inedible roots

[inedibleroots]

San Juan Mayor: It May Be Easy To Disregard Puerto Rico Because We’re A US Colony

"We will no longer be able to hide our poverty and our inequality with palm trees and piña coladas," Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto told HuffPost.

[inedibleroots]

Puerto Rico, Trapped Between Colonialism and Hurricanes · Global Voices

Irma and Maria's passing and aftermath have once again brought to light Puerto Rico’s primordial conundrum: colonialism.

“Now, barely two weeks after Irma’s passing, we’ve just been hit by another category 5 hurricane, María. This just as some household have just got back their electricity supply, and while others are still living in the dark; while the ground is still strewn with fallen trees and light posts waiting to take on second lives as projectiles; while many, both locals and refugees from neighboring Caribbean islands, are still recovering from the loss of their homes, their entire reality; and while crisis and colonialism continue to hold hands, as they do every day.

And so, you’re sitting in your cot with your straw hat on, hundreds of locals scrambling around you with what’s left of their lives stuffed into a bag or a suitcase, wondering why JetBlue dropped you off here and high-tailed it; why the shelter is so understaffed; why the power went even though it hasn’t yet started raining and not a gusts of wind has blown; why CNN wasn’t covering Irma’s passing over Puerto Rico. “I’m here, send over an Embassy representative for me!” you yell in your mind as you stare at the screen of your almost-dead smartphone. Why, you wonder, has life had been so unfair to you, ruining your longed-for vacation in the Island of enchantment.”

[inedibleroots]

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On She Goes - Travel Stories for All Women of Color

We’re On She Goes, a digital travel platform that helps all women of color travel more confidently, more adventurously, and more often.

[inedibleroots]

In Europe’s imperial centuries, argues Festa, encounters with strange peoples and places produced emotions that could threaten the integrity of the colonizing self. One way the latter could be reasserted or restored was by defining interpersonal relations in terms of the asymmetry of sympathy, articulating thereby an antithesis between the colonizing subject of sympathy and on the other the colonized subject of suffering, each side dependent on the other for its identity. Another binary reinforced this structure of feelings: On the one hand, persons belonging to the community having the right to judge, command, and improvise, and on the other hand, persons (differentiated by race, gender, and religion) who are obliged, in varying degree, to submit. These intertwined sentiments and powers, rights, and duties helped to constitute both communities at the same time and to redefine the content and limit of humanity envisioned by each. Sentimentality was therefore not simply an ideological mask for imperial exploitation and violence. It was—and is—an emotional complex shaping relations of domination and subjection: colonial as well as domestic, male as well as female, collective as well as individual.

Talal Asad, paraphrasing Lynn Festa: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/reflections_on_violence_law_and_humanitarianism/

[inedibleroots]

Amy Schumer's 'Snatched' Is Another Lazy Comedy About US Tourists Getting Kidnapped in South America

We take a look at the trailer for Amy Schumer's 'Snatched' and contend that it adds to a growing list of stereotype-ridden comedies set in South America.

[inedibleroots]

For cultures whose expansion and dominance were intimately dependent upon the colonial enterprise, travelling as part of a system of foreign investment by metropolitan powers has largely been a form of culture-collecting aimed at world hegemony. In their critical relation to such a journeying practice, a number of European writers have thus come to see in travelling a socio-historical process of dispossession that leads the contemporary traveller to a real identity crisis… One among some fifty million globe-trotters, the traveller maintains his difference mostly by despising others like himself.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Other than myself/my other self”

[inedibleroots]

Nostalgia traps the things you love in glass jars, letting you appreciate their arrested beauty until they finally die of boredom or starvation. The sought-after object cannot move on from you or depart from the fixed impression that you have imposed upon it. After all, a thing can’t be 'authentic' if it’s allowed the power to change. Robbed of its ability to evolve on its own, the only way such a thing can venture into the future is as an accessory worn by someone who can.

Soleil Ho @soleilho https://bitchmedia.org/article/craving-the-other-0

[thisiseverydayracism]

By Andi Sharavsky | Jan 9, 2014 | Reductress.com

So, you’re going abroad to an underdeveloped country. Good for you! Everyone is already impressed with your bravery and selflessness, but it’s important to make sure your help and goodwill have the most lasting effects – on social media! If Oprah and Angelina have taught us anything, it’s that giving solely for the sake of giving is a missed photo op and a waste of everyone’s time. The following photo tips may not give your host family easier access to clean drinking water, or provide them protection against parasitic worms and merciless warlords, but they will ensure that everyone you know sees that you are basically a living saint.

1. Cradling the child to your bosom.

The classic shot. Instantly invokes images of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that sad dust bowl mom. For added poignancy, stare off into the distance. Suggested caption: Any lyric from “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston.

2. While playing sports with all of the village children.

Women playing sports is already adorable, so this one is a no-brainer. Add a dusty, remote shanty town as a backdrop, and you’re golden. Suggested caption: “Who needs a personal trainer when you have these little cuties to kick your butt? Just kidding, Todd, I’ll be back in a few weeks, get those kettlebells ready!”

3. While wearing traditional native garb.

Really emphasize your newfound reverence for this developing country’s unique culture by incorporating it into your look. Be careful about camera angles though; dashikis do NOT cinch at the waist! Suggested caption: “I let my little host sister give me a makeover, and this is the most naturally beautiful I’ve ever felt in my life!”

4. The Family Portrait.

This quintessential shot of you and your host family (with you crouched down with their children, obviously) will show everyone how fully accepted, appreciated, and adored you are by the very people you came to help. Suggested caption: “They ended up teaching me more than I could ever teach them.” Or any lyric from Wicked’s “For Good.”

The most important thing to remember about your trip is that one person can’t really make a difference in the world, but she CAN look beautiful and benevolent while trying. You will forever cherish the posts you made on your timeline, so invest in a nice camera and get posting for all your family, friends, and vague acquaintances to see! After all, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does its Klout score go up? And if NPR never sends you your tote bag, was it even worth it to donate?

Source: http://reductress.com/cutest-ways-photograph-hugging-third-world-children/

[inedibleroots]

Jesus. Adventures. Africa. Two worlds. One love. Babies. Beauty. Not qualified. Called. 20 years young. It's not about me...but it kind of is.

Too good not to share.

[inedibleroots]

There’s a website from the Netherlands that lets tourists purchase “locals” in Asia, and their logo is actually chinky-eyed! 

Also, they market their company philosophy as wholly concerned with empowering locals. Yet they take 20% of the price paid by tourists.

Cultural commodification meets the “sharing” economy. And the profits continue to be filtered into the same hands.

[thisiseverydayracism]

6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture

Jan 28, 2014 | theonion.com

ST. LOUIS—Calling the experience “completely transformative,” local 22-year-old Angela Fisher told reporters Tuesday that her six-day visit to the rural Malawian village of Neno has completely changed her profile picture on Facebook. “As soon as I walked into that dusty, remote town and the smiling children started coming up to me, I just knew my Facebook profile photo would change forever,” said Fisher, noting that she realized early in her nearly weeklong visit just how narrow and unworldly her previous Facebook profile photos had been. “I don’t think my profile photo will ever be the same, not after the experience of taking such incredible pictures with my arms around those small African children’s shoulders. Honestly, I can’t even imagine going back to my old Facebook photo of my roommate and I at an outdoor concert.” Since returning, Fisher said she has been encouraging every one of her friends to visit Africa, promising that it would change their Facebook profile photos as well.

Source: http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african-village-completely-cha,35083/

[inedibleroots]

I engaged with children selling bracelets on the beach, teaching them yoga instead of avoiding them or buying their wares. I listened when genocide survivors told me their stories with compassion instead of pity. When locals described their lack of education or impoverished upbringing, I accepted my unfair privilege without questioning why I deserved it. Where I once found guilt I then found friends.

“How Traveling in Southeast Asia Changed Me Forever,” aka Reflections of Yet Another White Girl in Southeast Asia Who Has No Idea How Basic She Really Is

In case you missed it: “I accepted my unfair privilege without questioning why I deserved it.” White people accepting unfair privilege is now considered personal growth!

You can’t make this shit up.

The goal is never to confront or change the structures that allow them to personally benefit from exploitation. The goal is always to feel better about it.

if you need to click: http://www.thisamericangirl.com/2014/06/16/traveling-southeast-asia-changed-forever/

[inedibleroots]

While their historical precedent is uncertain, anthropologists can readily be identified on the reservations. Go into any crowd of people. Pick out a tall gaunt white man wearing Bermuda shorts, a World War II Army Air Force flying jacket, an Aus­tralian bush hat, tennis shoes, and packing a large knapsack incorrectly strapped on his back. [...] An anthropologist comes out to Indian reservations to make OBSERVATIONS. During the winter these observations will be­come books by which future anthropologists will be trained, so that they can come out to reservations years from now and verify the observations they have studied. [...] The implications of the anthropologist, if not for all America, should be clear for the Indian. Compilation of useless knowledge ‘for knowledge's sake’ should be utterly rejected by the Indian people. We should not be objects of observation for those who do nothing to help us.

Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

[inedibleroots]

“I asked, How do we negotiate the politics of tourism and travel responsibly? How do we negotiate the politics of who gets to travel, that is, who gets to look and then paint the picture for those who cannot? How do we describe foreign worlds when it could be argued that the imperialist origins of travel taint the very language we use to talk about difference?”

[inedibleroots]

Tourism and U.S. global expansion not only occurred simultaneously, but also shared a common material infrastructure. The commercial airline industry, so vital to the growth of overseas travel, played a key role in fostering international military integration... In the postwar period, private airline companies proved crucial to the development of overseas military bases and the securing of foreign air-transit rights, and U.S. officials encouraged airlines to locate their operations in areas they considered vital to ensuring U.S. security. Developing the means to move Americans around the world easily was both a commercial endeavor and a military necessity.

Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism