Before I go to sleep, I started thinking about how Thanksgiving is coming up.

scraggyhugs:

So here’s your yearly reminder that Thanksgiving is a racist holiday founded on white supremacy that attempts to rewrite actual history — actual racist, colonialist, murderous, sickening history.

What you are really “giving thanks” for, every year, is the decimation of my people and the enslavement and oppression of others.

“Thanksgiving is a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans. As Native people we give thanks everyday, but we will not give thanks for the European invasion of our country.”

Thanksgiving and Racism: Link Roundup
The American Thanksgiving: Rejoicing in Genocide and White Supremacy
The Massacre For Which Thanksgiving is Named
Thanksgiving: Celebrating the Genocide of Native Americans
What The Hell Does An Indian Do On Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving: A Day of Mourning

Okay, Tumblr. I’m getting pretty tired of seeing this everywhere, so I thought I’d make a post.

It is not okay to appropriate someone else’s culture. Even if you’re unaware you’re doing it, or even if it’s something so popular that you stop caring about the origins of it.

So! You might be seeing a lot of clothing with patterns similar to this in outlets at the mall, right?

Well, surprise! Those are based on many Navajo and various Southwestern tribes’ weaving patterns!

Unless you buy something directly from a Native American craftsperson or seller, DON’T WEAR IT.

Navajo weaving has a lot of deep symbolism and meaning! And you are treading all over it.

Also! THE MOHAWK. I have hated this trend for ages.

These are Mohawk people:

This person is not:

This guy probably isn’t either:

While ‘the mohawk’ hairstyle can have different variations (and a lot of people wear them!) the name and the long history of it are, indeed, very much appropriative.

It’s almost similar to wearing Native American headwear, as the hairstyle has different connotations within the tribe, and I really wish it would stop.

So, please, think seriously before you try something or buy something and consider its origins.

neverwillstop:

I’ve been thinking about conversations with white people I’ve had about racism, and this desire they have for me to clarify for them that I don’t hate white people, or that not all white people are bad. In a conversation that should have nothing to do with their feelings, at some point I have to reassure them that I don’t hate them, and it becomes all about their feelings. The conversation is derailed and re-centered firmly on them and their comfort level. Which is fucked up. And honestly,

• I didn’t say ALL white people, but since that’s what you heard, yes, ALL white people.
• Yes, I do hate white people; that’s what you’re worried about all the time. You wanna make sure you’re well-liked even by the people you hurt who you usually have no trouble ignoring.
• I shouldn’t have to qualify any statements I make to make sure your feathers aren’t ruffled. Fuck off.
• Every time a convo starts, it’s, ”What about the white people?” What ABOUT them?
• No, it’s not okay for you to compare my oppression to any others.
• Yes, you should feel guilty, but you damn sure shouldn’t talk to me about your white guilt because I don’t wanna hear about it.
• No, I don’t care about your feelings.
• This ain’t reverse racism. You should think about the irony of that phrase.
• No, I will not stop talking about racism.
• No, you cannot say the N word.
• Yes, you are racist.
• Stop making it about you.
• This ain’t about you.
• This ain’t a social justice blog. I am not an “ally” to my own fucking issues. Majoring in my culture doesn’t mean you know shit.
• No, excluding white people from POC convos ain’t racist.
• No, this isn’t the time or place for your opinion.
• If you have to ask, yes, it’s racist.
• But really don’t ask me about white people and their opinions since you can get them literally any and everywhere, whether you want them or not. IDGAF.
• IDGAF, STFU, GTFO.

[trigger warning: ableism] I’ve started to realize that any intelligence judgment is inherently ableist…

fromonesurvivortoanother:

…and possibly classist, and usually racist and/or sexist. “Intelligence” as a concept has been determined by privileged, nondisabled upper class hetero white men. The entire canon of psychology and mental illness literature is 99% people like that.

When a person uses words that judge intelligence like idiot, stupid, dumb, etc., it is about a very specific type of “intelligence”; that is, the socially accepted kind. There’s no room for people who experience the world differently, such as autistic people or people with PTSD.

An example: Sometimes I hang out with some people who like to play board games. There are occasional moments when I just totally blank and forget some rule for my turn. It’s a combination of PTSD and depression causing some cognitive dissonance, so I need a moment to “catch my breath” and think. But because my type of intelligence or processing the world is generally not accepted, I’m rushed into going ahead and playing— which means I usually end up making a mistake and looking a fool.

I know people with Fibro and other chronic issues which create problems like sensory overload or “brain fog”…and these people are incredibly intelligent. It’s just that the society around them does not have space for the different ways in which they approach the world.

There’s also some long histories and traditions of lack-of-intelligence-or-“sense” being prescribed on People of Color, women, and non-heterosexual and non-binary people. It is all there— if you’re not white and hetero, you or people before you have probably been called “crazy”. And it’s not like it is just simple name-calling; a lot of people have been tortured, maimed, and killed for being different. If you are into social justice of any kind, you should be concerned about how intelligence and mental disorder are prescribed to discredit and hurt minority peoples.

So yeah. I’ve begun to question it any time I see intelligence judgements (especially in politics, those happen ALL of the time with democrats and republicans). Because ignorance is not mental illness. Bigotry and hate is not mental illness. People doing what you don’t like is not mental illness either. And some of us aren’t even ill, we’re just different.

This! I grew up with ADD, and I still suffer from it! I don’t really like going into all of the details because it’s very painful for me, but having a learning disability has made my life very difficult! I am perfectly capable of comprehending things, but I often have a block when it comes to executing things. I need to pause for much longer and I like thinking things through thoroughly. However, it led to a lot of misunderstanding, both of my mental illness and of my capabilities, and thoughtless actions on the part of many, many teachers. (Some of which were quite mentally abusive toward me as a child.) I was told by one of them that I was stupid and that pain has remained with me my entire life.

I became obsessed with proving them wrong, and by middle school and high school I was in the advanced and AP courses, rather than resource as I had been in grade school. I still struggled through my classes, though.

It became such an obsession with me that I was terrified of losing that ‘intelligence’. I was terrified of making a single mistake. Of screwing everything up and inciting the hate of my instructors. It got to the point that, because of my anxiety, I couldn’t complete my work at all because I was afraid I’d mess up. (Though there were a number of other factors in my educational struggles, too - extreme shyness and inability to work in group projects being one of them.) To add to the matter, at sixteen, I dealt with two deaths in my family, as well as some surgeries that kept me out of school for almost a year, and I fell into a really deep depression!

I narrowly graduated, only due to my position as an editor and columnist on my student paper, and I struggled for a really long time in trying to identify where I stood in terms of intelligence.

It was only about the time that I turned twenty that I became more comfortable with who I was. I know I’m different and it is perfectly okay to be different! ‘Intelligence’ is, as stated above, a construct created by privileged people, and it is impossible to ‘measure’ it.

To go on, though, thinking in a way that deviates from the norm should not be such a scary thing. IT IS OKAY. and I wish more people - especially those in positions of power - would recognize and acknowledge it as such.

Anime and the Social Construction of Race

jiggit:

zeezeescorner:

A common misconception about anime cartoons amongst uninitiated audiences in majority-English-speaking countries is that anime characters are drawn to look ‘White’ rather than ‘Asian’. First of all, neither of terms are factual fixed categories - they are social constructions. That is, the meaning attached to race, whether ‘White’, ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ and so on, and the groups classified under these labels, change from one society to another, depending upon culture, time and place.

In an excellent exploration of the social construction of race in popular culture, sociologist Julian Abagond shows that Japanese animators do not, in fact, draw anime characters to personify their aspiration to be ‘white’. Instead, these characters reflect the animators’ own cultural biases - which is that Japanese people are the prototype model of the ‘default human being’. Abagond writes in Sociological Images:

If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman I have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, I have to add slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.

The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed.

Americans apply this thinking to Japanese drawings. But to the Japanese the Default Human Being is Japanese! So they feel no need to make their characters “look Asian”. They just have to make them look like people and everyone in Japan will assume they are Japanese – no matter how improbable their physical appearance.

You see the same thing in America: After all, why do people think Marge Simpson is white? Look at her skin: it is yellow. Look at her hair: it is a blue Afro. But the Default Human Being thing is so strong that lacking other clear, stereotyped signs of being either black or Asian she defaults to white…

When you think about it there is nothing particularly white about how anime characters look:huge round eyes – no one looks like that, not even white people (even though that style of drawing eyes does go back to Betty Boop).

• yellow hair – but they also have blue hair and green hair and all the rest. Therefore hair colour is not about being true to life.
• small noses – compared to the rest of the world whites have long noses that stick out.
• white skin – but many Japanese have skin just as pale and white as most White Americans…

Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it.  But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else.

As Abagond’s analysis shows, perceptions of race and gender influence how people ‘read’, understand and draw meaning from animation. For Japanese animators, their characters reflect their view of normality - that everyone in their creation is Japanese (or Korean or Chinese or wherever the anime is produced). Audiences that have an uncritical view of race and Whiteness presume that ‘Asian’ drawings should look ‘Asian’. Yet this term - Asian - means different things to different groups. In Japan, the category of Asian is not very meaningful. Instead, mainstream Japanese culture portrays the Japanese people as the ‘default human being’. Gender and class also affect how this default human being is imagined (usually male, affluent and lean).

Just all art forms embody the biases and taken-for-granted cultural assumptions about the world, what audiences see in anime drawings are mediated by the ethnocentrism of the animators and audiences. Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s group is superior to others. Viewers who think Japanese anime characters are trying to look ‘White’ are therefore viewing this artform through ethnocentrism.

Credit
Quotation originally from Abagond’s blog, via Sociological Images.

Image of Jubei from Ninja Scroll from Jinni.

And I’m going to link this video.