This is clearly not about individual officers. It’s about a structure built on systemic racism that this country created intentionally and now needs to dismantle intentionally and replace with one that takes into account the needs of the people that it actually serves and this is gonna take sustained pressure and attention over a long period of time from all of us.
Black communities have had to be perpetual activists while also routinely being disenfranchised and it is long past time that the rest of us joined to make sure that their voices are heard and acted upon because it’s going to be far too easy for nothing to meaningfully change here. That is what has always happened before.
After the unrest in the late ’60s, a commission was set up to investigate and issue advice. Many of its conclusions resemble ideas like a police demilitarization and broad reinvestment in marginalized communities that are still being pushed today.
Testifying before that commission was the social scientist Kenneth Clark and he made this observation which remains depressingly true. He said, “I read the report of the 1919 riot in Chicago and it’s as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee of the Harlem riot of 1935, the report of the investigating committee of the right of 1943, the report of the Macomb Commission of the Watts riot of 1965. I must again in candor say to you it is the kind of Alice in Wonderland with the same moving picture reshown over and over again. The same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.”
We’re in the same shit now that we were in back then and if you’re not directly impacted by it, it is tempting to look for a reason to feel better about the world, to look at some cops kneeling and think “Oh, well we just need more of that.” But we need so much more than that.
Because ours is a firmly entrenched system in which the roots of white supremacy run deep and it is critical that we all grab a fucking shovel. To do anything less would be absolutely unforgivable.
and you know what the fucking bullshit is they’re replacing it with a ~6 months free of a subscription to a third party captions provider~ which of course you’d have to pay for after those 6 months are up and you KNOW random youtuber #9039 isn’t going to bother to keep paying for that either because they won’t have the money or they just won’t care. and youtube’s going to act like that’s a perfectly fine alternative that won’t result in the majority of the site suddenly going from “more or less accessible” to “Fuck You If You’re Disabled”
“citing low usage” are you fucking kidding me nearly every worthwhile video i watch uses community captions. sometimes they’re kind of janky cuz they were made by some 14 year old who thought it’d be funny to put their own irrelevant jokes and commentary in there but that wasn’t a reason to ditch the feature entirely when its so useful and important
i’m not even hard of hearing and i rely on them to watch videos in other languages…this is literally how people have been making english subs for japanese songs and the like for years and it was great because you didn’t have to reupload the videos yourself and take away views from the original creators. many creators don’t allow reprints of their work whatsoever so if they go through with this (which unfortunately they seem pretty deadset on because lololol moneyyyyyy) it’s entirely likely that there just won’t be a way to watch that content with captions
there’s a petition to keep community captions…i don’t know if it’ll really do anything since they’re already going ~oh but we have Paid Alternatives!~ but don’t just let this pass by this should be a huge deal but i’ve barely seen anyone talking about it (not that i expect people to talk about things of any particular importance on tumblr but it’s not even getting attention on twitter beyond that one thread and like 2 other posts)
so like. sign this and shit don’t let youtube just actively get rid of accessibility features without anyone caring (though i’d say probably use twitter if you want to actually get their attention i don’t think they’d look here) http://chng.it/LN9HRNmnkg
It came to my attention that many people don’t know this, so I decided to make a PSA in meme form. Yes, citrus can interfere with ADHD meds. It’s because of the high Vitamin C.
wait WHAT
I mean….I don’t USUALLY drink orange juice with breakfast….. but this would have been REALLY GOOD to know
SEE YES
I have had SO many people reblog this long going “um no ur wrong sweaty it’s grapefruit :)))”
And yes, grapefruit is a definite nope with many medications
But I’m talking about vitamin C!!
WHAT
IT ALSO AFFECTS ALLERGY MEDICATION
THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN GOOD TO KNOW DURING PALO VERDE SEASON
hey do you think you could expand a bit on separating the art from the artist? clearly you’ve done it with jk rowling but what are your thoughts on it as a general idea?
here’s the truth: you can’t separate the art from the artist. not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you don’t agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but…. well, I’m afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.
Consider, for a second, that Lovecraft’s works were horror stories about extradimensional alien monsters having mutant children with humans, they were about invasions from distant monsters, they were about the purity of quaint European towns being tainted. Consider how this may have all been inflicted by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasn’t white. Consider how is opinions on “mixing the races” might fight into this; consider why being unable to maintain the “purity” of white Europe was the scariest thing of all to him.
This extends to Rowling too.
I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say “but at least her books are good,” because, well, they are, aren’t they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is…. ridiculous.
Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselvesand are maybe a little bit oppressed by the institution, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.
Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didn’t want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.
Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick “manly” hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house” might write this Rita Skeeter to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.
Harry Potter is full of Rowling’s bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, “oh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of it’s good!” because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.
Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harry’s distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, “your heritage is not that important and doesn’t make you better than others” she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him — he looks just like his father, but he has his mother’s eyes, you know! — consider WHY a woman who is racist might’ve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.
You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchies rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that it’s a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, and drenched in Rowling’s beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.
Again. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isn’t a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.
“Hey so it turns out that the people of earth accidentally did a global experiment to see if every individual could course correct climate change through mass personal change of habits, and it turns out, no! We can’t! It was massive corporate activity all along!”
