#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]

[triviareads]

@viscountessevie is reading Isabel and the Rogue by Liana de La Rosa and inadvertently gave me war flashbacks aka when I attended my allegedly very liberal PWI. And it's good in a way because Liana evokes that feeling SO well through her writing— that niggling sense of not *quite* belonging, even if you have the money, the education, the knowledge, etc. I remember judging Ana Maria and the Fox a little too harshly last year because of how *overt* the racism felt to the point of.... I don't want to say cartoonishness anymore because that shit still happens! Isabel and the Rogue amplifies that feeling outside of the more overtly racist interactions so deftly, and now I find myself wanting to go back to Ana Maria and see if it was the same here all along, and I judged based on my own experiences.

[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 :)

[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.

[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)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Robert F. Graboyes

Published: Feb 28, 2024

Egalitarianism vs Who-Knows-What

The titanic social struggle of our era pits those favoring equality (in its traditional sense) against those demanding “equity” (in a sense far from its traditional meaning). One who advocates equality is an egalitarian, and his philosophy is egalitarianism. One who advocates “equity” has no name—or has scores of names; the same is true of his philosophy. This asymmetry of nomenclature and the divergent meanings of “equity” put egalitarians at a powerful rhetorical disadvantage. For effective argumentation, egalitarians need to level the rhetorical playing field, and I believe the most efficient way of doing so is to refer to anti-egalitarians as “equitists” and to their philosophy as “equitism”—as we’ll do here. 

Following is an excellent example of how equitists themselves distinguish egalitarianism from equitism:

“Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.”

Egalitarians aspire to equalize individual rights and opportunities, and perhaps to equalize ex post outcomes across individuals via social safety nets. Equitists, well-intentioned though they may be, pigeonhole people by immutable characteristics (race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, disability, etc.) and then seek to equalize average outcomes across groups. Someone in charge (an equitist, naturally) must devise a taxonomy of mankind, assign every individual to some cell in that taxonomy, rank each cell along something like an oppressor/oppressed spectrum, and then allocate rights, privileges, opportunities, and wealth among these cells.

Generally, egalitarians seek to define “equal” objectively (e.g., equal rights, opportunities, access to education, income), whereas equitism’s definitions of “equal” are subjective. Equitism is largely an outgrowth of Frankfurt School critical theory, which rejects the very notion of objectivity. (My “Equity-toonz: One Meme Is Worth a Thousand Pictures” explores how explanatory memes that equitists often employ can mislead readers—intentionally or not.) 

The subjectivity of equitism can be seen in “antiracism” guru Ibram X. Kendi’s prescription: 

“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

In Kendi’s formulation, no metric can ever signal that equality (between groups) has arrived. Instead, there is never-ending retribution for ancestral sins, subjectively administered via an authoritarian “antiracist constitutional amendment.” 

And yet, as odious as Kendi’s ideas may be, the absence of a word like “equitism” leaves egalitarians flailing. Kendi calls his version of equitism “antiracism,” allowing his enthusiasts to declare that if one is not antiracist, then logic dictates that one must be proracist. This false dichotomy forces egalitarians into convoluted, never-satisfying rebuttals. Declaring one’s opposition to “Kendian Equitism” would present no equivalent difficulties. 

And “antiracism” is only one of many names an egalitarian must battle. As the artwork atop this essay shows, these interconnected doctrines have been called antiracism; wokeness; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); critical race theory (CRT); environmental, social, and governance (ESG); postcolonialism; anticolonialism; social and emotional learning (SEL); safetyism; intersectionality; oppressor/oppressed; white fragility; identity Marxism; identity politics; fighting white privilege; postmodernism; identity synthesis; social justice; critical social justice; political correctness; progressivism; and more. All are closely related, but just different enough to sow confusion, accidentally or deliberately—e.g., “Antiracism is not the same thing as critical race theory, which is not the same as DEI.” 

Sun Tzu said, “He who occupies the high ground will fight to advantage.” The absence of an umbrella term for these highly interrelated philosophies hands equitists the rhetorical high ground. The key to cleaning this Augean Stable of lexicon is recognizing that the revisionist definition of “equity” is the one common thread running through every one of these movements or concepts. This simple trio of terms—equity, equitist, equitism—can level that battlefield of ideas.

-

Name the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It

Many have commented on the absence or multiplicity of names for this anti-egalitarian tendency—and the rhetorical mire this shortcoming imposes on the whole egalitarianism-versus-whatever-you-happen-to-call-it-on-a-given-day debate. On the political right, Thomas Klingenstein said, “Rhetorically, our side is getting absolutely murdered … We have not even come up with an agreed-on name for the enemy.” In the center, Bari Weiss said, “[T]his new ideology doesn’t even like to be named.” On the left, Freddie DeBoer titled an essay (without asterisks), “Please Just F***ing Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Political Changes You Demand,” adding, “You don't get to insist that no one talks about your political project and it's weak and pathetic that you think you do.” 

Many have suggested names, but none has caught on. This is because an effective name must meet seven separate criteria—and no previously suggested options have checked all or even most of the seven boxes. Here are (1) the criteria; (2) examples of why current terms fail; and (3) why equity-equitist-equitism could succeed. 

[1] FLEXIBILITY: There must be a trio of terms naming the aspiration, the advocate, and the philosophy.

If you call the philosophy “wokeness,” then who advocates it? Wokesters? Woke folk? Persons of the woke persuasion? They have no name.

With equity-equitist-equitism, one can say, “Someone who supports equity over equality is an equitist, and his philosophy is equitism.” All grammatical forms are available, and their interconnections are logical and intuitive.

[2] BREVITY: The trio must consist of simple, single, clearly related words.

“Critical race theory” demands three words and seven clunky syllables. Who is its advocate? “Critical race theorist” might describe academicians, but not activists. “Someone who subscribes to critical race theory” entails a mind-numbing seven words and thirteen syllables. “CRT” is brief but obscure.

In contrast, one can easily say, “He is an equitist,” rather than ponderous phrases like, “He is someone who supports the idea of equity over equality,” or the audience-euthanizing, “He is someone who supports equity, but I’m talking about the modern anti-egalitarian definition of equity, not the traditional definition.” 

[3] BREADTH: The terms must be applicable to a broad swath of the many allied movements comprising this philosophy.

Enthusiasts swear (sometimes) that CRT is only a legal doctrine and not, say, the clearly derivative concepts taught in K-12 settings. ESG applies only to business investment. You need a term that covers all these related doctrines.

The re-engineered definition of “equity” is the common thread that connects all 21 movements listed above (along with others), and equitist-equitism follow suit. Does any other word fill this niche?

[4] COHESION: The quest for breadth must be offset by parameters that limit the philosophy to a focused topical range.

“Political correctness” may cover many equity doctrines, but it also incorporates lots of barely related concepts—etiquette, scientific doctrines, etc. Maybe SEL derives from postcolonialism, but applying the latter label to the former would likely stall the speaker in a futile argument over arcane lexical points.

Using equity-equitist-equitism limits the conversation to the notion of allocating rights, privileges, resources, and wealth across groups rather than across individuals. It leaves cultural tics and attitudes to other days. 

[5] CLARITY: The trio must be sufficiently novel to insulate egalitarians from both innocent confusion and deliberate shenanigans.

To naive listeners, “I oppose Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (the doctrine) sounds exactly like “I oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion” (three separate, benign ideals). This can lead to confusion among thoughtful, well-intentioned listeners and speakers—and it allows some disingenuous “equity” enthusiasts to frustrate meaningful debate by means of motte-and-bailey rhetorical tactics (i.e., using a term that has two meanings—one controversial, and one not). 

Equity-equitist-equitism quashes the motte-and-bailey problem. “Equitist” and “equitism” have no familiar, traditional meanings with which they can be easily confused—accidentally or purposefully. The word “equity” remains a problem, but one easily dealt with via scare quotes or quick clarifications like “equity, in the equitist sense.”

[6] FAMILIARITY: The trio must not be so novel as to be incomprehensible to those hearing them for the first time.

Yascha Mounk suggests that these doctrines be referred to together as, “identity synthesis.” But one would need a fairly comprehensive explanation before using such an expression. Terminology, like iPhones, should be usable without requiring an instruction booklet. 

Someone who has never heard the terms equitist or equitism can intuitively sense their meanings by thinking about the obvious root word—equity.   

[7] RESPECTABILITY: The terms must not be patently frivolous or insulting.

“Wokeness” is widely viewed as an insult and, to be honest, the word is usually invoked specifically to deliver scorn or insult. Yes, “woke” was once a self-description that seems to have originated with blues musician Huddie Ledbetter (a.k.a., Lead Belly), but there is always danger in outsiders trying to co-opt in-group slang.

“Equitist” and “equitism” have a staid, neutral vibe. Equity-equitist-equitism is precisely analogous to equality-egalitarian-egalitarianism. While some equitists will object to being called equitists, their complaint will seem more petty and unreasonable than their current objections to “wokeness” or “political correctness.”

Equity-equitist-equitism has an additional bonus virtue. Google Translate is able to translate all three into at least some other languages. (e.g., Equidad-equitista-equitismo for Spanish; Equité-equitiste-equitisme for French). Since these doctrines are debated internationally, this multilingual flexibility is important. This brings us to the following.

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Equity-Equitist-Equitism as Self Description

Interestingly, one can find some (obscure) equitists on the Internet who have suggested calling their philosophy “equitism.” Billionaire entrepreneur Marc Lore aspires to build a visionary city (“Telosa”) based on a somewhat-related concept of “equitism;” Telosa’s website says, “Equitism is inclusive growth,” and speaks of the project’s “commitment to DEI” to be administered by a municipal DEI department. A group calling itself the Atlas Movement (of whom I know nothing) wrote: 

“Equitism is the political, social, and economic doctrine promoting the idea that to maximize peoples’ well-being, society must ensure equitable rights and opportunities for all. In short, we want to systematically improve society by applying the value of Equity (from Aequitas, justice & fairness) to all its areas.”

There was also a 2022 opinion column in Ecuador’s El Heraldo: “La filosofía del equitismo” (“The Philosophy of Equitism”). Written by Guillermo Tapia Nicola, who calls himself a legal and political advisor to Ecuador’s National Assembly, here are some relevant passages (translated from Spanish):

“This endeavor … the result of everything that has happened in recent decades, is what has been called ‘Equitism,’ conceptualizing it as a new ideology for a new stage, which is supposed to guide political and social work. ... Then, talking about democratic equity, equity in vaccines, institutional equity, climate equity, or equity in matters of rights, and verifying the actions that are actually taking place on these issues, will no longer sound strange to the ears ... Ultimately, the effort and determination put in by those agents of change, promoters of equitism, could well give us a spark of hope, two years after the pandemic ... In short, it is about maintaining the audacity of those actions that provide balance, and it is only matched by the audacity of that new vision and philosophy. Equitism.”

I agree with these writers. The movement they describe should have a name, acceptable to honorable advocates and adversaries alike, and I believe the best option lies in equity-equitist-equitism.” Apply these words to the proponents of “equity” and to their philosophy, and let the real debates begin—on level ground, at last. 

[asterlark]

felt like it was time to make an actual pinned about / tags post!

aster / rowan / r | late 20s | they/them | bi & nonbinary trans | autistic, chronic pain haver, holder of brain soup w various mental illnesses | white usamerican

this has been my main blog for the whole time i've been on tumblr (like... 12 or 13 years ;_;) so it's very multifandom/ has a wide range of content lol. list of common tags & read before following info under the cut!

currently i post a mixture of:

tv shows: ofmd, leverage, otgw, ted lasso, atla/ lok, abbott elementary, black sails (only on s2, still have tag blocked), & others

webcomics: check please, heartstopper, & farragone

books: general book tag, the murderbot diaries, the raven cycle, all for the game, truly devious, dungeon meshi

podcasts: the adventure zone balance (& mcelroys in general), the strange case of starship iris, wolf 359

movies: the old guard, itsv & astv, dnd honor among thieves, knives out / glass onion, pacific rim, & other ones i forgot

youtube: drawfee & drawtectives, occasionally dan and phil

basic tags: video, audio, music, asks, replies, posts with image descriptions

games: mostly stardew valley and acnh

me: #me, my posts, my writing, my fanmixes, my edits

reference: writing, drawing, useful, resource, save tag

random text posts/ things i find funny or interesting

other misc things: fanart, art, poetry, mental health reminders, mh toolkit (wip tag), autism tag, nonbinary tag / trans tag, disability tag, tag for noodle (my cat)

i do also reblog posts about leftist politics / involvement & solidarity w movements such as BLM, land back/ native sovereignty, free palestine, anti-racism, & dismantling oppressive systems such as ICE, policing, & the prison industrial complex. i don't always tag these posts bc tumblr loves to censor those who are speaking out against power, but i do try to tag big triggers. if i ever miss something/ unknowingly rb something against my values, please let me know.

you are not welcome here if you:

don't support anti-racist, decolonization, and anti-fascist efforts

don't believe in self-diagnosis & expanded rights & accommodations for disabled people

don't support sex workers' rights

are a terf/ transmedicalist/ don't believe in trans people's right to self-identify

believe that houseless folks "deserve" to be houseless/ that it's their fault, and/or that people struggling with addiction don't deserve support and rights

other links: antiracism resources, petitions, funds to donate to, & more | aesthetic blog | ao3 | pinterest | cohost

i am not afraid to use the block button <3 get lost!

please don't follow if you are under 18- i don't go through every single follower to enforce this, but i am an adult in my late 20s and i reblog nsfw / adult content that is not always appropriate for minors.

think that's about it \○^○/ welcome & enjoy ur stay!!

[image description: noodle, a brown striped tabby cat with white patches, lays on a gray couch with her front two paws bent and touching, and her back paws wrapped around rowan's arm. rowan's hand is petting noodle's exposed belly, and noodle's eyes are closed. /end ID]

[noviceunicorn]

oo will check out

i was collecting some transformative justice resources for one of our volunteers in our discord server so i figured i'd share some here too:

for more, check out the #clarification-center channel of our server! every day, links to novels, videos, articles, and more are dropped. and this is also the same channel folks asks their questions! even if it seems silly or you feel behind in your activist journey, we trust that every question comes from an authentic place of curiosity!

-- reaux (she/they)

[camp-counselor-life]

Someone I follow on Instagram (Teach and Transform) has it in her new followers highlight story that if you want to see some specific content, you should be the one to make it rather than requesting it from someone else (for free). This really resonates with me because a lot of the things I write for this blog just don't exist in other places. ACA is great, but their resources are different. Ultimate Camp Resource is great, but their resources are different. And I think that's pretty special, to have a unique resource out there in the world, which is why I'll probably never fully delete or deactivate this blog.

But, there are some things that I struggle with providing resources and content about, and mostly because they're areas that I'm new(ish) to, like diversity and antiracism. So I haven't been posting those as much. But I'd like to. You can find existing posts in the "diversity equity and inclusion" tag (I abbreviate as DEI). I hope to add more to this tag in the near future, and could quite possibly change the tag to address updated language, as I think that it's important to have the resources there, even if nobody interacts with them publicly.

Intersectionality tells us of intersecting identities: race, gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, etc. One reason that I don't write a lot about DEI is because some of my identities are more prevalent than others in camp, but also my experiences are not diverse. I will never experience racism, even if I can still face racial bias. My camps and most workplaces have not been in racially or ethnically diverse areas and I have only worked at "single" gender camps (we all know GS camp is not actually single gender). I've never been "out" as a genderqueer staff at camp, navigating expectations of trans adults in a youth setting. I do not visibly present as disabled, or have high support needs, and haven't identified as disabled until recently. Not to play identity politics, but I'm not coming from a place to speak from experience about diversity or antiracism.

This got ramble-y, but I guess here's what I want to say. I do want to try and I do want to produce the content I want to see in the world. I will rely on sharing from experts, synthesis, and only add my experience if it does not take away from the voices I am sharing from. I will learn and I will grow, and I will share in my journey with you, so that you can join me.

[darkmaga-returns]

One of the most salient behaviours of modern liberal democracies, is their tendency towards inertial politics. Not all political programmes and initiatives have inertia, but the very worst of them always do.

The cycle invariably begins with a period of growing concern, hysteria and press coverage emanating from confined activist or expert circles. At first the state remains pacifically indifferent, but soon the general mobilisation crosses a threshold and governments respond with a lot of haphazard interventions on all sides. The greater the hysteria, the more expensive and intrusive these interventions must be, and for a time they provide still more energy to the inertial programme. Eventually, though, the system begins to lose momentum – less because the original problem persists despite everything, and more because human attention is a limited resource that is soon exhausted and the cure rapidly proves worse than the disease. It can take a few months, a few years or a whole decade to get past the peak, but once the slide begins, it is as inexorable as the initial swell. There is no saving it.

Covid was like this, and in writing about Covid I began to appreciate that its inertial properties were in no way unique. Many political causes exhibit similar behaviour, from anti-smoking campaigns to our present efforts to reduce carbon emissions to mass-migrationism to antiracism. The root cause of this behaviour appears to be the wide distribution of power in liberal democratic systems. For our states to do anything, thousands and thousands of people have to be brought on board. Fragmented managerial power structures, which lack clear hierarchies, mean that emotional appeals and hysteria must be the coordinating forces instead.

[alexesguerra]

Tarot for the Hard Work: An Archetypal Journey to Confront Racism and Inspire Collective Healing Tarot for the Hard Work: An Archetypal Journey to Confront Racism and Inspire Collective Healing Contributor(s): Minnis, Maria (Author), Tramble, Rashunda (Foreword by) ISBN: 9781578638079 Binding: Paperback Pub Date: January 08, 2024 Author: Maria Minnis Physical Info: 0.54" H x 8.05" L x 6.09" W (0.67 lbs) 280 pages Publisher: Weiser Books "An important and profoundly edifying book. . . . Perhaps the most important tarot text that will define this decade." -- Benebell Wen, author of Holistic Tarot Tarot for the Hard Work is a provocative exploration of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana that re envisions these archetypes as beacons that illuminate the various ways racism takes root both in ourselves and in the world. Author Maria Minnis, with compassion and wisdom, shows us how these insights can be turned into self-awareness, self-love, and positive social action. " Tarot for the Hard Work is a tool for passionately demolishing structural oppression. It is a map that we can take with us on a voyage as we discover our personal, subliminal views on race and how we're impacted. Each card of the Major Arcana serves as a waypoint that challenges us to rethink our views on racial equity." --Rashunda Tramble, from the foreword Tarot has always been a powerful guide for introspection and inner work, so what better tool to use when we're ready to do the really hard work? Minnis provides actionable exercises in this tarot workbook, giving readers a unique, personal understanding of what systemic racism is--and what steps we can take to begin to dismantle it. This is a book for anyone who has been overwhelmed, outraged, or frustrated and asked, "But what can I do?" It is a book for anyone ready to look within and do the uncomfortable inner work necessary to demolish everyday racism. This book says tarot can be a tool for action, one that may offer great satisfaction as well as great difficulty, all while pushing you out of your comfort zone. "This book should be on everyone's bookshelf, not just tarot readers. EVERYONE. In Tarot for the Hard Work, author Maria Minnis helps awaken us to our truest, bravest, most compassionate selves. It's a luminous work of love. Minnis shines a torch illuminating our path toward justice." --Amanda Yates Garcia, author of Initiated and host of the Between the Worlds podcast In Tarot for the Hard Work you'll explore the Major Arcana to uncover how each card highlights both benevolent and shadow aspects of each archetype in relation to the different ways that racism shows up in our lives. With exercises and thought-provoking recommended reading and resources, you will be guided how to use those themes to dismantle internalized racism, racism in your relationships, and racism in your communities. Journal prompts are provided to help you create your own antiracism tool kit. As you move from the Fool to the World card, you'll discover that everything we do ripples beyond us and that there are practical ways to use tarot energy to change our actions and our world. "Minnis is the real deal. From transformative perspectives on tarot archetypes to clever action items for every kind of reader and activist, Tarot for the Hard Work doesn't apologize for being exactly what it is: a brilliant primer and essential guide for utilizing tarot's truth in personal and collective antiracism work." --Meg Jones Wall, author of Finding the Fool Biographical Note: Maria Minnis is an unapologetically Black writer, ritual facilitator, and tarot reader who teaches about blending spirituality with liberation work. She has creatively worked with tarot for over twenty years and considers herself an eternal student of life, and thus the tarot. Her community program, Antiracist Tarot Society, is inspired by her belief that the end result of all magic should be to cultivate a more equitable and empathetic planet.