Esme Weatherwax

keepyourboehneroutofmyuterus:

soundfromsilence:

Highly informative website, the facts are shocking. 

What exactly about that incredibly racist website is “informative”? 

Why don’t we hear from a black woman about her reproductive rights (because while I appreciate cismen telling non-cismen what to do with their bodies, it’s also incredibly condescending, misogynistic, and, in this case, racist)?

SharkFu:

Reproductive justice didn’t happen to me. 
Fighting for the right to determine whether to have children, to raise the children we have, and to raise our families in communities free of violence and oppression…all of that wasn’t done to black women. 
All of that was and is done with black women, by black women for black women.
We are of this movement. 
Always have been.
Always will be.
So reproductive justice didn’t happen to me.
I am reproductive justice.
And you know and I know that you know that I know that you cannot advocate on behalf of black women if you do not trust black women.
But some will try.
A campaign is afoot.
A campaign that would define black women as genocidal…that claims that black children are a separate species that is endangered in the hands of black women…and that seeks to divide and conquer through the tired old tactic of blaming and shaming women in general and black women specifically.
Those who place racist billboards in our communities want to talk about dangerous places.
Okay…let’s talk about dangerous places.
Let’s talk about the infant mortality rate in America…about the lot of the born…about how each year having an infant that lives past the first year of life becomes more and more a privilege for the few and an expectation determined by race rather than a right of the masses. And let’s talk about how the stereotype of bad black mothers fuels the acceptance of high infant mortality rates just like it fuels the acceptance of low employment rates, low graduation rates and racial profiling.
As if all that is our due.
As if all that is to be expected.
[…]

Let’s talk about lies. 
About how the Missouri legislature passed a law mandating that women who seek abortion services must be told that there are programs to help them with housing and child care and education if they choose to continue their pregnancy…about how those programs are the same programs the legislature cut funding for while they mocked those who needed those services on the floor of the people’s house.
Let’s talk about black babies born to black mothers who are shackled during labor.
Let’s talk about the removal of comprehensive sex education from our schools and how our young people enter adulthood with the abstinence only advice to put a quarter between their legs and squeeze.
Let’s talk about how the debate over life ends at birth…about the young women I’ve met who chose to have a baby only to find that the same people praising them for that decision won’t hire them, don’t want them moving into their neighborhood, will one day grab their handbag and lock their car door when that black baby becomes a black man who walks by them on the sidewalk.  
But I don’t get to just “talk” about all that.
I’m a black woman - I live it.
I get to walk into a health care center to a shower of shouts from white men charging that I’m a race traitor, that I’m participating in black genocide, and that I bring shame upon black America…anti-choice activists who have been emboldened by a campaign that feeds right into the racism that lives just beneath the surface, that opportunistic infection that feeds off of billboard campaigns spouting rhetoric that backs up what they already hold true – that black women are lesser than, dangerous, inferior, lacking in humanity, unhinged, untrustworthy, reckless…
[…]

And so black women must be…wait for it…oppressed for our own good.
But…I AM A BLACK WOMAN.
The most dangerous place for my rights is in the hands of my oppressor.
And the most dangerous place for oppression is in my angry black hands.
Trust.

kombuchatime:

neutresex:

dancingonembers:

peopleofcolor:

The following are 10 conversations that I would be happy never to have with white peepul ever, ever, ever again. While there are countless others, these are at least 10 that I’m forced to endure far too often.

this is EXCELLENT and hilarious

OMG NUMBER 8. Seriously, bringing up race should not immediately radicalize me.

NUMBER 4.

““Ho hum Neo, that’s just the way So&So is. And they’re not going to change, so you’re just going to have to accept how they treat you, even if it is demeaning. And you know, do it with a smile.”

“Well Neo, that’s just the way things are, yes we live in the land of freedom and democracy and equality but you’re going to be discriminated against. You just have to accept it. And you know, do it with a smile.”

Ummm…….fuck you?   *smiles*”

Damn. Fantastic rant. 

socialisimo:

“BRITAIN’S 40% SURGE IN ETHNIC NUMBERS – 9 MILLION LIVING HERE ARE NON-WHITE”, yells the front-page headline this morning. It’s a classic tabloid ghost train ride: here come the immigrants, taking over Britain, turning us all a duskier shade of off-pink. When you think about it, “ethnic” is such an odd term to use – we’re all ethnic, of one type or another – but they’re using it to mean “ethnic minority”, as they have done before, together with the rather more blunt expression “ethnics”.

I suppose it’s one of those things that might bother some people more than others. It depends on whether you think these islands belong to people who are “white” more than people who are “non-white”, or whether you see the changes in population as a positive thing. Can you really divide up the various mixed races and groups in this country of rich heritage into the binary of “white” and “non-white”? And if you can, what are you trying to say?

This kind of thing goes back to an “us and them” distinction that has been apparent in the Daily Express and Daily Star for a while, usually in relation to Muslims and British people, as if the two could not possibly be the same. In this instance, the “us and them” narrative is that this country’s population is composed of two types of people: white and non-white. The assumption is that “we” are white and “they” are non-white, and there isn’t anything in between.

Give the readers what they want

It might be the case, of course, that this assumption may reflect a deeper truth about the readership of the publications in question, but this is still a national newspaper, shouting out from the news-stands to everyone, purporting to tell a version of reality. Even if you are pandering to an ever-dwindling bunch of frightened Little Englanders who are worried about immigrants, that doesn’t excuse the use of this kind of terminology, if you’re going to have integrity about the things you present as being true and untrue.