December 2010
Chrome
VNV Nation
As night descends upon the city,
the streets are cold, the lights go by.
And in the stories of the people,
a million faces, a million lies.
They’ll never say they feel what you feel,
that they can see the world you see.
And in their faces, their expressions,
a million faces, a million lies.
The Critical Fashion Lover's (Basic) Guide to Cultural Appropriation →
alagarconniere.blogspot.com
“…i don’t think the issue of institutional racism and discrimination can be completely divorced from the question of cultural appropration. they feed into one another. one would not exist (at least not in the same way) without the other. if we lived in a culture that acknowledged the fact that most of us live on stolen land in north america and that recognized native people as complex, diverse, intelligent people without romanticizing or glamourizing them, i’d like to think that it would put an end to these sorts of reductive stereotypes popping up in fashion, film, music scenes. reducing an entire culture to a simple ‘inspiration’ for your outfit, art project, fashion collection, or photoshoot is disrespectful and unhelpful, especially when we look at the bigger picture.”
public spheres →
telegraphia.wordpress.com
“Three years ago I was driving home from a night at my favorite Detroit bar, and I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a body face down in an empty lot…”
Without the eloquence of "White Woman, Listen!": white athiest, listen!
I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “reason for the season” thing and Christmas, and its intersection, where white people at one side deride and hate Christmas as a Christian holiday forced upon the masses, and at the other side, appropriate Latin@ culture. Of course, white people appropriate the cultures of other peoples of color, and nonwhite people appropriate, as well. I’m just speaking from my own experience, as a Chicana who was raised in a white area and felt at once the scorn for the religion that my family practices as a result of being colonized by white people, and the othering of “preference” for “authentic” “ethnic” (ha! that very word!) food from my culture. Or, and I know I’ve beaten this horse dead a long time ago, but I will say it again: those trendy, privileged white hipsters that love to talk about how they’ve made a conscious decision to be ethical by buying local and organic and all that bullshit, and yet they also make an effort to appropriate my religious and cultural symbols (I’m looking at you, hipsters and yuppies with your ~sugar skull~ body art and clothing) and then, to make matters worse, they (attempt to) strip them of the religious imagery.
People of color do not experience religion the same as white people do.
I cannot walk away from my religion without walking away from my culture. And my people are a colonized people, internally and externally, sure, but lets not fool ourselves and act like it was the ranchero class that had all the power, that made us what we are. Converting to Christianity saved the lives of people of color. I just think it’s funny that once upon a time, we were all uneducated heathens who didn’t know God, and now we’re simplistic, religious drones who still follow a tyrannical religion.
Well why do you think that is? Do you think that it could be as a result of being forced through the “normalizing” frames of the dominant fucking culture? Ah!, if I could live to see the day when the religious practices of brown people aren’t demonized or fetishized or oversimplified or seen as immature and backward. Ah! If only the colonizing were over.
“I’m not gonna trust you until you’re as willing to be changed and affected by my experience and transformed by my experience as I am every day by yours.”
—Victor Lewis, on trusting white people (via jazzonia)
“wherever i am i am what is missing”
—mark strand (via cockmouth)
Fuck yeah, feminists!: Cultural Appreciation Without Appropriation? →
fuckyeahfeminists.tumblr.com
Today I was teaching my students ‘A Passage To India’ — where teaching and seething become one intersecting activity — when one of my student’s cracked. He asked me if it was ever possible to have a cultural exchange, where a…
Yes, I agree sooooo much with all of this.
Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins
“Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City’s Majestic Ruins” features more than 175 pages in full color. Learn the stories behind 12 of the city’s most beautiful forgotten landmarks, from the day they opened to the day they closed. We share the memories of those who caught trains out of Michigan Central Station, necked with girlfriends in the balcony of the Michigan Theatre and kicked out the jams at the Grande Ballroom.
“Nobody told me I had a clitoris. Nobody told me I was capable of having orgasms. For five years I was given “sex education”. It mostly consisted of periods and condoms. It didn’t talk about consent. It didn’t talk about the actual mechanics of sex, about arousal and lubrication and oscillation. It didn’t tell me a single thing about relationships and it didn’t tell me I had a clitoris. I only know now because of the internet. Nobody entrusted with my care and education has ever told me that the female orgasm exists, or about the parts of my anatomy necessary for it. I didn’t find my clitoris until I was eighteen, after six years of active sexuality. That makes me angry.”
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Sex Education, or, What Boys Will Want From You « Frothing at the Brain
High school sex ed never has, and never will teach you about sexuality. It teaches you the bare minimum of “have sex this way or else you will become diseased and die”
(via drawnfreckles, sexisnottheenemy)
(via bunnygamer)
