Tiki Culture=Cultural Appropriation of the Worst kind.
Do you know who Native Hawaiians are? They are the poorest, most worse off ethnic group in the United States because when the U.S. stole, yes, STOLE the Hawaiian islands (Hawaii was a sovereign independent country) they were populated by Hawaiian Natives who were all killed off and/or stripped of their land, culture and language. Only in the 70’s were they able to reclaim whatever bits of their culture they managed to retain in secret but not before AMERICANS reduced it to Tiki culture and kitchsy exotic artifacts.
To this day these people are suffering with no end in sight and NO help at all. Most are homeless! Everything was taken from them and along came WWII and all the racist douchefucks decided to make Native Hawaiians sacred Tiki Gods just cute little souvenir relics. They created 34058948756 Hawaiian pin ups of which all were white women.
And now Pin Up culture continues to usurp Native Hawaiian dress, Gods and general aesthetics shamelessly. Grass skirts, leis, Hula, Tiki Gods, their bright floral prints, etc. They have been reduced to just that….As if they arent real, valuable, horribly oppressed people with a rich language, culture and customs. Its a slap in the face from the same careless white people who didnt give a fuck about them and left them dying and on the streets without anything.
Everywhere you look Asians are claiming to be “Hawaiian” and everytime you look up a photo of Hawaiian you are liable to find nothing but tan asian people and not one single Native Hawaiian. Basically asians immigrants to Hawaii have also appropriated Hawaiian culture and identities and are now even perpetrating as something they arent and further obfuscating Hawaiians plight.
Everytime some douchefuck with no Native Hawaiian ancestry (or 1/16th of it) who happened to be born in Hawaii insists on being called Hawaiian it is SPIT in the face of REAL Native Hawaiians. Hawaiian is an ethnicity, a nationality, a culture. Either you are born one or you arent. Being born in a Sioux reservation wouldnt make you Sioux by birth, either.
And no Samoans arent the Natives of Hawaii! Native Hawaiians are Hawaiis natives. Samoans are the natives of *gasp* SAMOA!!!!! Right race, wrong nationality. Hawaiians are polynesian and do look alot like Samoans, the Maori and Tahitians, who, not surprisingly have also been raped and pillaged by white colonizers. However they DONT look at all asian unless they are mixed with them. Get a fuckin clue, people.
Some are still even ignant enough to try to argue Native Hawaiians dont exist because thats like calling yourself Californian. Yeah, if California was a sovereign country before maybe there’d be a comparison, assholes. How do you just erase an entire ethnic group like that?
There are less than 3000 Native Hawaiians left at this point. I am sure in just one generation when they are finally dead and gone the U.S. will suddenly recognize them and give them useless scraps.
Its the plan.
Don’t be an ignant douchefuck. RESPECT people and their culture. Read. And not just what seems convenient to you, either. :)
For all the white people living there who cry about how mean all 3000 of those people are oppressing them.
(Source: bad-dominicana)
A letter written in 06, still relevant every. single. day.
“When confronted, rather than listen openly, you refute any perception of bigotry in your ultra-pure movement or that maybe, just maybe, people of color might have credible/valid points, that even minuscule errors might have been made and you have some work to do. Our effort to candidly communicate issues we see is returned with the posture that you and your movement are above growing, learning or reproach. White privilege has trained you white folks since the spoon that you are an authority, THE authority. You know what’s best and right, whether you say it openly or not, because you’re white.”
The above emphasis in that quote is mine, and is so true after going back and reading some of the responses to what I’ve been posting concerning Ryan Cassata. It’s either some neo-hippie bullshit of “Can we just forget about all this and learn to love each other?” or some more white folks in denial who think that just because he is a trans* activist he can do no wrong in other areas.
(via bad-dominicana)
Racism 101: Are you a Racist?: “The Good Ole Days” and Other Dreams We Don’t Share
There are things that white people talk about that few PoC talk about. “The Good Ole Days” is one of them. For you, the good ole days are when politics were clean, prices were cheap, family meant something and everybody was happy. For PoC, today is the best we can hope for and to be honest, today isn’t all that great.
You can dream about traveling back in time. Why the hell would I want to go back in time? If given the chance, which era would I pick? Go ahead, I’ll wait…
You see, you can say things like “I love the clothes of the 60’s, I wish I was alive then.” That is a real thing that some of you think about. That is a luxury. That is part of “White Privilege.” That is something that white people don’t have any reason to consider. It’s your normal everyday. Sure, you can find PoC that say things like that but they have to have a certain amount of tunnel vision to have that fantasy.
Not only is it something that you don’t have to consider, it is often something you blow off when a PoC points out why it would be a problem for them. This is also “White Privilege.” It doesn’t affect you. Therefore, it doesn’t concern you. You are able to belittle it. Make it “Not a big deal.”
The thing you should know is that the thing you are making “Not a big deal” is racism. Flat out racism. I understand why it’s not a big deal for you. Why are you CHOOSING not to understand why it is a problem for me?
^^ THIS. Especially when they say it in a class so nonchalantly: “I wish we could go back in time”
…
it’s like what time are you talking about? The time period where if I went back I would be enslaved…killed…probably dead, or Jim Crow?
Cis straight white people are trying to shut Arkh down.
Because they’re singling out people for being cis, white and straight. Singling out people for these things is meant to be everything this is standing against, is it not? You don’t mention these things for no reason. They can’t deliberately bring attention to these things and claim that they are irrelevant.
No. They’re singling people out for trying to shut down Arkh, and describing them using (some of) the vectors of privilege those specific people possess. Those things aren’t irrelevant, they’re incredibly relevant. But it’s not a generalization and unless you ARE the straight cis white guy who’s trying to shut down Arkh then it clearly has nothing to do with you.
If your name is Bob and I said, “My friend Bob makes annoying sounds when he eats.”, would you assume I’m “singling out people named Bob”? No. “Bob” is a relevant identifier in my story but it’s clearly not about you.
We live in a world that thinks nothing of using minority status as a descriptor for individuals (“This gay guy in my class…”),(“A couple of Black women…”),etc. The fact that you feel “singled out” by a sentence that clearly in no way applies to you is a function of your privilege. Using such a descriptor is not always making a generalization, but if you insist that no one can ever talk about other people in terms of identities that you happen to share, you’re making sure generalizations can only ever be made about other people and not you.
A+ response. Reblogging for context- and for anyone following who needs white privilege explained for the millionth time.
(Source: thearkhproject)
Dear white people,
Can you please stop telling PoC what we can and cannot be offended by? You sound like pretentious assholes and I’m sick and tired of explaining why you’re wrong. Thanks in advance.
— anoldladyonfire commenting on the Jane Elliott “Angry Eye” video. link to post/thread; includes more commentary & an animated GIF [WARNING for racism] (via numol)Yes. It’s a classic accountability dodge: Everybody hurts, but no one’s doing the hurting.
If you can see that fallacy in HS’s writing, if you can hear it in an abuser’s retelling of abuse they themselves perpetrated, if you can spot it in a preference for passive voice versus active, and so on? You have no excuse for not being able to see it in racism. Racism IS abuse.
That’s why Jane Elliott refusing to let the white woman apologize for “racism in this country” is so important. I don’t care how MEAN you think it is; that was absolutely necessary for her to do. She had to put a stop to the accountability dodge—“racism in this country,” that gosh, nobody knows how it got there and nobody nowadays perpetuates? No.
(Source: eshusplayground, via theoceanandthesky)
in response to, “how can white people fight racism?”
Why do White people always ask POCs stuff like this? I just spent 30 minutes Googling “white allies” to find resources. Why the hell did I have to do that? Why does it never occur to White people to do that? Why is the onus always on POCs to make it easy for White people to learn to be less racist? Why do we always have to do the heavy lifting? Why is the footwork always left to us? Why are we always asking the hard questions? Why do we have to have it all figured out? Why is the burden always on us to go out of our way to make the world less racist? There is no one-size-fits-all approach to undoing racism. There is no simple list of Do’s and Don’ts to apply to anti-racist efforts. There is no safe way to undermine White privilege. Each POC will give one or more very different answers because - surprise, surprise! - we’re different! Our experiences of racism are different for a variety of psychological, social, economic, and political reasons. What I would suggest is that, instead of asking random POCs what to do about racism, you figure out how racism operates in your own life and how it affects the POCs you interact with, then work from there.
from here.
(via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)
White people’s number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. We don’t have to learn about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.—
Jane Elliott
AKA Queen and Goddess of All
(via vogueflo)
the truth…which is displayed every day on tumblr and in real life
(via super-eklectic1)
If you get a chance, watch a few videos of her workshops. She does NOT care about White folks’ fee fees. She does NOT position herself as the expert (as a matter of fact, she talks directly TO people of color about their experiences with racism a great deal and assumes *gasp!* that we know what the fuck we’re talking about).
(via eshusplayground)
Most definitely looking up her workshops when I get the chance….
(via sourcedumal)
The Angry Eye (part 1, part 2)
WARNING: Jane Elliott gives no fucks about White Women’s Tears. None.
(via eshusplayground)
(via karnythia)
The participants – all white – watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.
Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen…
The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.
(Source: darkjez)
I cannot possibly verbally (or in any other form) properly explain to you how very very tired I am of whiteness.
Of being able to go the the movies and see full, 2 and a half hour features of nothing but white people. (Not to mention if someone makes a movie with a good amount of black people, suddenly its a niche film just for blacks, but white movies are for all, ya’ll!)
Its like we worship them on the daily. On our computer screens, our TV screens, our movie screens. With our hair, with our learned capitalism, our jesus-love. Worship worship worship.
Do any of them even KNOW that they are not the world’s majority?
When you are not, at all, the world’s majority of the population, yet you dominate in such a way that it is impossible to live in any “developed” part of the world without being effected by beauty standards that adhere to your people, enjoy entertainment that is so heavily populated by your people, when you and your white skin have become the norm for us all, when you can walk through the financial district of NYC amongst $4000/mo. studio apartments, all rented by people that look like you, with doormen/maids/homeless folk that look like me, how do you NOT see your privilege?
How does that bootstrap/”we worked hard”/”we gave you your rights” drivel really cloud the vision so successfully? What, you think brown/black skin folks are inherently ALL lazy? Let’s think about this. I mean look around, what much is different between now and the technical slave state we were in not that long ago?
What really is different? I’m still serving your pleasure, smiling in your face, working overtime constantly just for the bare minimum while you lavish about. Just to be able to afford a not-so-sturdy roof over my head and the cheapest food I can find. Really. The amount you are handed is just infuriating. How do you not see?
How did we come to praise and aspire to be like the people who have and still are oppressed/oppressing us? We want to be billionaires so freaking bad? What? No. Snap out of it. That’s how we got here in the first place.
I don’t want a white mask. I don’t want a perm. I don’t want to be a capitalist. I do not want to be you, I want to end you. I want to live. I want people who look like me to be able to live to. To eat. Not to die working just to live, that is ass backwards.
I’m so tired of ya’ll.
When little Black girls are talking about getting nose jobs to look more Eurocentric, you know it’s time for a real change.
I bolded the parts that are especially inherent to today’s society.
now let’s see how many people get pissed because they don’t understand what you mean by whiteness or what you meant at all and how many say you’re “generalizing” *sits back in my seat*
(via ladyatheist)
The Wage Gap and White Privilege
I’m very tired of hearing that women only make 77 cents on the male’s dollar. It’s not a correct statistic. It should read: White women only make 77 cents on the white man’s dollar.
That’s the real statistic.
Not all women are white. WOMEN don’t make 77 cents on the dollar, WHITE WOMEN do.
It’s important to remember.
Because every time we repeat that 77 number with no mention of race, we are erasing all women who are not white.
Black women make 69 cents on the white man’s dollar.
Hispanic women make 59 cents on the white man’s dollar.
Those women matter. Those women are women.
Women who should be included in feminism, who should be included in our movement.
So don’t erase them.
I imagine this gap is every more extreme for trans women, fat women, disabled women, or women with mental health issues.
(via youarenotyou-deactivated2012022)
Next time someone (white) calls something ghetto, I’m going to ask them, “Do you mean resourceful? Clever? Creative?” Because if you live in the ghetto, those are all things you have to be to overcome your situation. If you don’t have money to do things the easy way, you have to think outside of the box.
uh huh uh huh.
(Source: neverwillstop, via bad-dominicana)
All of you on Twitter
Racialicious is live tweeting the Q&A with Russell Means about the Lakotah Nation, Thanksgiving and decolonization. The Q&A is also live at Al Jazeera’s stream.
From one of the very recent tweets:
Lakotah men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.
Oh look. White privilege.
And this site doesn’t even mince words about how it’s a rice paddy hat! And this one even says it ‘sure looks funny’ in the description! Asians and their funny clothes, am I right? And the reviews have gold like someone calling the hat ‘clearly kind of crazy looking’ and someone talking about how they get nicknamed ‘rice merchant’ when they wear it, and isn’t that such a great conversation starter? It’s not as if white people haven’t used the image of that perfectly good and practical hat to mock the fuck out of Asians for ages.
But seriously, white hipsters — you look like complete tools when you wear them, not ‘worldly’, and especially so when you’re wearing them in the city as some sort of ‘I’m so multicultural’ fashion statement. And you look like even more of a jackass if it’s supposed to be ‘funny’ in a ‘Haha, I look like one of those backwards Asians, and I’m going to ironically joke about how they would call this a “lice paddy hat”, but I’m totally not racist’ way.
Also, you know you can get them in Chinatown (not American Apparel) for less than a dollar each or thereabouts, right? You could probably get 50 of those things for the price you pay for one, and the straw version will do the exact same shit as your fancy ‘cell foam construction’ hat. Look who’s laughing now!
You know what’s also true is that it’s not just white hipsters who do this, am I right? POCs aren’t immune from shitting on each other. Just wanted to point that out in addition.
I have been thinking a long time about how to reply to this bullshit of a whitesplaining and derailing post, and I am still shaking with rage right now even hours later. And I don’t care anymore if you’re going to get upset about being called out your racism and white privilege, and I am not going to educate you, because I am done with you and I am finally going to say what I’ve wanted to say for ages. This is the last fucking straw in a long string of racist shit you have pulled, and I am not biting my tongue because it hurts your feelings. You should have thought about that before you went and hurt me when I was already hurting from racism.
You come into what was a deeply personal post, despite my sarcasm, that I wrote after being hurt by racism that is perpetuated by white people both online and IRL, and you, a white person, have the fucking nerve to derail what I, a POC, wrote to deflect the focus away from racist white people — and as a supposed social justice activist who is anti-racist, you should damn well know who has power and privilege when it come to race — and make it all about white people’s feelings and downplay the responsibility they hold in perpetuating this shit.
And then you have even more fucking nerve to patronisingly tell me, a POC whom you know to be deeply into anti-racism, all about intra-POC racism and prejudice — which is ultimately rooted in white supremacy and how it’s internalised — as if you think I’m too ignorant as a POC to be aware that it exists and I need some educated white liberal to lecture me about it. And you use intra-POC racism to DOWNPLAY THE RACISM PERPETUATED BY WHITE PEOPLE and act as if POC ARE THE REAL PROBLEM. You don’t know shit about intra-POC racism, or you’d know it doesn’t hold the same power as racism perpetuated by white people, and you’d also know that pitting POC against each other to deflect attention away from white supremacy is racist. You, a white person, also do not get to tell me, a POC, how I should feel about other POC being prejudiced against me. Stop policing POC and forcing yourself into our discussions when you should shut up, listen, and learn instead — that shit does NOT make you a good white ally, it makes you an asshole.
I fucking bit my tongue when I spoke up about my right to be angry about racist portrayals of POC written by white people and you said I had a point, but that I need to calm down because it would upset you and other white people, and that is was my responsibility to educate them when that shit happens. I fucking bit my tongue when you had the gall to compare white South Africans to African-Americans and pull a fucking fallacious flip there regarding privilege and racism. I fucking bit my tongue when you lectured an Asian POC about an anti-Asian slur she chose to reclaim. I fucking bit my tongue when I told you that you had no right to police Black people on their use of the N-word, and you just didn’t care because your feelings as a white person were most important of all.
You talk a good game about how white people need to check their privilege and listen to POC, but then you go off and do shit like this where a POC wrote personally about racism, and instead of calling out the white racists, you fucking defend them and turn on POC instead. FUCK YOU. You are NOT a white ally, and you don’t know shit about anti-racism. Get the FUCK out of my life. Go cry to your friends about how dare I call you racist when you can’t be racist as a liberal, feminist, and anarchist who knows racism is wrong, even though YOU were the one who shit your white privilege all over me and other POC when I was already hurting from racism. You need to learn that being a white ally and anti-racist means having to confront your own mistakes and own up to them, not just tittering at other white people being racist — and until you do that, I want nothing to do with you ever again.
WOW you have the patience of like, GOD, hon. half of this shit woulda had this bitch sent off to the corner in a minnit
Seriously I applaud the OP’s restraint. I would have eaten a face after reading that derailing bullshit.