#thinking and drinking

[charnel-grounds]

© Robin Isely

[the-blind-assassin-12]

.

It’s Saturday night.

I’ve had a few adult beverages because:

Boredom

Emotions

And what can only be described as a general feeling of : 🙃🔪🤘🏻

So if you have any questions or want to talk about things or want to know one of my millions of HCs or literally anything at all my ask box is so fucking open right now.

[playfultrickster]

Deep in my cups

Most days are good, most days are fine

But it’s the deep of the night when I cross that line

Into the head space I avoid in the sunlight

It’s only then I can’t seem to get my head right

So I turn to drink to silence my brain

And sometimes still I just can’t refrain

From looking up your name in my phone

Typing a message, just a simple hello

Before I come to my senses and hit erase

But what if I didn’t, what would take place

Maybe one day I’ll have the courage or luck

For now though, I’ll stay deep in my cups

[whatsonyourplaylist]

Pryde- Thinking and Drinking

Submit a song @http://whatsonyourplaylist.tumblr.com/submit

[dagen-da-dragon]

[dd-the-man-without-fear]

Thinking and Drinking Ep.1: Our Dream Tarantino Movie

[ninjaruski]

I woke up this morning...

I sat down at my computer and began to think.

My biggest problem with Africana Philosophy and Queer Theory is that it repeats the missteps of Feminism before it: the lack of intersectionality. I'm not speaking about it in the sense that Feminism had to deal with it, as in silencing the voices of people of color, but the silencing of the diversity within their own ranks.

In Queer Theory, they speak of "bisexual erasure" and whether or not "questioning" is a legitimate way to identify: these issues I, argue, emerge from the lack of intersectionalty within the LBGTQ community. Culturally, this might be an example of the internalization of binary thinking (you're either a lesbian or gay or straight, but not both) and ignorance of a core tenant of Queer Theory: gender fluidity.

At ground-level, I'm stating that most Queer Theory discourse has its aim the discussion of the L and G and T issues, as opposed to the B and Q issues, which has contributed to a paucity of material on those people who should be a part of the conversation yet have their voices silenced for a variety of reasons.

Intersectionality in Africana Philosophy is a whole other ball game and I believe infinitely more complicated due to the history behind it. Basically, what I'm talking about is the privileging of a certain kind of African-American experience which is taken as the dominant discourse on ALL African-American experiences.

I'm sure if we think about it, we can pick out some aspects of this dominant discourse: it is largely one of a dark(er) skinned individual who, in their day to day, routinely experiences micro and macro-aggressions based on the way in which they can be said to "perform" their race, If I'm going to borrow Richard Majors' way of speaking.

That being said, it has been my experience that trying to talk about the experiences of lighter-skinned African-Americans tends to end up with a derailing based on privilege: because of the historically preferential treatment granted to the lighter-skinned African-Americans, they carry more privilege and have an easier time moving about spaces dominated by whiteness.Their performance is often seen as "whiter" than other African-Americans of darker skin, and they are less likely to experience the same kinds of micro and macro-aggressions that other African-Americans do.

Now, acknowledging this fact should not lead to the inevitable erasure of the experiences of these African-Americans, especially if we're to accept that institutionalized racism positions all brown bodies into oppression by virtue of being brown. The statement shouldn't be "these brown bodies suffer less than me, so their voices shouldn't count as much," but "how do these brown bodies suffer differently than me while still being called Black?"

It's as if being the only brown face in a sea of whiteness, and then being told "Oh, you're not like those other black people," doesn't take it's own kind of toll on you, especially when other black and brown bodies come to see you as being intrinsically more valuable because whiteness says so.

Not to further harp on a point, if we take it to be that different Black bodies, despite the amount of privilege they possess, suffer differently, then we can start addressing things like colorism, which I am told has its roots in White imperialism. Africana-Philosophy can start casting off notions of a hierarchy of experience, which itself is rooted in white imperialism and start valuing the experiences of the diversity of African-American bodies.

Coming back to the central point: it is my argument that these two branches of thought need to be more intersectional within their own boundaries, not in the sense of letting voices of the oppressor into the discourse, but looking at the way in which they are reproducing oppressive structures and silencing, muffling, or disregarding the voices of the members of their community that do not fit into the categories or under the umbrella narrative constructed by the dominant conversation.

I might add the following: we're to believe that "racism = power + prejudice," and we're to believe Foucault when he says that oppressive power emerges in the crystallization of certain kinds of relations, and further that prejudice is any number of unfounded beliefs about a certain group of people, couldn't a form of racism emerge in any crystallization of a relation that has prejudice at its core?

Or are we to disregard Foucault on power, and everyone on prejudice?

[lifeserial]

In the morning, I fill the coffeepot with water. I fill it up to the six printed on the glass. The water sloshes as I pour it out, out and into the back of our simple coffeemaker. This makes about two mugs of coffee and leaves about another mug in the coffeepot. Sometimes I waste that last mug. Sometimes it's still sitting in the coffeepot the following morning, dark and stale and unloved. Other times, lately, I enjoy that final mug in the early evening. The sun begins to set at a quarter to five. The falling light brushes passed our windows, quietly settling against the white eastern wall of our home. I heat the last mug in the microwave then. I warm it, wondering if the microwave's invisible energy could turn my black Costa Rican beverage into something radioactive, wondering and not caring.