#racial theories

[bootyandgeekeries]

Rhinelander was a derogatory term used in Nazi Germany to describe Afro-Germans, believed fathered by French Army personnel of African descent who were stationed in the Rhineland during its occupation by France after World War I. There is evidence that other Afro-Germans, born from unions between German men and African women in former German colonies in Africa, were also referred to as Rheinlandbastarde.

After 1933, under Nazi racial theories, Afro-Germans deemed to be Rheinlandbastarde were persecuted. They were rounded up in a campaign of compulsory sterilization.

[giritina]

(Edit: just to be clear I don't mean to emphasize this girl with the tattoo as the primary perpetrator if this stuff. Idk her story, it's in kind of bad taste but there's more to this than a tattoo)

I saw this great video discussing a critique of "lobotomycore"/"lobotomy chic" and the erasure of the racist history of lobotomies.

I can't add further on the subject of race, but as a person with schizotypal I did connect it with this image

(Source, though I have not verified it by sifting through the archive)

"Lobotomy chic" and the humor surrounding it is used so often by people who I've seen have zero empathy for schizophrenic people. For disables people generally.

Even just looking at how they treat an actual lobotomy victim, Rosemary Kennedy, even when she's that archetypical 40s white woman. Her disability is erased.

Here's a popular tiktok about her. No context, just images of her younger self and her older self. Simply "she was normal, glamorous, and then she became strange, disabled." Oftentimes, her intellectual disability is treated more as a conspiracy theory than a fact of her not receiving enough oxygen at birth. People are happy to relate to her as a ~poorly behaved woman~, but not as an intellectually disabled one.

It just reminds me how this has become a sort of coquetteish phrase and a universal joke that erases everything except the low support needs disabled white woman's experience. The idea that for your eccentricities, you'd be at risk. That you might be the only one at risk, so there's no need for solidarity with the intellectually disabled, the schizophrenic and psychotic, anyone with profound or uncomfortable disabilities. Times ten thousand if those disabled people are black. And god forbid they are disabled, black, AND homeless.

[visenyaism]

How is Criston Cole subject to a racist view by the Westerosi when he’s white-passing as hell?? The black (Velaryon) and Asian (Mysaria) characters face no racism in-universe (not talking about the racism in the writers’ room), but you think the white-passing man does? He could be subjected to xenophobia because of sharing ties to Dorne (not part of Westeros), but that’s not the same thing as being viewed through a racial lens, like you’re suggesting.

He is literally introduced when he takes his helmet off for the first time and Alicent says “oh gods he’s Dornish.” Because of his appearance. To them he “looks Dornish” and is racialized in-universe as Dornish which is in-universe perceived as a racial “other” in the canon. I do not know if they could have spelled it out clearer for you. Did we watch the same show

[taliabhattwrites]

Understanding Third-Sexing

Crossposted from my Troonsky account.

[rhetoricsofraceandidentity]

[randomnameless]

A Master’s Thesis for a university no less

-----

Yep, I’ve seen that!

at least that people got some dedication, I nearly died when I wrote mine but it wasn’t for shitposting so maybe that made it even more tedious lol

But I’d say, how can you even write a Thesis about something as empty as Fodlan? I think the writer mentionned how Supreme Leader didn’t attack civilians but... while we don’t see her do it, Ashe mentions they’re starving, Baldo’n’Waldi must come from somewhere (the experiments started in Remire, before the War, but obviously to be used for said war in, basically, Supreme Leader’s maternal territories!) and I guess the religious people fleeing the Empire or not bothering to send letters to their friends who don’t hear about them anymore since the war started must have been busy Zumba’ing with Rhea in the 5 stars Enbarr resort.

As someone from SPE (!) mentionned, the Fodlan games take explicit care not to have anyone seriously challenge her beliefs of criticise her, or give spotlight to her main, self-perceived, nemesis who... well, is either fridged, exists off-screen or gives infodumps before dying.

Which makes any discussion about a “Just War” completely moot - Watsonian wise, especially if you take Fodlan as this entity functionning under the Crust System - same, Doylist wise, with any comparisons with real world Conventions (iirc OP mentionned that one of they juries asked if taking a dragon prisoner could be considered a war crime or something like that lol) because, hey, it’s a video game basically centered around a gameplay mechanic of depleting a red unit’s HP bar by hitting them with a weapon.

This is basically a really good shitpost which shows a lot of dedication - and that’s the kind of stuff fandom thrives for (remember zigludo chan sama senpai’s wiki page?) !

but as a serious/discourse/meta piece...

It’s basically the same redshit 10k words, with a bit more formatting and no word limit.

I mean, I used the search engine for “nabatean” and found nothing, and I think you can’t valably discuss Supreme Leader’s motives, ignoring this 

“You are a child of the goddess. You must not be allowed power over the people!“

part of her reasoning to fight against the Church.

Not wanting to give that chamber pot any credit, but if they sprout heinous arguments to support their fave, imo, it’s basically because even the members of that hellpit noticed Supreme Leader’s, uh, fondness for Nabateans as a species, and since she can’t do anything BaD or be wrong, it means the species are BaD.

[overleftdown]

farleigh start and racism; oh boy.

(some people are going to find this post really annoying. some people are like felix catton.)

read this.

just some thoughts from the perspective of a person of color who is slightly too obsessed with this character. this movie leaves the viewer a lot of wiggle room to interpret how dynamics such as race and privilege come into play. there are certain parallels between this movie and the real world, and how unnoticeable white privilege tends to be for white people.

lemme lay some groundwork. from what i understand, the most prevalent form of racism and white privilege within upper- and middle-class circles is implicit bias. this is racist conceptualization that subconsciously interacts with one's perception of society and people. implicit bias is often externalized through microaggressions, differences in treatment and language towards a marginalized person, misplaced guilt or pity, and persistent denial of any existing privilege or marginalization. most of these biases are also founded on stereotypes. some racial stereotypes are heightening (e.g. asians are all smart) and some are lowering (e.g. black people are all lazy). all stereotypes are harmful. i'm going to discuss some of the stereotypes that could theoretically interact within the saltburn canon, as well as some things i've noticed within viewers. can of worms, to be honest. boutta get INTO IT.

to use one of my externalization examples, let's discuss (or, more accurately, let me discuss) the denial of existing privilege or marginalization. this is a subconscious way to uphold a sense of morality, effectively avoiding "white guilt," so to speak. as is clearly presented to us, the cattons are very attached to their methods of upholding their own self-righteousness. saviorism is a common theme within both elspeth and felix. in oliver's conversation with elspeth about poor dear pamela, you can see that oliver recognizes elspeth's need to justify her actions in an attempt to preserve her sense of decency. one can only assume that this applies to how they view farleigh's relationship with them. there's more to talk about there, but i'd like to start with the only overt mention of race in this movie.

in felix's confrontation with farleigh, farleigh makes the bold and brave decision to mention his blackness. i call this brave because it's genuinely a terrifying thing to do, and the end of this conversation is proof. "oh, that is... that is low, farleigh. seriously, that's where you want to take this? make it a race thing? i never know our footman's names; the turnover for a footman is notoriously high!" we have felix's intentional or unintentional shaming of farleigh. we have felix's appalled denial of any involvement of race or racial bias. we have felix's diversion away from farleigh specifically and onto his own inability to know his staff's names. felix made no further attempt to recenter farleigh, aside from telling him that the cattons have "done what they can." (which is SO absurd on its own. they are clearly and obviously able to do more. they are disgustingly rich). farleigh does feel ashamed after felix's response; you can see it on his face, and archie says it directly. here is a relevant and prevalent stereotype for all marginalized people: that the discussion of marginalization is exclusively weaponized to gain something or manipulate a situation. this is how felix chooses to see farleigh's implication of existing white privilege. this conversation results in nothing, does nothing, as felix chooses not to confront what he's probably thinking as he repeats the words "begging bowl" to venetia.

now. saviorism, guilt, and pity. felix specifically tells oliver that sir james made an effort to support farleigh out of guilt. i'd like to order some things in a way that i perceive them. frederica start runs from england, which is explained in a condescending way by felix. frederica start marries a so-referred-to "lunatic" who dug through fred and jame's money, although it's farleigh who only mentions fred's financial irresponsibility. out of guilt, james offers to pay for farleigh's education. the specificity of education is compelling to me. perhaps james is simply a patriotic man who strongly believes that english education is better. or this is a mobilized racial stereotype! who can truly know. i digress. james' offer to pay for farleigh's foreign education puts the cattons in an odd position; if farleigh is to attend english schools, he will need to stay with the cattons. if farleigh is staying with the cattons, he will need to be treated as equal to felix and venetia. this is all one long chain of obligations. none of these acts from one family member to another should be considered "charitable," because family should intrinsically create a trustworthy and supportive dynamic.

i believe that the cattons do consider their fostering of farleigh as obligatory. moral obligation, as they recognize that families are intended to have a sympathetic and loving relationship. they cannot, however, escape the truth that they're just guilty. the "begging bowl" and "biting the hand" are more symbolic of a starving dog and its charitable adopter than a cousin/nephew who's staying with his absurdly rich family. see, the cattons are fully and entirely capable of affording another child, of supporting frederica financially, etc. the only way i can rationalize their reluctance to do so is by assuming that they don't feel like farleigh deserves it. is this a crazy assumption? i genuinely don't see why else. of course, i don't think this mentality is explicit or conscious. it's more-so the reality that when farleigh walks in a room, he's not the same as anybody else. aside from background characters at oxbridge, the only on-screen black people are liam, joshua, and james' godson's wife (who gets degraded on-screen). this is the reality of being different in an environment such as the english aristocracy. the cattons choose to see themselves as the hand that feeds the less fortunate, more entertaining, and least inconvenient. the cattons' inclusion of farleigh is not only reliant on how well farleigh performs, but also on their own pity and guilt.

all of this is somehow, painfully mirrored by some takes i've seen on farleigh. maybe this entire post is presumptuous, but you know what isn't presumptuous? saying that certain people hold farleigh to an incredibly odd standard. while the cattons never canonically said anything along the lines of "farleigh doesn't deserve our love and support," mfs on the internet have. the number of times people have referred to this character as greedy, lazy, petty, and malignant is so odd to me. i'm insane, i know. i just don't understand how people can hold farleigh to the backdrop of an english aristocratic family and so passionately say that he, of all characters, is the most detestable. or that he, of all characters, has no reason to behave in the way he does.

is farleigh greedy? greed is defined as a desire for more. farleigh has no desire to climb ranks, no desire to replace or surpass felix, no desire to hold any power over any family member. he is maintaining, upholding a standard that has been set for him throughout his life. is it kind or selfless of him to meddle in other people's affairs with the cattons? no. does he have a reason to be upset that non-relatives of the cattons are a threat to his inclusion in the first place? yes. is farleigh lazy? i don't even need to explain this one. no. if you don't consider oliver lazy, then i really don't want to hear anything. is farleigh petty? pettiness is defined as "an undue concern for trivial matters, especially in a small-minded or spiteful way." farleigh's meticulous attention to trivial matters isn't undue in any sense. a person of color and their meticulous attention to trivial matters is almost never undue. elspeth is a good example of petty. is farleigh malignant? there are a lot of definitions of malignant and i've seen people apply all of them, in some way, to farleigh. that's just wrong. archie madekwe once said, "i was interested in humanizing what, on paper, seemed like a mean character, a villain, or a bully. i don't think he's any of that. he's very self-serving, but i think he's really a heartbreaking character." case closed, this was for my own piece of mind. had to write this section because good lord.

in conclusion to this post that has gone tragically off the rails, i think the in-canon and viewer perspective of farleigh is, perhaps, a little racially motivated. sue me. they are all very centered on this idea that farleigh doesn't deserve inherent respect, support, and love. to remove farleigh's rational position within the cattons family would be akin to removing his right to familial love. genuinely, that's how i see it. the transaction nature of farleigh's actions is responsive. he sees felix as a social shield at oxbridge, he sees elspeth and james as the beholders of his perceived security, and he sees saltburn as a way to escape from his lack of privilege and his lack of stability in america. boom. bam. pow.

[cheesebearger]

agatha all along had a really tight, well-constructed narrative until episodes 8 and 9. i actually think the conclusion episodes undermine what was working so well at the beginning. my main points:

Alice should not have died to, as Jac Schaeffer said, "punish" Agatha; having a woman of color die to "punish" a white woman flattens her character into an object designed to inflict white pain;

the revelation regarding who bound Jen's power reduces her trauma to a joke and disregards how interesting her having been "bound" by trauma rather than magic would have been;

Agatha's backstory fails to engage with the "why" motivating her serial killing or with her emotionally negligent and abusive parenting irt Nicky and the reveal that she can control her powers is significantly less interesting than if she cannot;

and Billy being revealed as responsible for the road and the trials fundamentally changes the significance of every moment of the show - to the point where you have multiple women dying for what is, literally, no reason due to his actions.

To preface: I never expect anything well written from the MCU or Disney, but about 65% of this show was surprisingly well-written. However, like with most Marvel franchises or TV shows, they just ruin it with their last moments by shoehorning in something, or having a very choppy constantly shifting emotional tone for the conclusion. I'm just glad that the show didn't end with a huge CGI battle sequences like Moon Knight and WandaVision did as they are the definition of a cop out for story telling.

As to point one: Alice's story was left unfinished. Multiple characters mention they made no effort to save her. Agatha is revealed to have complete control over her power, too. So ultimately, Alice dies for nothing. To "punish" Agatha, but that flattens her into an object, a weapon, directed at Agatha. She's no longer a person, she's merely a tool being wielded by the writer literally, and narratively by Billy and Agatha. Rio's words to Alice additionally make no sense - she tells Alice that she's a "protection witch who died protecting someone," but she didn't. She began to protect Agatha, and then Agatha consciously made the decision to kill her (as we know she has complete control over her power). Alice is murdered. She doesn't die heroically protecting someone. She dies for no reason, and dies with her story unfinished and unfulfilled. Is that how life goes sometime? Yeah, obviously. But this is a story, where the writer made a conscious decision to kill off a woman of color to "punish" her white main character. Alice fully deserved a complete character arc and the fact she did not have one is due to racist objectification of her.

Point two: Jen's power should have been revealed to be internally suppressed rather than bound by Agatha. Firstly, because making Agatha responsible makes the entire thing a joke - Agatha is flippant, she doesn't even remember necessarily how it happened, it completely undermines her "I left you alone..." comment to Jen. Secondly, the show introduces Chekov's Racist in episode 3 and, as a result of the reveal regarding Agatha, his existence in the story fails to have any significance. In fact, it reads as Jen simply being too blind or too foolish to "understand" who took her power from her. It robs her of the weight of her trauma at the hands of a violent racist and completely reduces the depth and affect of the trauma from racism that Jen experiences. Rather than having her cope with and come to terms with the reality of the trauma she experienced at the hands of the unnamed doctor, her entire story comes to be one of a woman "foolishly" misinterpreting her own life and lived experiences. It also would have been more interesting if Agatha had, genuinely, left Jen alone out of respect for her midwifery; that allows both characters to exist within the complexities of their own traumas without sacrificing one's pain for the other.

Point three: Agatha's backstory was rather limp. I think it could be immediately improved if a single line of dialogue was added, from Rio to Agatha. If, when Agatha asked what Rio would want to allow her to keep Nicky, Rio had responded, "I'll give you as much time as you give me bodies." From there, it would be easy to see why the loss of her son would drive her to engage in that ritual serial killing even more out of grief and out of resentment for being so alienated from her community. Personally, though, I think the backstory we needed was actually Agatha in Salem, being put on trial. Though I do think it's interesting to have Agatha make her son bait for her victims, thus making him an accomplice in her murders, and doing so using a song he wrote with his mother out of love; I just wish it was presented as how disturbing it all actually is - the episode itself never quite gets the emotional tenor it needs, it needed to empathize with Nicky as a child who is absolutely being emotionally neglected and abused, existing with the knowledge that he must help his mother murder.

And point four: Billy being revealed to be the creator of the road immediately destabilizes and reduces the show's stakes. I suppose I should lump in here the fact the road is a con by Agatha as part and parcel of this issue. I feel like the show kind of shied away from committing to the idea of the Witches Road - a really cool concept that, if well executed, could have been the stage for a great story from start to finish. By having Billy create the Road, we actually have Lilia's entire life become centered around him - the time loop she is trapped in, across her entire lifetime, is because of him. Not because of her, not for her, not for her growth, not for her coven. She dies for Billy. She dies for nothing. And sure, everyone ultimately dies for "nothing" if we want to get nitpicky. But how sad is it, for Lilia to be trapped dying in Billy's mind-road, for her entire life. Everything she is, flattened into a mere device for Billy's pain and growth. Way to completely ruin an incredible episode of TV by adding additional context lmfao.

Ultimately, I think the show is fine. Just fine. It could have been much better, which frustrates me. My assumption of what the show was going to be was this: the Witches Road exists as a journey wherein one must overcome their fear of death and strengthen the bonds of the coven to ward off social death, and to ultimately experience a form of "death" at the end of the road wherein the coven would be reunited, fundamentally changed as a result of their journeys. I thought that the meaning appended to "Death" in the show was going to align with the meaning of the tarot (upright: spiritual transformation, new beginnings, letting go, endings, sudden upheaval, etc.; reversed: inability to move forward, fear of beginnings, etc.) given they went through so much effort to put together the "correct" tarot spread. I'd also note that the "What's Missing" was community - so having the ending of the season be most of the coven permanently dead leaves that "What's Missing" still unfulfilled.

[system-of-a-feather]

Just gonna slide this here taken from "addressing racial trauma in behavioral health" course I'm taking for my work because this absolutely does not apply to the Theory of Structural Dissociation what so ever

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lois Beckett at The Guardian:

Attacks targeting American public schools over LGBTQ+ rights and education about race and racism cost those schools an estimated $3.2bn in the 2023-24 school year, according to a new report by education professors from four major American universities. The study is believed to be the first attempt to quantify the financial impact of rightwing political campaigns targeting school districts and school boards across the US. In the wake of the pandemic, these campaigns first attempted to restrict how American schools educate students about racism, and then increasingly shifted to spreading fear among parents about schools’ policies about transgender students and LGBTQ+ rights.

Researchers from UCLA, UT Austin, UC Riverside and American University surveyed 467 public school superintendents across 46 US states, asking them about the direct and indirect costs of dealing with these volatile campaigns. Those costs included everything from out-of-pocket payments to hire to lawyers or additional security, to the staff member hours devoted to responding to disinformation on social media, addressing parent concerns and replying to voluminous public records requests focused on the district’s teachings on racism, gender and sexuality. The campaigns that focused on public schools’ policies about transgender students often included lurid false claims about schools trying to change students’ gender or “indoctrinating” them into becoming gay. This disinformation sparked harassment and threats against individual teachers, school board members and administrators, with some of the fury coming from within local communities, and even more angry calls, emails and social media posts flooding in from conservative media viewers across the country.

In addition to the financial costs of responding to these targeted campaigns, the study revealed other dynamics, the researchers said. “The attack on public officials as pedophiles was one I heard again and again, from people across extremely different parts of the country: rural, urban, suburban. It speaks to the way that this really is a nationalized conflict campaign,” said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the study. The frequency with which both school board members and school superintendents were “being called out as sexual predators – it was really frightening”, Rogers said. Superintendents from across the country told the researchers how these culture battles had affected their schools, and cut into resources they would have preferred to spend on education.

[...] While disagreement, debate and dealing with angry parents are a normal part of local public school administration, the researchers noted, the political campaigns that schools have faced in recent years have been anything but normal. Many of them have been driven by “a small number of active individuals on social media or at school board meetings”, and fueled by misinformation. The school-focused campaigns, which started with claims that elementary and middle schools were harming white students by teaching critical race theory and later shifted to attacks on schools’ policies for transgender students, were nationally organized, with “common talking points” that could be traced back to conservative foundations and rightwing legal organizations, and were intensely amplified by rightwing media coverage, Rogers said.

Public schools across the US burned up nearly $3.2BN worth of money fending off right-wing culture war items such as book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ extremism, anti-student inclusion, and anti-racial equity policies.

See Also:

The Advocate: U.S. public schools lost $3.2 billion fighting conservative culture wars: report

[whiskeysorrows]

oh armand babygirl...you fucked up big time

[itellmyselfsecrets]

“When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong…Usually, when people talk about the “strength“ of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression��The tendency to romanticize the black female experience that began in the feminist movement was reflected in the culture as a whole. The stereotypical image of the “strong“ black woman was no longer seen as dehumanizing, it became the new badge of black female glory…Black women were told that we should find our dignity not in liberation from sexist oppression but in how well we could adjust, adapt, and cope…No one bothered to discuss the way in which sexism operates both independently and simultaneously with racism to oppress us…The stereotypical image of the black woman as strong and powerful so dominates the consciousness of most Americans that even if a black woman is clearly conforming to sexist notions of femininity and passivity she may be characterized as tough, domineering, and strong.” - bell hooks (ain’t I a woman: black women and feminism)

[biologusputrifier777-blog]

Grim Tidings for International Communism: F1nnster Fuckery

I have long since come to the conclusion that my ass will not live to see the fruits of class struggle, this generation of proletariats is cooked. If the supposed "leftists" of this generation fall into the sheer liberalism and cracker barrel ass takes because someone who they thought was a man (and later turned out to be a part of the very group they accused them of exploiting because these stupid fucking social democrats have the situational awareness of deaf dog) did gender wrong and presented too femme without being part of the right type of class (gender is enforced as a class and exists therefore as a construct perpetuated by the capitalist class to retain the power of capital over the proletariat, if you deny this you are either a Maoist, or even worse a Dengist) to do so is fucking crazy. This is the shit that crooked ass Social Democrats like Mussolini and Chairman Gonzalo would be doing if they were bitchless crypto redditors in the year of our lord 20 24. Lenin himself would not be able to redeem your anarcracker asses.

[destroyproject2025]

PROJECT 2025 WOULD:

*Remove the teaching of Critical Race Theory (systematic racism) and Gender Studies from all public schools. (Page 5)

Read P2025 here: static.project2025.org

VOTE

[crystalistrappedintheinternet]

adding tme to my bio bc while on one hand announcing my birth sex makes me dysphoric on the other hand. some of you are misogynists

[royalberryriku]

TERFs 🤝 Zionists

Using the exact same talking points and rhetoric.