thecatenelson

Killer walks free vs killer gets life in prison.

There. I told you what the difference is. You can stop pretending that racism goes both ways.

when i was 5 years old my best friend was a boy named kyle who didn’t know how to knock on doors so he made dinosaur noises outside my window to wake me up in the summer until i demonstrated how to ball his fists and slam them against my doors.  we collected caterpillars in my trailer park and built them houses while we traded pokemon cards.  he wasn’t the only one.  there was ben, and mitch, and noah—but kyle’s the only one who hurt me, because when he tried to kiss me and i asked him why, he told me “because you’re a girl and i’m a boy, shouldn’t we like each other?”

i missed him so much and i wondered why he couldn’t just be my friend like he always was

in the first grade there was rich and joseph and i got sent to detention with them almost every day with a smile on my face.  we built block towers and sang to my teacher’s lion king soundtracks when she’d turn the lights off during lunch time.  one day they got in a fist fight over me at recess, and i wondered why they felt they needed to share my friendship, like it was something they owned.

in the second grade zach and i played yu gi oh under our desks during free time and i got moved for talking to him constantly.  everyone in the class would tease him and i for talking, asking when we were going to date already, asking him if he’d kissed me, and he stopped being my friend.

when i was 11 i met a chubby boy with the name of a colour who wore puffy vests and unwashed t-shirts, with greasy hair and bright blue eyes and a smile that hid hurt behind it.  people didn’t like him because he was silly, but i liked him, because i was also silly.  he became my friend the day he bought me 5 giant roses and asked me to be his girlfriend, and i politely declined but promised him i’d be his best friend because i’d always wanted a best guy friend that stuck around. we burnt our feet on the concrete during the summer and walked home with the sunset silhouetting us.  he talked often about how he loved me, but never blamed me for being me, even though he refused to move on. that boy dyed his hair jet black and sat on the end of my bed playing songs to me on guitar, and all that pent up rage from before didn’t show until the first time he slapped me across the face and called me a dumb cunt.

in the 7th grade there was a boy named ryan who sat next to me on the bus and talked to me about manga.  he’d ask me personal invasive questions but i didn’t mind because it was attention and i liked attention.  i was dating another guitarist with curly brown hair, one who was much more kind-tempered than the other, and ryan mentioned how much of an asshole he was every day.  i wondered, why, why does he think the love of my life is an asshole?  but whenever i asked him, he just told me, “girls only date assholes.  there’s no room for nice guys like me.”

i wondered, if he was so nice, why did he say such mean things?

he never stopped with me, taking me to movies, hanging out with me, you know.  being friendly.  i thought we were friends.  but then, how many times had i thought that before?

how many times had i bonded with a boy, thought they got me, only for them to ask me if i wanted to make out?

how come when i told ryan i was coming out as a lesbian, he stopped being my friend, and said “damnit, the one girl i really want to pound into a mattress, and she’s only interested in chicks!”

there was a boy my junior year who stayed up all night with me until the sun rose, talking about life, past loves, hopes, dreams.  beneath a million twinkling stars spanning forever, he brushed long brown hair out of his eyes and listened to me talk about the history that made me. then he asked me if i’d ever consider dating a guy, and complained about how he’d never get laid.

when i told him no a couple hundred times, he found new girls to listen to.

i would sit on the couch and play zelda with dakota, and he’d talk about all my favourite games with me.  he was the closest thing to support i had, and the letters and poems he wrote me were always so kind and friendly.  but he’d put his arms around me on the couch, and no matter how many times i told him i was uncomfortable, he’d still come over every day and do it.

“don’t you know how it feels to love someone and not have them love you back?  don’t you know what it feels like to be friendzoned?”

when i meet guys who talk about the friendzone, who talk about the girls who don’t give “nice guys” like them i chance, i always want to just say

when i was 10 years old i met a girl whose brown hair fell across her shoulders and whos eyes sparkled when the sunlight hit them, whose voice was like velvet and whose scent was like mountain smoke, who made me dizzier than a fly climbing a sugar hill.  and i’m 18 years old, and i still love her, and she knows, and she doesn’t love me.

but my first thoughts upon hearing her rejection were not “what a bitch,” were not “she just wants a douchebag and not a nice girl like me!” were not “im going to keep pushing her until she dates me,”

they were

“she is the best friend i have ever had, and i am the best she’s ever had, and i would hate to take that away from her.”

so before you play the victim, mr. Nice Guy, before you angrily throw your fedora on the ground and blame the girl you claim to adore so much:

put yourself in the shoes of a girl who thought she made a wonderful friend, only to find out that he just wanted her for sex.  that he just wanted her for a relationship.  a girl who was just an object to win, a prize.  a girl who’s trust you’ve just shattered.

Instead of calling Pearl thirsty you can just call her desperate; instead of calling Pearl salty you can just call her bitter (this post is directed at the Steven Universe fandom, FYI).

I know it seems funny and cool to use AAVE like this but you should examine why you think these words are funny in the first place. Is it because they’re dank memes, or because you think anything black people say or do is inherently hilarious (which is part of why they became memes in the first place)? If it’s the second, you should know that’s rooted in the exotification of black people and black culture and ‘others’ them, which is obviously not okay.

Obviously I’m not an authority on the subject so here’s a link to two black people speaking out about non-black people using AAVE if you’re curious as to why it’s racist:

http://fuckyourracism.tumblr.com/post/93391303112/aave-and-why-it-is-more-than-likely-cultural

http://killbenedictcumberbatch.tumblr.com/post/83363441082/zodikat-killbenedictcumberbatch-bae-is-aave

Using AAVE at all (except for like, “ancient” AAVE, duh) should be kept to a minimum, and it DEFINITELY shouldn’t be used as a joke or to make you seem quirky or funny or cool.

There’s been such an upswing in white people discovering AAVE, appropriating it, using it incorrectly, bastardizing it, then destroying the original context and making it problematic.

Right now I’m noticing this with af (as fuck), and fuckboy. 

Honestly if I see one more post on my dash that says something like “bird af” or “arms af” or “couple af”, I’m gonna lose it. See the above “incorrect usage and bastardization”, after the appropriation stage.

Fuckboy has skyrocketed into the destruction phase, mostly because white AFAB trans-masculine people claimed it was a transphobic slur (which never actually existed??) and white feminists began using it to describe any man regardless of how ain’t-shit he actually is…not to mention the fact some people claimed fuckboy originated from the skeleton war meme (which it didn’t???).

This situation has really been irking me, as a black girl who struggles with what “blackness” is supposed to be. Black people, as a cultural influence on each other, have developed our own language as a way of personal communication WITHIN the community. That’s AAVE. Our speech patterns and terms, our slang, our grammar, our daily lives interspersed into the English language, in a way that reflects the daily lives of our communities. That’s ANY area-specific dialect. Except AAVE isn’t just for one city in one state. It transcends an entire race of people.

When you take that, you’re really, truly, no joke, taking part of our culture. When you mock us, you’re poking fun at how entire communities and cities and neighborhoods speak. And if we’re not being mocked for it, or praised for not using it, it’s being stolen from us. Then we’re being mocked again, and put down for “harmful connotation”.

The basic bitch fiasco? That’s the full-blown destruction sequence. 

I’m starting to ramble, but as a black person, my personal opinion is that I don’t mind “sharing” AAVE, per se. I don’t have a strong opinion aside from ‘Don’t be an ass about it. Don’t use it for fun, or because you think it’s a joke to talk “like us”.’ Of course, many other black people will not share that state of mind, and my opinion is solely my own. Additionally, I can never condone the appropriation and theft of black culture.

But at the very least, if you’re gonna use it, use it right. Respect the origins. Don’t create your own narrative for a story you aren’t even a character in. Don’t manufacture a background for a term that already has a history. Don’t change the connotations of a word that already has a meaning.

Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About The Radicalization of Whites?

by Johnny Silvercloud on afrosapiophile.com

A while back ago I spoke in great pain on how I’m losing friends fighting racism.  I talked about how one can have friends (white) who will invite you (black person) to a Christmas dinner, but will engage in vehicular manslaughter when it comes to Black Lives Matter protesters.  What I didn’t really discuss was this radicalization process among the white community in America which makes such violent ideas possible.

Radicalization?  You probably never really took a look at it. You’re probably wondering what am I talking about.  Radicalization?  What radicalization?

Radicalization of the White American

To the left is a photograph I took of a white woman, bowing down to Donald Trump during the Tucson Trump rally in March 2016.

The put this into perspective, I do a lot of political/protest rallies as a street photographer.  Out of the thousands of photos I’ve ever taken, I never seen anything like this in a political rally before in my life. The crazy thing about this photo is the fact that it was difficult to get anything like this.  You see, the photography is tightly controlled in a Trump rally.  They are NOT media friendly.  The bigger take away here is the fact that this is is categorically odd to capture at a political rally.

As Donald Trump continued to validate the claims of white supremacists, Americanized Nazis, and other racists, I always think of this photo.  When Richard Spencer held an Americanized Nazi rally in Washington D.C. and mainstream (whitestream?) media attempted to romanticize the alt-right, I thought of this photo.

I think of this photo a lot.  As a black abolitionist, I never really stop to think about what does white supremacist ideologies and propaganda feels like to a white person.  When it comes to that question this photo says plenty.

The structure and ideologies of white supremacy must be very comfortable.  I would imagine that it feels good to know that you are infinitely above suspicion when it comes to any form of social deviance, including crime.  It probably feels soothing to know that no matter what, a white person will NEVER have to answer for the behavior of other whites.  I’ll go as far as suggesting that white people may get a sad level of satisfaction in hearing non-white people talk, discuss, protest all these things that nonwhites suffer from due to white supremacy.  To hear that for example, people in Africa and Asia engage in skin bleaching to look like you — the white person — may be the source of a sick level of pride. Yes, we never think of it as people of color.  But the notion that people in Asia actually go through elective surgery and cut their eyes open to look more white probably fuels a cold-blooded smirk of satisfaction inside of many white people as a whole.

Sure, to a black person this level of pride is sick and disgusting. But to a white person, all of this — white supremacy, white privilege, white defaultness — is simply, the way.  All of this is simply the way things are.  While these things are largely invisible in (white) American society, these things are in fact known and understood.

Being that these things are understood by white America, imagine if a person comes by who promise to practically, maintain and rejuvenate white supremacy?  What happens when you have websites dedicated to taking the job of J. Edger Hoover, slandering those who are oppressed?  What happens when you have mainstream media forever angelicizing white criminals, all while demonizing black victims of crime?  What happens when the government who remained callous to minority drug offenders began softening up laws when heroin strikes white neighborhoods?  What happens when whites are allowed to have guns, but nonwhites are not?

What takes place is a caste system within a society.  Currently, America is NOT one reality for all.  You cannot argue that we live in an equal society if a police officer can murder me and attempt to place false evidence by my body, and not be convicted.

White Radicalization is a Reality

With an intricate collective of white supremacist websites, blogs, message board forums and conservative pundits, glued together with conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns (which guides stupid whites into kinetic action), we are now facing a moment in modern history where white people are now becoming radicalized into white supremacy at an alarming rate.  Where a man named Barry Goldwater campaigned as a blatant white supremacist and failed, Donald Trump did the same and succeeded.  Nazis think they can wear suits and nice haircuts and do Nazi salutes downtown Washington D.C.

Some of the friends I’ve lost, the white ones, now dance with the devil when it comes to the white radicalization process.  I’ve noticed this when Obama was in office.  One white male I’ve known for the Army years had a friend call me an Obama lover, which contextually sounds like nigger lover.   Honestly, the guy is so stupid it’s not a serious loss. Other white friends ROUTINELY share racist, bigoted propaganda on social media, with them actually taking refuge in racism, saying things with a false sense of shielding sarcasm, like:

“…but that would make me racist huh?”

“I’m gonna have to be racist…”

“….race baiting…”

If you were to look at the social media accounts of these radicalized white men, you’d think that American police forces are infallible, devoid of corruption — but federal (non-conservative) politicians are full of lies and deception. The list could go on.

Years ago, I wrote this one column I called the Four Fears.  The Four Fears were a set of fears I believe what drives white anxiety concerning white privilege and race relations as a whole.  At the end of this old column I stated that whites will either realize that diversity isn’t a bad thing and we are all the same regardless, or they will radicalize and fight tooth and nail to maintain white privilege and restore white supremacy.  I fear we are now looking at the latter.

America will talk all day about radical Islam and radical black speakers and writers.  No one ever thinks to talk about white radicalization, which is a unique danger we’ve seen on this planet before.

Anyway, I do believe that there should be a discussion on this white radicalization process taking place.  That conversation will have to be brutally honest.  If this discussion doesn’t take place, feel free to catch up on fascism, because it’s what follows next.

Ironheart (Riri Williams) cosplay via  Wayne Dyer‎

“My baby is ready for comic con!” 

Get the comics here

That’s 12-year-old Jessica Maple, whose late great-grandma owned the newly empty home. Maple asked her mother to take her to the crime scene and found something the authorities had missed: a broken window in the garage and multiple fingerprints. The cops were still trying to process this new information (or pretending to) when Maple managed to locate all the stolen furniture at a nearby pawnshop. At this point, she called the main detective involved in the case and told him, “I did your job again.”

But that isn’t the end of our story: The pawnshop owner, who apparently didn’t think it was weird when two jackasses came into his store dragging an entire grandma-style living room, also happened to have the pictures and IDs of the two guys. Rather than giving that info to the inept police department, Maple and the single most permissive mom in history drove down to the address on one of the IDs and confronted the 17-year-old robber in front of his mother.

At first, the guy denied having anything to do with the burglary, but Maple kept questioning him until he finally broke down and confessed to the crime, and possibly 9/11 and the Zodiac killings. Eventually, the police got around to arresting him.

Dark times all around but there are still people out there who love you

………………………………..sigh.

Like you couldn’t get a Japanese girl to be on the cover of Vogue Japan’s anniversary…

Devon Aoki would have been a perfect choice.