Here’s how to deal with the fact that a great orange buffoon is getting sworn into our highest office: go see Hidden Figures. Just go. Go see black women fighting misogyny and racism and Jim Crow while doing badass math. You need to see that right now.
*This review is mostly spoiler-free*
Take your children to go see it. Yes, even the young ones. Yes, even the teens. Look: I was in a theater full of little kids and teenagers, and they were sitting there beside unrelated adults up to the age of probably-watched-John-Glenn-orbit-live-on-teevee-with-their-own-kids, and apparently they were all riveted. I have never been to a movie that full of young folk who were so extraordinarily quiet. I’ve never been in an auditorium packed with nearly 400 people of all ages and had such an uninterrupted experience. The kids will do fine, and they need to see this.
Hollywood put out a movie about black women doing math, and it was spellbinding. I never thought they’d try. And since they tried, I never thought they’d do it with so much math and so few explosions. They had exploding rockets, but seemed almost embarrassed to mention them. There was a love story, but only because one of the real women this movie is based on actually got married in the middle of our race to space. It wasn’t shoved in just to hook our emotions, and you get the feeling they’d rather be doing more math. The movie stayed remarkably true to actual, historical events.
You’ll get to meet three of the most extraordinary women in our country’s scientific history: Katherine Goble (later Johnson), Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. You will get to see them be math nerds. You will get to see them have interests other than marriage and children. Hell, you’ll even get to see one of them fix a car. In a dress. Did you know women could fix cars while wearing dresses? Well, now you do.
You’ll get to see three black women star in their own story, as heroes, not as sidekicks and inspirations to white people. This wasn’t a story about white people learning how not to be racist gits (although several white people learned this, the movie isn’t about them). This wasn’t a story about three career women trying to also balance their roles as wives and mothers (although they were). This wasn’t a story about men learning how to deal with career women, women smarter than them, and figuring out how not to be sexist gits (although this all happens).
No.
This was a story about three black women doing math, and overcoming a lot of societal obstacles in order to be able to do math. This was about women getting us into space with their incredible math skills, even though racist whites and sexist men sometimes made it much harder than it needed to be. This movie took three black women mathematicians, and made them the heroes, even though there were a couple of heroic white men it could’ve centered on. And it worked. It worked so much better by centering those women.
We need stories like this. Especially now.
We need stories that center women of color and put the men and the white people into supporting roles as helpers and/or adversaries. We need stories that center the people whose work enables us to launch ourselves at the stars. We need stories that show us how much we can overcome, and how far we can go.
This is one of those stories.
It’s also a time machine that takes us back to and drops us in the midst of an era in which white people were so afraid of black people that they wouldn’t even share a coffee pot with them. We white people need to see this. We need to see how ridiculous “separate but equal” was. Hidden Figures shows us that. And it shows us what it’s like to try to get on with your life in the midst of social upheaval and the struggle for equal rights. It shows us how you can be a part of that, even if you can’t march or picket or protest in the streets.
We need to see that.
This is another such era, and we need to see how it’s done.This movie shows us how we can be a part of that change: how minorities can demand equal rights, and how allies can support them, and why we must.
I came away from this movie with a whole new appreciation of diversity. It’s not just a buzzword, folks. It’s necessary for us to be our best. The whole nation is stronger when we all unite, when we break the barriers and let go of old prejudices.*
Hidden Figures is so much more than just a movie about some women doing math. It’s a myriad of stories beautifully told. It’s an anthem to human achievement. It’s a love story about science and exploration. And it’s an inspiration to those of us who want to make a better world.
Go see it.
Bring tissue.
Be ready to cry some of the best tears of your life.
*Note: I am speaking to the bigoted gits here. I’m not saying we have to link hands and sing kumbaya with unrepentant bigots in order to achieve diversity. Rather the opposite is true. So, y’know, if you’re a bigoted git: don’t think I’m calling for tolerance and inclusion of you.
The post Hidden Figures: Yes, Go See It Right Now appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>I’ve seen some very oblivious white people in my Facebook feed claiming that this election couldn’t possibly have anything to do with race, because people voted for Trump who voted for Obama. Why would they vote for a black man and then a white supremacist??
Gosh, fellow white people, I dunno. Why don’t we stop denying we’ve got racist as fuck tendencies and start thinking of the reasons, eh? It’s actually pretty simple.
CN: racial slurs, racism, bigotry
You can vote for a black man and still harbor racist thoughts and tendencies. Trust me. I know white people. I know conservative white people – I was raised in a house and community full of ’em. And I know how they think. They’ll swear they haven’t got a racist bone in their body as they call their Iranian coworker a sand n*gger. They’ll claim they’re not at all prejudiced in one breath while they bleat about all those foreign brown people sneaking into our country and taking our jerbs – complete with slurs like w*tb*ck and ch*nk. They’ll all have that one black friend, but they’re super nervous around black people and steer clear of black neighborhoods, because everybody knows that’s where the thugs live.
Even those of us who have friends of color and really try not to ever use racial slurs and are pretty embarrassed by our more openly racist relatives and really admire a select few people of color are scared of what’s going to happen to white people when the brown folk outnumber us. And we may not admit it to ourselves, but we think affirmative action means some lesser human is going to get the job we deserve, and that more brown people getting college educations and entering the workforce means fewer opportunities for us, and so we’ll support policies that keep that from happening. We may not consciously realize we’re doing that. But we’re doing it all the same.
We’re susceptible to people preaching white supremacy, as long as the white supremacists talk in terms of getting tough on crime, and fighting the drug war, and equality of opportunity not outcome, and bringing the manufacturing jobs back, and American exceptionalism, and all that rot. We applaud people who bleat about free speech and against political correctness, because it’s so damned exhausting to watch our words, and we haven’t done the deep dive into our attitudes and motivations that would tell us that political correctness isn’t an unfair fetter on our right to tell it how it is, but a request that we respect people who are different from us.
We love brown people, so long as there’s not too many of them, and just so long as they behave like white folk. We love them extra much if they talk about how their communities need to stop whining and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. We adore them if they reinforce our notions about the majority of them. We like them in direct proportion to how much they aren’t like those other people. We’re fine with them just so long as they make us feel good and inclusive and never call us out on our bigotry.
We don’t want to do the hard work of rooting out the racist tendencies within ourselves. We know diversity is good, but we don’t like people who try to make it anything more than ceremonial. We cling to our tokens, because we can brandish them in people’s faces anytime we’re accused of being racists and scream, “See, I can’t possibly! My black friend says so! Some of my best coworkers are black! I voted for a black man for president!”
And so we come to Obama.
I’m pretty sure a lot of the votes he got were due to typical American political inertia: we had a rough near decade with a Republican, so it was time to switch to a Democrat. Some of us would vote for a ham sandwich if it had a different party letter after it’s name. The Xs aren’t fixing things! Let’s try the Ys this time.
And the black man they asked us to vote for wasn’t too black. He was Ivy League and he’d pulled himself up out of poverty and he was that feel-good American success story that we could point to as we told the people of color whose necks we were stomping on, “See? He made it! He’s not whining! Why don’t you get up and go to Harvard?”
Some of us pulled that lever because hey, look at me making history! I’m not prejudiced! I’m not a racist! I’ll even vote for a black dude. Racism is over. And then we went right on moaning about gangs and thugs and reverse racism and all those damned Mexicans sneaking in and taking good American jobs while sucking on the taxpayer teat like all those other lazy bleeps.
And then we voted for him a second time because of inertia. We’re out of the habit of changing horses mid-stream. We go with the name we’re familiar with. And he was a nice, articulate man who liked to talk about how black fathers should step up and take care of their kids.
So no, white people. You didn’t absolve yourself of racism just because you voted for one black man once or twice.
And then came Cheeto Hitler, and you watched him whip up the white supremacists and white nationalists and the fucking KKK, and you voted for him anyway. Now you want to pretend that it has nothing to do with race. It was about immigration and terrorism. It was about the economy. But here’s the thing: those are all racially charged in America right now. When you talk about immigrants, what you’re really saying is that you’re afraid of all those weird brown people stealing our jobs. When you talk about terrorism, you’re talking about icky brown Muslims coming here to blow us up (newsflash: most American terrorism is white Christian American). When you’re talking about the economy, you’re talking about how those awful furriners either come here to steal jobs from white Americans, or import our jobs to their countries.
So yeah, it’s really about race at the bottom of it, kids. Sorry to burst your plausible deniability bubble.
And even if you don’t think your vote for Trump was prompted by racist tendencies, you still looked at a man who called all Mexicans rapists, and who thinks all Muslims are terrorists and vowed to keep them out, and whose candidacy was enthusiastically embraced by the fucking KKK, and you decided those things weren’t dealbreakers.
I have some bad news for you. Voting for racist dickweeds rubs off on you. Voting for Obama doesn’t give you a protective coating against racism. Sorry not sorry.
You don’t get to claim you didn’t vote for that, because you did.
You don’t get to evade the consequences of your actions. And your actions? They were racist as shit. This country has a huge problem, and you’re not going to be able to avoid it anymore.
I know you, because in part, I used to be you – although even in my most conservative hours, I’m pretty sure I’d have pulled the lever for the person who wasn’t being championed by the most rabidly racist groups this nation has to offer. Still. I get the thinking, because I used to think that way too. And I used to claim I wasn’t a racist, but people, I was. I still am. We white folk were marinated in it all our lives, and we will never be able to wring it all out.
Not in our lifetimes.
But that doesn’t mean we get to stop trying.
If you voted for Trump, you have a hell of a lot of self-examination to do. You have a hell of a lot of unpleasant truth to accept. It won’t be easy. It’ll hurt. Trust me: when I first started facing up to the truth, it hurt like a mofo, and it still stings. Suck it up. If I can do it, so can you.
Stick with me, and we’ll get there. I’m going to help you through it.
The only way this country can truly be great is if we roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of dismantling white supremacy. We can’t go very far when we’re so busy holding other Americans back. We can’t get anywhere without opening our country to the people who can help us do the work to build something that will be the envy of the world again. White people, we need to stop pretending we’re strong by making others weak. We’re all going to be better off when we stop trying to hold each other down, and instead lift each other up.
But first, we have to deal with the consequences of our actions, and stop the people whose hate we just gave carte blanche to. I’m going to help you do that work. I’m going to introduce you to the people you need to listen to in order to understand what to do and how to do it. I’m going to be giving you concrete actions you can take. If you’re courageous enough. If you’re good enough. If you’re really the good person you say you are, we can do this together.
Stick with me, and we’ll get there.
The post To The People Trying to Claim We’re Not Racist Because We Voted for Obama appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>Long story short: white people have spent centuries trying to eradicate Native Americans in order to get their land, their resources, and their wealth. That hasn’t stopped. It’s ongoing today. It’s probably happening in your community without you even realizing. It’s happening in North Dakota, and if you’re not aware of the situation, please remedy that right now.
The Standing Rock Sioux are trying to preserve their land and their water from a pipeline that (overwhelmingly white) Bismarck refused to have passing through their city. You know why they don’t want it: pipelines break. They explode. They spill. And for women, there’s a whole other set of horrific problems that come along with a pipeline.
This is one of the most important movements for Native American self-determination and survival in our lifetime. The people of Standing Rock need you to stand with them. Here’s how you can do it:
If you’re local to North Dakota and can help folks who are being bailed out, please contact Lissa Yellow Bird-Chase.
Send Items to Camps via Amazon Wish Lists:
#NODAPL FRONT LINES CRITICAL SUPPLIES
Call for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be rescinded:
- Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414. Ask that the National Guard be called off, DOJ observers be sent, and the Dakota Access Pipeline be stopped.
- Sign the White House petition
- Call the Army Corps of Engineers (202) 761-5903
- Call the North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple at 701-328-2200
- Call or Email your Congressional Representatives and Senators
- Contact Hillary Clinton and demand action on #NoDAPL
Support the Sacred Stone Camp
Tell the executives of Energy Transfer Partners, L.P., to stop building the pipeline
- Lee Hanse, EVP (210) 403-6455 [email protected]
- Glenn Emery, VP (210) 403-6762 [email protected]
- Michael (Cliff) Waters, Lead Analyst (713) 989-2404 [email protected]
Start or join events in your area.
Read, talk, post, Tweet – get others to join in demanding that the Dakota Access Pipeline be stopped, Standing Rock Sioux be heard, and our treaties be honored.
Follow Sacred Stone Camp (Facebook) (Twitter), (Facebook) (Twitter), Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline Opposition (Facebook), and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Facebook) (Twitter).
Purchase Standing Rock designs from a native clothing company.
And, if you’re able to join the water defenders at the Sacred Stone Camp, find out how here.
The post How to Stand with Standing Rock – And Why We Must appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>Zeroth has come through with one of his most powerful analyses of a Supernatural episode to date. See, this is why I don’t mind the bad ones: he makes something good out of them!
Yeah, this is Racist Ghost Truck. Not one of our favorites, although it has its good points (even some great moments!). Zeroth shows us where it really falls down.
Content note for racism and white supremacy.
To me, there are three levels of power wielded in white supremacy.
- Overt. Death or injury.
- Exclusion or limiting access.
- Process.
This episode presents the first level of power – physical injury and death. There’s a burned down church. There’s regular lynch mobs.
But what this episode does not represent, and what I feel compromised the quality of the story is the way power is exercised through process. Everyone, including a joe-schmo fisherman, knew what was going on and who did it. The sheriff and the deputies all had to participate in covering this up so the murderer was never held accountable for his crimes. The mayor had to support the sheriff’s department in this. At least part of the city council had to be complicit as well.
And finally, an electorate that kept that mayor and city council in power, likely through excluding the black population from the vote through intimidation. (Exclusion or limiting access!)
It is narratively easy to create a single figure responsible for an awful situation and everyone is scared and goes along with them. But it is lazy.
The sheriff and the deputies and the mayor and the city council all benefited from this arrangement. The exclusion of black people from the vote through the intimidation levied by the antagonist here kept them in power for decades. Power is itself a reward for participation in a system of supremacy, in allowing process and overt and exclusionary power work against part of the population.
None of them are held accountable in this plot…
And yes, I promise, I’ll be coming through with my own analyses soon. Finally. I’ll probably eventually revisit some of the earlier episodes, but I can guarantee that upcoming episodes have plenty of stuff I want to talk about. You won’t be able to get me to shut up when we hit Episode 15, I guarantee it.
The post SPN Analysis – S1E13 – “Route 666” – Representing Supremacy appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>Gregory Gadow gave me his kind permission to repost his very incisive Facebook post here. This is so important.
A friend of mine made a very good point. Thanks, Calvin Hipps!
Dan White murdered San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978. Charged with two counts of first degree murder, he was eventually convicted on two counts of “voluntary manslaughter,” the lightest possible sentence given the evidence. It was later shown that the jury gave him that sentence because A) White had been a SF police officer, and thus jurors presumed that he was acting against evil-doers, and B) because Supervisor Milk was an openly gay man.
When the verdict was handed down on the afternoon of May 21, 1979, the gay community went ballistic. San Francisco’s gay community had long been a target of SFPD’s bigotry, and many saw this verdict as police literally getting away with murdering community members. What originally started as an angry but peaceful protest quickly changed when the police tried to stop the demonstration. Police were attacked, and damage was done to SF government buildings. After several hours, the rioting subsided.
Then the police staged a massive round of retaliatory raids in the Castro District. Cops in riot gear swarmed into gay bars and assaulted patrons, without even a pretext of claiming the mantle of law.
Sound like anything in recent events?
The White Night riots had an immediate impact on the city. Supervisor Diane Feinstein was elected mayor to replace Moscone. One of her first actions as mayor was to fire the Chief of Police that escalated the protests into riots and ordered the retaliation, and replace him with Cornelius Murphy, who like Feinstein supported the cause of LGBT rights. While SFPD still has a lot of problems, they were the first police force in the United States to take action at ending the official persecution of gay people.
When I hear gay people squawking about how “all lives matter!” or how “blue lives matter!” I get pissed. Very, very pissed. OUR OWN HISTORY shows what happens when a minority is victimized by law enforcement: they continue to be victimized until people stand up, cry out, and start pushing back.
#BlackLivesMatter, just as gay lives matter. In the 80s, our straight allies heard us and worked with us to correct the reasons why we were so angry. Today, it is our job as white allies to hear PoC and work with them to correct the reasons why they are so angry. Many of us remember what things were like for LGBT people just a generation ago: let us not be a community who says, “We got ours so fuck you.”
The post “Let Us Not be a Community Who Says, ‘We got ours so fuck you.'” appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>It’s been a horrific week for police violence. Alton Sterling was murdered for the “crime” of selling CDs. Philando Castile was murdered for the “crime” of exercising his Second Amendment rights and driving while black. Castile’s slaughter was so egregious that even many of the white folk who typically find some infinitesimal fault on the part of the black man that excuses his extrajudicial execution have to admit this one was pure, undeserved slaughter. Not that they haven’t tried. They always try. It can never be the police who are to blame.
And as protestors peacefully gathered, a sniper in Dallas shot down cops and protestors alike, in a city that was trying to get it right. This will be all the excuse some people need to declare war upon people of color in this country. Not that a clandestine war wasn’t already being waged. Black folk in this country might as well be living in a war zone, see. They’re certainly dying as if they are.
And you may be feeling helpless right now. You may have no idea what to do with your rage and sorrow and pain. If, like me, you’re white, you may not know what do to with the power invested in you by the color of your skin.
Are you ready to listen? Because people of color are telling us what they need. This is what we must do.
Ijeoma Oluo has an entire list of the things you should find out about your local police departments, and what to do with that information. Click it now. Go down it, step by step. Do not stop until you reach the end.
She’s also asking for volunteers:
I need a web developer.
I need grantwriters/fundraisers.
I need researchers.
I need whatever the fuck I can’t think of right now.
If you have skills and time you can donate, sign up here.
Here are 15 ways to end police brutality. Let your local, state, and federal politicians know you want them implemented. Don’t let up until they are.
If you see a person of color being confronted by the police, stop and record.
Don’t share images and video of black bodies being brutalized. Humanize the murdered people. Share details about their lives. Show them as the living, breathing, complex, wonderful human beings they were.
Unfriend your racist relatives and friends. Your friends and family of color deal with enough racist bullshit without having to put up with it on your wall. Also, it’s time for those engaging in racist behavior to face the consequences.
Demand police be held accountable for their brutality. You don’t leave the bad apple in the barrel. You get it the fuck out of there. The same thing needs to happen with racist, corrupt, law-breaking, brutal cops.
Listen to the cops who are telling you what’s broken and what needs to be fixed about policing. Listen to them when they talk about the dysfunction of us-vs-them thinking that’s rampant in the ranks.
Educate yourself on race and racism.
Educate yourself on ways to combat police brutality. Learn ways to increase police accountability. Encourage your local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to implement these ways to combat bias and reduce racism.
Don’t shoot the police. That won’t solve this. It’ll only make it worse.
Raise a fuss about police executing people with drones.
If you want to save police lives as well as civilians, get rid of guns. Maybe even disarm the police. And resolve the us-vs-them mentality that is driving the current waves of violence.
Acknowledge it’s not just black lives that are devalued by the police: anyone with brown skin, or a disability, or a mental illness, is at risk.
Absolutely stop with the All Lives Matter bullshit.
Do you still need to be convinced there’s a problem? Someone in your life who needs some evidence stuffed in their face? Here you go:
Study finds police fatally shoot unarmed black men at disproportionate rates
There’s more. There’s so much more, but you are now equipped to find it. Go seek out the voices of people of color. Shut up and listen. Raise your voice to the people in power. Call. Write. Vote. March. Do everything you can. Because if we don’t pull together, it’s going to get so much worse.
The post What We Must Do appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>Hiba Krisht posted a series on Facebook asking us not to ignore the part Islamic teachings on homosexuality played in the horrific shooting at the Pulse. LGBTQIA Muslims and ex-Muslims all too often get erased, their struggles ignored, as we try to counter Islamophobic bigotry. It’s important that we recognize the dangers and challenges they face, even as we rightly point out that Muslims at large shouldn’t be attacked for the actions of a few.
This is not impossible. We manage not to target Christians for bigotry even as we argue against toxic ideas and teachings within Christianity. Finding the way to thread this needle starts with listening to the voices of LGBTQIA Muslims and ex-Muslims.
Hiba has given me permssion to collect and post her series here. Please add her blog to your regular rotation.
June 12 at 9:48am
Dissent against anti-Muslim bigotry is encouraged and required, as is dissent against all bigotry.
But do not in your dissent erase the plight of those who suffer from homophobia in Muslim communities.
If it’s unfair for the average Muslim to have to shoulder the burden of this publically, it’s also unfair for the suffering queer Muslim or ex-Muslim to have to shoulder it silently.
June 12 at 10:15am
IT IS NOT GOOD OR USEFUL TO ANYONE TO PRETEND THERE IS NOT AN ACTIVELY FOSTERED CULTURE OF HOMOPHOBIA IN MUSLIM COMMUNITIES, DRIVEN BY MUSLIM CULTURAL VALUES. OBSCURING TRUTH IS NOT A SOLUTION. THIS DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
I’m about to lose it. Too many. Too many posts in my feed like this. I can’t. I can’t.
June 12 at 11:21am
Suddenly thinking about the way the Orlando shooting would have been *celebrated* once heard about it in the community I grew up in. And all the things I’d hear the victims gleefully called while I had to keep my mouth shut about it.
Cause I’ve seen their reactions to news of american shootings and lgbt people killed too many times before to not know how it’s playing out.
Just some perspective on hate. *deep shrug*
Hiba Bint Zeinab shared DEARBORN AREA COMMUNITY MEMBERS’s photo.
June 12 at 4:52pm
And the flipside. Every Muslim – presenting person in America, including those victimized by homophobia in their communities, will have to watch out because of shit like this.
June 13 at 9:47am
Apparently virulent homophobia and a penchant for gun violence are uniquely American things and I never fucking knew.
But then again I am being slowly taught that All Modern Sin Comes From White Folks and Brown Folks Have No Blame Er I Mean Agency.
June 13 at 10:57am
I just want everyone denying that Omar Mateen’s religion could have had something critical to do with this to consider that their words are being read by queer Muslims and ex-Muslims who have already swallowed a thousand instances of erasure of a real force of oppression in their lives in the last day alone, and who are not able to say damn shit about it without outing themselves. Folks who grew up with a culture of virulent homophobia actively fostered in their homes, schools, and mosques. Folks who have been beaten, dehumanized, and disowned by their Muslim families for failing to adhere to gender roles and for their sexuality. People who’ve grown up hearing their community leaders and reading religious texts denouncing them and deeming them worthy of violence and execution, people including immigrants and the children of immigrants who hail from and summer in countries where gay sex is a capital offense and they can be arrested and tortured or worse for any suspected homosexual activity.
Y’all have no fucking idea and it’s making us damn sick.
June 13 at 4:33pm
Someone on a thread asked “what can allies do” type question re: the problem of modern Muslim homophobia and I guess I’ll paste my response. I wish we had real answers but here tis:
Its a broader issue than what allies can do I think. Since the news unfolded the scope of the problem has seemed to me to far transcend what happens on American soil.
I agree with people on my end who have been saying that the battle to humanize the bodies of women and queer people needs to be taking place in Kabul and Karachi and Khartoum and Baghdad and Beirut and Benghazi concurrently with this one, and not just by the English-and-French- speaking bourgeois and elite citizen of the Muslim world, the one like me and everyone else having this out on Facebook and in the media, but in Arabic and Farsi and Urdu and Pashto etc. That the metropolitan battle against Islamophobia in the west ties hand in hand with local battles against our own vicious honor codes condemning sexual and gender “deviants”. That’s our problem and we need to step the fuck up. We also need to be critical of the very critical theory subsuming our struggles for freedom and equality under some western colonialist agenda, critical of the heroes we find in our Edward Saids and Joseph Massads when they are insufficient to address the totality of our local shame and pain and our deeply complex political realities. Especially when we know we need only turn to Arabic speaking twitter and the aljazeera arabic Facebook page to see thousands gleefully celebrating the deaths of lgbt people while calling them slurs it makes me tremble to even consider translating. The scale and ubiquity of the problem is is in a very real sense only ours to access, and this only ours to be dealt with.
Another part of it is good self-examination here in America, cleaning house. The American Muslim community collective is understandably deeply protective of its own insularity, given how often and unjustly it is put under assault. But too long has unjust victimization provided cover for the rampant human rights abuses within the community itself. Things you don’t know about unless you’re part of secret groups full of Americans and Canadians from widely varying Muslim communities living deeply closeted double lives they can’t risk their communities knowing about. The American Muslim community collective today needs to learn to react with critical self-examination instead of knee jerk move to disavowal (eg “this is not the true Islam!” while mosque loudspeakers continue to condemn homosexuality as a mortal sin, and “this is a western conspiracy to make Islam look bad!” while lgbt youth tolerate domestic violence and shaming from their families whose spokespersons say these things). There is too much moving of goalposts, too much willingness to shed all responsibility and put it all on the other factors (which are important and also need addressing).
But it’s a thing deeply rooted in our fundamental stances on gender and sexuality, in the mainstream Muslim conception of family structure and sexual permissiveness and normative community structure. The attempt to divorce discourse from violence does not address those, but instead (and this is definitely reflected in the shooter’s father’s sentiments) divorce the notion of sexual deviance from that of worldly punishment. When they still largely advocate that homosexual lifestyles are fundamentally sinful while providing the caveat that it’s a matter for god to deal with in the next life rather than one of vigilante justice, the basic problem of linking human and moral worth to sexuality persists. The stated disavowal for vigilante justice doesn’t remove the deep stigma and shame, the urge to disown and dehumanize and denounce people viewed as sexually deviant in cultures where sexual misconduct is one of the worst sins imaginable. This is a very cursory characterization of the problem, but just meant to describe how much of an internal issue there is.
For allies, I know it’s difficult and I know it’s super hard to point out the right things without also risking inadvertent racialization of an already heavily racialized group. It’s just as fucked for those of us inside of it tho, especially those who are queer and from Muslim backgrounds (I’d say Muslim-presenting instead of Muslim here because we receive bigoted anti-Muslim hate even when we’re atheists long disowned by our communities due to our names, languages, ethnic backgrounds). It seems like there is always some measure or another of tradeoff we have to juggle and it FUCKING SUCKS.
But. Some things to consider: in insular communities of any sort, those who dissent are liable to be the most silenced and invisible– so awareness that you may not be getting the whole picture is key. Minorities within minorities (eg silenced, suffering queer folks, dissenting women, apostates) do not have public advocacy the way Muslims against Anti-Muslim bigotry do. And the unfortunate, heart wrenching truth is that epidemics of silent abuse and violence under misogynistic, homophobic ideals (eg honor violence, FGM, forced purity culture, hijab et al) actually *flourish* under the same protectiveness trying to shield Muslim communities from bigotry, and this is definitely something powerful families or community leaders rely on. A hesitation to examine or condemn is itself proving to be achingly, damningly harmful.
And I’m not sure what the solution is beyond trying to raise awareness among the allies that may be inadvertently enabling this.
Thinking about it, thinking about it though.
June 14 at 6:11am
Just want to clarify that when I talk about Muslim homophobia, I ain’t talking about a necessarily political Islamist affiliation, or the ideology of a deeply devout practioner of the faith, what you’d call a ‘fundamentalist’. I’m talking about mainstream, normalized bigotry. I’m talking about a widespread notion that lgbt folks are gender and sexual deviants, a normalized disgust and intolerance of them that bears into tenets of faith, yes, and into politics, yes, but that is not by any means limited to any of that, that floats deep and wide and heavy in the community and culture, such that we all know a hundred non-practicing Muslims or meh-sometimes Muslims who don’t care overmuch about rites or politics, who don’t have qualms over the fact that they fornicate, and who perhaps hang out at bars themselves, but who harbor a deep, hostile aversion to queer folks that very much has to do with how gender and sexuality and the family structure were always talked about in their mosques and homes. Heck, my little brother is one of those folks–I don’t even know if he properly believes in Islam anymore, but he’s sure as hell retained the misogyny and homophobia of his Muslim upbringing.
There does not need to be an overt, conscious adherence to the practical tenets of a particular strain of Islam or the ideals of a particular political Islamist group for Muslim homophobia to persist.
June 14 at 7:54am
I don’t understand how there can be question about whether there was Muslim influence. It’s so very basic.
We either do or do not concede that if one is homophobic, being immersed in a culture of homophobia likely influences those homophobic ideals.
If we do not, we can’t talk about the Christian right or anti-lgbt bills anymore here either. But those denying that Mateen’s religion likely has anything to do with it are basically saying it is a widespread culture of American homophobia (among other lovely bits of USian experience) responsible. If we claim that, then we concede that surroundings matter in influencing bigotries.
If we do concede that, then we must acknowledge that Omar Mateen was part of more than one community, and in key aspects of his life closer to one community than another. And as per the above, any community steeped in homophobia that he is part of would likely influence his homophobia.
Then, we either do or do not concede that modern mainstream Muslim culture is steeped in homophobia. This does not require any individual to be aligned with a political Islamist ideology or to be a fundamentalist or to even really be practicing, or to not be struggling with the faith or even, I’ll say, have any faith at all– examining Mateen’s patterns of practice and his understanding of political Islamist ideology is a red herring to the question of whether he was influenced by surrounding Muslim homophobia. He no more needs to be scrupulous than someone raised in a conservative Christian community in the bible belt needs to go to church for their homophobia to be influenced by their culture. In the case of Islam, socialized homophobia need only involve the civil aspects of Muslim tradition being strongly heteronormative, establishing a gender binary, and opposed to any sexual conduct not within the confines of a nuclear heterosexual family as a matter of moral normativity. The details are where it gets most ugly to be sure, but we need only concede the above. And we either do or we do not.
If we do not, then damn. We’re deeply ignorant or in denial aren’t we?
If we do, then we are forced to conclude that Mateen was likely influenced by Muslim homophobia as well as American homophobia and perhaps American authoritarianism/fascism.
And remember, those of us clamoring to make sure the Muslim influence isn’t deliberately denied or obscured are really trying to do exactly what the rest of you are: fix shit before it gets worse. The key claim isn’t LET’S BLAME ISLAM. The key claim is “there is a real and urgent problem with homophobia in modern Muslim communities that needs to be addressed and PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING IN SILENCE because of it.”
And I don’t believe I have to say it but since someone “pointed out” that this can’t be much of a problem because the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit mass murder, here’s another analogy cause y’all can’t seem to see the double standards without direct comparisons:
Most men in America did not commit mass murder a la Elliott Rodger either, yet we know he was driven by a deep and common misogyny. The difference is that there isn’t consistent outright denial from liberal factions that misogyny is a deeply rooted problem in American culture that needs addressing in the same way there is avoidance of acknowledging any rampant problem within Muslim American communities. Muslims aren’t committing mass murder every day, but they *are* shaming denouncing disowning beating confining their children for being gender and sexual “deviants” every day and it’s a damn epidemic outsiders don’t see and even something like THIS isn’t getting people to pay damn attention.
June 14 at 9:17am
This was in response to someone expressing exasperation that people seem to think Mateen ought to have been particularly practicing for his homophobia to be influenced by his religion, “Like, do they think homophobic Christians aren’t having premarital sex and are tithing 10%?”
I have some thoughts on that line of thinking. This is mostly conjecture, but I wonder:
It seems the initial thought or interpretation when someone cites Islam as an influence in an act of violence is that it must have to do with political Islamism or fundamentalism.
And it’s hard for them to conceptualize of potential Muslim danger, for lack of a better word, being rooted in cultural attitudes about civil matters rather than something meta about Islam vs Some Other, some kind of essentialist mission or purpose in the name OF Islam.
I feel like what I have been trying to say for years is that the deepest, most ubiquitous, and most pressing Muslim danger is not what most would characterize as terrorism or political Islamism, but something more akin to how people understand misogyny or racism in the west, threading through actual communities in a thousand instances of injustice and private violence. That most of it and the most endemic of it is from within. And by endemic i mean this: i would not claim that mainstream Muslim communities are steeped in authoritarianism/fascism the same way I say they are with homophobia. Many of them surely are (including the one I grew up with), and for those that are it is deeply binding thru jurisprudence and more. But it’s not a mainstream problem. The common, deep bigotries that cause FGM and purity culture (hijab version) and a culture of homophobia and deep tolerance for domestic violence against women and children and everything honor-specific that fucks everyone’s lives up … that’s where the greatest danger of Islam lies in my view. And it’s always what I think of first.
But westerners, they think of terrorism and fundamentalism first I think. And so when someone decries a problem as of particularly Muslim influence, if it doesn’t fit the terrorist Islamist model it might seem blatantly false. The irony is that it’s their own urge to be critical of this Islamic terrorism thing as a caricature of Muslim culture that creates a projected false dichotomy.
Just a theory tho.
June 14 at 9:42am
Gosh I really can’t let this go. So someone “didn’t see the point in specifying” religious influence on homophobia, since we know its homophobia that needs addressing, citing the fact that Muslims are being scapegoated by the right and they shouldnt risk adding to that. This is what i was gonna respond before i couldn’t for logistical reasons. I got salty. I AM salty:
Not seeing the point in specification sounds like how the All Lives Matter folks don’t see a point in focusing on black lives (thx again Kaveh)
We’re trying to tell you that there is a Muslim – specific problem with homophobia (oh among all sorts of other nasty things you have the privilege of not having to think about) that NEEDS to be addressed and that is consistently glossed over and obscured. If you think that there is some overarching way of remedying homophobia across cultures and creeds WITHOUT addressing the particulars of its manifestations in certain social structures and communities, without an explicit push for Muslim communities to clean house and examine their own deep bigotries, then you are sorely unacquainted with the nature of the problem and are ill – equipped to judge whether it needs addressing. There is no way to do lgbt activism in Muslim communities without a Muslim – specific approach. If you cannot bring yourself to support this then at least lend us your silence instead of contributing to the thousands of voices erasing a real force of oppression in the lives of people already invisible and caught up in deep double lives in insular communities– the same communities always shielded from criticism by the most clueless wellmeaning outsiders. If you think the most marginalized of the most marginalized deserves to be thrown under the bus in order to protect a broader community from any much-needed scrutiny because they are marginalized, I don’t know what to say to you.
I wonder if you just don’t believe that women and queer folks suffer massively in mainstream Muslim communities or if you think the one epidemic you do see– anti-Muslim bigotry– is a cause that has primacy over every other epidemic festering beneath the surface.
The post Islam’s Homophobic Teachings Cannot Be Ignored as a Factor in the Orlando Mass Shooting appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>We give the shortest month of the year to black history, so please excuse me if I say “Fuck that” and extend our history into March.
In this edition, I’ll be introducing you to some incredible folks. These are people who survived slavery, and then thrived. These are folks who made the civil rights movement happen.
Slavery and Freedom
Wielding the Law Against Her Mormon Owners: Biddy Bridget Mason
This remarkable woman, who had been given as a wedding present to a Mormon couple, acted fast when she found out that California law forbade slavery. She used the courts to win freedom for herself, her daughters, and other slaves, and went on to have a long, prosperous, and generous life in LA. Such an awesome lady!
From Slave to Congressman: Robert Smalls
You’ve got to meet this man. He was clever, resourceful, and so determined to win freedom for himself and his family that he stole a riverboat with other slaves and made a break for the Union lines. He fought for the Union in the Civil War, and then spent his life afterward making life better for countless former slaves. He served in Congress, and left an enduring legacy.
Shipment to Freedom: Henry “Box” Brown
How bad was slavery? Bad enough that some slaves would go to almost any lengths to free themselves – including being packed and shipped North as “dry goods.”
A Remarkable Letter to A Slaveowner from His Former Slave: Jourdon Anderson
Mr. Anderson had obtained freedom for himself and his family and was making a decent wage in Ohio when he got a letter from his former owner, asking him to come back and work. The letter he sent back is sheer genius, and damn near British levels of dry. Several sentences had me giving a standing ovation.
Most slave masters didn’t want educated slaves – education can open the doors to freedom, can plant ideas of liberation and the means to obtain it. So the few slaves who did learn to read would try to pass that knowledge on.
Slavery was a horrific, brutal institution. So brutal that slave owners thought nothing of putting iron masks on their starving slaves to prevent them from eating the sugarcane crop they were harvesting.
20th Century Slavery: Mae Louise Miller
As a child, I was taught that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, but that wasn’t quite the truth. Slavery continued in a variety of forms (and still continues) – it’s just been driven to disguise itself as other things. In some cases, slaveowners just didn’t tell the people they victimized that they were actually free. Mae Miller didn’t find out slavery had been abolished until she escaped from the people who were illegally keeping her and her family enslaved.
What the Conversation Around Irish Slavery is Really About
If you’re on social media, then you may see your “not racist” white friends and family posting memes or articles about Irish slavery or even slightly more recent “Irish need not apply” signs as some sort of argument that it wasn’t just Black people that went through hard times. Although historically, the Irish did have a bit of a rough start in America, in some places, what these memes are leaving out is that in 2016, there’s no trace of that history left in the average everyday life of people of Irish decent, not because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, but because eventually they were just accepted into general whiteness. Which is important to note because when we talk about slavery, we’re not actually talking about the past, we’re talking about today.
Civil Rights
They are black and white, men and women, Southerners and Northerners, rich and poor.
They came together to fight oppression, to fight history, to fight the times. They came together to stand up; they came together to sit in. They came together to disobey; they came together with discipline.
They came together to be beaten; they came together to be humiliated. They came together to go get arrested.
They came together to show the country itself, unvarnished and ugly. They came together to teach. They came together with nonviolence.
They came together as Americans. And they came together willing to die.
Elizabeth Jennings Graham: A 19th Century Rosa Parks
Elizabeth Jennings Graham was simply trying to get to her father’s church where she was an organist. She didn’t likely wake up that summer’s day in 1854 looking for an altercation, but through it, she became a symbol of Civil Rights a century before Rosa Parks’ landmark case.
In those days, Blacks were subject to more than segregation on transportation, they were blatantly discriminated against at will. If the presence of an African American on a streetcar was objected to by a White, then he or she would have to leave Graham, who was in her mid- to late 20s at the time, stepped onto a horse drawn streetcar in Lower Manhattan, but when the conductor saw her, he ordered her off.
But she refused, asserting her right to board the vehicle, prompting the conductor to try to remove her by brute force. She tried to fight to stay in the car, but a policeman came along and helped the conductor take her off the streetcar.
The Exploitation Of Martin Luther King’s Legacy By White Supremacy
The Martin Luther King Jr. that we celebrate every year is no longer a man or a movement. The annual holiday is no longer a remembrance. Like the creation of the Christmas holiday to pacify, assimilate, and eventually control pagan populations by twisting their sacred truths into brightly colored lies, the narrative of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday (along with the oversimplified, whitewashed chapters of civil rights history only opened in schools during this week and the month of February) work to distract and weaken black Americans while strengthening white supremacy.
Here are some of the most damning myths that have marred the holiday.
Racial Inclusion in Higher Ed:
There was another front line in the 60’s that’s overshadowed by specific narratives that’s been rehearsed throughout the years. This front line was every bit as bloody, stringent and contested, and yet we don’t consider it in the same way as the habituated cultural imagination of the Civil Rights Era.
Racial inclusion in higher education isn’t something we really consider in the same context as other campaigns for equality insofar as its depth and significance. However, just as many people were killed in struggles at universities as were killed over voter rights. Presidents of elite universities called the police to perpetrate the same kind of “order” we saw on Bloody Sunday (Selma) and the “maintain the peace” work that Bull Connor was notorious for.
Yet it’s uncommon to think of these things on the same register…Why might that be?
Clara Belle Drisdale was born in Plum, Texas in 1885. She was the valedictorian of the graduating class of Prairie New Normal and Independent College, now (Prairie View A & M University) in 1908. Williams enrolled at the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in the fall of 1928, after taking some courses at the University of Chicago. While she worked as a teacher at Booker T. Washington School in Las Cruces, she also took college courses during the summer.
Most of Williams professors did not allow her inside the classroom because she was Black. But that didn’t stop Clara. She had to take notes from the hallway–standing up! That’s right, she wasn’t even given a chair to sit in many of those classes. She was also not allowed to walk with her class to get her diploma because of the segregation laws. Despite what they did or said against her, [s]he still graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from NMSU in 1937 at the age of 51.
On this day, Feb. 1, 1960, four college students went to the local Woolworth store, purchased some items, then sat down at the lunch counter to order coffee. They were denied service because of the color of their skin. The manager asked them to leave. The students decided to stay, seated, politely waiting for their coffee, until closing time.
The next day, the four students (Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond) returned, ordered coffee again, and were refused again.
“I certainly wasn’t afraid,” said Franklin McCain. “And I wasn’t afraid because I was too angry to be afraid. If I were lucky I would be carted off to jail for a long, long time. And if I were not so lucky, then I would be going back to my campus, in a pine box.”
The 9/11 You’ve Probably Never Heard About
At any rate, this is why there is Black History Month. Because basically, a 9/11 happened in 1920, and I’m 45 and never even heard of it until a black person on twitter I follow tweeted about it. Fer fuck’s sake, a couple dozen yokels got killed in a land grab (I’m simplifying a bit) in Texas and every kid in the nation “remembers” the Alamo. Here, 500 Americans were murdered, and it’s crickets.
Brother Outsider: Bayard Rustin
A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence.
Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.
This 43-tweet story explains how black kids are treated by America’s criminal justice system
T. Greg Doucette is a criminal defense lawyer in North Carolina who also writes a legal blog. And he’s got some things to say:
In a 43-part tweetstorm on Tuesday, Doucette recounted a recent experience defending a 17-year-old black teen from claims by a police officer that the teen was doing 360s in the middle of the street. Over the course of the story, Doucette demonstrates many of the problems black people face in the U.S. court system and why changes never seem to stick.
That’s all for this week. Next week, we’ll close the series with some final thoughts on Black History Month.
The post Black History Month Extravaganza #4: The Long Journey Towards Equality appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>Bear Bellinger explains what it’s like to be a black actor without the star power to push back against racism in the entertainment industry.
So when we yell #OscarsSoWhite, I stand here thinking, “So is the rest of the industry.” The inequality starts from the bottom and works its way to the top until it becomes fully institutionalized. And at that bottom level, where it begins, we don’t even have the insulation of money to help withstand the burden. We have to worry about that next paycheck to eat.
I couldn’t teach that white director that his concept of how black people respond to slurs ran counter to the truth of my life experience for fear of losing out on a job. When a white actor then used a slur with me onstage, I couldn’t walk away or demand his job for fear of losing a necessary paycheck and future income. And when a cop physically assaulted me to teach me how to play a part, I couldn’t exclaim my displeasure, as this was my big break.
I was voiceless.
This is why it’s not enough to have a token black guy, to have “diversity” in only one small aspect of a huge enterprise. This is why representation on all levels is hugely important. And we white folk need to be listening and have people’s backs when shit happens, as it inevitably will. Same goes for any majority interacting with minority folk. Men: have women’s backs. Straight people: back up the queer folk. Cis people: stand with the trans folk. And all of us must demand more minority folk be represented. Demand marginalized people be treated with respect, even when they’re not there to advocate for themselves.
We can change this shit, but we have to pull our weight, and listen, and believe people when they talk about their experiences.
The post Representation Matters: Acting While Black Edition appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
]]>“He was a beautiful child playing our fucked-up national game. Now, he’ll never be anything else, and we’re supposed to think that’s right.”
You may not have thought much about it, because a child with a realistic-looking gun being shot by police in America may not have tripped your alarm circuits. You saw the uniform on his killer, and didn’t think thug or criminal. You didn’t think of all the times you played with toy guns as a child, and when you did, you weren’t worried that a cop would roll up and shoot you for it. Your games of cops and robbers were never interrupted by cops arriving, stepping out of their car, and shooting your friends dead. So you figure there must have been some reason for it. After all, the killer wore blue.
You’re probably white, and thus don’t have to worry about the color of your skin priming someone to kill you dead before even getting a proper look at you.
If you still think the officer who shot Tamir was being reasonable, download a timer onto your phone. Have someone set it for two seconds. Have them start that timer as you pull your car into your driveway and get out. Have another friend standing in your yard, looking at you, holding something.
Would you have had enough time to assess whether they posed a threat? Would two seconds really be enough time to decide whether someone should live or die?
You may protest that a cop’s life could be taken in two seconds. It could. So could mine, and so could yours, but the difference is, cops are professionals. They should be able to approach a possibly dangerous scene and assess it. They should know how to minimize the danger to themselves while still not shooting a child who isn’t shooting at anyone, much less them. They should be trained and expected to hold their fire until it’s utterly necessary.
I’m reasonably sure that if that child had been white, he would have either been alive, or his killer on trial. But Officer Timothy Loehmann will probably go free. The grand jury declined to indict him. The prosecutor thinks it’s perfectly fine to shoot a child within two seconds of seeing him, as long as that child is dark-skinned and looks big and scary to the poor cowardly police.
Officer Timothy Loehmann is a murderer. But he will walk free, because we don’t mind our murderers as long as they wear a uniform and don’t target privileged people.
There will be protests. There will very likely be police violence against those protests. And the cycle of police violence against black bodies will continue.
It’s up to us to stop it.
There is something you can do right now to begin. You can talk about it. You can talk about how fucked up it is that a child is murdered and his family will see no justice. You can talk about how our police departments need to be demilitarized, how institutional racism must be rooted out, how they need to be trained to deescalate rather than shoot first and not even bother to ask questions.
You can tell your local, state, and national officials that you won’t accept this as status quo.
You can support the protesters. You can march, and you can signal boost, and you can defend them against people who think their own inconvenience matters more than justice for yet another dead child.
You can speak out.
But one of the most critical things you can do is take this challenge:
White People and non-black POC Challenge:
one thing you can do– talk to ALL the non-black people in your sphere of influence about why they should not call the police on black people for silly ass shit. remember that when you call the police to come scope out a black person- for having a loud party, or looking “suspicious,” or acting “erratically,” or loitering, or WHATEVER trifling reason- that black person might very well end up dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD.
the person who called the police on Tamir Rice was on the phone all like “hmmm i think it’s a toy gun, but i’m scared (because he’s a black child and i find them scary) so y’all should still come check him out.” don’t do shit like that and tell your friends and family not to do it either.
who gon take the challenge?
And you can confront the racism within yourself that tells you that a black person doing things is terrifying, whereas a white person doing the same things is merely annoying.
You can do these things, and it’s not enough, but it is a step towards making it possible for black children to play our national games without getting slaughtered for it.
We must take that step.
The post American Police Still Allowed to Murder Black Children Without Consequences appeared first on En Tequila Es Verdad.
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