(Source: nadiaxx, via wretchedoftheearth)
I once argued with a white dude about why ‘people of color’ was better than ‘colored people.’ Short answer: BECAUSE WE SAID SO.
(Source: modernmonkeys, via wretchedoftheearth)
NYPD Data Proves White People Are More Likely To Possess Drugs Or A Weapon Than Racial Minorities When Stopped, Yet 84% of Stop & Frisk Victims Are Black/Latino
During the just-concluded trial on the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, the city argued that officers’ disproportionate targeting of black and Latino New Yorkers was not due to racial profiling but because each stopped individual was doing something suspicious at the time. The data, however, tells a different story: weapons and drugs were more often found on white New Yorkers during stops than on minorities, according to the Public Advocate’s analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 statistics.
White New Yorkers make up a small minority of stop-and-frisks, which were 84 percent black and Latino residents. Despite this much higher number of minorities deemed suspicious by police, the likelihood that stopping an African American would find a weapon was half the likelihood of finding one on a white person.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.
It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime. Considering one officer’s testimony that superiors explicitly directed him to target young black men, minorities are judged by a much more flexible definition of “reasonable suspicion.”
In general, stop-and-frisk has proven to be remarkably ineffective; nearly 89 percent of all stops result in no charges. The city has also had to settle a surging number of civil rights lawsuits against police to the tune of $22 million in one year.
(via notyrbabe)
(Source: forbesdaenerys, via marvelous-merbutler)
(Source: futurebatgirl, via sleeplessinnewcastle)
Fat Body Politics: Thin Privilege vs. "Thin Shaming"
Thin privilege exists in America and many Western nations. Even in places where this may seem questionable, Eurocentric beauty and Americanized notions of beauty are broadcasted into other places and presented as superior.
I got somewhat pissed off about thin people playing doctor earlier on Twitter and tweeted this:
Gotta love these thin ppl who aren’t physicians, eating shit, fucking raw, smoking, drinking then discussing health based on weight.
The assumption that a person is hardworking, healthy, and responsible accompanies thinness. People assume that a person that is considered “fat” is also lazy and not a good employee. Employers are discriminatory to people who aren’t thin in ways that can mimic employment discrimination for race, gender and sexuality (and it compounds with intersectionality). People do not go into “physician mode” around thin people just by looking at them. Imagine how ridiculous two thin people would look if one immediately started discussing the others’ health without knowing them? Now change one of those people to a larger person and most people would have no problem with the discussion. Often thin people act as if they have the right to discuss others’ weight and mask their bigotry as “concern.” This becomes especially ignorant in cases where the person they are speaking of has no relationship to them and they, as usual, are not physicians. (Not that even trained physicians are automatically “neutral” in how they view, react to and treat their patients who are not thin. They too live in this kyriarchal society that attaches stigma to heavier weight. Even science is not “neutral.” It’s a popular myth though.)
Thinness is immediately associated with beauty (and femininity). Even if a woman is devalued for another reason (i.e. race), the fact that she is thin or has a smallish frame and is curvy (as curviness seems to be required for women of colour—in relation to the hypersexualization that we face, though it differs by race) is often considered more beautiful than someone who is considered “fat” or “large” or “obese.” Thin men can be disrespected individually, and deemed less masculine (as patriarchy and sexism intersect) for not having muscles, but there is no oppression that thin men collectively face because of thinness alone. In fact, coupled with height, thinner and taller men tend to earn more than shorter and heavier men.
Among some Black people, I have heard the term “thin shaming.” This has a long history because most Black women exist outside the parameters of Eurocentric beauty myths to start with and our own notions of intraracial aesthetic exist—ones definitely impacted by Eurocentric beauty, with some divergence.
In my experience, being too thin and developing breasts/hips later than other Black girls made some Black girls pick on me in 5th-7th grade. And though it hurt my feelings, these same girls also picked on any Black girl deemed “fat.” These curvier girls who began to physically mature around age 9-12 became symbols of beauty for other Black girls (and unfortunately, the history of misogynoir plays a role here as these Black girls were already intraracially and interracially hypersexualized because their physical appearance [despite lack of adult cognitive ability yet] was interpreted as “sexual readiness,” so it wasn’t just other Black girls who wanted to look like them that created this attention; it was often much older Black men adding a different element of “attention”) especially if other factors were at play, i.e. light skin, less coarse/long hair etc.; all facets of Eurocentric beauty, though still not deemed “beautiful” when they are compared to White girls.
However, I remember that colorism’s manifestation on complexion and hair were what stressed me most, not being mocked for being thin. Then of course, there’s the teasing that some Black men and Black women endure when they are deemed too thin and are assumed to not be eating well. (Obviously the history of poverty and having enough food is a factor as well, not just aesthetics in this case.) Older people, primarily the women in Black families joke about feeding them more, or question if they are starving when away at college, and similar jokes. Thus, the idea that thinness is always praised is not completely true. However, the lack of individual praise in certain instances is not the same thing as the systematic oppression of thin people.
The notion that teasing for thinness is oppression is a false notion. There is no equal oppression of thin people as there is for people who are considered fat or obese, thus creating thin privilege in the first place. If critically thinking people understand that there is no “reverse racism,” “heterophobia,” “misandry” and other made up systems of oppression that are in fact oppressed people individually responding to oppression and those with privilege having a fit about this response, why is it so hard to understand that thin shaming is not the same as the oppression of people considered “fat” or “obese” that affords these thin people thin privilege in the first place? Ah but…privilege tends to obscure itself from its possessor.
The fact that I can write this with the knowledge that I won’t be reduced to being called a “hater” or “bitter” or “secretly ashamed of my weight” is evidence of my own thin privilege. It’s like a White person writing an essay about race. No one questions her/his motivations as solely personal (as if that is bad) and thereby suspect. I have people check me on my thin privilege all of the time, and I appreciate it. For example, I wrote about Michelle Obama’s book American Grown, and one of the rebloggers added even more nuance to the conversation that I couldn’t see because of thin privilege. Another person asked me about adding more photographs of thick and fat Black women to my blog since I share images of beautiful Black women here, to reinforce what a Google search and the media at large neglects. I was glad to be called out and I am working on making my blog more diverse as Black women as a group are incredibly diverse.
As a Black woman, no, I don’t have White privilege, male privilege, class privilege, light skin privilege, passing privilege, or theist privilege. However, I do have cis privilege, heterosexual privilege, educational privilege (which partially ties into class privilege, but I do not have that socioeconomically) and thin privilege. I am not going to start whining about 5th grade girls being mean to me for being thin when I know damn well that no one will consider me unhealthy, lazy, stupid, or ignorant solely because of my weight. I know that weight alone, without considering intersectional parameters, will not hold me back from anything. I know that more positive assumptions are made about me versus Black women who aren’t thin.
To be truly progressive, Black women who openly discuss the privileges that we do not have (and the severe oppression that we do face) must also be willing to discuss privileges that we do have. Thus, I hope the usual denial and silence on light skinned privilege, passing privilege, cis privilege, heterosexual privilege, thin privilege and theist privilege (as they apply) will become, well…less silent.
To learn more about thin privilege, visit the Tumblr blog This Is Thin Privilege.
2 good essays on this topic, by other writers: Think People Hate Fat? Lemme Show You How Much, The Politics of Curviness and White Womanhood
Great article at Gradient Lair, check it out. It deftly draws the comparison between talking about thin privilege, fat oppression, and ‘thin-shaming.’
(via fuckyeahfeminists)
The Cola Road (2013)
This has always pissed me off because cocacola is a fucking poison.
(via queeraztlan)
Help end the ban on gay leadership and troops in the Boy Scouts
(via lipstick-feminists)
Israel & Mexico swap notes on abusing rights
May 22, 2013Earlier this month, Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca, Mexico’s newly-appointed secretary of public security in Chiapas, announced that discussions had taken place between his office and the Israeli defense ministry. The two countries talked about security coordination at the level of police, prisons and effective use of technology (“Israeli military will train Chiapas police,” Excelsior, 8 May [Spanish]).
Chiapas is home to the Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), a mostly indigenous Maya liberation movement that has enjoyed global grassroots support since it rose up against the Mexican government in 1994. The Zapatistas took back large tracts of land on which they have since built subsistence cooperatives, autonomous schools, collectivized clinics and other democratic community structures.
In the twenty years since the uprising, the Mexican government has not ceased its counterinsurgency programs in Chiapas. When Llaven Abarca was announced as security head in December, human rights organizations voiced concerns that the violence would escalate, pointing to his history of arbitrary detentions, use of public force, criminal preventive detentions, death threats and torture (“Concern about the appointment of Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca as Secretary of Public Security in Chiapas,” Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Frayba) Center for Human Rights,14 December 2012 [PDF, Spanish]).
Aptly, his recent contacts with Israeli personnel were “aimed at sharing experiences,” Abarca has claimed. This may be the first time the Mexican government has gone public about military coordination with Israelis in Chiapas. Yet the agreement is only the latest in Israel’s longer history of military exports to the region, an industry spawned from experiences in the conquest and pacification of Palestine.
Weapons sales escalate
The first Zionist militias (Bar Giora and HaShomer) were formed to advance the settlement of Palestinian land. Another Zionist militia, the Haganah — the precursor to the Israeli army and the successor of HaShomer — began importing and producing arms in 1920.
Israeli firms began exporting weapons in the 1950s to Latin America, including to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic under the Somoza and Trujillo dictatorships. Massive government investment in the arms industry followed the 1967 War and the ensuing French arms embargo. Israeli arms, police, military training and equipment have now been sent to at least 140 countries, including to Guatemala in the 1980s under Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator recently convicted of genocide against the Maya.
Mexico began receiving Israeli weaponry in 1973 with the sale of five Arava planes fromIsrael Aerospace Industries. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, infrequent exports continued to the country in the form of small arms, mortars and electronic fences. Sales escalated in the early 2000s, according to research that we have undertaken.
In 2003, Mexico bought helicopters formerly belonging to the Israeli army and Israel Aerospace Industries’ Gabriel missiles. Another Israeli security firm, Magal Security Systems, received one of several contracts for surveillance systems “to protect sensitive installations in Mexico” that same year, The Jerusalem Post reported.
In 2004, Israel Shipyards sold missile boats, and later both Aeronautics Defense Systems and Elbit Systems won contracts from the federal police and armed forces for drones for border and domestic surveillance (“UAV maker Aeronautics to supply Mexican police,”Globes, 15 February 2009). Verint Systems, a technology firm founded by former Israeli army personnel, has won several US-sponsored contracts since 2006 for the mass wiretapping of Mexican telecommunications, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.
Trained by Israel
According to declassified Defense Intelligence Agency documents [PDF] obtained via a freedom of information request, Israeli personnel were discreetly sent into Chiapas in response to the 1994 Zapatista uprising for the purpose of “providing training to Mexican military and police forces.”
The Mexican government also made use of the Arava aircraft to deploy its Airborne Special Forces Group (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE). GAFE commandos were themselves trained by Israel and the US. Several would later desert the GAFE and go on to create “Los Zetas,” currently Mexico’s most powerful and violent drug cartel (“Los Zetas and Mexico’s Transnational Drug War,” World Politics Review, 25 December 2009).
Mexico was surprised by the Zapatistas, who rose up the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. The Mexican government found itself needing to respond to the dictates of foreign investors, as a famously-leaked Chase-Manhattan Bank memo revealed: “While Chiapas, in our opinion, does not pose a fundamental threat to Mexican political stability, it is perceived to be so by many in the investment community. The government will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and of security policy.”
(via pizzavanguard)
