- rescue three white women who have been missing for a decade, and a baby
- become a national hero
- pull and even bosser move and tell the fbi to give the reward money to the victims
- media decides to dig into your past, and bring up your criminal record.
wonderful time to be black in america.
(via aggressivefrowning)
disclaimer: this is my own personal account so i won’t respond to fuckery and if you cite without proper citation and permission, it’s your ass. this story about the young Black girl being charged as an adult for a science project gone wrong inspired this.
i am someone who has been convicted of a felony. it was non-violent and drug dealing related. this criminal justice allows felonies for people who are arrested with others in possession of drugs even when you aren’t found with them on your person. since this happened, starting when i was 17 and something i had to deal with in court until 2010 so basically 4 years, i lost a lot of “friends”, my mother had people telling them their children couldn’t come over and be with my sister, i’ve had people ask about whether i am taking drugs because i lost a ton of weight due to stress. but one of the most impactful things that happened is i could no longer find work.
being a convicted felon means it doesn’t matter how skilled or long you’ve worked in a field. it doesn’t matter that i have an associates. or a bachelors degree. or soon a master’s degree. every single company pretty much in the company has the legal right to discriminate against me without impunity. there is no legal recourse convicted felons can take when they are denied time and time and time again for jobs they apply and are qualified for. recently, companies like staples and others had to pay large fines for simply phasing out people who have checked yes on the question, have you been convicted of a felony. and when you are perpetually unemployed, employers also have been found to discriminate against you for being unemployed and not currently working.
this is on top of being Black. perceived a woman. mentally ill. and queer. which already contribute to my marginalization and to the marginalization of many other people in that situation. when i was hired by a temp agency i was immediately fired after my record came back, despite being told i was the best temp the office had in awhile. after applying time after time i couldn’t work. i ended up dancing at a club for a few years. something that also contributes to stigma and showed me who my true friends are. it was the only way to keep a roof over my head and eat and still go to school. you know how many queer people of color go to jail simply for this crime of sex work to survive? for selling drugs to survive? for doing whatever they need to survive. when we are already pushed out of everything.
as a convicted felon, all comments in articles about my ass and people in my position say i deserve whatever i got. whatever it is violence, abuse, firing, r*pe in prison or many other things, people in the US believe felons deserve it. there is a completely racial nature to this of course in a white supremacist nation that thrived off free labour of enslaved Black people and then denied them reparations and continue to lock them up for more free labour and to support an economic system designed to terrorize us.
as a convicted felon, i can’t own a gun even though as a black queer perceived woman i am more likely to face death at the hands of a partner or by the police or other types of similar violence. being a convicted felon means you can never touch a weapon even if you were always non-violent. it means you will go to jail again if you are ever caught with a gun even if it’s to save your life.
as a convicted felon, it means all acts of violence against me will be questioned as questionable. even though black women already face that dilemma. it means that my entire background will be scrutinized and used as an excuse to do whatever the fuck people please.
as a convicted felon, i am held up as a bad Black person, holding back the good Black folk. i can’t stay out of trouble, get a job, stop being involved with the wrong men or the wrong work or get off the pole and just do right. these are the same people who blame black women as the fall of the black community and do backflips to deny white supremacy and anti-blackness.
as a convicted felon, i am always afraid of the police. i never feel safe to ask for help. i am at the verge of breaking down every time i see the cops. my heart stops every time i hear a siren. i get cold sweats and have bad dreams about the times guns have been thrown in my face, being thrown on the grown, having my doors busted in and being called everything under the sun. i am told it’s only a few bad apples when this kind of generational violence at the hands of police is something my people have experienced for over a hundred years.
as a convicted felon, i am what you warn your kids not to be. not to become. not to aspire to.
as a convicted felon, a white man with a felony conviction is more likely to be hired than a black person without a felony conviction. leaving me to ask, where does that leave me?
as a convicted felon, i am no longer eligible for any form of public assistance, be it food stamps, welfare, public housing, nothing. i can’t ask for help from the government i pay taxes into when i do work. i can’t utilize these so called “safety” nets. as someone who is lucky to have family who on one side has a bit of wealth cause they are white, i have been able to survive somehow. but not everyone has that. where does that leave black babies and children of convicted felons? where does that leave homeless people who have been convicted of felonies trying to get back on their feet? where does that leave sex workers convicted of felonies dying to change their career? where does this give us the resources to create generational wealth or a foundation when we can’t even get a mcdonalds job sometimes.
as a convicted felon, it means that if i got this conviction while on financial aid, i would never get financial aid ever again. ever. despite that they want me to stop selling drugs, stop dancing, stop doing what i do. despite the fact that you need support and financial backing to do that. despite the fact that education is one of the few opportunities to upward mobility black women have. all these black men we say are in prison instead of college. how the fuck you expect them to get to college when the black family wealth is less than $10,000? what is that going to do for these people who need funding? but oh, you wanna pump drugs into OUR communities, convict us for selling or being addicted and then deny us every institutional outlet available to try and survive and get one step forward.
as a convicted felon, i am always afraid i will never get ahead. no matter how educated. no matter how much i do that is acceptable in the eyes of white society. i can never stop paying for a crime of survival. ever. i always have to explain, apologize. and this fear is based on reality, the reality that every college i apply to, every job i apply to, asks about my background or runs a check. and has every legal right to excuse me no questions asked.
y’all wanna charge Black girls as felons for doing SCIENCE projects and tell us it’s not racist? it’s not terrorism? it’s not genocide? it’s not selling our children for a price? you wanna tell us to pull our pants up, go to school, talk white, act right, study, do this, do that, and even when that happens if we cough the wrong way we could end up in jail and lose everything. yall wanna treat Trayvon Martin like he was convicted of a felony and deserved to die simply for being found with a weed baggie at school? yall wanna act like going to church and being good for the white man is going to save Black people when we have over a million of our people in jail and even more with felony convictions. when healthcare, education, proper housing, safety and all that depend on some type of wealth. that no matter how hard a community bands together they can only support each other so much without those resources.
you wanna tell us we want more stop and frisk? you wanna tell us we need to be targeted more? that we are the description. that our kids need to go from school to prison. for what? to serve you as the slaves you so long to legally get back and have maintained in the shadows for generations.
wanna talk about what it means to be convicted as a felon? how about you fucking ask us? think about what you are going to put this girl through. what you have put millions of us through. what you plan to put millions more through. think about what your white silence and guilt does. it fucking kills. and your respectability politics. it fucking kills. you wanna cry about twerking and hip hop ruining our children when this is a possibility. fuck outta here. this is what it means to be a convicted felon. it’s fucking terror.
i was dismantling a bit of internalized racism after that last post about the double consciousness of being both black and gay, after i realized i was thinking “hey black people are more homophobic though”. and, realizing how very gross that sounded even only in my mind, i decided to examine it more closely and i think i managed to untangle it so that i can seek to remedy that awful mindset.
first i would like to make it clear that while i am one fourth black, i do not identify as black, and have never even once been coded as black or part black in my life by anyone other than my own mother. as such, i am writing this post from a place of passing privilege, and hope to make it clear that my intentions are good, but i may make some sort of slip up due to lack of personal experience of this particular brand of racism.
i feel the most obvious way to realize that the argument for black people being more homophobic is bullshit, is to realize it comes from the stereotype of black men and women as determined by white heteronormative patriarchy
black men are seen as
black women are seen as
these stereotypes are the reason that black people are believed to be more stubbornly homophobic. oh look at that word too — stubborn. like a mule or an ox — which is where these stereotypes came from, btw. the perception of black human beings as livestock instead of people. the perceptions of rebellion, not as a human reaction to being treated unjustly, but instead as a symptom of a beast that was difficult to tame. the perception of sexuality in order to justify white abuses of power enacted upon those sexualities, whether through directed “breeding” (god i wanna barf just typing that) or flat out rape. it’s not difficult to discern that the origins of these stereotypes are undoubtedly racist.
it’s also important to point out that the only time a black man is perceived as being gay or performing gay actions, is the stereotype of prison rape. how many times have you heard the phrase “a big black man named bubba” in reference to prison rape? black male homosexuals only exist as violent threats to white heterosexuality, which is a homophobic variation on how black males are perceived as violent threats to white men in a more general sense.
therefore, after understanding that these perceptions are in fact racist in origin, the underlying truth becomes obvious. there is no reason to believe all black people have these mentalities except for racism. consequently, there is no reason to believe black people or black culture is any more homophobic than white culture, outside of racism.
Little girl said to have inappropriate clothing
A Henry County woman is furious after being called out for sending her six-year-old kindergartener to school in what officials say was inappropriate.
Audrey Hightower tells Channel 2 Action News an assistant principal from Tussahaw Elementary called her on Tuesday complaining of her daughter’s Little Kitty dress saying it was too short or may be showing too much skin.
I don’t see anything inappropriate. It’s just ridiculous.
So clearly the school is run by pedophiles who don’t want to get fire for boners…She’s wearing stockings…where is the skin that she’s showing I just??? Do you want her in a turtle neck and mittens too?? What the absolute fuck.
What skin? She’s wearing what any little girl would wear?
the only skin is on her hands and face wtf
To them, being in a Black body is inappropriate.
(via patrickandmarcus)
blo:
ihate..america
wtf
remember when the nazis did this… with Jewish people… exaggerated stereotypical features to dehumanized them… hmm
remember when AMERICA did this to asians during wwii and sent asian americans into fuckin internment camps and then used this whole atmosphere of panic and racism to justify bombing the fuck out of SPECIFICALLY CIVILIAN POPULATIONS in japan
yeah i get what you’re saying. i get that it’s disgusting and racist and a symptom of a fucked up way of thinking
but this is fucking germany
this is america, where the average american, when thinking of a comparable atrocity, thinks of germany, instead of realizing that when their fucking grandparents were their age, the same fucking shit was happening, right here. it lives in THIS country. the racism is here. fight it with the memories we can’t brush away, saying to ourselves “oh, but that was germany and hitler… not america. never america.” but yeah. it is america. it’s been america from basically day one. accept it, and fight it HERE.
(Source: brofiling, via pansexualprincess)
correcting yourself to say “dumb Negro” is not helping at all
Melissa Harris-Perry about welfare, and the connection with Race-baiting.
This is amazing. I love her.
(Source: queerblackandproud, via patrickandmarcus)
tbh i don’t think that girls tears were fake, and that kind of just makes his point better. i feel like it illustrates how readily people become emotionally attached to other people’s stories, and rewrite them so they can be the hero.
—
i just fucking loved this line especially and it needed it’s own post.
Race matters.
Must reblog.
The so-called War on Drugs is a war on people.
(via knightspendid)
that google search thing is funny because i once saw searches for something like “white” and “black” and “asian” or something like that and there were normal people just standing around in the white and black screenshots but the asian was all porn
and the other day it occurred to me that the asian tab was probably porn because the searcher really liked asian porn and the search engine was just tailoring it according to the persons prior searches
i think that’s the first time i’ve ever searched “asian” in my life and look at all the titties before i even scrolled down
that person obvs searched for asian porn a lot, bc this is with safe search off. but even so, this is still pretty gross.
the initial post bothered me too tho, bc black and white are not assigned exclusively to people, so that’s going to sway the results too
today a couple of co-workers talked about the civil war and as if that entire conversation wasn’t already going in an entirely terrible place
one of them was talking about how the slave books her family had didn’t “read like cattle” like other slave-holder’s books, they “read like family”. they then proceeded to concur that it was “good for some slaves” depending on the owners and lament that they wished “all of them were treated nicely”
i
i just
pansexualprincess replied to your post:
in your opinion is it rude or funny to say white people problems to POC when they complain about first world stuff bc i cant decide if im being racist or not for thinking thats funny
you know, part of me thinks that’s funny, but another part of me is like wait a sec isn’t that just taking away a poc’s ability to complain about anything without aligning him with the oppressing class? i feel like pointing out first world problems in itself is obvs not a racist action, but it seems like it kind of singles out specifically poc in a way that makes me uncomfortable. and generally when it comes to racism, if it makes me uncomfortable even a bit, i assume it’s racist and give myself a period where i put it on the backburner. i give myself some time to examine what about it makes me uncomfortable, you know?
i think maybe some poc would find it funny, bc a first world problem for poc is often going to be related to white supremacy, so it’s like a twist on the meaning from problems a white person would have to also mean problems because of white people. but with like a super trivial thing like “my latte was made wrong at starbucks”, it sorta feels like it changes in implication from just being “don’t complain bc you have privilege”, to something like “don’t complain bc you have in this instance been able to achieve equality, so be grateful”.
personally i’d probably avoid saying ever it unless for some reason in that specific situation i was really confident it was the first meaning and not the second.
also why you always put these questions on my random unrelated posts i was talking about anime lesbians and you made me be all srs what’s that about dude.
remember when trayvon martin was literally killed in cold blood and people were going around calling him a ‘thug’ for wearing a hoodie and carrying ice tea but when a gang of boys rapes a girl they’re just ‘misguided children’
(Source: wlliamlecter, via saminalcrackers)
it’s hard for me to deal with cultural appropriation as a racist act because there’s an issue of wanting to see things that have been marginalized, and so i find it too easy to just see the thing, divorced from its context, enacted or used by white people, and still be happy about it. and that’s really some internalized racism there, bc it shows that for a moment i forget that these things and actions are attached to faces and lives that are not white, or worse actually, that i forgive that those faces and lives have been overwritten by a white narrative.
it’s important to recognize that divorcing these things from their context isn’t JUST divorcing them from their context — it is making it so that the action or thing is only visible when it is being done or worn or used by white people.
the issue of cultural appropriation is so inherently tied to racism and racist thinking, because it lacks respect. the cultures that are having aspects of themselves taken and overwritten, have had things taken from them for centuries, and still have things taken from them. to overwrite their history is an insult. i need to remember that no matter how harmless cultural appropriation looks or seems, at it’s core is a mindset of dismissal, or disrespect, of total lack of empathy and a deliberate ignorance of historical context.
27 yo white-passing mixed race bisexual/genderqueer woc named christina, engaged to a wonderful man/tumblr user certainlynotshibas.
i blog tv shows anime manga race intersectionality queer rights feminism and lots of shit i just find cute or funny or fascinating
i'm pretty easy to get along with if you aren't an asshole. actually, i don't like people who are less of an asshole than me. it's annoying. so try to be a little bit of a asshole but not too much of one. strike a delicate balance and then we can be friends.
bonnienoire replied to your post: As father of the realm, Joffrey took the place of…
i’ve already read past this :-p i’ve also read...
someone just give me amy acker as lady macbeth that’s all i want
at work a waitress slid an entire plate of shellfish into a patron’s lap
Of course I finally get Bioshock working at 9 pm on Sunday >:(
Inner Senshi Crystal Power Upgrade
