nappyedges replied to your post: nappyedges replied to your post: So I was watching…
I don’t think we can escape capitalism either. I think it’ll run itself into the ground in 1000+ years like the Roman Empire did. We can only dismantle parts of it.
I see what you mean. I was thinking the same but meanwhile the exploitation will keep on :/
as if it’s a really hip, new, revolutionary idea to defend racism, cultural appropriation, sexism, etc.. Guess what, jackasses - there have always been people that want to perpetuate systems of oppression by mocking those who fight against them. History paints an ugly portrait of those who stand in the way of progress.
Social INjustice bloggers are just as worthless as leeches. They feed off demeaning those who stand up for themselves. They are like the losers who would try to get on bullies’ good side by turning on the bullied. Worthless I am telling you!
(via gtfothinspo)
nappyedges replied to your post: So I was watching an interview of Steve Stoute and…
The problem is that capitalism is built on whiteness. So 99% of the time if you want to be a millionaire/billionaire in a consumer based industry you have to cater to whiteness otherwise you won’t make as much money.
Yeah this is what I said. Capitalism in its current state is basically the exploitation of browness to feed whiteness.
The thing is that I have difficulty imagining how capitalism could be defeated given how it absorbs, destroys and consumes everything with ease. This is what we need anti-capitalist theories of race and not that whiteness embedded Marxism.
And we dont have them right now. What we have is many POC around the world trying to de-construct capitalism but they always take the economic part without realising that most of its influence resides in the political and cultural stem it share with whiteness.
Capitalism is not simply a away of living or a way of consumption, it is a whole doctrine. And my question was: Can we, people who live in this society, who have already been indoctrinated really escape it? And I am rather pessimistic about it.
So I was watching an interview of Steve Stoute and was like ‘WOW this dude id brillaint’. ‘He is so smart’. So I went on and googled him to know more about him and then … UGH! yUCKKK!
Steve Stoute is one of the money men who engineered and is engineering the commodification of African American culture or how he would probably explain it, make black culture cross-over. Which is nonsensical since we know that sub-cultures DO NOT cross over (on their own), they get appropriated and exploited by the dominating culture which detains the power.
This guy sold a cultural identity as an ACCESSORY - whose only value is linked to its ’cool factor’ - to the world and by doing so, took it away from its originators to throw it like a simple rags at the feet of Fortune 500 companies. He is the guy behind Jay-z and G-Unit deals with Reebok.
Also Steve Stoute, who is dark-skinned btw, is notoriously color-struck. He was for a long time one of the big names of an industry - the music industry - who unapologetically hates dark-skinned black women and has been erasing us from the media, EVEN WHEN IT PERTAINS TO ‘BLACK CULTURE’!!! He is also behind Carol’s Daughter’s move to publicly disown black women - a group of women who made that company - by launching a campaign with only racially-ambiguous and light-skinned women to represent the ‘diversity’ of their demographics and go after a ‘poly-ethnic’ market. I know they are bitterly regretting it today, especially since Solange left! In Steve Stoute’s perfect world, dark-skinned black women would not exist, I guess.
Basically Steve Stoute is one of those people who think that racism can be ended by selling brownness and blackness to white people as disposable objects of consumption. Yeah racism can be ended by the capitalistic exploitation of minority groups’ identities. I am not even kidding; he had a show called the ‘Tanning of America’ (¬_¬)! This is not the first time I hear something like that. I remember watching Jay-z - you know, that dude who was selling Occupy Wall Street t-shirts to get his pocket fatter off a movement protesting against the excesses of capitalism (-_-” )- saying something similar on Oprah. And I am certain that Russell Simmons would agree with him.
What is interesting to note, is the fact that though the cultural exploitation and appropriation of African American culture ultimately benefit white-owned Fortune 500 companies, behind the scene, they are engineered by African American money men who get idolised for their ‘success’. I don’t want to have a simplistic and moralistic view of this because well, we all live in a world where ‘success’ is seen as something to aspire to and is tied to one’s position on the hierarchical capitalistic and exploitative machine. So I cannot blame people from an oppressed minority for trying to survive by embracing the values of the oppressive group. What I find interesting is the ease with which capitalism absorb EVERYTHING!! Even things that are in essence against it. Henceforth, if we need to sell ourselves to the money God, one of the many god of white supremacy, can we ever escape from it? I guess this is why all black movements of resistance around the world embraced Marxism early on. After the collapse and failure of the Soviet Union, is it reasonable to think that capitalism, with its phoenix-like abilities, can ever be defeated by all the brown people whose exploitation it feeds off, or our attempts to resist are doomed to be phagocyte by and destroy by it?
Shouts Outs to The Africans That Claims to Be Jamaicans aka “Kofi Kingston”
For me, this isn’t just comedy. You got faux revolutionaries (shout out to the ones on Tumblr) who think that being from the continent or 1st generation solves all identity issues around that particular kind of blackness. African cultureS are constantly disrespected by white people of course, and yes, other POC. I’ll bet my relaxer money that any 1st generation or recent immigrant kid here in the states has dealt with ignorance from their peers of all colors. Of course, the root of that issue is white hegemony but how often do elementary school students discuss how whiteness teaches them to loathe the POC cultures, in this case, African cultureS?
It’s not cool to be African. Sure there are people who are all about loving mother Africa, appropriating kente cloth and talking about Egypt, excuse me Kemet, as if that is the only place on the continent that produced greatness. (If I see another ankh I’m going to scream.) However, in the grand scheme of things, those people are few and ultimately, their behavior is highly problematic. That’s not to say that there are not people of the diaspora who manage to respect AfricanS and their respective cultureS but in my experience, those are far and few. I hope that others do not share my misfortune.
AfricanS are the butt of jokes in popular American culture. (I almost said Western but let me stick to what I know.) Our accents are mocked and exaggerated. If another person clicks at me I might haul off and punch of them. People think of the poor starving African children to make themselves feel better about their “first world problems”. Never mind that there are hungry children in the so-called first world, and that many Africans have these “first world problems” as well.
In spite of these sentiments, I have never been one to hide my Ghanaian identitieS. As a child liked being able to pick up my cell phone and speak a different language with my family. It didn’t and still doesn’t bother me that My GaGa wears African prints whenever we she goes out. The woman is 2973469732 years old and I don’t think she’s ever put on a pair of pants. I had too much pride (with a smidge of arrogance) for me to feel bad just for being me.
As a Jamaican, I never experienced Africans playing Jamaican, only beef between us.
But real talk, being African only recently became cool here in the UK. Before that, naw, niggas was the butt of all jokes. Jamaicans were the top of the Black people pile for a long time out here.
Thanks for bringing in a UK perspective and being honest. People like to forget that AfricanS, Black AfricanS in particular are teased and disrespected constantly. Being African is not the popular kind of black to be. Hell even the folks who are appropriative are laughed at. Not because folks recognize that their behavior is problematic but because Africans are always laughed at.
No one wants their identity to be treated as a joke or a costume. So I don’t really get too upset with people who aren’t gushing with pride for their African culture. It’s not like it’s encouraged from mainstream society and in a way, it may not be encouraged at home.
In my experience, parents want you to maintain the culture while simultaneously pushing assimilation.
If any of my 1st generation folks have something to add please do. Especially if you’re outside of the United States. Discussions here are always US Centric and I’d love to here about other perspectives.
The one on the UK is so true. When I was growing up, everyone wanted to identify as anything BUT African. And it was a lot cooler to be Jamaican or from the islands. Most people here idolized AA’s. So it’s still a major issues and it really only has been in the past couple of years that being Africa (or rather wearing wax prints etc) has become cool. Still, I don’t know how long that will last, given the way that taste is so easily coerced. And it’s not like people still don’t make “fresh of the boat” jokes, or ridicule African accents. So *le sigh
Adding to the UK perspective as well. I personally know a lot of Africans who (in the past) would lie about their nationalities because they didn’t want to be seen as African. Apparently this is all changing thanks to azonto and P-Square. But like lookingforthesteel suggests, you never really know.
(And how are they going to use an image of the badass circus performer who tamed a gotdamn hyena so that his daughter rides on it like a horse in a negative manner?)
(via thefemaletyrant)
Just a short note one the discussion about that video that is still flooding my dash. I need to say that I am not in a emotional state that allows to take on the whole thing now but I FEEL URGE TO ADDRESS ONE OF THE MANY ASPECTS I FIND EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC: The fact that certain people think we truly live in a chivalrous society i.e. ‘Women think they can get away with putting their hands on men’.
REALLY???
REALLY THOUGH??
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS??
Are you living in the same society where thousands of women die every year beaten to death by men?? Where rape culture dominates?? Where women are sexually harassed on the streets?? Where we FUCKING FEAR FOR OUR LIVES SIMPLY BECAUSE A MAN IS FOLLOWING US ?? Where we have to be nice to those who harass us by fear of being insulted or assaulted??
So what makes you think that in this climate and rape culture, where women fear for their lives and are terrified by men, we would be bold and foolish enough to think that we can get away with hitting a man. I have been groped so many times, yet I cannot even imagine ever slapping a man for doing that by fear of being beaten down or killed.
This set me off because by saying that women get a pass for putting their hands on men, this is first of all a fucking blatant lie and secondly, it invalidates the climate of fear most women live in within patriarchy.
Women do not think they can get away with putting their hands on men, this is patriarchal BS, used to justified domestic abuse i.e. ‘she may have started it’, ‘there is no way he went off like that for no reason’, ‘I am sure she said something or did something’ blabla blah
You can discuss this issue, admit that many women can be abusers too - and let’s be honest here black women are already demonised as hysterical bitches - without propagating the false and highly damageable idea that we live in an equal society, where men fear women just as women fear them, and men are shamed for hitting women even when they hit them first! THIS IS NOT TRUE!
so sorry for the vague description aaah, well what are your thoughts toward this event?
@AnonymousIt is ok :3
The thing is that I feel extremely uncomfortable discussing cultural appropriation of a culture that is not mine. There is a lot of literature out there describing how damageable cultural appropriation and commodification of native culture is and the fact that native American women are the most at risk of sexual assault in the US but I could never convey my feelings on the topic because this is not my culture.
In America
(via thepeoplesrecord)
i guess it has to do with cultural appropriation and the idea of sexualizing native american women in a bad way.
@AnonymousAh OK, sorry.
I had to remember who she was, I have never listened to her music or watched her video clips and I didn’t directly connected ‘headdress’ to Native American headdresses.
On alienation …
What is also interesting is the fact that there seems to be a good and acceptable forms of alienation versus a bad and shameful one. I have always found interesting how people would get overly defensive or even aggressive straightening yet shame those who bleach their skin of white-wash their genes. Like I said, I think that a good/bad or moralistic approach of issues of identity is more damageable than anything else. But it is interesting to note that most people do not want to see themselves as alienate, they do not want to accept and/or acknowledge that there are forces behind their awareness that guide, dictate and influence the most personal traits of their being. Yet they are really comfortable second guessing others, despite the fact that the subconscious doesnt work in a straightforward way, people are not simple equations and what may seems a way is rarely that way. I have been there so I can understand how one could feel attacked if one’s free will is questioned.
your thoughts on lana del rey wearing a headdress for her new music video?
@AnonymousSorry but I dont get :/
I find sad and tragic the way politics takes over resistance groups who are set to fight ‘the system’ in a first place but keep reproducing it.
One of the most tragic consequences is the mobilisation of bias - some issues get prioritised over others which is many cases are push and shut down and this is done to the benefit of very few and the detriment of many especially those with less power in those circles. This is unfair and damageable because on issues of identity, people go at a pace they see fit for the, it is beyond simply a matter of right of wrong, i.e. the creation of a new kind of moral which inevitably leads to the shaming of what is deemed unacceptable. Shame is one of the most powerful tools of repression.
An illustration of this is how alienation is treated and discussed within spaces supposedly safe. It is still considered shameful, something that must be hidden and/or used as a pretext to lambaste/silence/police others which is crazy because first of all, NONE of us can totally escape a reality shaped by our oppressors, hence the alienation that comes with it and secondly, alienation is as important as, if not more important than the mechanisms and structure of oppression in the experience of the oppressed. Alienation is basically the internal side of oppression, what is beneath the iceberg. I personally live oppression as a form of institutionalised abuse, which is why I am convinced that the trauma it causes to people and the different coping mechanisms they develop are worth understanding, analysing in depth and neutralising. Sweeping them under the rug, can only cause damages, things would get repressed deeper and their influence morphs in a way more difficult to defuse. From my experience, there is no moving on from abuse as long as the trauma has not been dealt with; the settings and circumstances may change externally, but if they remain the same in one’s mind, one is still captive. For instance, in most of Africa, the apparent decolonisation - which in fact was not one - didn’t prompt a decolonisation of minds, to the contrary. As oppressed people, we gleefully embraced the poisonous system of our oppressors ( administration, laws, languages, borders …) and called it independence. To the point where, nowadays, we, the most westernised, are oppressing those who have chosen to preserve their indigenous identity.
Light is hidden in the darkest side. All the ugly, shameful unbearable, hidden and repressed stuff must be confronted head on. Victims of abuse should never be shamed or silence for expressing or going through trauma; the same can be applied to the oppressed. And things such as politics or putting up front for our oppressors can only lead to such a thing happening, key issues sidelined and dismissed as ‘petty in-fighting’ when it is through this that is built solidarity.
I’m not big on the power plus privilege model for discussing racism. I mean as far as a succinct introduction to systematic racism it’s fine. Outside of that, I’m lukewarm to it. I do not however any worthwhile/useful definition of racism can include whore people. Sure there have been some that have been beat up or what have you because they’re white. I very much doubt that even a minute of a minute didn’t get any justice BECAUSE they were white however. That’s the distinction in my mind. Justice won’t fail you. Even if I would, I don’t, grant that a white kid didn’t get into an ivy league because a poc took their spot, if you’re good enough to get into an ivy league as a white student you’ll eventually find one to get in.again, that’s the distinction in my mind.
On race theory, I remember when you told me this few months ago and I didnt get it then. Looking back you were actually right, the model is extremely limited when you think of it. Or maybe it is the way people use it here on this website. , by putting it over lived expression of expression that is problematic. Theory is there to make sense of reality and not the other way round. People experiences of oppression should never be forced down concepts. I think I started seeing how this was extremely problematic when I saw many people here trying to deny antisemitism as a form of oppression because it didn’t fit the framework. Also the concept of whiteness is so complex, so diverse and varies so much depending on place and time. I saw a post few days ago about someone, who I guess was American, saying that they could understand why Penelope Cruz and her husband who are both from Spain were considered white since ‘they spanish’ O_O I guess in American whiteness is still stronly connected to Anglo WASP, which is why people like Kim Kardashian who has a typically Mediterranean look so would be classified here as white, without hesitation, is seen as a woman of color in the US. All of this to say that the model can not take on whiteness or racism globally in its current state. It must be more deeply anchored in people’s realities and reflect the specificities of racism in each region. I was thinking about this yesterday when I wrote about how in Cameroon, to be mixed-race is to be ‘almost white’. This is why I personally feel NO affinity whatsoever with white-passing POC because from my experience, my point of view, they are white! These concepts are not as tangible as many make them to be here. I was also thinking about how Chinese and Arab imperialisms plays in Africa and how Arab slave trade of African has still not stopped, all of this do not and cannot fit in the limited framework of race theory as it is sometimes discussed on this website. The lingering anti-blackness that support these form of exploitation get erased or even misunderstood in the White vs POC model.
I just feel like we should be closer to our experience, try and dissect them, not be afraid to venture in what they may or may bot mean, try to make sense of them by creating rich new concept and not trying to force them on someone else’s map.
People are not concepts!
My sister told me for black history month in school, a few older girls came into her class to do a presentation and all of them started to twerk. This cannot be life man.
HAAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH XD
BTW realniggajesus, you always have the best playlist :-)
“I do my duty to the booty right here in this bed room. You wanna me to break you off? I’d do it” XD Thank God, my mom cant speak English
Actually Deserea
was also on my background but I didn’t want to come off as a pervert (^_^)
So people are still reblogging this post 9 months later?
