that antisemitism persisted during that time and was heightened during the McCarthyism. 

Never forget the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) who violently suppressed political radicals (including killing the Jewish communist Rosa Luxemberg and other members of the KPD) during the Wiemar Republic, inadvertently aiding the Nazis. 

Never forget that this and their “lesser of two evils” strategy that led Hitler to become Chancellor. 

Never forget Magnus Hirschfeld, a sexologist, Homosexual Transvestite*, and German Jew–and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science). *his own terms 

Never forget that the Nazis burned it and all the works in his library. 

Never forget the “Masculunists” (the forerunner of today’s “homonationalists”), their hatred for Magnus Hirschfeld, and their support of the Nazis who later betrayed them in the Night of Long Knives after using them like the tools they were.

Never forget Willem Arondeus, a Dutch Homosexual gentile artist, writer, and resistance leader who led a group in bombing the Amsterdam Public Records Office on July 1st 1943 in order to hinder the Nazi round-up of Jews. 

Never forget his final words: “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.” 

Never forget Chiune Sugihara who saves tens of thousands of Lithuanian Jews by disobeying orders and giving them (often false) visas. 

Never forget that the city of Shanghai brought in tens of thousands of Jews, more than any USA city. 

Never forget the USSR, not the USA or Britain, liberated most of the concentration camps and captured Berlin, ending the war. 

Never forget the Japanese-Americans who liberated Dachau that USA textbooks never mention.

Never forget the Kapos.

Never forget that the world knew. 

Never forget all the Holocaust survivors who escaped the concentration camps and arrived in Britain, the USA, and the USSR and told the world their stories. 

Never forget the silence. 

Never forget that the entire chain of command for the USA, including President Roosevelt, ordered the air force not to bomb the railways leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers which would have saved thousands.  

Never forget that it was the Tuskegee Airmen–a racially segregated, all-Black division–that disobeyed orders and bombed the railways to Auschwitz.

Never forget that Hitler’s plans of genocide were inspired by the United States of America’s genocide of its Indigenous Peoples. 

Never forget Henry Ford and all the other American Nazi-collaborators.  

Never forget the pogroms just after the Holocaust officially ended. 

Never forget that never again means never again to anyone. 

Never forget the betrayal. 

Never forget the solidarity. 

Never forget that “first they came for the Socialists.”

- “I am your mother. I was your mother before I was ever the president, and I’ll be your mother long after, to the day they put me in the ground and beyond this earth. You are my child.”

- “If there’s any legacy for me on this bloody earth, I want it to be true.” 

- “on the map of you, my fingers can always find the green hills, wales. cool waters and a shore of white chalk. the ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. your spine’s a ridge i’d die climbing.” 

- “It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips open and carves out this chasm down below to make room.”

- “[I remember thinking], ‘God, I hope I can be like him.’ Because you were brave. Because you stood up for things. And I couldn’t stop wondering how you had the nerve to get up and do what you do every day with everyone knowing what they know about you.” 

- “What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof?”

- “It’s a mural of himself and Henry, facing each other, haloed by a bright yellow sun… He snaps a photo on his phone, and, fingers shaking, types out a tweet: Never tell me the odds.”

- “I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House.” 

- “Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: he is my choice.” 

Hello everyone! As many of us who study philosophy in some form are likely aware, people of color, especially black philosophers, are radically underrepresented in the field (composing only 1.32% of all philosophers in the US). In order to combat such marginalization, and in attempt to help amplify black voices within the field of philosophy, I have complied a series of links & information here for learning more about African/black philosophy, especially within the US. Please feel free to add to this post if you feel that anything is missing, esp if ur a black person!

Overview:

According to Wikipedia.org: “African philosophy is the philosophical discourse produced by indigenous Africans and their descendants, including African Americans. African philosophers may be found in the various academic fields of philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. One particular subject that many African philosophers have written about is that on the subject of freedom and what it means to be free or to experience wholeness.”

Articles to start with: 

“What African Philosophy Can Teach You About the Good Life.”

“A truly African philosophy.”

“African Philosophy.”

“Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons.’” 

“Does Western Philosophy Have Egyptian Roots?” 

“What You Should Know About Contemporary African Philosophy.” 

“Philosophy in Africa - A Case of Epistemic Injustice in the Academy.” 

“The African Enlightenment.”

“The Radical Philosophy of Egypt.” 

“The first God.” 

“African Philosophy Is More Than You Think It Is.” 

And some introductory texts:

Barry Hallen, A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (2009).

Samuel Oluoch Himbo, An Introduction to African Philosophy. Lanham et al.: Rowman and Littlefield (1998). 

Dismas Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (1994).

Kwasi Wiredu, A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing (2004). (PDF version linked here.)

Key essays:

“The Struggle for Reason in Africa” by Mogobe Ramose in The African Philosophy Reader eds. P.H. Coestzee & A.P.J. Roux

“Appeal,” David Walker 

“What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”, Frederick Douglass

“Ain’t I a Woman?”, Sojourner Truth 

“The Black Woman’s role in the Community of Slaves,” Angela Davis

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois (first chapter esp.)

“A Problem of Biography in African Thought” & “What Does It Mean to Be a Problem?” by Lewis Gordon in Existentia Africana 

“Racism and Feminism,” by bell hooks in the PDF linked here

“Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neoliberalism,” Angela Davis

“Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X

“The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Audre Lorde

“Whiteness as Property,” Cheryl Harris

Important contemporary black philosophers:

Cornel West (political philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, race, democracy, liberation theology)

Angela Davis (also a writer and social activist & just a general badass, really worth knowing about regardless of whether or not you have an interest in philosophy)

bell hooks (race, capitalism, sexuality & gender through a postmodern perspective)

Lewis Gordon (Africana philosophy, black existentialism, phenomenology)

Kwame Anthony Appiah (probabilistic semantics, political theory, moral theory, intellectual history, race and identity theory)

Patricia Hill Collins (sociology of knowledge, race, class, gender studies)

John H. McWhorter (linguistics) 

George Yancy (Critical philosophy of race, critical whiteness studies, African philosophy, philosophy of the body)

Kwassi Wiredu (African philosophy)

Franz Fanon (20th century Marxism, psychoanalysis, colonialism)

Online podcasts, blogs, & videos:

Podcast on Africana philosophy (the website linked here also contains several useful links and resources for further reading)

Youtube series on African Philosophy

Award-winning blog run by a Nigerian-Finnish woman which “connects feminism with critical reflections on contemporary culture from an Africa-centred perspective.”

Other links & resources:

Journal on African Philosophy

Wikipedia page, which includes a list of African philosophers

History of African Philosophy

Online bibliography on African Philosophy

25 Black Scholars You Should Know

Ok I started this response as a brief “idk he’s fun” and then went full on English major on it so uhh.. oops. Sorry for the formatting bc I’m on mobile and I’m super tired so idk how coherent it is. Basically, I think Henry’s an interesting character because he’s complex and almost reminiscent of the other boys, but is also so different and refreshing, his relationship with Gansey ultimately strengthens both their characters and makes him more compelling, and his own arc was essential to the ending themes, if not the actual events, of the series.

First off, and I think this is really the heart of the reason the fandom likes him so much, rather than any deep literary analysis, is that he was just a fun character.

The series as a whole is extremely character driven; every time I reread the books I’m always a little shocked by how things I thought occurred in the beginning of the middle of one of the books happen 50 pages from the end. I think probably the reason there’s so much that happens towards the end (without it feeling like it’s dragging on prior to that) is because those events are made so much more meaningful by the character development that happens before then. It’s the characters that make the books what they are; from what I’ve seen and my own experiences, when you talk to people who are reading the books about what they think you hear “oh I love Adam so much I just want to be happy” and “I’m so scared Gansey’s going to die I really love him”, not “wow I wonder how this welsh king thing is going to turn out” (not that welsh kings aren’t cool af). So we get a character like Henry, who we’re initially given one perception of in BLLB as just sort of a typical Aglionby boy. This really isn’t that different than our perception of any of the boys at the beginning of the series (besides maybe Gansey, because we know a) he’s going to die and b) he’s probably Blue’s true love), it’s over time we’re given pieces of them that make them the deeply complex and sympathetic characters we know and love.

Henry stands out because he’s funny and kind but kind of in a way we haven’t really seen before; he seems sort of untouched by this ANGST that the rest of the kids all sort of carry with them (Even Blue, who arguably has the least baggage, has had to spend the past four books making peace with the fact that the boy she’s falling in love with is about to die). But the thing is, Henry really doesn’t have any less emotional baggage than the other kids, he has this sympathetic backstory which has definitely affected him, but also has a perspective that so fresh and makes the reader sympathize him even more. (I actually think this is essential to the narrative of The Raven King, but I’ll get into that later). I’d argue the same thing that happens with the boys in TRB happens with Henry, only much faster and more condensed because there was so much going on in TRK plot wise in comparison to TRB AND TDT, which is when we get this kind of development for the other kids. I think this lends itself to two reactions from the reader: either you’re like me and all of this development all at once leads to a whole lot of feelings, love, and adoption papers being drawn up all at once, or you’re left with a sort of “Where did this come from??”

Also, second only to characters, friendships are a big deal in the series. Intense, life changing friendships. I saw a book review for the series once that mentioned that by the end of the series, you really feel like these kids are your friends, and at the definite risk of sounding corny, I think that’s true. Part of this has to do with the character development; when a series digs so deep into its characters, we honestly know them as well as we know some of our friends. But it also has to do with these strong preexisting friendships we get, and just like how in the Raven Boys we get to “befriend” these characters and learn about them along with Blue, as Gansey becomes friends with Henry, we get to experience this bond through him, which is something that I don’t think always works in literature, but that Maggie writes remarkably well (possibly due to the character work?). So this intense friendship Gansey and eventually Blue have with Henry only adds to the reader’s fondness for him, as it builds off of our own fondness for Blue and Gansey. Also, it’s this friendship that ultimately shapes Gansey and the reader’s psyche for the ending of the book.

Here is a post from CNN about the explosion in Beirut today. Here are live updates on the situation (also CNN).

A Twitter thread about why most donations and (all) petitions won’t be very helpful (from someone in Lebanon), including a carrd that summarizes the various crises in Lebanon as well (though I recommend you do your own research on those if possible)

If you can donate to one place make it the Lebanese Red Cross, as they’re not associated with the government and it’s guaranteed that 100% of your money will go towards helping the Lebanese people