samirathejerk:

Why is ghetto even used as an adjective to describe something that is low class, tacky or less valuable?? The most beautiful, talented and creative people I know have come from inner city areas.You frown upon women that have different color weave in their hair and call them “ghetto” but if a white woman is walking down the runway with the same hair design, it is artistic. What the hell?

A white kid draws on a building and that’s art but if a black kid does then the beauty of the picture he/she draws is overlooked and it turns into a crime. You know what the crime is? That child has to draw on those buildings because you’ve cut the art department in their school because who cares about that? The crime is that the only way they feel like they can be heard is by painting a political statement on the side of a building since their struggles are ignored, overlooked and unimportant to the people living on the other side of town in their big rich houses that make careless decisions regarding the people living in these “ghettos”. I put ghetto is quotation marks because I hate that word and the negative connotations most people apply to it, to me the ghetto is probably one of the most beautiful areas that you can go to. The sense of community, the heart of those areas that beats to the rhythms of Nas, Etta James and Celia Cruz while your driving through, the people getting up and still smiling despite the fact that they are overlooked by the majority of society.. all of that is beautiful to me. The ghetto isn’t just dilapidated buildings and crime and although both do exist - that’s not what it started out as. The ghetto was created to separate black people from white people after WWII when black people started moving into white urban neighborhoods. This caused white people to pack up their shit and run to the suburbs, and then when the anti discriminatory law was passed in housing, middle class black families also packed their shit and moved out into the ‘burbs. All that was left were the lower income black families that had been abandoned and in most cases were pretty much completely cut off from the rest of society due to high ways and other buildings placed in certain areas to maintain racial boundaries. 

So before the black people moved into the white urban areas, they were good places to live. After the white people left and moved out into the suburbs, leaving behind the black people that were at one time their neighbors - that area became called “the ghetto” (read that in a snobby tone) because it was no longer good enough for white people. 

Now ghetto isn’t used as a noun to describe a place, which the ghetto is - it is also used as an adjective to describe things people relate to the ghetto -  everything not up to their precious standards.

Alrighty.

barbreyryswells:

this is random but I don’t like it when a white person says it’s not “beneficial or constructive” or “childish” to call white people crackers and whatnot

I’m not saying it’s okay to call them that and I never use those words myself

but we’re not trying to be beneficial or constructive when we use those words

we’re trying to express our frustration against people who have oppressed us for centuries

we are childish, yes, because we’ve been reduced to children, something less than children in the eyes of white people

“half devil and half child” is Rudyard Kipling’s description for people like me

so

for us it’s not even social activism or being productive through social activism

it’s everyday in our fucking lives. it’s a fact of existence.

and idk what this is but I felt like saying it so yeah

snowdarkred:scruffyglitterboi:freesamuel:

You know how white people justify saying racist shit by talking about their one POC friend who said it was okay to say that racist shit like that POC is the representative of all POCs?

I hereby declare myself the representative of all white people and I say that it’s okay for all POC to hate white people, to call white people “crackers,” to take part in “reverse racism” against white people.

If a white person ever gives you shit for saying something “racist” against white people, tell them it’s okay for you to say that because Beckett is totally cool with it and Beckett’s white.

Co-fucking signed.

(via akitron)

the baddest bitch of her age.: when black men are murdered who am I to their murderer?

daniellemertina:

Another reason why I never felt like mainstream feminism was for me is because they have no understanding of how gender seperatism/ not going “but what about the men!” is never going to happen for me although I am still a feminist.

White women do not need to think of white…

howtobeterrell:

Hey gurl,

How y’all doing? Well just wanted to let u know saying: “i don’t care if your black, green or purple” is RACIST AS FUCK. There are no green or purple people in this world. And u should care that I’m black. Not caring ignores the history of my skin and also the history of yours. You got privileges out the ass because my skin and the shit people with your skin color did to them. Your history is as much mine as it is yours.

K, gurl.

Bye.

* oh and stop using black one liners in public spaces Around black people such as: I’m down, you go gurl, gurl insert neck roll and bling bling. You didn’t invent these sayings stop using them like u did.

(via homoerotics)

dazaibrosamu:yoisthisracist:

Ok, what about looking at it this way. When people say Black Pride (it could be any other kind of minority pride, though), what they’re actually saying is they’re proud of struggling, surviving and prospering in a society where life is systematically stacked against them, ie, something that they’ve accomplished. When people say White Pride (besides that literally being something only unrepentant racists really say), they’re talking about being proud of something that they were born into, or given, which, when you think about it, isn’t really that much of an accomplishment.

i want to marry this response.

(via gematriya)

fussyfangs:torayot:hupsoonheng:trexlover:thedailybeard:k-mac-attack:

forever yes. 
pale skin, dark hair or red hair is the most attractive combination ever. 

[clipped for dashes]

Dr. Syrup is highly unimpressed by attempts to construct hierarchies and dichotomies of skin colour which pay little attention to deeply ingrained histories!

Relatively pale skin has, in multiple cultures and across history, been associated with the following things:

• Wealth
• Refinement
• Beauty
• Chastity
• Moral purity
• Good health
• Good Christian faith [in Christian-dominated cultures]
• Great amount of merit in past life [in Buddhist-dominated cultures]

Relatively darker skin, whether tanned (which I take to mean not simply a tan colour but sun-darkened, previously light skin), or naturally very pigmented, has essentially represented the opposite of the above list. 

Pale skin is always something to protect and take care of while dark skin is damaged and disposable -in terms of class, peasants out in the sun while the rich mostly stay indoors; in terms of race/class, POC working outdoors in the sun while white people stay indoors; and in terms of race/gender, the softness and fragility of white women is emphasized by their light skin. Darker skin is associated with tough, leathery hides with correspondingly bestial, savage natures - women with those sorts of skins hardly need protecting, apparently!

You see those ideas in different forms even now, how light skin is seen as “classically” beautiful (like Greek sculptures and old movie stars - disregard the fact they were both painted!), how “darker” skin colours are seen as a trend afforded by bronzers, how there are Lolita secrets where people wonder why brown Lolitas bother to use parasols, and how nobody bothers to tell dark-skinned people to watch for skin cancer. Dark skin may be able to resist sun damage for a while longer (by an hour or two, not half a day of relentless sunshine!), but it is by no means invincible.

For white people, the trend is now to have very very very light brown skin: the colour my yellow arse is when it’s been under layers of clothing all winter is the colour white people seem to be when they can get some sun. White people can be dark but not too dark, or you’ll actually start to look like a darker-skinned POC and that would be too much ambiguity. Also, if a white person is too dark, they are deemed “lower class” and “tacky”. You need to be the right colour.

But this is by no means carries the same weight of historical oppression that dark skin has, nor the physical fact of having pigmented skin you can never really effectively lighten. It is easy to tint the surface skin cells brown, but harder to effect and maintain the upkeep of reducing the natural level of melanin production by using costly whitening creams (cheap creams may permanently damage and discolour the skin), never exposing your bare skin to any sort of sun, consistently covering up and using sunscreen all over just in case, and constantly abrading the surface of the skin with peels and microdermabrasion. Most if not all of these things are usually combined in a skin-lightening and tan-preventing regimen, which leaves the skin extremely fragile and may even increas the risk of cancer. People are sanctioned, even encouraged by culture to be obsessed with skin-whitening - and professionals enable this.

So, basically, there is little need to assert the superiority of pale skin to tan (and by extension any darker skin colour), because it’s essentially already a given and to say otherwise is a kind of privileged false-consciousness with hugely unfortunate implications.

(Source: crig, via lathyrism)