#Racial and Cultural Issues

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Religion and culture and their intersections always face the same savior attitudes, where outsiders who have no experience with those communities assume that the people in them are dumb savages who need to be saved from their own ignorance. The idea that we could not only be aware of issues in our communities but actually talking about them and trying to solve them just does not occur to people who want to play the role of the intelligent and rational heroes.

[sparrowposting]

I'm finally back into the way of kings and like.kaladin. Kaladin. Babe. My poor little meow meow. Sad boy times only. Prime Blorbo material. I would die for him.

What a shame bsanderson is such A Worldbuilding Guy and I'm very much more a character driven person where the world mostly exists to serve the narrative & themes bc like. Ho boy is this one dragging. The dalinar chapters SHOULD be smthn I enjoy! Sad old men! Guilt! Honour! Chivalric codes! The ever encroaching fear that you're losing your sanity! And yet. Mcdying.

Love shallan and jasnah. Absolutely fascianted by scholarly, philosophical and religious infighting and implications there. But Kaladin is THEE cosmere guy of all time. He's uprooted even my mistborn era 1 faves. Guilt complex chronically depressed sometimes suicidal enslaved soldier is actually meant to be a healer and a surgeon and he is kind. And good. He doesn't want to be a miracle but for his men he will be. But he also said fuck the lighteyes class oppression all my homies hate this shit. I stood ZERO chance of him not being my fave immediately

[actual-corpse]

Who the fuck decided the word "curvy" equaled "fat"?

Because they can go fuck themselves.

[cupcakesmoothie]

Behold

Alexander!

This is probably the most effort I've put into designing a character and I'm not even done with his outfit :')

The scarf might change designs and colours depending on how his outfit goes, I might also add some extra stuff to it.

Alexander is going to be one of the few side characters that don't have a blessing! He might not have a blessing, but he can still defend himself :)

His specialty is swords and knives (Also throwing weapons).

Yes, he is aromantic, but not asexual!

I spent like an hour straight drawing this

Ok edit: His name is actually Alexis now, and he's Spanish

[brekkie-e]

Thank you for saying that. I was so confused as to why no one in Tevinter called the Qunari an "Ox woman".

You're welcome! I'm glad it resonated with some people. Im always a little anxious posting things that are critical cause I understand not everyone wants to see that.

That being said, the Qwydion situation is really quite confusing to me and plays in to some of my bigger critiques of the show. Early on when the group is entering the city, a gaurd stops Miriam and comments on how gate checking elves is "in case they break the peace" or something along those lines.

:readmore:

When...elves are quite common place in Tevinter. A completely normal part of an average household whether as a servant or a slave, and there are even elves who do not fall into either of those categories in the country. That's not to say they have a good lot, or that it's okay. But they are present and not unusual to see and if they had to gate check every elf it would get excessive very fast.

Qunari on the other hand? They are literally at war with the Qun. If you're going to make a comment about breaking the peace with anyone, it would normally be about someone who's people you're at war with. This would have given them an opportunity to explore how Qwydion might carry her own racial issues as a Tal Vashoth mage who is herself a target of those who serve the Qun. While she also recieves the full brunt of people's prejudices against the Qun despite that.

But no. A qunari may walk around Tevinter with no questions asked or exploration of her identity and story. But an elf? Oh my god we can't let the audience forget how marginalized the elves are. To a degree that seems gratuitous.

[kath-artic]

like im all against unethical hunting practices but if the animal's dead then why not use every part of it. and me not buying a vintage coat isnt gonna magically bring that animal back to life

[swallowtail-ageha]

Man i just saw a post that was like "when they tell you that feminicide happens because of culture is goal shifting and ignoring that men from other cultural backgrounds do it" wowzers it's almost as if the culture we're referring to is the general patriarchal culture that's so rampant in many societies where men are taught that their female partners are objects to control and dominate.....

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

I see that usage of the term "toxic masculinity" has waned in the last 3 years. Thanks God it's finally dying. People just aim that word at anything that isn't some super soft a$$ crap.

[bijoumikhawal]

something funny about English language media going "not only is it bizarre to want your wife to be OBESE its barbaric to out her health at risk for it! This should be considered the same as FGM!" While you spend every single day getting bombarded by weight-loss ads and the suggestion that this is harmful is met with scorn

[cheesey-rice]

I've been getting a lot of vids from international YouTube channels bc of my foreign language interests and I see a lot of international poc complaining about American poc being in historical shows and calling it the same ahistoricality as someone casting a white person to play a poc, and I've felt that I disagreed.

Just trying to articulate this from my perspective as a 2nd gen kid... I think that folks saying poc being in like British historical type shows in positions poc definitely wouldn't have been in at that period have a point when they say studios should just produce movies/shows that tell the history of actual poc instead of misrepresenting history of predominant white countries have a point in that yes, American culture and media definitely has this huge Blindspot to history outside of a certain sphere of white American culture influences... But I still feel like there is a definite difference between a white person being cast as a historical poc vs a poc being cast as a historically white person.

Bc when it comes down to it I feel like the perspective some non-americans might not have is that when you grow up in America you are raised as an American. Poc are not exempt from the American cultural concept of what our history is. Like regardless of how u feel about the musical itself Hamilton is a good example of how something that exists in our culture as American history is something that a poc creator was able to retell as their own history as an immigrant. Regardless of the quality of the piece, one wouldn't say that the people of color in Hamilton's production are talking about or reenacting American history in an unfaithful or inaccurate way because American history is their history and an immigrant writing a view on that history from an immigrant's perspective adds a level of nuance to the piece rather than taking it away.

But in the case of a white person playing an important historical figure of color, it's completely different. Like in the instance of that famous harriet Tubman case, a white person could not play the black woman who fought the white institution of American slavery her entire life. Because victimization at the hands of the institution of slavery on the basis of race in America is a history that cannot be said to be the history of all Americans. Non-black Americans and (also most black non-americans) are not going to grow up being continually affected by the social, financial, and legal ramifications of the institution that remain in this country. A person who has never experienced a life that continues to be affected by racism is not going to be able to accurately tell a story about race. And because America has relied on racial dogma to excuse free labor and human rights abuses used to build the agricultural basis of our society from the very inception of the nation, there is never going to be a story about a black American in our history that was not in some way affected or influenced by the experience of racism.

I understand that from an outside perspective seeing an American poc just say a casting choice is "racist" can sound like oh they're saying a white person isn't allowed to play this role what about creative freedom etc etc. But like, ignoring the knee jerk reaction to call everything 'cancelling' these days maybe realize that they're saying a white actor is going to do a worse job representing a character who experienced racism than a person of color and that's just a fact. It's not restricting art to criticize that the choices behind it make the actual piece worse in the long term for very obvious reasons.

[juror4]

It's ridiculously and infuriatingly difficult to find some casual history material on the Moors because all anyone cares about is classifying whether or not they were Black... Shut up! I want to know about the arts and the science and the clothing and the crafts and the poetry and the battles and the culture! I don't want to do race science!

[caroloftheshells]

long post re theory pedagogy again

the other thing about that vid (and another thing! lol) being that hierarchically a lot of the people doing the more interesting or out-there research and diversifying the field from a content perspective (and, tbh, demographically) are like grad students or early-career people who don’t even necessarily have any pedagogical flexibility & tend to be slotted in to teach lower-level theory courses-- whose outcomes are predetermined not only by general screwy nasm strictures but by whatever the professor down the line in the curriculum is teaching / expects people to know when they get there. and we get paid (much) less also than tenured professors. which is really a generic “thing about all academia” that doesn’t necessarily become a nefarious personal flaw on the part of said scholars and instead ought to be addressed at a structural level bc the scale of the issue exceeds individual instructors’ spheres of influence.

BUT music occupies such a fucked “totally separate from society” space in many ppl’s imaginations that it’s like oh man how dare it have the same issues as every other field of scholarship bc it shouldn’t “really” be a matter of scholarship in the first place. ie music is culturally rendered a “nothing matters just feel it” / “everything is ephemeral and there is only Innate Talent and nothing can be taught” sort of field such that any intellectualizing thereof &/or suggestion of learnabilty / non-innateness is deemed, like, boring & regressive by some people & i’d say especially people raised with a certain awareness of the “composer-genius” culture of wam education. like i’m completely on the “fuck partwriting parallel fifths are awesome” train as a matter of taste (for example) but that does not mean that learning what parallel fifths are-- and why some old european guys didn’t like them *bc they preferred it to sound like there was more than one voice and it’s easier to create that perceptually w/o an overtone effect* (eg)-- is going to like destroy your artistic Essence and make you a worse musician bc now you’re no longer an empty vessel put on this earth to channel brahms or whoever. & plus i think perpetuating the synonymizing of theory-as-field with wam harmonic rules not only is like factually misrepresentative of current research but also is sort of a self fulfilling prophesy such that ppl who would otherwise have completely fascinating things to say & questions to ask are discouraged from non-platitudinous & open-ended (theoretical) inquiry re the content and aims of their own rep & listening, and tacitly learn that composers’ ~~genius~~ descended from the heavens & you either get it or you don’t, you either “have talent” as a composer or you don’t, et cetera

[falled-over]

i apologise for defending video essays in the past. i am living in a lovely bubble and was unaware of the general landscape

[menalez]

“Ireland has plenty of hate crimes… they likely wouldn’t have been beheaded, but gay people would continue to face hate crimes without that man (the criminal guy) being there” I think you’re aware of how unbelievably shitty a thing this was to say. Irish gay people still face homophobia of course, but prior to this never in our worst nightmares would we have thought that someone would FUCKING BEHEAD US. This is NOT NORMAL HERE.

do you think beheadings are normal anywhere? do u think that beheadings are normal in my country simply bc we’re mostly muslim and brown? it’s extreme everywhere you stupid racist fuck. it was obvious i was saying homophobia and especially homophobic killings would happen regardless because homophobia is still a major issue including in ireland. but your stupid brainless racist ass decided to take that as “beheadings are normal!” as if it’s normal for anyone besides ISIS. fuck off and stop spamming my inbox with your ignorant racist bullshit

[tikkunolamresistance]

Rapper Macklemore is releasing a track called “Hind’s Hall”, speaking out on the genocide of Palestinians, and the United States complacency in this ongoing violence. Macklemore has stated that once the track drops on streaming, all proceeds from streams will be going directly to UNRWA— the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.

The new tracks namesake Hind’s Hall echoes the honours that Columbia University encampment protestors bestowed the Morningside Heights campus’ Hamilton Hall— in memory of Hind Rajab, the 6 year old Palestinian girl in Gaza who was shot by Israeli soldiers after being trapped inside a vehicle, with her dead family. She had begged to be rescued as tanks closed in on her.

Macklemore using his platform to vehemently speak out against genocide, the Israeli occupation and United States-led violence is what every single artist should be doing right now. The power of art should not be underestimated. Macklemore started out in the Hip-Hop scene within communist circles, namely working alongside Blue Scholars, and has never neglected his Leftism through out his career: the artist has spoken on issues regarding mental health, addiction, racial profiling and police violence, Capitalism, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and toxicity of American culture.

“The Nakba never ended, the colonizer lied” Hind’s Hall, Macklemore, 2024

[rebellum]

I'll never get over how FUNNY it was for me to be like

"I feel so sad and like I'm disconnected from black culture. People talk about all this stuff online and I have no relationship to it. I'm so upset that I feel like I'm not REALLY black because of this disconnect from black american culture. "

And my brother just being like

"Star."

"We're Canadian"