(Source: cumwizzard, via netdredging)
[Self-portraits by Carrie Mae Weems, Käthe Kollwitz, Judy Baca, and Frida Kahlo, text “Never apologize for selfies”]
Wanted to get modern women artists and some WOC up in this one. If you reblog it would be cool if you kept the part in the brackets so these artists, two of whom are still working, will get credit—this conversational part below is nbd.
yes.
(via queerandpresentdanger)
fek:
Barbara Kruger’s never really talked about Supreme, the skate company who’s been ripping off her ideas and prints letter for letter, color for color, for their red-and-white logo, which you have seen, because it is everywhere.
I emailed her casually to ask her about this. And today, she got back to me, and gave a candid statement on the matter of Supreme for the first time, ever, really. By emailing me a blank email, with an attachment. Which you can see above.
she titled it “fools.doc”
das a bad bitch
i ALWAYS wondered if barbara kruger had said anything re: supreme ripping her off and I’M SO FUCKING HAPPY SHE FEELS THIS WAY
This body of work is an exploration of the extent of cultural appropriation and encourages a discussion about it. I give the appropriator and the appropriated the opportunity to defend themselves and create a dialogue between them, while maintaining a neutral stance myself. I am not attacking those who appropriate, merely educating and creating awareness. I’m also exploring appropriation myself, and discovering the carying degrees of it within this visual conversation.
I’d like to make this a long term exploration, with a lot more participants as a form of generation-wide debate. If you’d like to be photographed to add your point of view, please do not hesitate to pop me a message here or an email at sanaahamid@yahoo.com and we could work something out!
(via decolonizeyourmind)
America Only Gets Outraged About Gun Violence In White Neighborhoods
On 24 April in the town where I live, a wonderful town that I love, a woman was shot to death in front of her four-year-old son, Joshua. According to authorities, she was a college student.
A young woman, obviously invested in education, undoubtedly with dreams of a good life for herself and her child, struck down. It’s a sad story, a tragedy worthy of deep sorrow and serious reflection about gun violence and gun policy, especially when added to the fact that it was the fourth fatal shooting in my town in a week. Despite the obvious potential of such a story to poke at the hearts and minds of anyone who hears about it, most people won’t hear about it. It won’t get in the 24-hour news cycle. And it certainly will not spark a national debate about gun control. Why? Because the woman who was killed, Donitra Henderson, was a black woman and she died on a street corner in Oakland, a predominantly black and Latino town, in front of her black child.
Gun violence affects black and Latino people in poor, inner-city neighborhoods on a regular basis. As The Washington Post reported, black people are 10 times more likely to be killed by a gun crime, and yet our deaths by gun are much less likely to result in national conversations in which liberals and conservatives duke it out over the second amendment. We become statistics, just one more added to the number of gun deaths in the US in a particular year, and that’s all.
As I wrote in my recent blog post, “Hey, White liberals: A Word On the Boston Bombings, the Suffering of White children, and the Erosion of Empathy,” if you’re not white, your tragic death doesn’t feel quite as tragic to the American media or the collective American conscience, which are inextricably linked. It does not inspire the kind of national outrage and grief that white deaths, and especially middle-class and affluent white deaths, inspire.
There is a certain level of indifference in this country to the deaths of people of color. But there is also a double standard in the narrative around gun violence, depending on where it takes place and who is affected by it. When it happens to wealthy white folks in the suburbs, it’s a tragedy visited upon those who didn’t deserve it. When it happens to black and Latino people in a city, it’s our own fault.
Take, for example, President Obama’s speech in Chicago about gun violence where he talked about policy change, but also focused a lot on the structure of the black family, saying:
“There’s no more important ingredient for success, nothing that would be more important for us reducing violence than strong, stable families – which means we should do more to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.”
Compare that to speeches he made following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a predominantly white area, where a gunman murdered 26 people, including 20 children. The president never connected the violence there with the structure of anybody’s family or with the failure of any white parents. Even though the shooter, Adam Lanza, was raised by a single mother. Instead, he promised the people of Newtown that lawmakers would stand beside them and create policy to protect them. Those are two very different messages.
One reason this double standard is so easy to apply is that the question of why gun violence happens so much in inner cities is brushed over or ignored. There are many factors: the effects of racism on individuals and communities, failed education systems, high unemployment, etc. These are rarely discussed in connection to gun violence on a national level.
Without that connection, and thus with no greater social ills to help explain it, it’s seen simply as the fault of the people who live in those places, as if they have some inherent defect in their families and their communities. And because it’s our fault and not, as in the case of violence against middle-class white people, a national tragedy, it does not warrant a national conversation.
This double standard leads to the further devaluing of black and Latino lives. It also contributes to the sporadic nature of the national gun control conversation itself. Because gun control is only talked about on a national level when multiple murders happen in affluent white places, it’s talked about a few times a year at most.
If the conversation were shifted to include the tragedies of people in the inner city, if our lives were valued enough by the American media and the collective US conscience to warrant that conversation, it would be an ongoing debate. Maybe then it would at least have a chance at leading to some actual change. Which would be great. Especially for those of us who are most often affected by it.
(Source: innonsense, via ceedling)
i’m really getting into this jewish view of gender post! i might have to make two parts to this.
Have you read Judith Butler’s early work? You might find it helpful, it’s a topic she’s been thinking about her whole life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
“Just like Christians in the United States who speak out against the Westboro Baptists and don’t just quote the bible and all its contradictory glory. The Christians who actually have an intelligent point of view, point out the fundamental, theological construct written into the New Testament that specifically dictates that they are to turn the other cheek, be good to your neighbor no matter his beliefs, and not to subjugate the nonbelievers.”
as justification for the hatred of islam.
actually, no. Muslims don’t OWE you jack shit, much less the defence of extremists, any more than i OWE anybody an apology for the cave of the patriarchs. we act like “islam” is this monolithic religion, like politics doesn’t intersect with it, or like there is only one way to be muslim. it is not their responsibility to say “oh great white man, PLEASE forgive me for what these people that you somehow connect me with did.”
no christian is stopped in the street and harassed, demanded an apology for what violence a christian committed. and guess what? nobody EXPECTS christians to apologize for the westboro baptist church—some do, but then they’re Good People and we worship them for being oh-so-tolerant. meanwhile, muslims have to grovel to be considered to meet a BASIC STANDARD for christians. that’s absolutely fucked.
christians are not expected to repeatedly apologize for those who incite anti-abortion violence or anti-gay violence. christians are not even expected to give up their pro-life views, if they hold them, to help alleviate anti-abortion terrorists. christians are not stopped on the streets and associated with the KKK, but muslims are associated with al-Qaeda relentlessly.
so you want to tell me it’s JUST LIKE christians who apologize for a rancid hate group? are you fucking serious? get out of here.
(via lovenerdeen)
(via fuckyeahhardfemme)
