Feel confused, offended, disappointed, or uncomfortable with Beyonce’s new song & music video? Too bad.
I’m not a Beyonce fan. I don’t dislike her, but musically, she doesn’t do much for me. Neither does her latest single, “Formation.” But I don’t like “trap music,” and that’s okay. It wasn’t made for me, or any other white person.
Personally, I cannot WAIT to see the white fragility exposed when she performs it during the Super Bowl halftime show tonight. There’s going to be some angry, confused-ass white people at my family’s Super Bowl Party. They’re gonna squirm, I can already tell.
But I don’t care. Why? This song and video weren’t made for them, they were specifically made for black people:
Because guess what: not everything has to be made digestible for white people.
But how do you effect change when the agents of the institution you’re protesting against economically benefit from your protesting?
It’s well-established that if you want to effect change, hit ‘em where it hurts: economically. Nowhere was that more evident this past week than at the University of Missouri, whose dean resigned due to allegations of systemic racism, as well as not doing enough to prevent it:
The University of Missouri system’s president, Tim Wolfe, and the chancellor of the flagship campus, R. Bowen Loftin, announced on Monday that they were resigning their posts in the face of growing protests by African-American students, the threat of a walkout by faculty and a strike by football players who said the administrators had done too little to combat racism on campus.
It’s important to note that this started out with a student going on a hunger strike for several days, which went largely uncovered in the media. Only once the football team (as well as the coaching staff) went on strike was this taken seriously, because that’s where the big bucks are: the university would have lost millions had the strike continued.
Another great example of economics effecting change is in movies, most recently with big-budget blockbuster Exodus: Of Gods and Kings, which raised controversy with its racist (and frankly, unrealistic) casting of white people playing Egyptian royalty, while non-white actors were cast as the antagonists. As a result, there was a boycott of the movie, and it tanked.
Both of these examples involve either strikes and/or boycotts; i.e. cutting off a major source of income. But how do you effect change when an organization isn’t funded by sales, but instead: directly by the government? More importantly: how do you effect change in an organization whose rank & file members actually economically benefit by you protesting them?
Yes, I’m talking about the police.
Police Love Protests
I have some bad news for you, protesters: as long as they’re not getting killed or severely injured*, police officers love protests. At least, the rank & file ones do. More specifically, their bank accounts do.
Wanna know why? Click here to continue reading this article >>
*No, I’m not condoning or recommending the killing and/or injuring of cops. It’s sad that I even need to say that.
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A white, atheist southerner from Macon, GA delivers an eye-opening sermon entitled: Recognizing My White Privilege (via the Southern Discomfort Show)
As someone who grew up in Maryland, one of the more ethnically diverse states on the East Coast (at least near Baltimore & DC), most of the racism that you see or hear is of the inadvertent type (i.e. microaggressions). So when a follower of mine sent me a podcast of Matt Oxley, a white, atheist southerner who held a sermon on “White Privilege” at High Street Unitarian Universalist Church in Macon, GA, my interest was piqued, as you can imagine.
In this sermon, you can hear about how he:
Grew up with an overtly-racist grandmother
Realized his White Privilege at a young age
Recognized a racist double-standard when it came to the discipline of white and black students in his school
Is assumed to be tolerant of racism by other southerners, simply because of his skin tone and where he lives
Encourages everyone to ask hard questions of anyone that shares his identity (as a privileged, white male)
It is a bit long at 50 minutes total, but definitely worth listening to.
Because if you’re looking for humanity on the internet, there is none. Plus: Putting racists on full blast.
By now, you’ve most likely seen the video of School Resource Officer Ben Fields brutalizing a young black female student:
Now, because of my rule of not being reactionary towards specific events, I’m not going to provide a “reaction piece” to the event itself. But because I would feel remiss if I didn’t post something, I’d like to share with you some of the best (and worst)noteworthy responses I’ve found to this incident. As you can imagine, this incident brought out the worst in certain people on the internet, to say the least But before we start, let me say something to my fellow melanin-deficient skinfolk:
#DearWhitePeople: Do your best to empathize with this girl.
First: realize that she has lost both her mother and her grandmother in the past year, and is currently living in foster care.
Next: Before you lash out and respond with some (in)advertently racist bullshit about what the girl “should have done” or how “this isn’t a race issue,” ask yourself these questions:
Am I black?
Have I ever been black?
Do I know what it’s like to be black?
Are my children black?
Had my (white) child acted in the exact same way, would they end up being treated the same way?
If the answer to any of the above questions is “no,” then:
If you aren’t black, you have no right to tell black people that they don’t experience racism simply because it’s obscured by your privileged world view. Period.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s continue, shall we?
I despise the word “tolerance.” It feels like nothing more than a half-measure aiming for political correctness without tackling a much bigger problem. Why are people taught (or forced) to “tolerate” a person or group of people, when it’s clear that they still dislike, hate, or despise them?
Everything children learn in school about Christopher Columbus is a lie, and helps shape white supremacist views. Not to mention: he was a horrible human being, yet he gets whitewashed by the American education system.
Christopher Columbus is no hero, and does not deserve the place in history he occupies. Nor does he deserve a Federal Holiday, to which we can thank the Knights of Columbus and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (or as I like to call him, “Scumbag FDR”).
Everything taught to schoolchildren in America about him is a complete lie. Classroom songs are performed every year by elementary school kids about “the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria” (not the names of two of the three ships, by the way), “sailing across the ocean blue, etc.” and to “prove that the Earth was round.” All of this is extremely disingenuous at best, and at worst, completely ignores the atrocities he and his men committed. This essentially gives them a “free pass” for what they did to the native Taino people, sewing the seeds of subliminal white supremacy at the same time.
Don’t believe me? Check out some of the complete fabrications about him by reading the full article at Apolitically Incorrect >>
PS: If you think this is all just “political correctness run amok,” then you’re an asshole.
