Queer, Gifted & Black

An out pouring of brilliance from high school students across...

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:35:21 -0400

An out pouring of brilliance from high school students across the country on how to make schools safer! #outshine2013

Working with participants at the first ever National GSA Summit...

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:37:35 -0400

Working with participants at the first ever National GSA Summit harvesting recommendations on safety locally & nationally to be developed into a charter and presented federally. #outshine2013

thegoddamazon: slay-z: me on weekends. Clearly we are alike...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:57:30 -0400

http://youtube-personalities.tumblr.com/

http://youtube-personalities.tumblr.com/

thegoddamazon:

slay-z:

me on weekends.

Clearly we are alike in this.

brashblacknonbeliever: A few gems from the #BlackPrivilege tag...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:56:29 -0400

brashblacknonbeliever:

A few gems from the #BlackPrivilege tag on twitter.

Dying To Be Beautiful?

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:48:51 -0400

Dying To Be Beautiful?:

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Independence, we need to question our national motto, ‘Out of Many, One People’? Is Jamaica really a multiracial society? Obviously, not! We are a black-majority nation with a small minority of other racial groups. Our national motto is clearly delusional.
Fabricated by the brown/white elite half a century ago, the motto symbolises the arrogance of those who consider themselves entitled to rule. Disregarding the black majority, the self-centred minority deliberately falsified the truth. They concocted a motto in their own image: ‘Page 2′. No wonder the black in the flag represented ‘hardship’. In the spirit of Marcus Garvey, I propose an emancipated motto: ‘One Aim, One Destiny, Full Freedom’. That should cover just about everybody.

From the comments, I really appreciate this. We need to stop shaming people:

Diane Dawson | January 15, 2012 at 1:52 pm | Reply

I started bleaching at age 15, when I was just starting 5th form at St. Andrew high school. I was admiring photos of beautiful Michelle Moodie, who was posing in magazines before she turned 18, and thought, “what a happy girl she must be.” I gave up lunch for days or only bought half just so I could save to buy Nadinola Bleaching Cream. I had the right “straight hair” from my Dad, but my complexion was not the same alabaster tone of my classmates who lived in Kingston 8. I thought that if I bleached out my skin, my lighter complexion would override the fact that I lived in St. Catherine and commuted to school in my father’s beat up sedan. My sister had an easier time, as she had a much lighter complexion: more friends, her choice of boyfriends, and teachers giving her a “break” over late homework assignments. Being beautiful had advantages. There were things she never had to do, that people would do for her. I wanted to be like that. Unfortunately, my skin was too dark and bleaching only shifted my skin tone five percent. So, I decided to buckle down and study difficult subjects, as at least being a pretty black girl with a science degree would be almost the same as being fair-skinned. Why did I stop bleaching? I realised that I was wasting money, and precious time. I was so distracted from my studies, that I ultimately spent more years in UWI trying to get past pre-med than I did contributing to society when I eventually graduated. My self esteem problems will never go away, but I promise you, Dr. Cooper, that it doesn’t help to have these symposiums “studying” women like me and assuming that we are “dying to be beautiful.” It’s not that we’re dying to be beautiful, it’s that we are unhappy and want to have something about us that people can appreciate and admire. Why is that such a bad thing, to want to be loved and appreciated? This symposium is a form of bullying because we are already judging ourselves, but here we have people gathering in groups judging us as well. Wanting reassurance that our existence is not meaningless is not something that we should be punished for.

iluvsouthernafrica: Powerful image. Powerful music. Photo...

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:36:38 -0400

iluvsouthernafrica:

Powerful image. Powerful music.

Photo probably from Mozambique, Angola or Zimbabwe (I stand to be corrected)

Are We Living Inside a Computer Simulation?

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:33:06 -0400

Are We Living Inside a Computer Simulation?:

allmylaundry:

systemofaclown:

The popular film trilogy, The Matrix, presented a cyberuniverse where humans live in a simulated reality created by sentient machines.

Now, a philosopher and team of physicists imagine that we might really be living inside a computer-generated universe that you could call The Lattice. What’s more, we may be able to detect it.

In 2003, British philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper that proposed the universe we live in might in fact really be a numerical computer simulation. To give this a bizarreTwilight Zone twist, he suggested that our far-evolved distant descendants might construct such a program to simulate the past and recreate how their remote ancestors lived.

He felt that such an experiment was inevitable for a supercivilization. If it didn’t happen by now, then in meant that humanity never evolved that far and we’re doomed to a short lifespan as a species, he argued.

To extrapolate further, I’d suggest that artificial intelligent entities descended from us would be curious about looking back in time by simulating the universe of their biological ancestors.

Read the whole article: http://www.livescience.com/25589-are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation.html

Curiouser and curiouser… we live in strange times.

Also, an opinion piece on New Scientist about all of this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628950.300-the-idea-we-live-in-a-simulation-isnt-science-fiction.html

I was a philosophy major in college, and if I had a dollar for every time a student mentioned The Matrix, I could easily pay for a semester of nursing school.

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:26:17 -0400

Middlebury students stage checkpoint, Call on college to divest from Israeli apartheid

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:25:02 -0400

thepeoplesrecord:

Submitted by Jay Saper
May 19, 2013

On May 15, students at Middlebury College in Vermont staged a checkpoint outside their dining hall during the busiest meal of the year to commemorate the 65^th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the establishment of the state of Israel.

As the Middlebury divestment campaign from arms and fossil fuels gains national attention, a coalition that included Palestinian, Israeli, and American Jewish students staged the act of political theater in solidarity with Nakba Day demonstrations around the globe as a call to add apartheid to the students’ divestment demands.

At a midnight breakfast event during finals week, students were greeted in the dark with barricades blocking the entrance to the dining hall and flashlights from full uniformed soldiers asking for identification cards.

Alex Jackman, a junior from New York City, described the checkpoint as “one of the coolest pieces of theater I have seen on Middlebury Campus. Performed during the time when all students are wrapped up in stress about exams and schoolwork, the piece served as a reminder that there are greater battles to fight beyond our campus.”

A gate was lifted for students who had received Israeli documentation. They could pass freely to prepare themselves a plate of pancakes. Those with Palestinian IDs were directed around the checkpoint.

Some students voiced their frustration with being held up, “This is not cool, I am trying to get to midnight breakfast.” One shouted, “I have to study for finals.”

Jackman contended it was important for students to confront the checkpoint. She explained, “Middlebury College students tend to abstract issues of social injustice, a method that allows us to remove ourselves from these issues. But by being confronted, quite literally, with this piece of theater, we were not able to remove ourselves from our privileges—even if only for a moment.”

The performance, developed by students as part of a course on Theater and Social Change and members of the organization Justice for Palestine, was broken up by campus public safety.

“This is not theater, we can tell it is political,” one officer voiced. “Everything that is political has to be approved by the College.”

For Palestinians, checkpoints are not a momentary interruption, but one persistent piece of a dehumanizing system of apartheid. Between 2000 and 2005 there were 67 Palestinian mothers who were forced to give birth at Israeli military checkpoints and 36 of those babies died.

Apartheid is not enabled through merely subjecting a people to oppressive conditions, but rather through creating separate realities whereby a group of people is not forced to confront their implication in the domination of another group.

Middlebury College itself is a settlement on stolen Abenaki land. With its pristine limestone buildings and perfectly manicured grass, Middlebury manufactures an environment seemingly separate from the oppressions it perpetuates, which is itself a political act.

Students at Middlebury are stepping up and refusing to allow a separation of conscience that tolerates inaction in face of the school profiting from Israeli apartheid. Justice for Palestine has one message for administrators, particularly fitting of a midnight action, “We will not rest, until you divest.”

Jay Saper is a student organizer with Justice for Palestine at Middlebury College.

What Kelly Rowland sang: I was in an abusive relationship. He was both emotionally and physically abusive. He was mentally manipulative, turning me against my best friend/sister and telling me she was the last person in the world who loved me. I was feeling low at a time when she was doing really well and that led to some feelings of jealousy and devalued self-worth, especially when I felt like there was nobody I could talk to about it. But when I did let her know what was happening, she was right there by my side.

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:24:34 -0400

What Kelly Rowland sang: I was in an abusive relationship. He was both emotionally and physically abusive. He was mentally manipulative, turning me against my best friend/sister and telling me she was the last person in the world who loved me. I was feeling low at a time when she was doing really well and that led to some feelings of jealousy and devalued self-worth, especially when I felt like there was nobody I could talk to about it. But when I did let her know what was happening, she was right there by my side.
What the blogs report: KELLY ADMITS SHE WAS JEALOUS OF BEYONCE IN ANGRY, CURSE-LADEN RANT SHE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE; SHE'S A HATER.

Border Residents Disappointed by Fence Provision in New Immigration Reform Bill, Residents Offered $100 For Land

Sat, 18 May 2013 23:23:16 -0400

Border Residents Disappointed by Fence Provision in New Immigration Reform Bill, Residents Offered $100 For Land:

sinidentidades:

The so-called “Gang of Eight,” a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, released their much-awaited comprehensive immigration reform bill late Tuesday. It’s thrilling to finally see a reform bill which looks like it has some momentum come out of Congress—until you see the first section devoted to border security, which is like a kick in the gut for border communities.

Get ready for more fences, more invasive surveillance and more “boots on the ground.”

The bill appropriates $1.5 billion for the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy” to identify where fencing, including double-layer fencing, infrastructure, and technology would be deployed along the Southern border.

Here we go again. For anyone who has closely followed the building of the border fence in Texas, this is an immediate red flag. Landowners like Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez have been fighting the condemnation of their land since 2008. Much of the unfenced land left along the southern border is in Texas and it is owned by private landowners.

The proposed fencing means another round of land condemnations and costly court battles for landowners and business owners. Since 2007—when the Department of Homeland Security first started land condemnations under the 2006 Secure Fence Act in Texas—the agency has never adequately explained the decision-making process that determines where the fencing is built. And border residents say DHS seldom confers with communities before they start building.

Even worse, the immigration status of millions will hinge on the building of these border fences by the National Guard, as well as adding more drone surveillance to the border. And then finally a determination by a hyper-partisan Congress on whether the border is secure.

The bill creates a new class of immigrant called the “Registered Provisional Immigrant.” The bill says “RPIs” can travel outside of the country for up to 180 days a year and they can work. But it is a provisional status, presumably with even less rights than a Legal Permanent Resident status. According to the bill, immigrants cannot begin the process of becoming Legal Permanent Residents, (aka securing a green card) until the Homeland Security secretary submits a notice to Congress and the president that the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy is “substantially deployed and substantially operational,” and that the Secure Fence Strategy is implemented and “substantially completed.”

This could take years. Government officials have been trying to form a coherent border security strategy ever since 9/11 with little success. The past decade is littered with ideas and technologies that were once touted as the latest and greatest only to be later scrapped because they didn’t work and cost taxpayers too much. For instance, the virtual fence project was canceled in 2011 because of cost overruns and technical glitches. The radar sometimes mistook desert brush for border crossers when it was windy. And when it rained, the radar often didn’t work at all. The whole experiment cost taxpayers $1 billion.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, an El Paso immigration attorney with the law firm Cox Smith, says she was disappointed to see the fence provision in the bill. “A lot of communities—like El Paso where I live—have found the border fence to be a very offensive symbol,” says “I’m sorry to see the building of a fence used as a prerequisite for immigration reform.”

Rio Grande Valley resident Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, has been a steadfast opponent of building more fence, which he sees as environmentally destructive and an ultimately ineffective security tool. “If they’re talking about basing immigrant adjustment on the completion of the wall it’s going to take years because of the condemnations that will have to take place,” says Nicol. “The walls have already been built where it’s easy to condemn properties. They can destroy nature refuges without blinking because they’re on federal lands. But what’s left now is private property and most of it is in Texas.”

Even worse, he says, is that the walls are often ineffective. They clog with debris and flood communities or they fall over in flash floods. People can scale them with relative ease. “When the Gang of Eight was visiting Nogales they watched a woman climb the fence,” says Nicol.

For those already weary from fighting the U.S. government for their land for the past five years, the specter of another round of land condemnations is frightening. “My sense is that the government is plowing ahead on a security plan and the indigenous people in this community are still in the dark,” says Dr. Margo Tamez, daughter of Eloisa Tamez, who are of members of the Lipan Apache tribe.

As we spoke Tuesday, Margo said her mother was in federal court in Brownsville, still fighting to hold onto their property in El Calaboz, a tiny border community outside of Brownsville. The U.S. government is trying to take the land underneath the 18-foot border fence it already built in the middle of her property. They are offering the family $100. “We are subjected to decisions made from far away and not consulted about the things being done to our land,” says Margo, who now works as an assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia.

The comprehensive immigration reform bill is a hefty 844 pages. Many border residents are anxious to examine it in greater depth and weigh its impacts on their communities. “I’m still digesting this,” says Campbell Walker of the bill. “It’s going to be controversial and it still has a long way to go before it’s signed by the president.”

Study Finds People Of Color Nearly Invisible On Evening Cable News

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:57:18 -0400

Study Finds People Of Color Nearly Invisible On Evening Cable News:

sinidentidades:

A new analysis released yesterday by the media monitoring group Media Matters found that evening cable news guests are overwhelmingly white and male. According to the report, titled “Diversity on Evening Cable News in 13 Charts,” women and other people of color are underrepresented as guests on evening cable news programs at MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Media Matters examined the guests of thirteen evening cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during the month of April 2013. During that time period, only 33% of MSNBC guests, 29% Fox News guests and 24% CNN guests were female. Latinos fared much worse. Only 3% of Fox News guests and 2% of CNN and MSNBC guests were Latino.

An excerpt of some of the findings are below:

White Guests Were Hosted Most Often On Cable News. Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. African-Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and 5 percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively.

The Rachel Maddow Show Was Least Ethnically Diverse. Although The Rachel Maddow Show hosted fewer guests than other shows on MSNBC, those who were invited were most likely to be white. Out of 65 total guests, only 7 were non-white.

All In With Chris Hayes Was The Most Diverse Show In Evening Cable News. All In had both the largest proportion of women and the largest proportion of non-white guests — both 41 percent. All In also had the lowest proportion of white men — again 41 percent. Hayes’ show was the only evening cable news program to obtain such diversity.

Piers Morgan Live Guest Lineup Was 91 Percent White. CNN’s most ethnically diverse show was Outfront, which still hosted white guests 71 percent of the time. Similar to The Situation Room, the higher proportion of non-white guests on Outfront can be attributed in part to a couple of regular commentators: CNN correspondents Christiane Amanpour and Fareed Zakaria on The Situation Room and conservative political commentator Reihan Salam and political comedian Dean Obeidallah on Outfront.

White Men Were Vastly Overrepresented On Cable News. While white men enjoyed representation on cable that was nearly double that of their representation in the U.S. population, white women, who represent 32 percent of the population, were only 21 percent of guests on cable. Non-white women fared even worse. While they make up 19 percent of the population, they were only 8 percent of all guests on cable. Non-white men were also underrepresented; only 13 percent of guests on cable were non-white men while they make up 18 percent of the population.

The president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition released a statement on how he believes these findings may have real real world consequences.

“At a time when Latinos are over 16% of the country, a growing bloc of the electorate, and with over $1 trillion per year of buying power, it is unimaginable that we be excluded from cable news at such rates. This has a real affect on our community - the way we are perceived is how we are treated, and when our experts are absent from these programs it gives the perception that Latinos are not making meaningful contributions to this country, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” said NHMC president Alex Nogales in a statement sent to Colorlines.com.

zenjamaican: girljanitor: indica-tor: POC who live here in America: I realize you’re hurt by the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:55:08 -0400

zenjamaican:

girljanitor:

indica-tor:

POC who live here in America:

I realize you’re hurt by the ignorant words of “white people” who don’t know what they’re talking about, and I’m sorry.

But I have a question for you. In this “land of the free”…aren’t you free? What are their words doing to you, unless you LET them affect you? I thought this was a free country, where people were allowed to speak their minds, and other people were allowed not to listen.

But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the words of people are so strong that it’s impossible to stand up against them. Which is sad, and basically means our country is full of weak people.

No matter what race or gender I am, I would never let people’s words affect me. Don’t you realize they’re just words? Words are not physical, they will not capture and torture you. They won’t keep you from getting a job (and if your race is keeping you from getting a job, that’s the owners problem, not every white person), and they won’t kill you.

Unless you let them.

So take pride in who you are and stop listening to stupid people. It’s that easy. Once you let go of worrying about what other people think, your life will be a hell of a lot easier. And a lot less stressful.

Empower yourself. Empower your own life.

“once you let go of ‘worrying what people think and say’, then magically all this will disappear! “

“RACISM CAN’T AFFECT YOU UNLESS YOU LET IT!!!”

White people who live here in America:

Next time you want to give empowering advice to POC, don’t. Empower yourself to be less ignorant.

Reblogging for a great collection of resources.

Five major scandals the media isn't obsessing about

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:52:20 -0400

think-progress:

Are these things more important than edits to talking points? Judge for yourself.

1. Carbon pollution reaches historic highs, threatening human existence

2. The devastating impact of sequestration on kids, cancer patients and first responders.

3. Massive cuts to food stamps for the most vulnerable.

4. 1,100 workers die in a Bangladesh factory collapse, and American retailers continue business as usual.

5. 4,150 gun deaths from gun violence since Newtown.

#iseeyou #youarealldivine

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:28:44 -0400

#iseeyou #youarealldivine

jezebel and the phenomenon of using tumblr users' words, largely those of woc, without asking

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:20:35 -0400

angryasiangirlsunited:

so today, we got a message here on AAGU about a jezebel article where the user had seen our name. the jezebel article is about the mindy project and how all of mindy’s love interests on the show are white. the article then goes on to say:

A poster on the tumblr Angry Asian Girls United wrote a post defending Kaling when a reader called the show whitewashed:

she’s a darkskinned woman of color with her own show. she’s the first south asian-american woman who has done this. her entire existence and success are against white supremacy. the fact that she is where she is as far as success on TV is not something white people like or something that white people in charge of TV are actively working towards ensuring (some of them are actively making sure it doesn’t happen actually). she could do better with the show, but i also don’t think it’s fair to expect her to shoulder that burden by herself, considering the exceptional position she’s in right now.

i’m sure some of you remember this post from a few days ago when i responded to someone saying the mindy project was whitewashed and in particular, the statement that, “Mindy Kaling’s show is just her way to have white people like her.”

before this article was published, we did not receive any messages from anyone on jezebel asking our permission to use the quote. no one sent us the article to approve the section. no one from jezebel even told us about it. a third party had to send it to us (in a rather ignorant message about our “no white people submitting” policy, i might add).

while it is not per se illegal to use my words without asking me, it is unethical and moreover, journalistically irresponsible. i am also the only one in the article who was not named before being quoted. rather, i am “A poster on the tumblr Angry Asian Girls United.” this is in spite of me having put my name on the original post on the AAGU tumblr.

here’s the thing: i don’t agree with the majority of jezebel’s content. i don’t find articles on there i’m particularly interested in reading. i have read through stuff on there, including comments, and plain and simple do not trust many of the readers of jezebel. i find jezebel as a website to be largely geared towards upholding a very white western version of feminism that i absolutely do not subscribe to.

i also have no interest in engaging with jezebel’s writers or readers on the topic of the mindy project (or any topic, for that matter). yet my words were unwillingly pulled into this topic. our tumblr was unwillingly linked in the article without so much as a “hey, i wrote about you” message.

this is not a new phenomenon for women of color, especially Black women, on tumblr. there are users who have had their words and ideas stolen straight from their tumblrs and incorporated into other articles and not just articles on other informal users’ pages, but articles written by actual journalists or researchers working for established organizations. those words or ideas are never credited. at least this article linked our tumblr, but even then, the idea that you can jump in and use whatever content you want just because it is on tumblr and the person’s name does not seem famous to you? this is a violation of journalistic ethics, and as an organization, you really should know better than that.

it’s as if our words are not even respected. like our consent on whether we want our words being used like this has no meaning. let me say again: i did not want to engage in any of this discourse with jezebel. and yet the message that we got about the article was not from a regular reader of AAGU, but rather someone who saw our page linked on the article. this user came to target and criticize our policies.

that’s honestly just the tip of the iceberg for what can go wrong in a situation like this. people have gotten much worse hate and harassment for being in these situations.

i wrote what i wrote primarily for a website where i engage with other asian women. i did NOT write it for it to be used on any website by anyone. i especially did not write it to engage with largely white readers. and now we have to deal with the consequences of this article being written without our consent being asked for.

it matters who i wanted to engage with because in the article, the writer used my quote in a way i don’t feel fair. she wrote her article and then stuck my quote at the bottom as someone “defending” mindy kaling, when i think that my response was a lot more complex than that. i admitted the show had problems we should discuss, but i took issue with the phrasing of the message and especially of placing the burden singularly on mindy kaling. none of this was reflected in the article. rather, i am simply “A poster on the tumblr Angry Asian Girls United.”

they did not even bother to NAME me in the article. which is to say they felt comfortable enough to use my words to make a point, but not comfortable enough to actually treat me like a person.

this is also why we are currently looking into finding ways to put a creative commons license on this tumblr so that our content can be more protected and this won’t happen again.

quote THIS, jezebel.

-jannat

native-detroiter: ★ Who is your favourite villain? shady

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:18:39 -0400

native-detroiter:

★ Who is your favourite villain?

shady

"Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:08:54 -0400

“Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.”

- Assata Shakur (via littlebrowngrrl)

osobigbear: popularpugh: complimentstothechief: whereunicornsf...

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:08:07 -0400

osobigbear:

popularpugh:

complimentstothechief:

whereunicornsfartfreely:

kayy4short:

Exactly 

Ohemgee this is so accurate

Lmaoooo

this was funnier on here.

keepin it 100

searchingforknowledge: LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Fri, 17 May 2013 02:07:27 -0400

searchingforknowledge:

LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE