#antiracism resources

[sentientsky]

just a friendly reminder that, just because slavery was formally "abolished" in the so-called united states* in 1865, enslavement itself is still ongoing in the form of incarceration, which disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous people

(*i say "so-called" because the US is a settler-colonial construction founded on greed, extraction, and white supremacy) recommended readings/resources:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

"How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended" by Daniele Selby

"So You're Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist" by Mariame Kaba

"The Case for Prison Abolition: Ruth Wilson Gilmore on COVID-19, Racial Capitalism & Decarceration" from Democracy Now! [VIDEO]

[tododeku-or-bust]

“One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.” The claim of “not racist” neutrality is a mask for racism.”

--Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.

--Ijeoma Oluo

Want to learn how to do better involving race, racism, and race conversations, but not sure where to start? Check out the Anti-Racism Resource Guide by Tasha K (these quotes are from that guide) on bfpnola's webpage! The entire website is a platinum mine of information on SO MANY THINGS; truly bless them for compiling the resources!

[darcylindbergh]

I’m a queer minor with an unsupportive Republican family and I feel so fucking helpless about the election. What can I do or at least how can I stay safe?

listen to me. i am taking your face in my hands. i am looking into your eyes. listen. your second question is the right one. your safety is your priority. have you ever been on a plane? and they do the little safety routine? and when the masks fall down, they say, "put your own oxygen mask on before helping others?"

as a queer kid, this is a put your own mask on before helping others situation.

there are things you can do to get involved but first and foremost, you gotta be safe. if that means you don't come out and you don't talk about politics and you don't get involved in activism until you can be independent, that's what it means. i know it sucks to hear. it really sucks saying it, tbh. i want you to be big and out and loud and proud, and i never want you to have to make yourself small, but more than anything i want you to be safe.

so everything i'm about to say is with this caveat. safety first. your own mask before helping others.

here's a link to the lgbt national youth talkline. this service won't call outside agencies (like 911) on your behalf, unless you're making a credible threat to someone else.

the Trevor Project also has a hotline and chat services. they do call outside agencies on your behalf to report imminent harm to yourself or others as well as reporting child abuse. i'm not saying one is better than the other. i just want you to know what each service does.

the Trevor Project also has trevorspace, which i guess is like social media for lgbt youth? i am not a youth so i didn't sign up to check it out but it could be a good place to find folks to talk and connect with. connections are so good.

here's some things you can do. i tried to include a bunch of things with different amounts of involvement so you can pick your safety level.

read. read so much. read about people who are like you and who are not like you. read fiction that celebrates queer joy and read nonfiction books about antiracism and intersectionality and the history of queer people in the US. do you know who has a cool amount of information on queer history in the US? the national park service. watch queer movies, even (especially, tbh) old ~problematic stuff, look up what people say about it now. read through the articles on decolonizepalestine.com. watch interviews about Black joy. know your rights. read banned books. if you can't do, learn. read. just because it's happening inside your head doesn't mean it's real work.

check out scarleteen, which is a fantastic resource for queer sex ed and relationship information. a lot of their articles are older now, but still 100% great reads.

watch what your family is watching - debates, news stories, whatever - and ask yourself how would i respond to that? look up how to respond to that. you can use this time to start learning how to dissect political speech and how to respond to it. both sides do this! read news from both sides and see how it compares.

make your daily 5 calls. they give you scripts and everything. if you don't want to talk to a real human person, calling in the evening will usually get you a voicemail. talking on the phone is a hugely important social skill - if you don't have it, the 5 calls are a great way to start and to start addressing your discomfort with phones.

20 states allow 17-year-olds to vote in the primaries.

Pre-register to vote if you're eligible.

Vote Forward puts on a letter writing campaign you can participate in.

NextGen America has in-person volunteer opportunities in 8 states, and virtual opportunities globally. Although they target voters 18-35, volunteers can be any age. (hey adults - you listening?)

here's even more information on phone or text banking! for most of these, you don't have to be 18.

Organize a voter registration drive at your high school. the Civics Center has a free, one-hour online workshop that will walk you through how to host a drive and they'll even send you swag for it. check out their "for students" tab - they have sharable graphics, workshops, lots of stuff.

in some states, people under 18 can sign up to be poll workers. (hey adults - we can do this too)

CIRCLE is a civic engagement center that focuses on getting youth out to vote, but also educating folks. check their website out. listen. politics are so boring like, 99.9% of the time. the more you know about how it works, the more effective you can be when you want to get involved.

look up your local political body, find out when they meet. attend the meetings. in my county we have a board of commissioners that meet once a month, and a couple of committees as well. i don't go every time but now that i can log into the meetings via Zoom, I do about every other month or so. did you see that video of violet affleck speaking at the LA board of supervisors meeting? that could be you, babe.

so there's a lot you can do actually! here's some more stuff you can do!!

know, with 100% certainty, in your heart of hearts, that there are so many people who want you to be out and proud and loud and yourself. and there are so many people who are fighting for you to be able to do that. there are so many adults, queer and non-queer, rooting for you, standing up for you, putting ourselves between you and a future where you have to keep making yourself small. and you will get older and i know it's trite but THINGS REALLY DO GET BETTER, and someday you will be the queer adult on this side of the screen protecting kids like you. you gotta keep on keeping on and keeping yourself safe so you can do that someday.

log off. LOG OFF. doomscrolling is a form of self-harm. deliberately seeking out endless articles and tiktoks and whatever about news and information that will upset you is not activism, babe! it's harm! you aren't helping anyone by being hurt. there's a difference between being informed and hurting yourself. find the line. hold yourself to it.

stop using chat gpt. it's terrible. forget you ever knew about it. that's not related to activism its just like, general health, and also climate change. while i'm here, switch to firefox and duckduckgo.

go outside. it turns out touching grass is actually important for our mental health. go find some.

pick up a hobby that does something with your hands, if you're able to. i cross-stitch and play piano (badly). pick up drawing. cooking. embroidery. underwater basket weaving. it's important to find something that shows you what YOU can do with YOUR two hands. you can do so much.

find your people. online, in person. find your people. when i got this ask, i - not a parent - threw it to my people and they helped me find some resources. we're doing this together.

this is kind of silly but i love doing it. find the marriage license announcements in your county or township or whatever and look for gay people. you'll be guessing by names, so watch out - we love trans people who have and haven't made the legal name change! - but GOD. i've looked at the marriage license announcements literally every two weeks (which is how often they're published in my county) since Obergefell v Hodges 9 years ago, which is when we got gay marriage in my state, and it's so fucking healing. in the last 9 years, i have seen hundreds of gay people make this announcement. every two weeks, there are four or five gay couples in my community out of maybe 15, 20 (i live in a pretty small county). look up why marriage rights have mattered so much to our community. these marriage license announcements are just such a small, bright spot of joy and seeing the names - real people! in my real community! - cradles my heart. find what cradles your heart.

this has gotten long enough so i'm going to set it free. i'm sure there will be people in the notes adding things. for you parents out there, leave your love in the comments. for the rest of us extremely cool and suave adults, pick something off the list and volunteer too, and look at this anon and think yes, this is why we do it. kids like us who are kids now, who will be us later. for you Youth out there, put your oxygen mask on first and then help others.

i love you.

it gets better.

[opencommunion]

"Big Tech corporations are modern-day East India companies; they are an extension of American imperial power. They colonise the global digital economy and reinforce the divide between the North and the South. As a result, the US profits from the ownership of digital infrastructure and knowledge and the extraction of resources from the Global South.

Digital colonialism is hardwired into Big Tech’s DNA. Its close relationship with the Israeli army is not only lucrative, but it serves the broader geopolitical interests of the American Empire, from which it benefits.

Tech corporations’s support for Israel exposes their fake image as companies espousing antiracism and human rights. In reality, they are complicit in Israeli crimes, much like other organs of American imperialism. What we are witnessing is US-Israeli apartheid, colonial conquest and genocide, powered by American tech giants."

[gatheringbones]

["Questions can be a portal into possibilities we hadn’t yet imagined. This deceptively simple question—what if queer and trans people loved going to the doctor?—was a kind of portal for me, because of how it gestured toward an audaciously different set of conditions from the ones we’re in now.

When I ask other queer and trans people this question they usually laugh, roll their eyes, or make a face that tells me just how unfathomable the idea of loving going to the doctor is to them. But then something changes. As they contemplate what it would mean to feel this way, their facial expressions shift. Their eyes light up and their bodies relax a little. I know because mine does, too. There’s something potent about this moment of shared imagining, even if we aren’t picturing the same thing.

Think about it: What if you loved going to the doctor?

I’m curious: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you contemplate this question? How does it feel in your body? Maybe you’re already rolling your eyes at me or you instinctively put up a shield to protect yourself from potential harm. Sit with this question for a moment longer if you can. What kinds of possibilities begin to unfold for you as you let yourself imagine what it would take to be able to answer yes?

When I asked myself this question, it led me to other questions: What if queer and trans people had the resources we needed to create and sustain our own community-led forms of care and healing in ways that are expansively available to everyone who wants them? What if we could always trust in getting health care that felt good, accessible, and even pleasurable, wherever and whenever we needed it? What if it felt safe enough to bring our whole selves into the process? What if health care felt healing and helped us flourish?

What if all health care providers and healers genuinely honoured and valued queer and trans people, worked collaboratively with us, and trusted in our expert knowledge of our own bodies? What if health and healing were widely understood not as individual responsibilities but as processes that happen collectively in communities? What if all health care and healing was built on a foundation of antiracism and disability justice? What if the care we received was rooted in a commitment to our liberation and the liberation of all people?

What if?”]

from The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Justice Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, edited by Zena Sharman, 2021

[grumpyoldsnake]

Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi does a really good job of explaining and contextualizing the various racist ideas and justifications that have been used throughout US history, with plenty of quotations from primary documents.

I recommend it, especially if OP’s point is new to you or if you want a better idea of what these ideas are and why they’re harmful.

hey writers if you want to make a metaphor for racism, please maybe remember that racism is literally based on nothing. Africans weren’t enslaved en masse because the Robo-Musa threatened to destroy the world, they were enslaved because it was economically rewarding and politically convenient. If at any point your allegory for racism includes “so <oppressed group> did this major catastrophe and” then you have not only missed the point but you are literally reinforcing the ideas that racism have let racism self-perpetuate (that e.g. black people are naturally dangerous and violent and must be contained or begrudgingly accepted by the Nice White People)

[fairuzfan]

It's the zionist concern anon again. I will say for now that with what you said about prioritizing Palestinians I do agree. The people going through a genocide are a bigger priority than people who are not going through a genocide. I just fear that due to the fact I am neither Palestinian or Jewish that I may end up embracing stances that I do not actually understand and that innocent people may suffer because of it. I do not want to be irresponsible. I am also someone who lives in a country built on stolen land, so that does to some sort of extent influence my feelings on Isreal as I imagine many people in Isreal share my thoughts on the fact we have lived our entire lives on stolen land. As I said before, I also do not know any Palestinians personally so I find it hard to know who I can ask about the history, Hamas, technical details of politics, etc without risking being taught the wrong things. On a much more selfish note, I also struggle with debilitating mental health issues that make it very difficult to navigate moral issues especially if the moral issues do not impact me on a personal level. So if I am being honest, my questions are not entirely selfless as I have very self-centered fears on if I am actually a horrible person. I thank you again for being so understanding, but I figure the right thing to do here is admit I am likely not as pure intentioned in my questions as I should be when a large factor to why I worked up the courage to ask is in hope I am worrying too much about my quality of moral character from a selfish perspective. Again, I thank you for being so understanding and willing to answer these asks instead of just brushing me off as a horrible zionist.

I don't think you're a horrible person at all I just think everyone has underlying zionist biases because it's a product of the society we live in.

And I do understand where you're coming from, honestly. Something that always helps me is remembering something that my parents taught me as a kid: always stand on the side of the oppressed. Now as I grew up I realized you have to define what oppression means and I think exploring that will also help you get a better understanding of how to combat other forms of racism/antisemitism/transphobia/etc.

If you do want to learn about hamas tho, I would suggest taking a look at Tareq Baconi, he has a lot of writings about the history of Hamas and he's Palestinian. There are also Palestinian podcasts and social media accounts. I understand that not knowing a palestinian personally to help you guide yourself through these things is daunting, but there are plenty of resources to help! It's why I'm here on this blog honestly, I don't mind you reaching out to me for questions or anything.

A good principle to remind ourselves with is "how can I ensure that justice can be had?" And to find the answer to that you need to look into multiple types of antizionist thought. Some blogs I like to check out for a diverse antizionist opinion are @el-shab-hussein and @bringmemyrocks as a couple of examples. Plus I'd look to Black American thinkers on antiracism (like Angela Davis and James Baldwin and Kwame Ture) because they do a good job of showing you how to examine your internal biases which we are all subject to.

I don't think this selfish to want to be a good person. I have the same worries. I actually do get worried that sometimes I'm *actually* a bad person secretly without me realizing and I reach out to friends and family to talk it out. Something that helps me through this is realizing that you have to forgive yourself for previous beliefs you've had and promise yourself to do better because at the end of the day youre human and you make mistakes.

But really my biggest advice is to read and listen to a variety of schools of thought and if you can, interact with local communities dedicated to antiracism. Even if theyre digital communities! That will help a lot with identifying any problem points.

Again, feel free to reach out with any questions. I don't think you're a zionist at all! Please don't worry and thanks for reaching out :)

[multiplicity-positivity]

To our followers:

It has never been a goal of ours to police other people’s lived experience, much less their online experience. However, this is a shift we feel is necessary for us to make.

It is with a heavy heart that we are adding to our DNI followers and fans of @/sophieinwonderland.

Why?

This has everything to do with racism within the plural community. We have seen many conversations circling recently about tulpamancy terminology, its harm, and how it directly negatively affects marginalized groups (specifically Asian/Tibetan Buddhists).

As a white system, we believe it is crucial to center the voices of affected marginalized groups when discussing issues that directly concern them. Because of this, a few members of our system have compiled a list of testimonies from Buddhist POC involving their thoughts on tulpamancy language. We’d encourage everyone to check out that document, which we will link below:

The fact of the matter is, Sophie of @/sophieinwonderland has ignored, brushed off, or flat out denied the concerns and struggles of Buddhist POC regarding their language being appropriated. She has fearmongered to warp this issue into one that centers tulpas as those being discriminated against, rather than the racial and religious minorities whose culture has been stolen.

We cannot stand for this. As a white system aiming to unlearn racial biases and push for antiracism in our spaces, we feel it is imperative to bring this issue to light on our positivity blog and adjust our DNI accordingly.

We are more than happy to answer questions for anyone who is still confused or has concerns. And we will include a small FAQ below a cut to answer questions we anticipate may arise.

Thank you so much for reading, everyone! Of course, we cannot ensure that 100% of our interactions are coming from people who don’t support this user. However, we can rely on the basic human decency and respect of others and trust that they will respect our wishes on this matter. You are welcome to unfollow us, block us, do what you have to do. But we will not budge on this matter until the voices of Buddhist people of color have been acknowledged and recognized!

FAQ regarding this change:

Q) Can tulpa systems still interact?

A) Yes! Our biggest issue is with this particular user’s unwillingness to listen to racial and religious minorities concerning issues that directly affect them. While we are moving away from tulpamancy language ourself, we understand it may take some time for others to make this change for themselves!

Q) What terminology can be used instead of tulpamancy that is not cultural appropriation?

A) Thoughtform, parogenic/paromate, paro/paromancy, willogenic/willomate!

Q) I don’t want to have to choose between y’all and Sophie! What can I do?

A) In this situation, we politely ask you to choose anyway. And if that is too difficult a choice to make, we can make it for you and ask you to go ahead and unfollow us.

Q) What about (x user) who is a pro-tulpa Buddhist Asian/Tibetan?

A) Currently, we have resources from 8-9 individuals expressing concerns over tulpamancy language. If we can hear from a similar number of actual Asian/Tibetan Buddhists stating otherwise, we will happily reconsider our stance. It’s important to listen to people of color when they say something hurts them.

[olderthannetfic]

So end-otw-racism seems to want a few things mostly, to see a commitment to antiracism: hiring a diversity consultant, prominently displaying antiracist resources, a newly-created ability to get racist fanworks taken down via reporting to the Abuse team, stuff like that. That is in fact a great plan. But here's the problem.

Say they get their wish and there's a diversity consultant (which I think is a good idea) and a lot of people of color on the abuse team (again, a good idea). There are still undoubtedly going to be many, many instances where this ideal team - made up of people with varying tastes - still replies with "We've taken this report under consideration and we find that this fanwork/author doesn't warrant a removal/ban." Do I believe that most of the people reblogging, and who created the initiative, will be okay with that and are truly asking for this in good faith? Absolutely. Some of the asshole crazies reblogging it, though...

Are we supposed to believe that this group is going to take that lying down? Or are they going to start screaming about how all these people of color are in the pockets of white racists and are just trying to be liked and blah blah blah? Like, where exactly does it stop - are the people who are truly just fandom bullies pretending to care about this stuff (or people who care about it genuinely and are fandom bullies anyway) truly committed to a fair process, or will they blame the team if the fic they reported gets to stay up or the person who posted it gets to stick around?

I'd like to see some straight answers on that from the people in question, honestly.

--

I imagine they'll say that they can't be responsible for what every asshole who happens to agree with their platform does.

[puttingwingsonwords]

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts encouraging people to build community and organise, and also a lot of posts/comments on these posts saying it’s okay and just as important if all you can do is survive. I very much agree! There’s a big spectrum there, though. So, here’s a list of

Things You Can Do to Organise & Build Community

(additions welcome)

These are not necessarily in order, as you can start from different places and go different directions, except that 1 & 2 should definitely be first.

1. Survive (you cannot pour from an empty tank, put your own oxygen mask on first and other such (very true!) cliches)

2. Be covid cautious (this is part of surviving, as well as protecting those around you)

3. Build a relationship with the people around you (neighbours, family, friends, other locals, online communities)

4. Join a movement (union, mask bloc, mutual aid collective, food distribution, local anarchist/communist group etc) or start one if there’s none in your area

5. Use and optimise your available resources and skills (money, cooking, administration, art, outreach, etc. etc.)

6. Pick an area to focus on (disability justice, antiracism, trans rights, union organising, etc.; this does not mean ignoring all other struggles, but to narrow down your sphere of influence because one person cannot solve everything; all our struggles are connected)

7. Study history and leftist theory

8. Stay up to date with news in a productive way—no doomscrolling, focusing on in depth, insightful journalism over contextless and possibly unverified factoids, and mainly on your personal area(s) of activism

I recommend going through this list and thinking on what you can do for each point. Be honest about what you can do—don’t overexert yourself but also don’t underestimate or coddle yourself. If you’re unsure about which way you lean in those terms, talk to someone about it. You will also get better at this over time. I’m disabled and can do very little on any given day, so I’ve had to think a lot about how to get the most out of my will to organise. I’ll add what exactly I’m doing/planning on doing in a reblog in case that helps people.

[thatdamnrookie]

Twitter dogpiles (though you can see them elsewhere, at times) are interesting because they’re more often about someone’s old ignorant tweets or badly-worded take - or even a completely benign post that was so wildly misinterpreted that it’s barely conceivable - than anything truly heinous. But what’s really fascinating to watch is the degree to which thousands of people collectively attempt to define what an acceptable apology is – and as the party under fire sees these terms, they attempt to respond in accordance with those demands, only to quickly learn that they apparently haven’t done so adequately. So they adjust, and it’s not enough, but for a new reason, and so they adjust again and again, but it’s not enough. And it’s never enough.

They’re told they must apologize, and so they do. But the apology was too casual, and not in depth enough, and it needs to address more. So they’re told to do it again, but more groveling this time, but no no, that’s not right. That wasn’t sincere enough groveling, clearly they aren’t sorry. And why haven’t they explained why they did that? Have they learned anything? So they explain, which is also wrong. Clearly they’re trying to justify the unjustifiable. Maybe they should have shut up three explanations ago. So they shut up. ‘Why aren’t they saying anything?’ people ask – ‘it’s so clear they just want this to blow over, so we should make sure to never let it go. They can’t just get away with this.’ Also, why didn’t they delete that bad post? They must be proud of it, then. They want people to see it. So the person under fire deletes it, and people ask ‘why are you hiding what you’ve done?’ Bystanders and friends are told that it is not their place to forgive – only those who are socially vulnerable to the ignorance that was expressed can forgive. But then some of those people forgive, which is also not allowed. They are resented for forgiving, because there are people who are still angry, and they did not forgive.

And certainly people are free to make their own choices as to how sincere they think an apology is, or what they ‘forgive’ - particularly if the person at the center of the controversy displayed an ignorance that’s particularly close to home for them, one that they can’t so readily forget about. But that is, I feel, a very personal decision, and it’s actively harmful – malicious, even - to run people through the grinder again and again and again because they make a mistake (or are perceived as making one). Ignoring the more obvious point – that people can grow and change  – is the fact that the notion of justice in punishment is antithetical to all the little progressive sentiments people love plastering on their pages, and certainly antithetical to my own values in basically every way. People with the most adamant, impassioned arguments for prison abolition and better treatment of workers and increased mental health resources and antiracism and LGBTQ+ rights and anything else you can think of will turn right around with no discernable self-awareness and leap at the chance to wear (often vulnerable) people down with waves of abuse and call their workplace owned by the walmart corporation or some shit and beg they be fired, and often the subject of abuse is part of the very same marginalized and vulnerable communities their detractors hail from, and it is worth reiterating that this is so rarely because the accused was a threat to those communities or acted with malice, but because they crossed some invisible line or (at worst) said some stupid jackass thing.

I think part of this riles me up because (without revealing too much) my own personal life resolves heavily around all these social justice-y issues, and I meet all kinds of people from all kinds of circumstances, and many are lovely but many are ignorant – often about groups of people I belong to, tbh - , and many have thought and done far worse than the average thing that blows up on twitter. I think most people have *said* far worse than much of what blows up on twitter, because the nature of a lot of social ills and discrimination is that a lot of fairly shit things go unquestioned as we grow up. But even then, I’m happy to help people get food and find jobs and get to a better place in their life, and more often than not those stupid things they believe can be worked on, and ignorance is not necessarily proof of deep radicalization, and I see people change all the time. If you personally have a low tolerance for all that and are picky about where you place your trust, or what you forgive, that’s your right. But the boundless enthusiasm to punish and punish and punish at the slightest chance is so fucking incomprehensible to me that it makes me wanna eat nails

TL;DR Everyone on twitter has a bunch of loose change dangling around in their heads I guess

Also I don’t expect this to do numbers, but on the off-chance someone chooses to dramatically misinterpret the point of the post, know that you should assume this is not written to cover literally every scenario or exception you can think of and that asking for clarification is much better than making weird assumptions, thanks in advance

[beardedmrbean]

Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, headed by critical race theory activist Ibram X. Kendi, revealed last week that it was laying off about 40% of its staff as part of organization restructuring. About 15 to 20 of its approximately 45 employees were let go. Testimonies from former employees have exposed alleged mismanagement of Kendi’s center, which in turn has exposed the fraudulence and fragility of the diversity, equity, and inclusion complex.

Disgruntled former employees have accused Kendi of mishandling grant funding, failing to complete major projects, and fostering an exploitative company culture in which he ruled with an iron fist yet was routinely missing in action. The center has raked in $43 million since its inception, according to 2021 budget records obtained by the Daily Free Press. It received corporate support from Peloton, Deloitte, Stop & Shop, TJX Companies, and Deckers Outdoor Corporation, according to a 2020–2021 donor report. Only six weeks after its launch, then-CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey gifted $10 million without conditions.

“Your $10M donation, with no strings attached, gives us the resources and flexibility to greatly expand our antiracist work,” Kendi posted at the time. “The endowment is vital, as we build our new Center.”

Despite the investments, the center did not deliver on some key priorities, such as the much-hyped Racial Data Tracker that would document racial inequities in all sectors of society to finally root out racism.

“I don’t know where the money is,” Saida Grundy, a BU professor who worked at the center from fall 2020 to spring 2021, told the Boston Globe after the staff cuts.

Multiple other BU professors served as faculty leads on various projects at the center. Professor Sanaz Mobasseri of BU’s business school led the Antiracist Tech Initiative, professor Kaylene Stevens of BU’s education school led the “Designing Antiracist Curricula” team, and political science professor Spencer Piston led the Policy Office, for example.

In December 2021, Grundy emailed BU provost Jean Morrison that the organization had been showing a “pattern of amassing grants without any commitment to producing the research obligated” by them.

Like its umbrella idea DEI, “antiracism” actually translates to, well, nothing of note. Serial academics such as Kendi have built careers around racial fearmongering, even inventing new disciplines to study racism and its early-stage minutiae “microaggressions” and “implicit bias.” Rather than confront actual crimes of racism, these courses seek to aggressively manufacture racist intent.

Despite all this bureaucracy, academic DEI projects have unclear aims and products. Kendi’s center published just two research papers since its founding, the Washington Free Beacon reported. A January paper, "Association of Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Composition and Historical Redlining With Build Environment Indicators Derived From Street View Images,” found that predominantly black neighborhoods had more dilapidated buildings than white neighborhoods. The center released a report from its "Antibigotry Convening” from fall 2021 and winter 2022 that included many intersectionality themes such as “Ageism,” "Anti-fat Bigotry,” and “Transphobia,” further confusing its purpose.

Rachel Lapal Cavallario, spokeswoman for Kendi’s center, told the Boston Globe Wednesday that BU had “received some complaints from individuals questioning whether the center was following its funding guidelines. We are currently looking into those complaints.”

However, the center rejects the “characterization of it not having produced important work insofar as antiracism is concerned,” she said.

To raise Grundy’s question again, where did the money go? Echoing that sentiment, BU has launched an “inquiry” into the center amid the scandal, the Daily Free Press said.

The situation is reminiscent of the lawsuits against Black Lives Matter, another embattled racial justice organization. In 2023, Black Lives Matter reported a $9 million deficit for 2022 after raising $90 million in 2020. Only 33% of that massive sum went to charitable activism, federal filings showed, as a significant chunk was squandered on the leaders’ mansions, personal expenses, and favors for friends. Both Kendi’s center and BLM followed a similar model: drum up rumors of racism, prescribe DEI, create an apparatus, lure in donors, get paid.

The racial grievance business welcomes little accountability — or accounting, for that matter — which explains why it’s found a home in academia. Many colleges, such as Boston University, or my alma mater Boston College down the road, charge their students exorbitant tuition for useless degrees and boatloads of debt. Tenured professors collect big paychecks while hawking critical race theory, turning students into activists instead of real scholars.

Despite its self-destructive tendencies, the DEI racket continues to spread throughout academia. Some colleges are trying to meet demand for so-called DEI experts by creating a corresponding major, USA Today claimed. At least six colleges across the country offer DEI degree programs or will in the future, according to the publication’s analysis. Tufts University and the University of Pennsylvania even have DEI graduate programs.

Some universities have also woven DEI into their academic missions. Duke University in 2020 launched a Racial Equity Advisory Council, composed of four subcommittees including faculty members and students, which will propose “measures to assess and foster racial equity” to the university’s leadership. Every year since fall 2020, the Duke Endowment has sponsored professors with seed grants to pursue research proposals related to race as part of the school’s anti-racism mission. That’s more money down the drain.

DEI in America’s prestigious colleges contributes nothing, wastes money, and fuels a bubble of empty courses, professions, and promises. But if the shakeout at Kendi’s BU center is any clue, it might be starting to pop.

[owl-liberation-now]

While a reasonable introduction, by omission this video makes it sound like the Nakbha was less violent than it was. It wasn't simply millions of citizens displaced; displacement in this case means a bunch of soldiers coming into villages with guns and shooting at everyone until they were all dead or had managed to run away (Leila is a great movie about this on Netflix). At least 15,000 Palestinians were murdered by the occupying Zionist movement from 1947-1949 (source: Time magazine). This figure is likely lower as information on the Tantura massacre and other similar sites was obfuscated for decades and continues to be denied by the Israeli administration.

Also, incredibly important to point out, Israel's institutional racism doesn't stop at islamophobia. while underrepresented and invisiblised, there are many non-white Jewish identities each with their own histories dating back centuries (((and Israel is racist towards them)))

Despite continuing to vote far right, Mizrahi jews face discrimination in all aspects of Israeli society:

"Examination of the social structure in Israel shows that for economic and other reasons, members of the Mizrahi communities are underprivileged. This applies to ‘old inhabitants’ as well as new immigrants" - Haaretz

"The ethnic division between Israeli Jews, especially between the European Ashkenazi Jews and the Asian and African Jews, most of whom hail from the Arab world, is as old as the Zionist project, although it did not become explosive until after the Jewish settler colony was founded in 1948. Israeli officials would especially denigrate Moroccan Jews, the poorest of what Israel called the "Oriental communities", who later became known as the "Mizrahim". Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, had the following to say: "Those [Jews] from Morocco had no education. Their customs are those of Arabs." He asserted that "The Moroccan Jew took a lot from the Moroccan Arabs. The culture of Morocco I would not like to have here (...) We do not want Israelis to become Arabs. We are in duty bound to fight against the spirit of the Levant, which corrupts individuals and societies, and preserve the authentic Jewish values as they crystallised in the [European] Diaspora." - Middle-East Eye

Anti-Yemini racism (Stealing kids of Jewish-Yemini parents and giving them to Ashkenazi Jews):

One of the crueller chapters of this period involved the kidnapping of hundreds of children of Yemeni Jews from the transit camps in Israel. Some of the children were given to childless Ashkenazi couples for adoption in and outside of Israel. Yemeni parents whose children were sick were taken from them to hospitals where the parents were prevented from going. The parents were later told that their children had died. Twenty years later, in 1968, the Ministry of Defence sent military draft notices to the addresses of the parents of these children. (...) the affair was sophisticated enough to produce death certificates for some of the kidnapped children and to obstruct for decades all attempts by their parents to investigate the crime." - ibid.

Racism against Sephardi Jews (Ashkenazi Jewish parents refusing a court order to make their school racially integrated):

"With the resistance of the Immanuel parents to the court-ordered integration, the Ultra-Orthodox Sephardim have been forced to wake up from their complacency and see Ashkenazi racism anew. Feeling that they have properly assimilated into the Ashkenazi Haredi world, these Sephardim have been unpleasantly surprised to find that they are not welcome as equals in that world." - Huffington Post

Sephardi Jewish Erasure by Cultural Ashkenormativity:

"Middle Eastern Jews have for many decades lived as stigmatized citizens of Israel; their traditional Arabic culture and form of Jewish religiosity frequently objects of scorn and prejudice. Less obvious than the second-class status of Sephardim in Israel has been the gradual assimilation of Sephardic Jews into the dominant Ashkenazi collective. In spite of the fact that Sephardim comprise a substantial percentage of the Israeli Jewish population, in socio-cultural terms they find themselves in a subservient position vis-à-vis the Ashkenazim." - ibid.

Falash Mura Jews were denied the right to return until 2020, and even then they only allowed 2000 citizens in:

The Falash Mura community descends from members of the Beta Israel who were converted to Christianity by European missionaries in the late 1800s. They have since returned to practising Judaism but are not officially recognised by Israel's interior ministry as fully Jewish. The issue of whether they should be allowed to come to Israel at all is a divisive one, even among Ethiopian Jews in Israel (...) Ethiopian Jews' integration in Israel has been challenging, with the community suffering disproportionately high levels of unemployment and poverty as well as discrimination, although their situation has shown signs of improvement in recent years." - BBC News

And if you think that's bad, imagine how it is for gentile racial minorities. (it's bad; it's not good). Ethiopean refugees face extreme stigma and the same anti-migrant rhetoric seen in Europe.

Finally, in 2013, 35 Jewish-Ethiopean women claimed they were coerced into taking long acting contraceptive injections in order to be let into the country:

Figures show that 57 per cent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two per cent of the total population. About 90,000 Ethiopians have been brought to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has subsequently been questioned by some rabbis and is doubted by many ordinary Israelis. Ethiopians are reported to face widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and education and it recently emerged that their blood donations were routinely discarded. "This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor," said Hedva Eyal, the author of the report by Woman to Woman, a feminist organisation based in Haifa, in northern Israel. - The National

This one is potentially spurious as direct evidence was never found (so it's often dismissed as anti-zionist propaganda, this one is from IsreallyCool which is admittedly a great pun). However we do know from an investigation in 2012 that the birthrate for Jewish Ethiopeans halved in ten years, and we also have a verbal confirmation of the Depo-Provera affair by the Deputy Health minister at the time:

"In 2013, (...) Yaakov Litzman admitted that they had administered Depo-Provera to Ethiopian immigrant women without their consent, after reproductive and civil rights activists in Israel called for an investigation after a drop in the birthrate among Ethiopian women: close to 50 per cent within the previous decade." - Sage Journals

I bring this up not just for transparency (or because I accidentally spent 2 hours researching this) but because I think it's a great example of how oppressive regimes are able to obfuscate the extent of the harm they commit, or otherwise position themselves as not responsible. It's the same thing as Brianna Ghey's murder not being tried as a hate crime (despite texts clearly showing it was motivated by transphobia), or the acquittals in the Rodney King verdict (despite video evidence of their involvement), or the UKs continual denial of its participation in the 1953 coup against Mosaddegh (despite explicit testimony from one of the MI5 agents, or the goddamn Cass report. Systems of power conspire to evade culpability, and as a result some of the worst events in history disappear without a trace (like the massacre at Tantura almost did). This is why it's so important to do your research and stay informed!!

I hope this helps with that.

Israel is one of the most racist countries in the world.

[havrs]

yes i like the pirate show. i think it was cute, funny, i even post about it! but i am honestly embarrassed to be called a fan of it now seeing what is happening in the fandom. people who claim to be empathetic and to care about the oppressed are spending hours and hours and thousands of dollars desperately trying to get an already-cancelled comedy show back when there is a GENOCIDE happening.

if you claim to care so much about antiracism, donate to help palestine. their race is being targeted and killed. if you claim to care so much about queer people, donate to help palestine. there are so many lgbt+ palestinians who need help.

bombs, famine, and destruction do not discriminate.

it's an absolutely unreal experience to see one post about how desperately palestine needs our help, then to scroll down and see a picture of what the 'renew as a crew' campaign spent thousands of dollars on: ... a billboard. imagine what those thousands of dollars would have meant to the people of palestine.

put other people's lives first please, always. if you have any money at all to donate, please reconsider to which cause you give it. not giving even a single dollar to help humans just like you, when you give it so freely to get your favourite tv show back is not ever okay.

it's sad that the show is gone. but it's not the only queer show. there will always be other queer shows to carry the torch. shows are replaceable, human lives are not. we dont need a show, but palestinians need food, shelter, medical care, even the basics of survival.

let's please take all the enthusiasm and resources we had for 'renew as a crew' and use it towards sending aide to a population who needs it. please reconsider what causes you put your time and money towards, and how it affects others.

[djuvlipen]

Someone went through my blog and reblogged a post where I was sharing resources (a resource center for pregnant British Romani women) and another post compiling information about anti Romani racism in the USA, before deleting everything whe they realized I was a female-centered feminist. Don't ever pretend TRAs support antiracism and women's rights -_-

[pumpkin-knots]

What you'll find on my blog

Here's a list of things that you'll find on my blog. I am trying to do my very best with tagging my posts but thought I should make a pinned post just in case. If any of these aren't your style, no hard feelings but this might not be the blog for you :3

TERFs, transphobes, racists, transmeds, pro-life, abelists (including but not limited to people who don't think mental health self-ID is valid) DNI

Cats

Pomeranians

Posts of a non-explicit but potentially mildly salacious nature (I WILL TAG)

The Beatles

Classics stuff (particularly the Iliad and Odyssey rn)

Furry art (not salacious unless I have tagged it as such)

LGBTQ+ stuff (e.g. posts about my identity, support for other queer people whose identities don't align with mine, tips about resources, personal accounts by myself and others)

US politics related things

Kink stuff (vague and tagged and usually not about specific scenarios, I'm just very much in support of not making people feel weird about the stuff they do in consenting adult company and I will reblog stuff about that)

Social justice things (e.g. LGBTQ+ activism, intersex allyship, antiracism, pro-palestine, disability advocacy, mutual aid tips)

Dungeon Meshi

Gravity Falls

Supernatural (just a little bit, a sprinkle)

Autism/ADHD/mental health (things I relate to and also positivity for other people)