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Quickie: It’s Victim Blaming and It’s Racist

The comment that influx of migrants and refugees disproportionately affects the poor is actually and demonstrably false. The biggest increase I saw to my ODSP came around when Canada accepted a large contingent of Syrian and Somali refugees.

In addition, historically, forced improvements to social safety nets to deal with the sudden influx of new users actually strengthen those safety nets and tend to improve services for existing citizens and users of those services.

Where it does affect the poor is when conservatives make cuts to those social safety nets, then blame it on refugees. It’s literally them taking food out of our mouths, then blaming it on the person starving next to us. It’s a diversionary tactic that allows politicians to redirect the anger legitimately directed at them [the service cutting politicians] towards a more vulnerable population by playing on existing, unacknowledged, ignored, and normalized social racism.

It’s practically a political cartoon of someone physically stealing something from you in front of you then pointing at another person saying, “hey, they look different than you, clearly they must have stolen it.” without even bothering to hide what they’re doing.

To blame an influx of refugees for a rise in white supremacist sentiments is literally to blame the victims of racism for the existence of racism. That racism was already present, it just wasn’t talked about or more accurately was claimed to no longer be a problem despite all evidence to the contrary, making it easy for anyone to harness those sentiments for political gain.

It’s victim blaming, and it’s racist.

Quickie: It’s Victim Blaming and It’s Racist

Broad Ken: A Review

Last year Matter released a new line of Barbies with different body types. I’ve written reviews for Tall and Curvy. Petite will come shortly (pun not intended but appreciated).
Just in time for the holiday season of 2017, Mattel released new body types, skin tones and hair styles for Ken. There’s the Original, Slim and the one in this review, Broad.

Continue reading “Broad Ken: A Review”

Broad Ken: A Review