The mess that is me

"Racialised" is much better than PoC but I've been leaning a lot on the concept of racial markedness. Because that allows us to make statements like "the name Jamal is racially marked in USA". Rather than saying something like "Jamal is a PoC name", a nonsense statement, saying it's racially marked in USA allows us to contrast with societies like Albania or the Arab countries where the name Jamal is ordinary, thus unmarked.

It's a concept I've kind of imported from linguistic analysis; saying a speech pattern is more or less marked does not really allow us to avoid the subject of who's doing the marking. A statement like "womens' speech is more marked in Lakota" necessitates that we understand that it's the Lakota who are marking womens' speech. A foreigner can't tell the difference and probably doesn't understand why it would thus be weird to see a man using speech patterns associated with women, in the same way an Albanian wouldn't understand why USA people would think Jamal is a Black name.

Basically I think a lot of White ppl think the antithesis to racism is "Black people are inherently Cool, White people are inherently Lame" and it's just very hard to convince them that this is also extremely racist lmfao

It's the combination of "seeing a racialized group as Fundamentally Inherently Good is still dehumanizing and you aren't seeing them as people" and "your self-flagellating White guilt is extremely annoying for the people of color around you to deal with"

I think we need to bring local shrines back. Not in the sense of like, a church, but somewhere in a local community where offerings to the spirits, fae, deceased loved ones, can be left. not too dissimilar to community shrines to local spirits in Japan.

"no ethical consumption under capitalism" is really an argument for communism but has evolved into a thought terminating cliche for the populace of the global north who wish to mindlessly consume without having to consider the morality of our choices and behaviors and the inevitable need to change them alongside the deconstruction of capital and colony

sorry this is my first thought upon waking but between ai and factory farming and fucking monthly shein hauls and new phones every year mined by exploited people in drc and refusals to boycott along BDS guidelines by people with more than enough options and every aspect of the culture of convenience and whos labor must be invisiblized to maintain that comfort and convenience and then you see people online like well don't ruin my fun by trying to make me think critically at all ever . i am going to become the joker

While this is correct, it is very important for white people to remember that things like racism are used as tactics to keep us divided. We all are fighting a class war, but conversations about discrimination of minority groups are still very much relevant and important and don’t take from the larger struggle we are all fighting. We must stand in solidarity together rather than allowing the enemy to divide us.

This seems like a good time to mention the Prisoners Literature Project and Inside Books Project. Both of these organizations send free books to incarcerated people, and are always looking for donations - both books and money -and volunteers! (Prisoners literature project sends books everywhere but Texas - Inside Books project is just Texas).

Notice how removing seating doesnt actually prevent people from sitting it just makes them uncomfortable and makes public spaces more hostile it doesnt actually work at controlling their behavior not till a pig comes along anyways and they'll harass a homeless person/teen whatever they're sitting on.

Btw keep in mind how this also more dramatically affects disabled people, not everyone can stand for hours at a time or feasibly sit on the floor

That’s a major train station in NYC btw. A place where people, are, y’know, WAITING. For extended periods of time. That’s why everyone is sitting. They’re tired.

London hasn’t changed, it’s still appalling. I can’t stand for long periods anymore, so I always need to know where I can sit down and feel safe. Governments keep doing the same thing they always have: attacking and scapegoating minorities so that bigots and the complacent can feel superior. They manufacture conflicts where none exist just to stay relevant, because without constant strife, there would be no government to justify itself.

Petition to put this guy in charge of traffic enforcement in my state.

The real horseshoe theory.