October 2011
EVERYONE I FOLLOW IS WORTH FOLLOWING
BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL A BUNCH OF AMAZING PEOPLE.
Eshu's Playground: A modest proposal? →
eshusplayground.tumblr.com
Clearly, it is too much to ask for White folks to be less racist, even a little bit. One less pullover for Driving While Black, one less White girl in an “Indian” headdress, one less application being overlooked for having a “Black” name, one less article about how Black women ain’t shit, one less…
Eshu's Playground: Self-esteem and activism in the US →
eshusplayground.tumblr.com
“Significantly, even when individual black women are able to advance professionally and acquire a degree of economic self-sufficiency, it is in the social realm that racist and sexist stereotypes are continually used both as ways of defining black women’s identity and interpreting our behavior.
For example: if a black woman sits at a predominantly white corporate board meeting where a heated discussion is taking place and she interrupts, as everyone else has been doing, her behavior may be deemed hostile and aggressive. Often when I lecture with a black male colleague and I challenge his points, rather than being perceived as more intellectually competent, I am deemed castrating, brutal, etc. The reverse happens if he challenges me in a particularly winning way. He is seen as just more brilliant, more capable, etc.” —bell hooks, “Ain’t She Still a Woman?” (via nottingham)
For example: if a black woman sits at a predominantly white corporate board meeting where a heated discussion is taking place and she interrupts, as everyone else has been doing, her behavior may be deemed hostile and aggressive. Often when I lecture with a black male colleague and I challenge his points, rather than being perceived as more intellectually competent, I am deemed castrating, brutal, etc. The reverse happens if he challenges me in a particularly winning way. He is seen as just more brilliant, more capable, etc.” —bell hooks, “Ain’t She Still a Woman?” (via nottingham)
“Is this a time of mass deception, or mass consciousness and protest? This is an important issue b/c everyone claims to be in opposition to the banks and Wall Street, but not everyone is in opposition to the oppressed plight of the poor and unemployed. Many of the white working class would be only too happy if white workers were bribed once again with middle class concessions affecting only them, while the urban Black poor and unemployed, that is the majority of those suffering, would be once again sold out and kept in the ghetto. There is actually an economic apartheid in America, and if organizers do not acknowledge this and lead a struggle to benefit the white middle class only, then they ain’t building no new nation, but just building a new progressive plantation.”
—Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin via Facebook (via youarenotyou)
Eshu's Playground: A few words about "Solidarity" →
eshusplayground.tumblr.com
If you’re telling me solidarity means to forget my discomfort and experiences with privileged folk, or that privileged folk have a right to speak over the experiences of marginalized ones, or have just as much say in their marginalization, then I’m not…
