Melo Melo @motunriayo - Tumblr Blog

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blackfilm

Think you've got the next Get Out or Us? If so, polish up...

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

yeahsexyweaves

Follow for more styles

www.yeahsexyweaves.tumblr.com

politicalsci

afrodesiacworldwide

gahdamnpunk

This is important!!!

jehovahhthickness

You deserve the worst type of karma if you steal from innocent, hard working people

not-selfconfrontation

the fact that there’s a symbol that specifically means, vulnerable female easily cornered, which probably means they plan to commit sexual assault as well as burglary, is especially disgusting.

onlyblackgirl

Just draw a circle on the X.

n64thstreet

#memories don't live like people doooo

wonderful-language-sounds

Free Online Language Courses

Here is a masterpost of MOOCs (massive open online courses) that are available, archived, or starting soon. I think they will help those that like to learn with a teacher or with videos. You can always check the audit course or no certificate option so that you can learn for free.

American Sign Language

ASL University

Sign Language Structure, Learning, and Change

Arabic

Arabic for Global Exchange (in the drop-down menu)

Intro to Arabic

Madinah Arabic

Moroccan Arabic

Arabe (taught in French)

Catalan

Intro to Catalan Language & Society

Intro to Catalan Sign Language

Chinese

Beginner

Basic Chinese I. II, III, IV , V

Basic Mandarin Chinese I & II

Beginner’s Chinese

Chinese for Beginners

Chinese Characters

Chinese for HSK 1

Chinese for HSK 2

Chinese for HSK 3 I & II

HSK Level 1

Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese for Business

More Chinese for Beginners

Start Talking Mandarin Chinese

UT Gateway to Chinese

Chino Básico (Taught in Spanish)

Intermediate

Chinese Stories

Intermediate Business Chinese

Intermediate Chinese Grammar

Dutch

Introduction to Dutch

English

Online Courses here

Resources Here

Faroese

Faroese Course

Finnish

A Taste of Finnish

Basic Finnish

Finnish for Immigrants

Finnish for Medical Professionals

French

Beginner

AP French Language and Culture

Basic French Skills

Beginner’s French: Food & Drink

Diploma in French

Elementary French I & II

Français Interactif

French in Action

French Language Studies I, II, III

French: Ouverture

Intermediate & Advanced

French: Le Quatorze Juillet

Passe Partout

La Cité des Sciences et de Industrie

Vivre en France - A2

Vivre en France - B1

Frisian

Introduction to Frisian (Taught in English)

Introduction to Frisian (Taught in Dutch)

German

Beginner

Beginner’s German: Food & Drink

Conversational German I, II, III, IV

Deutsch im Blick

Diploma in German

German at Work

Rundblick-Beginner’s German

Intermediate

German: Regionen Traditionen und Geschichte

Landschaftliche Vielfalt

Gwich’in

Introduction to Gwich’in Language

Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew

Know the Hebrew Alphabet

Teach Me Hebrew

Hindi

A Door into Hindi

Business Hindi

Virtual Hindi

Icelandic

Icelandic 1-5

Indonesian

Learn Indonesian

Irish

Introduction to Irish

Irish 101

Irish 102

Italian

Beginner

Beginner’s Italian: Food & Drink

Beginner’s Italian I

Introduction to Italian

Italian for Beginners 1 , 2, 3 , 4 , 5, 6

Intermediate & Advanced

AP Italian Language and Culture

Intermediate Italian I

Advanced Italian I

Letteratura italiana

Japanese

Genki

Japanese JOSHU

Japanese Pronunciation

Sing and Learn Japanese

Tufs JpLang

Kazakh

A1-B2 Kazakh (Taught in Russian)

Korean

Beginner

First Step Korean

How to Study Korean

Introduction to Korean

Learn to Speak Korean

Pathway to Spoken Korean

Intermediate

Intermediate Korean

Nepali

Beginner’s Conversation and Grammar

Norwegian

Introduction to Norwegian

Norwegian on the Web

Portuguese

Curso de Português para Estrangeiros

Pluralidades em Português Brasileiro

Russian

Beginner

Easy Accelerated Learning for Russian

Advanced

Reading Master and Margarita

Russian as an Instrument of Communication

Siberia: Russian for Foreigners

Spanish

Beginner

AP Spanish Language & Culture

Basic Spanish for English Speakers

Beginner’s Spanish: Food & Drink

Introduction to Spanish

Restaurants and Dining Out

Spanish for Beginners 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Spanish Vocabulary

Intermediate

Spanish: Ciudades con Historia

Spanish: Espacios Públicos

Advanced

Corrección, Estilo y Variaciones

Leer a Macondo

Spanish:Con Mis Propias Manos

Spanish: Perspectivas Porteñas

Swedish

Intro to Swedish

Swedish Made Easy 1, 2, & 3

Ukrainian

Read Ukrainian

Ukrainian Language for Beginners

Welsh

Beginner’s Welsh

Discovering Wales

Multiple Languages

Ancient Languages

More Language Learning Resources & Websites!

Last updated: April 1, 2018

dripping-adorableness

darkmelaningirls-deactivated202

How cute is this 😊😇

melaninmoney

😊

thechanelmuse

How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope

The stereotype that African Americans are excessively fond of watermelon emerged for a specific historical reason and served a specific political purpose. The trope came into full force when slaves won their emancipation during the Civil War. Free black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons, and in doing so made the fruit a symbol of their freedom. Southern whites, threatened by blacks’ newfound freedom, responded by making the fruit a symbol of black people’s perceived uncleanliness, laziness, childishness, and unwanted public presence. This racist trope then exploded in American popular culture, becoming so pervasive that its historical origin became obscure. Few Americans in 1900 would’ve guessed the stereotype was less than half a century old.

Not that the raw material for the racist watermelon trope didn’t exist before emancipation. In the early modern European imagination, the typical watermelon-eater was an Italian or Arab peasant. The watermelon, noted a British officer stationed in Egypt in 1801, was “a poor Arab’s feast,” a meager substitute for a proper meal. In the port city of Rosetta he saw the locals eating watermelons “ravenously … as if afraid the passer-by was going to snatch them away,” and watermelon rinds littered the streets. There, the fruit symbolized many of the same qualities as it would in post-emancipation America: uncleanliness, because eating watermelon is so messy. Laziness, because growing watermelons is so easy, and it’s hard to eat watermelon and keep working—it’s a fruit you have to sit down and eat. Childishness, because watermelons are sweet, colorful, and devoid of much nutritional value. And unwanted public presence, because it’s hard to eat a watermelon by yourself. These tropes made their way to America, but the watermelon did not yet have a racial meaning. Americans were just as likely to associate the watermelon with white Kentucky hillbillies or New Hampshire yokels as with black South Carolina slaves.

This may be surprising given how prominent watermelons were in enslaved African Americans’ lives. Slave owners often let their slaves grow and sell their own watermelons, or even let them take a day off during the summer to eat the first watermelon harvest. The slave Israel Campbell would slip a watermelon into the bottom of his cotton basket when he fell short of his daily quota, and then retrieve the melon at the end of the day and eat it. Campbell taught the trick to another slave who was often whipped for not reaching his quota, and soon the trick was widespread. When the year’s cotton fell a few bales short of what the master had figured, it simply remained “a mystery.”

But Southern whites saw their slaves’ enjoyment of watermelon as a sign of their own supposed benevolence. Slaves were usually careful to enjoy watermelon according to the code of behavior established by whites. When an Alabama overseer cut open watermelons for the slaves under his watch, he expected the children to run to get their slice. One boy, Henry Barnes, refused to run, and once he did get his piece he would run off to the slave quarters to eat out of the white people’s sight. His mother would then whip him, he remembered, “fo’ being so stubborn.” The whites wanted Barnes to play the part of the watermelon-craving, juice-dribbling pickaninny. His refusal undermined the tenuous relationship between master and slave.

Emancipation, of course, destroyed that relationship. Black people grew, ate, and sold watermelons during slavery, but now when they did so it was a threat to the racial order. To whites, it seemed now as if blacks were flaunting their newfound freedom, living off their own land, selling watermelons in the market, and—worst of all—enjoying watermelon together in the public square. One white family in Houston was devastated when their nanny Clara left their household shortly after her emancipation in 1865. Henry Evans, a young white boy to whom Clara had likely been a second mother, cried for days after she left. But when he bumped into her on the street one day, he rejected her attempt to make peace. When Clara offered him some watermelon, Henry told her that “he would not eat what free negroes ate.”

Newspapers amplified this association between the watermelon and the free black person. In 1869, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper published perhaps the first caricature of blacks reveling in watermelon. The adjoining article explained, “The Southern negro in no particular more palpably exhibits his epicurean tastes than in his excessive fondness for watermelons. The juvenile freedman is especially intense in his partiality for that refreshing fruit.”

Two years later, a Georgia newspaper reported that a black man had been arrested for poisoning a watermelon with the intent of killing a neighbor. The story was headlined “Negro Kuklux” and equated black-on-black violence with the Ku Klux Klan, asking facetiously whether the Radical Republican congressional subcommittee investigating the Klan would investigate this freedman’s actions. The article began with a scornful depiction of the man on his way to the courthouse: “On Sabbath afternoon we encountered a strapping 15th Amendment bearing an enormous watermelon in his arms en route for the Court-house.” It was as if the freedman’s worst crime was not attempted murder but walking around in public with that ridiculous fruit.

The primary message of the watermelon stereotype was that black people were not ready for freedom. During the 1880 election season, Democrats accused the South Carolina state legislature, which had been majority-black during Reconstruction, of having wasted taxpayers’ money on watermelons for their own refreshment; this fiction even found its way into history textbooks. D. W. Griffith’s white-supremacist epic film The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, included a watermelon feast in its depiction of emancipation, as corrupt northern whites encouraged the former slaves to stop working and enjoy some watermelon instead. In these racist fictions, blacks were no more deserving of freedom than were children.

During his interview with Hot 97, director Ryan Coogler touched on the stereotype of Black people in America eating watermelon and discovering it’s importance in South Africa while making the movie, Black Panther:

“When I was in the Kingdom of Lesotho [a country surrounded by South Africa], I took a little drive up a mountain and a woman was handing out slices of watermelon to the shepherds. The shepherds would take them, wrap them up, and treat them like they were gold or diamonds or something. I was like, ‘What is up with y’all and the watermelon?’ She was like, ‘Oh man! This is the most important food out here. It’s the only food you can eat that’ll fill your stomach up, and give you the hydration and nutrients when you’re out here in the sun.’ And I was like, ‘Yooo, where I’m from, they make fun of us for eating that to the point that we don’t even want to eat it in front of people.’ [She couldn’t understand it.] She was like, ‘Why wouldn’t you want to eat something that’s so important to your culture? How can somebody tell you not to do that?’”

kaijuno

And in a shocking twist, Elon Musk has not kept his word on helping Flint residents afford water filters

kaijuno

‪You know what? I have a lot of followers. If I could get a list of contacts for people who need filters I bet I could wrangle enough donations to pay for them ‬

kaijuno

Okay! I have a plan! Here is the link to the Flint Water Fund by United Way: bit.ly/FlintStrong

It 100% goes towards buying bottled water for residents. The government has cut off aid to us and these charities are all we have.

I do have one request though! On the page provided it asks for your affiliation (if you have one) and if you guys could put ‘kaijuno’ in that box, it will help me know how much money you guys have raised!

Please consider donating if you can 💜

weavemama

I HIGHY AGREE WITH THIS

itsalburton

What rich fucker needs 55 beds and bathrooms to himself or a small family?

likehercoffee-deactivated202008

that makes too much sense so it won’t happen

kindaundead

Hey. I live right down the street from this and theyre looking to turn it into a facility for veterans. Theres unfortunately some backlash from the surrounding community, and its hard to see from the pictures but the building sits next to a neighborhood. Its also across the street from an elementary school.

Some people in the neighborhoods are UPSET that this facility will be offering mental health care for veterans. Theyre upset that mentally ill people are going to be coming and going near a school. Most of this is being voiced on the neighborhood forums so I dont have links for it, apologies.

The nonprofit that is leasing the space for their project still needs donations because the building is vandalized on the inside. Mostly from kids from the surrounding neighborhoods breaking into it. Which I know because I went to school with them. Anyways. Good news, this space is being used to help people who need it. Bad news, people are ableist assholes.

Sources: x x x

theflyingheadb

MAKE DONATIONS HERE

itskyalenotkyle

When she finally single

kinofkimo

OMFG

theafricanemperor

💀💀

bando--grand-scamyon

“ASH IS BLACK?!” Byeee 😂😂😂 @lyricism1898 @mysticboo-bear

odinsblog

wethrowaway111111world-deactiva

luna-drinker

originaldickwhisperer-deactivat

One mo ‘gin.

hundondestiny

this person complimented my resume and cover letter and was impressed with my qualifications but because i’m a student and don’t want to stay in a receptionist position forever (all I said was I would be pursuing law school / grad school after graduation) they don’t want me bc i’d be using the position as a ~stepping stone~ i’m so

tired

and

poor

hundondestiny

i have no income and no prospects of income and i only have $90 to my name with a $42 bill coming on the 18th and a $55 bill due on the 24th and that’s not even counting utilities which i don’t even know how much those are gonna be since we have to split them as a house im just so stressed and tired and depressed there’s literally nothing i can do but continue to apply and ask people if they have any openings and it sjust seems so pointless

hundondestiny

hey friends this wasn’t a donation post but if you want to send me money it’d be appreciated bc idk what else to do at this point https://cash.me/$hundondestiny

fantasmicallyfunsized

I did a thing…am I funny yet LOL

kyliaquilor-archive

If your language lost, it should die with dignity, not be put on artificial life-support because ‘reasons’

domhnall-na-feannaig

#Sorry but I have no sympathy for that fight#let the dead languages be dead#grumping#controversial opinions#because people always get annoyed with me when I say this#but Gaelic (for example) shouldn’t still exist

———–

Gaelic hasnt been lost. It’s never died or been brought back. There’s an unbroken line of native speakers going back to the beginning of the language. That doesn’t seem like a ‘lost’ language to me. Furthermore I’m not sure what ‘artificial life-support’ means in this context. Gaelic is given funding for schools because there’s still native speakers of the language. It’s no more artificial than money being given to schools for English language lessons.

domhnall-na-feannaig

If anything is ‘artificial’ its the imposition of a foreign language (English) into a Gaelic majority zone and native speakers having to fight for decades to be able to be taught in their own language. Native speakers being forced to learn English to exist within their own regions because a central government would not allow services to be given in a people’s own language.

But then the clock only goes back so far with people who wish that minority languages would just die. There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?

calystarose

“There’s nothing artificial about shooting someone but suddenly it becomes an ‘artificial’ act to maybe phone an ambulance?” — THIS RIGHT HERE

fenrir-kin

Also just gonna point out here:

In the UK, the languages Gaelige, Gaelic, Cymraeg and Kernewek (that’s Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish respectively) didn’t just “die out.” There was a concerted effort by the English to kill them off.

For example, in Wales, if a child was heard speaking Welsh in a classroom, they’d be given a “Welsh Not”, a wooden plaque engraved with “WN” to hang around their neck. They’d pass it onto the next child heard speaking Welsh, and whoever had the Welsh Not at the end of the day was punished - usually with a beating.

Kernewek was revived after a long hard struggle by the Cornish folk, and is now being taught again, but a lot about it has been lost because everyone who grew up speaking it has died.

And languages are never revived “just because.” The language of a place can offer so much insight into its history, so if you’re content to let a language die then you’re content to let history die.

People talk about “dead” languages as if they dwindle away gradually, naturally coming to an end and evolving into something else, but that’s rarely the case. Languages like Cymraeg and Gaelige and especially Kernewek didn’t have the chance to die with dignity, they were literally beaten out of my parents and grandparents.

Is it any wonder every other country hate the English? We invade their country, steal their history, claim pieces of their history as ours or flat out re-write it, and kill every part of their culture that we can.

It’s a miracle that any of the Celtic languages survived, so even if you don’t see the point in keeping them alive, the actual natives of each country we’ve fucked over are clinging onto what heritage they have left through the only thing they can: their language.

inali

Hey OP, póg mo thóin!

katjohnadams

*snerk* xD

prismatic-bell

I would like to point all of these “just let it die” assholes directly at Hebrew.

The language was effectively dead. It had been murdered and forced-assimilated away.

But there was this dude named Ben Yehuda.

And he said “no.”

“The language of my people for four thousand years or more,” he said, “should not stop existing because of a bunch of assholes.” (Okay, this is a dramatic retelling. He probably didn’t actually say assholes.)

So he started an official movement to recreate Hebrew as closely as possible to how it had been spoken about a thousand years prior.

Today, ancient Hebrew is spoken by millions of Jews around the world weekly in our prayers and Torah readings, and modern Hebrew is the official language of eight and a half million people–many of them having been born speaking it as a first language. Many people in the first group also speak at least some modern Hebrew–and it’s possible you do, too! A lot of loan words from Hebrew and Yiddish have made their way into English (like klutz, mensch, and kibitz).

That’s hardly “on life support.” Hebrew is growing, living, and thriving because of the Enlightenment efforts of the 1800s. The same COULD be done for languages like Welsh, Navajo, and Basque if the larger powers that be said “this is important” rather than forcing a giant bastion of culture–the language in which a people lived, loved, thought, told stories, and explained their world–to die.

belladonnalesbica

there is a distinct difference between language that has died because it stopped meeting the needs of the people using it and language that has been deliberately killed by oppressors

mysteriouspercentage

I remember reading a linguist’s thoughts on this a while back. They noted that languages are not only an important cultural heritage, but also an important historical artifact that offers a look into the unique perspective of a culture. The things that we name and how we name them reflect our values and priorities. For example, Inuktitut is said to have several different words for snow that categorize them by various metrics. This reflects a need for communication regarding what the snow was like, which naturally would be important to a people who deal with snow on a near constant basis. There are nine different ways to say “you’re welcome” in Native Hawaiian, each responding to a different level of gratitude. You don’t respond the same way to “thanks for giving me a donut” as you do to “thanks for saving my life.” This reflects a culture of accountability and honor.

The study and preservation of indigenous languages worldwide is vital to the enrichment of our global culture. You don’t have to be fluent in multiple languages to be able to understand the perspective that is offered by nurturing this tradition. Our ability to communicate is one of our greatest gifts - what a waste it would be to throw that away simply because providing institutions of cultural heritage is too inconvenient.

bemusedlybespectacled

korrasera

I just want to emphasize the cultural component here. Languages die off like this due to people trying to wipe out that culture. Take a look at the Hague’s definition of genocide and see how it talks about trying to destroy that culture through forced assimilation, population control, and theft of children. Language destruction goes hand in hand with all of that.

When you stop to think about it, when do you hear of a language people just stopped speaking? When is it not associated with form of genocide?

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