[insert highbrow allusion here]

dirtsky: Do not let any people who currently pass as white tell you that "Blacks and them were fighting for the same jobs at the...

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:00:35 -0400

dirtsky: Do not let any people who currently pass as white tell you that "Blacks and them were fighting for the same jobs at the...:

gadaboutgreen:

karnythia:

girljanitor:

sonzaishiteruhime:

As much as those people were hated, Black people were hated worse. People who had lived here for generations where actually kicked from the jobs they held when immigrants began to come here in spades, kicked to give the immigrants jobs.

Those people, the Italians, the Irish people, the Polish people, and many others, they were at ODDS with Black people because they did to Black people what these very same people claim Mexicans are doing to them today; they were taking jobs from Black people.

Only in this case, that is actually what was happening, not some perceived delusion. Now that there was more labor available and Black people did not NEED to be hired to fill out work forces, Black people were losing jobs at an alarming rate to incoming immigrants.

This led Black people to form their own communities, places like Seneca Village and Black Wall Street, where they could run their own businesses, own their own property.

Seneca Village, a large community in what’s now known as Central Park made up exclusively of ex-slaves and their descendants, was eliminated based on a law we still carry around today, a law that says that people can be moved from an area at extreme cost to them if it’s “for the better of the community”. That entire place was uprooted and destroyed, even though there were cemetaries full of Black people there, because Central Park was more “deserving” of the space and “better” for the community.

Black Wall Street? Was burned to the ground in a wild blaze.

Do not speak of “fighting with Black people for jobs at the bottom”. It wasn’t a fight. It was a massacre and these immigrants won it by far. Meanwhile, Black people still can’t get a loan from the bank to start their business and rebuild even ONE of the communities destroyed for the purpose of “white betterment”.

This also happened on the West Coast during the Great Depression. The waves of immigrants imported from Mexico, Japan, The Philippines, and China, not to mention African American migrant workers, were exploited for generations, subjected to unbelievable violence, and then abandoned, had their homes burned down, and/or were deported. This is detailed in Their Blood is Strong (John Steinbeck). During the depression, a huge number of displaced white farmers from the Midwest flooded California looking for jobs as agricultural migrant workers.

And the “horror” of the entire document basically is this: “oh, no! we’re treating WHITE people this way! That’s just inhuman and we need to help the poor “Okies”!

And they did. And the descendent of those Okies carry on their illustrious traditions in the “Heart” of California to this very day:

According to Ed Woodruff, a black cab driver, Oildale also is a town of occasional Ku Klux Klan rallies and at least one cross-burning on the bridge from Bakersfield. To Woodruff, the message to blacks was clear: Stay out. In the last year, three Oildale residents were convicted of hate crimes against blacks.

And on the West Coast, too, this is how those “poor, oppressed Okies” became White.

There was no “Fight” for jobs.This is what happened:

Farm labor in California will be white labor, it will be American labor, and it will insist on a standard of living much higher than that which was accorded the foreign “cheap labor”.
Some of the more enlightened of the large growers argue for white labor on the around “that it will not go on relief as quickly as the Mexican labor has.”
These enthusiasts do not realize that the some pride and self-respect that deters white migrant labor from accepting charity and relief, if there is an alternative, will also cause the white American labor to refuse to accept the role of field peon, with its attendant terrorism, squalor and starvation.
Foreign labor is on the wane in California, and the future farm workers will be white and American. This fact must be recognized and a rearrangement of the attitude towards and treatment of migrant labor must be achieved.

-John Steinbeck, Their Blood is Strong, 1938.

It is important to note that most of the POC “foreign” workers in California has actually been there for a generation or more, but were deported or just outright murdered anyways because their immigration papers were ignored or destroyed by white supremacist police forces, armed posses, and Okie vigilantes. The Okies struggled for less than a decade before labor reform for Whites happened, and then as soon as the “Okies” moved into the middle class as a result of relief, reform, and education, were once again replaced with “foreign” migrant workers being denied basic human rights-workers, including children, who are STILL enduring the same conditions right now.

My point is, this is ubiquitous from coast to coast of the United States. The systematic disenfranchisement of people of color and the degree to which anti-blackness and antiblack racism is at the very heart of creating whiteness is irrefutable.

The article regarding HOW the Okies “assimilated” into California white society via specifically antiblack racism illuminates and follows the same pattern as every sector of temporarily oppressed white immigrant and/or migrants.

Neil Foley’s book “The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture,” illustrates the same cycle in Texas. Black & Latin@ laborers cycled in and out of favor, while white laborers rose above them in social capital even if they were also tenant farmers.

A few friends of mine and I were talking about how we see the Republican Party’s way of trying to maintain its power is by trying to offer Latinos, specifically Mexicans, the same shot at white supremacist power as it did many other ethnic groups in this country. I wonder how that’s gonna play out, but I hope folks keep remembering the parable of the Irish and the Italian folks here. ‘Cause American whiteness is a helluva drug.

'The Baseline Is, You Suck': Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:42:23 -0400

The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a write—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.

climbing-the-holy-mountain: hehasawifeyouknow: Possibly the...

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:24:43 -0400

climbing-the-holy-mountain:

hehasawifeyouknow:

Possibly the greatest Greek-myth trainers ever (and maybe the only).

WANT

Photo

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:15:56 -0400

Space Oddity (by Chris Hadfield) SOBBING.

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:30:41 -0400

Space Oddity (by Chris Hadfield)

SOBBING.

paleoillustration: Felids by Sergio de la Rosa

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:15:53 -0400

Homotherium serum

Panthera leo atrox

Smilodon fatalis

paleoillustration:

Felids by Sergio de la Rosa

This motherfucking song.

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:08:11 -0400

This motherfucking song.

Patti Smith | Smells Like Teen Spirit (via Grooveshark)

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:57:00 -0400

Patti Smith | Smells Like Teen Spirit (via Grooveshark)

Also, if you’re interested, here’s the preview for...

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:38:20 -0400

Also, if you’re interested, here’s the preview for Hobo With a Shotgun. It looks AMAZING.

"The weirdest thing was how well Conlon’s concoction worked. The crisp texture and the bright acidity..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:36:16 -0400

“

The weirdest thing was how well Conlon’s concoction worked. The crisp texture and the bright acidity of grapes and celery balanced out the intense flavors of the cheese and durian, but it was still intense, about as subtle as bludgeoning someone with a brick. “It’s like a horror movie,” I drunkenly slurred to Conlon. “Have you seen the remake of Evil Dead? It’s like that. It’s amazing, but I never want to do it again.”

I meant it as a compliment. I think Conlon got that, because he started telling me about a movie called Hobo With a Shotgun before he got called away again. I looked up the trailer for it, and yeah. It’s exactly like that. A work of art, but not the kind of pleasant art that goes up in a bank or boutique cafe. The flavors and textures of these ingredients aren’t easy on the sensibilities of privileged Westerners. They’re violent on the palate.

Western aesthetics, until very recently, were mostly focused on things that were pleasant, non-disruptive, and yearning after some kind of lost paradisaical ideal. Think about the kind of vocabulary used in food writing: heavenly, glorious, sublime, ambrosial. Durian, Malört, dried shrimp: these aren’t the nectars of gods. They’re flavors that are firmly of the earth (or sea, in the case of dried shrimp). There’s an echo of something primal.

”

- Gozamos.com | Food Geek: Key Ingredient Cookoff

I feel weird quoting myself, but I’m really proud of this week’s Food Geek.

thechanelmuse: Photos that speak: Fuck your fountain....

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:21 -0400

thechanelmuse:

Photos that speak: Fuck your fountain. Fuck your tree. Fuck voter suppression. Fuck your labels. Fuck your stereotypes. Fuck your hatred. Fuck your restaurants. Fuck that dude. Fuck police brutality. Fuck white supremacy.

curseboxes: i’m sorry AHAHAHA. Ha. heh. (You know that special...

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:29:11 -0400

curseboxes:

i’m sorry

AHAHAHA. Ha. heh. (You know that special glee that comes from making gay jokes at the expense of homophobic straight bros? Yeah, that.)

fishingboatproceeds: Hey, bro, cool story. DFTBA sells a bunch...

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:25:15 -0400

fishingboatproceeds:

Hey, bro, cool story.

DFTBA sells a bunch of shirts, and we market to ugly people and nerdy people and small people and big people and pretty people and we’re doing okay and plus we don’t need physical stores with LITERALLY THE WORST MUSIC EVER CREATED BY HUMANS PLAYING AT EAR-BLEEDING VOLUME SO THAT ALL OF YOUR PURPORTEDLY COOL AND BEAUTIFUL EMPLOYEES ARE MADE DEAF BY THEIR WORKING CONDITIONS.

So that’s another way of doing it.

Also I hate your jeans.

motherjones: rollingstone: Oh my god, Becky… Sir Mix-a-Lot...

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:55:26 -0400

motherjones:

rollingstone:

Oh my god, Becky… Sir Mix-a-Lot released “Baby Got Back” 21 years ago today. Read about his inspiration in writing the track.

Er, happy birthday?

Photo

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:00:38 -0400

farewell-kingdom: Nina Katchadourian - Sorted Books “I suddenly...

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:00:40 -0400

farewell-kingdom:

Nina Katchadourian - Sorted Books

“I suddenly recalled a moment in the university library when, looking for a book, I had turned my head sideways as I walked down the stacks and thought how spectacular it would be if all the titles formed an accidental sentence when read one after the other in a long chain. Standing amidst the bookshelves in Half Moon Bay, my next move was simply to make this imaginary accident real. I spent days shifting and arranging books, composing them so that their titles formed short sentences. The exercise was intimate, like a form of portraiture, and it felt important that the books I selected should function as a cross section of the larger collection.”

"Few viral campaigns actually try to alter your perception of a film’s story before the..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:37:37 -0400

“Few viral campaigns actually try to alter your perception of a film’s story before the audience watches a single scene. Nitrate was special because its creators were playing the long game. Boyter and Ducker knew it might be years before they shot a single scene. By the time a real promotional campaign was ready, the pages would have existed so long they’d have gained weighty authority just by dint of their age.”

- The Daily Dot | The Greatest Movie That Never Was

Photo

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:51:15 -0400

Little girl: What are you doing?

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:34:27 -0400

Little girl: What are you doing?
Coworker: Writing an email.
LG: That's weird!
Coworker: ...It is weird, isn't it?
LG: [starts jumping up and down] I'm jumping!
Coworker: I'm sitting!
LG: [giggles] You're funny!

longreads: “Escape.” Natasha Gardner, 5280 Magazine

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:08:00 -0400

longreads:

“Escape.” Natasha Gardner, 5280 Magazine