#live in a Hispanic heavy population so | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jeminy3 · 4 years ago

Photo

old archie x maxie (hardenshipping) doodles i never posted, from 2017 or 2018. they were related to some of the doodles in this post.

I have a lot of unpublished drawings of these guys, and i never did elaborate on my headcanons for them. The truth is, I was (and still kinda am) very anxious and embarrassed about this fixation, probably because it centers around villains and “woobifies” them, but also because after playing and researching more into ORAS, i discovered that my personal canon was contradicted by actual canon and i felt invalidated.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll summarize my old headcanons below. (It’s still pretty long, ugh)

A grunt in Team Magma’s hideout says that Archie and Maxie “used to be on the same team.” In canon, this probably implies that they worked together on New Mauville, Sea Mauville, or another unnamed project, depending on how old they are and how long ago those projects started and ended.

However, like many other fans, I thought this meant they used to be in Team Rocket together, and I elaborated an entire backstory based on that:

+ Maxie and Archie were part of a group of Rocket recruits attempting to start a branch of Team Rocket in the Hoenn Region. The project failed because soon after they arrived, Giovanni was defeated in Kanto and officially dissolved Team Rocket, causing a schism to form within the Hoenn team over whether to give up the project or not. This eventually lead to the team splintering into two factions, one lead by Maxie and the other lead by Archie, which eventually grew and rebranded themselves into Team Magma and Team Aqua.

-Maxie and Archie met and connected enough to start dating, though they were emotionally dysfunctional. As problems arose and the Team began to splinter, their relationship also broke down and their separation was very messy.

Maxie clung to the ambition of staying in Hoenn and building up the Team as a paragon of human industry, pushing away Archie and anyone else he deemed as “not useful.”

Archie also wanted to make the Team work, but not in the way Maxie and his side wanted, at the expense of nature. Archie felt hurt and betrayed as Maxie pushed him away and disagreed with him, making him contradict and lash out at Maxie even more.

This all culminated in a huge fight between Archie and Maxie and their respective sides, involving both Pokemon battling and actual fist-fighting. Local authorities were called in, causing the teams to scatter, but not before Archie and Maxie promised to face each other again, reforging themselves as bitter rivals.

-- Maxie

+ Maxie is (the pokemon equivalent of) German/Japanese, and was born on Cinnabar Island. His birth name was Maximillian Matsubasa Von Brandt, but he prefers simply “Maxie”. He IDs as bigender, asexual and demi-homoromantic.

His father is a Kanto businessman named Masaru Matsubasa. His mother is from somewhere in or near Kalos, named Melissa Von Brandt. They were both wealthy and successful business people who frequently left on business trips, Masaru travelling between Kanto and Johto and Melissa to her home country.

Maxie was often left alone or with a nanny at home. He was well-provided for and self-sufficient, but he was lonely and emotionally stunted. He had a passion for geology and engineering, and showed interest in contributing to helping Cinnabar’s local issues, which were often tense because of the limited land space. Homelessness and unemployment were high, and development plans to alleviate these were stymied by parties who lobbied for the preservation of the local Pokemon wildlife by any means.

Maxie’s parents were skeptical of his choice in career but still supported him, if only half-heartedly. This lead Maxie to study Cinnabar’s volcano, which he found to be very much active and possibly dangerous. He developed a plan to build in and around the volcano in such a way that it would utilize extra space inside the mountain for housing/businesses and its magma for natural energy to power the city, possibly circumventing its eventual eruption.

He presented this plan to Cinnabar’s city council, but was practically laughed out of the meeting for such an ambitious and dangerous idea, especially by the wildlife parties. This damaged his reputation and caused him to be fired/demoted from his job. His parents reprimanded him, regretting their decision to support him.

Lost and disgusted with his life, Maxie found recruitment with Team Rocket and left Cinnabar to join their efforts on the mainland. When he presented his research to their higher-ups, they were impressed enough to pass it along to Giovanni himself, and Maxie ended up contributing to the construction of some of their underground lairs, like in Celadon City.

This also made him a prime candidate for the Rocket Hoenn project as a lead engineer and scientist, and he joined the project with high hopes.

+ His interest in Pokemon was soured by his past and usually only extends are far as his ambitions, which means he views Pokemon only as things that can be useful to whatever projects he’s working on, otherwise they are a nuisance. After becoming the leader of Team Magma and having to train a personal team to defend himself with, he warms up to Pokemon a bit more.

+ Maxie plays up his confidence and genius, but does have moments of crippling self-doubt and anxiety. Deep down, he’s socially awkward and has trouble expressing his feelings, tending to bottle things up until they spill out in moments of anger.

+ Maxie used to be a semi-heavy smoker in his youth to cope with his anxiety. After becoming the leader of Team Magma, his health was suffering and his grunts were visibly uncomfortable around him, so for the sake of his own health and that of his team, he quit, with help and advice from Courtney and Tabitha.

+ Maxie hates his parents and hasn’t contacted them since he left Cinnabar, which was over ten years ago by the end of ORAS events. He avoids them to the point that he uses a forged identity in Hoenn, named “Maxie Stormfront.” ‘Stormfront’ is a reference from one of his favorite metal bands, the Doom Hounds, because he is a nerd.

+ Years later, Cinnabar’s volcano did erupt and destroy the town, displacing its human population. Maxie has mixed feelings about this – he’s not sure if it’s righteous karma for the City Council rejecting his plans, or a sign that his old plans were doomed to failure and he was better off leaving Cinnabar after all.

-- Archie

+ Archie is (the pokemon equivalent of) Black/Hispanic and a Hoenn native. His birth name is Archibald Rodriguez. He IDs as a cis man (or trans?), pansexual and panromantic.

He was born to his father, Alexander Rodriguez and his mother, Alicia Fuentes (Rodriguez after marriage) in a small fishing town on one of Hoenn’s coasts, with its fishery being its only major industry. Most of its residents are middle-class or poor, and few members pursue an education after high school, usually joining the local fishing industry.

In his youth, Archie didn’t care much for school or work, preferring to spend his days playing with the local water Pokemon and his friends, Matt and Shelly. However, this exposed him to the effects that overfishing and pollution had on the local wildlife, and he eventually grew to want to pursue a career as a Veterinarian, specifically for water pokemon.

His parents didn’t believe he would be successful and his town had few resources to help him. The most he could do was research at the local library and a then-primitive internet.

Worse, his town was outright apathetic to the damage their industry was causing to the local wildlife because they depended on its capital to survive.

+A possible traumatic memory involves a young Archie nursing a sick Magikarp back to health for weeks, only to later discover it trapped in the nets of the fishery his father worked at, doomed to become food/products. When he attempted to cut the nets and save the Magikarp, his father restrained him and reprimanded him, claiming “it’s just a fish, boy! They’re all just stupid fish!”

Eventually, Archie was a depressed drifter in his 20s, unable to hold onto work and unable to afford to leave to a larger city. He often fought with his abrasive father and his mother was coddling, but unsupportive. This made Archie a prime candidate for Team Rocket recruiters as they arrived on Hoenn, promising a way out of his backwater town, decent pay, and a career where he’d be appreciated and be able to work with Pokemon to change the world. He joined as a lowly Grunt, but was talented and well-respected within the Team.

-Archie has limited contact with his parents since he left home, only calling them once a year or so.

-Archie doesn’t like being referred to as his full name, it feels pretentious and brings back uncomfortable memories of his family.

+I used to headcanon Archie and Matt as biological brothers because of the “bro” thing, but I’m not sure about keeping that. If so, Matt’s name would be short for Matthias Rodriguez, because their parents liked pretentious names.

-Like some of his dialog implies, Archie is kind of depressed, pessimistic and cynical deep down, but hides it behind his boisterous, reckless attitude. At his worst, he’s downright bitter, uncaring of his own life or the lives of humanity in general, in favor of Pokemon.

#hardenshipping #aqua leader archie #magma leader maxie #rocket hardenshipping #pokemon oras #jeminy3 art #jeminy writes #long post #headcanons

274 notes · View notes

cum-padre · 3 years ago

Text

Always saying this and im sorry but white people are naturally so demonic. Thinking of all the customers who get offended when I ask if they want to pay the bill stub in full and its always weird ignorant comments like "duh i actually like to work unlike some of the people in this community" like the community you live in? The heavy hispanic populated part of the city, them? You wanna make a weird comment but live with them? Or just other variations of such stupid bullshit just shut the hell up and pay you gas bill you god damn colonizer

#its ALWAYS white people who say this stuff too ugh

10 notes · View notes

whattolearntoday · 3 years ago

Photo

October 15th is...

Aesthetician Day - With specialized training and personalized attention, aestheticians bring out the most radiant skin in each of us. Their knowledge and skills often go unrecognized and yet they deliver superior services every day in spas and medical clinics across the country. Addressing the complex needs of their clientele, aestheticians rejuvenate and polish even the most sensitive skin.

Boss’s Day - Many leaders carry heavy loads. They oversee many employees and guide their careers, too. While their position holds them responsible for a department, business, or organization and leading it to success, their list of responsibilities is multifaceted.

Cheese Curd Day - Cheese Curds are unique, funky, snackable little pieces of yellow or white Wisconsin cheddar cheese. Many restaurants coat and deep-fry them to a golden brown. When you bite into one, first expect a warm buttery crunch on the outside. The next delicious taste will be an ooey-gooey burst of dairyland delicacy on the inside. What are they? Well, cheesemaking naturally creates cheese curds. Fresh ones squeak when you bite into them.

Chicken Cacciatore Day - Cacciatore means “hunter” in Italian, and it is hunters who first ate this dish. In fact, it is thought that the first Chicken Cacciatore was not made with chicken at all, but with rabbit or other wild game sometime during the Renaissance period, so between the 14th and 16th centuries. Chicken Cacciatore’s simple but delicious recipe was likely developed to satisfy the appetites of hunters who may have been on the track of a larger animal or herd of animals for several days, and who needed a tasty, filling stew that could easily be cooked outdoors to keep them going. The spices used, such as parsley and oregano, would have also been readily available to humble hunters.

Global Handwashing Day - You might not think that by merely washing your hands with soap, you could be saving a life. It seems like such a mundane thing to do. It’s something your parents or teachers have drilled into your head for years. “Remember to wash your hands.” That’s because washing your hands, with soap of course, is the best way to get rid of germs.

Grouch Day - It seems that a grouch may be happy (although they would never admit it) only when others are unhappy and grouchy. It is then that they feel most comfortable with having others share in their grumpy, cantankerous, surly world with them.

I Love Lucy Day - I Love Lucy, an American sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley made its debut on October 15, 1951. The program created a new television experience with the first filmed and scripted program performed before a live audience. The studio literally knocked a hole in a concrete wall creating room for theater seating inviting the once-banned fans to see the stars perform – for free

International Day Of Rural Women - Rural women make up one-quarter of the world’s population. One in three employed women around the world works in agriculture. Unfortunately, in many countries, rural women face many challenges. Besides living in poverty, they are excluded from leadership and decision-making. They also lack access to education, health care, and public services. In developing countries, women make up 43% of the rural workforce. In these countries, women work alongside men, make important decisions, and have more rights.

Latino AIDS Awareness Day - The NLAAD campaign works annually at building better opportunities for non-profit organizations and health departments to reach Latino/Hispanic communities. The campaign includes promoting HIV testing, providing HIV prevention information, and improving access to care.

Mammography Day - This day serves as a reminder to all women that the best defense is early detection. A mammogram can often detect a problem before there is any outward physical sign. A preventative mammogram is the last line of defense. Today’s mammograms offer more vivid detail of the breast tissue. Baseline mammograms are provided around the age of 35 unless family history indicates sooner. The baseline mammogram provides a comparison view for your physician should something develop later down the line. Women age 40 and over are recommended to receive yearly preventative mammograms.

Pregnancy And Infant Loss Awareness Day - Pregnancy loss and infant death may include but are not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or the death of a newborn. Since 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss, many families know the grief of this kind of loss. It’s often not spoken about, and yet, those who mourn often need support and understanding. The experience is painful and sometimes overwhelming.

Shawarma Day - Bursting with a marinade of Mediterranean herbs and spices, shawarma chicken slowly cooks on a vertical rotisserie spit. The tender meat is then thinly sliced, grilled and added to a pita wrap with a variety of toppings. Customize this flavorful dish with fresh vegetables, cheese and a variety of herbs.

White Cane Safety Day - This day has been set aside to celebrate all of the achievements of people who are blind or visually impaired, and the principal symbol of blindness and tool of independence, the white cane. While technological advancements continue to improve the lives of the blind and visually impaired, the white cane continues to be a basic necessity for leading an independent and productive life. The white cane extends a person’s senses allowing them to determine steps, unlevel pavement, and obstacles. But it also provides a level of safety as a signal to the seeing public.

World Students’ Day - From all corners of the globe, students are working hard to achieve their career goals and make a difference. Some students leave their families and travel far and wide to have a place in a university that will help them to have a better life and provide for their loved ones.

#aesthetician #boss #cheese curds #chicken cacciatore #handwashing #grouch #i love lucy #rural Women #aids #mammograms #child loss #shawarma #blindness #students

9 notes · View notes

antoine-roquentin · 4 years ago

Link

Conventional wisdom says COVID-19 threatens only the very old. That’s not true in Texas’ Latino and Black communities, where working-age adults are dying at rates many times higher than those of whites.

“That discussion of ‘Oh, it’s all the really old people’ — that’s a white people’s story,” said Sarah Reber, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles and a fellow at the nonprofit Brookings Institution.

In Texas, among those ages 25 to 64, the COVID death rate for Hispanics is more than four times as high as that of non-Hispanic whites, a Dallas Morning News analysis of state health data found. Blacks in that age group are dying at more than twice the rate of whites. Similar trends hold true for Dallas County.

While losing a person of any age to COVID is tragic, the virus has been disproportionately cutting down Blacks and Latinos during their most productive years, when they’re working, raising children and saving money for homes, retirement and their children’s college educations.

“That has been the untold story of all the injustices that COVID has highlighted,” said Erin Carlson, director of graduate public health programs at the University of Texas at Arlington. “The pandemic is taking people of color during the prime of their lives.”

The deaths have sweeping implications for Texas’ economy, for its higher education system and for a rapidly unfolding mental health crisis fueled by trauma and grief.

More than 4,200 Hispanics between ages 25 and 64 have died of COVID in Texas. That works out to 74 deaths per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, more than 1,100 whites in that age group have died, which works out to 17 deaths per 100,000. The death rate for Blacks fell in between, at 40 for every 100,000.

The age disparities have gone underreported, Carlson said, because health experts were not initially focused on them. “We were aggregating all of the ages together,” she said. “We were not delineating the data by age when it came to race and ethnicity. When you separate it out by age, now we see a significant and unjust disparity that demands attention.”

The impact of these losses will reverberate long after the pandemic recedes, experts say. Latinos have been by far the hardest hit of Texas’ ethnic and racial groups, and losses threaten to reverse the so-called “Latino Paradox.”

The term describes a seeming contradiction: Latinos have a lower socioeconomic status than whites but a longer life expectancy. Support from extended family and friends is thought to be at least partly behind Latinos’ traditionally low mortality rates.

That was before COVID-19 weaponized family togetherness. Rogelio Sáenz, a demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says the paradox has already vanished among Latinos ages 65 to 74 and will soon fade among those ages 55 to 64. “The longer the pandemic continues, we’re going to see other age categories follow suit,” Sáenz said.

At The News’ request, Sáenz calculated the total number of years of life lost to COVID-19 by racial and ethnic group in Texas. The number represents the difference between a person’s age at death from COVID-19 and that person’s life expectancy in Texas based on their age, race or ethnicity. Latinos have lost more than twice as many life years as whites — a total of 241,446. The figure reflects Texas’ large Latino population, its relative youth, Latinos’ long life expectancy and the heavy toll that COVID has taken on the community.

These staggering losses have several implications. First, they are likely to damage the Texas economy, Sáenz said. Young Latinos have fueled Texas’ economic growth, driving higher-education enrollment, expanding demand for housing, launching new businesses and filling essential jobs in health care, transportation and manufacturing.

The pandemic will also create new cycles of poverty and reinforce the old, said Dr. Sharon Davis, chief medical officer at the nonprofit Los Barrios Unidos Community Clinic. Children who had hoped to go to college may feel compelled to stay home and work to support widowed parents and younger siblings, she said. Families face the financial devastation of unemployment combined with medical and funeral bills.

The pandemic is already leaving a legacy of mental illness. Davis’ clinic employs five bilingual counselors, has an opening for a sixth and may need to add more staff to meet growing demand. Many of Davis’ patients escaped violence and persecution to come to the U.S. The isolation and loss associated with COVID “adds an excruciating layer of emotional pain,” she said.

13 notes · View notes

pandawritesmanythings · 5 years ago

Text

Halfrid // Part 2

Platonic!Loki x Teen!Reader

Summary: Your life has always been dictated by the fact that you are smarter than most adults. This has made you antagonize many of them, it isn’t your fault that you are just citing facts! However, when the god of mischief becomes your friend, are there enough facts you can cite to prove his innocence?

Warnings: None

A/N: Thanks for the support on the first part. I’m not sure how this one came out, but I’m having a lot of fun writing this! Feedback is always appreciated!

PRESENT TIME

Fury looked at you as if had grown a second head.

“You sneaked past me? Past security?”

“In my defence, I was a curious nine-year-old. I had no concept of boundaries.�� You put your hands in the air and tugged at the table as your cuffs stopped you.

“And don’t you think that maybe the sceptre started manipulating you? We barely figured out how it works.”

You had thought about it. It was a possibility that more than once had crossed your mind. You had looked at every angle, searched every corner. There was no possible way that you were under some sort of influence.

“No. There’s no way.”

“How would you be able to know?” He pressed for information.

“You’ll just have to trust me in this one agent Fury.” You said with determination.

“That is hard to do, especially considering that it is the representation of mischief and lies who could be behind this.”

You hit the desk with your fist. “Is that why he’s up there? Literally fighting the thing he’s most afraid of? To try and trick you? To try and destroy you?”

A shaky breath left your lips. Fury just silently looked at you, he didn’t really know what to make of this unusual situation. But the fact that a literal teenager was defending on of earth’s most wanted enemies was the most baffling part of the whole thing.

You sighed. “I just wanted to help. I just wanted to know why he did what he did.” You slumped in your chair. “My search for knowledge brought me here…”

“Do you regret that knowledge?”

That snapped you. “No! Of course not!” You straightened up. “Not in a million years. His burden is one that I am so happy to share. People told me to be curious, to learn things, to understand the world around us. But if there is no one else in that world to understand, is it worth it?”

NEW YORK 2012

You sat with your back pressed against the glass. On the other side, Loki did the same, the only difference being that he had extended his legs and you pressed yours against your chest. You head slightly tilted to look at him through the glass.

“So… Who exactly are you?” You broke the silence.

“Who do you think I am?”

You took a second to think. “Are you that Harry Potter dude? My friends are obsessed with him but I honestly don’t see it.”

Loki had an idea of who you were talking about, but most of all, your nonchalance amused him. “Snape, I believe he is called?”

“I guess, I’m not the one to ask about Harry Potter facts.” You giggled.

“Ah well, I guess we will have to find another topic to speak about.” He didn’t know why he was going along with her antics.

There was nothing particularly interesting about this kid, he thought. Besides her quick thinking, there wasn’t much more he could exploit. He told himself that if she could reveal even the slightest information about who she was or if she had any special abilities, then maybe she could be of some use to his own benefit. Yeah, that was it.

“I know! Let’s guess things about each other!” You beamed. “I’ll start guessing your name!”

Oh right, he hadn’t told her his name. He was going to, but you probably already had heard of who he was. And something inside him didn’t want you to confirm who he was. He didn’t know why, but that’s just what he wanted.

“Alright, try.”

“I think your name is Thomas.” You smiled.

Loki cringed visibly. “Norns no. Who would curse their child with such a name?”

You held your stomach as you laughed. “Many do! It is a very silly name, right?”

“Indeed.” He nodded. “Well, I believe you look like a Halfrid.”

Your face went blank for a second. “Hal-Who?”

“Halfrid. Don’t you agree?” His smirk only widened, knowing he had confused you.

“That is the weirdest name I have ever heard… Is that even a real word?” Your sense of reality seemed to have been shaken.

“Yes, where I come from is not that weird of a name.” He laughed at you.

“Well, then let me tell you of a name that you have never heard of.” You challenged with your chin raised.

“You think there is a single name in the galaxy that I have not heard?” He leaned closer to you as you challenged him.

“There is no way you have heard it.” You smirked at his defiance.

“Alright, say it.”

You smiled wickedly remembering exactly how your friend had taught you to say it. She was a Hispanic girl in your class, and she told you that even though the name Maria was 50% of the female Hispanic population, at least another 25% was made of the most unusual names in existence. It was particularly hilarious when it was a substitute teacher the one who tried to pronounce her first and last name.

“Douglimar Carmela Carrabos.” You said, accent almost perfect.

“Duglymer Cormella Karabos? What sort of monstrosity is that?” He said in a choppy Spanish accent.

“The name of a poor classmate of mine.” You giggled.

“Point taken.” He raised his hands in defeat.

“Okay, so now favourite color.” You did him a once over and raised an eyebrow. “I may not be mistaken to believe that your favourite color is green?”

He smiled at the child’s guess. “Well, although I am fond of the color, in reality, I prefer gold.”

“Then why don’t you wear it?” It seemed so simple to her if he likes the color he should wear it. That’s what she did if there is something she liked unless it was hurting herself or someone else, there was no reason why she couldn’t talk about it or show how much she liked it.

Loki, however, furrowed his brow. He had never truly thought about it. Why didn’t he wear it? It was something that ran deeper than it just being a color. He knew he could be risking spilling details about him if he tried to explain to the girl the reason for his attitude. So easing his expression he just looked at her with a controlled and unreadable expression and answered her.

“It’s too shiny to wear in the sunlight.”

She didn’t buy it, and he knew it. But she shrugged and let it go.

“Alright, if you say so. What about mine?” She asked tilting her head in a questioning manner.

He gave her a quick look and tried guessing, but seeing that her shirt had an array of different colours, he didn’t know if to securely pinpoint one.

“Well, I would be inclined to say blue, because of your skirt and stockings. But your shirt could tell another story.” He slyly responded, to not get himself in a pickle with the girl.

“Smart boy! In fact, I love all the colours! All of them are beautiful. Which is why I try to wear them all, every week. Even poop green, I have a really ugly poop green sweater that I always wear with my overall. I should show you one day.” She smiled.

Loki had a keen interest in this child. She was so different from the children of Asgard. Not that he had that much contact with any of them, but you were different from the ones he got to make acquaintance with. You had a carefree expression, not being afraid of just… living. You wore the colours of the rainbow, and yet still, you could also wear the ugliest of colours. And without seeing you in that ugly sweater he could already tell that when you wore it you did it with pride.

The girls he had known in Asgard were proper and shy. You were expressive and carefree. Your words may not feel that deep nor psychological at first glance, but in them, he could dig down and see a wisdom that was weird for a nine-year-old.

Princesses in Asgard were afraid of him. You, however, talked to him as if you had known him all along, looked at him as if he was worth anything at all. You weren’t scared of him, and that was something he never thought to be even remotely possible.

There was a silence that settled between the both of you, but it wasn’t awkward or heavy. It was just a simple enjoyable silence.

“But, for real…” You broke the silence. “Who are you?”

Your eyes… Loki had never seen such sincerity in someone else’s eyes. He felt something stir inside him, an old forgotten memory. Something so deep buried down in his mind that dusting it and bringing it into the light made him feel dizzy.

“I-I…” Why was he stammering?

He composed himself. “Who do you think I am?” He repeated the question he had asked her earlier trying to divert her attention.

She was just staring. You searched. Searched deep into his eyes. You tried to find a clue, anything that gave away who he was. There was only one thing that she could guess, it was an instinct, something in her gut that told her it was so.

“Are you Loki?”

PRESENT TIME

You looked at the wall. Fury leaned forward, urging you silently to continue.

“So? What did he say?”

You keep quiet for just another moment, knowing fully that you were getting to his nerves.

“Really, agent Fury?” You leaned forward, defying him. “You know very well what he said.”

You relaxed your posture and leaned back into your chair. However, your serious expression never left your face. “In fact, I know for a fact that you know what he said to me. How? Because your guys told me. You watched and rewatched the security tapes because you just had to know if he let any information slip his lips.” You accused. “So why are you asking me if you already know the answer?”

Fury remained silent. He knew you were right, so it was better not to dawdle on it.

“Alright. Then, let me ask you a better question. Why do you think he didn’t lie to you?”

Your serious facade broke. As much as you claimed to understand Loki, there were so many things you still couldn’t understand. And it ate your insides.

“I don’t know…” Your shoulders slumped. “I have no idea. A-and I hate it because I have given so much thought over what went on that day and I am still no closer to figuring out. Why…?”

Why had he not introduced himself from the begging? Why did he go along with your antics? Why did he make you finally understand the meaning of the word friend? Why? Why? Why? A million of those always rushed through your mind, and you could barely answer a couple.

“If you want me to say what you want me to say, then maybe he was just trying to play me. Maybe he just wanted to take advantage of me. Maybe he was waiting on something that I could say that would solidify his plan. Or maybe he just wanted to know who my parents were to see if I was worth kidnapping. Who knows?”

“But is that what you believe?” Fury asked, fully immersed in your way of arguing this antagonist’s case.

“No. Of course not.” A small smile crept onto your lips, your eyes lost in nothingness. “I mean, Loki can be a pain to deal with sometimes. But in all the time I’ve known him… I know I would trust him with my life if it came to it.” You focused again in agent Fury’s face. “And, that kind of trust doesn’t come out of nowhere.”

“You do realize what he did shortly after, don’t you?”

“Of course. I’m not blind. I know exactly what he did, not only because it is one of the most striking events that happened in New York since 9/11. But also because I have been making a ruckus in my mind trying to figure out how did it get there. Why did so many people have to die? Many points show us that this could have been avoided.” You debated if to tell Fury your next point. You had not yet made him understand how you got to this level of knowledge. Would he even understand?

“My men have also been very analytical about this situation. But what makes you think that a fifteen-year-old can know more about this than us?” He questioned.

“Honestly, the fact that your guys were just looking at one point in time tells you how unprepared they were to tackle this subject. They didn’t even question Loki nor kept him in custody long enough to find his motives! How could you be certain that their investigation was thorough?”

Fury thought that was a good point. And knowing that HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD, for God knows how long, could explain why a fully fleshed out explanation never landed on his lap.

“Well, it may be what you say. But we are running out of time kid.”

Just as he said it the whole bunker trembled. You held onto the chair your hair bouncing, fear in your eyes. The light flickered, it seemed about to turn off.

“What the heck?”

“What are they doing up there?” Fury quickly got up from his seat and walked towards the door in a hurry.

“Wait! I have to help them, please!”

“Kid, you are not a superhero. I need to check what’s going on up there. You need to stay here and figure out a way to tell me the short version of your story. Because if you don’t, your friend can either die or live as a hero, or remain a villain.” He finished slamming the door as if to prove a point.

You were so tired. Mentally and emotionally. It just wasn’t fair. The fact that your whole life had revolved around trying to show everyone how smart you were, only for them to look at you in disapproval. His were the only eyes who had looked at you and listened, laughed and believed your words. Even if they were the stupid comments of a nine-year-old who thought hers were the best comebacks in the history of ever.

Thinking back on it, knowing what you know now, you wondered if you ever were that smart. Your brain remembered you being clever, but honestly, you now cringed at the words you had said to the weasel behind the glass.

You smiled at that. Your departure from him that day had been perfectly timed. If this was a movie your father probably would have found you before he answered your question. But life gave you another mystery to solve.

You would have to ask him when he returned. Why did he go along with an annoying know-it-all nine-year-old?

That was… If he even came back alive.

Tears threatened to fall from your eyes. Your friend. Your best friend. Your only true friend. You had to get out of here and give it to him. It was the only way.

You took a deep breath in and tried to remember all you could from the rest of the day to try and summarize it to Fury.

It was honestly a pain since this was more than 6 years ago, so how could you remember every detail?

Still, you tried. Your mind walking back to your past self and seeing as clear as you could what had happened after you had guessed who he was.

NEW YORK 2012

Loki expected a reaction, a scream, a flinch. Anything. But you just staring at him was not exactly what he had in mind.

Your eyes didn’t look at him with the judgement, fear nor resentment that many others looked him with. There was only curiosity. And a slight level of cuteness that Loki didn’t want to admit thanks to your tilted head and slightly pursed lips.

“So…” You finally started. “You are… Evil?” You slowly tried to wrap your head around that fact.

It did make sense, in a way. Since the first thing you felt after looking at him was fear. His evil smile honestly freaked you out, but there were mixed signals to you.

He had complimented you, listened to you and talked to you without complaining about you being annoying a single time.

He opened his mouth to answer but the sound of boots alerted you both and you snapped your heads towards the door. As it opened you scrambled to your feet and you noticed that Loki was already up.

“(Y/N)! Daughter!” You heard your father’s voice.

He came in the room, his eyes frantic and filled with fear. His body becoming rigid when he saw the unnerving man standing behind you.

You, however, just smiled and bounced on you feet wiggling your fingers at him nervously. “Hi, dad."

"I told you not to go near the bad guy!” He reached for you and took you by the shoulders starting to lead you out of the room.

“But it was blondie who left me-” You tried to excuse but he didn’t let you.

“I don’t even want to know how you got past the door! Did you figure out the combination? How? You are just nine! The possibilities for it are endless!” He kept ranting desperately trying to make sense of the situation.

Just as the doors were closing behind you you turned and waved smiling brightly at Loki.

“Bye Loki! See you next time!”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING-?”

Your father’s shouts were cut short as the door closed behind you. Loki wasn’t able to hear more of the argument or of your father’s ranting. Which was, in all honesty, a relief. You obviously hadn’t inherited your brain and charm from him. Maybe your physical features, but he didn’t know much about him to make any solid conclusions.

One thing was for sure, your dad was just a regular agent, so there wasn’t much to exploit there. Not that he would want to kidnap you, he had already decided not to hurt Barton’s family, so why would he come even close to hurting you now that he had a notion of who you were?

He refocused his mind. This had been a nice distraction, but he knew why he was there. He knew why he was going along with this plan and he wasn’t going to let a mere child distract him from his goal.

He had to finish what he started, and yet there was something inside of himself that wandered, all the while he did his escape.

All the while The Hulk caused rampage in the helicarrier.

All the while he opened the portal to the Chitauri.

All the while he flew across the destruction that New York had become with the invasion.

All the while he was finally smashed to the ground and immobilized.

And all the while he was taken into custody back to Asgard…

That made his brain flash your innocent smile.

To be continued…

#loki odinson #loki x reader #loki laufeyson #loki layfeyson x reader #loki #loki friggason #loki fandom #long reads

58 notes · View notes

mrslutterman · 4 years ago

Text

I have been reading SO much and really trying to understand the history behind the decisions our country has made! This Instagram account @officialmillenialblack has taught me so much and connects me to a variety of other sites and resources. I highly encourage anyone (that should be ALL of you...) to check out her page but please be respectful of her time. Don’t send her a million DM’s asking what you can do- research, read and use google! If you can find out how to make a purse out of coke tabs, you can figure out how to be an Ally!

Becoming an ALLY is not something that can happen over night. It, in my opinion, is a concious decision that must be made every day. I struggle with this. Even today, I struggle. I hear what Black people are saying, I see it on the news, and I am trying to understand. I think sometimes things are so ridiculous, that you can’t understand them. And to find out that your foundational beliefs are in fact racist, and that I’ve been surrounded by privilege my entire life, even though I didn’t realize it, is a wake up call I didn’t know I needed.

How shameful of me to not realized it until now! I’m hoping that this statement extends to a few others out there in the Internet world that could possibly relate to what I’m feeling. I feel guilty for not knowing enough, I feel guilty for knowing too much. I feel guilty for not always agreeing, and I feel guilty for questioning others. I was always taught to never question authority (I scoff at that now because some of my most beneficial discussions I ever had were due to me questioning a decisions made by someone with more authority then me.) I think it’s a hard realization to find that the people in your life don’t always think the same way you do. I don’t think that discussing someone’s civil rights and the way they are treated is something that should be taken lightly and I’m having a really hard time just letting things fall into the “agree to disagree” blanketed category. It’s just a very emotional time and I tend to be an empath so taking on others emotions is not something new to me. I feel heavy right now- that’s the only way I can describe it. Making a change in thinking is far more complicated then I ever anticipated and I can only hope that I am helping my own two children develop a sense of humanity far greater than anything I can offer. I just pray that the next generation can squash the racism that has so delicately been swept under the rug.

In addition to changing my mode of thinking, I’m also trying to figure out how to integrate more culture into my classroom. After doing a slight inventory of the books I can remember having in my classroom (it’s been a few months since I’ve been in there!) I’m realizing that I have tried my best to include the Native American and Hispanic culture, but not many others. Because I live in a heavily Native American population, I was trying my best to respect their beliefs, but I never took time to consider other cultures. It’s hard to be inclusive for everyone but it’s something I need to continue to strive for. Baby steps. I’m in the process of reading “Ghost Boys” by Jewell Parker Rhodes and it’s a very well written story, but I’m still deciding whether I want this to be a Read Aloud or not. I feel like it would start SO many great conversations and the author included some excellent discussion questions! If anyone has read this in their classroom and has some suggestions for discussions, PLEASE share them with me! So what are YOU doing to become an Ally and make your classroom more inclusive?

1 note · View note

chasingshhadows · 6 years ago

Text

RNM S01: A Progressive Review

I want to talk about diversity, representation, social issues, and the way Roswell New Mexico succeeds and fails in that particular department. It’s 2019 and we no longer live in a world where it’s acceptable to ignore the societal implications of the media we consume. That said, it’s also 2019, and Roswell is doing some things that place it far ahead of its peers in media in ways that make it an absolute pleasure to watch. Like honestly, I’m fucking thrilled with this show ok.

I’ve read and skimmed a lot of discussion about the ways in which RNM has failed to be this perfect paragon of progressive representation, and I’ve read/skimmed far less discussion – by both fans and TPTB – about the ways in which the show is trying to be better than its forebears.

However, there seems to be a wide divide between people recognizing the former and people recognizing the latter, and I very much believe it’s irresponsible to try to focus on either one without at least acknowledging the other. So I’m going to talk about those failures and successes, and I’m gonna zig-zag that line so that if you want to read about how I feel about one of those things, you’re gonna have to at least skim the other.

[read more]

I tried to be as concise as possible, but even so, this is rather long, mostly because I didn’t want to make several posts about this. I want to say what I have to say on the topic and then get back to the story because that’s really why I’m here.

Also to note: I understand – and I hope we all understand – that we are in the first season of this show. This means that they should have plenty of time to follow through on or fix many of the issues I will point out, but that also leaves room for them to torpedo many of the positives I’ll discuss. Just – please know that I know we’re only one season in, and anything could happen.

On lived race

This show does a fabulous job exploring how race intersects with these characters’ lives and how it plays an active role in shaping not only who they are, but how their story lines play out. With Liz & Arturo, their race – and immigration status – are openly discussed on screen and inform their decisions and how they present themselves to others, as well as how they are received by their town. This is, in fact, a major aspect of the first season arc/plot as a whole, not just as it pertains to Arturo & Liz (and Rosa), but as it pertains to all the characters, so it’s worth emphasizing.

With Maria, we see her discuss her race as a factor in her isolation from her hometown, as well as seeing how she owns it in the face of racist customers. With Kyle, we see his compassion as a fellow child of immigrants in treating Arturo off the books, and with his mother, we see her perspective on that situation based on her own experiences as a Hispanic immigrant. And with Mimi, we see, tho tangentially, how the intersection of her race and gender and the stereotyping around those have had a negative impact on her healthcare. Even what little we saw of Arizona was washed in her experiences as a Native woman, and her (rightful) disdain for white people.

On the other side of that coin, we have white characters, namely the three alien siblings, whose White Privilege plays an active role in their actions and how they conduct themselves. I know some people have frustrations that these three main characters were all cast as white, but I’ll be honest, after having seen 1.06 (Smells Like Teen Spirit), I would not have bought that any of these characters were a POC. Can you imagine a Black or Hispanic teen being thoughtless enough to frame a WOC – who also happens to be the daughter of a known undocumented immigrant – for the drug-induced vehicular manslaughter of two white girls and not expect the entire town to then turn on that family? Even as a teen, no POC would be race-blind enough to not have had that forethought. It would not be believable, without an immense amount of heavy lifting in the backstory, for a POC to have framed Rosa instead of either of the white women, to have made the decision to put her in the driver’s seat over the other two.

And in this way, the show also does an amazing job in showcasing how good, liberal white people can still be thoughtless where it concerns race. Especially at 17. The White Privilege of the alien siblings, and their lack of awareness of it, serves as a major negative driver of the show’s plot and is the root cause of much of the conflict throughout the first season. That’s real, that’s believable, and that’s important to show.

This, all of this, is vital in portraying accurate, true-to-life representations of how marginalized racial communities interact with each other and white populations, and also gives those communities characters they can point to that not only look like them, but also share their experiences – experiences which are unique to POC and also give white viewers a clearer picture of what it’s truly like to live in this country as a person of color.

On meaningful racial representation

I feel rather let down that the show didn’t follow through on Alex’s heritage in any of the meaningful ways that they did with the other POC on the show (see previous section). All of those characters had clear and explicit aspects of their narrative which centered their race as an part of their story – again, rightfully, as that is how it’s lived IRL. We got to see them express and experience their race as more than just the color of their skin. We didn’t get that with Alex. (or with Noah, but he’s a whole other story)

It’s particularly disappointing considering that Alex is the only POC on the show who passes (that we know of, ofc). Many people will be upset at my bringing this up, but it’s true and we should be talking about it. His ability to pass – the ability for anyone to look at him and not know immediately that he is of Native descent – does not in any way negate his POC identity. Not even remotely. Not a little bit, not at all. All it means is that as a POC, Alex has the ability to be spared from certain microaggressions experienced by others in his community. Not all, not even most, but some. But it also means that he is subject to microaggressions that others in his community will never experience – such as someone making disparaging comments about Natives as tho there aren’t any in the room, or by people assuming he’s “basically white” bc he looks white and erasing his heritage entirely. Those are experiences unique to his race that other Natives who don’t “pass” would never experience.

Roswell didn’t follow through on that this season. We saw no indication, other than the casting of his brother as a Native actor (which I was very pleased about, mind you), that Alex Manes is not as white as he appears. Portraying and giving accurate representation to POCs who pass is just as important as giving it to POCs who don’t.

On consent

WOW this show does a marvelous job at portraying how people should approach getting active and explicit consent from those around them. Active consent is so deeply ingrained in the foundation of this show that its absence is used as an indicator to the audience that something is very very wrong - and on more than one occasion. In order to pull that off, the show has had to set an abundantly clear standard for the type of consent that these characters should expect from each other when things are not horribly wrong, and that standard is appropriately high.

Max and Liz are the obvious duo with which this is explored. From the first, when Liz wants to kiss Max outside of the cave, he stops her because he’s concerned that her judgement may be impaired or impacted by the effects of his powers. He refuses to take advantage of that state, making a direct call to the behavior women wish we could expect from men when our own judgement may be impaired. This continues later when she asks to be left alone and he just immediately backs down and away, not pushing or persuading. He treats her word as law, as he should. We see even in his past, as a teenage white boy in 2008, that he consistently asked for Liz’s consent to even be in her presence.

We see it between Michael and Alex in very different but still very present ways. A lot of Michael and Alex’s communication is silent and, as such, so are their consent check-ins. Before their first kiss, you see Michael checking in with Alex, watching Alex’s body language as he approaches and making sure Alex is receptive before he goes for the kiss – and Alex is, clearly. Michael asks what Alex wants and Alex says that doesn’t matter while stepping toward Michael. Michael stops and looks at Alex and Alex continues to move closer, looking back and forth from Michael’s eyes to his lips. This type of silent communication and consent checks continues throughout the rest of the season, from the scene at the drive-in to the teenage scenes and on.

We also see clear attempts at getting explicit consent between Liz & Kyle, between Cam & Max, and even when Michael was guarding Maria at the gala (I can go get Liz if you want me to leave) and later when he approaches her following the events of 1.13.

This has honestly been so fucking cool to see like this, on a CW show especially, to see how easy and essential it is to get that consent in all situations. It’s an important representation that we don’t see laid out clearly enough in media today and I’m so fucking proud of Roswell for doing it so effectively.

On disability & erasure

This show started to do something that was really incredible in portraying one of the main characters as an amputee. We see his crutch, we see the way he moves with it, we see how he struggles with it, and we see how he is determined to life his life as an amputee, and not just despite it.

There was certainly plenty of room to improve in even that regard - specifically where it concerns coaching on exactly how a recent amputee might move their body and center their weight and whatnot, even, or maybe especially, if that person were trying to hide their struggle. But it’s clear that the show was trying to represent a type of character we don’t get to see often.

But then Alex loses the crutch. Rather suddenly and very cold turkey. This is not an accurate representation of how someone with a recent loss of limb would experience their recovery, no matter how much that person may want to hide it. Recovery takes time, it takes practice, and it includes bad days. We didn’t see any of that.

It's particularly frustrating considering the show gave themselves the perfect opportunity to do this transition far better and didn't take advantage of it. There was a six-week time jump between episodes 8 & 9. Had we seen Alex try to go without his crutch when he confronted Liz in ep 7, and then have to return to using it after the long day out, and again in episode 8 with his father - wouldn't it have been so amazing to see him collapse in his chair after Jesse leaves and rub his leg because he's been ignoring the pain all day in an attempt to intimidate his father? And then we could see him moving more independently after that six-week jump.

The show dropped the ball there, in my opinion. In a big way. That beautiful representation was given and then promptly taken away. And then the show set itself up perfectly to explore how the invisibility of disability can be experienced, and has not followed through on that at all. Quite literally the last indication at all that we get of Alex's amputation is Michael commenting on his having lost the crutch in episode 9.

One of the harsh truths of disability is that no matter how much one might try to ignore and hide that aspect of who they are, it will always be there and it will make itself known. It might be invisible to others, but Alex will experience it anyway, will be affected by it anyway. He may be able to do anything that anyone else can do, but he’s gonna have to work ten times harder at it. We should have gotten to see that.

This same problem of erasing disability happens with Michael’s hand in the last episode. Michael’s scars, what they prevented him from doing, how they affected his work - all of that was so important to see, and then he gets the unconsensual healing power of magic and suddenly he gets his happy place back. And as happy as I was as a Michael!Stan to see him find that, this sends a bad message, that people with disabilities just need to be “fixed” to be happy. And as I mentioned above and in other posts, it is wildly apparent that Max healing Michael’s hand without his consent is meant to be an indicator that Max is Very Not Okay and is a prelude to him literally going so mad with power that he kills himself to resurrect Rosa. That noted, from a representation standpoint, I wish another mechanism had been used to show that.

On unapologetic politicism

Roswell makes it absolutely clear where it stands on the political spectrum and who this show is for. This show exists in the post-2016 election, post-#MeToo era and it embraces that culture and does not shy away from being political, on everything from race, sexuality and misogyny to immigration status, gun control, and even research science. It uses context and even hero dialogue to make the audience aware of what is right and what is wrong on these topics, and it does so without ambiguity or nuance.

It (appropriately) paints ICE as the enemy of good, hardworking people in literally the first scene of the show. Liz starts ranting about being stopped because she’s Latina and I just did a little dance inside because Yaassss, these are my people. And the show doesn’t let up there - the shadow of ICE hangs over Arturo’s - and by extension, Liz’s - head the entire season in a way that makes the audience uncomfortable and angry on his behalf.

The show consistently, from multiple characters both in law enforcement and not, refers to undocumented immigrants, the homeless, and prostitutes as “the most vulnerable members” of society, and not as a scourge or a menace to that society. These are good, worthy people deserving of protection and justice. The show paints anyone who views differently as firmly In The Wrong, from the disgusting Wyatt Long to the self-righteous Sheriff Valenti.

The dialogue calls out everything from subtle racism in police descriptions to building a wall to #AllLivesMatter to fake news to the terrifying ease of buying a gun to homophobia to the president himself - it does not hold back and it does not leave room for excuses or sympathy on the part of the more conservative characters.

Most of the dialogue on the show that wasn’t explicitly Alien-centric feels very organic in the ways that it makes offhand quips about immigration and racism and sexism and everything in between - that’s the way I and my friends speak and converse. That stuff just filters into our conversations about really anything because it’s always at the forefront of our minds. We call those things out when we see them and talk about idiots like they’re not sitting right in front of us (“I think that’s Hank speak for ‘he wasn’t white.’”) There aren’t a lot of shows that nail that so perfectly and the only one that’s coming to mind at the moment is Dear White People, which was the first I saw to pull this off so well.

This is media that doesn’t try to paint a picture of “there are good people on both sides.” This media isn’t playing middle ground, or trying to please everyone. It’s making a statement in these choices and it doesn’t shy away from pissing off toxic people - this media isn’t for them. Most popular successful media (*cough* MCU *cough*) achieves that status by very carefully toeing the line between left and right, by using subtext to attract progressive viewers while keeping the explicit storyline clean and moderate. Roswell doesn’t do that - its progressivism is explicit and unmissable, as it should be. And that makes it, truly, an absolute joy to watch.

On Maria’s arc

Maria DeLuca did not start this season as an extension of Michael’s - or anyone’s - storyline, and I’m incredibly frustrated that, narratively, that’s how she ended it. That’s easily my biggest disappointment regarding the season as a whole, exaggerated by the fact that Maria is a black woman and because of that, her storyline carries more weight than many of the others. This post does a good job of discussing why POC rep matters more, and while it focuses on race-bending (which this show has also done with Maria, in a positive way), I think it still makes the point that Any POC Rep will just always hit harder, good or bad.

When that Rep is good, it’s fantastic. When it’s bad, it’s terrible.

And for most of this season, it was hitting very very good well. Maria throughout most of the season was this fierce, beautiful firecracker of personality and suppressed issues. She had a history and a deep well of issues both pre- and post- the loss of one of her closest friends, followed by the physical separation from her other two best friends. She’s got an amazing relationship with a mother who is slowly losing grip and slipping away from her. Those things, how they shaped her, and how they expressed themselves made her relatable, tangible, and easy to love.

That was actually one of my favorite parts about her hooking up with Michael, that these were main characters seeking comfort and distraction in one another, rather than just with throwaway characters. Maria is her own person with her own story that we had already seen explored as an independent arc from any of the other main characters

However, that arc never quite got the same attention as Kyle’s or Alex’s and certainly not as much as Liz or the Pod Squad. A lot of that likely has to do with her ignorance of the alien presence in the town (which appears to be coming to a close, but I won’t speculate on that) and that makes sense, narratively. As she couldn’t be actively involved in pushing the alien mystery plot forward, there was only so much the show could do with her, and I think they did take advantage of what little wiggle room they had there.

That said, given that she’s the only black woman on the main cast, it’s very disappointing that she rounds out the season by being drugged, possessed, and either talking about, pushing away, or engaging with Michael. My own perspective on this show may revolve around Michael, but that doesn’t mean I think our black woman should share that fate narratively.

And I’ll note that characterization-wise, I understood the ways Maria’s thoughts and actions could become consumed and fixated on a love interest. Oh, holy wow, have I Been There. But allowing that - and essentially, only that, narratively for Maria at the end of the season, as the only MC black woman on the show - is a disservice to her character and the community she represents. Which is not to say that I take issue with how Michael and Maria come together at the end, either from a narrative or a character development standpoint; what I take issue with is that that is all we get of her in the later episodes. Maria deserved more, and so did we.

On fighting for WOC

One of my favorite things about this show is how the characters on this show again and again come to bat for the two main WOC, despite that both of them are portrayed as absolutely capable of fighting for themselves. Both Liz Ortecho and Maria DeLuca are shown to be strong, multifaceted, beautiful (neither because of nor in spite of their race - just beautiful, end of story), desirable, and worth fighting for - and unapologetically and undeniably women of color.

Our “main hero” Max makes it absolutely clear that he will Throw Down for Liz Ortecho. He risks his own life and the lives of his siblings to save her, and nearly torpedos those relationships entirely on her behalf. He loves her absolutely, flaws and all. And he acknowledges those flaws - he doesn’t put her on a pedestal or pretend she’s perfect - she doesn’t need to be for him to love and respect her.

We see Alex and Michael and Liz all show up for Maria at different points in the story, fighting on her behalf, defending her, and making the statement that Maria is precious and should be protected. More than that, through Michael’s eyes, we stand in awe of Maria DeLuca - she is a standout, she is impressive, she is powerful, and she is her own savior, every time. And through all of that, she is beautiful and desirable and absolutely worthy of being the center of attention.

These storylines and characterizations are unfortunately still incredibly rare for women of color in modern media. Women of color rarely get to be these fully fleshed out characters with their own backstory and own motivations, and even more rarely do we get to see them be viewed by others as special and valued. Roswell isn’t sidelining its WOC or centering their storylines around white men (my comments above re Maria’s last couple episodes notwithstanding). And that’s amazing and should be celebrated.

On aesthetics

No matter how important something is to the plot or how in-character it would be, the sociological aesthetics of media are still relevant. Plot-wise, the roundabout Wyatt leading to Maria leading to Noah was an interesting mechanism, and it makes sense, character-wise for Cam and then Isobel to suspect Maria’s involvement. And it makes sense, character-wise, for Liz to then defend Maria against those suspicions.

But - aesthetics matter. And watching a scene in which two white blonde women accuse a WOC of horrible crimes at another WOC is immensely uncomfortable and very tone-deaf. That wasn’t fun or engaging to watch, I don’t feel drawn into the mystery of it all in that moment, I feel pretty grossed out, actually. Because this show has set a standard for itself of being better than that, and in that scene, it failed its own test.

On bisexual representation

This one I’ve already talked about at length and having finished out the season, my feelings haven’t changed. This show does a damn fine job showing us a bisexual character living out his life, his pain, and his unhealthy but entirely relatable coping mechanisms. They don’t try to portray him as perfect because he’s not and he shouldn’t have to be for us to respect and love him.

On bi-baiting

I’ll admit to being disappointed that Isobel’s feelings for Rosa turned out to be artificial and driven by the man living her in mind. It took the whole situation from amazing bi rep to aggressively heterosexual. Not only was our queer woman not actually queer, but all of those feelings and attraction toward another woman were actually driven by a really toxic man that was actively violating Isobel to pursue that attraction.

Once again, the show started to give us something really fucking amazing - two bisexual main characters - and then appeared to take that away. We’ve been given no indication that Isobel’s attraction to Rosa was anything more than Noah in her head or that she herself is anything other than Very Straight.

This doesn’t diminish the amazing bi representation they’ve given us with Michael, but that amazing representation does not excuse or erase our having been baited into falling for another bisexual character only to find out it was all very likely a sham. While there are certainly not enough bisexual men in media, there is also not enough queer women at all. So dangling that in front of the audience before yanking it away is frustrating.

On respecting survivors

*Content Warning: sexual assault*

So I’m going to talk as a survivor for a moment and explain how Holy Shit Muther Fucking Important it was to see another survivor being told that other people’s feelings and needs didn’t matter. What She needed mattered. I was sobbing through that scene because no one has ever told me that. No one ever told me that what I needed trumped other people’s comfort or anger or needs.

But Isobel got to hear that. She got to hear that her brothers’ needs Did Not Matter (and that, particularly, hits hard for me). The only thing that mattered was whatever She needed to get through this, to feel better, and to heal. She got to hear that taking care of herself was the most important thing, that she was allowed to be selfish and think of herself. She didn’t have to put others first, or make sure everyone got what they wanted. What they wanted is nothing compared to what she needs. I needed to hear that just as much as Isobel did.

The show did not shy away in facing just how violently violated Isobel was by her husband - body and mind. It doesn’t brush off what he did as just another evil act by an evil man - this was invasion of Isobel in every possible way by someone she loved and trusted.

And it doesn’t try to artificially portray her as too strong to care, or too weak to handle it. She’s strong, but she’s affected. She’s shattered inside, and she’s handling it. A lot of us know what that’s like in ways people that haven’t experienced it never could. And as someone who finds therapy in being understood, in seeing my experiences in media, this scene was everything I needed.

On villainizing POC

This one has sparked a lot of valid discourse. Media has a really ugly history of telling society who is good and who is bad based on casting choices and always always always making the villains the POC, particularly MOC. It’s unconscious bias leading to more unconscious bias, teaching viewers that we shouldn’t trust POC bc they’re always the bad guy.

It’s a problem and every additional casting choice like this contributes to that problem. No show or movie is immune to it simply because they had a good reason, or even because they wanted to give a POC a job. Studios can give POC jobs by writing roles for them from the beginning, rather than slotting them into damaging stereotypes.

While I do acknowledge that it is unfair and in many ways problematic to deny an actor a role simply because of their race, aesthetics matter. There has to be some forethought in the casting choices regarding the message that choice will send. If the desire is to have more POC characters, then write more POC characters.

And that’s another way in which Roswell doesn’t really succeed with Noah. While there’s at least mention of Noah’s race on the show, he falls into the same category as Alex in that we never see his race expressed or lived. They cast a South Asian actor to play a raceblind role, which means they cast a POC actor to play a white role. POC characters have different stories than white characters - Roswell dropped the ball on giving us that with Noah.

Roswell does a lot right where it concerns race on this show, and it is refreshing that our POC villain is far from the only POC on the show. That said, I was taught something in college that I will never forget: oppression is a moving sidewalk. In order to work against it, you cannot stand still (i.e. casting POC on both sides). You must actively walk the other direction in order to affect change.

Like with the issue of Isobel’s baited bisexuality, giving us amazing representation in one hand doesn’t change that you’re using the other to flick our ear.

On centering queer stories

*hugs myself in delight* This is a big one and is probably the aspect that Roswell gets the most right. Both in impact, screen time, and even in literal scene-splitting, Roswell again and again makes it clear that Michael & Alex’s love story is just as vital and central to this story as Max & Liz’s. They intercut their scenes at numerous points, and characters even within the show compare how similarly their stories have played out. The two relationships experience major milestones on the same day on more than one occasion.

Michael and Alex’s relationship has depth. It has conflict, it has history, it has heartbreak. There is tension and pain and softness and love. It has laughter and safe spaces; it has big gestures and powerful words. These two men who crash together and fly apart but whose whole beings seem to orient toward the other and who, at the end of the day, are willing to let themselves be destroyed for their love.

This queer love story playing out on season 1 of Roswell has more foundation, development, chemistry, and payoff than some of the most romanticised straight couples in media history. It’s been a week since the finale and I’m still just utterly in awe at what we’ve been given here. Roswell is absolutely succeeding in giving us thorough, relatable, meaningful queer representation with Michael and Alex. They are not holding back or sidelining or tokenizing. And they are following through on narrative promises instead of just baiting or relying on subtext. And that’s…. so fucking insanely satisfying to finally get to see.

Ultimately, I’m far more happy with how the show treats its underrepresented identities and modern social issues than I am critical. Most of the content on this show is akin to looking in a mirror and seeing my own worldview reflected back. I am a queer progressive woman and a survivor, so many of these issues are personal for me.

But I’m also white, and my disabilities are not physical. As such, I am not and should not be the authority on some of these issues. I am more than open to feedback from those who feel I was either too harsh, or not harsh enough, where it concerns those issues.

But for now, this is essentially Chasing’s Progressive Review of Roswell New Mexico, Season 1. And now I’m gonna go roll around in meta and fanfic and gifsets for the next several months cuz I sure as hell ain’t done talking about this show.

#roswell new mexico #malex #echo #michael guerin #alex manes #max evans #lix ortecho #maria deluca #noah bracken #isobel evans #kyle valenti #candy #rnm #i just have a lot of feelings #rnm meta #chasing's progressive review of rnm season 1

117 notes · View notes

ahmedmsalama · 5 years ago

Text

Biggest pyramid in the world |how many pyramids on earth?

GPyramid Biggest pyramid in the world |how many pyramids on earth?

Biggest pyramid in the world !!!! The pyramids are the most amazing buildings can any civilization can build, there are so many across the globe, in this article we are going to show some of it to know more about the cultures and histories.

In modern and ancient civilizations they consider it as a simple of the civilization, starting with the most oldest to the newest in Egypt and united states.

What is the biggest pyramid in the world ?

1-Khofo’s pyramids in Egypt

It considers one of the oldest and largest pyramid in the history, they gave it the a title of the seven wonder in the old world, beside it is a complex structure that the scientists could not solve it is mysteries .

However, it has more that two million heavy rock that weights about two to three tones per one, that makes it has a lot of secrets.

Beside, the construction was undergoing about 20 years, and it is small number for such huge build like it.

The main reason that makes them built that amazing building, to be a tomb for the king khofo to remark during the mankind living.

The most amazing thing in the story, the pyramids remains the most tallest and biggest build standing in the earth for more that 3800 years.

The height of it about 481 feet tall, that makes it biggest pyramid in the world has ever built.

2-Khafre’s pyramid of Egypt

It is the second biggest pyramid in the world and in Egypt, and it has same mission of the great pyramid of the Giza to seek to the immortality.

however, the construction of the build is still a lot of secrets around it, but what makes it has the second rank between the pyramids.

The base is about 706 feet , and it is 471 feet high, the pyramids had a smooth layer outside on the side of it, but with time it disappeared.

But still a port of on the top of the khafre tomb, and tell us alot, and the reasons of to collect the sunlight and give back to be like a stars on the earth.

Most biggest pyramid in the world outside Egypt.

3- The Great Pyramid Of Cholula.

It located in Mexico appears to be a natural hill and it has in the top a Catholic church. beside the Spanish built it in 1594 on the site of a pre-Hispanic temple.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, this temple is in fact one of the biggest pyramids, with a total volume estimated at over 4.45 million m³. and the based on a size off 450 by 450 meter (1476×1476 ft) and a height of 66 m (217 ft).

4- Red Pyramid

It located in Egypt at the hill of giza, it is the first pyramid built in Egypt, the engineers did not have the enough experience to build that kind of structure.

So, the studied it very well and made an attempt to build the mysteries ! and they made it, in the age the king sneferu.

It was the largest one in the Egypt until they built the great pyramid, it measures 220 by 220 meters and is 104 meter high.

However, the most amazing thing in the red pyramid is there are no any lacks of crowds which plagues the Giza plateau.

5-Bent Pyramid

Egypt still have the mysteries and secrets, we are in still in the land of civilization , the number five still in the Egyptian land.

The bent is located in Dahshur, it the second one built by the king snefreu the Egyptian pyramids rise from the desert at an angle of 55 degrees.

BUT suddenly changes to gradual angle of 43 degrees. One theory holds that due to the steepness of the original angle the weight to be added above the inner chambers and passageways.

Became too large, forcing the builders to adopt a shallower angle.The base of the pyramid is 188.6 meters and the height 101.1 meters .

6- The luxor pyramid mega-resort in Las Vegas

It located in United State of America as mega resort, and it built take the architecture of the pyramids of Egypt.

They built in the 1990s and opened in 1993, it can take about 2500 guest.

7- Pyramid Of The Sun one of biggest pyramid in the world.

The Pyramid of the sun is the largest in the Teotihuacán and in Mesoamerica, they named it due to Aztecs.

Because they believe that Aztecs visited the city at th age of the when it was abandoned and his attempts to rebuilt it.

They built it in Two phases, First one 100 AD and it is so close from size of today, the second phase about 733 phase width and 246 high.

8- La Danta, El Mirador

La Danta was a major Mayan city that flourished from about the 6th century BC,that have population of 8,000 people.

In a few centuries the constructions were undergoing until the people for some reasons they left! .

During the life is going on fay by day, by chance they discovered the ruins in 1926 but received little attention due to its remote location deep in the jungle of the Guatemala.

Today the site is covered by the jungle that means make it so hard to can work on it and get out.

The platform is forming the pyramid, and it has a lot of platform above each other, and it build a pyramid.

The reports said that it has more that 2,800,000 million cubic meter, which would make it one of the largest pyramids.

Biggest pyramid in the world |how many pyramids on earth? [email protected]

from WordPress https://www.gpyramid.com/biggest-pyramid-in-the-world/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=biggest-pyramid-in-the-world

#The Pyramids #Egypt #pyramid

2 notes · View notes

bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

Text

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/sugar-slave-trade-slavery.html

The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the 'white gold' that fueled slavery, writes Khalil Gibran Muhammad. "It was the introduction of sugar slavery in the New World that changed everything."

The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad |Published August 14, 2019 | New York Times "1619 Project" | Posted August 24, 2019 9:58 AM ET |

Domino Sugar’s Chalmette Refinery in Arabi, La., sits on the edge of the mighty Mississippi River, about five miles east by way of the river’s bend from the French Quarter, and less than a mile down from the Lower Ninth Ward, where Hurricane Katrina and the failed levees destroyed so many black lives. It is North America’s largest sugar refinery, making nearly two billion pounds of sugar and sugar products annually. Those ubiquitous four-pound yellow paper bags emblazoned with the company logo are produced here at a rate of 120 bags a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week during operating season.

The United States makes about nine million tons of sugar annually, ranking it sixth in global production. The United States sugar industry receives as much as $4 billion in annual subsidies in the form of price supports, guaranteed crop loans, tariffs and regulated imports of foreign sugar, which by some estimates is about half the price per pound of domestic sugar. Louisiana’s sugar-cane industry is by itself worth $3 billion, generating an estimated 16,400 jobs.

A vast majority of that domestic sugar stays in this country, with an additional two to three million tons imported each year. Americans consume as much as 77.1 pounds of sugar and related sweeteners per person per year, according to United States Department of Agriculture data. That’s nearly twice the limit the department recommends, based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Sugar has been linked in the United States to diabetes, obesity and cancer. If it is killing all of us, it is killing black people faster. Over the last 30 years, the rate of Americans who are obese or overweight grew 27 percent among all adults, to 71 percent from 56 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control, with African-Americans overrepresented in the national figures. During the same period, diabetes rates overall nearly tripled. Among black non-Hispanic women, they are nearly double those of white non-Hispanic women, and one and a half times higher for black men than white men.

None of this — the extraordinary mass commodification of sugar, its economic might and outsize impact on the American diet and health — was in any way foreordained, or even predictable, when Christopher Columbus made his second voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1493, bringing sugar-cane stalks with him from the Spanish Canary Islands. In Europe at that time, refined sugar was a luxury product, the backbreaking toil and dangerous labor required in its manufacture an insuperable barrier to production in anything approaching bulk. It seems reasonable to imagine that it might have remained so if it weren’t for the establishment of an enormous market in enslaved laborers who had no way to opt out of the treacherous work.

For thousands of years, cane was a heavy and unwieldy crop that had to be cut by hand and immediately ground to release the juice inside, lest it spoil within a day or two. Even before harvest time, rows had to be dug, stalks planted and plentiful wood chopped as fuel for boiling the liquid and reducing it to crystals and molasses. From the earliest traces of cane domestication on the Pacific island of New Guinea 10,000 years ago to its island-hopping advance to ancient India in 350 B.C., sugar was locally consumed and very labor-intensive. It remained little more than an exotic spice, medicinal glaze or sweetener for elite palates.

It was the introduction of sugar slavery in the New World that changed everything. “The true Age of Sugar had begun — and it was doing more to reshape the world than any ruler, empire or war had ever done,” Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos write in their 2010 book, “Sugar Changed the World.” Over the four centuries that followed Columbus’s arrival, on the mainlands of Central and South America in Mexico, Guyana and Brazil as well as on the sugar islands of the West Indies — Cuba, Barbados and Jamaica, among others — countless indigenous lives were destroyed and nearly 11 million Africans were enslaved, just counting those who survived the Middle Passage.

“White gold” drove trade in goods and people, fueled the wealth of European nations and, for the British in particular, shored up the financing of their North American colonies. “There was direct trade among the colonies and between the colonies and Europe, but much of the Atlantic trade was triangular: enslaved people from Africa; sugar from the West Indies and Brazil; money and manufactures from Europe,” writes the Harvard historian Walter Johnson in his 1999 book, “Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market.” “People were traded along the bottom of the triangle; profits would stick at the top.”

Before French Jesuit priests planted the first cane stalk near Baronne Street in New Orleans in 1751, sugar was already a huge moneymaker in British New York. By the 1720s, one of every two ships in the city’s port was either arriving from or heading to the Caribbean, importing sugar and enslaved people and exporting flour, meat and shipbuilding supplies. The trade was so lucrative that Wall Street’s most impressive buildings were Trinity Church at one end, facing the Hudson River, and the five-story sugar warehouses on the other, close to the East River and near the busy slave market. New York’s enslaved population reached 20 percent, prompting the New York General Assembly in 1730 to issue a consolidated slave code, making it “unlawful for above three slaves” to meet on their own, and authorizing “each town” to employ “a common whipper for their slaves.”

In 1795, Étienne de Boré, a New Orleans sugar planter, granulated the first sugar crystals in the Louisiana Territory. With the advent of sugar processing locally, sugar plantations exploded up and down both banks of the Mississippi River. All of this was possible because of the abundantly rich alluvial soil, combined with the technical mastery of seasoned French and Spanish planters from around the cane-growing basin of the Gulf and the Caribbean — and because of the toil of thousands of enslaved people. More French planters and their enslaved expert sugar workers poured into Louisiana as Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines led a successful revolution to secure Haiti’s independence from France.

Within five decades, Louisiana planters were producing a quarter of the world’s cane-sugar supply. During her antebellum reign, Queen Sugar bested King Cotton locally, making Louisiana the second-richest state in per capita wealth. According to the historian Richard Follett, the state ranked third in banking capital behind New York and Massachusetts in 1840. The value of enslaved people alone represented tens of millions of dollars in capital that financed investments, loans and businesses. Much of that investment funneled back into the sugar mills, the “most industrialized sector of Southern agriculture,” Follett writes in his 2005 book, “Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World 1820-1860.” No other agricultural region came close to the amount of capital investment in farming by the eve of the Civil War. In 1853, Representative Miles Taylor of Louisiana bragged that his state’s success was “without parallel in the United States, or indeed in the world in any branch of industry.”

The enslaved population soared, quadrupling over a 20-year period to 125,000 souls in the mid-19th century. New Orleans became the Walmart of people-selling. The number of enslaved labor crews doubled on sugar plantations. And in every sugar parish, black people outnumbered whites. These were some of the most skilled laborers, doing some of the most dangerous agricultural and industrial work in the United States.

In the mill, alongside adults, children toiled like factory workers with assembly-line precision and discipline under the constant threat of boiling hot kettles, open furnaces and grinding rollers. “All along the endless carrier are ranged slave children, whose business it is to place the cane upon it, when it is conveyed through the shed into the main building,” wrote Solomon Northup in “Twelve Years a Slave,” his 1853 memoir of being kidnapped and forced into slavery on Louisiana plantations.

To achieve the highest efficiency, as in the round-the-clock Domino refinery today, sugar houses operated night and day. “On cane plantations in sugar time, there is no distinction as to the days of the week,” Northup wrote. Fatigue might mean losing an arm to the grinding rollers or being flayed for failing to keep up. Resistance was often met with sadistic cruelty.

A formerly enslaved black woman named Mrs. Webb described a torture chamber used by her owner, Valsin Marmillion. “One of his cruelties was to place a disobedient slave, standing in a box, in which there were nails placed in such a manner that the poor creature was unable to move,” she told a W.P.A. interviewer in 1940. “He was powerless even to chase the flies, or sometimes ants crawling on some parts of his body.”

Louisiana led the nation in destroying the lives of black people in the name of economic efficiency. The historian Michael Tadman found that Louisiana sugar parishes had a pattern of “deaths exceeding births.” Backbreaking labor and “inadequate net nutrition meant that slaves working on sugar plantations were, compared with other working-age slaves in the United States, far less able to resist the common and life-threatening diseases of dirt and poverty,” wrote Tadman in a 2000 study published in the American Historical Review. Life expectancy was less like that on a cotton plantation and closer to that of a Jamaican cane field, where the most overworked and abused could drop dead after seven years.

Most of these stories of brutality, torture and premature death have never been told in classroom textbooks or historical museums. They have been refined and whitewashed in the mills and factories of Southern folklore: the romantic South, the Lost Cause, the popular “moonlight and magnolias” plantation tours so important to Louisiana’s agritourism today.

When I arrived at the Whitney Plantation Museum on a hot day in June, I mentioned to Ashley Rogers, 36, the museum’s executive director, that I had passed the Nelson Coleman Correctional Center about 15 miles back along the way. “You passed a dump and a prison on your way to a plantation,” she said. “These are not coincidences.”

The Whitney, which opened five years ago as the only sugar-slavery museum in the nation, rests squarely in a geography of human detritus. The museum tells of the everyday struggles and resistance of black people who didn’t lose their dignity even when they lost everything else. It sits on the west bank of the Mississippi at the northern edge of the St. John the Baptist Parish, home to dozens of once-thriving sugar plantations; Marmillion’s plantation and torture box were just a few miles down from Whitney.

The museum also sits across the river from the site of the German Coast uprising in 1811, one of the largest revolts of enslaved people in United States history. As many as 500 sugar rebels joined a liberation army heading toward New Orleans, only to be cut down by federal troops and local militia; no record of their actual plans survives. About a hundred were killed in battle or executed later, many with their heads severed and placed on pikes throughout the region. Based on historians’ estimates, the execution tally was nearly twice as high as the number in Nat Turner’s more famous 1831 rebellion. The revolt has been virtually redacted from the historical record. But not at Whitney. And yet tourists, Rogers said, sometimes admit to her, a white woman, that they are warned by hotel concierges and tour operators that Whitney is the one misrepresenting the past. “You are meant to empathize with the owners as their guests,” Rogers told me in her office. In Louisiana’s plantation tourism, she said, “the currency has been the distortion of the past.”

The landscape bears witness and corroborates Whitney’s version of history. Although the Coleman jail opened in 2001 and is named for an African-American sheriff’s deputy who died in the line of duty, Rogers connects it to a longer history of coerced labor, land theft and racial control after slavery. Sugar cane grows on farms all around the jail, but at the nearby Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola, prisoners grow it. Angola is the largest maximum-security prison by land mass in the nation. It opened in its current location in 1901 and took the name of one of the plantations that had occupied the land. Even today, incarcerated men harvest Angola’s cane, which is turned into syrup and sold on-site.

From slavery to freedom, many black Louisianans found that the crushing work of sugar cane remained mostly the same. Even with Reconstruction delivering civil rights for the first time, white planters continued to dominate landownership. Freedmen and freedwomen had little choice but to live in somebody’s old slave quarters. As new wage earners, they negotiated the best terms they could, signed labor contracts for up to a year and moved frequently from one plantation to another in search of a life whose daily rhythms beat differently than before. And yet, even compared with sharecropping on cotton plantations, Rogers said, “sugar plantations did a better job preserving racial hierarchy.” As a rule, the historian John C. Rodrigue writes, “plantation labor overshadowed black people’s lives in the sugar region until well into the 20th century.”

Sometimes black cane workers resisted collectively by striking during planting and harvesting time — threatening to ruin the crop. Wages and working conditions occasionally improved. But other times workers met swift and violent reprisals. After a major labor insurgency in 1887, led by the Knights of Labor, a national union, at least 30 black people — some estimated hundreds — were killed in their homes and on the streets of Thibodaux, La. “I think this will settle the question of who is to rule, the nigger or the white man, for the next 50 years,” a local white planter’s widow, Mary Pugh, wrote, rejoicing, to her son.

Many African-Americans aspired to own or rent their own sugar-cane farms in the late 19th century, but faced deliberate efforts to limit black farm and land owning. The historian Rebecca Scott found that although “black farmers were occasionally able to buy plots of cane land from bankrupt estates, or otherwise establish themselves as suppliers, the trend was for planters to seek to establish relations with white tenants or sharecroppers who could provide cane for the mill.”

By World War II, many black people began to move not simply from one plantation to another, but from a cane field to a car factory in the North. By then, harvesting machines had begun to take over some, but not all, of the work. With fewer and fewer black workers in the industry, and after efforts in the late 1800s to recruit Chinese, Italian, Irish and German immigrant workers had already failed, labor recruiters in Louisiana and Florida sought workers in other states.

In 1942, the Department of Justice began a major investigation into the recruiting practices of one of the largest sugar producers in the nation, the United States Sugar Corporation, a South Florida company. Black men unfamiliar with the brutal nature of the work were promised seasonal sugar jobs at high wages, only to be forced into debt peonage, immediately accruing the cost of their transportation, lodging and equipment — all for $1.80 a day. One man testified that the conditions were so bad, “It wasn’t no freedom; it was worse than the pen.” Federal investigators agreed. When workers tried to escape, the F.B.I. found, they were captured on the highway or “shot at while trying to hitch rides on the sugar trains.” The company was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa for “carrying out a conspiracy to commit slavery,” wrote Alec Wilkinson, in his 1989 book, “Big Sugar: Seasons in the Cane Fields of Florida.” (The indictment was ultimately quashed on procedural grounds.) A congressional investigation in the 1980s found that sugar companies had systematically tried to exploit seasonal West Indian workers to maintain absolute control over them with the constant threat of immediately sending them back to where they came from.

At the Whitney plantation, which operated continuously from 1752 to 1975, its museum staff of 12 is nearly all African-American women. A third of them have immediate relatives who either worked there or were born there in the 1960s and ’70s. These black women show tourists the same slave cabins and the same cane fields their own relatives knew all too well.

Farm laborers, mill workers and refinery employees make up the 16,400 jobs of Louisiana’s sugar-cane industry. But it is the owners of the 11 mills and 391 commercial farms who have the most influence and greatest share of the wealth. And the number of black sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana is most likely in the single digits, based on estimates from people who work in the industry. They are the exceedingly rare exceptions to a system designed to codify black loss.

And yet two of these black farmers, Charles Guidry and Eddie Lewis III, have been featured in a number of prominent news items and marketing materials out of proportion to their representation and economic footprint in the industry. Lewis and Guidry have appeared in separate online videos. The American Sugar Cane League has highlighted the same pair separately in its online newsletter, Sugar News.

Lewis has no illusions about why the marketing focuses on him, he told me; sugar cane is a lucrative business, and to keep it that way, the industry has to work with the government. “You need a few minorities in there, because these mills survive off having minorities involved with the mill to get these huge government loans,” he said. A former financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, Lewis, 36, chose to leave a successful career in finance to take his rightful place as a fifth-generation farmer. “My family was farming in the late 1800s” near the same land, he says, that his enslaved ancestors once worked. Much of the 3,000 acres he now farms comes from relationships with white landowners his father, Eddie Lewis Jr., and his grandfather before him, built and maintained.

Lewis is the minority adviser for the federal Farm Service Agency (F.S.A.) in St. Martin and Lafayette Parish, and also participates in lobbying federal legislators. He says he does it because the stakes are so high. If things don’t change, Lewis told me, “I’m probably one of two or three that’s going to be farming in the next 10 to 15 years. They’re trying to basically extinct us.” As control of the industry consolidates in fewer and fewer hands, Lewis believes black sugar-cane farmers will no longer exist, part of a long-term trend nationally, where the total proportion of all African-American farmers has plummeted since the early 1900s, to less than 2 percent from more than 14 percent, with 90 percent of black farmers’ land lost amid decades of racist actions by government agencies, banks and real estate developers.

“There’s still a few good white men around here,” Lewis told me. “It’s not to say it’s all bad. But this is definitely a community where you still have to say, ‘Yes sir,’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and accept ‘boy’ and different things like that.”

One of the biggest players in that community is M.A. Patout and Son, the largest sugar-cane mill company in Louisiana. Founded in 1825, Patout has been known to boast that it is “the oldest complete family-owned and operated manufacturer of raw sugar in the United States.” It owns three of the 11 remaining sugar-cane mills in Louisiana, processing roughly a third of the cane in the state.

The company is being sued by a former fourth-generation black farmer. As first reported in The Guardian, Wenceslaus Provost Jr. claims the company breached a harvesting contract in an effort to deliberately sabotage his business. Provost, who goes by the first name June, and his wife, Angie, who is also a farmer, lost their home to foreclosure in 2018, after defaulting on F.S.A.-guaranteed crop loans. June Provost has also filed a federal lawsuit against First Guaranty Bank and a bank senior vice president for claims related to lending discrimination, as well as for mail and wire fraud in reporting false information to federal loan officials. The suit names a whistle-blower, a federal loan officer, who, in April 2015, “informed Mr. Provost that he had been systematically discriminated against by First Guaranty Bank,” the lawsuit reads.

(In court filings, M.A. Patout and Son denied that it breached the contract. Representatives for the company did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, First Guaranty Bank and the senior vice president also denied Provost’s claims. Their representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)

Lewis is himself a litigant in a separate petition against white landowners. He claims they “unilaterally, arbitrarily and without just cause terminated” a seven-year-old agreement to operate his sugar-cane farm on their land, causing him to lose the value of the crop still growing there. Lewis is seeking damages of more than $200,000, based on an independent appraisal he obtained, court records show. The landowners did not respond to requests for comment.

But the new lessee, Ryan Doré, a white farmer, did confirm with me that he is now leasing the land and has offered to pay Lewis what a county agent assessed as the crop’s worth, about $50,000. Doré does not dispute the amount of Lewis’s sugar cane on the 86.16 acres. What he disputes is Lewis’s ability to make the same crop as profitable as he would. Doré, who credits M.A. Patout and Son for getting him started in sugar-cane farming, also told me he is farming some of the land June Provost had farmed.

Lewis and the Provosts say they believe Doré is using his position as an elected F.S.A. committee member to gain an unfair advantage over black farmers with white landowners. “He’s privileged with a lot of information,” Lewis said.

Doré denied he is abusing his F.S.A. position and countered that “the Lewis boy” is trying to “make this a black-white deal.” Doré insisted that “both those guys simply lost their acreage for one reason and one reason only: They are horrible farmers.”

It’s impossible to listen to the stories that Lewis and the Provosts tell and not hear echoes of the policies and practices that have been used since Reconstruction to maintain the racial caste system that sugar slavery helped create. The crop, land and farm theft that they claim harks back to the New Deal era, when Southern F.S.A. committees denied black farmers government funding.

“June and I hope to create a dent in these oppressive tactics for future generations,” Angie Provost told me on the same day this spring that a congressional subcommittee held hearings on reparations. “To this day we are harassed, retaliated against and denied the true DNA of our past.”

Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a Suzanne Young Murray professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and author of “The Condemnation of Blackness.” Tiya Miles is a professor in the history department at Harvard and the author, most recently, of “The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits.”

THE ENSLAVED PECAN PIONEER

By Tiya Miles | Published August 14, 2019 | New York Times "1619 Project" | Posted August 24, 2019 10:30AM ET |

Pecans are the nut of choice when it comes to satisfying America’s sweet tooth, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season being the pecan’s most popular time, when the nut graces the rich pie named for it. Southerners claim the pecan along with the cornbread and collard greens that distinguish the regional table, and the South looms large in our imaginations as this nut’s mother country.

The presence of pecan pralines in every Southern gift shop from South Carolina to Texas, and our view of the nut as regional fare, masks a crucial chapter in the story of the pecan: It was an enslaved man who made the wide cultivation of this nut possible.

Pecan trees are native to the middle southwestern region of the Mississippi River Valley and the Gulf Coast of Texas and Mexico. While the trees can live for a hundred years or more, they do not produce nuts in the first years of life, and the kinds of nuts they produce are wildly variable in size, shape, flavor and ease of shell removal. Indigenous people worked around this variability, harvesting the nuts for hundreds and probably thousands of years, camping near the groves in season, trading the nuts in a network that stretched across the continent, and lending the food the name we have come to know it by: paccan.

Once white Southerners became fans of the nut, they set about trying to standardize its fruit by engineering the perfect pecan tree. Planters tried to cultivate pecan trees for a commercial market beginning at least as early as the 1820s, when a well-known planter from South Carolina named Abner Landrum published detailed descriptions of his attempt in the American Farmer periodical. In the mid-1840s, a planter in Louisiana sent cuttings of a much-prized pecan tree over to his neighbor J.T. Roman, the owner of Oak Alley Plantation. Roman did what many enslavers were accustomed to in that period: He turned the impossible work over to an enslaved person with vast capabilities, a man whose name we know only as Antoine. Antoine undertook the delicate task of grafting the pecan cuttings onto the limbs of different tree species on the plantation grounds. Many specimens thrived, and Antoine fashioned still more trees, selecting for nuts with favorable qualities. It was Antoine who successfully created what would become the country’s first commercially viable pecan varietal.

Decades later, a new owner of Oak Alley, Hubert Bonzano, exhibited nuts from Antoine’s trees at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, the World’s Fair held in Philadelphia and a major showcase for American innovation. As the horticulturalist Lenny Wells has recorded, the exhibited nuts received a commendation from the Yale botanist William H. Brewer, who praised them for their “remarkably large size, tenderness of shell and very special excellence.” Coined “the Centennial,” Antoine’s pecan varietal was then seized upon for commercial production (other varieties have since become the standard).

Was Antoine aware of his creation’s triumph? No one knows. As the historian James McWilliams writes in “The Pecan: A History of America’s Native Nut” (2013): “History leaves no record as to the former slave gardener’s location — or whether he was even alive — when the nuts from the tree he grafted were praised by the nation’s leading agricultural experts.” The tree never bore the name of the man who had handcrafted it and developed a full-scale orchard on the Oak Alley Plantation before he slipped into the shadow of history.

#american history #african american history #history #1619 #1619project #politics and government #us politics #politics #u.s. news #u.s. economy

6 notes · View notes

uclaradio · 6 years ago

Text

Latinx Punks’ Style Against Societal Norms

Article by Samantha Garduno

Photographs by Karina Jaramillo and Kelvin Cerezo

In the United States, white supremacist and patriarchal ideologies create societal norms causing a struggle for survival among marginalized youth. Latinx kids from Los Angeles are currently trying to create their own space in order to openly perform their identities and ideas in an oppressive society. The punk genre is a loud and fast-paced form of music that speaks about the failures of society. Classism, Sexism, and Racism are all issues that limit the growth of marginalized youth. This genre encourages rebellious youth movements against oppressive social norms and government institutions. The punk scene is a form of spatial entitlement and sonic space among Latinx youth trying to survive in Los Angeles. The rebellious aspect of the punk scene is shown through Latinx fashion; their style is considered as nonconforming. The dark “edgy” clothes worn by these youth is critical in giving the space meaning and allows the representation of Latinx punk identities. Conservative adults look down upon Punk Latinx groups because they look intimidating and problematic. However, interacting with these Latinx Punks and hearing their stories it reveals how empowered they are by claiming a space that is rarely inclusive towards their identity.

The aggression and rebellion that is seen through Latinx Punk style is a product of marginalized kids’ creation of subcultures in order to help them survive discrimination and racism. Their styles showcase empowerment and unity among Latinx youth. They are able to separate themselves from mass culture to seek their own individuality. In the following photos, I will present some images from the OC Punk Fest of Latinx youth embodying the punk culture. At the fest, I asked them to introduce themselves, share their identities, and why the punk subculture is important to them. After hearing their stories, I learned that these Latinx punks are visionaries and want to present themselves through their fashion, ideas, and music. They are making an impact in today’s society by being themselves.

Left to Right: Jagger Age 16, Sydney Mendez Age 16, Rodrigo Hernandez Age 15, Daisy Gonzales Age 16, Andrew Hernandez Age 17 (Shot by Karina Jaramillo)

Sidney Mendez: “My name is Sidney, I'm 16 years old. I live in Placita. I’m Latina and Columbiana. Punk is something that has been a part of my life because it runs in my family. My mom was in a band when she was younger and so she taught me basically everything she knows about punk music. It’s basically something that I’ve been listening to my whole life and never got over it. Punk music is more than just listening and liking how it sounds, it makes me feel alive because of how my adrenaline rises. It’s a contest feeling of happiness for me and it brings me and my friends closer because we share the same interest in music.”

Left to Right: Aurora Zavala Age 20, Karina Perez Age 20, Leslie Mayorga Age 19 (Shot by Karina Jaramillo)

Aurora Zavala: “My name is Aurora Zavala I'm 20 years old I'm latina. The way I dress is inspired by some of my favorite musicians from the '80s and of course, I incorporate my own taste into it. It's important to me because I feel like it represents everything that I like.” Karina Perez: “Well hi my name is Karina Perez I’m 20 years I live in South Central Los Angeles. I’m Latina. Well for me it’s a representation of who I am what I like and it’s important to me because I’m representing the punk scene in some way since we are underrepresented and not really paid attention to an extent. It also represents us female since it’s very dominated by males and shows that females do exist in the punk scene that were out here changing the scene and representing it. And also it is a part of me and my style and who I am as a person.” Leslie Mayorga: “My name is Leslie Mayorga I’m 19 years old and I’m from Los Angeles, I identify as Hispanic. My style varies a lot it’s usually lots of black 80s-esqué garments like dresses, trousers, blazers, etc. I love jewelry too! I’ve made earrings and stuff like that. I feel like the reason I like to dress the way I do has a lot to do with how I express myself and want to physically project myself to others, a lot of times people stare at me and mad dog me and I know the reason for that is because of how I look (dress, hairstyle, makeup) and in a way making people angry or uncomfortable in that sense can be liberating because it’s obvious that if someone feels threatened it’s because they are looking at something they don’t know or even bother to understand/respect and I find it kinda funny and kinda sad how people can be so judgmental. Part of it too is that I just love putting outfits together and adding little details. Fashion and style can be very empowering.”

Far Right: Ramon Torres Age 19 (Shot by Karina Jaramillo) Ramon Torres: “Ramon Torres (19) Hispanic. My style is a mix of 90s grunge/punk/hipster style. It’s just a combination of all the things I enjoy listening to or things I find appealing to wear. Usually set myself apart from the general population that wears the new high-end brands while I just thrift most my stuff to save money and mix it up. My style is significant to me because it gives a satisfaction that I don’t look like everyone else and it gives me confidence. This is basically saying to everyone else “This is me, I dress weird and that’s okay.” I always had a sense of style, however, my current style was influenced by OC punk scene going on right now where punk is still seen as abnormal and crazy!”

Anai Mata, Age 19 wearing a distress Black Flag Police Story shirt and a cheetah print skirt (Shot by Karina Jaramillo) Anai Mata: “Anai Mata, age 19, born Chula Vista raised Moreno Valley, I am Mexican American, first language Spanish. My style has a lot of rock and roll roots, my dad was a metal head and I would see pictures of him; he'd talk about the music but in very little interest. When of course I was interested. He has the photo of him and his old friend and they're both in heavy leather jackets and hightop Nikes; I thought it looked badass. Anyway, music wise I started off listening to Rage Against the Machine when I was 5 years old and from there I built up a style, you know. My first punk bands were The Adolescents, Conflict, The Casualties, The Clash, and Circle Jerks. I always thought about the punk scene/music was revolutionary. The style itself was fucking everyone off right and it was an outcast thing. That's goes with me. My parents didn't let me dress myself under up to 5th grade and I would dress casual. At the age of 12 through 15, I was making my own shit(jeans, cut shirts and shit like that). I started attending backyard shows at 13 because my brother had this band, so therefore I was exposed to the Moreno valley punk/ska/indie. It was all mixed in from what I remember. Throughout high school I had my docs and patches I shaved my hair into a tri-hawk and would wear it up every day. My dad has beat me up because of the way I would dress and stuff. It wasn't cool but it’s important because it shows the ones that want to see you "normal" or "una pinche niña adolescente" like it’s a big FUCK”

Nathan Salazar Age 15 (Shot by Kelvin Cerezo) Nathan Salazar: “My name is Nathan Salazar. I am 15 years old and I’m from Long Beach, California. I am Hispanic and Guatemalan. My style isn’t exactly the same as everyone else; I like to dress in my own way where I feel comfortable. I like to paint my nails black and wear docs and tuck in my shirt with cut sleeves and wear a bandana around my leg. I paint my nails and wear the bandana because I hate the fashion now and everyone looks the same and it bugs me. I just try to do the opposite like painting my nails to show that I don’t care that “painting your nails is for females. ” The scene is important to me for many reasons. I’m glad punk rock is still thriving because if it weren’t I would be one bored mf but also it gives me a reason just to go out and be with people I can call my friends because we all feel the same about things and how we think people on the outside are. I’m thankful for the scene because how it brings us together in every way not just through feeling but through the love for punk rock and without the scene I don’t even think I’ll have my own band, The Neurotics, and it encourages me and my band just go hard every time we play because we can’t look sorry. I love the people in it yeah everyone’s not perfect but the people I’ve met I’m thankful for that people are really humble.”

#latinx #punk #punk style #latinx punks #punks #la music #los angeles #culture #ucla radio #college radio #other

60 notes · View notes