PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

aboutmaleprivilege:

lust-sea:

My friend Sarah, is an incredibly intelligent, talented, athletic, and all around amazing girl.

She also happens to be black.

Now, I go to a school, where less than 1% of the school is black. We’re about 95% white, 4% asian, and 1% black and other minorities. This means that Sarah is one of only a handful of black kids in the school. Because there’s absolutely no diversity in our community (some of the deeds on the homes STILL say they can’t be sold to blacks or jews!), people think it’s okay to make offhandedly racist comments because there’s nobody around to offend, and no experience with diversity. Sarah’s told me how uncomfortable some of her classmates’ comments have made her, and I’ve seen it happening too.

That’s bad enough. But what happened to her a couple weeks ago is beyond ok.

Sarah is a member of our school’s waterpolo team, and a waterpolo tradition is for the juniors to make a video parodying certain traits of the outgoing seniors near the end of their last season. It’s supposed to be fun and lighthearted, and it’s done in the spirit of teamwork and friendship. Now, Sarah’s one of two outgoing seniors, and the other girl’s video was just that. Lighthearted, playful, nothing serious. But when it came time for Sarah’s video… 

The scene consisted of two of her (white) teammates parodying Sarah’s race and stereotypical ‘blackness’. The girls stuffed their butts with pillows and danced to “Baby Got Back”, imitating gorillas as they danced. This is racial stereotyping and it is NOT OKAY.

It gets worse.

So understandably, Sarah’s upset, and hurt, and angry, because these girls she thought were her friends have mocked her for her insecurities, and her race. So she goes to her coach and to the administration, and do you know what they do?

Nothing. 

Let me repeat that for you: THEY DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE WAS BULLIED FOR HER RACE.

The school is REFUSING to punish the girls, and Sarah is being chastised for overreacting. And she’s trying to struggle through the end of her season, while the entire rest of the team is talking about her behind her back and she’s being forced to put up with their betrayal and her own immeasurable hurt.

At the very least, it’s bullying. But it’s so much more than that. Yes, these are stupid kids messing up. But this says so much about are community. This says that we live in a community where privilege is everything. Where it’s OK to make fun of someone not only FOR their race but BECAUSE of it. Where somebody’s hurt is being ignored because of their race, because they’re “too sensitive.” We are never taught tolerance and love and equality. We’re taught in such a way that the few black students feel uncomfortable when learning about the civil rights movement, and where they can fear and even expect racial profiling and bullying. That is NOT OK.

I don’t know what else to do. I’m having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that I live in a community like this; I can’t even begin to imagine what Sarah’s going through. I want to support her in any way possible, and she’s so upset and has asked me to raise awareness of this.

Please please spread the word that this is UNACCEPTABLE. 

If we don’t stand up for her, who will? Who’s going to stand up for all the kids after her who are going to suffer what she suffered? People think we’re in an equal society now, but  we’re not. We have GOT to let them know that this is not acceptable. Please help. I know it’s a really long wall of text, but I’m hurting for my friend and I’m trying to help her in the only way I know how.

Thank you for your time. Please try to make a difference.

Reblogging this for a signal boost. School systems/administrators ignoring bullying and harassment is a large part of why I have issues going to people ‘in charge’ for help when I need it now.  

Please take a moment to send emails to egreenwald@uaschools.org (which is her principal) and to jpalmer@uaschools.org.

Include where you are from and that you heard about the incident. 

(is that supposed to say “how you heard about the incident?)

Anyway, this behavior is unacceptable and perhaps administration would do their job/recognize that this is unacceptable if they heard it from enough people.

-eccoecho

Hurricane Sandy

casual-isms:

Casual racism and casual classism may not realize that the poor and working class of NYC (many of whom are PoC) still lack access to basics like food and water, because the Goldman Sachs building is lit up, and that means everything’s ok, right?

Some friends of mine back home (I’m in uni outside NYC) are doing something to change that.

Hurricane Sandy Relief Efforts

ATTENTION!

The link above is to a relief effort fund dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. A friend of mine who has done extensive work post-Katrina mentioned to me that “it’s like New Orleans up here.” (Obviously, the two cities are different, but there is lots of water damage and many folks, especially working class folks, are left out in the cold to suffer - literally.)

If you can help, please do so! Everything goes directly to the people who need it, who are lacking in food, medicine, and clothes.

Also attached is the Urban Rebuilding Initiative. This is a project dedicated to addressing the intersecting issues of the disenfranchisement of people of colour and working class communities. This project is also involved in Hurricane Sandy relief.

Please help and Signal Boost!

Arizona's largest county prints correct election date in English, wrong date in Spanish on voter ID cards.

steviemcfly:

And that makes eleven states of voter fraud.

Help fund The Red Cape, a feature film about the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot.

glossylalia:

steviemcfly:

steviemcfly:

The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, America’s only coup d’etat, was when a group of white supremacists overthrew the rightfully-elected government of Wilmington, NC (where I live, because of course I do), which included black people. The death toll was not properly recorded, but some estimates say that as many as a hundred black people were killed, including children. These evil men took a gatling gun through the streets of this city and murdered innocent people. This incident spurred the creation of the first Jim Crow laws and inspired apartheid in South Africa. Nobody hears about it. And one of the conspirators has a park named after him, just down the street from my house.

Help fund this film so the world can be made aware of the tragedy that happened here.

They’re over halfway to their goal, but they only have eight days left. Donate, reblog, post this everywhere you can.

AAAHHH!! DO THIS! We were JUST talking about a movie needing to be made about this!

two people are now dead at the Sikh Temple mass shooting.

deafmuslimpunx:

I hope the white man (TERRORIST) gets caught and will be fried. The U.S media needs to brand this as a TERRORIST ATTACK. A white man who goes on a shooting rampage at a Sikh temple and target innocent people is a TERRORIST.

Israel Begins Rounding Up and Interning Africans

dreams-from-my-father:

choongcommunist:

“An opinion poll last week showed 52 percent of Israelis agree that the Africans are ‘a cancer.’ ‘They’ve come here to rape and steal,’ an Israeli woman shouted during an anti-migrant demonstration earlier this month in south Tel Aviv. ‘We should burn them out, put poison in their food,’ an elderly man suggested. In the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, racists call them ‘a cancer and an AIDs virus on the Israeli people.’”

What a difference 60 years makes!! To think that once upon a time a group of people was referred to as ‘cockroaches’ and interned in camps in the name of white supremacy, today this people is now taking part to the dehumanisation and massacre of other peoples with the support of the most white supremacist country on the planet WOW!!

Israel is a RACIST state!!

158,406 black men between the ages of 14 and 24 live in NYC. Last year, the NYPD stopped and frisked black men between the ages of 14 and 24 168,000 times.

ATLANTA TUMBLR USERS

anedumacation:

bitchslap-barbie:

Heads up: AVOID Alpharetta right now. The police have shut down several exits on GA-400. One exit (11) was shut down by 12 policemen, all doing a huge check on licenses, registration, tags, seat belts, and God knows whatever else. (One cop asked us twice if we *really* weren’t “hiding people” in the back of our CR-V, while shining a flashlight in our eyes.)

I saw them let more expensive cars through without blinking, and stopping everyone else. 

It’s profiling.

Stay safe.

SIGNAL BOOST

muchomegamountains:

and for fucks sake, y’all. this is NOT ABOUT HOW SOME DUDE IS GROSSED OUT BY THE WORD VAGINA.

this is about how the state of michigan just ended welfare eligibility for a HUGE portion of michiganders—of which A VAST PORTION OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE CHILDREN and of which a VAST PORTION OF THOSE CHILDREN ARE CHILDREN OF COLOR.

yes, it’s irritating that some old fucking rich white christian gags at the thought of vagina—but it’s a devastating moral, ethical and humanitarian CATASTROPHE that all those children of color that you are forcing to be born ARE GOING HUNGRY and WITHOUT ADEQUATE SHELTER as a result of your attacks on reproductive rights.

CHRIST.

Just once, I need us to all be looking in the RIGHT FUCKING DIRECTION.