The Way Out Is Through

Gloria Richardson pushes a national guard bayonet out of her...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:33:27 -0700

Gloria Richardson pushes a national guard bayonet out of her face during a 1963 civil rights protest in Maryland.

Anybody out there?

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:10:15 -0700

Anybody out there?

Right in the feels.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:53:55 -0700

Right in the feels.

Video

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:25:48 -0700

Coldplay Fix You

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:02:09 -0700

Coldplay

Fix You

izmia: Creative AMMAR (Argentina’s Sex Workers’ Association.)...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:35:23 -0700

izmia:

Creative AMMAR (Argentina’s Sex Workers’ Association.) Advertisement: 86% of sex workers are mothers. We need a law to regulate our work.

Damn, this is an ingenious way to raise awareness! I dig.

Yesssssss…..

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:32:37 -0700

Yesssssss…..

Just contacted the ex about fixing my computer. It also happens to be the day before what would have...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:27:22 -0700

Just contacted the ex about fixing my computer. It also happens to be the day before what would have been our 3 year anniversary AND the 1 year anniversary of our break up. This could be completely awesome or completely awkward.

OH THE SUSPENSE!

obsession with undertones of nausea: fuckyeahcracker: Effects Of Thinking White People Are “All Like...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:41:46 -0700

obsession with undertones of nausea: fuckyeahcracker: Effects Of Thinking White People Are “All Like...:

fuckyeahcracker:

Effects Of Thinking White People Are “All Like That”:

Literally nothing other than white people having their feelings hurt on the internet

I’m not joking there is no real world consequence of this

Effects Of Thinking People of Color Are “All Like That”:

Saudi student is literally surrounded by FBI for cooking rice under terrorist suspicions

White people literally can not associate positive words with Black faces because of racism

More white people use drugs but Black people are sent to jail for drugs at 10 times the rate that white people are

Black people who “sound Black” earn less money than those who don’t because of associations with stereotypes. Black people who “sound Black” are less likely to get called back for jobs

Black children grow up literally associating being Black with being bad and ugly

White people when tested shot more unarmed Black subjects than armed and unarmed white subjects

Hate crimes increase after Boston tragedy

Moroccan High School Student is linked to Boston tragedy for being Brown

Bangladeshi man is beaten by people out of racism

NYPD Commissioner wants Black and Latino men to fear him after the police targeted literally 90 percent Black and Latino men in New York and humiliating them by frisking them in public under the assumption that they had weapons. Studies found that white men were the ones who overwhelmingly had weapons while Black and Latino men didn’t

White people blaming and convicting Black men for crimes they never committed and everyone believing them because of racism

Stop and Frisk, ruled unconstitutional was practiced by New York police disproportionately and unfairly affecting 90% Black and Latino men because of racism

Universities throwing racist ‘Fiesta Party’ homogenizing culture with extreme racism

Here are some of the numbers on hate crimes against People of Color and btw, Neo Naziism is increasing!

Every 28 Hours an African American is Extrajudicially Murdered in the U.S.

Black people 3 times more likely to be arrested for Marijuana

Black people receive much harsher sentencing than white people for the same crimes do I need to go on?

But yeah, white people’s feelings :*(

findingsbyhimay: Melissa Harris Perry commencement speech at...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:18:40 -0700

findingsbyhimay:

Melissa Harris Perry commencement speech at Wellesley College, 2012

The most amazing graduation speech ever. She gives three advice to the graduates:

“Be ignorant, be silent, and be thick.”

Be Ignorant

In a few moments you’re going to walk across this stage and you’re going to have your accomplishments acknowledged in the acquisition of a certification that you KNOW something.

But even as you accept your hard won degree, I encourage you to embrace the reality that you know almost nothing.

I love my iPad. I’m reading my lecture right now from my iPad. I love that it streams books and knowledge and information to me, Matrix-like, at a moment. Like, toowoosh! anything that I need to know. But it is important for me to pretty regularly just go stand in the library. It is an AWE-full experience standing in a library. I think of myself as quite accomplished. I’ve written two books—heh hey. But when you stand in the library and you are surrounded by those stacks of all of those thousands of volumes of texts of things that you know nothing about, written in languages that you cannot decipher, on topics you can barely fathom, it is humbling.

Standing in a library reminds us of our own limitations. It encourages us to remember that we don’t know everything, can’t predict every outcome, and don’t even know all the right questions to ask.

I will never fill a cavity. It is pretty unlikely that I will ever speak Mandarin. I am certainly not going to decode anything in the DNA chain. But thankfully, graciously, the universe provides an interdependent web of other fantastic women who will. Remembering our ignorance, embracing our ignorance, allowing our ourselves to accept a posture of ignorance compels us to keep learning.

There will come a September morning pretty soon when you are going to miss this place. And not just the buildings and not just your friends. You are going to miss a new syllabus. You’re going to miss somebody handing you a piece of paper full of things that you’ve not thought about yet. About challenges you didn’t even know existed. The exquisite moment of utter ignorance just before the learning begins: I promise you, you will miss it.

So remember, ignorance is not your enemy, only complacency with ignorance is to be resisted. Never become so enamored of your own smarts that you stop signing up for life’s hard classes. Remember to keep forming hypotheses and gathering data. Keep your conclusions light and your curiosity ferocious. Keep groping in the darkness with ravenous desire.

Ignorance is not incompatible with excellence. It is not incompatible with leadership. It is not incompatible with greatness. Ignorance is a posture of humility, which brings me to the other piece of nontraditional advice: Be silent.

Be Silent

If the Nerdland staff is watching right now they probably just fell out of their chairs, because I know they didn’t even know I could be silent as long as I just was. And, in fact, not just the Nerdland staff but we share space in 30 Rock right next to the Up staff. And the Up staff is really quite diligent. They’re very quiet, they type along. And when I come in, usually on Thursdays or Fridays, the screaming begins. I sit in my office where I don’t much like to be alone and I scream, “Oh my god! Have you read the script today?! Come in here and talk to me! Come! Come! Come!” Sometimes they just shut the door.

I am, in being a feminist and having been trained as a feminist, become very good at using my voice.

Women’s education is very much about finding your voice. About learning to speak, about speaking with confidence, about sharing your ideas freely, about battling the boys.

But there is an enormous difference between being silenced and choosing to be silent. When we are silenced, you have something to say but no one will listen. When you choose to be silent, to quiet it down, to listen, you’ve actually exercised the other part of voice. The part that makes your voice sound like something. It sounds like something in comparison to the silence.

Silence can help to soothe one of the voices that you actually would like to be more quiet more frequently. It’s what Jay-Smooth would call your “internal hater.” That little hater. I don’t know if boys have the hater. Girls have the hater. The hater sits on our shoulder and tells us, “Sit up straight.” “Omigod, you have a lisp. Why are are you talking?”

The little hater fusses at us and tells us that we are insufficient, and suggests that we “can’t do math, because it’s hard.” She is actually soothed by silence. You can actually encourage that part of your meta-narrative voice to be quiet so that this part of your voice can speak. And silence allows you to do something else that you now have as Wellesley women.

You have privilege. No matter what circumstances of dis-privilege you came from, this degree now confers upon you privilege. And when you choose to be silent in the face of those who have less privilege, you undermine the idea that only people with certain degrees and certain certifications have a right to speak.

So, I’m not asking you to silence your advocacy for justice or to mute your voice as a citizen. I am not asking you to accept the opinions of others as your own truths. I am not asking you to sit on your ideas or fail to share your skills. I am asking you to remember that silence is the vital precursor to voice. Gather your voice in your silence. Listen to it in your own head before you give it away. Wake up, roll over, and make love to the day wordlessly.

My final piece of advice is this: Be thick.

Be Thick

In a world that teaches women to be thin, be thick.

Recall the moment in Toni Morrison’s Beloved when Paul D says to Sethe:

“ Your love is too thick, Sethe,” and she responds:

“Love is or it isn’t. Thin love ain’t no love at all.”

Thick is the only thing worth being. When you are thick you unconditionally embrace the object of your attention. Thick women make fools of themselves all the time, because thin women stand on the sidelines; they’re critical; they’re removed; they’re barely committed. Thick people pitch tents in a park with the belief that social action can change an entire international global system of economic injustice.

Thin citizens vote; thick citizens run for office.

Thin folks believe every critic is a “hater.” Thick folks can hear critique without crumbling.

Thin leaders stay the course no matter what the evidence sat. Thick leaders listen, learn, and correct.

Thin women look great in bikinis. Thick women look terrific in history books.

Cultivate a radical thickness that allows you to be vulnerable and imperfect as you cast yourself headlong into the crazy, scary, painful, grown-up world.

"Self-care includes holding each other accountable because we are interconnected. Loving ourselves..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:49:02 -0700

“Self-care includes holding each other accountable because we are interconnected. Loving ourselves includes learning how not to harm each other. Loving ourselves includes disrupting violent patterns in our homes and community-building spaces.”

- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, quoted by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in a transformative justice workshop at Hampshire earlier this year.

Stuff I’m finding as I “clean” my room.

(via verbalprivilege)

"What we didn’t hear about was a how an African-American women who in the course of protecting..."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:45:38 -0700

“What we didn’t hear about was a how an African-American women who in the course of protecting herself from an abusive husband who beat her while she was pregnant, shot a gun that she legally owns into the air. No one was hurt, but she is now looking at 25 years. Yes indeed, you read that right, facing 25 years.. Her name is Marissa Alexander, she lives in Florida, is a mother of 3 and everyone should know her name and her case.The person who prosecuted her case is Angela Corey, the prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case.”

- As We Watch the Trayvon Martin Case, All of Us Should Know Marissa Alexander « Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner-(The Blog)

That’s it. I’m done. Finished. Completo.

Fuck this shit I’m out.

(via weian-fu)

All the hope I had, poof. Gone.

frenchymcblack: thatscienceguy: 1 and 5 are kind of...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:40:44 -0700

frenchymcblack:

thatscienceguy:

1 and 5 are kind of Humbling…

oh look at that. underwater spiders. another reason i dont like the ocean

Photo

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:32:37 -0700

#nofilter #ladymarmalade #doña #cat #kitty #box #ladybox #meow...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:46:57 -0700

#nofilter #ladymarmalade #doña #cat #kitty #box #ladybox #meow #love #newdigs #yard #garden #nomoarporchparties

#honeywine #nectarofthegods

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:20:02 -0700

#honeywine #nectarofthegods

Gotta keep these tats lookin’ fresh. Also, boobs.

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:46:41 -0700

Gotta keep these tats lookin’ fresh. Also, boobs.

kadaver: Ahahahahahahhaha

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:43:56 -0700

kadaver:

Ahahahahahahhaha

I post what I post because I like it. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, what the #frack are you...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:43:23 -0700

I post what I post because I like it. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, what the #frack are you doing here?

My new pretty shirt!

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:01:11 -0700

My new pretty shirt!