dusting off one dream at a time

Gay, Biracial, Female, Teacher, Singaporean

[weareallmixedup]

(at Jay) I am a monoracial black girl (not light skin) and i feel inferior to mixed race girls (especially half white and half black girls who are light skinned). Mainly because in the black community everyone love biracial people and they treat them like they are special just because they are black AND something else. I know that being mixed race is not easy but i just feel shitty for being JUST black and not special.

I don’t really know what to say to you. Usually the reason why people “”””value”””” mixedness over monoracial, especially within the black community is because of antiblackness and fetishization. They pick and choose which parts of us mixed black people they like. Also not every black/white girl has light skin or light eyes or big loose curls. We don’t all look the same and some monoracial black folks have light skin. Don’t single the mixed ones out. The other problem is they see us as something exotic and different but not in a respectful way. It’s dehumanizing for us and it’s not something we typically enjoy. They make us feel outcasted from the black community and it’s really not fair. All I can say is that people make us out to be “special” for all the wrong reasons and it makes us feel gross and used and objectified.

I know because of colorism throughout society and the media, you have been made to feel like you’re not good enough and that isn’t true. Your existence is just as valid as anyone else. I wish I could change how you feel about yourself but I can’t. All I can do is explain what’s going on. I really suggest if you use tumblr, to follow some blogs that celebrate darker skin black people. 

– Jay

[allthestoriescantbelies]

I don’t think this response is wholly adequate.  Because antiblackness exists on its own, colorism does not have to be present to enable mixed race people to skate on “i’m not black, I’m mixed.”  Which they do, many of them, whether they even realize it’s antiblack or not.  My mom is one such person. She is very proud of her blackness and her white family is mostly abusive, but still responds protestingly to being categorized as black, because she doesn’t feel it’s all of her heritage.  And that is pretty complicated.  People bring up the one drop rule often and I don’t think it’s really gone away but the reason the one drop rule existed wasn’t to define our race or understand our identities but literally because blackness was supposed to be inferior and to prevent mixed people from capitalizing on our privilege.  It is a history of antiblackness and a history of believing that blackness is less than everything else.

(Off the top of my head i can only think of Naomi Campbell. She has dark skin but she is mixed race, and I have seen people bring that up. Even though she is largely identified as black, I have it brought up as points to proof her ~exoticness~, as a backdrop to her beauty and success.)

It’s not fair to reduce this matter to colorism because even though colorism plays a big part, it isn’t the only part. Because of the nature of antiblackness, being able to say “I am not JUST black” gives us an edge over monoracial black people that we have to talk about and accept.  Just like you cannot derail a conversation about colorism to protest that it’s all racism you cannot derail this one to protest it’s colorism and we all face racism. We do all face racism, but the nature and history of antiblackness, its creation and origin, makes it so that it is seen as “more than” to be mixed. 

It’s also not fair to say basically, “I know you feel bad about mixed people but it’s not OUR fault we’re fetishized and we don’t like it”.  LOTS of mixed people like and encourage this thinking - because it gives them advantages in a world where we are at a serious disadvantage!  Being able to have these connections to non-blackness that get people to put us in a different category - I would be willing to be that most mixed people at the very least allow this to happen when it is happening in a positive way, and I would also be willing to bet that the people the most likely to protest that they are black are the people who read the least as black - not just because of identity erasure, which we talk about a lot on WAAMU, but also because frankly, we can AFFORD to say we’re black and still not get the full force of people’s antiblackness.  I know for a damn fact that even people who have gotten the “I’m black, thanks” from me in the iciest tone of voice would still treat me more sensitively than they would treat some dark-skinned, monoracial girls i know if those girls were the nicest in the world to them.  They don’t have to fight to be seen as an historically oppressed group, they have to fight to not be TREATED like the one they are already categorized into.  Because yes these problems were started by white supremacy, but that’s the beauty of a history of violence and an instition: WE perpetuate it, just be benefitting, just by staying ignorant and silent.

And finally, there are tons of mixed people who bask in their exoticness and their more-than-blackness and what little fetishization they can get because to be fetishized is still better than to be demonized, and even though we would hope that they aren’t polluting this blog we know they’re out there and to deny them is, insidiously, a part of denying larger privilege.  (I do think it’s worthwhile to say that some mixed people’s motivations in seeing representation is because we feel ugly for being mixed and having “weird” faces and weird backgrounds and histories - not because you should prioritize us but because it might help to know that a lot of other people feel ugly duckling too.  But a lot of mixed people - I am so guilty of this myself and I’m only recently starting to really examine it - take up a load of space and refuse to see that they’re given more space than they realize to work out their problems.  That isn’t your problem though, and you’re allowed to just evade that shit when it comes up without feeling bad.)

Connection to anything not black is a privilege in an antiblack society.  Privilege, as a concept, is grossly overused to the point of being hard to define now so i know one of the reasons people reject the notion of “mixed privilege” is because it isn’t an absolute, it’s heavily contextual.  But privilege is by nature and definition contextual so that shouldn’t change anything a whole lot.  And just because you don’t personally engage in that privilege out of ethical reasons doesn’t mean you don’t have it, that isn’t how privilege works. 

So here is what I want to say to the OP: I know that it feels like blackness isn’t special and it’s not good enough, that we’re made to feel like we don’t have a culture or history worth being a part of, if we’re allowed to have it at all.  But mixed people really are just more people.  They aren’t more special than you.  They aren’t even more beautiful than you.  The only thing they have that you don’t is greater access to white supremacist approval.  I know that there’s a wide cavern between saying “I don’t want white supremacist approval” and genuinely, in your soul, not wanting it.  I don’t even know how to bridge that gap because I know I haven’t done it. 

If you can’t say good things about yourself, say them about somebody else.  I know there’s still a leap you have to make to saying them about yourself, and that it’s not easy to get there, but it still really helps.  Praise and uplift fellow black women for their blackness.  When you praise and uplift mixed women, praise their blackness, too. If they reject the praise because they feel reduced, even if that’s their prerogative (and it might be, but it’s still suspicious), don’t feel bad if you need to put some distance between yourself and them: they have baggage to unpack, it doesn’t need to be your baggage, it’s not your job.

If you have good relationships with your family, think about the positive things about your family that make you happy to be a part of them. If you don’t, think about the positive things in your life.  Even things that have nothing to do with race because you are the one experiencing them; center yourself, your wonder, your curiosity, your happiness, your self-education in the things that you experience.  You are experiencing those things not as a general person but as yourself.  I guess this is a more general journey to loving oneself but loving oneself for one’s race and loving oneself in general are not mutually exclusive categories.

The glorification of mixed people is bullshit that purely stems from the idea that blackness isn’t enough, but it is enough.  I know it’s hard and won’t happen overnight, but train yourself to dismiss the need to look exotic or special in order to feel valuable, both because comparing yourself to anyone is probably inherently unhealthy, and because in this specific case, it’s a system rigged to make you fail, and so it can never make you happy.  Hearing this from mixed black girls will probably only take you so far and I agree that looking for positive representation from black women (real life and fictional) will help you a lot.  I think a couple of years ago i just went on a follow spree of a bunch of blogs that just post black women and even just regularly seeing black women made a big difference to me,so I could see it being helpful to someone else to see more dark-skinned and monoracial black beauty and not see “not JUST black”ness as the dominant mode of beauty, style and intelligence.  It hasn’t taken me all the way, in part because for me personally I struggle with not being beautiful by either white or black standards of beauty and I need to unlearn, again, the need to fit a standard and to be beautiful to anyone but myself, and those are hard things to unlearn so I wish i had more advice for you but i don’t.  I hope you take care of yourself.

[antifa-chaos-witch-deactivated2]

in case you missed it: slavoj zizek publicly imploded into a festering puddle of transphobia

or, I Read The Slavoj Zizek Piece So You Don’t Have To

the capitalists support letting trans people pee but exploit their workers, now watch me concern-troll

TRANSGENDERISM

the transgenders want POSTGENDERISM, the COMPLETE ABOLITION OF GENDER

the postgenderists seek to use new medical/scientific technology to abolish sexual reproduction

it’s gonna be ANARCHY

the Youths are rejecting the concept of belonging to strict categories, which is kind of like how fascists call on people to renounce their individual cultural identities

transgenders are choosing to be marginalized so they can assert their identities in the same way that reverse racism is real

*whines about multiculturalism and immigrants*

THE TRANSES ARE CHOOSING TO BE OPPRESSED

if you were REALLY rejecting the gender binary then it wouldn’t MATTER which toilet you use

a Cutting-Edge New Argument No One Has Ever Made: if we give the transgenders rights, what’s to stop people from demanding POLYAMOROUS MARRIAGE? or BESTIALITY??!!!1 has anyone ever thought of THAT before?

yuppppp letting trans people pee is the slippery slope to marrying your dog

lol next they’re gonna reject the bourgoisie-proletariat binary

[extended metaphor comparing each letter of the LGBTQA acronym to a position in capitalist class relations]

*whines about putting a + on the LGBT acronym*

metaphor about single-stream recycling

he’s literally just puking on the keyboard at this point and we’re only halfway through

Keep reading

[dustedddreams]

What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced with the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All non-Black peoples are promised that if they comply, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And Black, Native, Latino, and Asian peoples are poised that they will economically and politically advance if they join US wars to spread “democracy”. 

[dustedddreams]

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea; Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I 

[dustedddreams]

So for at least until tomorrow

[dustedddreams]

On letting go

I found this scene from Butterfly heartbreaking to watch. A woman named Flavia tells her husband she’s leaving him because she’s a lesbian. He understandably responds with denial (they’d been together for so long), anger (at being lied to / being left), rage (you can see his fist curled up). I can think of a whole host of adjectives. 

It’s a scene all the more poignant in light of my own recent break-up. In many lesbian films that end happily (e.g.: Kyss Mig, Elena Undone), the husband is usually depicted as some sort of asshole who deserves to be left. In Butterfly, Ming is a sweet, if quiet husband and a loving father. He has done nothing to deserve being left. At first he tries to intimidate her into not leaving, and then he breaks down and pleads with her not to go. He tells her he can change. It was the desperation that I think killed me. 

But of course we sympathise with our protagonist. She has done nothing but be governed by her instincts. She only knows what she is and what she isn’t. I think my recent experiences have left me very jaded when it comes to the politics of love. Specifically within the LGBT community, there are debates about racism on dating websites (no Asian men, no black men, etc) and trans-exclusionary lesbians. While I understand the desire for political correctness and inclusive communities, a little bit of me dies inside at the prospect of someone making an effort to curb their preferences and dating someone they don’t actually want to, only to walk away later saying oops, actually you’re not really my type. As a gay woman, I go through life assuming that the majority of the people that I might be interested in will not be interested in me. It’s not something I can fault them for or say that they’ve been socialised to not like women. It might be seem like it’s in my interest to get them to try, but I’m beginning to think that more and more, it’s a lost cause. Give me the racists and transphobic announcements any day, because at least you weed them out from the get go. 

I’m cynical about any attempts to re-educate the self, and wonder at how much damage we’d be inflicting if we police language without checking to see if desire is mutable. If gay therapy doesn’t work, why on earth would we expect sexual preferences related to other aspects of the body to change? I’m just tired at the idea of being with someone who intellectually wants to be with me, but really is interested in men. I get that sexuality is a complex thing and takes time to figure out. I just don’t like being around and being the thing that helps people figure it out. 

[dustedddreams]

And, to be clear: being a hella radical leftist who also has a great and interesting sex life says nothing about the inherently radical nature of sex.  It just means you’re really, really hot and you should probably visit me soon.

This isn't just a finger-wagging exercise to tell queer radicals not to have so much sex.  By all means, have all the sex you need and want, but don't mistake fucking for anything other than, well, fucking. There is a serious side to all this, too: Too often, we hear of people coming out into radical queer communities, often at very young ages, being told that they can't possibly be radical enough unless they've entered into polyamorous and orgiastic relationships.  I've heard from too many people that they felt pressured, especially as young and vulnerable new activists, to be particular kinds of sexual beings and made to feel less political simply because a particular sex scene wasn't really their scene.  

That needs to stop.  The revolution will not come on the tidal wave of your next multiple orgasm had with your seven partners on the floor of your communal living space. It will only happen if you have an actual plan for destroying systems of oppression and exploitation.

[dustedddreams]

On April 20, 2015, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU hosted "What's Radical About 'Mixed Race'?". Eschewing an apolitical “celebration” of mixed race, this panel examined the movement’s implications for multiracial coalition and the future of race in the US and Canada, asking: does the multiracial movement challenge—or actually reinforce—the logics of structural racism? Minelle Mahtani critically located how an apolitical and ahistorical Canadian “model multiracial” upholds the multicultural claims of the Canadian settler state. Jared Sexton called to task multiracial activists who leverage a mixed race identity in opposition to those who are “all black, all the time.” A roundtable conversation moderated by Ann Morning (NYU Department of Sociology) followed.

[ucresearch]

Do High Fives Help Sports Teams Win?

Hugs. High fives. Fist bumps. Touch is an essential part of how people communicate with one another.

UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner examined NBA games to see  if there is a relationship between a team’s success and how often they touch.

For more videos, subscribe to Fig. 1 on YouTube

[adeptly-amateurish-blog]

“I’m intersex, I’m queer & I do a lot of work within LGBT communities. Increasingly, I see LGBT being extended to “LGBTI,” and every time I see that acronym, I’m filled with dread. That’s just the tip of the iceberg—increasingly, individuals, groups and organizations within the community are extending the acronym ad infinitum, to “LGBTQQIPA,” or even further.  Today, I want to write a little bit about why that feels so problematic, and ways of approaching identity inclusion in LGBT communities and movements.

First things first: in my experience, when someone bemoans the ever-lengthening “alphabet soup,” it’s usually someone who’s relatively privileged within the community, talking about how it’s “too difficult to keep up with all these letters,” and getting irritated with having to track who our communities and movements are claiming to represent.  This is often combined with a hint of fear that, as our communities and movements expand, their voice and needs will be diluted or deprioritized.  This isn’t that.  This is a way of looking critically at our history, our communities, and our missed opportunities and applying those lessons to our collective future.

the problems with inclusion

Inclusion is a lovely impulse.  Without taking a genuinely inclusive approach, we contribute to the erasure of communities we don’t represent.  And, frankly, when we don’t prioritize multifaceted inclusion, we don’t get to the root of the distorted ways that our society makes sense of sex, gender and sexuality.  Yes, let’s create a movement for any & all of us who exist outside of the sex/gender/sexuality norm!  Come one, come all for the gender justice revolution!  I’m in!

But here’s the thing: when we add a new letter to our collective acronym, we also make ourselves responsible for speaking for that identity/community.  But when we do so, we don’t make ourselves accountable to actually doing that work, much less doing it in a way that’s accountable to those communities.  Here are a few of the challenges of the inclusion approach:

We assume that, because our title is inclusive, our work is inclusive.  When we discuss the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), we almost always use “LGBT” as a way of describing the people it will impact.  Except it won’t actually remedy much for trans people in the military.  Many of us who aren’t trans-identified don’t understand that—and the routine use of the full LGBT acronym keeps us from thinking regularly about who our work impacts.  Better, I would argue, to be clear that policies like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell primarily impact cisgender gay and bi people.

We don’t restructure our priorities, as witnessed by the continued prioritization of primarily cisgender gay issues like repealing DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) over winning federal protections against employment discrimination, which deeply impact a much larger portion of the community, especially those of us who experience transphobia, classism, racism, and life in isolated/rural communities.

We don’t change our leadership structures.  Most boards require major fundraising.  That will likely be a problem for working class queer people, trans people (the majority of whom are un- or underemployed), and LGBT people of color (who are more likely to raise children, and therefore less likely to have disposable income).

We don’t make our work accountable to newly-included communities.  We don’t elevate intersex people into leadership positions.  We don’t set up advisory boards of same gender loving people.  And we don’t intentionally open ourselves up to critiques of our work and programming from the communities we represent.

I’m not saying that we should revert to being a primarily white, class-privileged, cisgender gay & lesbian movement—quite the opposite.  I’m saying that when we expand the movement, we should do so in a thoughtful, deep, reciprocal and accountable way.  And while some of us have figured out how to do that, most of us haven’t.

(Note: this is very much focused on a “we” that’s white cisgender gay people.  That’s not meant to be exclusive, it’s meant to be real about where power is centered in our movements and communities, and who’s elevated to positions to hold it.)

why it keeps happening

With all that, why do we keep seeing these pushes for inclusion?  Because, for those of us who are allies to those newly-included communities, we see the benefits.  Inclusion pacifies guilt.  It allows us to feel as if we’re on the cutting edge of progressive identity politics.  And frankly, it makes us sound like the most progressive person in the room, without requiring us to do anything substantive to represent those communities.  In other words, we can talk the talk without having to walk the walk. 

None of this is bad in and of itself—but it does present problems if we act strictly out of self-interest, and don’t actually listen to the communities we’re claiming to represent.  The point of being an ally isn’t to better yourself or your image—it’s to work to support communities that face a different type of oppression than you.  And that support must exist on those communities’ terms. 

action steps

When inclusion can be so problematic, what can you do?  Here are some options:

Speak for yourself.  Speak from your own experience—don’t try to speak for the needs of other communities if you haven’t been asked or invited to do so.

Include a community when they ask you to.  It’s a basic ally principle: do what you’re asked to do when you’re asked to do it.  Anything short of that is hijacking the priorities and needs of the community you’re trying to support.

[thequeerproletariat-blog]

I agree with much of what this is saying, however, I don’t see it as a critique of the inclusion approach.  Rather, this post represents a good critique of how we too often use the inclusion approach, and how we can improve the inclusion approach.  I don’t think that the problems mentioned here are inherent to an inclusion approach, and I think that we can still go about social justice work using this model… except, with the more comprehensive, sincere attitude toward inclusion recommended by the above post.

[dustedddreams]

An Open Letter to the White Fathers of Black Daughters

Beautifully written. Must read.

I have been drafting this letter since I was ten. I am twenty and tonight is the first night I will write these words outside of me. I don’t know what they will look like here. Honestly, I am scared to see them uncoiled and still damp from the sweaty palms that have enclosed them for a decade. I am so accustomed to holding fistfuls of aching, rambunctious words around you, Dad. More than anything, I wish you would ask me to open my hands, and actually listen to what you see, what I say, what you hear. But that is not how we work, is it? I give you the words you don’t know how to ask for. We know all our scripted prompts for loving cautiously. We are used to trafficking in glass blown conversations. I will not, I cannot, do this with you anymore. I love you too much for this, so listen. Dad, you are a white man. I know this might come as a shock because people do not tell you this too often. You are not approached on the street, in the movies, at the workplace, and ordered to explain your race so strangers can “read” you properly and treat you accordingly. You have both the privilege and the curse of living in the unmarked, white blind spot of the American racial imaginary. If you have enjoyed living there, departing only to return comfortably home to White every night, I’m afraid you have a problem. Me. I am your problem. I am the brown-bodied child with the boisterous curls who colored your mother’s whitewashed scrapbooks and inspired obnoxious inquiries about our relationship and your paternity whenever we were out together.

[neweconomies]

How to Democratize the US Economy: A long-term plan to renovate the American dream begins at the local level and scales up.

By: Gar Alperovitz

Everyone knows the United States faces enormous challenges: unemployment, poverty, global warming, environmental decay—to say nothing of whole cities that have essentially been thrown away. We know the economic system is dominated by powerful corporate institutions. And we know the political system is dominated by those same institutions. Elections occur and major fiscal debates ensue, but most of the problems are only marginally affected (and often in ways that increase the burdens).   The issue is not simply that our situation is worrisome. It is that the nation’s most pressing problems are built into the structure of the system. They are not unique to the current economic slump or the result of partisan bickering, something passing in the night that will go away when we elect forward-looking leaders and pressure them to move in a different direction.

Read More

[dustedddreams]

Five Queers Of Color On What Connects Us To Our Complicated Or Mixed-Race Identities

A teaser of a great article.

I have always gravitated towards “alternative lifestyle” looks. When I got my septum pierced I was worried people might confuse me for one of “those queers” (It seems my fashion choices have always preceded my self-discoveries). One thing I have always wanted is to dye my hair a whacky color or get it all chopped off into a funky ‘do. As I’ve embraced my bisexuality that urge has only grown stronger. But there’s a part of me that has feels a longer standing allegiance to being a biracial woman. In particular, I’ve always felt like I need something to prove to others and myself that I am authentically African-American. Somehow, even as I remind myself that authenticity is an unattainable social construct, I yearn for a cultural heritage that I might recognize in myself when I look in the mirror.

[dustedddreams]

I'd expected to watch something funny but I hadn't expected to find something moving as well. 

[dustedddreams]

Gay Christians choosing celibacy emerge from the shadows

Celibate Christian LGBT people are stepping out into the open for the same reason LGBT people in general are: Society has become so much more accepting, including in religious circles. But among conservative Christians, efforts toward more acceptance have collided with the basic teaching that sex belongs only among married men and women. The celibacy movement helps reconcile those concerns.

However, they are also met with criticism from many quarters, including from other gays and lesbians who say celibacy is both untenable and a denial of equality.

“We’ve been told for so long that there’s something wrong with us,” said Arthur Fitzmaurice, resource director of the Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry. Acceptance in exchange for celibacy “is not sufficient,” he said. “There’s a perception that [LGBT] people who choose celibacy are not living authentic lives.”

The reaction among church leaders themselves has been mixed, with some praising the celibacy movement as a valid way to be both gay and Christian. But others have returned to the central question of how far Christianity can go in embracing homosexuality — even if people abstain from sex.

[clevahgal]

Aziz Ansari Is a Feminist [x]

[dustedddreams]

What a woman. I aspire to be as classy as this one day. Such dignity.

This interview gave me pause to think about who I write for and why it's matters.