#'they want to erase our culture'
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the racism problem in spain reminds me of the racism problem in southern brazil.
much to the ignorance of foreigners, brazil’s south was heavily settled by european immigrants from non-portuguese origins. these include, by numbers, italians, germans, ukrainians, and poles. santa catarina and paraná, two of the three southern states, were seldom settled by portuguese settlers, but rio grande do sul, the southermost state of brazil, was settled by iberian settlers as well as italians and germans (and is also the most segregated state of all 3, which is made evident by the fact it’s the 2nd whitest state but also the state with most adepts of afro-brazilian religions in brazil; the blacks brought from slavery were not integrated).
racism is a taboo topic in southern brazil. nobody wants to admit they are racist, but they will also pause before saying the portuguese word for black (”negro”, which is the questionably polite word, no older white in brazil will say “preto”). since it is taboo and you cannot speak directly about it, you also can’t reflect on it, because if you are socially banned from using certain words then you cannot communicate ideas about something properly. everyone wants to believe they’re a good person and treat black people fairly, but in truth here in the south not much is actually done to make the lives of black gaúchos and other black southerners better. because it’s “not an issue” here.
i think spain is the same, and iberia in general (portugal), due to their reconquista past which made it necessary for them to rely on the idea of a single cohesive people with one culture and one religion and to believe that the moors (muslims) were inferior, that the christians in iberia were inherently better. portugal became the first nation-state in europe in 1386 after the battle of aljubarrota after they defeated the castilian crown in a national effort where the portuguese people themselves drove out the castilian invasor.
so i believe it is a mix of historical patterns and the taboo factor that are behind the racism problem in iberia. british people will often be apologetic about colonialism, but the portuguese are more often than not racist and xenophobic towards brazilians, and this kind of behavior is common and widely accepted in their society. they don’t question it. and it’s strange that in the context of europe, where the southern countries are often targets of racism themselves, end up being the most racist towards non-europeans. just as southern brazilians, who are not even considered white by most of the west (instead latinos or something), are a tad more racist than your average (urban) american or european white, if more ashamed about it, due to the taboo factor and the fact it’s still brazil, and racism/anti-racism also has to be interpreted in a national context even here.
#racism#i mean portugal and spain start to drift apart from the rest of europe#like italy#during the reformation#so i guess a lot of the philosophical and social advancements in the rest of the continent#didn't spread completely to those countries#i can clearly picture your average spanish old white lady scoffing at the notion she's racist#not very unlike your average old white southen brazilian lady who will instead shut you down sternly#while still believing there's something that makes them and their country/state inherently better than others#their particular flavor of whiteness#a black city councillor from porto alegre the capital of rio grande do sul#raised the point that in his view a section of the state anthem was offensive to black gaúchos#far from me to judge if he's right#but the reaction from virtually every white in the state?#'they want to erase our culture'#so there you have it#unwillingness to even talk about it#to admit anything#that we're in fact guilty#that wealthy neighborhoods in downtown porto alegre are built on top of the houses of black gaúchos who were driven out#to the edges of the city
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Reductress is just spreading terf rhetoric now
The "joke" is that nonbinary people are somehow escaping from violence by being trans that we can opt out of fearing violence and don't fear violence when walking at night....
Like just yuck as a transmasc nonbinary survivor whose actually aware of the stats of violence against nonbinary people this just disgusts me...
Also I'm betting they have talked to zero Black trans enbies or men or women of colour about how being seen as "scary" puts them in danger from racist white people & or they're just assuming all enbies are white idk it's disgusting... There's just so many layers to the bigotry and white fauxminism of this "joke"
They've previously made posts like this so idk if they've got terfs on staff who keep trying to slip this in to pipeline people or people who think certain trans people they dislike facing violence including sexual violence is funny and that those trans survivors are lying and shouldn't be beleived.
They're priming their audience to disbelieve and mock nonbinary trans survivors. They're literally pushing the "people transition to escape/opt out of patriarchal violence like a fun game" terf talking point which isn't reflected in the stats of violence against trans people who face higher rates of physical sexual and domestic violence than cis people
Just "it's a coin toss!"
As a survivor fuck you
Like the comments section is full of transphobia and people going "har har they think they're in danger they're delusional " or spouting transphobic BS and a trans man whose talking about how he fears violence walking at night being called 'female' and misgendered like well done you've curated a comment section full of transphobes and people who think trans people aren't who we say we are fucking yikes
None of the transphobic comments have been deleted reductress seems happy to leave up comments calling trans men "female" and saying that trans people are a danger to children
#Reductress#Exorsexism#Rape culture#transandrophobia#Terf rhetoric#Erasing tpoc#When your “joke” is “haha enbies don't face violence people think you're men and trans men don't face violence” in current year just wtaf#Did a nonbinary person reject one of the writers or something there seems to be this persistent creepy obsession with mocking and belittlin#It really sounds like the “all my exgfs are crazy” shit but projected onto enbies like who hurt you and why are you hurting survivors?#Like they already tried a similarly transphobic joke and it went over just as badly then why do they keep trying to push this maga shit#Enbyphobia#Anti-Transmasculinity#This is what violent transphobes who harass assault & kill us WANT you to think when we try to talk about fearing for our safety#Why are you perpetuating this transphobic nonsense#Also I wonder if the stock model whose image they used knows its being used to mock&erase trans survivors
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The more I learn about the history of the middle east in general, the more I realise that the "Israel-Palestine conflict" is actually just a group killing their own fellow shared ethnic group who are "too brown".
Hebrews and Arabs both originate from Phoenicians, aka "Abraham's descendents" according to their respective oral stories and passed on histories. They are from the same place and people. However, there is a narrative that twists this and claims that Arabs were "always an outside force that invaded", when the various groups within that ethnicity always had their share of cooperation and conflict in various stages of history. Just like, say, the various groups in France. They were of the same group and no particular ethnicity had no more of a "claim" to the land than the other, they just had their beef and eventually integrated.
So when I see "but the Arabs are colonisers" I can't help but ask; what is a colonisers to you? Seriously. If colonisation means "any conflict in the past between a shared group from the same place" every single group would be colonisers. There's no such thing as "an innocent conflict" where atrocities weren't committed by either side. So please get that out of your head if you want to say "but the Arabs did X, Y, Z to the Hebrews so it's colonisation and they don't belong in A, B or C areas". That's just not how colonisation works. It's like calling TERF or cis a slur when they're not. Conflict between the same people from the same area is, yeah, a conflict hit not colonisation. However, a people who are from a completely different place who want to erase an ethnic group and take over their culture, erase their history and get rid of their physical features? Yeah, that's what colonisation is. It's genocide with the aim to erase a specific group or culture and take it and the land over. For example, the British in the Middle East.
The problem with calling Arabs "colonisers" is not only is it completely historically wrong, they're from the same place and have the same origins as the Hebrews, but they (like Palestinian Jews) have been their since before the British came. Compared to European Jews who came later on after having lived in Europe (and became European as that is genuinely a part of their culture and ethnicity as well and shouldn't be erased or forgotten, that's also cultural erasure of Germanic, Polish, etc traditions passed on) and, sure, do have origins there *as well* but it needs to be understood that they, specifically Zionists, are a part of the British colonial project aimed at killing *both* Arabs and Jews. The point isn't to help Jews against a colonisers from the first few centuries (sorry to tell you everyone, but no, the Ottoman Empire, Baylon and the Pharaohs literally do not exist anymore, like how Italy isn't the Roman Empire by default because that's where Rome is), but a group of people who've just been living there for the past few centuries and generations who just want to live. The problem is, they haven't been allowed that and propaganda keeps being pushed that completely jumps around historical facts like, for example, Jews (ethnically speaking) were not always Jews but the Ancient Hebrews, aka, Phoenicians, aka where Arabs came from ethically. They are the same people, just who moved to different areas and developed different cultures and languages. Sort of like, you know, every other nation with specific dialects for specific regions and different cultures and folk stories depending on where you go.
The point is, so much of Jewish history is actively being erased to "protect the Jews" by...commuting cultural genocide of the Jews and Arabs. It ignores the actual impact of Nazism within Israel's formation and history, how much it influenced policy, how Jews who were "too visibly Phoenicians" aka appeared too Jewish or arabic or middle eastern in appearance were deemed as "weaker" and "lesser" for my surviving the holocaust and used as a reason to deny rights to both Jews and Arabs who were too visibly Semitic. It ignores how antisemetic Israel is towards Jewishness and how utterly antisemetic Islamophobia is because they are literally from the same origin and, yes, hatred and fear of one does carry into hatred and fear of the other. So much of the propaganda and denialism of history happening right now is a direct response to dear and hatred of "big noses", "brown skin" and people deemed as too middle eastern because they, just like in World War II, World War I and beforehand, antisemetism is the backbone of British imperialism and conquest of the middle east (yes, this also means a targeting of Arabs and Jews as people who look a specific way). And yes I'm annoyed and yes this is a ramble that's probably not very coherent, but damn I'm so sick and tired of misinformation and the twisting of everything to suit this narrative of "Arabs versus Jews" as if they aren't both just Semites who are being collectively oppressed, erased and reinvented by the west to suit western ends.
#I'm tired man#Palestine#Israel#No Jews didn't just manefest out of thin air in Judea because it has “Judea”ism in it...#and no Arabs didn't all just pop out of the air in the Arab Peninsula#They're all from the same place and/or region and ethnicity#and yes Europeans with Hebrew ancestory are still also European just like how I'm also European (Ukrainian Polish) and Indigenous Australian#It doesn't automatically mean I can walk up to a Dharawal elder and say like#“oh I'm Yorta Yorta so I can do whatever I want to you and you're an invader”#Also I can't just pretend I don't benefit from white privilege when yeah I don't get called shit like petrol sniffer and other slurs#I don't get treated different because I don't look indigenous#doesn't mean I'm not and don't belong here and I still deserve to know my culture and language#BUT that doesn't make me entitled to other nations/ tribes around me simply because our grandparents were neighbours#Doesn't mean I get to reinvent THEIR history and oral traditions to suit me and my family's genuine displacement#Yeah we were fucked over and our family suffered a lack of knowledge of who wer were but that doesn't give us the right to do it to others#The british are the enemy not Palestinians or Arabs or Hebrews#when will y'all learn that maybe it's the far right people who currently want to erase multiple cultures for money and power??#We all have a shared issue and that issue is fucking Britian.
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i hate when people talk about racism as like the reason not to root for argentina bc the other girl is literally FRANCE aaaaaa
#oh the argentian state took measures to erase black people from its history? so did brazil and any other country in this continent#and do you know why it happened? this little thing called colonialism yeah it has a grip over our culture!#do you know whos responsible for colonialism? these goddamnend europian countries#i know im leaving out a lot of nuance in this equation but like sorry a latinamerican country could never be more racist than an europian 1#and that talk about argnt not having black people in its population anymore is literally fake shit that neonazi southamerican sympathizers#spread#anyway yeah sorry for logging on tumblr and saying Discourse Shit#like if this is a racism competition and we want to use math to find out whos worse#then france is worse#yes argentina is a racist country so is brazil and i was still rooting for my stupid shit country when we were still in the competition#GAHHHHHH#i typed europian it's europEAN i know
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seriously,it just comes off like youre pissy we said no and youre trying to change our no into a yes, when it will never be anything but a no. real rapey
person: will you date/sex/etc me?
aro/ace/aspec person: no
person: omfg you evil heartless piece of shit now im gonna rape you and justify it in my head bc my feelings got hurt, how DARE you be your own person with a mind, will, & desires of their own & not some commodity for my consumption AJJANJDSHSBSTFAFGA
ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story
#aromantic#asexual#you know. the one with the pendulum#'hey. why are you as an allo person shipping this aspec character like this'#'oh aspec people can still date/have sex!'#'yeah. now can you answer the question that i actually asked you'#it like. sucks. for sure. lotta aspec people will be unhappy with you. but everyone is entitled to their own wants and experiences.#but i'd prefer you just be honest with it rather than using our community's conversation points as retroactive justification#and once again. you guys are real fucking cavalier with this shit and it shows a real fundamental lack of respect for aspecs#when most of you would never ship a canonically gay character with the 'other' gender. cause again. it would suck.#you can do it. nobody's stopping you. but it would suck.#and we understand that putting a queer character in situations that erase that queerness is shitty! until it comes to aspec characters!#rly comes off like they think we’re broken & need their fixing AKA raping#aro#ace#ace pride#aro pride#aroace pride#amatonormativity and rape culture
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saw someone saying its weird for a 17 yo to be hanging out w a 14 yo .. idk not really. like i dont think thatd be weird but maybe thats just me not being american. maybe thats just me havibg a 19 yo classmate who i hang out w ?? maybe thats just me havibg a 13 yo friend while being 16. maybe thats just me not giving a fuck if a 14 year old is friends w a 17 yo cause thats two lil kids / teens & people being adults at 18 is bullshit ?? 😭 like to me youre not an adult until youre 20 / 21 idc
#im being dramatic i know#leave me alone !!#im petty#just like im petty about the italianization / colonization of sardinians and our loss of independence and language and#how we’re still discriminated against and people only speaking sardinian are still viewed as 'dirty' and 'crude' and people with an heavy#sardinian accent while speaking are still made fun of and our language is being erased and still being called a dialect despite having been#recognized as a minority language and sardinians are called 'italian' despite being an ethnical minority and having been historically#geographically culturally traditionally linguistically etc separated and different from italy and no one is teaching the youth about#sardinian history and only teaching the 0.5 seconds of history we shared with italy (which was ! you guessed it ! colonization) and leaving#out the revolts (sometimes successful such as the one that lead to the creation of sa die de sa sardigna !) against the spaniards and more#often the italians including the terroristic movements between the 70s-90s and the 'bandits' and the 'sardinian robin hood' and i could#spend YEARS talking about this but NO ONE will listen and i got off track and im tired and mad rn so i’ll stop#thats it im done#if u read through this congrats !! no one takes me seriously. the people who want independence dont vote for the sardinian independence#parties. im so tired#ily yall !! waou i sure got off track
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"All art is political"
Yeah but maybe consider that it's not your politics being represented
Just because media has been translated to your language does not necessarily mean that the media was created to be a commentary on your specific culture and country
#usa culture wars (tired jpeg)#because it's always almost an USAian going on about assigning US politics to everything#like hey maybe asians creating asian media in asian countries and languages have seperate and distinct political and cultural issues#that they may want to comment on specifically as stated in creator interviews (and occassionally author notes/blogs)#or the fact that things like gender and class and cultural expectations are DIFFERENT in non-USian countries#which does not actually map 1-on-1 to US politics and culture#and yet USians insist on erasing all nuance and inflicting their issues on every discussion about the topics#why does US politics always have to be spotlighted ok it costs nothing for ya'll to shut the fuck up and not interject#maybe learn something about other countries and the issues they're facing once in a while#we all know about YOUR issues i assure you with how our faces are ground into it#and let's not even go into actual irl political/cultural discussions about non-US countries
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want to choose a chinese name for my legal name but my family would question me so bad
(they've already tried to erase the chinese culture from mine and my siblings' lives and i want to reclaim that part of me but it's like they view being chinese as a bad thing. i didn't know my dad was literally half chinese until a couple years ago, my grandma doesn't really ever speak in her native tongue anymore and my dad has never taught me anything of our culture. i want to reconnect and i dont see that as bad, but my family will be so weirded out because "i'm more filipino than chinese")
#ryotalks#this goes the same way with me trying to reconnect with japanese culture#it's like my family's ashamed of those parts of our heritage#the amount of times my mum had told me 'but you're not chinese'#the amount of times they didn't want me to go to chinese festivals with my other relatives#the amount of times i felt at home in chinese food stores and restaurants and chinese oriented towns but could never go beyond that because#i knew nothing of the culture#i am an adult i can make my own choices#but my parents would really wonder 'why would he ever choose to do such a thing'#they'll think im erasing all theyve done#maybe i am#i want to have that part of me back#it's not wrong to do so#right?
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I do want to say re:food appropriation, for Palestinians it is a very very very sensitive issue. I don't know a single Palestinian who doesn't react vehemently to calling food "Israeli." One, because you have to recognize that this is within a larger pattern of completely erasing Palestinian identity, and two, because food is an essential core part of culture, where historical, familial instruction should be acknowledged.
I find it incredibly.... insulting to say "well food can be exchanged between cultures and people, so what's the big idea?" and neglect the fact that even within the Levant, there is a diverse array of cooking styles. To call certain dishes "Israeli" especially within the context of how the state of Israel was established, plays into the erasure of Palestinians.
It's often necessary to attribute the food we eat to specific cultures. For example, I, a Palestinian, would never claim ownership over Macarona Bil-Bashamil, or Yalenji, because they're "Arab." That's just not how food culture works. Different cultures, different climates, different environments all contribute to the food we eat and the clothes we wear. Food in itself is political because of how heavily it is tied to a location in which things are grown and raised.
Food is what builds community. Women, young and old, pass this knowledge throughout generations. And ESPECIALLY between peasant families that grow and raise the very flora and fauna we rely on in our dishes. This is a professional sort of knowledge that we celebrate and consider incredibly important. To strip our very food of our identity is not only insulting, but negates the centuries worth of food culture we've established in favor of homogenization. So yes, it IS possible to appropriate food, especially when you do not acknowledge the centuries worth of knowledge shared.
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I hope it's ok I'm not putting this in tags! I had too much to say about it. I actually had a conversation about this with a UK friend of mine, who is the first person to explain this concept to me. My reply was that it seems there's a misunderstanding about what exactly Americans mean when we refer to ourselves as whatever nationality. So, when we say "I'm Irish" or "I'm Chinese" or "I'm Mexican" (because this is definitely 100% not something only "white" Americans do lol), we are pretty much always referring to our heritage and not our nationality. We're talking about what makes up our ancestry, and it is purely out of genuine interest in learning more about people around you and also in some cases other (usually Americanized) cultures. We're just shortening talking about our ancestors' origins. I realized when talking with my friend how confusing it might sound to people outside the US, but like. It makes perfect sense to us because most people living in the US are native citizens, as is the case for pretty much every other country honestly. Sometimes you learn that someone you thought is a native citizen turns out to have been born and grown up in a different country, but it's not really common, so "I'm Korean" from someone who speaks perfect English with no accent is going to often be assumed to mean "My heritage is Korean" and that the speaker's nationality is American. Same thing for someone saying "I'm Polish" or "I'm Indian". Likewise, if someone says that but DOES have an accent, the assumption will likely be that they are actually from that country depending on the strength of the accent. The internet brings people around the world closer together, and a lot of popular social media and blogging websites (like Tumblr) are American--meaning you're going to find quite a lot of Americans here. It's like making an account on NicoNico or BiliBili and being confused about the Japanese or Chinese culture that you come across. It won't make sense to you unless you have learned about that aspect of the culture or grew up in it. When you're on an American website, you're going to experience some American culture when you inevitably run into Americans. In this case, people around the world are experiencing the American culture of shorthand telling others what makes up our heritage. It by no means is an attempt to steal or cheapen identities. Most Americans actually really enjoy learning about other cultures, whether it be regional cultures or Americanized heritage cultures from our own country, or cultures from other countries around the world. The US is one of the biggest countries in the world, and most Americans neither make enough money or have enough time to travel outside the US. Also, I wanted to explain that "Americanized" cultures are literally just cultures brought here and then adapting to it. The example I told my UK friend was why people of Irish heritage in the US eat corned beef instead of bacon on St. Patrick's day. It's not because we're ignorant and don't know any better. It's because Irish immigrants couldn't afford bacon. They could, however, afford the corned beef sold at Jewish delis. So yeah, we're interested in those things and enjoy learning about them, and that's about it. It's nothing as foolish as saying we're a nationality other than American. My advice to people who would still be bothered by it even after learning all that, is simply: Don't like, don't read. We know what we mean by it, and you have now also learned what we mean by it. It's an ultimately harmless manner of speaking that has changed literally nothing about your culture. If while celebrating your local customs and holidays and traditions you find yourself thinking how we cursed Americans are ruining it with our ignorance and "false claims of nationality", then you might want to sit down and touch some grass and realize that you are there and we are here and we have had no influence on your culture that you yourself did not choose to adopt.
okay now I'm curious.
context: (white) USAmericans have this tendency to take a DNA test to better understand their cultural heritage. then they make whatever result they got (50% Scots-Irish, 25% German, 12.5% French, as a common example) and say that they "are" those things. this is a common topic of conversation, sometimes people will even say something like "are there any Germans here" and they don't mean people who were born and raised German, they mean people who were told they were German by a DNA test.
now, I see this a bit from an outside perspective (my family is culturally French-American because my mother is a French immigrant), but it seems to me like they take this to a cultural level. I've heard people say things like "my family's Irish so St. Patrick's Day is very special to me" without it seeming like they know anything about the day they are celebrating. it's a cultural identity, but their familial culture is no different from their neighbors with a completely different genetic makeup.
for anyone who wants to participate, here's a poll and please please PLEASE reblog and tell me your deeper feelings about this this is something I feel strongly about for no particular reason. please say where you are from (to your comfort level) and why you chose what option, at least.
I think this is a deeply interesting conversation with many different avenues of thought (immigrants trying to hide otherness with descendents regretting that, what does cultural identity mean if not your blood and how does that intersect with this idea, the general concept of the "great American melting pot"; to name a few)!! I'm even doing a teacher thing and giving you examples PLEAAASE circulate this and tell me your thoughts no matter where in the world you come from
#the US#american cultural heritage#polls#to everyone else who understands now I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about us and this bit of our culture#as much as we enjoy learning about others!#also this is edited in because I hit the word limit for posts and don't want to go edit it back in somewhere but#Americans by this point often have heritage from many different countries#my family alone has like 8 or something like that#and yeah not everyone online is American but it's not uncommon at all to run into other Americans on American websites lol#it's not that serious and it's easy enough to learn what we mean just like when two languages (or different slang) cause some confusion#we don't tell the English not to call erasers 'rubbers' lol we just learn what they mean#it's the same thing here--you've learned what we mean
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"the curtains weren't blue on purpose. why should we care?"
my love! let me ask you this - did you eat breakfast today? this tiny moment in your life. just think about it. did you?
for some of you, the answer is yes and for some of you it is technically and for some of you it is does coffee count. some of you reached for cereal or gmo-free overnight oats or frozen waffles or 3-day-old pizza. sometimes we eat the same thing, every day, for weeks. i get tired of eggs randomly, only to go back to craving them desperately. i'm cuban; i take my coffee like my father showed me, very milky and sweet.
some of us ate in a hurry. some of us hate eating breakfast but if we don't we will get nauseous later. some of us took our meds first or took our meds after. some of us have a kitchen 5 feet wide and sometimes it's the biggest room in the house. some of us are confident there will be food in the pantry and some of us flinch and say well, the paycheck is coming. some of us turn on a podcast while we eat or we scroll our phones or write in our diaries.
some of us are choosing, specifically, not to eat breakfast. some of us are too busy. some of us are pretending we "just forgot," but we are ignoring the warning signs that everything feels too-heavy. some of us are so consumed with anxiety or grief that we can't eat. some of us can't stand up long enough to make our coffee. some of us have no table to sit down and eat.
i cannot tell you what an artist "meant" by their choices. but they did have to make a choice, conscious or otherwise, to give you information. to give you a little bit more light. each of these choices are little stars of data; connecting speckles for you to weave through, drawing a line.
you cannot use a mirror in a dark room. for some of us; we will not care that the curtains are blue, because that will just be a data point and not enough light to see by. for some of us, the blue curtains will be the same as our childhood bedroom. it will make us seasick. for some of us, blue will be the color of frostbite. it might look like a pixel up close; but from a distance, oh! the picture blooms.
i cannot tell you what will stick out for you. what will carry meaning. some of you will read the sentence "i didn't have breakfast today" and say "this means nothing." some of you will read that and say "oh, me neither." some of you will say "this means the character is probably a little grouchy." some of you will say "oh, i wonder if they're okay. why didn't they eat anything?" ... art is a mirror. i am holding hands with you, over space and time, and asking you to feel something with me.
i want you to read my work and find a blue pair of curtains. i want you to read my work and find things in it that i never imagined placing. i have no way of knowing what will resonate with you, that's true. and maybe i just was hungry while i wrote this, and thinking about the eggs in my fridge. but if you found meaning, that meaning is yours. it cannot be erased just because i didn't "intend" it. you created a different world by interpreting my work. it's collaborative! that's beautiful! that's stunning!
just! imagine looking at the night sky and saying - it's stupid to have a favorite constellation or a favorite star. they're just there.
because here's the thing - across centuries and cultures, we look up. we still find meaning in the stars. these beautiful, lovely scattered accidents. are you looking? they call. and we look back and say oh! of course we are!
#this got away from me#but like#u know#reading is a form of creation#and sometimes the choice that the author makes might SEEM random#but it's like. bro that's telling u something.#also hate the vibe where authors/artists mock their audience for finding meaning in something#nahhhh#if u make art u need to be okay with people finding their own reflection in it
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Multiple Jeopardy Gender and Liberation in Palestine
by Nada Elia
[ID: "Palestinian women and queers in the homeland are often asked by concerned Westerners how we negotiate the challenges of living full, rewarding lives in a conservative society. Those of us in the Western diaspora are asked if we are not better off, really, living in "modern" societies where we can wear whatever we want and go wherever we want. These questions are misguided. Instead, Palestinians should be asked how we persist, how we continue to live, love, and care, in a society that is living under Israel's brutal system of apartheid, intent on erasing our very existence and history. We should be asked how we persist under the rule of law of an ethno-supremacist country that views each and every one of us as a "demographic threat," simply for being who we are. We should be asked how our youth retain the impulse to be free, when trigger-happy Israeli soldiers and snipers are ordered to kill unarmed children demanding their human rights. We should be asked how we continue to build community, nurture each other, and denounce settler colonialism in the same breath as we reject patriarchy. And anyone who is concerned that those of us in the diaspora are better off than in Palestine should stop and think about who is the greater oppressor of the Palestinian people, including women and queers: Israel, which denies every Palestinian their basic rights, or Palestinian society, with its at times stifling "traditional values," which are often little more than an attempt to hold on to one's culture, threatened with erasure. And they should consider that, for the millions of us longing for the homeland, our diaspora is not a choice but a reality imposed upon the Palestinian people by Israel." End ID]
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"Growing up, Mackenzee Thompson always wanted a deeper connection with her tribe and culture.
The 26-year-old member of the Choctaw Nation said she grew up outside of her tribe’s reservation and wasn’t sure what her place within the Indigenous community would be.
Through a first-of-its-kind program, Thompson said she’s now figured out how she can best serve her people — as a doctor.
Thompson is graduating as part of the inaugural class from Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation. It’s the first physician training program on a Native American reservation and in affiliation with a tribal government, according to school and tribal officials.
“I couldn’t even have dreamed this up,” she said. “To be able to serve my people and learn more about my culture is so exciting. I have learned so much already.”
Thompson is one of nine Native graduates, who make up more than 20 percent of the class of 46 students, said Dr. Natasha Bray, the school’s dean. There are an additional 15 Native students graduating from the school’s Tulsa campus.
The OSU-COM graduates include students from 14 different tribes, including Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Alaska Native, Caddo, and Osage.
Bray said OSU partnered with the Cherokee Nation to open the school in 2020 to help erase the shortage of Indigenous doctors nationwide. There are about 841,000 active physicians practicing in the United States. Of those, nearly 2,500 — or 0.3 percent — are Native American, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
When American Indian and Alaska Native people visit Indian Health Service clinics, there aren’t enough doctors or nurses to provide “quality and timely health care,” according to a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office. On average, a quarter of IHS provider positions — from physicians to nurses and other care positions –are vacant.
“These students here are going to make a generational impact,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told the students days before graduation. “There is such a need in this state and in this region for physicians and this school was created out of a concern about the pipeline of doctors into our health system.”
The Cherokee Nation spent $40 million to build the college in its capital of Tahlequah. The walls of the campus feature artifacts of Cherokee culture as well as paintings to remember important figures from Cherokee history. An oath of commitment on the wall is written in both English and Cherokee.
The physician training program was launched in the first year of the pandemic.
Bray said OSU and Cherokee leadership felt it was important to have the school in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, home to more than 141,000 people, because students would be able to get experience treating Indigenous patients. In Tahlequah, students live and study in a small town about an hour east of Tulsa with a population of less than 24,000 people.
“While many students learn about the problems facing these rural communities,” Bray said. “Our students are getting to see them firsthand and learn from those experiences.”
While students from the college are free to choose where to complete their residency after graduation, an emphasis is placed on serving rural and Indigenous areas of the country.
There’s also a severe lack of physicians in rural America, a shortage that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Association of American Medical Colleges has projected that rural counties could see a shortage between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034. An additional 180,000 doctors would be needed in rural counties and other underserved populations to make up the difference.
Bray said OSU saw an opportunity to not only help correct the underrepresentation of Native physicians but also fill a workforce need to help serve and improve health care outcomes in rural populations.
“We knew we’d need to identify students who had a desire to serve these communities and also stay in these communities,” she said.
Osteopathic doctors, or DOs, have the same qualifications and training as allopathic doctors, or MDs, but the two types of doctors attend different schools. While MDs learn from traditional programs, DOs take on additional training at osteopathic schools that focus on holistic medicine, like how to reduce patient discomfort by physically manipulating muscles and bones. DOs are more likely to work in primary care and rural areas to help combat the health care shortages in those areas.
As part of the curriculum, the school invited Native elders and healers to help teach students about Indigenous science and practices...
Thompson said she was able to bring those experiences into her appointments. Instead of asking only standard doctor questions, she’s been getting curious and asking about her patient’s diets, and if they are taking any natural remedies.
“It’s our mission to be as culturally competent as we can,” she said. “Learning this is making me not only a better doctor but helping patients trust me more.”
-via PBS NewsHour, May 23, 2024
#indigenous#native american#cherokee#choctaw#cherokee nation#medical school#united states#doctors#medical news#medical student#cultural competence#cultural heritage#public health#health care#medicine#good news#hope#oklahoma
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I want to take a few minutes to talk about my connection to Israel, as a Jew. I want to do that because some people desperately need to understand this, and also I'm procrastinating on uni homework.
Some years ago there were calls to return artifacts from the British Museum to the countries they're from. I know Britain pretty much went anywhere and took anything they wanted, but it got me thinking about cultural identities and their connection over time.
The middle east was home to some of the world's most ancient civilizations, and I'm sure most people living there could trace their lineage back to those civilizations (theoretically of course, we don't have data going that far). But how are they related to them? Do modern day Iraqis have any connection to Babylonians? They don't have a common language, religion, holidays, costumes… there is no cultural connection there. Babylonians happened to live in the same place, but other than that…
But this is not the case for Jews. Wherever Jewish people ended up throughout time, we kept a direct connection to ancient Israelites. I speak the same language they did thousands of years ago, I celebrate the holidays they celebrated. Our holy book is localized to Israel. We have holidays where we use local flora as decorations. We remembered our home, wherever we were, and waited to return.
The city I grew up in has flooding every winter. The whole area does (the Sharon region). It's because it used to be a swamp. There are 3 limestone ridges blocking the rivers from getting to the ocean, and when the early Zionist pioneers bought lands in this area (which were uninhabited swampland at the time) they had to open up tunnels through the limestone and drain the swamps before people could live here.
Why am I telling you this? Because we already did it before. Ancient Israelites already dug tunnels and drained swamps and lived here. There was a prayer during Yom Kippur specifically for the safety of people living here. All of the towns in the Sharon were razed by the Mamluks in the 13th century, and it became a swamp again. Until we returned.
To anyone who call us "colonizers": These "ancient" Israelites don't just share a religion with us, they ARE us. We were expelled from our homeland, but we kept our identity, we refused to let go, we kept wishing to come back home. We were always indigenous to Israel. We don't belong anywhere but here.
And now they're are trying to tell us that some people with a name invented by Rome to erase Judea and Israel, with a religion and language from Arabia, who didn't have a distinct cultural identity other than "Arab" until a few decades ago, belong here more than we do? I don't think so.
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Thinking of all these Russians not living there that still consume only Putin's propaganda and tell everyone how Ukraine has been bombing Russia for years, they finally had to do something... Yeah, they are collectively hoping for Russian win. Tsarist or Soviet or anything else they are colonizers and oppressors without any shame about their history or present actions.
Russophobia isn’t any better than Islamophobia. It’s not cute how jingoistic the left has gotten, y’all are seriously worse than the right after 9/11.
Whatever u say bestie <3 I'm Eastern European. Russia has put the entire region through hell for centuries. There's a lot of genetational trauma surrounding Russia in my country due to them being absolutely brutal and raping everything that moved during WW2. My great grandma remembered those times. There are women alive right now who used to hid as young girls because Russians would come and destroy evreything they could get their hands on. Sounds a bit too familiar, doesn't it? I'm sorry I don't care about the victimization of poor little innocent Russians who go around putting destroyed Mariupol as their aesthetic wallpaper and think it's glorious to rape and murder Ukrainian children whose only fault is being Ukrainian. I'm sorry I don't care about people who think they have the superior culture and have done evreything they could to erase not just one other culture off the map, but several others. I'm sorry I don't care about Russians who go to ex USSR countries expecting evreyone to cater to them and think it's a violation of human rights not to speak to them in Russian. I'm sorry I don't care about people who have looted my country and took away chunks of it just because they could and wanted to. I'm sorry I don't care about people who are actively committing genocide as we speak and have forced friends dear to me to live a life that could crumble at any given moment, a life without any security and guarantee, a life of agony and seeing evreything they hold dear destroyed, spat on and left to rot. I have a friend who was forced to take her young baby and raise him in a country she knew nothing of, completely alone. Why? We both know why.
Truth is I AM NOT SORRY and never will be! Not for Russians who bask in their colonial glory. The truth is the majority of them support the genocide against Ukrainians, and those who don't are apathetic towards it and adopt the same lethargic laissez-faire attitude they always had. It's not them, it's never them. Except it is.
#our russophobia is insufficient#and no hating someone who has been actively genociding you for centuries and still hasn't stopped doing it is not 'phobia'#wanting accountability for mass murder and cultural erasing is not a phobia#whoever uses the word russophobia unironically shows they are a shill for fascist imperialism
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like I'm genuinely so fucking tired of white lgbts
I love being a lesbian! I love the community that lesbians of colour have built!
but it's a damn shame that we had to build our own distinct community because of how white lesbians treat us
white lesbians have like four different ways that they treat us: fetishization, disgust, erasure, and false allyship. and they're all equally bad and hurtful
constantly telling studs that you want them to beat you up. talking about lesbians of colour like we're sex objects. defending so-called "raceplay". do you really think you're better than the white men who tell woc that they're really into asian girls or latinas? it's fetishization!
and the disgust. disrespecting our cultures, our skintones. talking about your "preference" for other white girls. talking shit about black lesbians' hair.
or you try to erase us. you only acknowledge white lesbians. your wlw positivity blog is only white girls. you talk about iconic lesbians and only mention white ones. you imply or outright say that cultures of colour (especially in the global south) are inherently homophobic, like lesbians of colour don't even exist.
and the one that leaves the worst taste in my mouth? the false allyship. claiming to support us until it comes time to actually do something about it. letting people get away with racism because they're lgbt+. getting mad at us for calling out racism in the community. telling us it's okay to talk about racism, but we have to be nicer about it, that we're too judgemental or confrontational
and no matter which of these forms of white supremacy a white lesbian practices, they will always always hide behind being lgbt+ to get away with it. white lesbians will form a united front to defend each other from accountability for racism
it's no fucking wonder we've built our own communities away from you.
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